I had never really looked at the subject of runic inscriptions, let alone magical runic inscriptions. Once I read a nice article on the Dutch website Ingwaz.nl about the magical words “Alu” and Laukaz” in runic inscriptions, my interest was caught by the inscription on a bone-amulet found in Lindholm, Sweden (see image above this article):

Similar inscriptions were found, such as “kk. kiiii. kkk” on the Ellestad stone, “ltlsssiiikutramsstltttll” (Nore stave church, Norway), “laþu aaduaaaliia alu” (Funen bracteate), or “þmkiiissstttiiilll” which can be read on both the Ledberg and the Gorlev stone. It is funny to read what interpretations can be given to these lines of runes.

Arild-Hauge, for example, gives an inscription that goes “r.a.þ.k.m.u:iiiiii:ssssss:tttttt:iiiiii:llllll” (“This inscription is attached to the Galder song Buslubæn, i.e. Bula’s curse, which is written in Bóse’s saga.”) and says: “The inscription is interpreted “ristil aistil þistil kistil mistil listil” by means of each of the 6 first runes – r.a.þ.k.m.u. – is attached one rune in each of the 5 groups with i s t i l”.

Something similar you can read on the website Nordic-life.org, where about the Ellestad inscription (kk. kiiii. kkk) is written:

a magical formula with Kaunan and Isaz as the basis.
Often, these secret runes can be interpreted as follows. The group of identical runes represents the rune carved, and the number of times that the rune is repeated represents the position of the second rune in the same aett. For example, kk represents rune k, Kaunan, since it is found in the first aett, and it is repeated twice, it is also referring to the second rune of the first aett which is Uruz. So kk represents Kaunan followed by Uruz; kkk represents Kaunan followed by Thurisaz, while iiii, with Isaz being the second aett, represents Isaz followed by Ihwaz. The magical formula would be thus: ku kiï kþ.

An interpretation that I never heard. On other places on the same site, the strings of characters are described as: “Side B obviously contains a magical formula” (Lindholm amulet) or “As we have seen in # 22, one can decipher the magical inscription as auduaþlina.” (Funen bracteate).

Ingwaz.nl says a bit more about the Lindholm amulet and since this website is in Dutch, I will translate the text:

The first part can be translated as ‘I, the erilaz here, I am called the Sly’, but of the second part nothing can be made except for the word ‘alu’ […].
The part ‘aaaaaaaazzznn(n?)bmuttt’ is untranslatable. It isn’t just a word, but a magical formula, a spell. The name of the A-rune is ‘Ansuz’, which means ‘god’. The word ‘god’ is repeated eight times here, eight gods are being called upon. Three times the Z-rune (Algiz) could refer to (a plead for) protection, while the N-rune (Nauthiz) points to danger […]. The three T-runes (Tiwaz) represent victory.

Other traditions

On the forum of Ingwaz I remarked that the inscriptions remind me a lot of similar magical formulas that can be found in the Nag Hammadi scriptures or the Papyri Graecae Magicae. Let me give you a few:

“[…] He is perfect, the invisible God to whom one speaks in silence – his image is moved when it is directed, and it governs – the one mighty power, who is exalted above majesty, who is better than the honored (ones),
Zoxathazo,
a
òò
ee
èèè
òòòò
èè
òòòòòò
oooooo
òòòòòò
uuuuuu
òòòòòòòòòòòòòò
zazazoth”
(NHC VI.6)
This quote comes from the Hermetic Nag Hammadi text “The Discource on the Eighth and the Ninth” (“celestial sphere” I might add, also called “The discource on the octoade and the eneade”).

This comes from the Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM) and I can tell you, it can get more crazy than this. Read my article about these texts if you are interested.

There are a few things that are the same in both contexts. ‘Normal writing’ suddenly goes over in magical formulas. In the runic inscriptions it bluntly says something like “this inscription was made by me” and then strings of runes follow. The same goes for the Hermetic initiation into the eighth and ninth sphere. Another similarity is that scholars don’t have a clue what to think of these strange writings. The quote from the Nag Hammadi library has the formula in the way I gave them (under eachother), but most translations just put them after eachother (I think the writer must have had a reason to order the characters like that). I have two translations of the PGM, one of them often leaves out the formulas or simply says “Vokalen” (“vocals” in German). The runic scholars seem to be a bit more fair and at least give the characters in their translations. What is also the same in both cases, is that no conclusive theory of the phenomenon has been given. Some runic scholars seem to like to think that this is about some kind of cipher, but most writers vaguely refer to magical formulas.

When I was reading the English translation of the PGM (this book is reviewed of course), I was simultaneously rereading the Nag Hammadi library. I found an extremely interesting passage in NHC X:

But I am speaking to you (sg.) concerning the three [...] shapes of the soul. The third shape of the soul is [...] is a spherical one, put after it, from the simple vowels: eee, iii, ooo, uuu, OOO. The diphthongs were as follows: ai, au, ei, eu, Eu, ou, Ou, oi, Ei, ui, Oi, auei, euEu, oiou, ggg, ggg, ggg, aiau, eieu, Eu, oiou, Ou, ggg, ggg, aueieu, oiou, Eu, three times for a male soul. The third shape is spherical. The second shape, being put after it, has two sounds. The male soul’s third shape (consists) of the simple vowels: aaa, eee, EEE, iii, ooo, uuu, OOO, OOO, OOO. And this shape is different from the first, but they resemble each other, and they make some ordinary sounds of this sort: aeEoO. And from these (are made) the diphthongs.

This seems to imply that certain characters refer to certain entities, that the numbers of characters have their meaning, etc.

In 2006 Roelof van den Broek published his Hermes Trismegistos, a book with Hermetic texts other than the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius that were earlier published in the same series. In his introduction to the Nag Hammadi text On the Eight and Nineth Sphere he poses some theories on the strings of vowels in the text. My translation from Dutch makes a lengthy quote:

In the magical papyri of the first centuries of our era the secret name of god is called upon frequently with the seven Greek vocals: a e e- [with the - above the e] i o u o- [...]. Thereby the vocals could be ordered in several ways. A well-known method is to increase them in number (aeee-e-e-iiiiooooouuuuuuo-o-o-o-o-o-o-), which allows them to be formed in a ladder (Greek: klima) or a double ladder, which makes a piramide. [...] For the Greeks the characters also served as numbers (a=1, b=2, etc.) and musical notes. In astrology the seven vowels are connected to the seven planets who produce the music of the spheres in their circular paths. For a good effect the vowels had to recited in certain positions, for which the magical papyri give some clues, for example for the a: facing east, with both hands to the left, with the e: facing north, with the right fist forward, etc. The way the different vowels were pronounced was also of importance for the effectivity of the spell, and also herefor prescriptions are given: de a rolling like a wave, the e in the manner of a baboon, etc.

Van den Broek continues some more, but here we have the basis, seven vowels that form the secret name of God if written in certain figures. They should be pronounced in a certain way to be effective. The remark of the characters being musical notes is interesting.

Summery

I am not claiming that the traditions of the PGM and runic magic are the same, nor even that they have the same source. It might be interesting to find out if this could be a theory that can be posed though, but for now I only want to point towards the similarities. Also I do not give explanations for the inscriptions, I know. I like to think of them as magical sounds (just think of the famous “AUM”) that were used in incantations or maybe even prayers. Undoubtely this is a tradition that we have lost and we no longer know the meaning of them, but it is nice to see that similar formulas were used in the Hellenistic Egyptian (Nag Hammadi, Hermetica, PGM) context around the beginning of our era and also in Northern Europe many centuries later. Who knows what more traditions have the same thing and one tradition may shed light on another.

Buslubæn runes

-27/12/06-

In my article “The Philosophical Renaissance In Italy” I have written about the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy focussing on the philosophical side. In this article I will leave Italy and since especially in other countries there came a more esoteric side, I will speak some more about that. In the mentioned article I told about the humanist tradition as starting-point for Renaissance-thinking. Ironically enough, humanism outside Italy has brought forth two very opposital movements. One is the more occult movement, the other led to the reformation and the coming up of Protestantism. Initially the two weren’t too hostile towards each other, but later there came friction and when the Catholics started to win back territory (the so-called counter-reformation) occultism was completely not-done. I will leave the reformation for what it is and go to the second offspring of humanism here, but of course the two can’t be taken apart entirely.

My aim for this article is a less historical one and more focussing on the ideas. In order to keep the length in proportions, I will only speak about some of the big names. You will get an idea of the development of the occult. First I have to make a jump in history to give a good view of the story.

The art of memory

Frances Amelia Yates (1890-1981) wrote an entire book about this subject, which she felt needed to to give a good idea of the history of the Hermetic tradition. Three classical sources are recognised: 1) the anonymously written Ad Herenium that was rediscovered in 1482 and which was initially believed to be by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC); 2) Cicero himself; and 3) Fabius Quintillian (35-100). Also Aristotle (384-322BC) and St. Augustine (of Hippo 354-430) have written about the subject as did many other classical writers.
Very simply explained the idea is as follows. In order to remember something (a speech, information, images) you imagine that your memory is a large building with different rooms. The rooms should not look too much alike, otherwise you won’t keep them apart. The things you need to remember, you ‘put into’ the rooms and when you need to bring it back to memory, you walk through your building, looking inside the rooms. Archetypical images were used to make them easier to remember/recognise. There were different techniques for different things to remember, but here you have the general idea.

In times that book printing wasn’t yet invented, this art was highly acclaimed. In the Middle Ages for example famous theologians like Tomas of Aquino (1226-1274) and Albertus Magnus (1200-1280) were much in favour of this art, which they turned into a religious/devotional art. The big medieval Christian orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans even had their own systems that they taught to their pupils.

Also in the Middle Ages there was a non-classical art of memory, coming from the first person I want to talk about.

Ramon Lull

Ramon Lull (1232-1316) was born in Spain in an exciting time in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t just scholacism and dogmatism in these days. The Cathars prospered in southern France and especially in Spain under the rule of the Muslims and with a lot of Jews living there, some interesting developments took place. The Jewish esoteric system Kabbalah (“tradition”) was crystallised in Spain in this period. The Sepher Zohar (book of splendour) for example, was first printed in 1275. Frances Yates has an interesting theory about these developments. She says that maybe the influence of the ideas of John Scotus Erigena (810-875) came back in the interest because of the Clavis Physicae of Honorius Augustodunensis (1080-1157). Ramon Lull built his system partly on these Scotian ideas and the Kabbala became a Jewish version of it. It is also possible that Lull was influenced by Jewish and Arabic ideas, but this is not certain. He did write several works in Arabic, but mostly in the hope that Arabic readers would take over his ideas.

Lull lived in a time where astrology was regarded heretic, but still he wanted to use it in the “Art” that was revealed to him in a vision on mount Randa (on Mallorca) in 1272. He came up with an equally genius as difficult solution: letters.

Scotus divided the world in four parts, from divine to material. The second highest world is that of the names of God, which became Lull’s “Dignitates Dei”, divine dignities (also called “principiae”, principles) of which Lull recognised nine, but sometimes ten or sixteen. The nine most-used dignities are bonitas (goodness), magnitudo (magnitude), eternitas (eternity), potestas (power), sapientia (wisdom), voluntas (will), virtus (strength), veritas (truth) and gloria (glory). These dignities or creative primordial causes got the letters BCDEFGHIK. A is reserved for the Holy Trinity (essentia, unitas, perfectio) and the I or J is always left out. The divine attributes form themselves into a trinitarian structure by which they became a reflection of the Trinity. Also they work through the elements.

“Lull believed that he had found a way of calculating from the fundamental patterns of nature”, Frances Yates writes in her Lull & Bruno.

Lull’s use of letters is interesting. It had never been done before, but his Jewish contemporaries were also experimenting with systems and meditations on Hebrew letters It has never been proved that Lull was really influenced by this. Ironically enough he never wrote anything about the Kabbala, but after his death pseudo-Lullian Kabbalistic and alchemical writings appeared. For both systems the original Ars Raymundi proved helpful.

Also in threes are the three powers of the soul of Augustine that Lull recognised; the intellectus or the knowing and finding of the truth; the voluntas the training of the will towards loving the truth and the memoria or remembering the truth.

Further Lull uses elements (A, B, C and D) to group the stars and constellations, questions, subjects, virtues, etc. which are all put in rotating schemes. But Lull’s art wasn’t just a way to remember things, it was a dynamic system involving the asking of questions and combining possibilities. Yates quotes Lynn Thorndike (1882-1962) in Lull & Bruno saying: “By properly arranging categories and concepts, subjects and predicates in the first place, one could get the correct answer to such prepositions as might be put.” The wheels are used to get answers to questions by turning the wheels and thus combining different possibilities. Ars Combinatoria is not for nothing the title of one of Lull’s writings, but also one of his Arts.

Augustine has been mentioned and this is also the starting point of Lull leaving behind the scholastic Middle Ages behind for a more neoplatonic system. Lull was really a predecessor of the Renaissance, he replaced the images that the classical and medieval memory students used by letters and the static buildings became revolving schemes, incorporated with astrological imaginary.

Lull was familiar with the classical art of memory and saw his art as an expansion of it. His system resembled the Kabbalistic meditation system of Abraham Abulafia (1240-1292), but without Hebrew. The Dominicans didn’t feel much for Lull’s system, but the Franciscans were not entirely uninterested and even approved his writings.

Because Lull put much stress on the elements and the names of God and these are also recognised in the Jewish and Muslim worldviews, he thought that his art had missionary possibilities. His lifework was to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity.

Most of the massive amount of writings of Ramon Lull have never been published or studied properly, but they deal with a wide variety of subjects. His art on the level of ‘coelum’ (heaven) for example, involved the twelve signs of the zodiac and the seven holy planets to which again letters are assigned and in combination with the dignitates dei Lull came to some kind of astral science and also astral medicine in which powers can be used for beneficial matters. Herein Lull is also a predecessor of Ficino and Bruno (see later).

Lull was a predecessor of the Renaissance in various ways, so these very rough sketches of the Ars Raymundi can be seen as an introduction and foundation of the rest.

