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The Origins Of The Goetia

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Has any historian attempted to find the historical origin of the Occult Grimoire ; The Goetia ( The Lesser Key of Solomon).

I know there are Paris manuscripts but is there a version that precedes the Paris manuscripts? German ? Italian?

Feedback welcome.
 
Pass. But it is probably based on Johann Weyer's
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) which is an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (1563)
 
While we're on the subject, how on earth is Goetia pronounced?
 
Threadrot - we really need a pronunciation thread around here.

I always thought is was either Go-eesh-ya or Go-eti-ka. Neither of which seem especially impressive now I come to think of it.
 
I suspect that the number of people who can pronounce 'Goetia' correctly are so few you can count them on the fingers of one hand.

I'd go with something along the lines of "goat-ear" - the trick is to say it as if you mean it, say it loudly and with confidence and others who may have doubts will think your correct! ;)
 
Goetia.

The traditional way to pronounce it is "GOEESHAA".

It means "Howling/The Howling".

Anyway back to my point; Has any historian done detective work on the origins of the Goetia/Lemegeton.

Are their any copies in Arabic?
 
Re: Goetia.

wowsah156 said:
"The traditional way to pronounce it is 'GOEESHAA'".

And here I've always thought it had a more-or-less Germanic pronunciation - something like "GETTY-YA," with the emphasis on the first syllable.
 
Well, if it's Greek aren't you [Traditionally] supposed to pronounce everything so nothing is lost? Something like Go-eh-tee-a. (Pretty short sound at the end, stress on second syllable)

I tried to write in phonetics but the symbols won't cut and paste correctly. Here's a bash:

/g@u'eIti:a/

Where @=Schwa. (Which won't copy but should be an inverted 'e')

Though perhaps the final /a/ could be a Schwa. Slight difference.
 
wowsah156 said:
Has any historian attempted to find the historical origin of the Occult Grimoire ; The Goetia ( The Lesser Key of Solomon).

I know there are Paris manuscripts but is there a version that precedes the Paris manuscripts? German ? Italian? Are their any copies in Arabic?

Feedback welcome.

I doubt a "straight" historian would attempt such an investigative task, as it would almost certainly be doomed to failure. Unless i'm grossly mistaken, almost everybody accepts that the historical reality of this text has its origins during about the black death / hundred years war period (mid 14th C). Agrippa, Paracelsus are all thrown into the mix, but even allowing for interpretive errors in translation of the "original" sources, much of the imagery of the work can be traced to medieval or new testament motifs. Examples include the 48th entity - Haagenti - having the ability to turn water into wine. The 32nd and 66th manifestations ride beasts of war, either dragons or horses, which preclude an Egyptian origin.

Moses De Leon's translation of the Zohar - The Book of Splendour - in the mid 13th century also arguably sowed seeds for magical thinking to be formalised into a more ceremonial format. Yith was right earlier when he said that Weyer's latin text could quite possibly have been the source material.

HERE is a very good pdf, tracing the origins of many grimoires and magical texts, including the first book of the lesser KoS - The Goetia.

You can find a complete (sigils and all) version of the GoetiaHERE

A Wiki-esque encylopedia entry for the complete lesser KoS can be found HERE

and lastly, good old amazon offers a complete version of text, collated magisterially by Joseph Peterson HERE

And here's a snippet on the origin of the term Ars Goetia:

Goety - "Magic Involving the Employment of Evil Spirits or Demons; A Sorcerer who Employs Spirits or Demons in Magic." This word is generally archaic. It was sometimes misspelled "geoty" in a confusion of etymology, were some believed it to be from "geo" = "earth." In Early Modern English, "goety" was often contrasted against "magia," seen as "white magik." It could also be seen as opposite of "theurgy." English derives the word from the French "goetie." The word still exists in French, though it is generally marked "rare" in dictionaries. "Goetie" is also the proper German spelling. As with most words English derives from French, the word comes from Greek through Latin. The Latin form is "goetia," meaning "black magic." The primary word in Greek is "goetiea," meaning "witchcraft, jugglery," from "goes," meaning a "sorcerer, wizard" or a "juggler, cheat." Other Greek forms of the word are "goeteuma" = "a spell or charm," "goeteusis" = "sorcery," "goeteutikos" = "sorceress," "goetiuo" = "to bewitch, fascinate" and "goetis" = "bewitching, fascinating." The root of all these is generally the idea of "howling" or "murmering." This can be seen in the related words "goes" = "wailer," "goos" = "weeping, wailing," "goao" = "to groan, weep," "gongustes" = "mutter, mumble," and even "goi goi," the sound of pigs grunting. Exactly where the word came to mean specifically dealing with evil spirits is either in the French or in English.

