Thoughts on the Definition of Magic

 

Recently, someone proposed that the specific definition that Aleister Crowley gave to magic in his work “Magic In Theory and Practice” did more harm than good regarding how magic is worked today. While I have attempted to define magic in my very first book, “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick,” I saw that it lacked a certain clarity that I now possess. When I saw this statement on Face Book and the resultant conversation, my immediate thoughts were to agree and also disagree. Crowley wrote his thesis and defined magic in his book written in the late 1920's, and that was nearly 100 years ago. Is anything still absolutely relevant after that length of time? While I liked Crowley’s book “Magic In Theory and Practice”, I also found it to be very complex and not particularly easy to read.

My basic opinion is that Crowley was very much a part of the evolution of magic, and brought it from the 19th century to the 20th century. He further clarified and gave an elaborate but consistent definition to the word magic. He also used the spelling “magick” to differentiate it from the common magic of prestidigitation and causing illusion through trickery. I also adopted this spelling for a while, but found that it didn’t lend itself to referring to practitioners of magic as “magickians.” I have also come to believe that stage magic is just as much a form of magic, and that in the previous age that were considered part of the regimen of the art of magic.

Let’s look at what Crowley had to say about magic and how he defined it. This is the quote that has been proposed as the stumbling block for magicians today.

“Magick is the art and science of causing change in conformity with will.”

And also, the corollary definition, which is: 

“ANY required Change may be effected by application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium to the proper object.”

This sounds like a proper scientific theory, although it is so obviously a truth that it probably doesn’t need to be proven empirically. Of course such a set of definitions would not exclude any number of mundane activities and therefore, could not differentiate them from magic. For instance, if I have an objective, such as finding and getting a new job, or looking for a significant other, I could use magic to aid in this work, but I could use regular mundane actions to do it as well. In fact if I were to engage in either of these pursuits and used magic to aid me, I would also need to engage in the associated mundane activities to ensure success. The purpose of combining mundane steps with magical ones is to bend the laws of probability for something to happen. I doubt that such a pursuit of material objects could be achieved by working magic alone. 

That being said, it would seem that Crowley’s definition of magic is too general to be useful, but behind it are some very thoughtful clues as to how a successful magical operation could be pursued. This is the methodology of applying some kind of personal force through the correct medium or link to a given object to influence a probable outcome. That would seem to aptly define a basic operation using magic to achieve a material outcome, with the caveat that the proper medium is the all-important magical link. Crowley goes on to define what a magical link is, and I think that this was an important factor in defining magic. It just doesn’t explain all the other forms of magic that are practiced today. In that sense it might be seen as misleading, but I think that it is a useful but incomplete and overly generalized definition of magic.

If we look at the popular definition of magic as found in any dictionary, we come up with the following definitions. This, of course, is how magic is defined by popular consensus despite all of the years that it has been developed, refined and brought into the 21st century by practitioners and social scientists.

“The use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces. An extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source. Incantations or enchantments. The art of producing illusions by sleight of hand.”

Popular consensus about magic requires a belief in the supernatural and that magical power is a supernatural force. Other popular definitions discuss engaging or conjuring of spirits and forcing them to produce supernatural effects and achieve material objectives through their intervention. In fact, in the previous age, before the European Enlightenment, human beings were thought to have no inherent powers and that it was only through the artifice of angels, demons or neutral spirits could a human being cause seemingly miraculous changes in the material world. Also, the public sees little difference between ritual or ceremonial magic and prestidigitation. They are all one thing, and if a person fails to believe in the supernatural, then the whole definition falls completely apart. It becomes, without this belief in the supernatural, a fraudulent activity, trickery and even criminal deceit. 

The 19th century produced two individuals who changed the perception of magic in the various occult communities, those who had adhered to various beliefs from the previous age and were backed by the philosophy of late antiquity, which was neoplatonism. This was also the century when much of the Eastern systems of religious philosophy and metaphysics became available, through the efforts of various intellectuals and organizations such as the Theosophical Society, Spiritism, and various quasy Masonic organizations, such as the Golden Dawn. One of the chief proponents of magic in the 19th century was Eliphas Levi, from whom the Golden Dawn got its definition of magic, and where MacGregor Mathers made it into an accessible practice. Levi proposed a down-to-earth definition of what magic was, and detached it from the belief in the supernatural and the theatrics of popular stage magic. Here is how Levi defined magic.

“The three chief components of Levi's magical thesis were: Astral Light, the Will and the Imagination. Levi defined the Astral Light as a blind, amoral, universal force that sweeps all before it in a perpetual and restless search for equilibrium.”

 Levi came up with this idea about the Astral Light from the writings of Carl Reichenbach, who conjectured that there was what he called an “odic” force in the universe, which was a hypothetical vital energy or life force believed to exist by many in the mid-19th century. Reichenbach himself was strongly influenced by the writings of Mesmer about animal magnetism. The idea of the existence of the Astral Light was picked up the Theosophical Society since it melded well with Eastern philosophies concerning the life-force or prana. 

While Levi and the Golden Dawn brought the practice of magic from out of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the 19th century, the definitions that they used still seemed very nebulous and not very factual. While eliminating the idea of the supernatural was a good step in the right direction, it seemed that adding forms of metaphysics made the definition more confusing. However, when Crowley wrote up his definitions of magic there had not yet been anything succinct or definitive to say about how magic was actually defined. Still, it was an evolving process that continues to this day, and Crowley’s definition was just a step in that process. It is easy to criticize his definition and also to remark that it could easily lead one astray as it could help define what magic is and how it functions. Still, it is also important to see Crowley’s definition from the perspective of the context of the time in which it was presented.

Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists spent a great deal of time from the 19th century and well into the 20th century studying and remarking on the phenomenon of the practice of magic in so-called primitive societies. While they accepted the idea that magic was deficient and based on superstition, they attempted to explain how these less enlightened societies believed about themselves, their world and how magic fit into that world. Frazer was the first to write volumes on the topic, attempting to universalize the idea of magic and to define its different component beliefs, and many others followed suit, such as Malinowski , Freud, and then later Jung, Marcel Mauss, and  Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe. 

O’Keefe was interesting because he speculated that magic was the expropriation of religious rites and ceremonies from public and state religions for the selfish purpose of achieving personal gain. He flipped the narrative that Frazer had developed (and Crowley accepted) that magic was the precursor to science. I felt that O’Keefe was quite correct for certain forms of magic as practiced in Europe from antiquity through the Renaissance. However, he did not take into account primitive forms of magic and shamanism that were the bedrock of what early societies defined as magic and did not depend on the expropriation of religious practices.

