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biblioteca goetica
THETRVE
GRIMOIRE
+
THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA GOETICA
VOLUME ONE
by
},lkc Str,ltto/l-Kcllt
SCARLET IMPRINT
MMIX
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I
INTRODUCTION
1. "TI1e Importance of the True Grimoire I
II. Goetia & Sigils I I
Ill. TI1e Context of the Grimoire IS
Iv. The Art Armadel 27
II
THE TRUE GRIMOIRE
I. Introduction 5I
II. Preamble 55
Ill. TI1e First Part 57
IV. "TI1e Second Part 81
V. "TI1e TI1ird Part 101
VI. '11K Cabala of the Green Butterfly 123
III
NOTES TO THE GRIMOIRE
1. Notes on the First Part 127
II. Who are the Spirits? 139
III. A Unihed Hierarchy of Goetic Spirits 159
IV. Notes on the Second Part 167
v. Comment on the Second Part 175
VI. On Constructing Verum spells 177
VII. Notes on the Third Part 181
VIII. The Ritual Procedure of the Grimoire 185
IX. Planetary Days & Hours 189
IV
APPENDICES
1. The Spirits of the Seven Days 193
II. On the Cabala of the Green Butterfly 195
III. Ibe Cabala of the Black Pullet 199
IV. Aftaroth, Lady of the Crossroads 201
V. Goetia & the New \Vorld 2 I 9
VI. Verum & the Brazilian Cult of ~limbanda 22 3
POSTSCRIPT 255
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 257
INDEX 263
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My PROfOUND GRATITUDE to all those who helped make this book
possible against all the odds, through many setbacks and disappointments,
T() Michelle Newitt for love, support and encouragement, and
her painstaking work on many dozens of sigils and their Brazilian
equivalents; to Juliette and Mark Williams for their very generous assistance
in many details relating to African Traditional Religions, for
locating and providing access to many rare documents, and for general
encouragement; to Joseph Peterson -masterly occult archivist for
his friendly and helpful response on discovering we were preparing
editions of Verurn simultaneously, and for supplying high resolution
images ofimportant symbols; to Mary Guyver for valuable assistance
in translating old French, and the first redrawing ofthe Armadel sigils;
to Brendan Hughes for his multi-lingual skills, his substantial help
and support and his belief in the author; to Emanuel Moura for his
kind assistance in researching Brazilian and African terms and traditions;
to 'Zadkiel' for pointing me at Trithemius as the source of
Vmml conjurations; and to Ioannis Marathakis for valuable pointers
regarding the history of invisibility spells,
Many thanks also to Peter and Alkistis of Scarlet Imprint for not
starting the revolution without me, as well as to David Beth and Tim
March h}r recommending them. To friends, sisters and brothers, past
and present, for their work and encouragement at various times, To
all those, over several centuries, who have done their best to preserve
and elucidate old lore for generations to come, whose work has encouraged
and inspired me in this project. Lasr, but by no means least,
ro the spirirs ofthe Grimorium Verum, who have led me into deep waters
while keeping my head above the waves,
J.S.K
THE IMPORTANCE OF
THE TRUE GRIMOIRE
+
D
D
HE TRUE GIUMOIRE has been called 'a book bv the devil'
and 'par excellence the magical workbook of Eu;ope: In his
introduction to the Key of Solomoll, published in 1889,
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers described the True Grimoirr as
'full of evil magic' and stated, 'I cannot caution the pracrical student
too strongly against [it): A.E. Waite considered the Grimorium Verum
one of the, 'specific and undisguised handbooks of Black Magic: and
incorporated sections into his which has the distinction of being
named in Aleister Crowley's autobiographical notes, its reading marking
the official commencement of his magical career.
