Claude Lecouteux - The Book of Grimoires: The Secret Grammar of Magic

THE BOOK OF GRIMOIRES

Lecouteux is a genius. I have been gratefully following his researchwhich provides information I have never found in other locationsfor years. As someone who has seen no small amount of grimoires, I can attest to the practical as well as scholarly nature of this book. Whether you are hunting for healing charms or just trying to find out more about the history of grimoires, this work will not disappoint you. Lecouteuxs brilliant observations are the icing on the cake for this amalgamation of various works, outlining workable incantations and valuable lost techniques. I was particularly pleased to find a list of Solomons demons with their diseases and remedies within the pages. This book is a serious contribution to occult work and a joy to read.

MAJA DAOUST, WHITE WITCH OF L.A., ASTROLOGER, COUNSELOR, AND COAUTHOR OF THE SECRETS SOURCE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could never have been completed without the help of my friends and colleagues, who provided many documents and assisted in determining the meaning of the texts. I would like to thank Diane Tridoux (Bibliothque nationale de France), Ronald Grambo (Kongsvinger), Dieter Harmening (Wurzburg), Herfried Vgel (Munich), Guy Saunier (Paris-Sorbonne), Emmanuelle Karagiannis-Moser (Montpellier), and Florence Bayard (Caen). Finally, thanks to his computer skills, the help of my son Benot pulled me out of a jam on more than one occasion!

INTRODUCTION

THE SIX KINDS OF MAGIC

Magia sapientiam sonat (Magic speaks wisdom)

PICATRIX LATINUS

There are certain words that fire the imagination because they evoke a disturbing yet fascinating world. Grimoire is one such word. It quickly conjures up mental images of the sorcerers and magicians of a bygone age, of Kabbalistic symbols, and of strange midnight activities in a cemetery, at a crossroads, or in the recesses of a secret chamber. One can easily picture an individual hovering over a massive tome positioned on a lectern and filled with mysterious glyphs.

These clichd images have been popularized through films and novels, although they probably bear little resemblance to the reality of our remote ancestors. Even comic books make use of certain aspects of traditional magic, so it is worthwhile to go back to the original sources in order to discover what was really going on. This book has no other ambition than to provide examples of what the ancient grimoires looked like, which should allow everyone to form their own opinions about their contents.

Grimoires deal with magic, but this latter term has become synonymous with stage magic, and today even the most pedestrian sleight-of-hand artists call themselves magicians. Thus, the sense of the word has become quite vague and distorted, so it will be helpful to see just what it once meant.

MAGIC

Magic is a word related to the Latin magia, which was borrowed from Greek mageia. The word ultimately derives from the Indo-European root magh-, meaning to have power, to be able. Magus (plural magi), which originally designated the member of a priest class, then took on the meaning of dream diviner. The working of good magic was ascribed to a magician, that of evil magic to a sorcerer. In distinguishing between those who are good and evil practitioners of magic, we use mages for the former category, as is the case in Bible translationsthe three kings that come to Bethlehem to pay homage to Christ are magi, sages, scientists. Thus, first and foremost, magic is the science of the divine powers of nature. It is thus described as the practical utilization of these powers in certain operations, such as divination, and finally it came to signify charms and deceptive illusions.

Magic has many facets. To gain a proper sense of this fact, we may take Paracelsus (14931541) as our guide; since defining the categories of magic was one of his chief concerns. He lists six different kinds of magic in his Philosophia sagax:

The first kind is the interpretation of the natural signs in the sky and is called insignis magica. It includes the interpretation of the stars that are unnatural and herald certain events.

The second kind teaches about the shaping and transformation of bodies: this is magia transfigurativa. This magic permits, for example, the transmutation of one metal into another.

The third kind teaches how to form and pronounce words or letters: carved, written, or drawn signs that hold the power to do with words what the physician achieves with his remedies. This is the magia caracterialis.

The fourth kind teaches the carving of astral constellations on gemstones so they provide protection; these stones also make it possible to become invisible and hold many other powers. This is the magic called gamaheos.

The fifth kind is the art of crafting powerful images that possess the same or increased powers as simple herbal remedies. The name for this kind of magic is altera in alteram. It permits the sorcerer to paralyze, blind, or make individuals impotent, among other things.

The sixth kind is the art of making yourself heard and understood at great distancesfor example, all the way to heavenof traveling more quickly than naturally possible, and of achieving in the blink of an eye what normally takes days to accomplish. This is the ars cabalistica.

Collectively, Paracelsus adds, these various types of magic are referred to as the arts of wisdom (artes sapientiae). For him, magic is a natural thing and the object of study. Even the necromancer (nigromanticus) is not considered a minion of Satan, and his art is divided into five types. The first type involves the spirits of the departed and is called knowledge of the dead. The second type forces these dead spirits to act and is known as nocturnal torture, while the third type involves recognition of their astral birth and is called living meteor. The fourth type, the necromantic enclosure, permits the practitioner to physically influence the bodyto remove something, or to introduce something inside it. The fifth type consists of covering a visible body with an invisible one and its name is necromantic blinding.

THE GRIMOIRES AND THEIR ANCESTORS

The word grimoire is a distortion of grammaria, grammar. It originally designated a book written in Latin, but it quickly took on the meaning of a book of magic. It appeared as a mixture of various recipes both for healing certain ills as well as for conjuring or invoking demons, obtaining advantages, manufacturing talismans and amulets, sortilege, and so forth.

Magical treatises existed long before the appearance of the word grimoire, which as a generic term came to designate a wide range of works that shared the common feature of being writings that had been anathematized by the Church. To get a glimpse of this, we need only consider a few medieval authors who compiled lists of these manuals between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their nomenclatures are interesting because they clearly show that the essential features of Western magic come from the Mediterranean world, which was itself subject to even more remote influences, such as those from India. Thanks to the authors cited, some of whom have been identified, we can see that a line directly connects Babylon to Greece, then the Arab world, and finally Western Europe.

The first of the magicians was Albertus Magnus (12061280), assuming that The Mirror of Astronomy was actually written by him. This treatise mentions the abominable images of Toz Graecus, Gremath of Babylon, Belenus, and Hermesimages of the planets that are invoked by addressing, for example, the fifty-four angels that accompany the moon in its course. He speaks of characters, by which he means magic signs and symbols, and the detestable names found in the books of Solomon on the four rings and on the nine-branched candelabrum or in his