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A grimoire is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms, and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons. In many cases, the books themselves are believed to be imbued with magical powers, although in many cultures, other sacred texts that are not grimoires have been believed to have supernatural properties intrinsically. The only contents found in a grimoire would be information on spells, rituals, the preparation of magical tools, and lists of ingredients and their magical correspondences. In this manner, while all books on magic could be thought of as grimoires, not all magical books should be thought of as grimoires.
Robert Fludd, also known as Robertus de Fluctibus, was a prominent English Paracelsian physician with both scientific and occult interests. He is remembered as an astrologer, mathematician, cosmologist, Qabalist and Rosicrucian.
Paracelsus, born Theophrastus von Hohenheim, was a Swiss physician, alchemist, lay theologian, and philosopher of the German Renaissance.
The Lesser Key of Solomon, also known as Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis or simply Lemegeton, is an anonymous grimoire on demonology. It was compiled in the mid-17th century, mostly from materials a couple of centuries older. It is divided into five books—the Ars Goetia, Ars Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, and Ars Notoria.
Andreas Libavius or Andrew Libavius was born in Halle, Germany c. 1550 and died in July 1616. Libavius was a renaissance man who spent time as a professor at the University of Jena teaching history and poetry. After which he became a physician at the Gymnasium in Rothenburg and later founded the Gymnasium at Coburg. Libavius was most known for practicing alchemy and writing a book called Alchemia, one of the first chemistry textbooks ever written.
A sylph is an air spirit stemming from the 16th-century works of Paracelsus, who describes sylphs as (invisible) beings of the air, his elementals of air. A significant number of subsequent literary and occult works have been inspired by Paracelsus's concept: Robert Alfred Vaughan noted that "the wild but poetical fantasies" of Paracelsus had probably exercised a larger influence over his age and the subsequent one than is generally supposed, particularly on the Rosicrucians, but that through the 18th century they had become reduced to "machinery for the playwright" and "opera figurantes with wings of gauze and spangles".
Thomas Erastus was a Swiss physician and Calvinist theologian. He wrote 100 theses in which he argued that the sins committed by Christians should be punished by the State, and that the Church should not withhold sacraments as a form of punishment. They were published in 1589, after his death, with the title Explicatio gravissimae quaestionis. His name was later applied to Erastianism.
Johann Rudolf Glauber was a German-Dutch alchemist and chemist. Some historians of science have described him as one of the first chemical engineers. His discovery of sodium sulfate in 1625 led to the compound being named after him: "Glauber's salt".
The Book of Abramelin tells the story of an Egyptian mage named Abraham, or Abra-Melin, who taught a system of magic to Abraham of Worms, a Jew in Worms, Germany, presumed to have lived from c. 1362–c. 1458. The system of magic from this book regained popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries partly due to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers' translation, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.
Francis Barrett was an English occultist.
Alphabet of the Magi is the modern name of a variant of the Hebrew alphabet used for inscriptions in talismans in 17th-century occultism.
Picatrix is the Latin name used today for a 400-page book of magic and astrology originally written in Arabic under the title Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, which most scholars assume was originally written in the middle of the 11th century, though an argument for composition in the first half of the 10th century has been made. The Arabic title translates as The Aim of the Sage or The Goal of The Wise. The Arabic work was translated into Spanish and then into Latin during the 13th century, at which time it got the Latin title Picatrix. The book's title Picatrix is also sometimes used to refer to the book's author.
Franz Hartmann was a German medical doctor, theosophist, occultist, geomancer, astrologer, and author.
The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is an 18th- or 19th-century magical text allegedly written by Moses, and passed down as hidden books of the Hebrew Bible. Self-described as "the wonderful arts of the old Hebrews, taken from the Mosaic books of the Kabbalah and the Talmud", it is actually a grimoire, or text of magical incantations and seals, that purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create some of the miracles portrayed in the Bible as well as to grant other forms of good fortune and good health. The work contains reputed Talmudic magic names, words, and ideograms, some written in Hebrew and some with letters from the Latin alphabet. It contains "Seals" or magical drawings accompanied by instructions intended to help the user perform various tasks, from controlling weather or people to contacting the dead or Biblical religious figures.