Marsilio Ficino

In my article about the philosophy in Renaissance Italy I have given you the story of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), so I will not tell too much about the person this time. As we now know Ficino was the turn-on of a renewed interest in Plato (427-347BC) and Plotinus (204-270), but also of the Hermetic tradition, since he was the first translator of the Corpus Hermeticum. Besides massive translation-works Ficino wrote a lot material himself. Ficino had quite a magical worldview. Like Lull he wrote about medicine, but not in a way we understand this today. For a good doctor astrological knowledge was evident and Ficino even incorporated some kind of astrological magic. Ficino said that you can use the powers in the universe and from earth to do good and his magic is mostly called “natural magic” or “spiritual magic”. Angels or spirits (forces of nature) could be stemmed favourable for beneficial purposes by using sound, music, scent or talismans. Ficino’s knowledge of talismans and his magic in general he learned from the Hermetic writings Asclepius and the Picatrix and Ficino wrote most about it in his De Vita Coelitus Comperanda (on obtaining life from the heavens – 1489).

Music was particularly important to Ficino. He played his lyre and sang “Orphic hyms” which were probably magic incantations. Ficino did his utmost -though- to stay away of ‘demonic magic’ which involved the calling of demons (bad angels). One point to make here is the following: Ficino had three souls, a lower, a higher and a middle soul. The middle soul is the mediator between the other two and called “spiritus”. This non-rational soul is influenced by ‘spiritual magic’ and however Ficino’s magic also must have had darker elements, he scarcely kept that to himself. More you will read about this in the following piece about Pico.

Giovani Pico

Even within Ficino’s “Platonic Academy” a more ‘strong’ kind of magic appeared. Giovani Pico (of Mirandola) (1463-1494) was introduced to Ficino’s academy at an early age. In the beginning he was still a follower of Aristotle and couldn’t quite find himself in Ficino’s Platonism, but later in his life he came more to Plato. Pico travelled all across Europe and in Spain he studied with Jews. Shortly before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Pico was taught Hebrew and was introduced to the Kabbala. He wanted to use the Kabbala to prove the truth of the Christian doctrines and therewith became the founder of the Christian Cabala. Pico always wrote this word with a “c” and I follow him therein to divide the Jewish version (“Kabbalah”), from the Christian one.

It wasn’t just Christianity and Cabala that Pico brought together. Pico compared the knowledge that he got from his Jewish friends with the Hermetica that he learned from Ficino and discovered that both recognised that creation took place by Word. This and other parallels led Pico to not only believe that both systems are from the same time (that of Moses), but he worked the systems to one.

However Pico was of the opinion that there is difference between good (or natural) magic and bad magic, his aims surpassed those of Ficino. Natural magic carefully avoided to reach ‘beyond the stars’ where both good and bad demons live and dealt only with spirits by using talismans and the like. Pico’s complementary ‘more strong philosophy’ of Christian Cabala went as far as to summon angels and archangels by using the power of their names in the Hebrew language. As you may know Hebrew characters also have a numerological value, so each word also has a numerological value. The combination of sound and number proved a good way to do magic. Pico really “tried to tap the higher spiritual powers beyond the natural powers of the cosmos” to quote Frances Yates some more. Where Ficino still used the angels as powers to try to work with him, Jewish occultists summoned angels for their benefit and ever since Pico angels have mostly been used in a Kabbalistic and magical way. Still, in Pico’s well-known 900 ‘conclusiones’ he states that magic should always be accompanied by Cabala to make it both powerful and safe.

Francesco Giorgi

This Franciscan friar was a much more ‘harmonious’ person than most of the people I write about in this article. This resulted in the fact that Giorgi (1466-1540) didn’t fall from grace when the suppression of the occult started.

Giorgi’s most famous book is De Harmonia Mundi Totius (about universal harmony – 1525), a large work about the harmony between the micro- and macrocosmos. Giorgi had met Pico and was much influenced by his Christian Cabala. Also Giorgi learned Hebrew and got himself a large library of Hebrew books. However in basis he stood more in the Pythagorean tradition that was popular in medieval times, Giorgi added Ficinian hermetism and Pician Cabala in his worldview.

What is most remarkable about Giorgi is that he was a very theoretical person. He didn’t come to practical magic or Cabala, but wrote and pondered mostly. The summit of the ‘harmonia mundi’ for Giorgi was to be found in architecture in which the architecture could design a building reflecting the universe. His cosmos was based on number and his god was a great architect and as the sun the heart of the cosmos. Giorgi helped designing and building Francesco church in Venice.

Another large interest of Giorgi was astrology and here we come to another strange thing in his philosophy. Like his contemporaries Giorgi recognised the 12 signs of the zodiac, the 7 holy planets and the angels as natural forces, but he was of the opinion that casting horoscopes is a too lengthy and uncertain process and goes as far to identify someone’s leading planet with his/her guardian angel to make the process easier. This –for his time- weird unity of planets and angels led the official church to take over some of Giorgi’s ideas on these subjects.

Johann Reuchlin

With this German humanist, lawyer and contemporary of Pico, we leave Italy and go to Germany. Reuchlin (1455-1522) was also a fervent traveller and met Pico in Italy. Just as all of the previous mentioned persons, Reuchlin mastered different languages, in his case Latin, Greek and Hebrew and of course his native language.

Reuchlin was very much into Cabala en Hebrew. His Rudimenta Hebraica (1506) was the first book about Hebrew grammar by a non-Jew. He was regarded an authority on the subject of the Jews but fell victim to a Jewish controversy in which his opinion was asked. This plus the problems about his own person gave Reuchlin a bad name in the later years of his life.

The Cabala had become quite popular in Germany already, but after Reuchlin things took a high flight. His first work on the subject was De Verbo Mirifico (about the wonderful word -1494) in which he (among other things) speaks about the power of Hebrew words and their numerological values. Large parts of the book are dedicated to the putting of Jesus Christ in the Jewish texts. The unpronouncable name of God “YHVH” (the tetragrammaton, most given as either “Jehova” or “Jahwe”) is expanded with an “S” making it “YHSVH”, Joshua or Jesus Christ, in this way the Creator. De Verbo Mirifico is a beginnersbook (“a beginner rushing to print” Joseph Blau wrote) and contains several mistakes. Reuchlin even gives an incorrect Kabbalistic tree for example! Some mistakes would later be corrected, some not.

It took 20 years for Reuchlin to finish his second Cabalistic word being the famous De Arte Cabalistica (about the art of the Cabala – 1517). This book is said to be the first full treatise on the subject by a non-Jew and became the bible of the Christian Cabalists. De Arte Cabalistica not only speaks about numerological magic, but also the Cabalistic letter-manipulations and meditative techniques.

Reuchlin had a Hermetic Academy in Heidelberg where he met Trithemius (see below). Trithemius is mostly notorious because of his summoning of angels and also Reuchlin experimented with this, which was of course fuel on the fire of his enemies. I will now move to Reuchlin’s student for a bit more like on this kind of magic.

Johann Trithemius

It is said that Johann Heidenberg (1462-1516) couldn’t read until he was 15 years old. Then he had a vision in which he was given the choice between the knowledge of language and the knowledge of images. Thinking that the word was the power of creation, Johann chose the knowledge of language and so it was and he started writing. Born in Trittenheim in Germany, he named himself after his village of birth and Heidenberg has ever since been known as ‘Trithemius’.

After his vision the development of Trithemius went fast. He met the Reuchlin in Heidelberg -as said- and at the age of 21 Trithemius already was abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Sponheim. There he studied the medieval system of the hierarchies of angels of the pseudo-Dionysus (the Areopagite) as many occultists did before him. According to the Areopagite there are nine hierarchies of angels. Trithemius largely expanded this system and taught that there are angels ruling over hours of the day (book II Steganographia-see later) and regions of the world (book I Steganographia). These angels are ruled by seven planetary angels (book III Steganographia). I have schemes of these angels in a text called The art of drawing spirits into crystals, but I haven’t been able to find out from what book of Trithemius this is. The most famous work of this German is the Steganographia which has existed as manuscript for many many years, but wasn’t published until 1606. Followers and Trithemius himself thought that it would be too dangerous to publish and it is a strange work for sure!

On first sight it seems to be a work to summon angels. You have to find the appropriate angel first. You have to find the correct angel of the hour by dividing the hours that it is light (or dark of course) in twelve and look up the angel in a table. This angel you summon by using the numerological value of his name and an ununderstandable incantation. Then you can use this angel to have a message brought to someone. Also Trithemius hoped that he could get angels to give him information and/or images of things that happen on another part of the world.

As has been known for a long time Trithemius was very fond of cryptography (which is the literary translation of “steganographia”) (writing secret messages) and however he gives a ‘key’ to the first two books of the Steganographia in his Clavis Steganographia it wasn’t until 1996 that the codes have been cracked. The Steganographia turned out to be nothing more than Trithemius writing secret messages in the vein of: “see how I can write secret messages”!! So there are different layers of purposes in one of the strangest works of the Renaissance I asume.

Trithemius used magic to invent the early telephone and television, but he put much stress on the difference between magic and superstition (‘witches and wizards’) an opinion that people after him would take over.

Henry Cornelius Agrippa

Agrippa (1486-1535) can be seen as the person in who all I wrote about before came together. Like the previous persons, Agrippa can be regarded as a Christian Cabalist and he wanted to prove the authenticity of Christianity using Cabala. Also Agrippa was of the opinion that his magic was a good kind of magic, but many people were of another opinion. Even in his life Agrippa was regarded as a black magician and his black dog was an incarnation of the devil. Agrippa used the natural magic of Ficino, the Cabala of Pico and Reuchlin and further developed Trithemius’ angelic incantations. Agrippa learned Hebrew and was in short contact with Giorgi, but most of all he was a student of Johann Reuchlin and Trithemius, but Agrippa intended to surpass his masters. Especially because of his ceremonial works of magic, Agrippa got his bad name, but as mentioned, he saw himself as a good Christian. Living in the time of the reformation he also said that he was a follower of the Dutch humanist and early reformist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and he was not the only one supporting the reformation.

Agrippa’s first encounter with magic was a book of the medieval Albertus Magnus and it is said that he was the centre of an occult circle in his hometown Köln/Cologne in Germany, but has said to be travelling constantly (on behalf of this group?). London, Paris, Antwerp, Italy, Agrippa has been all across Europe to study or lecture on Lullism (which was his specialty), alchemy, science, Hermetism and the like.

However he wrote more works, Agrippa is best known for his ‘opus magnum’ De Occulta Philosophica (1531). A massive compendium of three books about the magic of the Renaissance that he wrote at the age of 24. The worldview in the Renaissance always had three worlds and also Agrippa recognised these. His ‘three books of occult philosophy’ follows this division. Book I is about (Ficino’s) natural magic (in the elemental world), dealing with the worldsoul and world of ideas; book II about celestial magic (numerology, geometry, optics, etc.) (in the celestial world) and book III is about ceremonial magic (angels, cabala, etc.) (in the supercelestial/spiritual/intellectual world). This book it far too large to speak about in short. Maybe an idea for a whole article?

Agrippa took some distance from magic for safety by writing that all knowledge, including magical, is in vein, but later in his life he even abandoned his magical pursuits and put his efforts to the Christian doctrines.

Philipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus

This joke is told so often that I probably don’t have to give the wellknown name of this man anymore. Especially not when I also add “Von Hohemheim” after the place of his birth. I actually can’t continue without mentioning Paracelsus (1493-1541) but so much can be said about this son of a nobility-bastard from Germany that I will be forced to stay to a few elements of this man. Like his father, Paracelsus started to study medicine when he was 16. This included astrology in that time, but the interests of the young Paracelsus reached further. He was an utter and complete bastard without repect of other people’s opinions, but still Paracelsus has had students all the time he was travelling throughout Europe. Paracelsus was a fanatical alchemist, not to make gold, but to find the ultimate medicine. This caused him to become not only the inventor or chemical medicine, but also of homeopathics. People where delighted by the medicines of Paracelsus, because now they no longer had to eat cockroaches to get rid of their aches. But there were more breakthoughs coming from the man like on the fields of psychology, psychiatry, gyneology and anaesthetics.

And alchemy also wasn’t Paracelsus’ only esoteric interest. He further developed the astrological medicine of Ficino and formed theories that are either or not still used today. He said that there are three basic materials: salt, sulpher and mercury. You are ill when these are out of balance and getting them in balance may include the calling on of celestial forces. Paracelsus gives detailed instructions of the making of talismans, what to engrave on what material and when (astrologically determined). This sometimes looks a lot like the system of Trithemius of who Paracelsus has shortly been a student.

John Dee

After Agrippa John Dee (1527-1608) from the United Kingdom is probably the best-known magician from the Renaissance. At an early age he was interested in mathematics which in that time was still regarded as magical (numerology) and not too long after his mathematical efforts Dee found interest in astronomy. This interest brought him in contact with the famous Belgian globe-maker Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594), a friendship that would last.

After some changes in the kingship in England with kings and queens that were much in favour of Dee or not at all, Dee started to study the Cabala. He taught himself Hebrew and started to buy texts for his rapidly expanding library. Also Dee believed that “the word” from Genesis was a Hebrew word and that Hebrew was the language of creation. Therefore a magician should be able to use this language for his own creations or alterations therein. Dee’s study of the Cabala (and Kabbala) made him acquainted with the summoning of angels and he started to make systematic principles (‘prayers’) to summon angels. He eagerly started to collect the writings of Trithemius and had to travel to Antwerp to lay his hands on a copy of the Steganographia. Following Trithemius in his opinion, Dee made a sharp division between magic and superstition.

However Dee then showed a growing interest in alchemy, his efforts to get answers from spiritual beings continued all his life. He proved unable to summon angels himself and had a large number of mediums doing this for him, but almost every single one of them was unfit. They either couldn’t get in contact with the correct beings or were unable to transfer the information correctly. In 1582 there was hope though.

