Books, such as Giles has in Buffy, or in the film “Thirteen Ghosts” et al…
Do these types of book exist outside of Hollywood invention?
Did Monks / Researchers / Fanatics in the 11th-15th centuries really write books with spells / procedures which could hypothetically raise Demons, ‘End the World’, ‘Cause Plagues’, and such like. Did they describe ‘machines’ that could be built to open portals to other worlds?
If so, how rare are such books? Single voulmes? (if written pre-printing press). Where are they kept / stored? Are there many such tomes? Who were the authors of such works?
Also, as as aside, does the British Library have any such books in archive where the public have (limited) access to them?
Depends. There are manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts dating back thousands of years which describe “magical” stuff - for example, the collection of prayers and rituals generally referred to as the “Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” is pretty much authentically Ancient Egyptian. Books of what you might call speculative philosophy or speculative theology were written in the Middle Ages; like any other book, they’d be circulated in manuscript copies.
Things written specifically as “books of magic” tend to be later in origin, but often claim to be much older than they actually are. Stuff like the Clavicula Salomonis falls into this category. Mostly, I suspect, they were written by dingbats who pretended to esoteric knowledge in an attempt to a) con people out of money and b) pull women. These were certainly the motivations of the Master Therion, Aleister Crowley, the 20th century’s premier black-magic dingbat. Most of Crowley’s stuff was self-published in limited circulation (he was a tireless self-publicist in every possible way.)
Original manuscripts of stuff like the Clavicula Salomonis are probably fairly tough to get hold of, but mass-market translations have been made. Most of my collection of sanity-blasting esoterica was picked up in paperback at Waterstone’s … Collections of earlier magical writings have been made; most of them, though, are considered only of scholarly interest, so aren’t likely to be generally available (the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead being an exception here, since there’s enough general interest to support a mass-market edition). However, getting hold of this stuff is more likely to involve trawling second-hand bookshops and applying for inter-library loans than secret rituals with the Keeper of the Tomes in the crypt at midnight.
Also, please note that some of the famous magical texts are not available in their original manuscript anywhere, because they don’t exist. (The Necronomicon being a prime example here. Just because there are several purported transcripts and translations floating around, that doesn’t mean the original ever existed.)
A fair number of “standard” esoteric texts can be found here. I’ve read many of them, and haven’t et had my face pulled off by the denizens of the Dungeon Dimensions… Some of these give bibliographic information; some of this bibliographic information may even be reliable. If you want to read long lists of demons, and how they can do your homework and pay your bills and get girls to like you, this is a good place to go.
To take the same example, running ‘Clavicula Salomonis’ through the British Library’s online Manuscripts catalogue produces one result. That document, Additional MS 36674, appears to be a late sixteenth century copy of a work which one of its owners, Gabriel Harvey, thought was the Clavicula Salomonis but which is actually not the work usually given that name. Other items bound with it also seem to be documents of that type.
It won’t be too difficult (certainly easier than it used to be) for you to get access to this particular volume. Rooting around the BL catalogue would doubtless turn up other esoteric material. This sort of stuff is not secret.
Crowley has many…they’re uhhh not so ancient though. :, infact, not ancient at all. Although, any magic(k) dating before the 1700’s probbly focused on spiritual things alone and would therefore be useless.
Thanks for the information guys. Interesting stuff.
A see a lot of the books listed seem quite ‘recent’, around the times of Shakespeare thro’ to Newton. Not from deep in the Middle Ages as I originally surmised.
APB, I now see I can get the books on-line from the source Steve gave me…i.e. ‘Clavicula Salomonis’
But I guess the idea of a single existing book, created by an unknown genius of the time, being searched for by demonologists in order to unleash some power is really only in the Hollywood myth. Pity, that’s the idea I like the best…
Or perhaps there are books like this out there, but they are only known to a select chosen few.
Of course, all of the known books have been reprinted (their copyrights have expired). But keep in mind that there are many ancient and uncatalogued manuscripts in libraries around the world. All you need is to find the one that has been missed, learn the ancient language in which it was written, and be foolish enough to broach the awful mysteries therein. Then, mayhap, you will find yourself the victim of the same loathsome and secret evil which I
Steve Wright, do you by any chance have the Spider skin bound edition of the Fullomyth? I’ve never found it and I’m really curious about the London Underground stations that never appear on the public maps. :=)
The Hermetica can today be found at bookstores quite commonly. IIRC, possession of a copy of the secrets of the Thrice-Great Hermes was at one time under the Roman empire punishable by death. Of course, it’s all hooey. In antiquity, the “secrets” were claimed to be quite ancient knowledge to increase their prestige, but I beleive today’s scholars think they were written in part around 100 AD and added onto about 300 AD.
