Photo by Magenta
Have you ever wondered if grimoires are real? If any of the ancient magickal texts people like Rupert Giles or Sam and Dean Winchester had were real? (Ok, not Dean. I mean did he read? Like, ever?) What about the really old magick books Dark Willow assimilated or a real Book of Shadows like the one the Halliwells have? If grimoires are real….can they still be used today?
Well, certainly real gimoires and other magickal texts have been in circulation for centuries. Some are older or more authentic than others. So as ever, beware of a bunch of fakelore that goes along with any ‘ancient’ magickal texts. So you’ll be relieved to know that we’ve read a fair few of these ‘Ye Olde Bookes’ and we’ve done our research, so to make life easy for you we’ve got a little ready-reckoner for these books right here.
We’ll break it down into two parts, cause otherwise we’ll be here all day. Part one now, and Part two next week.
Part one features these real grimoires
The False Monarchy of Demons
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
The Grand Grimoire/ The Red Dragon
The Key of Solomon The King
Arbatel
And in Part two we’ll talk about
The Sworn Book of Honorius
The Sepher Ha-Razim
The Lesser Key of Solomon
The Picatrix
The Voynich Manuscript
But before we start, just a word from our sponsor. History. Now, a lot of the books we’ll look at do go on about traditional mono-deity type religion. Whether it is Judaism or Christianity. It’s just what they do. So they use words like angel, God, demon, heaven, prayers etc etc….this was against a backdrop of societal change and persecution. The author isn’t trying to convert people away from magick, and neither are we. So let’s look at the books with that in mind and just go with it, alright? Cool.
The False Monarchy of Demons (aka Pseudomonarchia Daemonum)
This was first published as an Appendix to another real grimoire, On the Tricks of Demons (aka De Praestigiis Daemonum) way back in 1577. This particular grimoire was written by a fella called Johann Weyer. Then some guy called Reginald Scot, back in 1587, nicked this Appendix and created The False Monarchy of Demons. Our version was published by Strigoi Publishing in 2017.
What’s it about?
It’s basically the 1500s version of Facebook for demons. So, kinda like the Halliwells’ Book of Shadows. This book has about 70 demons in it, and it describes their various attributes, what powers they can bestow on us mere humans and how many ‘minions’ they all have. But it certainly doesn’t talk about how evil they are. In fact according to this book some of these demons can give us a bunch of pretty cool powers, if we ask nicely.
Fakelore? Or Real?
Well, the purpose of both Weyer’s original book and then Scot’s plagiarism of it, was to try and argue that witchcraft wasn’t real and that Europe probably ought to stop killing ‘witches’. So real or fake I guess depends on your perspective. For the purposes of this article, we’re not going to debate the existence of magick, demons, angels or any of that stuff…so instead let’s go with the authorship and publication story, and leave the contents of each book on one side. Everyone ok with that? Good. It’s definitely a real book, it really was published in 1587 so its age and oldness is genuine.
What do we think of it?
It’s a pretty interesting Who’s Who of the Underworld. It’s a tiny little book though, and doesn’t really explain how you get in touch with these demons (No, that gets covered later by a whole bunch of other books we look at in Part 2!).
It doesn’t really align with our magick, and as there’s no instructions or spells there’s not much to use this book for. However, for anyone who is interested in working with spirits this might be a good book to look at first, to familiarise yourself with demons and their powers.
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Now, this is a proper grimoire. Very real. It’s a Book of Shadows, a Book of Mirrors and it’s almost like a magickal Haynes Manual from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. It’s got absolutely everything about magick in it, including its relationship with religion. The first three volumes were published in full in 1533. Our version is an English version edited by Donald Tyson and published by Llewellyn in 1993.
What’s it about?
Absolutely everything. This is exactly the sort of thing Dark Willow would crave. The Three Books deal with things like folk, astral and ceremonial magick. So it goes into a lot of detail about the elements, about astrology, the Kabbalah, sigils, seals, magick squares, numerology, angels, God, divination. You name it, if it’s even remotely used in magick, it’s found in this book.
Fakelore? Or Real?
There’s no fakelore with this one. By this we mean, yes this was really written by Agrippa in the 1500s and it’s written from a perspective that magick could be useful in resolving problems, and that magick could work in harmony with faith and religion. Agrippa wasn’t creating the magick, but he was describing much older texts and established practices. So he was summarising or representing magickal practice in a new way. Don’t forget this was a terrible time in history to be even remotely magickal! But whenever the religious types started getting twitchy, Agrippa would bark back.
What do we think of it?
These are three massive books on their own, and our copy has teeny tiny text, written in columns to get the words to fit inside this one massive book. So it’s a lot to read! But because it’s got everything in it, nobody can say it isn’t detailed.
We use it as reference material because it aligns with our magick, given we’re a hodge podge of elemental, folk and astral magick. It also aligns with our philosophy that magick can be used for change in the world.
