Grimoire
Encyclopedia
Magic (paranormal)
Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...
. Such books typically include instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
and also how to summon
Evocation
Evocation is the act of calling or summoning a spirit, demon, god or other supernatural agent, in the Western mystery tradition. Comparable practices exist in many religions and magical traditions.-Evocation in the Western mystery tradition:...
or invoke
Invocation
An invocation may take the form of:*Supplication or prayer.*A form of possession.*Command or conjuration.*Self-identification with certain spirits....
supernatural entities such as angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
s, spirits, and demon
Demon
call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...
s. In many cases the books themselves are also believed to be imbued with magical powers, though in many cultures other sacred texts that are not grimoires, such as the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
, have also been believed to intrinsically have magical properties; in this manner while all books on magic could be thought of as grimoires, not all magical books could.
While the term grimoire is originally European, and many Europeans throughout history, particularly ceremonial magic
Ceremonial magic
Ceremonial magic, also referred to as high magic and as learned magic, is a broad term used in the context of Hermeticism or Western esotericism to encompass a wide variety of long, elaborate, and complex rituals of magic. It is named as such because the works included are characterized by...
ians and cunning folk
Cunning folk
The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic active from the Medieval period through to the early twentieth century. As cunning folk, they practised folk magic – also known as "low magic" – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial...
, have made use of grimoires, the historian Owen Davies
Owen Davies
Owen Davies is a reader in Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. His main field of research is on the history of modern and contemporary witchcraft and magic....
noted that similar such books can be found all across the world, ranging from Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
to Sumatra
Sumatra
Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...
, and he also noted that the first such grimoires could be found not in Europe but in the Ancient Near East
Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Iran The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia...
.
It is most commonly believed that the term grimoire originated from the Old French word grammaire, which had initially been used to refer to all books written in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. By the 18th century, the term had gained its now common usage in France, and had begun to be used to refer purely to books of magic, which Owen Davies presumed was because "many of them continued to circulate in Latin manuscripts." However, the term grimoire also later developed into a figure of speech amongst the French indicating something that was hard or even impossible to understand. It was only in the 19th century, with the increasing interest in occultism amongst the British following the publication of Francis Barrett's
Francis Barrett (occultist)
Francis Barrett was an English occultist.Barrett, an Englishman, claimed himself to be a student of chemistry, metaphysics, and natural occult philosophy...
The Magus
The Magus (handbook)
The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer is a handbook of the occult and ceremonial magic compiled by Francis Barrett and published in 1801. Much of the material was actually collected by Barrett from older occult handbooks, as he hints in the preface:...
(1801), that the term entered the English language in reference to books of magic.
Ancient period
The earliest known written magical incantations come from ancient MesopotamiaMesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
(modern Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
), where they have been found inscribed on various cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
clay-tablets excavated by archaeologists
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
from the city of Uruk
Uruk
Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...
, and dated to between the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ians also employed magical incantations, which have been found inscribed on various amulets and other items. The Egyptian magical system, known as heka
Heka (god)
In Egyptian mythology, Heka was the deification of magic, his name being the Egyptian word for magic. According to Egyptian writing , Heka existed "before duality had yet come into being." The term "Heka" was also used for the practice of magical ritual...
, was greatly altered and enhanced after the Macedonians, led by Alexander the Great, invaded Egypt in 332 BC. Under the next three centuries of Hellenistic Egypt, the Coptic
Coptic alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language...
writing system evolved and the Library of Alexandria
Library of Alexandria
The Royal Library of Alexandria, or Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Alexandria, Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the...
was opened, and this likely had an influence upon books of magic, with the trend on known incantations switching from simple health and protection charms to more specific things such as financial success and sexual fulfilment. It was also around this time that the legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermes Trismegistus is the eponymous author of the Hermetic Corpus, a sacred text belonging to the genre of divine revelation.-Origin and identity:...
developed as a conflation of the Egyptian god Thoth
Thoth
Thoth was considered one of the more important deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat...
and the Greek Hermes
Hermes
Hermes is the great messenger of the gods in Greek mythology and a guide to the Underworld. Hermes was born on Mount Kyllini in Arcadia. An Olympian god, he is also the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and...