“Mr Clerkson” who had brought Dee more mediums, introduced Dee to Edward Talbot. However Dee was well informed in the happenings in the occult world (he was very well aware of the bad name of Trithemius), he didn’t know about the reputation of this man who came to him under a false name. Edward Kelly (1555-1595) was regarded a fraud, a forgerer, a necromancer and a criminal who used some magical powder to produce gold.

So Dee got one of his ‘shew stones’ and asked ‘Talbot’ to ‘skry’. Of course this was preceded by some preparations, like prayers to the angel Dee hoped to appear. Already in the first sessions there were conversations with the archangel Uriel who Dee wanted to ask about his Arabic book with the names of angels the Book of Sogya, but however Uriel confirmed its authenticity, only the archangel Michael could explain the strange text in the angelic language (Enochian). It was the book that was given to Adam after all!

During the years Dee and Kelly split up and came together several times, Dee received magical tables, texts and books as well as practical information for his daily life. Not only from archangels, but from all kinds of spiritual beings. Kelly sees and tells Dee what to write down in his magical diaries. Dee also wrote a personal diary which is still available and as said the two received several books. Dee also wrote a book about his ‘skrying techniques’ and either together (and with the families) or alone, Dee and Kelly travelled all across Europe ever continuing their summonings.

However the drawings that Dee received look a bit too much like drawings of Trithemius, Dee is often regarded as the receiver of the Enochian language. Dee spent his life trying to ‘crack the code’ and found out that like Hebrew Enochian is alphanumeric, a letter is also a number and he used Cabalistic methods to work on them. Dee indeed very much was interested in coding, numbers and ciphers and wrote books on mathematics. Also he was a spy for queen Elizabeth (1533-1603).

Dee’s most famous writing is the Monas Hieroglyphica (1582). A strange and short work explaining his famous symbol using astrological, Cabalistic and magical imaginary. His symbol gave the name to these pages and it’s logo!

Giordano Bruno

My previous article has also given the story of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), so I won’t tell you too much about his life this time. Important is that “the Nolan” (after his birthplace in Italy) like Pico travelled all across Europe, but every time he got problems and was forced to leave. However at first side it may not seem like it, but Bruno was in some regards even ahead Agrippa. Bruno was a big admirer of Ficino, but also here Pico’s and Reuchlin’s Cabala had his interest. However all of the previous persons (but Agrippa) have worked with the art of memory, I now come back to Ramon Lull with who I opened this article. Bruno who incorrectly saw Lull as an alchemist and Cabalist, leaned heavily on several of Lull’s arts. One of these was Lull’s mnemonics, or the art of memory, but Lull’s ‘ars combinatoria’ was Bruno’s favourite magical system.

Bruno wrote several works about the art of memory such as De Umbris Idearum (of the shadows of ideas – 1582) and Cantus Circaeus (incantations of circe -1582). Where the Cantus already contains magical incantations, Bruno later made two books with ‘Lullianesk’ diagrams, but then for magical purposes.

Bruno had three ways of conjuring angels. The first was the use of word and song (natural magic), the second by using images, seals (as talismans) and characters (which he called mathematical magic), but his most favourite system is the previously described reworked Lullian diagrams which he called the system of imagination.

He used ‘links’ to conjure angels. Ficino already described these, but Bruno put the theory to practise. Bruno’s links where the rulers of the four cardinal points and also Bruno used the (numerological value of their) names for incantations and seals.

Whereas all the previous persons did their utmost to seem like devote Christians, Bruno openly critised the church and was of the opinion that the original Egyptian language (that Bruno thought was learned by Hermes Trismegistus) was far superior. This was really the drop that made the bucket flow over (as we say in the Netherlands) and Bruno was lured back to Italy and burned at the stake in 1600 after seven years of imprisonment.

Robert Fludd

Bruno’s death wasn’t the end of the occult in Europe, not by far. In the years after 1614 three manifests were published in Germany by the mysterious movement of the Rosicrucians. They seemed to be involved in Renaissance magic, Cabala and the like, but this time hardly any names. The Rosicrucians seemed to be a group of reformists with magical interests.

Also in 1614 the Hermetic scriptures were dated by Isaac Causabon (1559-1614) who placed the scriptures in Christian times. After this almost nobody dared to place Hermes in times of Moses.

Fludd (1574-1637) was born in England and became a Paracelsian doctor and fervent member of the Church of England. He was interested in chemistry, alchemy and the early Rosicrucian movement that arose in Germany after 1614. However his unorthodox interests didn’t bring him many friends in medical circles, he got his own practise in London and what was quite unique, with his own apothecary. In his laboratory he not only made medicines, but also conducted alchemical experiments. He not only treated his patients with medicines, but had a quite spiritual approach to his profession. He drew horoscopes and used some sort of magnetism.

It was a quite well known German alchemist who introduced Fludd to the Rosicrucians in 1615: Michael Maier (1569-1622) who is best known for his book Atalanta Fugiens (1617). Fludd was highly impressed by the Rosicrucian manifestoes. The effort of the Rosicrucians to unite science and spiritualism to form a new reformation was music in the ears of the British doctor. The German Rosicrucians surrounded themselves with a lot of mystery, Fludd openly admits to be a member of the society. He became the Rosicrucians patron, protector and defender.

But the Rosicrucians weren’t Fludd’s first mystical encounter. From around 1600 he had been studying Cabala, magic, astrology and alchemy which all proved to be elements of the Rosicrucians writings. In spite of all this, Fludd always remained a faithful member of the Church of England.

Maier and Fludd used the same engraver and Fludd’s drawings have become his trading-mark. Especially his complex diagrams of the universe appeal to people. Like his predecessors Fludd recognised the three worlds (elemental, ethereal and angelic). The same division Fludd made for the soul (corporal, spiritual, intellectual) and his divisions of the spheres is also threefold (colour and sensations (consciousness), spiritual correspondences and reflection within the mind). Also he put a lot of stress on the differences and resemblances between the macrocosmos and microcosmos. A concept that brought Fludd the most problems was that of the worldsoul or universal soul, especially in combination with his hierarchy of angels. A little strange in regard of the previous persons I wrote about, is Fludd’s dualism. He recognised a hierarchy of angels ànd a hierarchy of demons. Alchemy he saw as a method to divide the pure from the impure, light from darkness, sin from good, creation and spirit. The goal of the alchemist was to understand both sides and make a balance and this was not so far from what the church tried to do for their followers.

Also Fludd’s sun-centered worldview didn’t appeal to many contemporaries. He saw the physical sun as the physical counterpart of God, the worldsoul, which he called Jehovah.

However not without problems, Fludd lived a productive life and nowadays is one of the better-documented persons from the late Renaissance.

Athanasius Kircher

The last individual that I want to mention is the German Kircher (1602-1680). He was a universal man in every way. Though Jesuit Kircher was interested in a wide variety of subjects. He not only wrote books about magnetism, but his books about Egypt and Egyptian hieroglyphs made him the first Egyptologist in history. Kircher translated various obelisks and his writings were even used when more modern scientists were working on the Rosetta Stone. He was as enthusiastic about the Egyptian culture as Bruno was about the Egyptian religion and in spite of Causabon he said that Hermes was a contemporary of Abraham. Also Kircher was the first vulcanologist and he even descended into the Etna shortly after it erupted. Further Kircher studied the stars and his scientific interests and crave to collect lead him to found the first known public museum and even several inventions of his own. As the last in line of individual, I unfortunately have to tell you that Kircher had no good words for the art of alchemy.

Suppression

However Giorgi was quite popular, Agrippa’s bad name became a problem for Pico and other esotericists in his time. The church became more serious in the knockdown of the magical movement. In 1559 the index of forbidden works was compiled and from 1580 on severe censorship was imposed, but as early as 1487 the Malleus Maleficarum was published. The notorious book that became the standard source of information for the Holy Inquisition. On top of all this, also in 1580 the book La Démonomanie Des Sorciers of Jean Bodin (1520-1596) saw the light of day. His statement was clear: occultists must die. And when the Catholics started to win back terrain from the Protestants (the so-called counter-formation), the witch craze began which spelled the end the occult.

- – -

What to read if you have further interest?

Most books of F.A. Yates, especially Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and The Occult Philosophy In The Elizabethan Age. If you want something easier to read, try The Elixer and the Stone of Baigent and Leigh.

Three Books Of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa
The Queen’s Conjurer, the life of John Dee

web-references:
www.lullianarts.net

www.esotericarchives.com
alchemical texts on Adam McLean’s page
western esoteric texts online
philosophical and magical texts

Don’t forget to look through my book-reviews section of course and check Amazon for example.

-30/4/03-

Comparing the two writings it becomes very clear that Trithemius used the older writing as basis for his own work. Not only the names of the angels, dukes, etc. are almost always roughly the same, but even the order corresponds mostly.

Both books speak of 31 angels, dukes, spirits and the like and both books have a diagram like a compass somewhere in the beginning. In T/G this diagram is complex and extensive, with Trithemius simple and half-finished:

T/G has several stars over eachother, this is clearer in the diagram in the Esotericarchives-version. This doesn’t really matter, because the order the angels, etc. are treated in, do not really follow the star anyway. In the ‘top star’ of the T/G-diagram you can find the names Barmiel (south), Uriel (sw), Malgaras (w), Usiel (nw), Rasiel (n), Armadel (ne), Pamersiel (e) and Camuel (se).

The order of the book T/G is as in the table below. There are 4 emperors, 16 chief spirits and 11 wandering dukes. Trithemius is on the right. I shove a bit with the tables, because Trithemius first treats the spirits, then the emperors and then the wandering dukes. Now you have the same names on the same lines.

The names between Trithemius and the T/Gs that I used differ, but this is also the case between the two T/Gs.

Both books give some information about the emperors, spirits and dukes. This information is for example, how many spirits of the day and night the treated entity rules over. Most of the time, the numbers correspond. They do not with Padiel (Trithemius has 10x as much spirits of the night).
The next part of the information are tables with the names of spirits under the command of the treated entity. T/G not only gives the seals of the emperor, chief spirit and duke, but also of the spirits under their command. Trithemius has no seals whatsover, he only refers to them sometimes. The tables do always correspond in number, even in division, but the names sometimes differ, sometimes a lot too! For example with the spirits under command of Asyriel we have “Astor” with Trithemius and “Alitors” in T/G, “Cusiel” vs “Cuopiel” and “Malqueel” vs “Malugel”.

After this follow the conjurations. In T/G they are almost all the same, with Trithemius there is something completely different going on. After the conjuration T/G goes to the following entity, but Trithemius gives much, much more information including a second spell. Trithemius had a different idea with his Steganographia: you summon a spirit, give him an encrypted message, the receiver gets a letter from you and then summons the same spirit and receives the encrypted message. The summonings are examples and codes for different kinds of encryptions, but still you get two of them, one spell for the sender, one for the receiver. Here I give all summonings without further comment. People who like to try to decipher them here have all the codes. Parmesiel (I know) is every other letter of every other word. See my Angel Magic article for this.

Looking over the names, you can at least see immediately that Trithemius followed the order of the T/G. The differences in names can possibly be caused by Trithemius having another (older) version of the text, but for the rest, there can be little doubt for his ‘inspiration’.

Trithemius -though- adds some information, about the entities: good or bad, only for advanced magicians or also for beginners, how they should appear; what kind of letters you should send to the receiver, sometimes how to act when an entity appears, etc.

And here follow the summonings from the Steganographia. Sometimes they are right in the text, sometimes marked. When it doesn’t say anything between <broken brackets>, I had to find the code myself, since it was right in the middle of the rest of the text. Two times the codes are printed in red, so I suppose it is the same in the original. At other times Trithemius bluntly says “coniuratio” (conjuration) or “carmen” (song) before giving an encrypted line, this information is added between the broken brackets.

Pamersiel oshurmy delmuson Thafloyn peano charustea melany, lyaminto colchan, paroys, madyn, moerlay, bulre + atloor don melcour peloin, ibutsyl meon mysbreath alini driaco person. Crisolnay, lemon asosle mydar, icoriel pean thalmõ, asophiel il notreon banyel ocrimos esteuor naelma besrona thulaomor fronian beldodrayn bon otalmesgo mero fas elnathyn bosramoth.

<7/1/04>

a word of advice: you may want to read my articles about “the philosophical renaissance in italy” and “the occult renaissance” first to put things in a wider perspective and for background information. also i have more articles about the jewish kabbalah which you may want to read first.

Never had I consulted so much literature for one article. First I thought that there was hardly any information about the Christian Cabala, but digging deeper I found out that there is quite some literature about the subject. Often as a (small) part of another investigation (such as Renaissance magic or Jewish Kabbala) but also as a separate subject. Unfortunately these books are not always too good and mostly virtually unavailable. Most literature I had to get from different libraries throughout the country and of course the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. At the bottom of this article you will find titles that I used and which you may want to look for. Often like with the Christian Cabalists themselves, older investigations are copied with mistakes and everything, but sometimes investigators of the Christian Cabala came to very different conclusions.

My aim for this article is to give you a general idea of the history of the Christian Cabala separately and combined with that of the Jewish Kabbala and their mutual influences; and to compare some ideas from both traditions to give you an idea of where the differences and similarities are.
Asterixes refer to the bibliography below, under *further*reading*. Also I give alternative writings of names of people that I mention. It doesn’t look too great, but it will help you a lot when you start your own searches.

Short history the Kabbala

Of course I can’t start to speak of the Christian Cabala when you have no information about the original version. A short article within these pages may be helpful and also the longer one about the Tree of Life (Etz Chayyim). Maybe some book reviews can be helpful as well.

Here follows a very short account to refresh you memory and/or to introduce you to the world of Jewish mysticism.

The word “Kabbala” means “tradition” and in Hebrew contains of three letters (normally from right to left) KBL (kaf, bet, lamed). I have the idea that the spelling can differ in time and context and sometimes it is QBL (qof, bet, lamed), but so far I haven’t seen a text in Hebrew with the actual word really in it.