The Grand Grimoire/ The Red Dragon
This real grimoire claims to be super old. So let’s just talk about that for a second. There’s a whole collection of magickal books supposedly written by a bunch of Bible guys, like Adam, Noah and King Solomon. But they weren’t, of course. A lot of the books were written during the Renaissance and ‘borrowed’ (stole?) from a lot of Jewish and Arabic texts, and from each other. This particular grimoire was apparently written slightly later, in 1750 and our version of The Grand Grimoire aka The Red Dragon is an English version edited and published by Tarl Warwick in 2015.
What’s it about?
This is really three books in one. The first book is one long spell for summoning a demon and explains the magickal tools required to force this demon to do whatever you want. The second book is sort of in two parts. The first half of book two is another long spell for making a pact with a demon. However, in this spell no tools are required to control the demon apparently. So maybe we’re all supposed to be ok with that. The second half of Book Two contains some simpler spells and rituals. Mostly about controlling women, of course. Eye roll.
Fakelore? Or Real?
It’s a fun history, it claims to have been written by King Solomon but as it wasn’t it’s pretty obvious the book’s history is fake. We’re not even convinced it was written in 1750 either for that matter.
What do we think of it?
Well, it’s a bit dumb. There’s an awful lot of animal sacrifice required for this magick as well, so it doesn’t exactly align with our practice and we haven’t used it. But it’s ok as a bit of silly grimoire if you accept the fakelore and just take it for what it is. Although it’s three books in one, it’s only about 60 pages long. And it has pictures.
The Key of Solomon The King
This is another one of those magickal books supposedly written by King Solomon. There are a few books that like to say they were written by Solomon or, confusingly, are called Key of Solomon. This version is an English version edited and published by Golden Dawn founder Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers in 1888.
What’s it about?
It’s in two parts, or its two books in one. Book One contains spells and incantations for summoning various entities or demons, and how to find stolen property, how to become invisible, how to obtain love etc. It also has pictures of talismans (eg pentacles) that can be used. Book Two is a bit more like a manual, or Book of Shadows if you like. It describes the various rituals that the practitioner (termed “exorcist”. Nice.) should go through, like casting a circle, and how they should be dressed and what magickal tools they should have etc.
Fakelore? Or Real?
A bit more creative thought went into the fakelore for this one. Apparently Solomon wrote this book for his son and Solomon told him that when he (Solomon) died, his son had to hide the book in his tomb. So of course his son did this, and the book was not discovered until a group of philosophers repaired Solomon’s tomb. Cause apparently that’s what they do. They think about the big questions and they also have emergency grave repair call-outs to attend to. Obviously nobody could read the book until they asked a passing angel to have a word with God and see if God would help. They all pinky promised that they wouldn’t tell anyone about this book if God let them read it. To double down on this promise, they put a spell on the book keeping the contents a secret from the unworthy, the unwise or those who did not fear God.
The real history is that the book possibly dates to the middle ages, but there are a few copies of the manuscripts kicking about in different languages. The version we’ve got was probably copied and edited from the British Library manuscripts by Mathers, dating it to somewhere around the 17th Century.
What do we think of it?
Although it’s two books within one, it’s not a huge book. It aligns with our magick a fair bit. For example the ingredients in the spells must be made of the appropriate correspondances, collected and the spells cast at the appropriate astrological time using the right kind of planetary energy. There are some useful pentacles if you’re into seal or sigil magick, so if you can live with the fact that it is built on fakelore, it’s fine. But if you’re after something authentic or really old, this possibly ain’t it.
Arbatel
This is a bit of an outlier, as it’s a lovely grimoire that doesn’t invite you to consort with demons and such. It was possibly first written in the mid to later 1500s, our version published in 2009 by Ibis Press has a date of 1575 included on the title page, with the editor (Joseph Peterson) suggesting this is probably true.
What’s it about?
It’s a book with nine volumes in it, but it’s not a huge book by any stretch. Arbatel mainly focuses on the relationship between humanity, celestial beings, and the positive relationship between the two. So it uses a lot of angelic magick, good spirits, various magickal creatures and some spirits called Olympians. It talks about how these good spirits can be contacted to help you be a better person, which we would describe as Humanistic Magick.
Fakelore? Or Real?
There is no fakelore with this one. Even though there’s no clear idea of who even wrote it in the first place, nobody since has tried to attribute it to any one from the Bible. So it looks to be genuinely from the later part of the middle ages.
What do we think of it?
It’s pretty safe as far as these real grimoires go. So if you’re new to working with various entities and you’re still unsure about whether you want to confront that word ‘demon’, this is a safer journey than the False Monarchy of Demons. It aligns with our magick a fair bit as it teaches that magick can be used positively and to invite the practitioner to be mindful and practice gratitude. So we’ve used it a couple of times to communicate with entities. Plus, there’s no requirement to kill animals or spells for controlling women in this book.
So that wraps up Part One of our exploration of real life grimoires and magickal texts….next Monday we’ll conclude our romp through our library so don’t forget to subscribe to us, then you’ll have something more interesting to read while you’re at work! Hey, here to help folks.
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