; this figure was associated with both writing and magic, and therefore of books on magic. The ancient Greeks
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
and Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
believed that books on magic were invented by the Persians, with the 1st century CE writer Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
stating that magic had been first discovered by the ancient philosopher Zoroaster
Zoroaster
Zoroaster , also known as Zarathustra , was a prophet and the founder of Zoroastrianism who was either born in North Western or Eastern Iran. He is credited with the authorship of the Yasna Haptanghaiti as well as the Gathas, hymns which are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrianism...
around the year 6347 BC, but that it was only written down in the 5th century BC by the magician Osthanes
Osthanes
Ostanes or Osthanes was an Iranian alchemist mage in classical and medieval literature with unclear identity....
- his claims are not however supported by modern historians.
The ancient Jewish
Hebrews
Hebrews is an ethnonym used in the Hebrew Bible...
people were also often viewed as being knowledgeable in magic, which according to legend they had learned from Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
, who himself had learned it in Egypt. Indeed, amongst many ancient writers, Moses himself was seen as an Egyptian rather than a Jew, and two manuscripts likely dating to the Fourth Century, both of which purport to be the legendary eighth Book of Moses (the first five being the initial books in the Biblical Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
), present him as a polytheist
Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
who explained how to conjure gods and subdue demons. Meanwhile there is definite evidence of grimoires being used by certain, particularly Gnostic
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
sects of early Christianity
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
; in the Book of Enoch
Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish religious work, traditionally ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. It is not part of the biblical canon as used by Jews, apart from Beta Israel...
found within the Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
for instance, there is various information on astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
and the angels. In possible connection with the Book of Enoch, the idea of Enoch
Enoch (ancestor of Noah)
Enoch is a figure in the Generations of Adam. Enoch is described as Adam's greatx4 grandson , the son of Jared, the father of Methuselah, and the great-grandfather of Noah...
and his great-grandson Noah
Noah
Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
having some involvement with books of magic given to them by angels continued in various forms through to the mediaeval period.
Israelite King Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
was a Biblical figure also associated with magic and sorcery in the ancient world. The pseudigraphic Testament of Solomon
Testament of Solomon
The Testament of Solomon is an Old Testament pseudepigraphical work, the authorship of which is ascribed to King Solomon. It describes how Solomon was enabled to build the Temple by commanding demons by means of a magical ring entrusted to him by the Archangel Michael.- History :Despite the text's...
is one of the oldest magical texts. It is a Greek manuscript attributed to Solomon and likely written in either Babylonia or Egypt sometime in the first five centuries A.D., over a thousand years after Solomon's death. The work tells of the building of The Temple
The Temple
The Temple is an area of central London, in the vicinity of Temple Church, which is one of the main legal districts of the capital and a notable centre for English law, both historically and in the present day. Two of the four Inns of Court, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, are located here...
and relates that construction was hampered by demons until the angel Michael
Michael
Michael is a given name that comes from the , derived from the Hebrew question מי כמו אלוהים? meaning "Who is like God?" In English, it is sometimes shortened to Mike, Mikey, or, especially in Ireland, Mick...
gave the king a magical ring. The ring, engraved with the Seal of Solomon
Seal of Solomon
In Medieval Jewish, Christian and Islamic legends, the Seal of Solomon was a magical signet ring said to have been possessed by King Solomon, which variously gave him the power to command demons, genies , or to speak with animals.-In legend :...
, had the power to bind demons from doing harm. Solomon used it to lock certain demons within jars and command others to do his bidding although eventually, according to the Testament, he was tempted into worshipping "false-gods" like Moloch
Moloch
Moloch — also rendered as Molech, Molekh, Molok, Molek, Molock, or Moloc — is the name of an ancient Semitic god...
, Baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
and Rapha
Rapha
Rapha Performance Roadwear is a premium sportswear and lifestyle brand focused on bicycle road cycling, clothing and accessories. Started in London in early 2004 by Simon Mottram and Luke Scheybeler, the first products launched in July of that year...
. Subsequently, after losing favour with God, King Solomon wrote the work as both a warning and a guide to the reader.
Notwithstanding the accounts of Biblical figures like Moses, Enoch and Solomon being associated with magical practices, when Christianity became the dominant faith of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, the early Church frowned upon the propagation of books on magic, connecting it with paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
and burned books of magic
Book burning
Book burning, biblioclasm or libricide is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, books or other written material and media. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded...