Don't believe everything Al Moore says ;)
 
heres a new book about paracelsus.

Renaissance science

The uses of enchantment

Jan 19th 2006
From The Economist print edition



The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the Renaissance World of Magic and Science
By Philip Ball



To be published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April
William Heinemann; 430 pages; £20.

Buy it at
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk



PARACELSUS, or Philip Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, is one of the oddest and most intriguing figures of late medieval European history. Part doctor, part alchemist, theologian and prolific writer, he was also a querulous braggart who fell out regularly with his patrons, antagonising those who tried to help him, which may explain why he never stayed in one place for long.

Born in Switzerland in 1493, a year after Christopher Columbus journeyed to the New World, Paracelsus travelled all over Europe, from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea, healing the sick, preaching, occasionally teaching in universities and all the time writing books, almanacs and pamphlets. Many of the places he visited had been touched by the bubonic plague that swept Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, and he was fascinated by the legend of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. He was a great humanist who spent much of his time reading Plato and Aristotle. A self-taught expert on mining, he is often regarded as one of the fathers of modern chemistry, yet chemists don't always know what to make of him and are embarrassed by his rantings.


Nevertheless, Paracelsus is an important contemporary of Nicholas Copernicus, Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci and the other figures commonly associated with the transformation of medieval ideas about philosophy, medicine, politics and religion. And he remains an inspiration to those interested in untangling the roots of modern science, when magic was important both to ordinary people and to the evolution of scientific knowledge.

Poets have always loved him. Paracelsus was said to travel on a white horse and to carry the elixir of life in the pommel of his broadsword. Goethe and Thomas Mann both used him as a model for their versions of Faust; he appears in novels by Jeanette Winterson and A.S. Byatt, and there is a bust of him near the common room of Harry Potter's house at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Despite his hold on the modern imagination, the true Paracelsus remains difficult to separate from the myth that grew up around him. His writings are scattered in libraries all over the world. Even when physically available, they are never easy to understand. Though occasionally he wrote in Latin, Paracelsus liked also to use a Low German that was full of unusual, little-known words. The University of Zurich has undertaken to collect and catalogue his writings in a vast programme known as the Zurich Paracelsus Project. Progress is slow, though, and work on the Paracelsus Dictionary has reached only the letter B.

Philip Ball, who is a scientist rather than a historian, has chosen to take on the challenge of explaining Paracelsus by offering as much context as he can find. Given that Paracelsus lived during one of the most turbulent periods of European history—in the early part of the Counter-Reformation and just before the Thirty Years War—this was not an unreasonable decision. However, faced with such a mountain of historical material, the clarity that characterised Mr Ball's “Critical Mass”, winner of the Aventis science book prize last year, has deserted him on this occasion. No sooner does Paracelsus move at the age of nine to the Carinthian mountains in Austria, for example, than Mr Ball takes a detour into the history of mining; a description of Paracelsus's education offers an excursion into the background of humanism, ancient cures, Galen and the early history of dissecting; a short commentary on Paracelsus's pacifism and his religious philosophy turns into a study of the Anabaptist rebellions; an exploration of the problems facing the Roman Catholic Church leads into an analysis of how Luther might have been affected by being constipated. All this before you reach page 150.

Mr Ball's enthusiasm for the wider picture is to be admired, but somewhere in all this Paracelsus is lost. The book is full of wonderful nuggets, but the thread of ideas is difficult to follow. This may be his first “life and times” for 40 years. But with far more “times” than “life”, the balance between the two is not wholly successful.

The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the Renaissance World of Magic and Science.
By Philip Ball.
William Heinemann; 430 pages; £20.
To be published in America by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April
 
theyithian said:
Pass. But it is probably based on Johann Weyer's
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) which is an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (1563)

Weyer's list is based on a text entitled Liber Officiorum Spirituum, sev Liber dictus Empto Salomonis, de principibus & Regibus daemoniorum. A work of a similar title is referred to by Trithemius in his Antipalus Maleficiorum (1508) but I've found nothing earlier than that. Curiously, two of the other books that form the Lemegeton, Theurgia Goetia and the Pauline Art, contain names derived from Trithemius' Steganographia (1606, although it had circulated in manuscript during the 16th Century).
I'm not aware of any surviving medieval manuscripts that contain similar directories of spirits, although some might exist.
 
