From Butler's Ritual Magic (pp. 16-17) quoting a fourth or fifteenth
century papyrus:
"Keep yourself pure for seven days, and then go on the third
day of the moon to a place which the receding Nile had just laid bare.
Make a fire on two upright bricks with olive-wood, that is to say thin
wood, when the sun if half-risen, after having before the sunrise circumambulated
the altar....Decapitate an immaculate pure-white cock, holding it in the
crook of your left elbow....Hold the cock fast by your knees and decapitate
it with no one else holding it. Throw the head into the river, catch
the blood in your right hand and drink it up. Put the rest of the
body on the burning altar and jump into the river. Dive under in
the clothes you are wearing, then stepping backwards climb on to the bank.
After that take the gall of a raven and rub
some of it with the wing of an ibis on your eyes and you will be consecrated."
"This is the holy operation for winning a familiar spirit....He will
perform at once any commission you may give him. He will send dreams,
he will bring you women and men without need for material link; he will
remove, he will subdue, he will hurl winds up from the bosom of the earth;
he will bring gold, silver, bronze and give it to you, if you need it;
he will also free from bonds the prisoner in chains, he opens doors, he
renders you invisible, so that no human soul can see you; he will bring
fire, carry water, bring wine, bread, and any other food you want; oil,
vinegar, everything except fish, as many vegetables as you want; but as
for pork, you must never command him to bring that."
From Cockayne (3:9) on a remedy against swelling:
"Take a root of lily, sprouts of elder, and leaves of leek,
and scrape them very small and pound them thoroughly, and put them [in]
a thick cloth and bind [it] on [the swelling]"
Late 13th century Latin collection attributed to Albertus Magnus
under the title the 'Secreta Alberti' or the 'Liber aggregantionis'
was translated into the early modern period into English, French, German,
Italian, and Spanish. The book has some 200 formulas
including:
"To know whether your wife is chaste. To be made invisible.
To burn someone's hand without using fire. To make a perpetual, inextinguishable
fire. To divine the future. To start a fire [using a lens].
To make an incombustible garment [using asbestos].
To make a sleeping man tell you what he has
done. To make a rainbow appear [using a prism]. To generate
love between to people. To make men seem headless. To make
men seem to have dog's faces. To make men seem to have three heads.
To see what others cannot. To understand the speech of birds.
To make a man impotent. To make a lamp that makes any man holding
it fart until he sets it down.
Some variations on what is listed in magic books.
1. Ritual
and incantations that were not part of divine worship; evocation of powerful
names; words, sounds gestures, character, and symbols.
2. Applications
and mixing of natural substances where the ingredients, the recipes, or
the effects were unusual or generally unknown.
3. Mechanical
contrivances whose workings were hidden or not generally understood.
4. Sleight-of-hand
and other illusionistic manipulations, including the use of mirrors and
lenses
5. any other
generally striking effect a person might create in which the causes were
not recognized by others.
Isidore of Seville in his great 'Etymologiae' of the early seventh
century provided a sinister portrait of magicians that was widely quoted
and paraphrased well into the twelfth century:
"Magi are those who are popularly called malefici or socrcerers
on account of the great magnitude of their crimes. They agitate the
elements, disturb men's minds, and slay merely by force of incantations
without any poisoned drink" (Etymologiae 8:9).
The following is from chapter 67 of De ortu scientiarum (1250),
where Robert Kilardby is closely dependent upon chapter 15 of Hugh of St.
Victor's Didascalicon:
Magic is not accepted as part of philosophy since it teaches
every iniquity and malic; lying about the truth and truly causing injury,
it seduces men's minds from divine religion, it prompts them to the cult
of demons, it fosters corruption of morals, and it impels the minds of
its devotees to every wickedness.
By the thirteenth century, people were beginning to drop away the
magical and mirraculous fascades. Albertus Magnus explained the Three
Magi in his 'Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew": "For magi are
great men according to the etymology. . . . And the Magi are not sorcerers
as some wrongly claim. For a magus is different from the astrologer,
the enchanter, the sorcerer (or necromancer), and the other types of diviner,
since properly a magus is only a great man who, having knowledge of all
necessary things... sometimes produces marvels or gives advance notice
of them." He, rather than condemn magi, explained that their knowledge
came from nature and was praiseworthy. Much of this change came from
the Arabic influences.
The De radiis (attributed to the ninth century Islamic scholar
al-Kindi) a major naturalistic theory of magical effects analyzes all forms
of rations that transmit influences through space, including astral influence
and the effect of one mind on another. This 'Book on Radiations or
the Theory of Magic, argues that it is naturally flowing celestial influence,
when properly tapped by magicians, the produces the unusual effects.
Al-Kindi's naturalistic theory allows no place for demons and for this
reason evoked critical responses from certain quarters. But the Latin
translation (made in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century) was
widely dispersed in manuscripts and influenced many writers including Roger
Bacon (13th), Nicole Orsems (14th) and John Dee (16th).
The anonymous Picatrix (sometimes wrongly attributed to al-Majriti).