. The New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
records that St. Paul had called for the burning of magic and pagan books in the city of Ephesus
Ephesus
Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era...
; this advice was adopted on a large scale after the Christian ascent to power. Even before Christianisation, the Imperial Roman government had suppressed many pagan, Christian, philosophical and divinatory texts that it viewed as threats to Roman authority, including those of the Greek mystic and mathematician Pythagoras
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable information is known about him...
.
Medieval period
In the Medieval period, the production of grimoires continued in ChristendomChristendom
Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...
as well as amongst Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
and the followers of the newly founded Islamic faith
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
. As the historian Owen Davies noted, "while the [Christian] Church was ultimately successful in defeating pagan worship it never managed to demarcate clearly and maintain a line of practice between religious devotion and magic," and the use of such books on magic continued. In Christianised Europe, the Church divided books of magic into two kinds; those that dealt with "natural magic" and those that dealt in "demonic magic". The former was acceptable, because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, for instance the Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
leechbooks which contained simple spells designed for medicinal purposes were tolerated. However the latter, demonic magic was not acceptable, because it was believed that such magic did not come from God, but from the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
and his demons - these grimoires dealt in such topics as necromancy
Necromancy
Necromancy is a claimed form of magic that involves communication with the deceased, either by summoning their spirit in the form of an apparition or raising them bodily, for the purpose of divination, imparting the ability to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge...
, divination
Divination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
and demonology
Demonology
Demonology is the systematic study of demons or beliefs about demons. It is the branch of theology relating to superhuman beings who are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings that have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent...
. Despite this, "there is ample evidence that the medieval clergy were the main practitioners of magic and therefore the owners, transcribers, and circulators of grimoires" while several grimoires were actually attributed to various Popes.
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
and the Moorish occupation of Spain, various magical ideas and concepts originating in the Islamic world made their way into European grimoires. In particular, astral magic
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
, involving invoking and praising the powers of celestial bodies into talismans and amulets was introduced to significant effect. One such Arabic grimoire devoted to astral magic, the 12th Century Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr, was later translated into Latin and circulated in Europe during the 13th century under the name of the Picatrix
Picatrix
Picatrix is the name used today, and historically in Christian Europe, for a grimoire originally written in Arabic titled غاية الحكيم , which most scholars assume was written in the middle of the 11th century, though a supported argument for composition in the first half of the 10th century has...
. However, not all such grimoires of this era were based upon Arabic sources; the 13th Century the Sworn Book of Honorius
The Sworn Book of Honorius
The Sworn Book of Honorius, or Liber Juratus is a medieval grimoire purportedly written by Honorius of Thebes. Its date of composition is uncertain, but it is mentioned as Liber Sacer in the 13th century, apparently asserting a high medieval date...
for instance was, like the ancient Testament of Solomon before it, largely based upon the supposed teachings of the Biblical king Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
, and also included ideas such as prayers and a ritual circle, with the mystical
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
purpose of having visions of God, Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
and Purgatory
Purgatory
Purgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
, and gaining much wisdom and knowledge as a result. Another was the Hebrew Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh, translated in Europe as the Liber Razielis Archangeli.
A later book also claiming to have been written by Solomon was originally written in Greek during the 15th Century, where it was known as the Magical Treatise of Solomon or the Little Key of the Whole Art of Hygromancy, Found by Several Craftmen and by the Holy Prophet Solomon. In the 16th Century this work had been translated into Latin and Italian, being renamed the Clavicula Salomonis or the Key of Solomon
Key of Solomon
The Key of Solomon , is a grimoire, or book on magic incorrectly attributed to King Solomon. It probably dates back to the 14th or 15th century Italian Renaissance...
. Also in Christendom during the Medieval, grimoires were written that were attributed to other ancient figures, thereby supposedly giving them a sense of authenticity because of their antiquity. The German Abbot and occultist Trithemius (1462–1516) supposedly had in his possession a Book of Simon the Magician, based upon the New Testament figure of Simon Magus
Simon Magus
Simon the Sorcerer or Simon the Magician, in Latin Simon Magus, was a Samaritan magus or religious figure and a convert to Christianity, baptised by Philip the Apostle, whose later confrontation with Peter is recorded in . The sin of simony, or paying for position and influence in the church, is...