All of these various academic perspectives about magic were from an etic or external perspective, and they were not emic, or from the standpoint of the magical practitioner. They also did not define either how magic worked or what was happening in nature to allow it to function. I believe that only practitioners can define magic from the inside as long as they don’t seek to postulate some kind of unknown electromagnetic force as its underlying physical basis.

Jung brought up the idea of synchronicity and the powers of cultural and religious symbolism as archetypes of psychic transformation, and Campbell and Eliade discussed the powers and impact of cultural myths and their language that underlie the psychology of the individual and the societies at large. Magic also seems to employ a combination of imagination and metaphor that is a lot like what children do when the play pretend. Eastern religious philosophy talks about a vital force called prana, and this force is integral to life, and especially conscious life. It also functions as a metaphor that proposes that everything is connected to everything else, and that through this web of union, one individual may effect many individuals.

All of these theories seem to saying that the consciousness of the individual and the collective consciousness of the societies that they live in have a great and powerful influence on the social environment and its material basis in the world. They also seem to imply that the imagination as unfettered creativity, combined with the power of symbols and myths can make a phenomenon like magic part of the conscious equation. It can also produce great literature, art, poetry, theater, music, and the various powerful sentiments of human existence. It is the driver for religion and its individual exponent, mysticism. Within this perspective is what we would define as Spirit, and all the collective attributes of the religious and mystical phenomena of Deities, devils, angels, demons, nature spirits, mythical creatures, legendary heros and heroines, ghosts of our ancestors, and the hosts of what had once been defined as supernatural, now defined as the products of the greater mind of humanity. While Carl Sagon despaired over the continued human proclivity for what he defined as superstition, I see it as an integral part of the phenomena of human consciousness.

Science allows us to be rational and empirical when approaching the physical phenomena of the material world, and it has created mathematics, technology, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, astrophysics, engineering and the overall standards for objectivity. Yet science cannot explain the phenomenon of consciousness itself, and it cannot abrogate the necessary human tendency to sentimentalize, imagine, feel through emotions, and express oneself through passion. There is still a place for the Arts in our world, and may the Gods save us if we ever lose that important aspect of being human.

So, based on all of these ideas and theories, how do we define magic from an emic perspective? I will attempt to define magic here, but of course, mine is not the last word.

There are seven basic models of magic, and each explains part of the phenomenon of magic. There is the spirit model, the energy model, the psychological model, the stocastic model, the temporal model, the information model, and the metaphysical or theurgic model. What all of these models have in common is the peculiarity of consciousness. They represent different definitions and viewpoints on the phenomenon of magic, but they also fail to define it from a unified perspective. We can merge them into a single perspective that is relevant to the modern world, since previous ages had very different cultural foundations through which magic typically defined.

Magic is a psychological process that occurs in the mind and has no actual physical representation in the material world, except, perhaps, from the perspective of neurology. It relies on rare altered states of consciousness as its foundation, and it utilizes transformative symbols, religious attributes and belief systems woven into rituals and ceremonies and directed by symbolic tools and artifacts. It can be employed in a singular manner with a single objective, whether material or conceptual. It can also be employed to enhance, instruct, inspire, illuminate, and ultimately, cause its practitioners to ascend into a state of permanent enlightenment and union with the monistic exemplar of consciousness itself. It proposes a form of rapid and contagious spiritual evolution that can be achieved in a single lifetime, although it typically attracts those who initially seek material power over their lives and circumstances. 

Magic is protean in its form and function because all models and perspectives can be shown to be correct in some manner, including that magic doesn’t even exist. It can be perceived differently by different people, and everyone who practices magic sustains their belief in it through their perception of its efficacy. There are very few rules that govern magic, and often what breaks the rules is more effective than what complies with them. It is also a phenomenon that seems to have a separate conscious volition and character, and it often behaves as if it were an entity instead of a phenomenon of individual human consciousness. 

Magic is also the process whereby individuals build meaning, significance and a sense of purpose or destiny onto their life’s path, pulling them out of the meaninglessness of their trivial secular society, the happenstance of the material world and the seemingly autonomous universe at large. Modern magic is as important to our post modern world as organized religion was to the pre-modern and modern ages. Yet it remains to be seen if this varied process can meet or exceed the objectives of a human system of conscious evolution as religion had functioned in the past.

Frater Barrabbas

What is Armadel - A Person or Process

 

This is another article on the Grimoire Armadel, which I have been fascinated with ever since I bought the hard cover edition back in the 1980's. I have already written a few articles in the past about this subject, and this article mirrors some items that I have already written in my first article on the subject, and you can find it here. There are some new concepts and refinements in this article compared to the previous one, but you can read that article to get a broader idea about my approach to this wondrous grimoire.

The name Armadel, used for a specific grimoire, is often confused with Almadel and Arbatel. The Almadel is a scrying table made up of beeswax candles and a small table inscribed with sigils and a shew stone in the center. Arbatel is the name of a Paracelsian system of planetary magic that uses the seven Olympian spirits and their associated seals. Both of these systems predate the Grimoire Armadel, which was likely composed in the mid 17th century. So, these three similar names represent very distinctly different systems of magic, although the Armadel system does borrow some attributes from both the Almadel and the Arbatel.

An obvious question is to figure out what Armadel means, if it has any meaning, or whether it is a proper name for an individual lost to time, or if it is a process or type of magic. I think it is a process or type of magic, but there is evidence for other perspectives. What we need is a definitive definition, and that might not be available to us, since whether a name or a process, it was an obscure word that had a limited use by occult practitioners well over four hundred years ago.

Some authors have speculated that the name Armadel refers to an individual, whether legendary or actual. Since there are no famous individuals named Armadel, but there obviously are for Solomon, Faust, Saint Cyprian, or Albertus Magnus, then if we consider it to be a name we might be making an erroneous assumption. A version of the Key of Solomon in the British Museum has the title “The True Keys of Solomon by Armadel,” which could infer that Armadel was the pseudo name of a legendary author, or the “by Armadel” could be interpreted as “by means of” instead of indicating the author. Still, the idea that there was someone named Armadel has persisted. There are a few other 17th century anonymous grimoires whose authorship is attributed to Armadel, which only confuses the matter to properly identify what or who Armadel actually is.

I have used my rudimentary linguistic skills and I cannot find any kind of definitive word combination in Hebrew, Latin or Greek. So, it is word that exists without an actual meaning, or one that can’t be easily derived. It is likely some kind of a name. I had proposed in my previous article that Armadel was from the Hebrew A’arum Mod EL ערום־מאד־אלָ, which loosely means “God’s Powerful Skill”, but that was a weak translation. What I have gotten from translating that Hebrew phrase is “Naked from God.” Another approach could be Armata El, where the ‘t’ in Aramata became a ‘d’ like the word ‘armada’, and in Latin it means army, so it would be the “Army of El,” but this is also weak. It might simply be Arma di El, or “weapon of God” in Italian. None of these pseudo translations help to define what Armadel is from a magical perspective.