Ancient Hebrew had no vowels so it is hard to fill them in sometimes. Also the transliteration of letters is different, others will tell you that it is caf, bet, lamed, so you can imagine that ancient Hebrew words are written differently. This is the reason that you often see “Kabballah”, “Kabbalah”, “Cabala”, Qabbalah or whatever variety you can think off. The most common way of writing is “Kabbala”. Early Christian Cabalists usually wrote “Cabala” which is the reason that many people took over this manner of writing to keep the Jewish “Kabbala” from the Christian “Cabala”. Also there is also the magical (Crowleyan) “Qabbala”.

The Jewish Kabbala -very bluntly put- is the result of two mystic traditions, the ‘Mercavah’ (chariot) and ‘Hechaloth’ (hallway) traditions that developed towards the Kabbala from the 3rd century on. ‘Mercavah’ comes from the chariot in Esechiels vision and the ‘Hechaloth’ are the hallways that the mystic has to pass on his/her way ‘up’. Kabbala came to flourish especially in Spain in the late Middle Ages en the early Renaissance and in time two kinds of Kabbala developped, the practical and theoretical, or magical and mystical if you like.

The Kabbalists focus on the sacred Hebrew books of the Torah, also called Pentateuch which are the five books of Moses and thus the first five books of our Old Testament. These date from ancient times and contain instructions for daily life.
The study of these books resulted in the Talmud which means ‘study’ or ‘instructions’. There is a Palestine Talmud dating from the 3rd or 4th century and a Babylonian Talmud written in the 5th century. The Talmud falls apart in two books, first the Mishnah (‘repetition’ or teachings about the Torah) and second Gemarah (or ‘expansion’, an explanation of the Mishnah).
Then in the 3rd to 6th century we get the first writing that would be regarded as a Kabbalistic, the well known Sepher Yetsirah or ‘book of formation’.
Another well-known Kabbalistic text is the Sepher ha-Zohar or the ‘book of splendour’ which first circulated around 1280 and nowadays it is generally thought that it was written by Moses de Leon (1240-1305), but is said to go back to the teachings of the 2nd century Shimon bar Yochai (135-170).

Kabbalism kept developing also in the time that Renaissance eclectics started to form a Christian version of it. Two people that I have to mention in this development are Moses ben Josef Cordovero (1522-1570) and Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534-1572). As a matter of fact these two late-Kabbalistic figures were the originators of the two major Kabbalistic schools of today. The first worked mostly on the intellectual level and worked out the speculative Kabbala to an understandable system. Luria was more of a mystic. Cordovero’s major work is the Pardes Rimmonim (‘a garden of pomegranates’ – 1591) and his major teachings involve the four levels of understanding the Zohar. 1) Literal; 2) figurative; 3) moral and 4) esoteric/mystical. Luria was the one developing the doctrines of ‘tsimtsum’ (or ‘zimzum’) or God’s withdrawal from creation. This idea was later developed to the idea of the ‘breaking vessels’ or how the upper sephira of the Kabbalistic Tree (Kether) breaks and flows over into the second two, which break, etc. It must be noted that Luria wasn’t much of a writer and his teachings mostly found their ways into the world by his students, especially Hayim ben Josef Vital (Chayim, Hayyim – 1542-1620).
These scratches of information should be just about enough information to continue with the Christian Cabala.

A history of the early Christian Cabala

Giovani Pico (or Picus) della Mirandola (1463-1494) claimed to be the first Latin scholar to study the Kabbala (in his Apologia (‘defence’) of 1487) and many investigators of the Christian Cabala have followed him in this opinion. Actually Pico wasn’t the first Christian Cabalist as Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) found out. Scholem writes: “In fact, a whole chain of facts prove that converted Jews were producing “Christian Kabbalist” arguments long before Pico. Pico was the first Christian of non-Jewish origin, but by no means the first Christian, to go through this kind of process.” (*Dan | p.24)

As early as the 13th century Raymund (or Raymundus, Raimundus, Ramon) Martini (1220-±1284) wrote in his Pugio Fidei (‘dagger of faith’ – completed after 1278, but not published until 1651) that the Talmud and Midrash (a more ‘literary’ version of the Mishnah) had Christian influences and argued that this fact could be used as Christian propaganda to try to convert Jews. This very idea would become one of the main reasons for Christian Cabalists to study the Jewish tradition a few centuries later.
The well-known Kabbalist Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia (1240-1292) was the one who systemised the jungle of Jewish letter/word-games and already made ‘Christian’ word plays that would later become popular under Christian Cabalists. I will come back to this later.
The first Jew to be really converted to Christianity was Abner of Burgos (1270-1348) who became Alfonso of Valladolid in 1320. Strangely enough he had visions of shifting around letters like Abulafia had.

In the time that Pico was born, many Jews lived in Europe under the tolerant reign of the Muslims. Especially Spain and southern France were crowded with Jews living together with Christians and Muslims. This resulted in fertile crossbreeds. Not for nothing the major Kabbalistic books were written in Spain in this period. When Christians started to win back territory from the Muslims, times got more difficult for the Jews as well. The idea rose that when Muslims were removed anyway, why not kick out the Jews within the same operation (they were -according to Christians- not only heretics, but also responsible for the plague!)? This process was going on in Pico’s early years. Jews were driven away from different places from 1477 on until the big expulsion from Spain in 1492. However many Jews indeed did leave, others thought of another solution: conversion to Christianity. This way they could stay were they were, study Jewish writings as sources of the Christian faith and most of all, continue their Kabbalistic studies (in secret).

A very strange thing is that on one hand Jews were kicked out of the major cities all over Europe, but on the other hand there was an interest in Jewish scriptures upto extraordinary high ranks in the Christian hierarchy. It is said that no other than pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484) ordered for translations of Kabbalistic books and most of them are still in the Vatican library until the present day! The translations were made by the Jewish convert Samuel ben Nissim Abulfarash (1226-1286) who after his conversion named himself Gugliem Raimundo Moncada, but is best known under the name Flavius Mithridates. Mithridates told the pope that with the Kabbala he could prove the Christian truths.

The same man was the Jewish friend that taught Pico the Hebrew and Chaldean languages. He translated many Kabbalistic and non-Kabbalistic works for Pico and Scholem argues (*Dan | p.20) that the translations in the Vatican library were not made for Sixtus, but for Pico himself! Mithridates (whose father was already a translator of Hebrew books) was Pico’s main source of Jewish writings and Pico didn’t receive the most common Kabbalistic books either! The best-known Kabbalist whose writings Pico read were those of the earlier mentioned Abulafia. Non-Kabbalistic writings that Mithridates translated for Pico include the Bible-commentaries of Menahem Recanati (late 13th to early 14th century). Because there were not that many more texts that Pico read, Joseph Blau* (1909-1986) states that Pico’s knowledge of Kabbala was extremely limited. In a way this may be true, but Philip Beitchman* and Scholem* prove at least a bit otherwise.

Mithridates also introduced Pico to the Sepher ha-Bahir (‘book of brightness’) for example, which Pico is said to have studied in Hebrew. Bahir is a strange Kabbalistic work from the Provence from after 1150. The book became important in the Christian Cabala because it forms the link between the Jewish esoteric tradition and neoplatonism and gnosticism. It is formed of various ancient Kabbalistic texts and introduced Kabbalists to the idea of ‘gilgul’ or reincarnation.

Another teacher of Pico’s was still a Jewish Kabbalist in the time the two met: Yahonan Alemanno who the Jewish scholar Josef Perles (1835-1894) saw as the most probable person for Pico’s mysterious teacher Dattilo or Dattylus, who wrote a lot about magic, but published only one book. Dattilo based himself on the Kabbalist with many names who is best known for his commentary on the Sepher Yetsirah: Josef ben Shalom Ashkenazi alias Josef the Tall alias Abraham ben David of Posquières alias Rabad (±1125-1198).

The last big influence of Pico that I want to mention is Paulus (or Pablo) de Heredia (1408-1486). De Heredia was a convert who had the very irritating habit that Christians seem to have had for a few centuries already: falsifying Jewish texts and using these forgeries as arguments. However Mithridates and Pico’s other teachers probably mentioned this fact to him it seems that the writings of De Heredia had quite an influence on the thinking of the young Pico who may or may not have known him personally.

Christian Cabalist approach of Judaism

The early Christian Cabalists had a unique approach to Judaism and their esoteric teachings. They were not original in the idea that Judaism was a form of pre-Christianity, but definitely a new view was that Judaic teachings were valuable for Christianity. Judaism was not wrong and Christianity right, in fact, there was more truth in Judaism than Christians had always said. This very fact made Christianity as follower of Judaism even better! The idea of Pico and especially John (Johannes, Johan) Reuchlin (1455-1522) was that all ancient traditions together form the hardcore truth of Christianity, especially two. As Reuchlin wrote in a letter to pope Leo X (1475-1521) (a sprout of the De Medici family, see my article about the Philosophical Renaissance): “But this task [bringing Pythagoras to the Germans] could not be accomplished without the Cabala of the Jews, because the philosophy of Pythagoras had its origins in the precepts of the Cabala, and when in the memory of our ancestors it disappeared from the Magna Graecia, it lived again in the volumes of the Cabalists.”

But not only Kabbalist writings were regarded valuable. As we saw before Pico also had translations of non-Kabbalistic Jewish literature. Mithridates also translated works of esoteric theological Jewish writers such as Rabbi Judah ben Samuel He-Chasid of Regensburg (‘the Chasid’ – ?-1217) and Rabbi Aleazar ben Judah ben Kalonymus of Worms (±1176-1238). He did this in particular for another fan of these writers Cardinal Egidio (Ægidius) da Viterbi (Viterbo – 1465-1532) and later Reuchlin seems to have had access to Viterbi’s library. Judah and Eleazar wrote a lot about the Talmud and Midrash from which Christian Cabalists also found many quotes in books of Recanati and Josef ben Abraham Gikatilla (or Gikatilia, Gicatila – 1248-1325). They couldn’t tell apart the theological Talmud commentaries from ‘real Kabbala’. This ignorance was one of the bigger differences between Jewish and Christian Kabbalists: the Cabalists had only scatters and had no knowledge of what was from the Talmudic traditions and what from Kabbalistic. This is not entirely true though, Reuchlin -as Hebraist- later in his life tried to used this half-faked ignorance to save as many Jewish books as he could (he was asked which ones should be burned) by saying that some Talmudic works (which were evil in the eyes of the Christians) were Kabbalistic (which were allowed for containing Christian truths).

Translations of Hebrew texts

A very interesting subject in the Christian approach to Jewish works is which works were translated in languages that could be read by Christians and when. There were a few people who started to make translations of Jewish writings at a remarkably early time.

I of course mentioned Mithridates a few times already, so I won’t bring him up again. It becomes more interesting when we turn to the major Kabbalistic texts. Large sections of the Zohar have been translated by Guillaume Postel (1510-1587) but these were not published during his life. They did circulate as manuscripts and were known to most Christian Cabalists of his time. The Hebrew Zohar itself wasn’t published until 1558 (under protest), but Postel had translated parts of it before that. The same goes for Postel’s translation of the Sepher Yetsirah. This translation was published in 1552 when the Hebrew version had yet to come. Many translations of this short but primary text would follow. An interesting version is the 1642 printing of Jo(h)annes Stephanus Rittangel(us) (1606-1652), which has both the Hebrew text and a Latin translation. Postel’s translation was by far not the first. One “master Isaac” made a translation to Latin as early as 1480 which we will run into a few paragraphs furtheron.

Joseph Blau* didn’t think too highly of most Christian Cabalists. An exception was the convert Paul(o) Ricci(o) (Ric(c)ius, originally Paulus Israelita – ±1470-1541). He not only knew a respectable amount of texts, but also the less well-known texts and he was the first to systemise the Christian Cabalist doctrines. Ricci was a fervent translator and his best-known translation is that of the Sha’are Orah of Gikatilla as the well-known Portae Lucis (‘gates of light’ – 1516). The title page of this work had the first depiction of the Kabbalistic tree outside a Jewish text. The work speaks about the gates of understanding which also will be dealt with later.

Another convert that knew “his sources’ sources” (*Beitchman | p.49) was Pietro (Colonna) di Galatini (Petro Galatino 1460-1540). As with many Jews later, Cabala caused his conversion to Christianity. To show the Christian truth in Jewish texts he wrote the book De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis (‘about arcane Catholic truth’- 1518). Herein you can find translations of parts of the Zohar, a summary of a text on the ‘Shema Israel’ prayer by Paulus de Heredia and other important texts.

Johannes Pistorius (1546-1608) was one of the councillors of the Hermetic emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) of Prague. Pistorius’ “Christian Cabalist Bible” the Artis Cabalisticae (1587) contains translations of what he regarded a the most important Cabalist writings: two books of Paul Ricci De Coelesti Agricultura (1514 – a compilation of texts including Portae Lucis); De Verbo Mirifico and De Arte Cabalistica of Reuchlin (see later); the 1480 translation of the Sepher Yetsirah; commentaries of Archangelus (Puteus) de Burgonova (Burgonovo | ?-1571) on Pico’s Cabalistic conclusions (which were in fact written by his teacher Francesco Giorgi(o) (Venetus) (Franciscus Giorgius / Zorzi – 1466-1540) but Archangelus published them after Giorgi’s death under his own name); and more.

The best-known compilation of Kabbalistic and Cabalistic texts if of course the Kabbala Denundata (part I 1677, part II 1684) of Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689) which came out very late in the Renaissance, but is still regarded as the most important Christian Cabalist book. Its translations include parts of the Zohar (some of the more mysterious parts), the earlier mentioned Pardes Rimmonim of Cordovero, the Sepher ha-Gilgulim (‘book of the transmigration of souls’ – 1684) by Hayim Vital and other translations. Further a dictionary, explaining diagrams and in some editions a text by a friend of Knorr’s: Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (a.k.a. Peganius – 1577-1644).
Of course these are not the only titles that I could mention, but at least you have an idea. Often translations were parts of writings of Christian Cabalists which I will turn to shortly now.