. Magus had been a contemporary of Jesus Christ's, and like the Biblical Jesus had supposedly performed miracles, but had been demonised by the Medieval Church as a devil-worshipper
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
and evil individual. Similarly, it was commonly believed by Medieval people that other ancient figures like the poet Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, astronomer Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
and philosopher Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
had been involved in magic, and grimoires claiming to have been written by them were circulated. However, there were those who did not believe this, for instance the Fransiscan friar Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empirical methods...
(c.1214-1294) stated that books falsely claiming to be by ancient authors "ought to be prohibited by law".
Early Modern period
As the Early Modern period commenced in the late 15th Century, many changes began to shock Europe that would have an effect on the production of grimoires; the historian Owen Davies classed the most important of these as being the Protestant ReformationProtestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...
and subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...
, the Witch Hunt and the advent of printing. The Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
saw the continuation of interest in magic that had been found in the Mediaeval period, and in this period, there was an increased interest in Hermeticism
Hermeticism
Hermeticism or the Western Hermetic Tradition is a set of philosophical and religious beliefs based primarily upon the pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus...
amongst occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
ists and ceremonial magic
Ceremonial magic
Ceremonial magic, also referred to as high magic and as learned magic, is a broad term used in the context of Hermeticism or Western esotericism to encompass a wide variety of long, elaborate, and complex rituals of magic. It is named as such because the works included are characterized by...
ians in Europe, largely fuelled by the 1471 translation of the ancient Corpus hermeticum into Latin by Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin...
(1433–1499). Alongside this, there was also a rise in interest in a form of Jewish mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
known as the Kabbalah
Kabbalah
Kabbalah/Kabala is a discipline and school of thought concerned with the esoteric aspect of Rabbinic Judaism. It was systematized in 11th-13th century Hachmei Provence and Spain, and again after the Expulsion from Spain, in 16th century Ottoman Palestine...
, which was spread across the continent by Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin. The most important magician of the Renaissance was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was a German magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, and alchemist.-Life:Agrippa was born in Cologne in 1486...
(1486–1535), who widely studied various occult topics and earlier grimoires, and eventually published his own, the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, in 1533. A similar figure was the Swiss magician known as Paracelsus
Paracelsus
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
(1493–1541), who published Of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature in which he emphasised the distinction between good and bad magic. A third such individual at the time was Georg Faust, upon whom several pieces of later literature were written, such as Christopher Marlow's Faust, that portrayed him as consulting with demons. The idea of demonology
Demonology
Demonology is the systematic study of demons or beliefs about demons. It is the branch of theology relating to superhuman beings who are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings that have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent...
had remained strong in the Renaissance, and several demonological grimoires were published, including The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy which falsely claimed to having been authored by Agrippa, and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or Hierarchy of Demons first appears as an Appendix to Johann Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum . The title of the book translates roughly to "false monarchy of demons"....
, which listed sixty-nine different demons. To counter this, the Roman Catholic Church authorised the production of many works of exorcism
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...
, the rituals of which were often very similar to those of demonic conjuration. However, alongside these demonological works, grimoires on natural magic also continued to be produced, including Magia naturalis, written by Giambattista Della Porta
Giambattista della Porta
Giambattista della Porta , also known as Giovanni Battista Della Porta and John Baptist Porta, was an Italian scholar, polymath and playwright who lived in Naples at the time of the Scientific Revolution and Reformation....
(1535–1615).
.jpg)
Printing
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....
in Europe meant that books could be mass-produced for the first time, and could reach an ever-growing literate audience. Amongst the earliest books to be printed were magical texts; the nóminas were one example of this, consisting of prayers to the saints used as talismans. It was particularly in Protestant countries such as Switzerland and the German states, which were not under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, where such grimoires were published. Despite the advent of print however, hand-written grimoires remained highly valued, as they were believed to contain inherent magical powers within them, and they continued to be produced. However, with increasing availability, people lower down the social scale and women began to have access to books on magic; this was often incorporated into the popular folk magic of the average people, and in particular that of the cunning folk
Cunning folk
The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic active from the Medieval period through to the early twentieth century. As cunning folk, they practised folk magic – also known as "low magic" – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial...