According to William Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, he states that the earliest published use of Armadel is to be found in a work written by Gabriel Naude, in 1625. In that book, which was a thorough study of the occult works at that time, he wrote about an author who had summarized the art of magic into five distinct categories. These were outlined as the following:

• Art of Trithemius - for invention,
• Art of Theurgy - for elocution,
• Art of Armadel - for disposition,
• Art Pauline - for pronunciation, 
• Art Lullian - for memory.

According to Keith, all these categories had a body of work associated with them except for the Art of Armadel. These five different categories seem similar to the five disciplines used to teach students the basic skills needed to be considered educated, and these were grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic and geometry. Theurgy is a form of magic that is closely related to thaumaturgy, doing the work of the Deity on the material plan, and thereby causing miraculous changes. I don’t know how that would fit with elocution, and the Pauline Art is based on a grimoire that is part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, and works with the angels of the hours and days of the week using a table of practice, thereby sacralizing any calendric event with angelic magic. It doesn’t seem to involve any kind of the development of pronunciation. Invention, disposition and memory seem to adequately define the Trithemian, Armadel, and Lullian arts. There are examples of four of these methodologies, but according to Keith, there is nothing to be associated with the Art of Armadel. I believe that Keith is wrong about Armadel having no examples or body of practice.

I believe that we can determine what the author meant when describing the Art of Armadel as “for disposition” if we examine that word carefully, since it has at least three different meaning contexts. There is the disposition of the self, which is the mood that we are in at the moment or our habitual emotional state. There is also the business disposition of a product or service (how it is disposed), and the legal disposition of a case, or its status or ending. I think that the meaning of disposition in regards to the Art of Armadel fits the business disposition, which would make it a kind of transaction between spiritual entities and the magician. Disposition of the self could also be employed if we would stipulate that the Art of Armadel has a transformative impact on the individual working it. 

So, I think that what is transacted in this kind of magic is a form of knowledge or an inspiring insight or vision, or even to gain an intellectual skill. The later has representations in various grimoires and forms of magic, especially the Ars Notaria of Solomon, which is the perfect example of the Art of Armadel. However, the Ars Notaria has the accompanied verba ignota or words of power to go along with the prayers, the rigorous schedule of operation, and the powerful images; Liber Armadel only has the elaborately colored seals and a vague theological context without any kind of magical schedule for working them, nor any kind of magical language to empower them. These extra tools are omitted from the version of the grimoires that we presently possess. Despite the dissimilarities between the Ars Noteria and the Liber Armadel grimoire, I think that they are a part of the same kind of magical technology. The Ars Noteria is one of the earliest grimoires, and Liber Armadel is one of the latest grimoires. Yet there is a long line of these kinds of magical works from the 13th through the 17th centuries that infrequently appear. Thus, Armadel can be considered one of the disciplines of magic that has a provenance going back to medieval magic and even earlier. 

One of the most powerful and profound systems of magic espoused in the middle ages was called scholastic image magic. It is defined by scholars as a system of magic that focuses on a three dimensional object or a two dimensional icon, such as a talisman or an elaborate magical seal in order to invoke or evoke a heavenly body or a powerful spirit to imbue it with power. The empowered object then acts as an instrument to inspire the operator, who then channels its effect into the material plane, or internalizes it into their mind. This kind of magic typically worked with astrological imagery and correspondences, but could also include angels, whether classical or of unknown origin; but the result was to powerfully alter the mind of the operator, and to empower them to change the material world, either directly or indirectly. 

This type of magic emerged from Arabic and Jewish sources, and was utilized to build a body of magic in Europe, beginning in the 12th century. When we consider the Art of Armadel, we are examining this category of image magic where astrological symbols and correspondences or magical icons and seals of spirits in certain theological contexts were used to transform the operator and then through them, to alter their material or intellectual situation. Thus the Art of Armadel has a long history in the annals representing the various stages of image magic, and it is still important today. It is my belief that we can link the magical techniques of the notary art with image magic and correctly define what the Art Armadel is as a system and its importance and relevance today.

My most recent inspiration is that because the Grimoire Armadel lacks an invocative language or verba ignota to conjure and empower the various seals, I realized that because the Art Notaria of Solomon is closely related as a type of magic, and that it is focused on certain mastery of specific intellectual practices and disciplines, I might borrow the powerful verba ignota from that grimoire to use with the Armadel. It was like a significant piece of the puzzle dropped into my lap to combine some elements of the Ars Noteria with the Armadel. Since there are other purloined magical technics from other grimoires in the Armadel, why not add one more to fully empower it as a completed grimoire. I suspect that there is no precedence for doing this, but the idea seems inspired to me, so I will comb through the Ars Noteria and find those sections of powerful invocations that would match up with the theological based seals in the Armadel. I think that this is a fascinating approach, and I intend to follow through on it.

Overall, I believe that giving the title to a grimoire the name that represents an entire antique tradition of magic might be considered presumptuous or even hyperbolic; but examining the seals in this book reveals that it could be considered the final and powerful exemplar of that magical discipline. After the end of the 17th century, magic and even alchemy in the 18th century started to become labeled as fraudulent by the various legal systems of Europe and then by the intelligentsia, thereby being replaced by the empirical sciences. Thus, magicians lost the meaning of the discipline of Armadel and its associated magical arts. So, when this grimoire in two forms was found by Mathers in the Arsenal Library in the late 19th century, they were considered novel and mysterious. The colored seals certainly had an inspiring effect on Mathers when he perused these manuscripts, and he wisely saw them as very remarkable, which is why he translated and produced his English language version. 

Even though Keith, in his introduction to the 2001 edition of the Grimoire Armadel, wondered why Mathers would have wasted his time translating this work, I think that anyone who has worked with these seals or realizes their provenance would know why Mathers engaged in translating them. I have found the Grimoire Armadel to be one of the most mysterious but also the most powerful grimoires that I have ever worked with. Keith said that this grimoire was a late and unremarkable version, unoriginal and derivative because it borrowed from other systems of magic. However, all grimoires are, for the most part, derivative; but they stand as a part of an evolving discipline. Each grimoire has something unique and empowering to offer the operator. Whether it is the Grimoirum Verum, the Greater or Lesser Clavicles of Solomon, Liber Juratus, the Ars Notaria, the Heptameron, the Almadel, the Arbatel, the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the Grand or Petite Albert, the Red or Black Dragons, or many others, the Grimoire Armadel is a remarkable part of that history of grimoires and stands equally with them throughout the medieval period to the modern.

