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The Necromancer’s Handbook: Conjurations, Circles and Spells
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Picatrix Book IV: Fumigations, Oils and Chaldean Secrets
How did medieval magi seek to rule the winds and win the favour of men? Picatrix Book IV records what they tried: planetary incense and anointing oils for each of the seven planets, the mirror of the winds with its seven red characters, and the images of the 28 mansions of the Moon. Every sentence that survives, in clear modern English, translated from the Latin manuscript (about 1500–1525). Picatrix was written in Arabic as «Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm» (Ghayat al-Hakim), «The Goal of the Wise», and translated at the court of King Alfonso X of Castile (completed 1256); nothing is softened or left out.
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Part of Picatrix — Complete Set of 4 Books
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About this book
Book IV is the last book of Picatrix, a great notebook of collected secrets. Its opening is lost in the manuscript, and the surviving text begins with works for the Moon in the signs, from Leo to Pisces, and «the great wonders that were among the Indians». Then come the secrets of the Chaldeans and Adocentyn, the city Hermes built, where a tower crowned with an apple shone in a new colour each day; the aphorisms of the old sages; the ten sciences a magician must master; and the suffumigations and oils of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The longest chapter draws on the «Chaldean Agriculture»: the speaking laurel, vineyards guarded from harm, pests driven away, and a gilded mirror inscribed with the names of planets, angels and winds «that the winds and storms may obey you», as the text says. The book closes with the natural virtues of stones, plants and animals, a ring with characters to be well received by men of rank, the 28 mansions of the Moon with an image, a suffumigation and the name of the lord of each, and seven prayers to the planets.
Translated into modern English by BlusaBooks, directly from the Latin manuscript; the medieval text is in the public domain. Every sentence that survives, not a summary, in the voice of the original. No manuscript images are reproduced: the red and dark characters of the manuscript (three groups) are our own redrawings, set in their place in the text.
What is inside
- Book IV as it survives: Chapters 2–9, the Conclusion, the 28 mansions of the Moon according to Ptolemy and the prayers to the planets.
- Notes on the same page (Arabic names, spirits, stars, plants and substances — poisonous ones are marked).
- A foreword on where Book IV begins and how to read it; a commentary in plain words at the end.
- Colour illustrations: the city of Adocentyn, the mirror of the winds, a wax image for a mansion of the Moon.
- PDF, A5 page size (148 × 210 mm), 156 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 the mansions of the Moon in Agrippa or the city of Adocentyn in books on Renaissance magic and wants to read what the magi actually wrote.
A historical source: the book gives a medieval text and what historians know about it. It is not a practical guide. Its recipes contain poisons (arsenic, monkshood, mandrake, henbane, lead, quicksilver, hellebore, cantharides) and some works are meant to harm; burning or applying some of them can kill. They are not advice and must not be tried. The book also contains animal sacrifices, curses and spells that force a person's will, translated as history. Digital PDF, delivered for download after payment.
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