SamSuka
The Caretaker
The Caretaker

patreon


UNTITLED MAGIC BOOK - 5/5/2022

Added 2022-05-05 18:05:18 +0000 UTC

ASIDE: A QUICK FIELD GUIDE TO MALICIOUS SPIRITS

The term “demon” has become a shorthand for “the things that carry pitchforks in Christian Hell.” However, many of the entities referred to as “demons” are not demons.

Just as one must take care not to mistake a crow for a raven, one must understand the differences between a Daimon, a Sheyd, or a Djinn.

Demons: The malicious fallen angels of Christian mythology. The demons of Christianity are fallen angels (Rev 12:7-9), that rebelled against God and were cast down to earth as punishment. Though mentions of demons in the Bible are scant, their purpose in creation is generally to cause misery and suffering. Infamous witch-hunting handbook the Malleus Malefecarum describes demons as the external cause of all mortal sin. They are an ontological evil: their very nature is malicious.

Demons generally do not like humans very much. If paradise lost is to be believed, demons rebelled against god for loving mankind over the angels.

Shedim: The spirits of Jewish mythology are generally associated with foreign gods. Though superficially similar to Christian demons, the role of Shedim in Jewish cosmology is significantly different. The Talmud describes them as being like ministering angels: They have wings like ministering angels; and they fly from one end of the world to the other like ministering angels; and they know what will be in the future like ministering angels. And in three ways they are similar to humans: They eat and drink like humans; they multiply like humans; and they die like humans.” (Hagigah 16a) [get that citation on Shedim practicing other religions from willo]

Djinn: Spirits from pre-Islamic arabian cultures who exist alongside humanity. They have their own culture, with their own tribes

Shaitan: The malicious spirits of Islamic mythology who exist to lead mortals and djinn to sin. Their role in islamic cosmology closely parallels that of Christian demons, but their origins differ. Shayatin are not fallen angels, but are the offspring of Iblis (Satan).

Djinn:

Daimon: Also spelled daemon. Daimon are less a type of entity, and more a term for magical entities in general.

SOLOMONIC MAGIC

An understanding of western magic is incomplete without King Solomon. Of the various figures that populate the biblical tradition, Solomon is one of the most complicated. He is difficult to fit into any one mold, existing as both pious king of Israel, and wanton hedonist. Unlike the other major figures of the Talmud and the Old Testament, many of whom are nigh unimpeachable in their virtue, Solomon is tragically human.

When Solomon acceded to the throne, he found himself unprepared to run a country. He prayed to God not for wealth, not for power, but only for the wisdom to govern his country well. God, pleased with Solomon's humility, gave him the wisdom he desired as well as fabulous wealth.

The first example of Solomon’s wisdom was recognizing the need to build the First Temple. Solomon's father, King David, became increasingly aware that while the tabernacle housing the ark of the covenant was elaborate and beautiful, it was essentially a tent. He told the prophet Natha “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent.” (1 Chronicles 17:1) This prompted Solomon to begin construction on the First Temple, a task that, in some versions of the story, is accomplished with sorcerous means.

While Solomon pleased God with such virtuous acts, he also often showed wanton disregard for God’s law. Deuteronomy 17:16-17 explicitly stated that kings of Israel were prohibited from amassing great amounts of gold, silver, horses, and wives. Solomon seemed to take this warning as a to-do list, and spent his reign acquiring tremendous amounts of gold, silver, horses, and wives. 1 Kings 11:3 claims Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. While this already sounds difficult to manage, Solomon’s wives turned his heart towards other gods like Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech of the Ammonites. (1 Kings 11)

The contradictory, multivalent figure Solomon served as a mold for pious but transgressive sorcerers throughout western literature, from Dr. Faust to Shakespeare's Prospero. But the majority of Solomon’s influence on magical history lies in his relationship with demons exemplified by the talmudic story of Solomon and Ashmedai.

Solomon wished to build the First Temple, he needed a way to cut the stones without the aid of hammers or axes in accordance with the proscriptions of the deuteronomic proscriptions of the Bible. Solomon first asked the rabbis, who did not know how, but said that the demons might be old enough to know of other stonecutting methods since lost to time. When Solomon sought out these lesser demons they did not know either, but said that the demon prince Ashmedai would. So Solomon armed Benaiah with a chain engraved with the ineffable name of God, and set him to the task of ensnaring the demon prince.