Frater Barrabbas 

New Year 2026 - End of Stasis and Wintering

 

The New Year has started, and there were a few final items that need to be resolved so that I would be able to move forward with my magical life, and my wintering will finally be over. I wrote about my wintering a while back, and you can find the article here. It has been almost nine years since my last big magical working, and much has changed over that period. I moved first to Richmond in 2018, and then last year, I moved to Williamsburg. My house in Richmond was not able to accommodate a temple, so I went without a temple until I moved into my new home in 2025. Yet there were other blockages that prevented me from moving forward.

Since the first week of June, we put our old house up for sale, hoping for a quick sell. We had already moved into our new house by early May, and had effectively moved most of our belongings from the old home to the new. Still, after three months of not getting even a single offer, I decided to dedicate my new temple, recently assembled, to resolving that issue. Divination showed that there were larger economic issues occurring, mostly associated with the Trump administration and the tariffs that they had employed in a chaotic manner back in April. 

Prior to April, it had been a sellers’ market, and after the tariffs went into effect, the market changed within 30 days to become a buyers’ market. This happened because the money needed to purchase a house was tightened due to the economic instability fostered by Trump’s on again and off again tariffs, and the uncertainty of the overall economic future in the U.S. Suddenly, there were more houses for sale than places to rent, and the money needed for loans was harder to get. All this created an economic storm that blocked the selling of our old house. We were locked into a financial situation of having to pay mortgages and supporting expenses on two homes, and that burden, while not small, we could support. Yet it made things economically tighter for us and overall, our transition to our new home, more difficult to complete.

I decided to take some magical action and activate my talismanic machine that I had set up in my temple. I placed a consecrated sigil, which would help us sell the house, into the center of the septagramic icon with the charged metallic talismans arrayed around it and fully energized. It had not taken me long to develop a suitable sigil and I consecrated it when saying a special votive Mass rite. I then used the energy of the Mass to trigger and activate the talismanic array. While performing this magic, I had a vision of myself standing on a rocky plateau in a deadly desert storm with a mighty headwind blowing against me. It seemed to block my ability to move forward while blinding me and scouring my face and hands. I sensed that this was a symbolic analogy showing the difficulties arrayed against me when attempting to sell our old home. 

I heard a voice saying to me amidst the noise of the storm that these head winds are not of my making nor my fault. They are the results of powers beyond my control. Even despite the emotional impact that this vision produced in my mind, when I energetically invoked the talismanic field with its sigil imprint, the energy that I experienced inspired and powerfully motivated me to use my magic to aid our quest. I would endeavor to persevere despite the seemingly hopelessness of the situation. I knew, when I was releasing this talismanic field that I was fighting against the regime itself, which was seeking to thwart those of lesser economic means the ability to receive the material rewards of their hardworking efforts and their steadfast adherence to the laws of the land. It seemed that the storm was produced to afflict the little people and not aimed at the wealthy or the politically connected, who didn’t need to follow the laws or work hard to enrich themselves. I understood that it would take longer to achieve selling our old home, but I was set on this path regardless of the circumstances. Thus, in unleashing this magical field I was defying the regime, and I was going to war against the evils that were seeking to destroy the middle class.

Some days later, in the midst of this ordeal, I had Another vision that occurred when I was doing some divination on the progress of the magic that I had unleashed. On two consecutive Tarot card readings occurring over a few weeks, I was getting the Tarot trump Atu XVI, The Tower, at the end of the reading, and I naturally felt a certain dread about my future and the course that my magic was taking. When this occurred for a second time, much to my dismay, I felt my Deity reach out to me, and I heard a voice in my head instruct me to lower the price that I was asking for the house. We had already lowered it twice, but not significantly. It seemed that this new asking price would mitigate the possibility of financial ruin, which is how I interpreted the Tarot trump, the Tower. Because this card had quite unnerved me, I began to wonder if I was misinterpreting it. My wife and I were not in any kind of dire straights economically, but we were supporting two households and accumulating credit card debt. That could lead to difficulties if there was any kind of economic crisis that happened nationally, or if one of us lost our job.

Still, it was only after I had lowered the asking price of our house to the value I had been mysteriously shown that we began to get greater interest in the house, with several public showings sponsored by our realty partner. Our real-estate agent was also using whatever mechanisms she had to help us sell the house. The combination of magic, lowering the price at a strategic time and the efforts of our realtor helped to finally seal the deal. We got two offers during my Thanksgiving break, and chose the best and most secure one. That made the holiday quite exciting, and gave us something to be grateful for. Our wise choice in selecting a good real estate agency and the magic that I had deployed made all this possible. 

We signed a contract in early December, and the house was sold in mid January. The couple who bought it had been looking for a home for quite a while and saw in our old home a spacious and affordable new home for themselves. They had been living in a cramped apartment and wanted a real home, and our place was just the right size and price, and they fell in love with it. Hearing their story really warmed my heart, and I wished them a very happy and bountiful future.

It would seem that the classical interpretation of the Tower card in the Tarot deck has greater nuance and alternative meanings than I initially realized. While it does often symbolize drastic changes, unexpected crises, and the overturning and fall of an established house or order, that interpretation was not correct for the two readings that I had performed. What I sensed through my intuition is that it symbolized the final transition of a household, so it can also mean the ending of an old residence and station in one’s life. It represented for me that the house was going to sell if I persevered, using my intuitive sense of what should be done (lowering the asking price). It was the end of a home life, but the beginning of a new one, which is a transition finally completed. There was no disaster nor financial bankruptcy, and I and my family were not brought to economic destruction by our own hubris. It was an ending, and as far as our old home was concerned, we had departed and were detached from it to make room for new owners. I will have to remember that subtle interpretation, and also understand that magical work can and does make material change happen according to one’s will or desire.   

Because of all the economic turbulence created by the Trump regime, it took us over six months to sell the house. Yet I was grateful for that event when it happened, and I felt a powerful dispelling of my angst and economic worries. We also realized a large profit from the sale, and this would help us deal with any future blow-back coming from the Trump regime. We will sit tight, give money to the Democratic party (who else?), offer monetary help to the needy and the dispossessed, and vote for all elections, great and small. Hopefully, we can start off the next new year, 2027, with a profound shift in political power to the left, and the beginning of the deconstruction of the Trump administration. It will be a long and dreadful year starting today, but there is hope for the future.

What this also means is that I am now free to plan and perform new magical workings. My transition is complete, and my magical resources, so focused on selling the house, can now be used to perform other workings. Even though it is the middle of winter, I am realizing that the end of my long period of wintering is at hand, and that a new Spring and a rebirth to my magical practice is soon to follow.