Original manuscripts of the Grimoire were unknown to these aurhors,
as they are to the present writer. There are many inaccuracies
and omissions in the quite widely differing French and Italian printed
versions and perhaps even more so in their English derivatives. Indeed,
many of these were catchpenny affairs, exhibiting no care whatever in
editing the various materials at their disposal. In consequence a great
many important characters and sigils had been lost, substituted, reversed
or mislabelled. Idries Shah wrote in his OrierltalMagic of:
... the much-coveted Grin/orium Verum, [thatJ by means of it
rhe sorcerer may prepare himself for the difljcult exercise of
the Art, can make the various instruments which are essential
to the difficult art of raising spirits, and can evoke and dismiss
a large number ofpowerful beings. Although the tide-page says
thar it was collected and published by 'Alibeck the Egyptian' in
1517 (in Memphis), it is more likely to from the eighteenth
century, and was probably printed from a mllch earlier manuscript.
No collated version of the True Grimoire is known,
Ihc True Grimoirc
though parts which are missing in this [French1edition arc ap
parenrly available in the more modern Italian editions.
A survey of the variants indicated tbat to even partially recover the
core ofa lost 'original' would require more than a collated edition of
the printed versions as suggested by Shah; rather a critical reconstruction
was needed. This process of reconstruction has been, hitherto,
an unsurmounted obstacle to the production ofa definitive edition.
Although writers such as Shah have claimed to synthesise dements
of the primed Italian and French editions this Ius not really
served a useful purpose. as often reproducing the faults ofboth as rectifying
one by the other. So while his readers may have been led to
believe that the Italian editions supply deficiencies in the French regarding
characters and sigils, in fact they are missing key elements
and mislabel others which the French preserves in better order. In
addition we find sometimes the French and Italian versions ofa particular
sigil are reversed in relation to one another, or even that part
of one sigil has become attached to another.
Essentially, the problem ofcharacters involves the following:
A) The nature and appearance ofthe character to be worn by the operaror
when commencing the process ofthe Grimoire. rshall call this
the first character as it is the first to be mentioned and ofthe first importance
in beginning the work. A figure bearing this name, and with
identical purpose, appears in the Grimoirc of Armadd.
B) correct identification of sigils belonging to several spirits in
the hierarchy, several ofwhich are attributed to different spirits from
one version to another, or rendered backwards or in a mutilated form.
Having achieved B, the identification ofwhich ofthese characters
are intended for various magical operations, which use is oftwo kinds,
first for insctibing on various magical tools. and second for use in
spells.
2
The Importance ofthc True Grimoirc
Many of the versions published in English during the 20ri, century
failed to note any of these difliculties. Primarily this is because most
have drawn from one source, being derived from a single French edition
without comparison with the Italian editions which makes the
discrepancies more apparent. Nevertheless, it appears not to have
been noticed that some spirits have been given sigils that are also attributed
to another spirit in the same book! This discrepancy becomes
more glaring when variants are compared, but is detectable
with close examination within each of them.
In one influential French version we have an apparently random
selection oHifteen sigils, most ofthem apparently from a set ofeighteen
spirits, two from a second set offifteen who otherwise have none.
Both the latter two are actually misattribured, to Minoson and Bucan,
which becomes obvious by comparison with the sigils ofBechaud and
Frimosr.
Top row, 'Bucoll' md Frimost sigils, aid below, Frimost w,md sigil,
reversed
The himost sigil, despite all diHimlties in the variant texts, is particularly
consistent in appearance. It is also among the sigils that ap
3
The True Grimoire
pear on magical instruments, even in the version where the clearer
form of his sigil is misattributed to Bucon. This, taken with the use
of his sigil and others as inscriptions on instruments, may point to
the source of confusion among the figures. Of the confused sigils, almost
every case is to be found among the first eight spirits. Often also
we find that the plates illustrating the symbols of the three chiefs in
the French editions have additional characters underneath them that
are not theirs but those of three of these eighteen spirits. Taken together
these facts suggest a misreading of a now lost plate of illustrations.