Pass. But it is probably based on Johann Weyer's
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) which is an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (1563)

Weyer's list is based on a text entitled Liber Officiorum Spirituum, sev Liber dictus Empto Salomonis, de principibus & Regibus daemoniorum. A work of a similar title is referred to by Trithemius in his Antipalus Maleficiorum (1508) but I've found nothing earlier than that. Curiously, two of the other books that form the Lemegeton, Theurgia Goetia and the Pauline Art, contain names derived from Trithemius' Steganographia (1606, although it had circulated in manuscript during the 16th Century).
I'm not aware of any surviving medieval manuscripts that contain similar directories of spirits, although some might exist.

Certainly there are earlier extant texts that had a tradition of yielding the names, ranking and powers of demons and archangels.

A f'rinstance would be the Gnostic script On the origin of the world. It's one of the Nag Hammadi scrolls, so let's both agree on early hundreds CE for its provenance.

An excerpt here: "Thus, when the prime parent of chaos saw his son Sabaoth and the glory that he was in, and perceived that he was greatest of all the authorities of chaos, he envied him. And having become wrathful, he engendered Death out of his death: and he (viz., Death) was established over the sixth heaven, <for> Sabaoth had been snatched up from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was achieved. Then Death, being androgynous, mingled with his (own) nature and begot seven androgynous offspring. These are the names of the male ones: Jealousy, Wrath, Tears, Sighing, Suffering, Lamentation, Bitter Weeping. And these are the names of the female ones: Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, Quarrelsomeness. They had intercourse with one another, and each one begot seven, so that they amount to forty-nine androgynous demons. Their names and their effects you will find in the Book of Solomon.

The Testament of Solomon, related in Solomonic lore to the above Gnostic text, could be studied for a doctorate. Just one more fragment of an enormous, mainly Hebraic, industry around the man. Stories around him were told as often as the 1001 Arabian Nights, and bear in mind, Solomon is just one source for the lemegeton.

The first pdf i linked earlier has a great section that describes the vibrant fusion of ideas that were happening in those far off centuries, gematraic techniques mingled with images of the christ, crucified, awe-inspiring i would have thought. anyway

These writings were added to, over time, as entropy generally awards. More material was combined. recensions,,redactions,all found their way in to the corpus.

The jewish diasporas, other exodimovement of the people:), amalgamated disparate strains of sociomagical-religious thinking.

Bacon introduced Arabian translations of Taoist Alchemical books.

Alchemy, in the East the search for life eternal. In the West, to somehow transmute lead into ingots auriferous.

The printing press. An emerging social class with enough money to buy exotic books and grimoires, and enough time on their hands to read them.

Point is, the existence of scientifically datable medieaval grimories only as far back as the 15th century seems perfectly reasonable. For all the reasons above, and many more, this was a time of critical mass in history for this material to be combined into different kinds of witches almanacs.

Other "how-to" books were around at the time of the LKOS. The Liber Iuratus, the Grimorium Verum to name but two.

As with so many other things, it's a melange. Despite the best efforts of brilliant contemporary minds to unlock the secrets of the past, to capture the voice of the ancient scribes, as usual were stumbling around in the dark pretty much fucking things completely up. ;)
 
Has any historian attempted to find the historical origin of the Occult Grimoire ; The Goetia ( The Lesser Key of Solomon). I know there are Paris manuscripts but is there a version that precedes the Paris manuscripts? German ? Italian? Feedback welcome.

Having looked into the matter, the pedigree of the Lesser Key of Solomon is certainly not older than the 16th Century. There are no examples of it before that time. This of course begs the question of whether it is merely a fraud, and what exactly is it? So I'm going to float an idea.

One of the most crucial elements in the LKoS is often utterly overlooked.

Lesser Key.jpg
Please note the triangle and circle with the names of God around it at the top of the page (marked East). The circle in that image is supposed to contain a black mirror, and that mirror is supposed to face the circle. Apparently it is within this mirror that the manifestations can be seen.