Frater Barrabbas 

Books Published by Frater Barrabbas

Here is the literary guide to books that I have written over the years, starting back in 2007, when I wrote my first book Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick. I had to learn how to write these kinds of non-fiction books, and it was quite a struggle for me. I am not a gifted writer, and it took me years to achieve a certain level of literary mastery. I have also included in this list books that are yet in the planning stages. All of this material was already developed and written years ago, but poorly written and not appropriately organized to pass on to my readers. Still, it represents my work of over 50 years.

1. Disciples Guide to Ritual Magick - first published 2007, republished 2024
2. Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick - revised 2013, republished 2024
3. Magical Qabalah for Beginners - first published 2013, to be republished 2027 as Practical Qabalah for Occultists
4. Spirit Conjuring for Witches - published 2017
5. Elemental Powers for Witches - published 2021
6. Talismanic Magic for Witches - published 2023
7. Sacramental Theurgy for Witches - published 2024
8. Transformative Initiation for Witches - published 2024
9. Liber Nephilim - published 2024
10. Mastering the Art of Witchcraft - published 2024
11. Abramelin Lunar Ordeal - published 2025
12. Magical Notary Art - published 2025
13. Liber Artis Archaeomancy volume 1 - to be published 2026
14. Liber Artis Archaeomancy volume 2 - to be published 2027
15. The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary volume 1 - to be published 2028
16. The Gnostic Tetrasacramentary volume 2 - to be published 2028

Books being written or in planning stages by Frater Barrabbas.

1. Ordeal XV - possible publishing date 2029
2. Liber Armadel: Grimoire of Image Magic - possible publishing date 2029
3. Liber Magister Magiae Talismanicae: Advanced Planetary Magic - possible date 2030
4. Liber Nephilim Additum: Additional Rites and Workings - possible date 2030
5. Liber Gnosis Stellaris Septem Radiorum - possible date 2031
6. Order of the Gnostic Star: Organization, Rites and Ceremonies - possible date 2032
7. Frater Barrabbas Tiresius: An Autobiography. Some time around 2035 or later.

Why have I written and plan on writing so many books? What drives me to do this kind of work, at the cost of time where I could be doing other things like living and engaging with my life? The amount of time it takes to write these books is no small investment, even despite the fact that it concerns rituals, ceremonies and other writings that I have penned or typed decades ago. I have a suite of hand calligraphed grimoires that will all be published in the next few years. While this is my legacy to the occult world and my contribution of a magical technology that I believe is fairly unique and very accessible to anyone who wants to master the art of magic as practiced by someone who is a neopagan and a part of the BTW of witchcraft. 

Many years ago, when I was just in my late teens, I had an intimate relationship with the Goddess and could converse with her in my head, and she was my first teacher, guide and advocate. I believe that she opened the doors to the mysteries for me, but it was all conditional and there were strings attached. First, I belonged to her, mind, body, soul and spirit. Our bond was life-long and even after my life has ended. Second, that I share this knowledge she has inspired me to master, and that I ultimately write it all down in books so that many others would know of my magic and also that she was my primary inspiration. I committed myself to this task, knowing that whatever I achieved magically would need to be communicated to any and all who spoke English, and perhaps not even limited to those people. So, I am consumed with writing and completing this work before my time of life is ended, and considering my age, I decided to pursue this work with a certain degree of alacrity and disciplined focus.

Whether or not my work lasts into future, or if it even is seen as relevant to the study or pursuit of magic and witchcraft, or if magic and witchcraft have a future destiny in the next age, I will pursue my literary career, because the Goddess has willed it, and I, her faithful servant, will do my utmost to see it done.

Frater Barrabbas

Scrying versus Immersion

Lately I have seen a number of beautifully constructed scrying stands called variously Trithemius table of workings or watchtower scrying stands. I recall that Alex Sanders possessed one of these devices and they appear to be a popular tool amongst ceremonial magicians today, especially those espousing a more traditional approach to grimoire magic. As impressive and beautiful as these devices are, they rely on an age-old approach to interacting with the domain of Spirit, or the Inner Planes, and that is to activate one’s clairvoyant abilities and summon spirits, opening a “gateway” within the scrying stone to see and relate what the spirits say, or to receive symbolic and visionary imagery, or a combination.

While this might seem like a very impressive and powerful mechanism to communicate with entities and to gain a visionary insight into the domain of Spirit, and it has now become a very popular methodology, it is not the only method of communication and visual entry into that domain. It also relies on the abilities and attuned senses of the scryer, and I believe that clairvoyance is something that is neither consistent nor reliable. There are methods of astral projection, spirit vision, and a system that I have developed, which is what I call immersion. First, let’s look at scrying and see what it is like.

If we look back at the history of this technique or approach to magical operations, the most famous scrying sessions were those that were performed by Edward Kelly for Dr. John Dee. While Edward Kelly functioned as the scryer, what was passed by him to John Dee was carefully examined and given a coherent context, so that it was actually the two of them working together who brought forth the Enochian system of magic. Edward Kelly, by himself, could not have produced such an ordered and sensible system, and without him, John Dee could not have penetrated the unseen world of angels and good spirits. 

Yet Edward Kelly was sporadic, moody, and not always able to produce results, and it is likely that some of what Kelly passed to Dee was not particularly significant, coherent, or informative. While the Enochian system itself is nearly peerless, much of what the angels and spirits passed to Dee through Kelly was deceptive, erroneous or even somewhat delusional. Promises were made by the various spirits and angels of wealth and fame, but failed to have any practical application or basis in reality. Kelly went off on one of his escapades seeking to exploit the secret of alchemically producing gold, and Dee succumbed to poverty and defamation after returning home. Without Kelly, Dee was never able to produce the results that he had previously.

This example of scrying is probably one of the greatest and best known, but other examples show an inconsistency in producing results that might otherwise be a potential occult breakthrough, like what Dee managed to produce, and instead have a tendency toward triviality and irrelevancy. Even Dee passed on a lot of communications in his diaries that are mostly irrelevant and trivial, making them particularly meaningless today to modern occultists. This tendency toward irrelevant communications was also what happened during mediumistic trance sessions in the 19th century Spiritualism movement. I believe that indirectly contacting the domain of Spirit either through a trance medium or a scrying session loses a lot of context and meaning by being displaced from the place where the spirits actually reside, which is a domain ruled by symbols and analogues, much like the place of lucid dreaming. 

I think a better example of what is required for a closer, direct, and intimate communication are the mystery cults of the dead and death, where the candidate was expected to journey to a place or sacred location and experience the mystery physically and mentally immersed. This is true regarding the Eleusinian Mysteries, or others, like the Oracle of Trophonius with the famous grave passage, or the Oracle at Delphi, found in a remote cave. However, since I live in the U.S., I lack any such famous historically sacred place or location that could be considered a gateway into the underworld. However, the idea of a location where a gateway to the underworld could be found or even forced is a compelling example of what I have come to know as immersion.