Benaiah located Ashmedai, and successfully bound the demon with the chains, crying “Thy Master's name is inscribed upon you! Thy Master's name is inscribed upon you!" The pair traveled back to the palace where Ashmedai was compelled to reveal how to cut the stone.

Instead of freeing Ashmedai, Solomon realized he had an inhumanly strong demon prince in his employ, and decided not to set Ashmedai free until the demon had completed construction of the temple.

Ashmedai did good work for a time, but eventually tricked Solomon into removing the chains, as well as the magic signet ring. The demon used his temporary freedom to swallow the ring and hurl Solomon four hundred Persian miles away, well into the wilderness. Solomon was reduced to nothing more than a pauper, forced to walk all the way back to Israel while Ashmedai assumed the throne in disguise.

When Solomon makes his dramatic reappearance in the throne room, the court is startled by the sight of two identical men staring at each other. Frightened at the sight of the true king, Ashmedai drops his enchanted disguise and soars into the heavens. While Solomon now had his throne back, he would live in fear of demonic retribution for the rest of his life.

This story tells us several things: Firstly, demons can be bound with an ineffable name of God. Before this, the name of God had been useful for warding off or trapping demons, but the story of Solomon introduced the idea that the name of God could be used to control them. Secondly, this control could be mediated by magical jewelry inscribed with a special seal. Thirdly, demons generally do not enjoy being bound and will do everything in their power to resist their bonds. The idea of binding demons to the will was not unique to Solomon, and had existed in the Greco-Jewish milieu for centuries, but the popularity of the story would come to define popular understanding of demons and their workings. Even today, this story forms the bedrock of the Christian understanding of demons.

Somewhere around the first to third centuries A.D., we find the emergence of the Testament of Solomon, a piece of Old Testament apocrypha that claims to be written by Solomon himself. The text posits that it was not only Ashmedai who was commanded to build the temple, but an entire host of demons. The text acts as a handy-dandy reference guide for the 72 demons available for the magician to summon, along with their abilities and the corresponding angels that can be called upon to control them.

Okay but how did any of this actually work?

“For I have seen a certain man of my own countrey, whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his Captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers: the manner of the cure was this: he put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniack: after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils: and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more: making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed.” [Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 8, Ch 2,

Theres basically two big subschools of solomonic magic: the GMP and the sepher Ha-Razim

GMP has two spells that invoke solomon:

Sefer HaRazim, (3/4th century ce book of jewish magic)

Sometime in the Byzantine Era, we go from describing solomon conjuring demons, to explanations of how to conjure the demons yourself We dont know exactly when

By the 15th century, texts of solomonic magic started showing up in greek

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/josephus/ant-8.html ]

*

Pentalpha: http://www.esotericarchives.com/gifs/pentacle.gif

Testament of Solomon - http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/testamen.htm

Story of Solomon and Ashmedai - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:The_Story_of_King_Solomon_and_Ashmedai

The Life of Solomon

Key of Solomon - http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol.htm

Lesser Key - Lemegaton Clavicula Salomonis - http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/lemegeton.htm

[*]Solomon in the bible with commentary

https://overviewbible.com/solomon/

MEDIEVAL MAGIC

The medieval world saw the emergence of a new paradigm for magic. What was once only a loose conglomerate of legends and folk traditions was now a loose conglomerate of legends, folk traditions, and meticulously systemized knowledge. And like most important things in the medieval era, this new paradigm was born from Catholic priests getting into fights.

This was a scrappy era for the church. The latin-speaking Catholic church had spent most of its history sharing power in the roman empire with the greek-speaking orthodox church. The collapse of the eastern roman empire resulted in a Catholic church which suddenly no longer had to share power, and with a lovely buffer state between them and their increasingly rowdy neighbor: The Abbasid Caliphate. The tides of history had thrown them the ball, and by God were they going to run with it. (cut down, work into next paragraph)

The medieval world was inexorably dominated by the rising catholic church. Like any rising power, the catholic church had its share of enemies. Roger Bacon once wrote “Christendom had two major rivals: philosophy and magic.” It is here, in the church’s desire to defeat these rivals, that we can see the core, the engine driving the machine which transforms magic.

