Book of Ceremonial Magic: Chapter VII: The Method of Honorius: Chapter VII: The Method of Honorius

CHAPTER VII

The Method of Honorius

THE Grimoire of Honorius is perhaps the most frankly diabolical of all the Rituals connected with Black Magic, and yet, as we have already seen, its enormities have been much exaggerated. It suffers comparison, for example, with the Key of Solomon, and it is preferable to the Lemegeton because it is less disguised. Its most evident objections are: 1. Profanation of the mysteries of religion. 2. A bloody sacrifice, characterised by details of a monstrous kind. A less manifest objection is the superstitious nature of some of its ordinances. It must be confessed that such a charge seems fantastic, having regard to the innumerable offices of vain observance with which I have been dealing. But a vain observance, it should be remembered, is not necessarily superstitious. To assume that a virtue is resident in parchment prepared from the skin of an animal which has not engendered, and that such virtue is wanting in the skin of one which has reproduced its species,

1 the whole on his knees; further, he must drink no wine and eat no meat on that day. Next, he shall rise at midnight on the first Monday of the month, 2 and, seeing that he is apparently a priest, shall say a Mass of the Holy Ghost. 3

PRAYER

My Sovereign Saviour Jesus Christ, Son of the living God! Thou Who for the Salvation of all mankind didst suffer the death of the Cross; Thou Who, before being abandoned to Thine enemies, by an impulse of ineffable love, didst institute the Sacrament of Thy Body; Thou Who hast vouchsafed to us miserable creatures the Privilege of making daily commemoration thereof; do Thou deign unto Thine unworthy servant, thus holding Thy Living Body in his hands, all strength and ability for the Profitable application of that power with which he has been entrusted against the horde of rebellious spirits. Thou art their true God, and if they tremble at the utterance of Thy Name, upon that Holy Name will I call, crying Jesus Christ! Jesus, be Thou my help, now and for ever! Amen.

After sunrise, a black cock must be killed, the first feather of its left wing being plucked and preserved for use at the required time. The eyes must be torn out, and so also the tongue and heart; these must be dried in the sun and afterwards reduced to powder. The remains must be interred at sunset in a secret place, a cross of a palm in height being set upon the mound, while at each of the four corners the signs which here follow must be drawn with the thumb:--

1 placing the feather taken from the bird upon the altar, together with a new penknife. The signs hereinafter represented must be inscribed on a sheet of clean paper with the consecrated wine which is the Blood of Jesus Christ:--

2

1--Attendite, Popule meus, legem meam, &c.--without the Gloria Patri. He shall then begin the Office of the Dead with Venite exultemus Domino, &c. He shall recite Matins and Lauds, but in place of the versicle of the ninth Lesson 2 he shall say: Deliver us, O Lord, from the fear of hell. Let not the demons destroy my soul when I shall raise them from the deep Pit, when I shall command them to do my will. May the day be bright, may the sun and moon shine forth, when I shall call upon them. Terrible of aspect are they, deformed and horrible to sight; but do Thou restore unto them their angelic shapes when I shall impose my will upon them. O Lord, deliver me, from those of the dread visage, and grant that they shall be obedient when I shall raise them up from hell, when I shall impose my will upon them.

After the Office of the, Dead the operator shall extinguish the taper, and at sunrise shall cut the throat of a male lamb of nine days, taking care that the blood does not gush forth upon the earth. He shall skin the lamb, and shall cast its tongue and heart into the fire. The fire must be freshly kindled, and the ashes shall be preserved for use at the proper time. The skin of the lamb shall be spread in the middle of a field and for the space of nine days shall be sprinkled four times every day with holy water. On the tenth day, before the rising of the sun, the lambskin shall be covered with the

1 after sunset, the flesh of the lamb shall be interred in a secret place where no bird can come, and the priest with his right thumb shall inscribe on the grave the characters here indicated:--

PRAYER

Christ Jesus, Redeemer of men, Who, being the Lamb without spot, wast immolated for the salvation of the human

1

The Beginning of the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory be to Thee, O Lord.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, &c., in extenso, so far as the end of the fourteenth versicle.

Thanks be to God. Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He Who cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the Highest. We invoke Thee. We adore Thee. We Praise. Thee. We glorify Thee, O blessed and glorious Trinity I May the Name of the Lord be blessed, now and henceforth for ever I Amen. In the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. May Christ conquer ✠, reign ✠, command ✠, and defend me from all evil. Amen.

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Footnotes

267:1 The reference is probably to the Litany of the Saints and the various orations which follow it.

267:2 The three days' fast must therefore have been regulated so that it expired on the previous Saturday.

267:3 The Mass of Pentecost, except the Epistle, which should be that of the Tuesday after Pentecost, and the Gradual, for which there are special versicles.

269:1 The Mass for the Apparition of St. Michael, May 8, with a special Epistle, Gospel, Commemoration, &c.

269:2 I give this direction as I find it: the oblation is the bread and wine, and the sacrilegious reservation is the root-matter out of which the theory and practice of modem French Satanism has obviously arisen.

270:1 This Psalm is numbered lxxviii. in the Authorised Version.

270:2 This is extremely confused; the Office of the Dead does not begin with the Venite exultemus. The ninth Lesson belongs to the third Nocturne of the Matins. The prayer given in the Grimoire is based on the verses which it replaces.

271:1 The days on which the various operations should be performed have been confused, after the prevailing manner of the Grimoires.

274:1 At this point the process of the Grimoire becomes almost unintelligible. The recitation of the seventy-two names apparently succeeds the Psalm and is followed by the Second Gospel, which is not omitted after all. There is then an extension of the Dea Gratias, this concluded the Mass, which seems immediately followed by the evocation. But the use of the Pentacles of Solomon and St. John does not appear, in the one case, till the close of the Conjurations and not at all in the other.