, who were professionally involved in folk magic. These works also left Europe and were imported to those parts of Latin America controlled by the Spanish
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
and Portuguese
Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Empire , also known as the Portuguese Overseas Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire , was the first global empire in history...
empires and the parts of North America controlled by the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and French
French colonial empire
The French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
empires.
Throughout this period, the Inquisition
Inquisition
The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis , was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy...
, a Roman Catholic organisation, had organised the mass suppression of peoples and views that they considered heretical
Heresy
Heresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
. In many cases, grimoires were found in the heretics' possessions and destroyed. In 1599, the Church published the Indexes of Prohibited Books in which many grimoires were listed as forbidden, including several mediaeval ones like the Key of Solomon
Key of Solomon
The Key of Solomon , is a grimoire, or book on magic incorrectly attributed to King Solomon. It probably dates back to the 14th or 15th century Italian Renaissance...
which were still popular. In Christendom there also began to develop a widespread fear of witchcraft
Witchcraft
Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...
, which was believed to be Satanic
Satanism
Satanism is a group of religions that is composed of a diverse number of ideological and philosophical beliefs and social phenomena. Their shared feature include symbolic association with, admiration for the character of, and even veneration of Satan or similar rebellious, promethean, and...
in nature, and the subsequent hysteria, known as the Witch Hunt
Witch trials in Early Modern Europe
The Witch trials in the Early Modern period were a period of witch hunts between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, when across Early Modern Europe, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as...
caused the death of around 40,000 people, most of whom were women. Sometimes those found with grimoires, particularly of a demonological nature, were prosecuted and dealt with as witches, but in most cases those accused had no access to such books. The European nation that proved the exception to this however was the highly-literate Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, where a third of the 134 witch trials held here involved people who had owned grimoires. By the end of the Early Modern period however, and the beginnings of the Enlightenment, many European governments brought in laws prohibiting many superstitious beliefs in an attempt to bring an end to the Witch Hunt; this would invariably affect the release of grimoires.
Meanwhile, Hermeticism and the Kabbalah would influence the creation of a mystical philosophy known as Rosicrucianism, which first appeared in the early 17th Century when two pamphlets detailing the existence of the mysterious Rosicrucian group were published in Germany. These claimed that Rosicrucianism had originated with a Mediaeval figure known as Christian Rosenkreuz
Christian Rosenkreuz
Christian Rosenkreuz is the legendary, perhaps allegorical, founder of the Rosicrucian Order , presented in the three Manifestos published in the early 17th century...
who had founded the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross; however there was no evidence for the existence of Rosenkreuz or the Brotherhood and it seems likely that Rosicrucianism was formed as a hoax.
18th and 19th centuries
The 18th century saw the rise in the EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, a movement devoted to science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, predominantly amongst the ruling classes. However, amongst much of Europe, belief in magic and witchcraft persisted, as did the witch trials in certain areas. Certain governments did try and crack down on magicians and fortune tellers, particularly that of France, where the police viewed them as a social pest who took money from the gullible, often in a search for treasure
Treasure
Treasure is a concentration of riches, often one which is considered lost or forgotten until being rediscovered...
. In doing so they confiscated many grimoires. However it was also in France that a new form of printing developed, the Bibliothèque bleue, and many grimoires were published through this and circulated amongst an ever growing percentage of the populace, in particular the Grand Albert, the Petit Albert
Petit Albert
Petit Albert is an 18th century grimoire of natural and cabalistic magic.-On-line Edition:* Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du petit Albert....
, the Grimoire du Pape Honorious and the Enchiridion Leonis Papae. The Petit Albert in particular contained a wide variety of different forms of magic, for instance dealing in both simple charms for ailments along with more complex things such as the instructions for making a Hand of Glory
Hand of Glory
The Hand of Glory is the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged, often specified as being the left hand, or else, if the man were hanged for murder, the hand that "did the deed."...
. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, following the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
of 1789, a hugely influential grimoire was published under the title of the Grand Grimoire, which was considered particularly powerful because it involved conjuring and making a pact with the Devil's chief minister, Lucifugé Rofocale, in order to gain wealth off of him. A new version of this grimoire was later published under the title of the Dragon rouge, and was available for sale in many Parisian bookstores. Similar books published in France at the time included the Black Pullet
Black Pullet
The Black Pullet is a grimoire that proposes to teach the "science of magical talismans and rings", including the art of necromancy and Kabbalah. It is believed to have been written in the 18th century by an anonymous French officer who served in Napoleon's army...
and the Grimoirium Verum.