Crowley, in his masterful ordeal, performing the 30 invocations of the Aethyrs and fully realizing their powerful and transformative visions, was done in the backdrop of the sacred space of the great Algerian Saharan desert. Crowley performed these rites in a physically sacred space, intoning the 19th Enochian key, and did not use any kind magic circle to protect himself or his accomplice. There also wasn’t any scrying stone or other kind of device. Crowley's experiences was direct and without any boundary or obstacle, so his magical experience was through immersion. I believe that the magical process of immersion made his book, “Vision and the Voice” containing these experiences far more potent than they would have been had he employed a system of scrying.

Unlike Crowley, I couldn’t travel to some far away land to perform my magic in some sacred place. Lacking any sacred terrain to make this kind of underworld egress, I did find two powerful and useful tools in my regimen of ritual structures. That is the triangular gateway ritual structure and the cross-roads negative vortex ritual structure. These are patently new ritual structures that I have not found in any other system of ritual magic. They work with the symbology of entering the underworld, and generate the appropriate energy fields that simulate entry into another domain, and combined together, produce a potent analogue of the underworld entrance that is a key to acquiring an immersion within the energized symbology of the underworld and all that it contains. 

This magically defined domain that the magician has entered is highly suggestible, allowing the magician to define and establish a specific domain associated with a spirit that they would seek to summon. A magician then uses the symbols of correspondences associated with a specific spirit to build an imagos or image body for the spirit, and to define its home or domain. A spirit body is generated through an elemental or energy construct, and its intelligence is defined through the planets. A spirit’s name is its symbolic key, used to generate a sigil or seal, as well as lending symbolic clues to its essential nature. 

Typically, a spirit also has a location within the Tree of Life (or below it), and has other symbolic qualifiers, such as the four elements, seven planets, twelve astrological signs, and also symbolic numbers and gematria word associations. All these symbols blend together to define a spirit and the place where it resides. When merging this symbology with the cross-roads vortex and the gateway underworld passage, it opens up the symbolic location where the spirit resides and allows for a direct exposure to this entity without a protective magic circle or triangle of evocation getting in the way. Using such a technique to gain a direct encounter with a conjured spirit makes such practices as scrying or evoking through a triangle seem anaemic and too displaced to have the kind of affect of a naked exposure. 

Of course, my critics in the magical practitioner’s world would claim that such a direct exposure would be dangerous, and that it is critically important to shield oneself from potentially hostile spirits and the affects of their mind bending and twisted domain, whether associated with heaven or hell. Because I learned to perform conjurations as a Witch, I did not need to use any kind of protective magic circle to experience a form of immersion with the Gods and Goddesses of Witchcraft. Our magic circle was used to establish a boundary between the sacred realm of our Deities warded by the Dread Lords to fashion a world within a world. We did not need to be protected in our magic circle because it was populated with our powerful Deities and protective guardians. All we needed to perform invocations and evocations was to fortify ourselves to be able to experience such encounters, and to erect within that sacred precinct, a gateway and a cross-road vortex that open it up to the greater domain of the underworld. All magic and liturgy were performed in the same space, so the need for a magic circle of protection and an evocation gateway, as well as use of a scrying stone were for all practical purposes, unnecessary. Using that approach, I have build an advanced magical system based on a Witchcraft magical foundation.

To fortify oneself to perform this kind of magic without boundaries or protective areas, I have developed a methodology based on the Drawing Down rite, which I have renamed as godhead assumption. Since this is also a part of Witchcraft practices, to use it to empower and protect oneself seemed intuitively obvious to me. I made it an integral part of the magic that I perform very early on in my magical development, and it has me and many others quite well in the performance of this kind of ritual magic. Modern Witches and Pagans have always approached engaging with their Deities in a direct manner, and based on the structure of their magic circle and the rites of charging and empowering it, it would seem that ancillary rites to conjure spirits would be performed in a similar manner. Add to that set of liturgical and magical rites a godhead assumption and communion, and what you have is so sacralized environment that functions as the magical and spiritual base for all subsequent magical workings. These practices fuse the liturgical rites and magical rites to formulate a Witchcraft magical system that is entirely theurgic, and channels the Godhead into all the workings that Witches and Pagans might perform.

It is for this reason that I seldom use a scrying stone to gain any kind of magical contact with a spirit. I have no need for this kind of magical operation since I can just go and talk to the spirits first hand in their world. I can use spirit vision to travel with the spirits so they can show me places and give me visions, and I can use incubation, to peaceful sleep in their domain and to dream the answers to my questions. To me spirit vision or astral projection are similar, and sleeping in the activated symbolic domain of the spirit is similar to sleeping in the sacred space of a temple or grove in some faraway place. Additionally, directly engaging with conjured spirits in their domain produces a powerful transformative experience, which can trigger initiations and even brief forms of illumination. It would seem that what I have developed is, in my opinion, superior to the methodology of ceremonial magic that requires boundaries and obstacles so that spirits can only remotely engage with magicians.

My method of immersion is just another technique for gaining access to conjured spirits, and it is certainly not the only one. Scrying is a tried and true practice, and one that is guaranteed to be protected and safe. It also keeps the magician from having spiritual transformations and more direct communications such as might be produced if these boundaries were eliminated. Of course eliminating the boundaries requires fortifying the self through the agency of a Deity, and these kind of practices are specific to the ritual magic performed by Witches and Pagans, so they are not capable of being used by adherents of monotheistic faiths, who lack the agency of godhead assumption. There are possible exceptions, such as when a priest performs a mass rite and briefly becomes the Christ, but that mechanism has not been incorporated into magical workings as far as I know, and extending the mass rite in this manner might be considered blasphemous.

I offer the technique of magical immersion as another method, but I believe that is the best approach for Modern Witches and Pagans to practice the art of spirit conjuration.

Frater Barrabbas

Another Winter of my Discontent

 

 

Reading the national news these days is a form of self-punishment. Every incompetent action, bad-faith policy and focus on supposed “enemies of the State” by this administration makes my teeth grate. There is even an occasional oath and curse word uttered by me when reading, but most times there is a lot of head shaking. I knew that the Trump regime was going to be bad, but it has exceeded my expectations, and there appears to be no bottom to what Trump and his ass-kissing lackeys will attempt to do. With the Congress, Senate and even the Supreme Court enabling, encouraging and siding with Donald J. Trump’s descent into authoritarianism and single party rule, there is little that anyone can do to rectify this situation. The White House has been literally trashed, with the East Wing demolished, the Kennedy Center renamed to the Trump-Kennedy Center, and many other ridiculous and obsequious nonsense is happing every day, such that it could cause anyone who actually loves their country (but never unconditionally) to lose heart and succumb to despair. What we have is a unitary presidency, based on the fever dreams of the far rightwing conservatives who were appalled at the fall of Richard Nixon and sought to make the president a law unto himself, as long as he is Republican. (They wouldn’t want a Democrat to have the same powers, of course.)