To understand medieval magic, we have to understand the core pieces on the Christian side of the board. The Priest, and the Scholar. The Priest is fairly simple. The Church looked out on a Europe increasingly isolated by unmaintained roman roads and irrigation, and saw a world dreadfully lacking in christendom. Barbarian kings looked out on a Europe severely lacking in cool roman goods, and found conversion to be a quick fix for their problems. Where a centurion conquers with a sword, a priest conquers with a litany, and sometimes also a sword. The Scholar, however, wields a subtler tool: a new form of learning called Scholasticism, and sometimes also a sword.

Magic changed because knowledge itself changed. Generally, if an ancient thinker wanted some knowledge, they would take their bucket down to one of two wells: The well of Tradition (things people have been doing or saying for a long time) or the well of  Legendary Teachers, (Socrates said so.) This was a bit inconvenient for Catholicism, as tradition often did not match up with the bible, and Socrates was a pagan with the gall to die 322 years before the birth of christ. While problems with traditional wisdom could be solved with a declaration of heresy or the careful application of a sword to the neck, philosophy proved a bit trickier. This is where Scholasticism comes in.

Scholasticism is a method of learning characterized by:

To summarize, scholasticism was a specifically Catholic method of analyzing a text, finding contradictions, and resolving those contradictions logically. It can be thought of as a method for the church to organize and stitch together bodies of knowledge. Most importantly for our purposes, it is a method of analysis that involves priests getting into detailed and well written philosophical slap fights about magic.

First into the ring is St. Augustine, who sets the pace with the one-two combo of On the City of God and On the Divination of Demons. Here he summarizes much of the classical conception of magic set down by writers like Iamblicus and Porphyry, but most notably, he rejects the classical distinction of Goetia, (evil magic) and Theurgia (good or divine magic.) Augustine argues that they differ in name only, that both are “Entangled in the rites of demons who masquerade as good angels.” To Augustine, all magic is simply the actions of demons. Demons,according to Augustine, are conscious beings with ethereal bodies similar to fine smoke. This allows them to move at incredible speeds and possess the bodies of mortal humans. Additionally, he also introduces the idea that lesser demons can be bullied into submission via the control of a more powerful demon, an idea that continued through Solomonic magic, and is to this day broadly held by modern occultists.

Yet St. Augustine doesn’t believe that humans have any real control over demons. To him, magic itself is a trap for humanity, and demons are attempting to delude humans into believing they have more power than they actually do. Demons are simply playing along until the opportune moment to drop their spiritual snare and drag their human quarry screaming into hell.

Following quick at St. Augustine’s heels is Isadore of Seville, whose text The Etymologies served as a central informational text in the Middle Ages. His proposed origin of magic is confident and strangely specific: Magic was invented by Zoroaster, and expanded by Democritus.

He mirrors Augsutine’s scorn for magicians, writing “this foolery of the magic arts held sway

over the entire world for many centuries through the instruction of the evil angels.” Given that, he divides practitioners of magic into several subtypes that give us an interesting snapshot of the type of people who practiced non-church-sanctioned magic at the time.

Isidore’s Taxonomy of Magicians:

As for how exactly all of this was accomplished, Isidore tows the party line, explaining that all magic was the result of a “pestilential alliance between humans and demons.” A position that would be repeated by church founders, essentially establishing it as the de facto church position.

Isidore paints quite the cast of magical characters, but the question remains: who was actually practicing magic during the middle ages? Turns out a lot of Catholic priests were practitioners of the arcane. This may seem surprising, given everything we’ve been talking about so far, but I am sure even the most devout catholic can recognize that though the church may condemn something, it is also made of people, and may have a history of condemning with one hand while practicing with another.

John of Salisbury provides our evidence in the form of his text Policraticus, a work of political theory. John details an experience he had with a teacher, another Catholic priest, who taught him to perform a fingernail-based form of divination called Onychomancy. John says that he was unable to see anything, but that his fellow student was able to see “certain airy figures.” This is important for two reasons: One, it is eyewitness evidence of Catholic priests practicing magic, a practice so common that modern scholarship has deemed it worthy of the delightful term “The Clerical Necromantic Underground.” Two, it seems to imply that there was a common understanding of what magic was. Additionally, things that fall into the category of magic for us are not necessarily classified as magic for John. After an entire chapter discussing magic and its tricks, John moves on to Omens. From ants bringing grains of wheat to the infant Midas to indicate that he would one day be wealthy, to six swans flying overhead to announce the return of Aneas’s fleet, these signs were seemingly considered a strange if mundane element of the world, and thus entirely permissible within Christendom.

