Libraries of the Sorcerers: Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke Class-Bundle

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Libraries of the Sorcerers: Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke Class-Bundle

$40.00

A self-contained one-off class-bundle exploring the history and practical application of the early modern grimoire the Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke; consisting of a two-hour long-form illustrated lecture, the accompanying slide-deck, and a bibliography of further recommended study. No previous knowledge or experience of grimoiric magic necessary.

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The Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke is a mid-sixteenth-century manual found in British Library MS Additional 36674 for working with the Four Demonic Kings of the cardinal directions to bring the operator magical empowerment through visionary and evocational scrying.  It is bound with its attendant document, called simply the Visions, which forms the magical journal that documents how the Excellent Booke was delivered by these spirits and employed by its operators, Humphrey Gilbert and John Davies.

Study of these grimoiric texts highlights the influence of both pious works of angelical magic and more sinister and potent practical demonology, appeals to dead magicians to act as tutelary shades to the enterprising necromancer, as well as foregrounding a central preoccupation of early modern conjurors: to use their grimoires to command spirits to bring and teach them even more excellent books of magics…

This class-bundle includes: 

An illustrated lecture of two hours duration
Lecture slide-deck
Bibliography of further recommended study on grimoiric magic

A full table of contents of the lecture itself runs:

•        History & Context
•        Grimoire & ‘Visions’
•        Antagonistic Spiritwork
•        Tools & Supplies
•        Beginning Protocols
•        Order of Operations
•        Conjurations & Constraints
•        Intimidation & ‘Punishment’
•        Spirits & Dead Magicians
•        Visions of Gilbert & Davis
•        The House of Solomon
•        St Luke’s Intervention
•        Closing Remarks & Derived Experiments
•        Further Study

By purchasing this class recording, you agree that you understand that no part of the material dictated or provided throughout the duration of the presentation may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any other form (neither electronic nor mechanic, including photocopies and recordings), without the direct and written consent of the instructor, Dr Alexander Cummins.

“Necromancer (necromantes) he that practises that wicked Art, a Master of the Black Art, one that seeks to the dead; or consults with Satan in the shape of a dead man. The Hebrews describe him thus; he made himself hungry, and then lodged among the Graves, that the dead might come to him in a dream, and make known to him that which he asked, &c. Others there were that clad themselves with cloathes for that purpose, and spoke certain words, burned Incense, and slept by themselves, that such a dead person might come and talk with them in a dream.”
- Thomas Blount, Glossographia (London, 1661)