Magic books

The Seven Seals of medieval Islamic magic, which are believed to constitute the Greatest Name of God, also feature in Jewish Kabbalah from the same period. While many Seal symbols make sporadic appearances in early Islamic amulets bearing Kufic script, the source of the symbols and their eventual ordering remains a matter of legend. As this topic was first – and last – examined systematically by Dr. Hans Winkler in 1930, a wider-ranging and more modern review is long overdue. The present survey focuses on potential sources for the symbols rather than on their exegesis. It first examines the possibility that a precedent for the Seal series exists in an undecipherable “seven signs repeated seven times” inscribed on a Late Babylonian amulet. It then considers the possibility that the Seals’ origins lie in other cuneiform symbols from ancient Mesopotamia; in Egyptian hieroglyphs or scripts; in paleo-Hebrew characters or the letters of ancient South Arabian scripts; in Libyco-Berber or Tifinagh letters from North Africa; or in the symbol repertoire of Late Antique magic, including the highly potent seven Greek vowels. The review also explores the possibility that at least some of the symbols originated in numerological ciphers or religious emblems, canvassing sources as diverse as Indian Hinduism and Byzantine Christendom. The article concludes by considering the recent suggestion that the Seal series may have acquired its privileged status because its symbols reflect “shape archetypes” that are hard-wired into the human nervous system.

In Islamic magic, the Greatest Name of God is traditionally represented in graphic form by a series of seven glyphs known as the Seven Seals; the series is also known to Jewish Kabbalah. Ciphers of a very different appearance, characterised by strings of single-letter (ha’ and ‘ayn) repeats, are another recurring feature of Islamic amulets, as for example in the popular “Pleiades Square.” These ciphers are often found close to occurrences of the Seven Seals and, while much less well known, they too are alleged to represent the Greatest Name. In the present communication, an unexpected avian association for the repeat-letter ciphers is explained in terms of the mythology of the Pleiades star cluster. Moreover, the ciphers are shown for the first time to relate directly to the Seven Seals via a ca. twelfth-century CE prototype of the latter preserved in a manuscript copy of the Diwan of Ali (Brit. Mus. 577 Add. 7534). While this prototype was soon supplanted by the now canonical version of the Seven Seals, degraded forms of the Diwan series seem to have survived incognito as the repeat-letter ciphers, which persist in Shi‘a talismanic plaques sold today. Two other unexpected survivals/revivals of the Diwan Seal series in talismans of recent manufacture are also presented: one inscribed on an Ethiopian silver ring, the other concluding a Jewish Kabbalah scroll. The newly proposed Seal–cipher–Pleiades relationship links two auspicious heptads by associating the Seven Seals with the Seven Stars, a conjunction reminiscent of the seven stars/seals nexus in Revelation 1-6.

This article is intended to supplement Tawfiq Canaan's 1937 review “The Decipherment of Arabic Talismans,” which was republished in 2004. It draws on both medieval and modern material for illustration, and contains some novel suggestions as to how certain magical formulae may have evolved from Qurʾānic templates. The focus of the paper is on series of Arabic letters where the characters have been written in their “isolated” or “disconnected” forms; the most popular of these privileged letter series turn out to have colorful Qurʾānic origins or associations which are not well served by existing commentaries in English. The survey commences with the nineteen-letter basmalla and then addresses the fourteen Letters of Light, including the full-length Name of the Mysteries and two five-letter “crowning words” from the muqaṭṭaʿāt letter-sequences of the Qurʾān. It moves on to the seven letters of the lower darkness, the sawāqiṭ. Subsequently, it examines the seven Letters of Bahteh from the al-qādirat and the seven component letters of the Qurʾānic phrase “strong, severe.” Finally, it reviews the seven-letter strings that comprise the seven ṭahaṭīl names, and the eighth name that is their acronym. Many of the letter series presented in this paper feature in the work of the Egyptian magician Aḥmad al-Būnī (d. 622/1225), who sought to deflect suspicions of demonolatry or polytheism by grounding his magical practices in the Qurʾān and in the letters making up particular Qurʾānic verses. With the significance of those letters amplified by the use of disconnected writing, the resulting paradigm has remained prominent in the books and talismans of Islamic magic from the thirteenth century CE through to the present day.

The MA thesis deals with Syriac charms as stemming from the Late-Antique Aramaic magic tradition. It includes the edition of one of the yet unpublished Syriac magic codices (CNB KNC RAN 4, Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia) providing translation in Russian and commentaries.
The present version includes English table of contents of the ms.

This paper intends to confront the theology of the magic pact with demons such as it is defined in the XIVth century by the inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich - one of the best advocates of the qualification of magic as heresy - with the way the contemporary texts of ritual magic defined for their part the relationship between the magician and the devils. Indeed, the magic books that Eymerich seems to know quite well give to see a much more complex reality that the manichean vision of the theologians between the demonic worship of the apostate magician and the divine worship of the christian believer. The magician who adresses the devils by words and signs is the initiator of a true pact with God, who is the only One who can delegate to him the "potestas ligandi" necessary to subdue the evil spirits. This pact is based on his faith and on his spiritual purity. But at the same time, and without systematic mind, he turns to practices, such as the sacrifices, which draw a more ambivalent relationship with the spirits and seem de facto to define a kind of secondary pact. Obviously, this type of practices could only feed the traditional negative vision of magic shared by the theologians and the inquisitors at the end of the Middle Ages.

The nunciatures papers have often been used to reconstruct diplomatic and political events, but rarely as a medium to understand social and cultural history. Between 1632 and 1643, Decio Francesco Vitelli, an erudite ecclesiastic with very heterogeneous interests, was nuncio in Venice. Vitelli was born in Bomarzo, and probably grew up in the Palazzo Orsini, overlooking the "Sacro Bosco" (now known as "Parco dei mostri"). Both the “Palazzo” and the “Sacro Bosco” were commissioned by Vicino Orsini and inspired by the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili”, thus being rich in epigraphs, gigantomachies and references to hermeticism as well as to classical culture, and belonging to a refined erudition, always set on the edge of scepticism. When appointed nuncio, Vitelli found in Venice an ideal place to satisfy his omnivorous desire for knowledge, stimulated by the environment he had grown up in. During over 11 years in the Lagoon, he was able to enlarge his collection of coins, medals, statues and paintings, as well as satisfy his naturalist interests (he used to keep animals with him: a dog and even a caged bear), and his bibliophilia. In fact, in his Venetian residence Vitelli created a "wunderkammer" in which he also jealously kept forbidden books.
Among the over two hundred and fifty inquisitorial trials that he had to manage as nuncio, almost one hundred were trials for magic, necromancy, spells and witchcraft. But if, on the one hand, Vitelli inquired who owned, sold, read or used the grimoires, on the other he was himself a reader and owner of books such as the “Clavicula Salomonis”, to which he associated texts and collections of "non-conforming" authors, like Ulisse Aldrovandi or Pietro Aretino.
Based on the inquisitorial trials managed by Vitelli, as well as on his collections and correspondence with the Secretary of the State and with other inquisitors, this article aims to stress how erudition and power were weapons that allowed Vitelli to escape the ecclesiastical jurisprudence. Besides, I propose some hypotheses about anti-magical trials as contexts in which ecclesiastics passionate about the natural and the supernatural as Vitelli could acquire new information, thus broadening the "dark side" of their culture and their private collections.