The widespread availability of such printed grimoires in France despite the opposition of both the rationalists and the Church soon spread to neighbouring countries such as Spain and Germany. In Switzerland, the city of Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
was commonly associated with the occult at the time, particularly by Catholics, because it had been a stronghold of Protestantism, and many of those interested in the esoteric travelled from their own Roman Catholic nations to Switzerland to purchase grimoires or study with occultists. Soon, grimoires appeared that involved Catholic saints within them; one such example that appeared during the 19th Century which became relatively popular, particularly in Spain was the Libro de San Cipriano, or The Book of St Ciprian, which falsely claimed to date from circa 1000. Like most grimoires of this period, it dealt with how to discover treasure amongst other things.
In Germany, with the increased interest in folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
during the 19th Century, there were many historians with an interest in magic and grimoires. Several published extracts of these such grimoires in their own books on the history of magic, thereby helping to further propagate them. Perhaps the most notable of these was the Protestant pastor Georg Conrad Horst (1779–1832), who from 1821 to 1826 published a six-volume collection of magical texts in which he studied them as a peculiarity of the Mediaeval mindset. Another scholar of the time interested in grimoires was the antiquarian bookseller Johann Scheible, who first published the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses
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 Five Books of Moses or Pentateuch. A grimoire, a text of magical incantations and seals, it purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create...
, two influential magical texts that claimed to have been written by the ancient Jewish figure Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were amongst the works that later spread to the countries of Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
, where, in the Danish and Swedish languages, grimoires were known as 'black books
Cyprianus
Cyprianus is a name given in Scandinavian traditions of folk magic to the "black book" : a grimoire or manuscript collection of spells; and by extension to the magical tradition that these spells form a part of...
' and were commonly found amongst members of the army.
In Britain, new grimoires continued to be produced throughout the 18th Century, such as Ebenezer Sibly
Ebenezer Sibly
Ebenezer Sibly was an English physician, astrologer and writer on the occult.He had the M. D. degreeSibly is celebrated for the natal horoscope he cast of the United States of America, published in 1787 and still cited....
's A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology, which became particularly popular with cunning folk. In the last decades of that century, London was experiencing a revival of interest in the occult, and this was only further propagated when Francis Barrett
Francis Barrett (occultist)
Francis Barrett was an English occultist.Barrett, an Englishman, claimed himself to be a student of chemistry, metaphysics, and natural occult philosophy...
published The Magus
The Magus (handbook)
The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer is a handbook of the occult and ceremonial magic compiled by Francis Barrett and published in 1801. Much of the material was actually collected by Barrett from older occult handbooks, as he hints in the preface:...
in 1801. The Magus contained many things taken from older grimoires, particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa, and while not achieving initial popularity upon release, gradually came to be a particularly influential text. One of Barrett's pupils, John Parkin, created his own handwritten grimoire, The Grand Oracle of Heaven, or, The Art of Divine Magic, although it was never actually published, largely because Britain at the time was at war with France
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
, and grimoires were commonly associated with the French. The only writer to widely publish British grimoires in the early 19th Century, Robert Cross Smith, released The Philosophical Merlin (1822) and The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century (1825), but neither sold well.
The Lemegeton, or, the Lesser Key of Solomon
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Lesser Key of Solomon or Clavicula Salomonis , is an anonymous 17th-century grimoire, and one of the most popular books of demonology...
(17th Century)
In the late 19th Century, several of these texts (including the Abra-Melin text and the Key of Solomon
Key of Solomon
The Key of Solomon , is a grimoire, or book on magic incorrectly attributed to King Solomon. It probably dates back to the 14th or 15th century Italian Renaissance...
) were reclaimed by para-Masonic magical organisations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
and the Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
.
20th and 21st centuries
The Secret Grimoire of Turiel claims to have been written in the 16th Century, but no copy older than 1927 has been produced.A modern grimoire is the Simon Necronomicon
Simon Necronomicon
The Simon Necronomicon is written by an unknown author, but is introduced by a man identified only as "Simon". Stories presented are a blend of Mesopotamian myths, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian and a storyline of unknown authenticity about a man known as the "Mad Arab."The book was released in...