Our nation has unwittingly become its shadow form, espousing ideals and beliefs that are completely contrary to those that were used to found our nation. A president acting like a dictator who is lawless and enabled for egregious overreach, with a compliant Federal law enforcement seemingly doing the work of a mob family, where news corporations and institutions are forced to comply to the whims of the dear leader with money and obedience. Where graft is not hidden but a public spectacle of presidential power, and where the whole point of power is to harm those people identified as undesirable, such as federal workers, migrants seeking asylum, foreign workers, and those who are poor and without opportunities. It is regime that appears to reinforce white privilege and Evangelical Christianity, but only rewards the rich and powerful. It is a place where corruption and lawlessness knows no boundaries as long as it is promoted by the president and his supporters, and where Congress and the courts have abrogated their powers, functioning as an instrument of the imperial presidency. It is also a nation that threatens allies, encourages despots, turns it back on the poor of the world, and seeks to start wars of conquest. This is not the nation that I believe in. It is more like some petty but dangerous banana republic with nuclear weapons. 

In this winter of Trump’s first year of his second presidency, transitioning to his second year in office, I am filled with contempt for his cabinet of minions and the population of idiots who voted for Republicans over a year ago. Latinos came out in large numbers to vote for this scoundrel, and now ICE agents are rounding up Latinos even if they have green cards or are citizens. ICE and Homeland Security have become the Gestapo of the Trump regime, pushing forward their pogrom against brown and black people. The list of crimes and abuses of power is now so large that it must be astonishing to everyone what is happening here in our country, if they are paying attention. 

It would seem that those minorities who voted for Trump, and the disaffected who worried about the Biden economy, and the poor white southerners who wouldn’t vote for a brown-skinned woman presidential candidate can now experience an even more chaotic instability, with inflation via tariffs, rising unemployment, and the loss of entitlements and government sponsored assistance. It has become a FAFO scenario, and unfortunately, we are all being collectively punished for the foolishness of a minority of disaffected voters. Those Muslims who voted for Trump or someone else to protest the genocidal war in Gaza and the Biden’ administration complicity now have a president who considers them to be undesirable migrants who should be somehow deported despite their citizenship. When deportation does occur, it isn’t to the place of the deportee’s origin, but to some maximum security prison in El Salvador. 

Yes, all of this is quite bothersome, and I have found that to retain my positive outlook I need to be selective when reading the news. Too much will enrage me, and too little will isolate me, so I have to find a middle ground of being informed but avoiding too many news-worthy details that would make me angry. While typically there is magic and wonder in my heart at the events of the Winter Solstice, Christmas, and Chanukah, as well as the hope and optimism of the New Year, this year I feel that all the crimes pushed by Trump and his minions has spoiled the season for me. This is because, deep down, I really and truly hate and despise this man and those who passionately support him. The Trump and Maga crowd can all go to hell, as far as I am concerned. I have no pity for any of his supporters who are traumatized or injured by the actions of a regime that I don’t even consider to be American. They voted for these clowns, and so they deserve to experience the trauma and bitterness of their foolish choices. As for the rest of the many victims of this regime, I feel deeply and compassionately for them, but helpless to do anything to change their outcomes.

While I pass the time of the holiday season of 2025 in a dreary sense of sorrow for what could have been, and a dread of what might yet come, I realize that this is yet another winter season of my discontent. I am not young, and I have seen the conservative movement in this country grow ever more powerful, exclusive, and powered by White Christian Nationalism. It started with Ronald Reagan, and has proceeded with George W. Bush and Trump 45. Now, with Trump 47, our democratic republic is in serious danger of becoming a autocracy fueled by the money of oligarchs and led by rightwing extremists. This is a transition from a pluralistic democratic society to one that is exclusive, racist, bigoted and fascist. If our nation is to change and go in what I consider to be the right direction, will I still be alive to see a brighter and better nation emerge from the darkness? Or, will I see this decline continue until I, too, am a victim of its hate and brutality?

As a boomer who knew the previous generation in our country who fought the Nazis in Europe and the Imperial Japanese in the Pacific, I never thought I would see the day when fascism became a popular political option in our own country. It saddens me, but I also see the danger to myself personally. This is because I would not fit in country that is run by fascist Christian Nationalists, and it is likely that the goons from ICE will soon turn their attention to other “enemies of the State” and expand their jurisdiction to arrest and detain even citizens. We are actually close to that kind of autocratic state.

Here we are together facing this terrible possibility at the turning of the year, when we say goodbye and good riddance to the year 2025, and face the new year, 2026. However, there are signs that bring hope of a populous backlash against the Trump regime and that the rightwing autocratic movement is starting to show signs of losing its grip on power and that the days left to them to change the government and to establish a permanent power base are numbered. Next year there will be midterm elections, and the consensus based on the public mood does not bode well for the Republican party. They moved too quickly and aggressively pursued their Project 2025 agenda, and now it is seen as too great of an over-reach, and the American people are justifiably angry, dismayed, and firmly opposed to what has been done to them and their country. 

If the Democrats win big next November and take the House and perhaps even the Senate, then Trumpism is doomed. If there is a massive political shift next autumn, it will likely carry into the Presidential election in 2028 as well. I believe that people are alarmed, angry, and deeply opposed to what Trump and his minions have done since gaining political power and pushing their MAGA policies and Project 2025 onto an unwilling electorate. I suspect the aftermath will be one where a number of MAGA principals will find themselves prosecuted by a newly empowered, independent, and Democratic DOJ. There will likely be a corresponding Project 2029 to right the wrongs perpetrated by Trump and his regime, and I hope that the Democrats take the notion of “no more Mr. Nice Guy” to heart and eradicate from our political body any tendencies toward White Christian Nationalism. I would like to see the racists, bigots, and the hosts of the stupid redneck people who empowered MAGA to go underground once and for all. I would also like to see the perpetrators and architects of the MAGA regime prosecuted and jailed for breaking the laws of the land.