Christian Cabalist ideas and writings

A good introduction to this chapter is a quote from Scholem which I took from the book of Blau: “Jewish mysticism is concerned with the interpretation of the idea of God as He himself is creation, revelation and redemption. The Christian interpreters of Cabala attempt to fuse the specifically Christian concept of the Divine act of redemption through Jesus with the concepts of creation and revelation common to both Judaism and Christianity.” (*Blau | p.21)

Christian Cabalists saw Christian truths in the Jewish doctrines, especially that of the Kabbala. They started to look for similarities, information that they could use and since it proved that there were Jews who followed the path via Kabbala to Christianity, soon the idea rose that Cabala may be a very good way to convert Jews. So then effort was made to prove that Christianity exists in Jewish texts and that (therefore) Christianity is the follower-up and improvement of Judaism. All this without losing the respect for Judaism itself by the way.

The first Christian Cabalist Pico didn’t write a whole lot of Cabalistic texts. His well-known 900 conclusions that he wanted to defend before the church, contain 47 Cabalist conclusions and the 72 derivative theorems thereof. The first 47 are quotes from a variety of works and the 72 are Pico’s own theories based on the quotes. These conclusions were fanatically copied and explained by followers of Pico, but seldom with much originality or new ideas. Pico’s other main Cabalistic work is his Heptaplus (‘more than seven’? – 1489) which Blau calls a “hardly Cabalistic account of creation.” (*Blau | p.28), but which definitely has a Cabalistic content as we will see later.

The early Jewish converts that I spoke of before gave an example of the ‘conversional’ methods of Christian Cabala. An example that I hopefully will be able to explain without giving the Hebrew text: In the Song of Songs there is a passage saying ‘in his shadow’. One of the Jewish word-games involves shifting around letters (‘temurah’) by which way Abulafia rearranged the Hebrew text into ‘his cross’ making the statement that the text could be explained as ‘in the shadow of the crucified’. Maybe strange for us modern men, but something of an argument in those times when you wanted to prove that Christianity can be found within the Torah! ‘

Shortly after Pico followed John Reuchlin who travelled to Florence to meet Pico. Their meeting was short and formal, but the two had a lot of ideas incommon. Reuchlin saw Cabala as “paradisal knowledge that was lost after the fall but [which] could be divined, if not regained, through quiet contemplation on the Hebrew letters, self-absorption and the love of God” (*Dan | p.134). He wrote two Cabalistic books. The first was published in 1494 and called De Verbo Mirifico (‘about the wonder-working word’). It is written in the form of a discussion. At the time of publishing Reuchlin wasn’t much of an expert in Kabbala and Blau even calls him “a beginner rushing to print” (*Blau | p.49). Still the book has its values and is interesting for some of the ideas that would become important in the Christian Cabala. The most eye-catching thing is the play with the tetragrammaton. This term literally means “four-letter-word” and is written thus: YHVH. It is usually either given as “Jahwe” or “Jehova”, but in fact unpronounceable, or better said, the original pronunciation has been lost. The best way to refer to it is to call it the ‘tetragrammaton’, which means ‘four-letter-word’.
In his book Reuchlin divides history in three parts like in the Talmud: First there was the age of the patriarchs or of nature (‘tohu’ or chaos in the Talmud) and the three-letter name of God (ShDY or Shaddai). Then there was the age of the Old Testament (the Talmudic age of the law or Torah) and the tetragrammaton YHVH. Thirdly was the age of the New Testament (of the Messiah or of bliss) and the complete name of God (YHShVH). Thus forming the wonder-working ‘pentagrammaton’ (five-letter word) that can be written “Joshua” or Jesus Christ. The latter, Reuchlin described as the first creation, the Logos, to be represented by the highest sephiroth Kether.
Further the Verbo says that Hebrew is the original language in which God spoke with men and that it therefore has magical powers, especially when rendering names of God.
The book isn’t too penetrating and contains some obvious mistakes. I doubt Reuchlin will have forgiven himself for giving an incorrect sephirothic tree.

20 Years passed before Reuchlin wrote his next Kabbalistic work De Arte Cabalistica (1517). In this time he became ‘Hebraist’, expert in the language and culture of the Jews. He wrote as first non-Jew a (not too good) book on Jewish grammar (Rudimenta Hebraica – 1506) and was asked his opinion about Jewish texts when the Jews had fallen from grace. He read a lot of Kabbalistic works, but to Blau’s* opinion he puts too much stress on Gikatilla.
Whereas De Verbo Mirifico was plainly to convey information, in De Arte Cabalistica Reuchlin tried to interweave the Jewish concept that language itself is divine. Here for he comes with more ‘serious’ Jewish word games than before.
De Arte Cabalistica is again a discussion, this time between a Cabalist, a Pythagorean and a Muslim. As we saw earlier, Reuchlin saw two traditions particularly as the source and truth of Christianity, one of which is the Cabala, a “sublimated form of alchemy”, the other the Greek classical philosophy. The Arte was written after the controversies and at the time of the burning of Jewish texts. Reuchlin tried to prove their Christian content, to prevent further losses. Both the Jews and the Christians had their four elements, also Kabbalists follow Aristotle (384-322BC) and practise mathematics. Furtheron Reuchlin distincts natural philosophy (‘opus Bereshit’) from spiritual science (‘opus Mercavah’) working respectively on the intellectual and sensible planes and there you have two worlds are higher than our earth. Another thing that would become popular is turning the Jewish expectation of the Messiah in such a way that He has already come in the halfgod Jesus Christ. Greek philosophy is compared to the Cabala, a good example of this comes from another writer. Giorgi said that Aristotle’s 10 categories can be identified with the sephiroth.

Reuchlin also explains some typically Kabbalistic concepts which made his book an introduction for Latin readers. First the idea of the Kabbalistic tree. This tree has 10 sephiroth and 22 ‘paths of wisdom’, the connections between the sephiroth. Each path is assigned with a letter from the alphabet (alephbeth). Often you read about the 32 paths of the tree, this number includes the sephiroth.
Also there is the earlier mentioned concept of the ’50 gates of Binah’ which “were necessary to creation” (*Blau | p.56) and are linked with the third sephiroth Binah. This name can be translated as ‘understanding’. The 50 gates are 50 levels of understanding God.
Counting their number together with the number of the 22 paths of wisdom, you get another mystical number: 72. Not for nothing Pico had 72 Cabalistic ‘theorems’, it is the number of the names of God which can be drawn from three verses of Exodus. The verses 19, 20 and 21 of chapter 14 have 72 letters each, something that caught the eye of early Jewish mystics. They wrote the verses under eachother (the second in reversed order) resulting in 72 three-letter names of God. From these you can also make the names of 72 angels. The number 72 itself can also be found within the tetragrammaton (Y+YH+YHV+YHVH=10+ 10+5+ 10+5+6+ 10+5+6+10 = 72).

Inside and outside Reuchlin’s book we can find more of similar ‘proofs’ of Christian doctrines in Jewish texts. Take alone the highest angel Metratron who was often identified with the Son (first creation, Logos, highest sephiroth, etc.), but Jews also identified him with God. This last is the conclusion of another Kabbalist letter game called ‘gematria’. The numerological value of the name Metratron is the same as that of the God-name Shaddai: 314.

Another Christian play of Jewish origin is the following. The first word of the Hebrew Bible is “Bereshit” (BRAShYT – in the beginning). The word game of ‘notaricon’ says that every first (or last) letter of every word of a sentence gives a word that says something about that sentence. This also goes the other way, one word could be a sentence. In our example “BRAShYT” could be a sentence, for example: “In the beginning Elohim saw that Israel would receive the law”. In Hebrew the first letters of this sentence form “BRAShYT”, so the Bible says that the people Israel receive the Torah. A Christian Cabalist would make another sentence of the same word, for example: “Son, Spirit, Father, their Trinity, complete oneness”. There you have it! Christian doctrines in the Jewish Bible! These plays seemed to have been able to let Jews embrace the Christian faith. It was like getting on the Jews with their own methods.

So now I have mentioned the trinity. There is more to say about this concept. Already in 1292 the Franciscan Arnoldo de Villanova (1235-1315) said that there are three different letters in the tetragrammaton which thus represents the trinity.
And so Christian Cabalists did their utmost to bring proof of the trinitarian concept in Jewish texts. Pico -for example- said that the first three sephiroth kether-hokhmah-binah represent the trinity, Reuchlin calls God a threefold principle unity and Giorgi found the trinity in the Jewish names of God AHYA (Eheieh which Giorgi identifies with the Father), YHVH (for the son) and ADNY (Adonai for the Holy Ghost). Three other holy names are folded into a trinity by Reuchlin: He (He), Eheih (I am) and Esh (fire).

The number three also comes back in the threefold division of the world: elemental, celestial, supercelestial / intellectual. These three can be found in the Heptaplus of Pico, De Verbo Mirifico of Reuchlin and De Harmonia Mundi of Giorgi. Pico says that the first is our black pit of darkness (earth), the celestial is the world of light and in the heavens light and darkness are in balance (*Secret | p.41).

Another three: the three souls of the Jews ‘nephesh’, ruach’, ‘neshamah’ which can be compared to the threefold soul of the Renaissance. Giorgi -for example- talks about these three souls in his De Harmonia Mundi. He speaks about the high, low and middle soul in his long poem. The middle soul is the mediator, the breath of life or ruach. The high soul is the divine soul, the immortal neshamah; and the lower soul, the animal soul or nephesh.

Some things were consciously or unconsciously not taken over from Jewish Kabbalistic sources or only partly. Unconscious reasons can be that the Christian Cabalists didn’t know the full range of Kabbalistic literature. Another thing is that the sources of the Cabalists weighted heavily on the minds of them. Dan himself writes in his book that 1. the sources of the Christian Cabalists (Recanati, Samuel, Eleazar) didn’t emphasize these elements or even rejected them (Abulafia); 2. Christian Cabalists were more interested in finding Pythagoras, Plato and Christianity inside Kabbala than in Kabbala itself; 3. some concepts didn’t fit very well with Christian doctrines (*Dan | p.65/66).

An example of the last point is the Kabbalistic (sometimes downright Gnostic) dualism. Pico had a fairly un-Christian Cabalistic conclusion, being number XIX: “The letters of the name of the evil demon who is the prince of this world are the same as those of the name of God -the tetragrammaton- and he who knows how to effect their transposition can extract one from the other.” (*Beitchman | p. 67). But after this it was mostly done with the dualism of the Christian Cabalists.

Other elements that didn’t make it to the Christian Cabalist doctrines were the overtly feminine sexuality of the sephiroth Shekinah and Malkuth and the pleroma of the sephiroth.

With later Christian Cabalists things didn’t get any better. Christian Cabalists mostly followed Pico and Reuchlin who already often tapped from secondhand sources. Just a handfull of Christians got to learn with a Jew and learned Hebrew, but often didn’t come much further than the books they learned the language from.

Cabala +

It is already hard to say where Jewish Kabbala starts and begins. It involves much more than these few things that I have written about. Take alone the magical side of it. Angel magic, Golems, finding the true name of God for the highest knowledge. Also some Christian Cabalists meddled with magic, often continuing the traditions of pre-Cabalistic natural magic. Other Cabalists didn’t want anything to do with magic and had a theoretical approach (like you have practical and theoretical Jewish Kabbala as we saw earlier). I don’t think anyone has ever tried (or will try) to give all embracing definition of the term Kabbala or Cabala. Still you can see that Cabala (whatever it is) gets mixed with other arts. The most well known is the art of poetry and play. Poetic cabalistic writings such as De Harmonia Mundi and Jean Thenaud’s (?-1542) La Saincte et Trescrétienne Cabala (‘the holy and very Christian Cabala’) inspired poets and play writers like Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616) to incorporate Cabalistic themes in their own writings.

Other reworkings of Cabala can be found in the works of magicians like Johann Trithemius (1462-1516), Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) and John Dee (1527-1608). The first and the last were primary ‘angel magicians’ which is a subject I am currently writing an article on. Agrippa is best known for his compendium of Renaissance occultism De Occulta Philosophia libri tres (‘three books of occult philosophy’ – 1531). In his theoretical work he speaks about “cabalie” in book three (ceremonial magic) which art is quite well written. Also in his defensive writing De Vanitate Scientiarum (‘about the vanity of all arts’- 1526) he shortly gives good information about several arts.

Cabala even made it to science. The earlier mentioned Knorr and his friend Van Helmont introduced Cabala to well-known early scientists like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646 – 1716) and John Locke (1632-1704).
I will not speak about all this (here). Some of the books below do, some do extensively, so if you are interested. A fact remains that in time the ‘sharp edges’ of Cabala disappeared and some ideas remained in our thinking (without us knowing most of the time) because of sources we never suspected having such a background. Pretty soon after the Renaissance there is not much trace of the Cabala and nowadays Christian Cabala is mostly regarded as a Renaissance phenomenon, while Jewish Kabbala keeps developing until the present day. Blau goes as far as calling Christian Cabala: “a fad of no lasting significance.” (*Blau | foreword). I don’t agree with him entirely and also later investigators don’t agree with Blau negative approach, but it is true that the original version definitely outlived the Christian version.

*Further*reading*

Here follows a survey of the literature that I used. It is almost all literature about the subject available. Four books in particular form the core of my information, but I can assure you that all of the titles below have been under my attention. Unfortunately for all titles except Beitchman, you will have to find a library that has them…

The oldest modern investigation of the Christian Cabala is the book is The Christian Interpretation Of The Cabala In The Renaissance (1944) by Josef Leon Blau. In a way an interesting book, but he has a very negative approach. Blau wrote a nice history with Pico, Reuchlin, Ricci and the like, but completely misses the point on a few subjects. A great bibliography though and a good introduction, but be sure to read more recent works which often build further on this book and but with a less negative approach.

In 1958 there was the work Die Christliche Kabbala of Ernst Benz with the revealing subtitle “ein Stiefkind der Theologie” (“a stepchild of theology”) with a nice overview. Nothing smashing, but especially for its time interesting.

A very small work is La Kabbala. Kabbala Juive et Cabala Chrétienne (‘the Jewish and Christian Cabala’ – 1977) of L. Gorny. Interesting for being written so early, but not adding much to the later releases.