(find that citation about how John felt magic was worthy of study, which was controversial. Build up his engagement with magic to the point where it seems like he considers it permissible, then drop the bomb that he was a whole ass archbishop.)

The ambiguity around astrology set up by Isadore would eventually become a large source of controversy around later church writers with an occult bent, and when it comes to church writers with controversial opinions on the occult, Michael Scot sits at the top of the pyramid.

As “Science Advisor and Court Astrologer” (read: “court wizard”) to Fredrick II, Scot enjoyed significant resources in his pursuit of the occult, writing about everything from divination, to alchemy, to astrology, to the occult in general. The tone of his writing differs significantly, taking on a tone akin to “Demonology is highly highly forbidden by the church, but here is a list of demons and how to summon them, you know, for research purposes.” Scot’s tone was notably unsubtle, even for the time. While his works would later be censured by the likes of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, his boldness is indicative of a shift in towards acknowledgement if not acceptance of magic.

This is the fight that characterizes magic in the Middle Ages, this internal struggle within the church of just what to do with all these wizards, that forms the gears and cogs of medieval magic. That said, It is important to remember that magic was not solely owned by people with the resources to write books, no the medieval world was a complex tapestry of people and ideas for the Catholic Church to get into fights with. For while the court wizards of history were busy systemizing magic, the folk practitioners and itinerant mystics of Europe were busy with good-old straightforward salt-of-the-earth no-nonsense heresy.

By the 13th century, Christianity had become the dominant religion of Europe, but dominant does not necessarily mean “ideologically stable.” Quietism, Autotheism, and Antinomianism were all on the rise, and all arguably a prelude to the coming Protestant reformation. Metaphysical frameworks are a lot like songs: when they get popular, people start to remix them. Of the innumerable MC’s to rock the tables of Christendom in the 13th century, few did so with more underappreciated skill than the Beguines. Often called the Grey Sisters, the Beguines were a group of christain women who took self-imposed vows of piety, chastity, and community service. They would generally live communally in cities where they would work odd jobs as transcribers and nurses. They quickly became known for their effective and charismatic preaching, and for providing free education to children.

Beguine occult works were often literary, taking the form of divinely inspired poetry. Hadewijch of Antwerp wrote in the style of the courtly love poem, a popular form for the time, in which Hadewijch describes the process through which one achieves oneness with divinity via the metaphor of divine pining. However, Hadewijch cleverly inverts the common tropes, with herself taking the role of the pining noble or knight, and God or Jesus taking the role of the beloved. The effect is a radical feminization of the divine that frames the authors transcendental experiences through erotic, and often homoerotic, language. Reactions from the rest of Christendom could be described as “mixed.” For while some communities welcomed the Beguines as examples of righteous and pious women, others had them shunned, imprisoned, and even executed.

[we should talk about st guinefort here]

There are two ways that the medieval relationship to magic could end: Christendom could subtly develop a framework that allows magic to exist under purview of the church, syncretizing as it did for so many other cultures and beliefs, or the protestant reformers could criticize the church for being “magical” prompting a bloody centuries-long crackdown on deviation from explicit canon.

–

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettleshiem  is a difficult man to categorize, the story of his life and work is atypical even for magical authors. He graduated from the University of Cologne at the age of 16 and became a mercenary, traveling across Europe as a captain in the army of Maximilian I. After seven years of military service he settled in Burgundy under the patronage of both Margaret of Austria, governor of Franche-Comté, and Antoine de Vergy, archbishop of Besançon and chancellor of the University of Dole. With the political powerhouse of both a Hapsburg and an archbishop behind him, Agrippa took to his theological study with a renegade’s bravado. In what was likely a bid to impress Margaret, he wrote a text called  De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminae sexus or “On the Nobility and Excellence of the Feminine Sex” a work which utilized elements of hebrew theology and Cabalistic mysticism to prove that women were the inherently superior sex. He was eventually given a doctorate, while at the same time being denounced as a “Judaizing heretic” by Franciscan prior Jean Catilinet, and forced to flee Dole. Once safely in England, Agrippa replied "I am a Christian, but I do not dislike Jewish Rabbis," a dangerously radical position to hold at the time.

