Picatrix Book I: What Is Magic

About this book

Inside Book I the author explains what knowledge is and what magic is, what the heavens are made of, and how the parts of the sky rule the things of this world. Then come the 28 Mansions of the Moon, each with its name, the works it favours and the works it spoils, and a long series of talismans: images for love between two people, for the favour of kings, for trade and riches, to drive away scorpions, to catch many fish, to free a prisoner, to separate friends and to destroy an enemy, and the images the author prescribes against kidney stone and melancholy. The book ends with man as the «small world» that mirrors the great one.

Translated into modern English by BlusaBooks, directly from the Latin manuscript; the medieval text is in the public domain. Every sentence, not a summary, in the voice of the original: planets, spirits and curses are left as the author wrote them. No manuscript images are reproduced. One small gap in the manuscript lies in later books (III–IV) and is explained in the foreword.

What is inside

• Alfonso’s prologue and the author’s introduction.
• Chapters 1–7 of Book I: knowledge, magic, the heavens, the 28 Mansions of the Moon, examples of talismans, man as the small world, the order of all things.
• Notes on the same page (Arabic names, stars, plants and substances — poisonous ones are marked).
• A foreword on the book, its Arabic origin and Alfonso X; a commentary in plain words at the end.
• Colour illustrations: a Toledo scriptorium, an astrologer under the Moon, engraving a talisman, the armillary sphere.
• PDF, A5 page size (148 × 210 mm), 72 pages, readable on phone, tablet and computer.

Who it is for

Readers of the history of magic, astrology and the occult, lovers of grimoires and Hermetic books, anyone who has met Picatrix in Agrippa or in books on talismans and wants to read the real text.

A historical source: the book gives a medieval text and what historians know about it. It is not a practical guide, and its recipes, some with poisonous substances, are not advice. Digital PDF, delivered for download after payment.