Picatrix Book II: Planets, Stars and Stones

About this book

Book II opens with the question of who may learn magic at all, and with a story in which a seal stamped with a scorpion, dissolved in a drink, is said to heal a man stung by a scorpion. Then come the figures of heaven and the Moon, the motion of the eighth sphere, the three schools of magic and prophetic dreams, and the author’s explanation of why images work. The longest part gives the forms of the seven planets and the works made with them, with the red characters the scribe drew in the margins and between the lines: images to drive away mice and flies, to stop blood, to win the favour of kings, for love and against snakes. The book ends with the faces of the signs according to the Indians and the images of Hermes against the ailments of every part of the body.

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. No manuscript images are reproduced: the 32 red and brown characters are our own redrawings, set in their place in the text.

What is inside

• Chapters 1–12 of Book II: who may learn magic, the figures of heaven, the Moon, the eighth sphere, three schools of magic and dreams, the powers of images, the quadrivium and the ladder of natures, the images of the planets, the stones of the planets, the faces of the signs, the Indian images and the images of Hermes.
• 32 magic characters from the manuscript, redrawn.
• Notes on the same page (Arabic names, stars, stones, plants and substances — poisonous ones are marked).
• A foreword on how to read Book II and its characters; a commentary in plain words at the end.
• Colour illustrations: engraved stones, a scribe drawing the red characters, an astrologer at the chart of the 36 faces.
• PDF, A5 page size (148 × 210 mm), 118 pages, readable on phone, tablet and computer.

Who it is for

Readers of the history of magic, astrology and the occult, lovers of grimoires, sigils 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 such as mercury, are not advice. Digital PDF, delivered for download after payment.