His work, the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, serves as both a compendium of magical knowledge and as a metaphysical framework unifies disparate magical beliefs into a single comprehensive system. The scope of topics Agrippa attempted to unify was broad, including topics from the nature of the Christian god, to herbal medicine, to Persian folk magic, to Jewish mysticism. To call his ambitions bold would be an understatement. Agrippa spent his life hounded by accusations of pro-Semitism (a sympathy that could result in criminal prosecution at this time) and witchcraft, charges that would eventually lead to his torture and execution at the hands of the Inquisition.

Despite this, The Three Books of Occult Philosophy would go on to become a defining work of Western magic. The book is influential, above all, because of its clarity and scope. Like the Monas Heiroglyphica, the text is written in the style of a geometric proof, but rather than attempt to reconstruct all of reality from geometry alone, Agrippa’s first book begins with a definition of scope, explaining that everything exists in one of three planes: Material, Celestial, and Intellectual, and that magicians can gain power through the manipulation of the forcestherein. Agrippa is engrossed with the mysterious, but has no interest in being mysterious himself. His language is direct, comprehensible, and charmingly self-aware.

*get a fun example here

*In my opinion, an essential element of discussing the occult is maintaining that element of wonder. A good magician can explain a concept in dense mystical language, but a great magician can do it while sounding like a textbook.

Additionally, Agrippa gives us his own definition of magic:

“Magick is a faculty of wonderfull vertue, full of most high mysteries, containing the most profound Contemplation of most secret things, together with the nature, power, quality, substance, and vertues thereof, as also the knowledge of whole nature, and it doth instruct us concerning the differing, and agreement of things amongst themselves, whence it produceth its wonderfull effects, by uniting the vertues of things through the application of them one to the other, and to their inferior sutable subjects, joyning and knitting them together thoroughly by the powers, and vertues of the superior Bodies.”

When Agrippa says “vertue” he means it in the sense of “an attribute or quality.” For Agrippa, magic is a force like gravity, but it is also the web of relationships between objects, and the manipulation of those bonds. Agrippa divides the world into three planes, the Natural Plane at the bottom, Celestial Plane in the middle, and Intellectual Plane at the top. Each plane governs what happens on the plane below it. Each plane has a corresponding form of magic: natural magic, celestial magic, and ritual magic.

Natural Magic: As Agrippa describes it, natural magic is the manipulation of the magical properties of the physical world. All things contain magical virtue, though some contain specific forms of magic in higher concentrations, with the types of magical effects broadly categorized under the seven planetary metals.

Aside: Agrippa’s Taxonomy of Magical Energies:

The goal of the natural magician is to identify and manipulate these energies through various forms of physical change. If a magician wishes to make a magical ring, Agrippa recommends combining a precious stone, a metal, and an herb, all of the same type of virtue. If the magician wishes for solar virtue, they would make a ring of gold set with hyacinth and peridot, the idea being that three separate objects of similar virtue form a more effective channel for solar energy.

Celestial Magic: Celestial magic concerns the principles, forces, and numinous ideas of the world. Numbers, letters, ratios, and the night sky, all have their own set of magical correspondences which can be manipulated by a magician. To a modern mind, there is no relationship between numbers, letters, ratios, and the night sky, but to the medieval mind there was. The motions of the stars and the planets had a direct link to events here on earth.To some, the stars caused events to happen, to others, the stars merely reflected them. To some, the sky was the clockwork of the world, the divine machinery which moved the fates of men. To others, it was akin to the surface of a great dark lake, a mirror, upon which the world was reflected. To a medieval, the night sky could be measured to learn about the changing world in the same way that soil pH can be measured to learn about a flower's growth.

Agrippa describes the celestial world as a sort of medium between the physical and the divine. There are four cardinal directions, four seasons, but also four archangels, and four letters in the Hebrew name of God. To Agrippa, something that can measure both the physical and the divine must contain incredible power.

Practically all forms of Western divination fall within what Agrippa defines as celestial magic. From Astrology to palmistry, any form of magic involving the reading of signs and shapes falls under the umbrella of celestial magic. It also contains practices like sacred geometry, numerology, and astrology.