Heinrich Khunrath, or Dr. Henricus Khunrath as he was also called, was a German physician, hermetic philosopher, and alchemist. Frances Yates considered him to be a link between the philosophy of John Dee and Rosicrucianism. His name, in the spelling "Henricus Künraht" was used as a pseudonym for the 1670 publisher of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of Baruch Spinoza.
The Arbatel De Magia Veterum is a Latin grimoire of Renaissance ceremonial magic published in 1575 in Switzerland.
Pietro Perna was an Italian printer, the leading printer of Late Renaissance Basel, the Erasmian crossroads between Italian Renaissance humanism and the Protestant Reformation. His books promoted the Italian heretical thinkers at the origins of Socinianism and the theory of Tolerance. He was a major publisher of Protestant historians like Flacius Illyricus and David Chytraeus and promoted the ars historica treatises of the period, notably the 18 authores de historia in Artis Historicae Penus (1579).
Monas Hieroglyphica is a book by John Dee, the Elizabethan magus and court astrologer of Elizabeth I of England, published in Antwerp in 1564. It is an exposition of the meaning of an esoteric symbol that he invented.
Renaissance magic was a resurgence in Hermeticism and Neo-Platonic varieties of the magical arts which arose along with Renaissance humanism in the 15th and 16th centuries CE. These magical arts were divided into seven types.
Petit Albert is an 18th-century grimoire of natural and cabalistic magic. The Petit Albert is possibly inspired by the writings of Albertus Parvus Lucius. Brought down to the smallest hamlets in the saddlebags of peddlers, it represents a phenomenal publishing success, despite its association with "devil worshipers"—or rather because of it. It is associated with a second work, the Grand Albert. It is a composite, maybe heterogeneous work, collecting texts of unequal value written by various authors; most of these authors are anonymous, but some are notable such as Cardano and Paracelsus. Due to its historical nature, Albertus Magnus's attribution to the text is considerably uncertain and since the text quotes from so many later sources, it is an ethnological document of the first order.
References
- ↑ Huserum Brisgoium, Johannem (1591). Zehender Theil Der Bücher und Schriften Adiunctus est Index rerum et verborum accuratiß. et copiosissimus. Franckfort am Meyn. p. 359. This is one of the magic squares published by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in 1531.
- ↑ Vol. 10 of Huser's edition (Zehender Theil der Bucher und Schrifften) is primarily devoted to alchemy, astrology and magic, containing Astronomia magna, Archdoxis magica, Ausslegung der Figuren, Fasciculus prognosticationum, Philosophia sagax and an Appendix. In a paragraph ad lectorem on p. 318, Huser says Es soll aber auch nit ungemelt bleiben, das etliche an diesen Büchern Archidoxis Magicae dubitieren, ob sie Theophrasti seyen [...] Jedoch weil sie Theophrasti Sachen nicht ungemesz, und von vielen für seine Bücher angenommen und erkennt werden, mögen sie auff disz mal neben den andern unterlauffen, bis man desz Auctori gewisser werde ("It shall not be concealed that several have doubted, whether these books Archidoxis Magicae are Theophrast's [...] but because they are not untypical to the material treated by Theophrast, and because they are accepted and recognized by many as his books, may they pass among the others for this time, until there is greater certainty regarding the author.")
- editions and translations
- Joh. Huser (ed.), Zehender Theil der Bücher und Schrifften [...] Paracelsi , Basel (1591), 319 – 359.
- Robert Turner (trans.) Paracelsus, Of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature (1656, facsimile from the Library of Congress; reprints: Askin Publishers & Samuel Weiser, 1975; Ibis Publishing 2004).
- Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Paracelsus. Essential Readings, North Atlantic Books (1999), 192–197.
- secondary sources
- Wolfgang Schneider, Paracelsus — Autor der Archidoxis Magica? (1982).
- Charles Webster, "Paracelsus Confronts the Saints: Miracles, Healing and the Secularization of Magic", Soc Hist Med 8(3), December 1995, 403–21.
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