A Collection of Magical Secrets, Taken from Peter de Abano, Cornelius Agrippa and other Famous Occult Philosophers Being a translation of the final part of Wellcome MS4669 by Paul Harry Barron from the original French dated 1796. The initial parts of Wellcome MS4669 are The Key of Solomon, King of the Hebrews and the Universal Treatise of the KelJs of Solomon, both of which are reproduced in TIle Veritable Key of Solomon (Golden Hoard Press 2008, Llewellyn 2009) by Stephen Skinner and David Rankine. For further details of TIle Veritable KelJ of Solomon, which is Book IV in the Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic series by Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, edited from rare classical manuscripts see: www.avaloniabooks.co.uk or www.goldenhoard.com 21"\ ('()lJe("tion of ~vrdgi('nl 'Jt:'crets A selection of other books by Stephen Skinner & David Rankine on subjects related to the Western Esoteric Tradition include: The Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic Series Practical Angel Magic of Dr John Dee's Enochian Tables (Volume I) Keys to the Gatew~y of Magic (Volume II) The Goetia of Dr Rudd (Volume III) The Veritable Key of Solomon (Volume IV) By Stephen Skinner The Complete Magician's Tables Guide to the Feng Shui Compass Agrippa's Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (edited) Complete Enochian Dictionary (with Dr. Donald Laycock) Terrestrial Astrology: Divination by Geomancy Techniques of High Magic (with Francis King) Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley (edited) Paracelsus' Archidoxes of Magic (edited) Search for Abraxas (with Nevill Drury) Aleister Crowley's Astrology (edited) GeOmancy in Theory and Practice Oracle of Geomancy Sacred Geometry By David Rankine Heka: Ancient Egyptian Magic Climbing the Tree of Life Becoming Magick Crystals Healing & Folklore Avalonia's Book of Chakras (with Sorita d'Este) Circle of Fire (with Sorita d'Este) Practical Elemental Magick (with Sorita d'Este) Practical Planetary Magick (with Sorita d'Este) The Guises of the Morrigan (with So rita d'Este) The Isles of the Many Gods (with Sorita d'Este) Visions of the Cailleach (with Sorita d'Este) Wicca Magickal Beginnings (with Sorita d'Este) 31 A Coll(~('lion Q(Magi{·,tJ Sec]".'ls "In order to put this procedure into practice successfully, you should approach God and his Angels, as we have stated before, through leading a shrewd life and through prayer and you should know all their names." 41 A Co,lleclion OJ' ;\jn gj('ai S()crets A Collection of Magical Secrets Taken from Peter de Abano, Cornelius Agrippa and from other Famous Occult Philosophers and A Treatise Of Mixed Cabalah Which comprises the Angelic Art Taken From Hebrew Sages Translated from Wellcome MS4669 btl Paul Ham) Barron from the original French manuscript dated 1796 With Introduction by Stephen Skinner & David Rankine Avalonia 2009 Dedicated to Abraham Colomo (1530-1598) translator of the earliest known Key of Solomon, and engineer to,Duke Alfonso d'Este Acknowledgements The illustrations from Wellcome MS 4669 reproduced with the kind permission of the Wellcome Trust, for which we are duly grateful. Other illustrations by Jill Lake, thank you. Our gratitude to Paul Harry Barron for his conscientious translation of the original French manuscripts, his support and encouragement for both A valonia and Golden Hoard Press. The image on the cover of this volume depicts the figure which is drawn onto linen and used for wrapping the pentacles as given in the TIle Universal Treatise of the Keys of Solomon. For more information see TIle Veritable Ke1J of Solomon by Stephen Skinner & David Rankine. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .................................................................... 11 A COLLECTION OF MAGICAL SECRETS MAGICAL OPERATIONS FOR DIFFICULT OBJECfS ............... 21 SECRETS TAKEN FROM AGRIPPA ........................................ .31 TREATISE OF MIXED CABALAH WHICH COMPRISES THE ANGELIC ART TAKEN FROM HEBREW SAGES CONCERNING MISCELLANEOUS CABALAH ......................... 89 CONCERNING MISCELLANEOUS CABALAH 2ND PART ....... 101 CONCERNING MISCELLANEOUS CABALAH 3RD PART ....... 123 CONCERNING MISCELLANEOUS CABALAH 4TH PART ....... 135 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................... 156 INDEX ................................................................................... 159 9 I A C (l .l 1e el· i (1 n (l t .\1 a g i c ".l Sec ret s INTRODUCTION Over the last thousand years there have been several distinct streams of Western magical practice. One of these is the Grimoires, which focus on preparation and complex procedures to produce effective communication and interaction with spiritual beings. To this category belong such major works as the Ketj of Solomon, the Lemegeton and the Sworn Book of Honorius, which have influenced many modern magical traditions and practices.1 Another stream includes rather simple rule of thumb procedures, which do not involve much preparation, and which might have been used by local village witches or cunning men. From the sixteenth century onwards these latter procedures were often to be found in works known as Books of Secrets, which focused on simple techniques that could be practiced by anybody rather than long and complex rites. Effectively such works made magic available to anybody who could read a book and gather simple ingredients, rather than the moneyed classes with their elaborate paraphernalia and expensive hand-copied grimoires. The popularity of such Books of Secrets can be seen when you look at the number of editions published. The most famous of all of these books, Secreti by Alessio Piemontese was published in 104 editions in 9 European languages between 1555 and 1699. These books were amongst the early best- 1 See e.g. Wicca Magickal Beginnings, d'Este & Rankine, Avalonia, 2008, for many such examples of the influence of these grimoires and others. sellers, and contained a diverse spectrum of useful remedies from magical to medical, gardening to cosmetics and metalwork! Such books sold not only to the middle classes, but also at village fairs and wherever an audience could be found. From the mid-seventeenth century scientists would start to repudiate Books of Secrets as propagating fake secrets and vulgarities with no basis in fact, and as purveying dubious folklore and esoterica which were challenged by the ongoing Scientific Revolution. Nevertheless in societies where a university education remained an expensive privilege, the Books of Secrets remained popular into the eighteenth century. These two streams of practice, Grimoires and Books of Secrets, are sometimes found together in the same manuscript. It is common for the pages of a working grimoire to have been supplemented by its owner with other formulae that he had successfully used or picked up in his course of reading. These snippets are often drawn from books like Agrippa's De Occulta Plzilosoplzia, and the works ascribed to Albertus Magnus, and may be in a different handwriting. In the course of time these notes in the back of a grimoire were copied along with the grimoire as if they were part of it. Indeed the nineteenth century French pseudo-grimoires of black magic, such as the Grimoire of Pope Honorius III, the Red Dragon and Grimorium Verum are often full of such procedures. It is as the result of such a practice that the contents of this present book finished up copied out in one of the manuscripts (Wellcome MS 4669) that we used as a source text for the Veritable Key of Solomon.2 As such they provide us with an insight into the practices of a previous owner of that grimoire. 2The Veritable Key of Solomon, Skinner & Rankine, Golden Hoard, London, 2008. 121 ('u [ec\iP[l pt !'..lagical Secrets