Ceremonial Magic: Ceremonial magic is interaction with the divine through the medium of ritual. While popular media tends to depict the magicians of history as either Pagan madmen or brooding satanists, the reality is that practically all magicians were practicing Catholics, and Agrippa was especially devout. Ceremonial magic centers around religion, which Agrippa considers an essential element of magic. Agrippa was not the only magician stressing Christian religious aspects for magic, but he was notable for being the only magician who attempted to place both Pagan magic and Christian miracles into the same metaphysical framework. It is here in the third book that Agrippa joins most closely with Christian theology. Agrippa explores the mechanics of the divine, providing a theoretical peek under the hood of church rituals like consecration and prayer. Agrippa also creates the text’s central heresy: the idea that Pagan magic and church ritual are “homousian,” made of the same stuff, except for a single key element: the presence of God.

If natural magic is the physical manipulation of magic, and celestial magic is the mathematical manipulation of magic, ceremonial magic is the divine manipulation of magic. Within Agrippa’s metaphysical framework, all magic stems from God and permeates all things, but some magic is inherently “closer” to God. And while anyone could manipulate magic if they had the right knowledge, to do so morally and effectively required an active devotion to God.

In 1535, Agrippa was tortured and killed by the inquisition. The legend goes that on the moment of his death, his beloved pet dog, Monsieur, cast itself into a nearby river.

Magic has a way of defying definition. In this same sense, it has a tendency to defy standard historical narratives. The line between the medieval and renaissance world is already blurry, but this is doubly truefor magical history. Magic exists out of step with the rest of history, and the paradigm shifts happening in magic are not necessarily the same shifts happening in the rest of western history and culture.

Think of medieval magic as a camping cooler full of organs: There is no system to it, just a big plastic container full of ice and livers and hearts and whatnot. The archetypal example is the Greek Magical Papyri. One rite might bind a spirit, another might tell the future, another might create a magical amulet, but the organs are not connected to each other, they do not exist as a complete system. *include an example of systemized magic*

Think of renaissance magic as Frankenstein's monster. The organs exist in a system, a big meaty container full of blood and livers and hearts that all form a greater whole. In the context of magical history, Dr Frankenstien is Catholic Scholasticism.

*(maybe talk about magic and cryptography here? Did cryptography contribute to the systemization of magic?)

A systemized practice asks “how does magic work?” There are stones with magical properties, spirits who can be summoned, futures that can be told, but what is the common thread between them? If these things all fall under the umbrella of “magic,” then how does magic actually work? What are its mechanics? To attempt to answer that question is to systemize magic.

*potential example

One of the first men to attempt to systemize magic was John Dee. A man worthy of a book on his own, he was an extraordinarily well-educated man, an astronomer, astrologer, teacher, occultist, alchemist, spy, angelic translator, wife-swapper, and court wizard to queen Elizabeth I, there was quite possibly no man in history more deserving of the term “renaissance man.”

His occult writings are diverse, but his text the Monas Hieroglyphica is one of the earliest attempts at systemizing all of magic into a comprehensible body of knowledge. The Monas dense even for the standards of occult texts, pulling from dozens of bodies of knowledge both occult and mundane. It is an attempt to unify several of the main occult fields of Dee’s time, combining Astrology-Astronomy, Christian neoplatonism, and alchemy into a single system represented by the titular symbol, the Monas Hieroglyph, which Dee posits as a representation of the fundamental structure of the universe.

Reactions to the Monas Hieroglyphica were mixed. Some of Dee’s contemporaries would decry it as nonsense (find the quote from that one guy who roasted it), but at the same time the Monas Hieroglyphica would go on to become an emblem for the Hermetic tradition as a whole.

While Dees' success at systemizing magic is debatable, he is emblematic of the next great era for magic: The rise of the Poet-Mystic.

***ASIDE: WHATS UP WITH ALL THE HEBREW?

Nominalism vs Realism

The remarkable proliferation of Hebrew in non-Jewish magic has its origin in a hot topic of theological debate for the medieval Christian world. What they discussed lay at the heart of Western magic and philosophy then and now: what is the relationship between a thing and its name?

Common knowledge has changed. Nowadays, we are nominalists. When we say the word “dog” we know that the word “dog” is just a series of noises we use to represent the animal, the word has no real effect on the furry creature known as a dog. This was not always the case. The vast majority of medieval thinkers were realists. They believed that “dog” meant “the furry animal with four legs that barks” in the same sense that one plus one equals two.