Another quite well known but not too good book is Spanish Christian Cabala of Catherine Swietlicki (1986) dealing only with “the works of Luis de León, Santa Therese de Jesús and Juan de la Cruz”. Swietlicki has also written a few other titles that I haven’t been able to see.

A brilliant book that is unfortunately no longer available is as an account of an exhibition and symposium at Harvard University in 1996. The Christian Kabbalah: Jewish mystical books and their Christian interpreters (1997) edited by a student of the late Gershom Scholem: Joseph Dan. The book contains the superb article by Scholem for the first time in English about the origins of the Christian Cabala under the title The Beginnings Of The Christian Kabbalah. Further a great article by Dan himself about Reuchlin, Francesco Zorzi (Giorgi) by Giulio Busi and articles by Klaus Reichert, Allison P. Caudert and Hillel Levine. With enormous distance the best book about the subject which I had the pleasure to read for this article.

A third book that I used is the not-too-great Alchemy Of The Word: Cabala of the Renaissance (1998) by Philip Beitchman, but which is the only book that is still available. It heavily leans on Blau (and also Scholem, Secret, Waite and Yates), but disproves many of Blau’s ideas and highly enlarges the information. All in all a helpful book, but it also misses vital points and is not too well written. His Bibliographica Kabbalistica with descriptions of works is helpful, but by no means unique.

The Impact Of The Kabbala In The Seventeenth Century of A. Coudert (1998) mainly deals with F.M. van Helmont and his influences and influence.

A Frenchman who did groundbreaking work was François Secret. He wrote several books about the Christian Cabala, Paul Ricci, Guillaume Postel, Sabbatai Sevi, Pico and other Renaissance subjects (such as superstition, Mesmer, talismans, literature and alchemy, etc.). Unfortunately all but two are not available in another language than his native one. I found one title in English and one in Dutch. Three titles that I used are Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens de la Renaissance (‘the Christian Cabalists of the Renaissance’ – 1985) and the Dutch Hermetisme en Kabbala (1990) which Secret wrote for an exhibition of our Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and speaks of a great many old and less old works. Lastly another book with a similar title Hermétisme et Kabbale (1992). I own a copy of the Dutch exhibition bundle, which has been very helpful.

One of the first academic investigators of the Kabbala was of course the late Gershom Scholem (1897-1982). He wrote mostly about the Jewish Kabbala, but included large sections about the Christian variants in some of his books, his best-known even: Major Trends In Jewish Mysticism (1941) and Kabballah (1978).

Even an occultist as Arthur Edward Waite (1857-1947) in his book The Holy Kabbalah (1929!) has extensive sections about Christian Cabalists.

Translations

Most books were written in Latin, a language that many of us no longer master. Some of the works from the Renaissance have been made available in English, such as:

The Kabbala Denundata of Knorr (1677+1684 in two parts) partly as The Kabbalah Unveiled by Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers (1887!) which can even be read online .

The well-known book De Arte Cabalistica (1517) of Reuchlin is also translated to English by Martin and Sarah Goodman in 1983 as On The Art Of The Kabbala.

Rabbi Josef Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah (1280) has been translated to Latin by Ricci as Portae Lucis (1587) and later to Gates Of Light (1994) by Avi Weinstein.

Naturally many more titles are available. For a great overview of these I suggest you surf to the excellent article The Study Of The Christian Christian Cabala by the artist Don Karr which gives virtually all information about articles, books, translations, etc. available. PDF-file.

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In my article about the Occult Renaissance I spoke about angel magic in the short pieces about Johannes Trithemius and John Dee. I wanted a deeper investigation of the subject to place these two in a wider context. The subject of angel magic proved to be more complicated than I thought. There seems to be a tradition, but on the other hand, many things seem to stand on their own and however there must be an ongoing tradition from times long past onward, there are gaps in the history as it came to us. Of course more recent happenings are better documented than ancient, but there are times that seem to lack magicians -or at least the mentioning of them- at all. I will try to follow a line and pick on certain subjects and persons on the way. No complete image, but at least you will have an idea.
The result is that for this article I did a wide-reaching investigation of angel magic, limiting myself to the ‘Jewish kinds’, since no doubt similar systems exist in eastern cultures and others as well. Still this ‘Jewish kind’ is extensive enough to force me to keep this article an overview and first introduction.

In different chapters I will speak about different subjects that at first sight seem to stand apart, but as you shall see, there is a lot of overlap between the different chapters, so you will get the same information a few times sometimes, but in different contexts.

Judaism and angel magic

For starters we have to go back to the times of Egypt and Babylon and also ancient China and India, civilisations in which religion and magic were two sides of the same coin. Not much information is available, but we know about the gods, angels and demons of these civilisations and will be able to understand the will of the people to form methods to try to protect themselves against harms. Interestingly enough there are scratches of information that for example in Egypt and Babylon they had tables with names of angels and demons that remained in the traditions that followed.

Some centuries Before Common Era (BCE), Gnostic sects lived in the Middle East and North Africa. Two sects are particularly interesting in our story, the Essenes and the Therapeuts. Both sects drew their information mostly from ancient Egyptian magic which has a lot of similarities with systems, names and the like that we will run into later in this article.
Gnostics made use of amulets and charms to please or keep away everyday (evil) spirits and had a whole legion of them. The techniques, systems, symbols, etc. kept developing and even though Gnosticism was burned down entirely by the upcoming Christian church, more Gnostic ideas survived than we may think at first glance.

Then we come to the Jews, the time before the well-known Exodus. The Jews fled from Egypt in the 13th centre BCE where they had lived since about 1750 BCE. Some had been in good terms with Egyptian priests and men like Moses have learned a lot from them, just as (Jewish) Gnostic sects would much later. This lead some investigators to conclude that Jewish mysticism found its source mainly in Egyptian magic. Personally I also find it very likely that during the (much later) time of the Babylonian exile (586-538 BCE) a lot of Babylonian magic was learned as well. A lot of names, spells and techniques seem to be traceable to Babylon and this short encounter between the two cultures seems the most plausible explanation for that to me.

Jewish folklore took over quite a bit of the Gnostic ‘folkloristic/magical’ elements, but two Jewish mystic traditions are particularly interesting for this article. The first is the Mercavah-tradition, the second the Hechaloth-tradition.

‘Mercavah’ means ‘chariot’, more in particular the throne-chariot from the vision of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:1-28). The long period in which Mercavah-mysticism was at its peak was from 100 BCE to 1000 CE. The purpose of the mystic is to reach the throne-chariot of God. Mercavah-mysticism is closely aligned to the other tradition that I mentioned.

‘Hechaloth’ means ‘hall’ and refers to the seven halls that connect the seven heavens on the way up to the throne-chariot. Each hall is guarded by a giant who can only be passed when the mystic knows the specific passwords. Also the mystic has to prepare talismans and seals and learn charms and spells to protect him against evil spirits that try to lead him away from the path. The spirits should also be recognised and known by name in order to present the correct talisman and say the right prayer.

All this developed towards the Kabbalah of which a practical / magical (‘ma’asieth’) and speculative / theoretical / mystical (‘jehunieth’) version came into being. Practical Kabbalah mainly built further on the knowledge of names, seals and charms. The Kabbalist Eleazer of Worms (1165-1238) says that the first literature of the practical Kabbalah came to Italy in 917. It was taken there by the Babylonian (!) scholar Aäron ben-Samuel. Eleazer got the task to make Kabbalah available to a wider German public.

Kabbalah became a system in which the magical working of language (‘kawanah’ or ‘prayer’) became very important. More and more secret names of God and names of angels were sought in older literature, but also new were formed.

The angels brought a strange development. They were first seen as messengers from God who take messages both ways. First God was called upon for help, instructions, etc. but later it became more important to ‘know your angel’ and they even became more important than God himself.

Now I will make a jump back in history to tell you a bit more about some traditional names, but also traditional seals. Magic squares, they may seem a bit our of the context, but they sure are not!

Magic squares

Magic squares is a subject that will prove to be closely related with angel magic. They are extremely old and they were used in different cultures. Already about 3000 years ago magic squares appeared in China and later India and Iraq. Nowadays investigators think that in China there was one tradition (partly) based on the I Ching and the other tradition reached Mesopotamia via India. The squares have never been just mathematical games, but always regarded as magical and also it seems that they have been linked with astrology since the beginning. Mesopotamia is in our story the most interesting.

A magic square is a square with numbers. The line, columns and diagonals have the same sums. There is a link with astrology. Certain squares are linked with planets. These associations come from the Babylonians. They had the very simple vision that the smallest planet is the farthest away from earth and the largest the closest. The smallest planet gets the smallest square, so we come to the following order: saturn – square of 3; jupiter – square of 4; Mars – 5; Sun – 6; Venus – 7; Mercury – 8 and the moon – 9. I am talking about the simplest squares possible by the way, the squares with the lowest numbers.

Signs and sigils

Now we come to an interesting subject which explains why I started with the magic squares. Back to the Jews and especially their language. Let us have a look at the most simple square, that of Saturn:

The squares are the basis for the sigils of every planet. In the Saturn example this is very clear. A line following 1-2-3, a line through 4-5-6 and a line following 7-8-9. This gets more complex when the squares get more complex and the system is not always this simple (sometimes even unknown), so I will not go into the details of this process. Donald Tyson already did, in his appendix about magic squares in The Three Books Of Occult Philosophy of Agrippa (see bibliography below).

Besides a sigil, every planet has its own intelligences and spirits. There are well-known names and really strange ones. The sigils of these spirits you can also find within the squares. In Hebrew a letter is a letter and a number, so we can replace the numbers by letters of the Saturn square which gives the following result (DTB-GHZ-ChAV in our order):

the second image is the seal of “Agiel” intelligence of Saturn the third image is the seal of “Zazel” spirit of Saturn

The Saturn square counts 45 in total (all compartments together), so Saturn got an “intelligence” and a “spirit” with names that have a number-value of 45. The first is called “Agiel”, the second “Zazel”.
Not every Hebrew letter can be found in a square of three. The system of ‘Aiq Beker’ was come up with to solve this problem. 27 Hebrew letters (22 and 5 final letters) where grouped in 9 times 3 letters. The three letters can replace each other if needed. Then you simply follow the name of the spirit within the square to make the sigil. As simple as that!

The squares, sigils and signs are used to make talismans as we can see in the often depicted overview from Frances Barretts “The Magus” (1801), which on his turn, he took from the Clavicula Salomonis which will be spoken about later. Just an example:

Jupiter talisman

There are also divine letters, seals and characters for every planet. I have no idea where they come from, but according to Agrippa (see later) they are derived from nature. Trunks, knots, roots, leaves, stones, etc. have been the inspiration for them (De Occulta Philosophia bk.1 ch.XXXIII).

More names and sigils

Many names of angels seem to be traditional and the highest Divinity also has more than one name. Lists with names of fallen angels can be found in early writings such as the Book of Enoch (about 200 BCE) (see VI:7+8). When even more names were needed, other Gnostic, early Jewish and Babylonian sources were used for inspiration. Also the Jews didn’t want to desecrate the name of God (YHVH) so thought of replacements. First various other names were come up with to still be able to call upon God magically, names of 4, 12, 42 and even 72 letters, all for the same Divinity. These names all came from the Thora, verses in which God is named or talked about, or His power is spoken off. Various methods were used to make new names, which I will come to shortly. And when the highest of high names eventually did slip into the magical manuscripts, it did in several forms! 12 Permutations can be made with 4 letters. 12 Names with the absolute highest power!

As mentioned before, angels tended to take over adoration, because they were the beings that could transport the messages to the right place in the heavenly court. The Jews had angels for literary anything. Every human has his angel, every animal, every plant, every blow of wind, every sparkle of light, every month, everything has its representative in the high planes. Many news names had to be invented for all these angels. The first method follows the structure of the traditional names of the archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, etc.), which was a root-word, with a ‘divine ending’: el, ya, or yahu. This is very clear with the 72 angels that were formed from the ’72 letter’ name of God.
This shem ha-mephorash is formed by writing three verses of Exodus (14:19-21) that each have 72 letters under each other, and the second in revered order. This way you get 72 times three letters under each other, 72 ‘names’, or one name of 72 words if you like. These 72 names of three letters with a divine ending, make 72 names of angels. This is only one method though.
Another one was simply combining two words or names for example by alternately writing a letter of each and saying that the result was a secret name of God (the words come from the Thora, of course).
Also you can always replace letters, either or not following rules of the ‘letter-game’ Temurah (systems of esoterically replacing letters). You can think of simply taking every following letter from the alphabet of an existing name, but there are more manners.
Another ‘letter-game’ Notaricon is also a method. By saying that every first (or second or last or middle) letter of word of a sentence makes word that says something about this sentence, holy names were formed of holy verses.
Then I can mention the third ‘letter-game’ Gematria. Every Hebrew letter is also a figure, so a word is also a number. Two words with the same numerological value are replaceable. A word or name with the same value as a divine name, is as divine as the original.
The last method that I want to mention is bluntly taking names from other cultures (often Greek in the Hellenistic times) and write these in Hebrew letters.

Strangely enough, as time would tell, magicians were not that interested in angels after all. By means of their names, the magician could get what he wanted, so when he knew the name and function, this was enough. All in all this ‘name-story’ is a strange one. Many names were taken from or inspired by Babylonian Djins, but the Babylonians didn’t make any ‘bastard-names’ (Marduk already had 50 names, why make other?), the Egyptians on the other side! A great many angels were known to the Egyptians, an angel for every month, week, day and even hour. Very interesting as we will see later. Much of this angelic system of the Egyptians was taken over by the Jews.

There were even magical books solely dedicated to the creation (or explanation) of new names. The Shimmush Tehilim (‘the (magical) use of the Psalms’) is one of these texts. It even opens: “the entire Thora is composed of names of God” and gives instructions how to find these and how the Psalms can be used magically.

