Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies
Oxford University Press, December 2010
ISBN: 978-0199590049
"An amazing achievement, not just for its depth of research but its breadth, from Massachusetts to Martinique to Mauritius. It must become the classic work on the subject."
-Ronald Hutton, author of The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Pagan Witchcraft
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, while it is a very good survey of magical books in the West from the Middle Ages to the present, actually is much more, the best study of esotericism in the West I have read yet.
When it comes to astrology, alchemy, magic and esoteric knowledge in the West, it's follow the book, or rather the books! In the East there are traditions that have continued their oral and direct transmission of wisdom and technique until the present day. In the West oral transmission essentially ceased and the esoteric traditions of the West from the Middle Ages onward have been heavily literary, dependent to a great extent on learning from books. Therefore, when you trace the history of grimoires, books of magic, as Davies has done, you can see the importance of magic books.
I was particularly taken by the incredible notoriety of DeLaurence, who I'd always taken as a plagiarist and publisher of pulp [Davies has a whole chapter called Pulp Magic!] In South America, in the Caribbean and especially in Jamaica, DeLaurence became notorious and the possession of his "Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" the key to magical credibility.
So we have everything, King Solomon, Greek Magical Papyri, Hermes Trismegistus, Picatrix, Ficino, Agrippa, Key of Solomon, 17th & 18th century Europe and America, Petit Albert, Red Dragon, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Books of Moses, Freemasonry, Joseph Smith, Voudun, Santeria, Allen Kardac, Hoodoo, Paschal Beverly Randolph, the Golden Dawn, Crowely, Necronomicon, Anton Levey, Gardner and Wicca. All the disparate strands of Western esotericism, all connected by grimoires!
Excellent, really excellent! This is exactly what an academic study is useful for, placing things in historical perspective. Definitely extremely useful and worth getting!
OWEN DAVIES is Reader in Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. His previous books include The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts; Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard; and Cunning-folk: Popular Magic in English History.
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, while it is a very good survey of magical books in the West from the Middle Ages to the present, actually is much more, the best study of esotericism in the West I have read yet.
When it comes to astrology, alchemy, magic and esoteric knowledge in the West, it's follow the book, or rather the books! In the East there are traditions that have continued their oral and direct transmission of wisdom and technique until the present day. In the West oral transmission essentially ceased and the esoteric traditions of the West from the Middle Ages onward have been heavily literary, dependent to a great extent on learning from books. Therefore, when you trace the history of grimoires, books of magic, as Davies has done, you can see the importance of magic books.
I was particularly taken by the incredible notoriety of DeLaurence, who I'd always taken as a plagiarist and publisher of pulp [Davies has a whole chapter called Pulp Magic!] In South America, in the Caribbean and especially in Jamaica, DeLaurence became notorious and the possession of his "Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses" the key to magical credibility.
So we have everything, King Solomon, Greek Magical Papyri, Hermes Trismegistus, Picatrix, Ficino, Agrippa, Key of Solomon, 17th & 18th century Europe and America, Petit Albert, Red Dragon, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Books of Moses, Freemasonry, Joseph Smith, Voudun, Santeria, Allen Kardac, Hoodoo, Paschal Beverly Randolph, the Golden Dawn, Crowely, Necronomicon, Anton Levey, Gardner and Wicca. All the disparate strands of Western esotericism, all connected by grimoires!
Excellent, really excellent! This is exactly what an academic study is useful for, placing things in historical perspective. Definitely extremely useful and worth getting!
OWEN DAVIES is Reader in Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. His previous books include The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts; Murder, Magic, Madness: The Victorian Trials of Dove and the Wizard; and Cunning-folk: Popular Magic in English History.