For a moment, we must put ourselves in the jingly little shoes of a medieval person. For them, this debate had widespread consequences for the nature of reality. We know humans exist, but does the category “human” exist as a privileged part of the fabric of reality? If it does, how is it defined? What is it made of? If it doesn't, how can we be humans?

Practically, if everything in the universe has a True Name, that brings up the problem of how there are many languages on earth. If dogs have a True Name, how do we know which word is the true one? This becomes a real problem if you’ve ever tried to engage in one of the Catholic churches favorite pastimes: translating the bible. If God wants to talk about a dog, what language does she speak?

Given that the Christian Bible is based on the Hebrew Bible, the consensus that most realists reached was that God probably spoke some form of modified or primordial Hebrew.

This was problematic for the church for several reasons. First, the Catholic church’s view of Judaism as a whole was that Judaism was obsolete, and that Catholicism is here to supersede and replace Judaism. Anything Jewish the Catholic Church could not appropriate was seen as wrong, dangerous, or blasphemous.

Another reason that there is so much Hebrew in this era of occult history was the Alhambra Decree. On March 31st of 1492 the joint Catholic monarchs of Spain violently expelled all practicing Jewish people from the territories of Castille and Aragon. Of the estimated 300,000 Jewish Spaniards, more than 200,000 were forced into conversion, with anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 resisting conversion to face expulsion. [3]

Every Spanish Rabbi was faced with an impossible choice. On one hand, they could risk everything to resist conversion in the face of what was in no short terms a genocide. On the other hand, they could convert, they could keep their family, their property, and their flock, at the cost of their identity as a culture.

This led to a population of Rabbis who converted to become priests. Suddenly, Jewish theology and knowledge of the Hebrew language was significantly more accessible to Christendom. Books of Jewish theology and mysticism were translated, both as part of the ongoing pillaging of Jewish culture, and as an effort to preserve what could be preserved.

*Possible other avenues of cultural exchange?*

*tie in the above to nominalism*

It is here that we find the distinction between Jewish Kabbalah, and Christian Cabbala.

*religions effect on the nature of reality was radically different, be prepared to put yourself in some odd shoes

***

ASIDE: A SIMPLIFIED GUIDE TO EARLY RENAISSANCE ALCHEMICAL THEORY

The medieval world was generally divided into three categories: Animals, Minerals, and Vegetables.

People had a solid handle on where vegetables came from. Plants come from seeds. You put them in the earth, give them plenty of air and sunlight, they produce more seeds and eventually they die.

Animals were a bit more complicated. Animals had to have sex. Medieval scholars didn’t know exactly how it worked, but they knew that animals could have sex and give birth. Additionally, it was thought that animals could be “generated,“ literally constructed via recipe like a cake. Many medieval magical texts contain what are essentially crafting recipes for rats or frogs.

Metals though, metals were tricky. Nobody could really figure out where exactly metals came from. They were under the earth, that much was understood, but exactly how and why deposits of ore formed was the center of intense debate among medieval alchemists. There were essentially three main theories:

First, let us establish that Alchemists were working from the Aristotelian view of the world. The world was made of four elements: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. These elements interacted through four causes: Material, Formal, Efficient, and Final.

Sulfur-Mercury Theory: This is the “traditional“ alchemical position pioneered by (the likely legendary) Jabir Ibn-Hayyan, but eventually reached Europe through the 1144 translation of the Book of the Composition of Alchemy. The theory itself posits that when sulfur and mercury are trapped beneath the earth and combined, metals are produced. Which metal is produced is based on the ratio of sulfur to mercury. The more balanced the ratio, the closer the metal would be to gold. This was the generally accepted theory among alchemists for most of the medieval era, but it is important to remember that every alchemist had their own spin on how metal generation worked.

Sulfur-Mercury-Salt Theory: The radical, upstart theory of wild mavericks like Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, who developed the theory in his text 1530 text, the Opus paramirum. Paracelcus conceptualizes sulfur and mercury not simply as physical substances, but as metaphysical essences necessary to all chemical change. The theory considers all change, not only the creation of metals, to have three components: A sulfur (the combustible element, the fuel which prompts change), a mercury (the thing which is changed), and a salt (the ash, the detritus given off by the change.)