, named after a fictional book of magic in the stories of author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
, and inspired by Babylonian mythology and the Ars Goetia, a section in the Lesser Key of Solomon which concerns the summoning of demons. The Azoëtia of Andrew D. Chumbley
Andrew D. Chumbley
Andrew D. Chumbley was an English practitioner and theorist of magic, and a writer, poet and artist. He was Magister of the UK-based magical group Cultus Sabbati....
has been described as a modern grimoire.
The Neopagan religion of Wicca
Wicca
Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...
publicly appeared in the 1940s, and Gerald Gardner
Gerald Gardner
Gerald Brousseau Gardner , who sometimes used the craft name Scire, was an influential English Wiccan, as well as an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist, writer, weaponry expert and occultist. He was instrumental in bringing the Neopagan religion of Wicca to public attention in Britain and...
introduced the Book of Shadows
Book of Shadows
A Book of Shadows is a book containing religious texts and instructions for magical rituals found within the Neopagan religion of Wicca. Originating within the Gardnerian tradition of the Craft, the first Book of Shadows was created by the pioneering Wiccan Gerald Gardner sometime in the late 1940s...
as a Wiccan Grimoire.
Popular culture
The term "grimoire" commonly serves as an alternative name for a spell-book or tome of magical knowledge in such genres as fantasy fiction and role-playing games. The most famous fictional grimoire is the NecronomiconNecronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
, a creation of the author H. P. Lovecraft. Similarly in the television series, Charmed
Charmed
Charmed is an American television series that originally aired from October 7, 1998, until May 21, 2006, on the now defunct The WB Television Network. The series was created in 1998 by writer Constance M...
and The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries is a young adult vampire horror series of novels written by L. J. Smith. The story centers around Elena Gilbert, a high school girl torn between two vampire brothers. The series was originally a trilogy published in 1991, but pressure from readers led Smith to write a fourth...
, the Grimoire refers to the evil spell book used by demons, warlocks, etc.. Similarly, on the Disney cartoon Gargoyles (TV series)
Gargoyles (TV series)
Gargoyles is an American animated series created by Greg Weisman. It was produced by Greg Weisman and Frank Paur and aired from October 24, 1994 to February 15, 1997. Gargoyles is known for its dark tone, complex story arcs and melodrama...
, the book of powerful magic sought by the Archmage, and held at various times by either Goliath
Goliath (Gargoyles)
Goliath is a fictional character, and lead protagonist, in the animated television series Gargoyles, voiced by Keith David.-Overview:The Gargoyles concept began as a comedy series in the style of The Gummi Bears, although set in the modern day...
or David Xanatos
David Xanatos
David Xanatos is one of the primary characters of the animated series Gargoyles. In the series, he is the founder, owner and CEO of Xanatos Enterprises and a member of the Illuminati...
in the series' episodes was called the Grimorum Arcanorum. They are also featured in the anime/manga Toaru Majutsu no Index and Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san
Yondemasuyo, Azazel-san
is a Japanese comedy manga written and illustrated by Yasuhisa Kubo. An anime adaptation by Production I.G began airing in Japan in April 2011.-Characters:...
. The magician Alice Margatroid in Touhou Project
Touhou Project
The , also known as Toho Project or Project Shrine Maiden, is a Japanese dōjin game series focused on bullet hell shooters made by the one-man developer Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member, known as ZUN, is responsible for all the graphics, music, and programming for the most part...
also uses a grimoire. A grimoire is also featured in the Canadia television series "Blood Ties
Blood Ties (TV series)
Blood Ties is a Canadian television series based on the Blood Books by Tanya Huff; the show was created by Peter Mohan. It is set in Toronto, Canada and has a similar premise to an earlier series also set in Toronto, Forever Knight, in which a Vampire assists Police in dealing with crime...
", where the main character, Henry Fitzroy uses the grimoire as a dictionary for demons.
External links
- Internet Sacred Text Archives: Grimoires
- Hermetics Library of Magical & Mystical E-Books
- Magical Athenaeum - collection of magical books in PDF format
- Timeline of esoterica
- Solomonic Magic