~
Figurefrom the French edition: the circularfigure is that ofLuc!fer, the
central figure of the three below it is the sigil of Claunech, while the left
hand figure represents Lucifer in Europe and that on tl)e right his
dominion in Asia.
4
JiJe Importance of the True Grimoire
CiJaracters of Bdzeuutl! tlnd A)1;arothfrom the Frenc/! edition, with
misplaced sigils In:neath.
Thus we find mistakenly included beneath the symbol of Lucifer a
character that is elsewhere attributed to Claunech, beneath the symbol
ofBdzeburh a sigil ofMusisin, and beneath Astaroth a character
that in the Italian is attributed to the spirit KhiL whom in the French
is given quite another sigil, which has been copied by most published
editions.
These three spirits are among the first eight, as are Bechaud,
Frimost and Klepoth, whose symbols would have been given later on
because of their relation to the knife and the wands. Another difflculty
arises here, fl)r Klepoth has been allocated two different sigils
in the various editions. I shall refer to these as the dancing and divining
sigils. The dancing sigil is undoubtedly apt to the functions ofthe
spirit in the editions in which it appears. On the other hand, the other
sigil has an established relationship with the hazel wand. Klepoth's
dancing role only appears in the editions of the Grimoire with the
5
TIle Importance of the True Grimoire
GV~\')
~o
C£~/:;t
Three vari<lIlts [~r the KIJilsigil
FrelJch Khil sigil French Segal sigil
Anot/Jer French Khil sigil and ti,e Italjall Segal sigil
7
The True Grimoin:
This reconstruction of the plate places the Lucifer, Bclzebuth and
Astaroth sigils above those ofClaunech, Musisin and Khil, as already
illustrated. The symbols of Bechaud, Frimost and Klepoth would
have been omitted as they were to appear accompanying the sections
concerning the knife and wands. The remaining symbols would then
f()llow in rows conforming to the order ofnames given by the French
edition, thus:
~
y ~
( t~
~eLl\lh.e:t\ k..,Le
~'h'l" ~
&
~. J. L-----<
I' ~~
/'v;
'-/ Se~:).l Iii< pa...lh. ~ H,,-1'i,'[<,
/
+.f<
~t ;.c...
/ ~r;~,,,,t<"< ~\,l."[ ~)\,:,~
:f.
."'~
V
~
( ~
~
~
m01'd..ll ~ f1.tAi~ nIL'1" Hluctlc~a1'o...~
Choosing between the variant sigHs tl)r Khil and for Segal remains a
problem, since there are clearly three sigils between two spirits, with
one sigil competed over and another Segal sigil found only in the
French editions. The operative reader must resolve this for themselves,
and a most straightforward solution is supplied by another aspect of
reconstruction ofwhich mention follows in the notes (see Siugambutl)
and Aabidandes, page 132).
8
'The Importance oj tilt? True Grimoire
Despite these difficulties, it deserves saying that the apparent difficulty
surrounding the two spirits from the second list, who are deprived
of sigils by the hypothesis of the broken plate and by
comparative deduction, is resolved not by characters in the Italian
version, but by its text. There is a collective conjuration in the halian
of this entire group of spirits and various superiors, not given in the
French. This indicates a different means of employment from those
for whom characters are given. The suggested identification of two
names, in an obscure parr of the Preamble of the Grimorium Verum,
with two superiors among these spirits surmounts a major obstacle
to reconstructing the original modus operandi in its entirety. Something
along these lines may be the clarifying material in the Italian
which Shah referred to in The Secret Lore ofMagic. In that book also
he refers to the Grimorium Verum as:
... one ofthe most interesting ofmagical rituals which include
the famous grimoires or black books of the sorcerers. It is, in
fact. nothing less than a magician's handbook. containing in
small compass the entire rites ofpreparation, identification of
spirits, [and the process of] conjuration.
In this assessment he is undoubtedly correct, and this compact completeness
underlines its imporrance both to magicians and to students
of magic.
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