A few problems occur as time passes. Several texts have long lists of names, for example those for the hours of the day. When book printing was not yet invented, these manuscripts were copied by hand. More than once this was conducted by people who were not magicians or even familiar with all these strange and unpronounceable (even in Hebrew!) names, so undoubtedly many have been copied incorrectly. Some scholars try to trace back the origins, but this is in many cases utterly impossible. It is therefore hard to tell how authentic the texts that we have today really are.

As we saw, the methods of making new holy names is endless and the number of Jewish holy names you hear about varies from a few tens to tenthousands. All with their own qualities, purposes, seals and ways of conjuring.

And about these seals I am again in doubt. I showed you that sigils of planets can be found in their magic squares, but it seems that the sigils of (arch)angels and spirits are just a given fact. I have examples of them in several books. Sometimes the names don’t correspond, but most of the time the sigils look similar enough to be regarded the same. I haven’t been able to find out from where they came. To me some look a bit like compilations of letters of an ancient alphabet, but others do not. Just a few examples to show you what I am talking about.

seal of the sun of Michael (Barrett) or Raphael (Solomon)

And now I will go to another subject in which most of what I spoke about before comes back.

Solomonic magic

Of the person Solomon (or Salomo(n)) we get two versions. He would have been the last of 72 monarchs who had the name ‘Suleiman’ (a title indicating royal power) who all ruled over the djins (Babylonian spirits). In another version Solomon was the son of King David, the first real king of the Jews, chosen by God. Solomon was the builder of the first Temple and comes back in many myths, legends and cultures. It is said that the devil tried to persuade Solomon to use his powers for evil purposes, but when Solomon turned him down, the devil put black magic spellbooks under Solomon’s throne to be found after his death. Lynn Thorndike (1882-1965) writes in her massive eight-volume work History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923-1958 chapter XLIX): “It was only natural that Solomon, regarded as the wisest man in the history of the world, should be represented in oriental tradition as the worker of many marvels and that in the course of time books of magic should be at tributed to him”. Some people even claim that the earlier mentioned Essenes and Therapeuts learned their magic from this great king.

‘Solomonic magic’ is a story of its own, but also it isn’t. People who are a little bit interested in medieval magic, will be familiar with The Key Of Solomon and The Lesser Key Of Solomon. These are by far not the only books ascribed to Solomon!

The oldest work ascribed to Solomon is The Testament Of Solomon. It is written in Greek and would first have appeared as early as the third century. It is written as a story told by Solomon himself and speaks about his contacts with angels, listing their names and functions. Many texts would follow, often quite similar in structure.

A large jump in history, but still filling the gap between the next texts I will write about is The Sword of Moses. This is a Hebrew manuscript that was probably written in the 10th century. Names, blessings and conjurations can be found in this short text.

Then I have to mention the Sepher Raziel, the book of the angel Raziel. It was said that Raziel delivered it to Adam immediately after Adam left Paradise. Later it was ascribed to Solomon and more later it was suggested quite convisingly that it is a compilation of texts, probably from the hand of Eleazer of Worms. Little can be said about the age of the original texts, but they seem to be from Jewish origin. The book contains seven parts dealing with almost every subject which angel magic is about: astronomy, the virtues of stones, plants and animals, the angels that rule the times of day and night, the angels that rule the parts of the earth, lists of names, seals and spells. What more does an angel magician want?

Well, more instructions? This is very possible, even within fairly short treatises. Let me turn to the well-known Clavicula Salomonis, the Key of Solomon that later became the Greater Key of Solomon, since it was followed by a smaller key (Lemegeton). The Key is a short text that is quite well available in translations nowadays (but the versions differ a lot). I have got a Dutch version (1981, but still available). You will get very detailed information of how to prepare yourself to study the Kabbalah, how to perform rituals, how to conduct them, how to get the right atmosphere and material and further on how to make the seals, sigils, talismans (to protect), pentacles (for one-time use), lists of angels ruling the hours of day and night and tables with information and drawings. Not always too helpful for us modern men, because parchment should be made from a virgin lamb ritually killed over a streaming source of bright water during special hours of the day, just to name an example. There are a lot of drawings in this book, but unfortunately without any explanation. This explanation you can sometimes find in later texts that I will come to later on. The second book deals with ceremonies.
A similar text from almost the same time (first half 14th century) is The Sacred Magic Of Abramelin The Mage, which is as specific about things as the Key. Abramelin is a German text, probably by Eleazer (again).

It is funny to see how much different manuscripts are alike, even those from different cultures. From the Arabian countries we have the Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi’l-sihr, or Picatrix (‘the aim of the sage’), as it is known in the West. It is ascribed the mathematician Maslamati ibn Ahmad al-Majriti (?-±1005) and was written in the tenth century. As early as 1256 there was a Latin translation. It is so much like ‘our’ Solomonic magic, that people have said that the Picatrix is a translation of the Key. Everything you can find in the previous mentioned books can be found in the Picatrix and a bit more too, since some versions are a bit longer.
My other example is from something completely different. Pope Honorius III (?-1227) wrote the Liber Juratus, also known as Liber Sacratus, but best known as The Sworn Book of Honorius. This text may very likely have inspired later medieval works with its long lists of angels in strange languages and three kinds of working with spirits: pagan (without control), Jewish (“in no wise work to obtain a vision of the deity”) and Christian (successful in such visions).

But let us first come back to Solomonic writings. In the Lesser Key and other writings you can see different chapters about what at first sight seem different kinds of magic. First there is the Ars Notoria or Notory Art (sometimes Ars Nova) “which seeks to gain knowledge from or communion with God by invocation of angels, mystic figures, and magical prayers” (Thorndike). This was the art that was revealed to Solomon by God himself. Second there is the Ars Paulina was “discovered by the Apostle Paul after he had been snatched up to the third heaven, and delivered by him at Corinth” (Thorndike). It is divided in three books, one speaking of the spirits of the day, one speaking of the spirits of the night and one speaking of the angels of the signs of the zodiac.

These chapters are often published without its context and there are other arts besides these. I have been thinking about whether or not to include these in this article. So far all magic was ‘good’, or at least called that way. A bit like the ‘spiritual magic’ in the Renaissance of my other articles which stands in contradiction to ‘demonic magic’ or black magic. The Key of Solomon, which has been the bases of many later magical texts, makes it very clear. The art is not for selfish purposes, can only be conducted by those pure and holy of heart, is about love and the good of mankind and thrives on the love of God. Other arts were derived here from, but less harmonic, black magic so to say.

The Lesser Key contains the following parts besides the ones I just mentioned: Goetia, Theurgia/goetia and (Ars) Almadel.
The first is the most ‘popular’ today, because of attention from the Golden Dawn (see later). According to Agrippa (also see later) it deals with unclean spirits, unlawful charms and the dead. The book Goetia speaks about the 72 infernal spirits that were conjured by King Solomon, giving their names, sigils and descriptions.
Theurgia is often placed contradictory to Goetia. Where Goetia is black magic, Theurgia is white. Agrippa -though- speaks about these two forms of magic in the same chapter of his De Incertitudine et Vanitate Scientiarum (‘about the uncertainty and vanity of all arts’ – 1527). Theurgia/goetia has 31 chapters, and will come back later.
Almadel is said to be an Arabic writer whose writings came before the Key of Solomon and may have been an influence to it. Trithemius (see later) even calls him the writer of the greater key. Agrippa doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to this book, but speaks about the writer in his first book about natural (good) magic. The book tells how Solomon obtained great wisdom of the angels that rule the four corners of the world. “Almadel” is also a wax square seal ordained with Kabbalistic symbols and names. The book tells you how to conjure angels and how they and their helpers appear to you, something we also see in the Key and other texts.

Johannes Trithemius

Johannes Heidenberg lived from 1462 to 1516, a time in which magic books were available and new were still written. We know Trithemius (after his birthplace Tritheim in Germany) mostly for a few of his numerous writings. Besides writing a lot of theological books, hagiographies (biographies of saints), prayers, etc., Trithemius had an interest in magic, or did he? He DID have a student that would be known as a magician: Agrippa (see later). Also he learned Greek and Hebrew from Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) who we know from my Christian Cabala article. Still, in Trithemius’ tens of books and hundreds of letters, there isn’t really that much magic to be found, but referrals to magic in a few books would spell his name for the future.

Trithemius lost his father when he was very young. His mother remarried an illiterate and rigid man who didn’t allow him to learn to read and write. The youngster wanted to know everything that there is to know and at the age of 15, a youthful figure appeared in a dream. Trithemius got to choose between a tablet with writing and one with symbols. Wanting to be able to read the Bible, Trithemius went for the ability of language over symbols. After the vision it took him only a month to learn German and another few months to learn Latin in secret from his neighbour. At an early age he left his parentally house for a tour through Europe and learned various arts. When wanting to visit his parents after not having seen them for various years, Trithemius was surprised by a snowstorm and ended up in a very small monastery in Sponheim. Trithemius didn’t return home, but became monk and very soon, at the age of 23, abbot. He rebuilt the complex and enlarged the library with thousands of books which made Trithemius’ monastery a resort for humanist scholars. In his early forties he left the Sponheim monastery for one in Würzberg where he spent the last years of his life.

Trithemius saw himself as a good Catholic and initially everybody agreed. In the beginning of the 16th century Trithemius wrote most of his books and letters. His favourite concept was that of the Trinity. When his interest in magic grew, he said that the Trinity is the basis of all occult knowledge. Trithemius started to study number, order and measure which also led towards a Trinitarian concept: the three in One. In my article about the Occult Renaissance we saw that Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) did his best to keep his magic “natural” or “spiritual”. He didn’t want to reach for levels, which could also involve evil spirits. However Schumaker* keeps telling that Trithemius’ magic was natural magic, our abbot wrote about the levels of the seven planets and the stars: “it is necessary to step beyond this, so that the ascent may be prepared by the Trinity, the ascent to that harmony that is supercelestial, where nothing is material and everything spiritual.” (quote from Borchardt*) The way up is a 9-step ladder. You can debate about the fact whether this is ‘spiritual’ or ‘demonic’ magic, but one point speaks for the first: the 9-step ladder that Trithemius took from the system of the pseudo-Dionysius (the Areopagiet) (5th century BCE) of who he owned all surviving works in one manuscript. Magicians often refer to the pseudo-Dionysius, since he developed an advanced system of hierarchies of angels, which has nine levels. Trithemius translated several of the pseudo-Dionysius’ works from Greek to Latin and incorporated many Dionysian concepts in his own system. Like the early Italian Renaissance men (Ficino, Pico, etc.) Trithemius left out the Dionysian negative approach.

During the years Trithemius worked in silence, but always had visitors in his monastery. Also -as mentioned- he wrote a lot of letters to people all over Europe. In one letter Trithemius was talking big of his capabilities (communicate without speaking, learn people Latin in two hours, transfer messages to other places in the world, etc.). This letter was meant for Arnold Bastius, who didn’t get it since he died before the letter reached him. The letter fell in the wrong hands and you can guess what happened… Four years later (1503) a Frenchman Charles de Bouelles (or Bovilles | 1540-1570) paid his second visit to Trithemius and got to read his just finished Steganographia (see later). Back in France he spread the word that Trithemius was a demonic magician.

So what about these magical writings then? Besides a few texts against witches, at least three not very theological writings came from the hands of the good abbot: De Septem Secundeis, Polygraphiae (finished 1505 and published 1515) and the Steganographia.
Another magical work is ascribed to Trithemius: Veterum Sophorum Sigilla et Imagines Magicae (a book with magical seals and images – 1612), but some say that it is from long before Trithemius. It speaks of seals and talismans from different cultures, Solomonic/Judaic, Egyptian, Babylonian and the like.
The Steganographia is from Trithemius’ hands for sure and it is his best-known writing in magical circles. The work comes in three books. The first was finished in march 1500, the second a month later. The third book is a ‘clavis’ or key to the first two and was never completed. Trithemius soon found out that the book would bring him problems. He deleted the worst parts of it and never wanted it published. Still the Steganographia circulated as manuscript for a long time, until it was finally published in 1606. The ‘clavis’ followed in 1635.
Polygraphiae is about secret writing, Steganographia too, but then in the form of a ‘grimoire’, a book of black magic. The title of the last book says enough.

Where did Trithemius learn these arts? One man Trithemius considered as his “best and extraordinary teacher”, the mysterious Libanius Gallus. Libanius visited the monastery in 1495 and was in very good terms with a Majorcan group of mystics. This may explain how Trithemius knew about the works of the late Medieval writer Ramon Lull (1232-1316 see Occult Renaissance). What Trithemius exactly learned from Libanius is unknown to me, but some elements of the system of Lull found their way into Trithemius’ system.
Cryptography, Trithemius found a very old book in another monastery dealing with this subject. He was caught by the possibilities of it and started his own ciphering experiments. Things were combined to one as we will see later.
Also it seems that Trithemius read the Solomonic works that I have spoken about earlier, at least the second book of the Lemegeton, the part about Theurgia/Goetia. The text of it is closely followed by Trithemius in his Steganographia, even the angel-names are almost the same. The order of the chapters is different in Trithemius’ version, he starts with the four emperors of the corners of the world and then continues with the spirits under their command. I am sure that there are more versions of Theugia/Goetia which may explain this, but maybe Trithemius wanted to improve the original text.
T/G has 31 chapters for 4 emperors and 27 spirits. Each chapter tells you something about a spirit, gives its name and how many spirits of the day and night are ruled by it. Also a conjuration to invoke the spirit is given. Further there is a star in the beginning of the book in which the names of the angels are giving dividing them over the cardinal points. Trithemius does that a bit simpler, but the idea of his circle in 16 parts is the same. The Steganographia follows the structure of T/G. There are 32 chapters (one closing off), you get information about a certain spirit, but Trithemius is a bit more extensive. This is partly due to the purpose of his writing. In contradiction to T/G Trithemius doesn’t want to just conjure the spirit, but use it in a specific function and this is also the bridge to the other element of the Steganographia. You learn how to conjure a spirit with a strange “coniuratio” or “carmen” (song) in an unknown language. The spirit appears and you give it a secret message, in cipher! The recipient conjures the same spirit with another conjuration and receives your secret message. The conjurations are examples of the ciphers. When you encipher the codes, you get instructions of how to crack other ones, for example, one conjuration goes:
“Parmesiel oshurmy delmuson Thafloyn peano charustrea melany, lyaminto colchan, paroys, madyn, moerlay, bulre + atloor don melcour peloin, ibutsyl meon mysbreath alini driaco person. Crisolnay, lemon asosle mydar, icoriel pean thalmõ, asophiel ilnotreon banyel ocrimos esteuor naelma besrona thulaomor fronian beldodrayn bon otalmesgo merofas elnathyn bosramoth.”
You decode it by alternately reading a letter from alternate words, so you get “sum taly cautela it pryme lytore cuiuslybet diccionys secretam intencionem tuam reddant legenty”, which means something like that the message is hidden by backwardly writing a letter in the beginning of words (letters of the ‘plain text’ make words in the cipher, beginning in the back). How you encipher the code is told (also in code) in the opening sentence of chapter 1.
Commentators give different sentences. My copy of the original text has a sentence that would not lead to the given result. Some letters are different, some words are written separately. I made a few small modifications for the result above.
Some people have said that in this case the angel name “Parmesiel” indicates what kind of cipher it is. Others say that letters or numbers at the end of the code give that information, but there aren’t any. In any case, since Parmesiel has his own chapter, he doesn’t come back in the book later on. the Parmesiel code is also used with other angels’ summonings.