So, given this small piece of evidence, the question arises, where in the history of European occultism does the use of a black mirror have a precedent? The answer is "nowhere". If we look further afield however , we find that in Mesoamerica, the Aztec worship of Tezcatlipoca uses an obsidian mirror as a ritual aid. Tezcatlipoca in fact means "Lord of the Smoking Mirror", and he was a Jaguar god, a trickster, and God of the Sun to whom most of those sacrificed hearts were offered.

Now if we look briefly at history, Hernan Cortez had destroyed the Aztec Empire (with a lot of help from the many local tribes who deeply hated the Aztecs, whom Cortez's translator Malinal aka Dona Marina unified under Spanish command). This was largely concluded by 1521. Now the Aztecs were a literate civilization, and the Catholic Church went to a good deal of trouble to destroy their written culture, and so we only have a few extant codices of Aztec literature available to us today.

Now word goes back to Spain about this amazing culture of obvious Satanists and Devil Worshipers whom the conquistadors have subdued and brought to mother church. No doubt there are those in Spain who are actual practicing Satanists at this time. Some of the most notorious Spanish Brujah (witches) were actually members of the clergy, in fact. So it is would seem pretty likely that they would be interested in finding out what the Aztecs knew before the Church burned all the books and melted all the idols. So, given the time frame, and the style of occult practices in grimoires that immediately predate the LKoS, I will suggest that what we are looking at is a fusion of an Aztec codex and a European grimoire.

Consider if you will, the descriptions of the devils in the LKoS. They are often described as physically extraordinary, and not out of keeping with the denizens of the Aztec underworld of Xibalba.

On a related note, it might surprise people to discover that the Sacred Heart that is so prominent in Catholic iconography had little prominence prior to the Conquest of New Spain. The doctrine that converted the Aztecs was that there was no more need to sacrifice hearts to keep the Sun alight, as the heart of the Savior Jesus Christ had been offered to that purpose (lets just ignore the fact that the notion of sacrificing Jesus to Tezcatlipoca never actually occurred, and would be more than a little blasphemous by Judeo-Christian standards if it had).
 
That's an interesting hypothesis.

However, I feel the need to point out you're blending references to at least 3 distinct Meso-American cultures as if everything traces back to the Aztecs alone.

For example:

- The Aztecs did have a writing system, but they apparently adopted it from the separate Mixtecs.

- It may be a bit of an overstatement to call the Aztecs "a literate civilization", to the extent it can be parsed as suggesting reading and writing were widespread beyond certain elite classes or roles.

- The codex motif wasn't an Aztec invention - it was adopted / derived from the Mixtec and Mayan cultures.

- Xibalba is the underworld of the Mayans - a different culture that had collapsed and survived in diminished form by the time the Europeans arrived.

- The use of mirrors (or the mirror surrogate of water) for divination pre-dated the Aztecs, though the use of specifically obsidian mirrors correlates with the Post-Classical period during which the Aztecs arose and thrived.
 
That's an interesting hypothesis. However, I feel the need to point out you're blending references to at least 3 distinct Meso-American cultures as if everything traces back to the Aztecs alone.

I would have said 2 rather than 3. The Nahua around Lake Mexico had adopted the Mixtec writing system well in advance of the arrival of the Aztecs, and so the Aztecs adopted it after their arrival too. The crux of the argument that I can't yet demonstrate is that there was someone adequately proficient in the script to provide a translation for a European audience.

- The Aztecs did have a writing system, but they apparently adopted it from the separate Mixtecs.

Agreed. This doesn't really detract from my argument. We also have Spanish historical records of their burning Aztec texts on the grounds that they were deemed to be demonic.

- It may be a bit of an overstatement to call the Aztecs "a literate civilization", to the extent it can be parsed as suggesting reading and writing were widespread beyond certain elite classes or roles..

By literate, I merely mean that they had a written language. I would describe Feudal Europe as literate in the same way, though we both know only a tiny fraction of the population could read. What I meant was that they produced literature, i.e. written documents for various purposes.

- The codex motif wasn't an Aztec invention - it was adopted / derived from the Mixtec and Mayan cultures..

My understanding of the Aztec codices was that they were an effort by Spanish missionaries to belatedly make some attempt to get the Aztec priests to record their knowledge for posterity. For example, the Florentine Codex was comissioned by Fr. Bernadino de Sahagin

- Xibalba is the underworld of the Mayans - a different culture that had collapsed and survived in diminished form by the time the Europeans arrived..

Yes, I meant Mictlan. My Mesoamerican studies were years ago and I am clearly going senile.

