Book of Ceremonial Magic: Chapter III: Composite Rituals: Section 7: The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage

§ 7. The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage

The existence of this text had been known to students for a considerable period before it was made available in an English translation by the editor of the Key of Solomon. The amateurs of occult science in the more dubious of its practical branches became possessed of this pearl of tradition in 1898, and I suppose that it is familiar enough in certain circles. I am sorry that it seems necessary to say a few words concerning it in the present place. Mr. Mathers prefixed an introduction which does honour to his especial form of talent--that is to say, it is eloquent as a caution respecting things which should be avoided by an expert in the expression of his views and the mode of writing exercises in English.

The text is preserved in the Arsénal Library at Paris and is a French manuscript belonging to the early part of the eighteenth century; it is also the sole copy which is known certainly to collectors, though there is a rumour of another in Holland. According to its own claim, the work belongs to the year 1458, at which period it was written by one Abraham, the son of Simon and the father of Lamech, for whose benefit it was more especially designed. The original is said to have been in Hebrew, and this statement on the part of the text is naturally accepted by the translator. It is perhaps rendered

b.) to the custom of paternal benediction, (c.) to those who leave Christianity for Judaism, (d.) to the festival of Easter, and otherwise (e.) its allusions to the New Testament, (f.) its use of the Vulgate, and (g.) its hypothesis concerning Guardian Angels are unmistakable proof for those who know what is meant by textual evidence. To conclude on this part of the subject, the date of the work is the date of the known copy, or thereabouts; it was never written in Hebrew, or by one who was acquainted with Hebrew; and the claim that the author was a Jew has the same value as the translator's brilliant speculation that the supposed Abraham was a descendant of that other Abraham the Jew, whose mysterious hieroglyphical tract on Alchemy came, as it is alleged, into the hands of Nicholas Flame], his putative contemporary.

Abramelin the Mage was an instructor of the magical Abraham, who reduced into writing the knowledge which he received from this source, prefixing thereto some account of his own life and occult adventures. There are several respects in which the text differs conspicuously from the common run of the Rituals. It derides, for example, all observations of times and seasons along the usual and accepted lines. Such formalities, it is said, have no power over spirits or virtue in supernatural things. It would follow not unreasonably from this, and is made plain in a special chapter, that the majority of magical books are false and vain. They are also otherwise evil, not only on account of their superstitious attention to celestial signs but from their use of unintelligible words in

But when we come to the dealings with spirits, we find that they are Lucifer, Leviathan, Satan and Belial, for the superior princes, and Astaroth, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, et hoc genus omne, for the lesser powers. Furthermore, these demons may be summoned indifferently for operations of good or evil, while the objects are the usual objects, the