Mercury Alone Theory: The fringe position, though one notably held by John Dee. This theory posits that all metals were simply the result of mercury trapped in the earth and subjected to various forces which “cooked“ it into the metals we know today. Dee specifically believed that it was stellar rays which “cooked” the metals, and that the ore produced was determined by astrology. This theory is also related to the “metallic seed“ theory of metals, which conceptualizes mercury as the seedbed into which tiny yet indestructible “seeds“ of metal can be planted, eventually transforming the mercury into the desired metal. This theory was actually tested and conclusively disproved by Sir Issac Newton, who dissolved metals in powerful acid and distilled the mixture to see if any “metallic seeds“ were left behind.

***

*we gotta talk about witchraft at some point

*We are gonna talk about neoplatonism soon, so we gotta talk about porphyry and iambalcus

*We’ve got to go back and beef up the section on solomonic magic

*I’m enjoying the direction of exploring what exactly magic is

***Consider ending chapter with Dee, then get into Early Modern/Baroque

*we should use the dee / Agrippa conversation as an opportunity to talk about magical alphabets

2] Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas, The Western Esoteric Traditions', 2008, ISBN 0195320999, p. 55

[3] Gerber, Jane (1994). The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. New York: The Free Press. pp. 1–144. ISBN 978-0029115749.

–

RENAISSANCE MAGIC

Magic is systemized now, so what? Whats the next step?

*we gotta talk about the rosicrucians

*Christian Rosenkreuz

*The rise of the secret society and the Poet Mystic

*Jakob Bohme

*Newton

*William Blake

*magic makes a shift from the clerical to the Volitional, the romantic arguably brought on by humanism

*previously, knowledge was divine, it was revealed to mortals by the divine. Now you can get knowledge on your own with humanism.

*exposure to other cultures

*some start to see the church as moribund and controlling, seek something personal and

revitalizing

*magic is hibernating

*more baroque than enlightenment

*maybe start with sendivogius

*start with solomonic magic

*use agrippa as a bookend, and Dee as the transition to the Baroque period

*baroque moods:

*solomonic magic

*Cyranides? Maybe?

*Greek Magical Papyri

*Chaldean Oracles

Key of Solomon: http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol.htm

Heptameron: http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/heptamer.htm

*Marsilio Ficino

*Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

ASIDE: A DEMON BY ANY OTHER NAME

*talk about Daemons vs Demons vs Sheydim vs Djinn


More Creators

べあ

べあ

 fanbox
anxiton7

anxiton7

 fanbox
ゆき恵

ゆき恵

 fanbox
Gunpowder & Gears ⚙️

Gunpowder & Gears ⚙️

 patreon
sixplusone

sixplusone

 patreon
grix

grix

 patreon
Luna

Luna

 patreon
lsp

lsp

 patreon
PixelicaCG

PixelicaCG

 gumroad
moddedhdgames

moddedhdgames

 patreon
Noe

Noe

 fanbox
T0000K1

T0000K1

 patreon
Doctor Nowhere

Doctor Nowhere

 patreon
HoshinoSera

HoshinoSera

 patreon
Domeza

Domeza

 gumroad
sobtac

sobtac

 gumroad
doggirlkari

doggirlkari

 patreon
とよのきつね。

とよのきつね。

 fanbox
HeruNite

HeruNite

 patreon
sho_Art456

sho_Art456

 patreon
NSFW Sprite Art from D

NSFW Sprite Art from D

 patreon
unrelenting_avocado

unrelenting_avocado

 patreon
remosuka

remosuka

 patreon
fkingtdrawings

fkingtdrawings

 patreon
Purple Horn

Purple Horn

 patreon
rosvo

rosvo

 fanbox
Fabian Zazueta

Fabian Zazueta

 gumroad
Reverend Insanity

Reverend Insanity

 patreon
Comigration

Comigration

 patreon
skepty

skepty

 patreon
Fizzer

Fizzer

 fanbox
fimfiction

fimfiction

 patreon
nap-g

nap-g

 fanbox
Metal Complex

Metal Complex

 patreon
babybellaasmr

babybellaasmr

 patreon
Sakurabrii 🌸

Sakurabrii 🌸

patreon
ラネイルJr

ラネイルJr

 fanbox
cainesart

cainesart

 patreon
Yirusann

Yirusann

 patreon
RobinAHR

RobinAHR

 patreon