- The use of mirrors (or the mirror surrogate of water) for divination pre-dated the Aztecs, though the use of specifically obsidian mirrors correlates with the Post-Classical period during which the Aztecs arose and thrived.

All that matters for the purpose of my argument is that the practice pre-dates Cortez and the LKoS, which it does.
 
Twin Star used to be one of my target reads last decade. Wish she'd reignite.
I am learning a bunch from Alky and AltaredBoy these days. Very interesting history, those texts.

Alky, you seem to know your stuff here, so could you tell me how a practitioner would use the diagram in post 14? What do you do with it apart from the exegesis?
 
Twin Star used to be one of my target reads last decade. Wish she'd reignite.
I am learning a bunch from Alky and AltaredBoy these days. Very interesting history, those texts. Alky, you seem to know your stuff here, so could you tell me how a practitioner would use the diagram in post 14? What do you do with it apart from the exegesis?

In essence, you treat it like a shamanic circle, as far as I am aware. In effect the Goetia can be treated as a shamanic tradition. The crucial thing is that when the entity manifests in the circle, you can see it in the obsidian mirror in the triangle, which should be propped up to the North. From memory, you place the sigil of the Daimon within the center of the circle (which invokes the God of the Jews and his angels to protect the boundary of the circle), recite the invocation, having met the ritual requirements outlined in the book. Omit nothing, as the ancients were utter sticklers for elaborate ritual protocols. If you read the Goetia extra-carefully and take notes of all the steps, and follow them to the letter, the ritual is supposed to work. The most important thing is to read all about "closing the circle", i.e. how to dismiss your summons. One also shouldn't cross the circle, as it may lead to possession. Language may or may not be an issue. Perhaps summoning something that can help with language acquisition would be a good first step? (Assuming you don't mind having something messing with your head in that fashion). Read everything in the book 5 times, and consider all possible meanings before attempting anything. By then you should be psychologically primed for a crazy crazy evening and an eternity of damnation if things go wrong, if the Ecclesiastical Community is to be believed.
 
Think I'll pay you to guide me for the operation, mate. Have you performed it yet? What was the result?
 
The most important thing is to read all about "closing the circle", i.e. how to dismiss your summons.
Which, by the accounts I've read, those who've omitted to do have allowed all manner of monstrous entities to manifest in our physical realm (yes, Al, I'm looking at you and Mdm Nessie).
 
Think I'll pay you to guide me for the operation, mate. Have you performed it yet? What was the result?

TBH I haven't dabbled in such things since my teens. Which of the Goetia are you thinking of summoning? Also, be warned, you may find the ingredients expensive to procure or manufacture.
 
Which of the Goetia are you thinking of summoning?
The one that keeps the numpties away from me.

Here's a great photograph I took in 2013. I think it's a water sprite, but friend who saw this stated quite categorically that it's a fire sprite.

What do yous think?
 

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The one that keeps the numpties away from me.

Here's a great photograph I took in 2013. I think it's a water sprite, but friend who saw this stated quite categorically that it's a fire sprite.

What do yous think?

If I'm not mistaken, that is the Moon of the Prophet +1 star =:)
 
You are.
Saturn, Venus and ninth waning cycle lunar in November 2007. Just days before the birth of my first childken. Year of the golden pig, it was.
 
Etymology of Goetia from Wikipedia:

The Ancient Greek word γοητεία (goēteía) means "charm, jugglery, sorcery",[1] from γόης (góēs) "sorcerer, wizard" (plural: γόητες góētes).[2] The meaning of "sorcerer" is attested in a scholion, or commentary, referring to the Dactyli, a mythical race, stating that according to Pherecydes of Syros and Hellanicus of Lesbos, those to the left are goētes, while those to the right are deliverers from sorcery.[3][page needed] The word may be ultimately derived from the verb γοάω "groan, bewail" (goáō). Derivative terms are γοήτευμα "a charm" (goḗteuma, plural γοητεύματα goēteúmata) and γοητεύω "to bewitch, beguile" (goēteúō).

Γοητεία was a term for the magic in the Greco-Roman world. Its Latinized form is goëtia; in the 16th century, English adopted it as goecie or goety (and the adjectival form goetic), via French goétie.
 
You are.
Saturn, Venus and ninth waning cycle lunar in November 2007. Just days before the birth of my first children. Year of the golden pig, it was.

Actually Venus in close contact with the Moon is the "moon of the prophet", but on this case Saturn is the star.
 
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