Grimoires are books of magic, manuals of spirit conjuration, handbooks for petitioning and navigating the influences of angelical choirs and the infernal hierarchies of Hell, as well as occult philosophical treatises and even stranger tomes of arcane sorcery. Such books formed a central way in which occult knowledge and sorcerous techniques were transmitted and received throughout the pre-modern world, and underwent a veritable explosion in popularity across Europe following the Renaissance.

The volumes found upon the shelves and in the conjuring circles of early modern magical practitioners range from mysterious texts attributed ancient or mythic authorship to self-assembled working spellbooks of formulae, charms, conjurations, and diagrams.

In this seven-part course, contemporary cunning-man and historian of magic Dr Alexander Cummins will lead us through a guided tour of a handful of these grimoires – exploring conceptions of demonic pacts  and angel-summoning, diving into the wealth of spellcrafts contained in collections of so-called “supernatural secrets”, and assessing various sorcerous endeavours to visually depict and graph – through their seals, sigils, pentacles, and other occult symbologies – the shifting mysterious presence and influences of spirits and their manifestations.

Along the way, we’ll encounter angelic messengers, devils, familiar spirits, elementals, fairies, nature spirits, and the dead. We’ll muse on scrying operations to draw spirits into crystals, mirrors, and ‘shewstones’ and analyse a range of rituals to enchant, ensorcel, and ward. We’ll consider the magicians that both wrote and used these magical handbooks, assessing their influences, contexts, and specific practices and services. And along the way, we’ll refine our own understandings and engagements with these spirits and the manifold forms, purposes, and implications of conjuring them.

 This seven-part series breaks down into the following sessions:

Session 1: The Heptameron
In our first session, we will analyse the Heptameron – also known as The Magical Elements of Peter d’Abano – which synthesized and streamlined older medieval works into an incredibly popular early modern manual for conjuring planetary archangels via aerial spirits. We will pay some homage to its attributed author, accused necromancer Peter of Abano, assess the influence of Arabic djinn magic on this European grimoire, explore the sorcerous technologies of its bespoke circles of conjuration – which were encoded with magical characters and the names not only of potent spirits but of periods of time – as well as consider some of the ways this streamlined handbook of spirit conjuration suffered textual corruptions which confused the ritual protocols of the earlier tome upon which the Heptameron was based, knowns as the Elucidation of Necromancy.

Session 2: Arbatel
In our second session, we will explore the Arbatel – also called the Isagogue – another well-circulated work of early modern grimoire magic, popularised in Paracelsian occult philosophical milieus and drawing on influences as diverse as ancient Hellenistic theurgy and Calvinist moral philosophy to teach the magician how to conjure so-called ‘Olympian’ planetary spirits and their legions of attendant entities. A far shorter work of technical conjuration, the Arbatel appends a range of occult and religious precepts and axioms in the form of its 49 ‘Aphorisms’ for not only working effective magic but living an ethical life, demonstrating that grimoire magic could – and indeed did – include not only operations for gaining power and answering fundamental needs but also meditations to engage with in works of spiritual development.

Session 3: The Cambridge Book of Magic
In our third session, we will examine the sixteenth-century text known as the Cambridge Book of Magic found in Cambridge University Library MS Additional 3544 and attributed to one Paul Foreman, which is formed of 91 ‘experiments’ of magic – ranging from conjuring angels and demons to divining the future, inflicting harm on enemies, locating and returning stolen property, hunting for magical treasure, gathering herbs, and consecrating various instruments of the magical arts. Examination of such a work will highlight how not all grimoires presented themselves as systematic protocols of actions with a strictly defined list of spirits, but rather often took the form of these self-assembled tomes of diverse spells, rituals, charms, and secrets.

Session 4: The Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke
In our fourth session, we will analyse the two mid-sixteenth-century texts found in British Library MS Additional 36674: The Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke, a manual for working with the Four Demonic Kings of the cardinal directions to bring the operator magical empowerment through visionary and evocational scrying; and the attendant document called simply the Visions, the magical journal that documents how the Excellent Booke was that 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.

Session 5: Grimoire of Pope Honorius
In our fifth session, we will develop analysis of early modern grimoiric operations with the Four Kings, in this case considering how the various grimoires attributed to the authorship of Pope Honorius circulating from the seventeenth century onwards combined planetary, angelological, and demonological sorceries to summon and command devilish spirits assigned to the days of the week. We will also explore the Honorian grimoires’ appended Books of Secrets, presenting a huge range of folk grimoiric operations, charms, spells, and talismanic magical items – from instructions to create magical garters to travel without tiring and the infamous Hand of Glory, to folk magical prayers and charms to cure fevers, staunch bleeding, extinguish fires, win at dice games, and render oneself impervious to weapons.

Session 6: The Veritable Key of Solomon
In our sixth session, we will survey the mass of grimoiric texts referred to as Keys of Solomon, attributed to the wise sorcerer-king Solomon. Becoming something of a catch-all term for any and all books of magic across the early modern period, we will analyse the huge range of different systems, handbooks, and collections of magical lore and techniques that went by the recognised and popular title Clavicula Salomonis. In the course of this analysis, we will take stock of a range of instructions for constructing and consecrating wands, knives, robes, and many many other tools of magical paraphernalia, and examine the sigils and chains of barbarous words and names of spirits that effectuate and empower the conjuration of spirits, as well as noting the range and depth of Christian appropriations and corruptions of sacred Hebrew names of god, Jewish angelology, and ceremonialised operations and expressions of popular folk magic.

Session 7: Grimorium Verum
In our seventh and final session, we will explore one of the most infamous manuals of so-called “black magic”, the Grimorium Verum or True Grimoire. Emerging in its present form around the eighteenth century, this grimoire can be framed as a newer expression of an older sixteenth-century manual of conjuration, the Clavicula Salomonis de Secretis, and indeed – following the recent and hugely influential work of twenty-first-century folk necromancer, the late Jake Stratton-Kent – can be shown to draw on the roots of ancient goetic magic at the heart of pre-Christian European grimoire magic; to summon and pact with elementals, nature spirits, dryads and naiads, fairies, the dead, and a host of chthonic spirits deemed ‘unclean’ or even “demonic” by pre-modern Church authorities… 

 By purchasing these class recordings, you agree that you understand that no part of the material dictated or provided throughout the duration of the course 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.