Translated to Spanish by Alfonso the Wise of Castile in 1256. It
presents magic as an applied science. It offers this definition of
magic in the second chapter:
We call by the name necromancy all the things done by which
the senses and spirits are brought to marvelous effects. ... Necromancy
is divided into two parts, theory and practice. Its theory is the
knowledge of the positions of the fixed stars...,
of the form of the heavens, and of the means by which they project rays
onto the self-moving planters. ... And in this [theoretical part]
is comprehended all of what the ancient sages related concerning the choosing
of hours and seasons for the work of images
[namely, talismans]. ... And words, too, are a part of necromancy since
speech has itself the necromantic power. ... Practice consists in
the compounding of the three natures [animal, vegetable, and mineral] with
the power of the influence of the fixed stars.
The third Arabian work which effected the Middle Ages was the Secretum
secretorum, purportedly a letter from Aristotle to Alexander on kingship
and ethics. Probably written in the 10th century, it grew into am
important encyclopedia of learning, science, and wise counsel. Its
tenth discourse on the occult sciences includes recipes, material on talismans,
herbs, and stones, as well as the theory of magic and the powers of he
planets. Over 500 Latin manuscripts of this work are extant and translations
in Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italina, Spanish, and Welsh
and even Russian. Roger Bacon produced a well-knonw glossed version
of this book.
As natural philosophy flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries, it
began to explain what had previously been know as magic effects.
Albert Magnus thought that the Pharaoh's magician's staves were simply
the instance of worms coming from rotted wood. Roger Bacon's explanation
of the evil eye (fascinatio) employed concepts from the newly recovered
Aristotelian texts and the newly available philosophy of al-Kindi and Avicenna
(Ibn Sina).
Albert Magnus played down demons, Thomas Aquinas played them up.
Siger of Brabant, said magical effects derived entirely from heavenly bodies
controlled by the magician's scientific knowledge having nothing to do
with demons.
Nicole Oresme (the famous French mathematician and bishop, fl late 14th
cent.) elaborated his theory of the configuration of qualities in order
to explain a wide range of magical processes, including sympathetic action,
attraction and repulsion at a distance, the power of enchanters' words
and songs, and fascinatio. He also began the move to distinguish
between what was truly magical (or natural) from that which was illusionary.
He used the excuse that God's miracles were less common now than in Biblical
times.
From the Renaissance to the seventeenth century views of magic began
to split. One looked at the artifice, the illusion, and the mechanisms
behind these. This died with the rise of Galileo, Descartes, Boyle,
and Newton.
The other direction was the powers of the mind. This was especially
prevalent in fifteenth century Italy. Their concern was the power
of the mind over externatl things. Led by Ficino, and derived largely
from the Platonic and hermetic texts as well as Al-Kindi and Picatrix.
This moved into the mysticl magic religions.
The question comes down to what is the difference between magic and
science? Magic appeared as the common man's ignorance of the existence
of natural laws that any man could control. Magic also included in
its scope, those natural laws of the universe that may never, even today,
be understood by any human beings, such as the nature of death, the origin
of the universe, the existence of a thinking being greater than mankind.
Are these last questions mystical or are they just not yet understood?
Ignorance and the desire to hide it, often produce a strange form of fiction.
Anything not understood is believed to be supernatural. And in an
attempt to understand these supernatural things, fictional theories are
presented. That trees grow must mean they have a soul and spirit.
That the sun crosses the sky, it must be the chariot of a god, shining
brilliantly. That I often lose a sock means there must be gremlins
in the house. That I don't know how the universe started, there must
be a god or gods who do know. Then again, there are at any given
time, three views of what is impossible and miraculous: the view of the
common man, the view of those at the pinnacle of scientific knowledge,
and the view of those of religious and judicial knowledge who must determine
the ethics of events.
FROM Colin Wilson's The Occult:
Actually in the 16th century the quality of magical texts fell off.
The Church was losing her hold on the people. The age of science
was approaching. An intelligent, cultured country gentleman named
Reginald Scot wrote 'The Discovery of Witchcraft' in the 1580's; he took
the point of view of a throrough-going sceptic who declared that 'all spiritualistic
manifestations were artfully impostures' and that witches were an invention
of the Inquisition. Some of his anecdotes are ribald and delightful--as,
for example, the story of a young man who was unfortunate enough to lose
his sexual member while fornicating. He went to a witch, who told
him she know of a tree in which there was a nest of spare penises. 'And
being in the top of the tree, he took out a mighty great one and showed
the same to her, asking her if he might have the same. Nay, qouth
she, that is our parish priest's tool, but take any other thou wilt. ...'
The nest, apparently, contained twenty or thirty tools, lying in provender--undoubtedly
oats--upon which they fed. 'These are no jests,' Scot says seriously,
'for they be written by ... judges.' King James I called the book
'damnable,' and wrote his 'Demonologie' to refute it; but even with a king's
name to recommend it, the book never achieved the popularity of Scot's
work. And, in the long run, James I had to agree with Scot since
his passion for witch interrogation found mostly fraud and illusion.
In the last years of his reign, witchcraft trials almost ceased.
A copy of the King James I "Demonologie" can be found in the Miskatonic
University Library
Check out stories of Simon Magus in the apocryphal ACTS OF PETER
and in the pseudo-Clementine writings, with further elaborations in the
Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions.
...