The Polygraphiae speaks only about ciphers, without the ‘dubious’ form and nobody has ever raised an eyebrow over that book. It has long tables with words representing letters, so an innocent prayer is actually a word. I will not speak about that here.

Then I have to say something about De Septem Secundeis (‘about the seven planetary gods’ – 1508) is an interesting book in the context, but still I will not speak too long about it. It gives a history of the world and explains how angels and spirits caused the events. Angels as mediators, does that mean that Trithemius thought that they could be used for selfish or non-selfish reasons?

You may wonder why Trithemius chose to use such dangerous subjects. He must have known about the inquisition, the wicked magicians of the past and how they were persecuted, the bad names of people like Agrippa, etc. so why while trying to be a good Catholic, use a magical book as the Lemegeton as source for his Steganographia or speak about the power of angels concerning the cause of history? Was he naive or did Trithemius really practise angel magic? I doubt we will ever know.

Henry Cornelius Agrippa from Nettesheim

Now I want to turn shortly to Trithemius’ student, who dedicated the first version (1510) of what would become his ‘magnus opus’ to Trithemius. De Occulta Philosophia libri tres (‘three books of occult philosophy’) is a massive compilation of (almost) all the occult sciences of Agrippa’s time (1486-1535). Almost naturally there are also parts dedicated to angel magic or Solomonic magic more in particular. Inspite of what you mostly hear about De Occulta Philosophia, it is not much of a practical magic book, but rather a theoretical summary and description of a great variety of subjects. Some info is nicely brought together in short chapter and tables, so it made and makes a good reference book, also for a practical magician. Shortly I will speak about angel magic in De Occulta Philosophia.

Book I deals with natural magic, ‘good magic’ so to say. Agrippa quickly mentions what things fall under which planet. Book II is about celestial magic, but Agrippa dedicates even less pages to angel magic here. Only the images of planets and constellations are given. So then to the third book about ceremonial magic. In chapter 16 Agrippa explains that there are three kinds of spirits: intelligences, spirits and angels. After this you will read about the nine orders of evil spirits (ch.18-20), their names (ch.24) and the making of angel names (ch.24). Also very nice Kabbalistic information in various chapters.
There is a book IV that was published post-mortem and which was probably not written by Agrippa himself. It is a complete ‘grimoire’ and links the Solomonic works with the first three books of Agrippa. Also it is much more practical than anything else of Agrippa. It speaks about names, characters, seals and appearances of spirits, how to conjure them and even the raising of the dead.

John Dee

Dee (1527-1608) is a story of its own. He was the foremost occultist in Elizabethan England (Elizabeth I 1533-1603, reigned from 1558-1603) and studied a variety of arts. In my article about the Occult Renaissance I have given some general information about Dee, so here I will stick to the current subject.
Dee wanted to contact spirits to get answers to questions he had. He collected all the books he could find and was eagerly looking for the Steganographia for which he made a special trip to Antwerp (Belgium). Dee also had a few crystal balls (‘skry stones’) and a special room for séances. Because he proved to be unable to ‘skry’ himself, several people who were, were brought to Dee by his special deliverer. The only man who lived up to Dee’s expectations was Edward Kelly (Kelley) or Edward Talbot (1555-1595). The two have had a long and often difficult relationship, but in some ways fruitful.

In the first session Dee inquired about the authenticity of his Book of Sogya or Book of Enoch as Dee called it sometimes. It is a book in an unknown language (sometimes said Arabic), said to be delivered to Adam (this reminds of the Sepher Raziel of which the same is said). However Uriel confirmed the authenticity, only Michael could explain the language, tables and names. After this followed many years of communication with archangels, angels and other spiritual beings. Dee made notice of each and every session in his special diary of which much is still available. Dee asked a lot about everyday life and politics, but the most interesting part of “doctor Dee’s true and faithful relation with some spirits” is when he and Kelly received a system of angel magic. This was in sessions among the other ones, but sometimes during long days after each other. Dee not only received the language of the angels (“Enochian”, after the Book of Enoch?), but a whole system of preparations, ritual, keys/calling (conjurations), functions of angels, diagrams and tables.

Dee is told (through Kelly of course) that black magic was God’s punishment for the arrogance of mankind. It was time though, that good magic came back to the people and Dee understood that it was him who would reveal it to the world. It is presented as if Dee received a complete system of angel magic from the angels. This system is called “Enochian magic”, after the language that Dee received. The picture is slightly croaked though.
First we may not forget that Dee was very well read in magical texts and owned England’s biggest occult library. His skryer Kelly was a practising alchemist and however not as well read as Dee, he also knew his sources. Parts of Dee’s system and drawings have similarities with older manuscripts. His ‘Sigillum Dei Aemeth’ (see later) looks an awful lot like the one we can find in the Liber Juratus (13th century) that I spoke of earlier. Not all manuscripts of this text contain the diagram though, so maybe it was added later. After the example of Athanasius Kircher’s (1602-1680) Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1562)? And did Kircher copy it from Dee? Also Dee knew the Steganographia and the ‘original’ Theurgia/goetia too, just as the Honorius book and who knows what other medieval magical scriptures?
And there is another thing. It is quite obvious that Dee didn’t receive a complete system. He was promised things by the angels, but apparently they didn’t want Dee to actually put the art into practise and left essential gaps in the system which Dee was not always able to fill.
It is interesting to see the similarities of Enochian magic with ‘traditional’ angel magic. You may wonder whether the art was delivered to mankind long ago and degenerated and that it was Dee’s task to bring the system back to its original form. Also you may wonder if it were Dee and Kelly (who was a known forgerer) or maybe even Kelly alone made up the system or compiled it from texts they knew. In the case of Dee this doesn’t seem likely, he was too erudite. As for Kelly, he was probably not intelligent enough to come up with the massive amount of details. The real origin of Enochian magic will probably always remain a mystery.

Onto the system itself then. As mentioned, it is enormously complex and Dee spent hundreds and hundreds of pages with notes, workings-out, information received during the sessions, etc. I will limit myself to the most important parts of it.

To start with, Dee received instruments to be used in the magical workings. A ring and a crystal ball appeared from thin air. And a table of practise (see ‘the Holy table’ on the bottom of Occult Renaissance) should be made. Kelly saw it and had to describe it to Dee. You can imagine the problems Kelly had, when he had to describe the Enochian letters. The table is similar to some Solomonic writings by the way. On the table seven “ensigns of creation” had to be drawn, which are very complex talismans, impossible to describe. Further a wax ‘sigillum Aemeth’ (‘seal of thruth’) or ‘sigillum Dei’ (‘divine seal’) (remember the Almadel?) should be made and put on the table. This is again a very complex drawing containing names that had to be taken from magic squares (!) and a great number of letters and figures. On the back of the sigillum Aemeth comes a much simpler drawing of a cross and the name Agla, which is a Kabbalistic name, but not traditional (more like Christian Cabalist). The feet of the practitioner should rest on ‘seals of the angelic ministers’. A ‘holy lamen’ with no logic whatsoever had to be made from gold and hung around the neck. Smaller items had to be kept close, tables of kings and different kinds of furniture. The preparations are a task of their own, but this is not really different in Solomonic magic.

The order of the angels is described in the book De Heptarchia Mystica (‘about the mystical order of seven’ – 1582). Seven kings (one for each holy planet) have one prince each. Every prince has five nobles. This gives 49 names which again had to be drawn from letter-squares and can become as strange as “ergdbab”. Each prince also has 42 ministers for the hours of the day and night in six groups of seven. A part of De Heptarchia Mystica became a ‘grimoire’. With the information of the earlier parts of the books, you should be able to determine the right spirit of the days and hours and conjure it by the given seal. This part is very vague though and possibly not even meant to be clear.
An awful lot of weird names for a wide range of beings are drawn from squares. For some beings seals are given, some of which remind of Solomic seals, but other do not

Then another very complex element has to be spoken about, the watchtowers. Kelly skried a square table, divided in four parts for the four cardinal points. Each part on its turn is also divided in four parts and these too, but not in equal crosses, but in ‘Christian crosses’ so to say. A large number of letters can be found in the drawing, which make (again) a large number of names and sigils. This “great table” was delivered to Dee two times, but different and this happened with other tables as well! Every part of the table has a key to open one of the ‘gates of wisdom’. These keys may be the angel-names to be found in the table, which are the angels ruling over the parts of the world. There are good and evil angels, which all have their specific function for which the magician may want to conjure it.

However Dee was sometimes encouraged to write his own conjurations, he received 19 keys or calls for conjuring purposes. These are the well-known “Enochian keys” that we know from Aleister Crowley and which can even be found in the Satanic Bible of Anton LaVey. They are (of course) in Enochian, but since Dee also got English translations, it is possible to translate Enochian upto a certain point.

All in all too much to say about all this in a few lines. Donald Tyson devotes an entire work to the system of Dee, which you will find in the bibliography below.

To modern times

Dee died in the early 15th century. After him came another few magicians that formed the bridge to modern times. They are shortly mentioned in my Occult Renaissance article and not really interesting in this article. So I make a jump of almost two centuries to shortly mention the Englishman Francis Barrett. He compiled the book The Magus in 1801 from texts of Agrippa, Trithemius and Solomic works. His aim was to interest people to form a magical circle, but it is unknown if he succeeded. He book is a nice reference work, but does not say anything that hasn’t been mentioned before.

Not too long after Barrett a real renewed interest in esoteric matters arose. In the late 19th century the Theosophical Society was founded, making the West familiar with the esoteric systems of the East. Also the Western traditions weren’t forgotten though. Around the same time The Golden Dawn was founded in England. Surprisingly many old texts were made available by the founders of The Golden Dawn and interesting translations saw the light of day. Solomonic works, Jewish Kabbalist works and even Christian Cabalist works were translated and released. Especially from Solomonic magic and the system of Dee The Golden Dawn formed a complex magical system of its own. Half of the system of Dee is taken, with a lot of stress on the watchtowers, but then with four separate tables. The Enochian keys are used, but conjuring methods were mostly Medieval. Gaps in Dee’s system are filled, sometime ingenious, sometimes not. Other elements have been added to the system to form an own kind of magic. I haven’t studied the system of The Golden Dawn very thoroughly, but I just mentioned it to point to the ever-continuing line of angel magic.

And in the present time? Well, The Golden Dawn of course still exists, in a bit different form, but still. Offshoots have appeared in the cause of time, but most well known of course being Aleister Crowley and everything that came after him. Either or not in one of these ‘two modern traditions’ I want to mention three people who seriously deal with the systems of angel magic today. Benjamin Rowe, Joseph H. Peterson and Donald Tyson, all writers and practitioners.

Further reading

On the internet I highly advise the internet page of Joe Peterson, which has texts online of about everything I spoke about, often in translation, sometimes in the original language. Visit www.esotericarchives.com for a massive amount of texts.

Also many texts can be found at www.sacred-texts.com. Look for ‘esoteric/occult’, ‘grimoires’ and ‘Judaism’.

Also very helpful are the “bibliographical surveys” of Don Karr. You will not get contentional information from him, but an overview of every single shred of information on texts about the subjects you are interested in. Click here and in this case look for “The Study Of Solomon Magic in English”. All pdf-files by the way.

Benjamin Rowe can be found online http://www.hermetic.com/browe

Concerning printed works

There seems to be one primary book for the Jewish part, and I happened to have used just that (I picked it fairly at random and later ran into a secondhand copy). It is not just available from Amazon, so you will have to have your library look around a bit. (I believe a new pressing is set for november 2003) It is a nice book, but only parts of it are useful.

Joshua Trachtenberg Jewish Magic And Superstition (1939)

For Solomonic books, see the article of Karr.

For Trithemius I used the book Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) by Klaus Arnold (1971), also not available anymore.

A very big help was the article The Magus As Renaissance Man by Frank L. Borchardt, from the Sixteenth Century Journal number XXI, 1 (1990) and available online (http://www.duke.edu/~frankbo/pdf/magus.html).

Trithemius and Dee are dealt with in the alright book Renaissance Curiosa by Wayne Shumaker (1982), no longer available.

As for Dee, there is plenty to go on. Biographies are available (I have The Queen’s Conjurer of Benjamin Woollet (2001) (see my review).

Large parts of his magical diaries are to be found in the book Five Books of Mystery of John Dee by Joseph H. Peterson (2003) (see my review), but the most wonderful work speaking in detail about Dee’s system is Enochian Magic for Beginners by Donald Tyson (1997) in which Tyson also tried to fill the gaps. (see my review)

Again Tyson for Agrippa. Going on the translation of James Freake (from 1531), he made the magistral book Three Books Of Occult Philosophy, with a lot of extra info (see my review).

The Magus of Barrett is also still available and reviewed.