We are country that contains people from all over the world, and there is no place at our democratic table for racists, bigots, and rightwing anti-democratic fanatics. Out nation is certainly not perfect, and the injustices that we have done to our citizens over the decades, and the injustices that we have done in the world can be readily atoned for if we vow to continue our work to make our country more just, both within and without, and fix what we have injured or broken.  We have to remember that a just nation guided by laws, both national and international, and one that is dedicated to peace and prosperity, mercy and compassion for everyone, is a nation that people who practice faiths such as Neopaganism, Witchcraft, magic and occultism can feel safe knowing that their rights are protected. As practitioners of a minority religion that espouses ritual magic and occultism, we are like the canaries in the coal mine. If there is a sudden change from democracy to autocracy, we will be some of the first to be prosecuted and imprisoned. So, we need to be civically engaged, kept informed, and to vote our preferences both wisely and compassionately, to ensure that our nation of many races, ethnicities, genders, sexual preferences, and political persuasions stands firmly for democracy, equality, and justice for everyone. 

Frater Barrabbas

Armadel Project for 2026

  

Grimoire Armadel. Actual title: Liber Armadel seu totius cabalae perfectissima brevissima et infallabilis scientia tam speculativa quam practiqua

Translation (Latin): The Book of Armadel, or the whole Cabala, a most perfect, brief, and infallible science, both speculative and practical

It has long been a dream of mine to publish the Grimoire Armadel with all the additional elements and restructuring needed to make it a completely usable grimoire. I would consider it to be the highest achievement amongst all the books I have published and will publish. I decided this last autumn to try to make this dream a reality. Mathers had translated this manuscript from around 1897 through 1899, when he submitted the Book of Abramelin to be published, but this work was never published until around 1980, when his various papers and manuscripts were supposedly acquired by Gerald Yorke, and he and Frances King published a hardcover edition with an introduction through the publisher Samuel Weiser. A later edition, published in 2001, by Weiser, had a soft cover and an introduction by William Keith.

Here is a link to the edition that was published by Weiser. 

First and foremost, I wanted to find an original digital copy of this manuscript from the Arsenal Library in Paris, France, to begin my  work. I didn’t have a clue how to go about requesting that file, and a friend and neighbor said she would try to help me out, since she was an accredited academic. She was, unfortunately, not successful. The reason why I wanted a digital copy is to validate and verify the work that Mathers did, and to what else might be lurking in the pages. I also felt that what was published was either missing some parts, or was structured in some peculiar manner that made it difficult to use as a working grimoire. While I had extracted some seals from the grimoire to use in my gateway icons, and I found them to be very powerful indeed, I felt a strong desire to get the original manuscript, since it had some mysteries that I wanted to resolve.

As for the manuscript, the original version was likely written in the early to middle 17th century, likely part of a family of German Faustian grimoires, which was the veritable golden age of magical grimoires. The actual manuscript that I was looking for in the Arsenal Library was a translated copy penned in the late 17th century and was supposedly confiscated by the famous and first Lieutenant General of the Paris Police (Gabriel Nicholas de la Reynie) who led a purge of cunning folk, alchemists, poisoners, divinators, diabolists, abortionists, and sooth-sayers from the Paris area, who made it a business catering to the gullible whims and dark fancies of the upper class men and women attending the King's court in Versailles. 

This pogrom was triggered by the notorious and infamous Affair of the Poisons scandal (1677) that rocked the court of Louie XIV. De la Reyine, as head of the police, aggressively pursued this perceived social menace for several years, so it went on for seven years until it quietly ended in 1684. It was, in many ways, a kind of Witchcraft persecution, since most of the victims were women, accused of heresy and poisoning, and several were burned as such. I believe that this grimoire was likely part of the larger confiscated hoard that these cunning folk possessed, and they ended up in the possession of de la Reyine. Additionally, De la Reynie's large collection of books, which contained many costly and rare papers and manuscripts written in Greek and Latin, were later purchased by d’Argenson (who became the next Lieutenant General of Police) another wealthy book collector, and that massive library ultimately ended up in the Bibliotheque de l’Arsenal collection, and then into the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BNF). 

No other version of this grimoire has turned up amongst the collections and libraries examined by academics who now are studying this literature. While it is rumored that there might be a German copy in some other place or location, which is possible, it has not appeared amongst any of the writings or reports from those academics who are studying them. It might be that the original German version was lost or destroyed. I believe that there are other copies or versions of this grimoire yet to be discovered, but none have surfaced so far. Since the Armadel was only known to a few French antiquarians and occultists like Mathers, it had little notoriety, Since a translated version only appeared in 1980, it likely that this obscure grimoire may exist in other libraries or collections and fail to be noticed by academics. However, a companion manuscript in the same set of book in the Arsenal Library, the Book of Abramelin, was found to exist in German, and it was an earlier and more complete copy than the French version. Some authors have commented that the tradition of the Armadel has more affinity to German grimoires than the French versions, and others have disagreed.

I have written a blog article about this grimoire and you can find it here.

So, to continue with my story, I was at a loss on how to find this manuscript. I searched the internet, but was not able to find any mention of the actual source. I found out that much of the Arsenal library had been digitized and was part of the BNF collection, but looking for it seemed like a fool's errand, since I found that the public face of the online BNF was not very helpful, especially for someone who doesn't speak French. I only lucked out when I had adjusted my web search to Liber Armadel (instead of the Grimoire Armadel) and found this web page, which had the BNF documents hyperlinked. It was a review written by Dan Harms (Papers Falling from an Attic Window) of the book Editions du Monolithe edition of the Armadel, although it was called Liber Armadel in the text. 

Curiously, the manuscript number that I possessed was incorrect, and the link in the article shows two manuscripts as the source and not one, as I had originally thought. These are the BNF manuscript numbers MS #826 and MS# 2494. I then proceeded to download these two large PDF files of the BNF manuscripts, just as anyone else could do. These two manuscripts were available to the public without any kind of protection, other than a copyright disclaimer embedded in the documents, and pages of the manuscripts were stamped with the Arsenal imprint. 

What I discovered is that the source of Mather’s translation consisted of two manuscripts and not one. MS #826 contains just the Liber Armadel with four pages of text added after the manuscript end vignette, the text of which was never translated. These I set out to translate them myself with my rudimentary skills, but my wife used ChatGPT to translate them from the cursive straight into English. That astonished me, but I am not very trusting or willing to rely on that approach and I wanted to find someone who has the time and can read French and Latin to help me. The other manuscript contains the Liber Armadel grimoire in the first set of pages, but the rest of the manuscript contains another lengthy ad hoc grimoire not associated with the Armadel material. 

No one knows who the author or authors of the Aramdel were, nor what was the original source text, but the manuscripts appear to have been professionally scribed by local artisans for a fee. Still, I could imagine that the manuscripts had once belonged to Abbe Etienne Guibourg, or maybe Adam Lesage, two men out of the 32 mostly women who were the primary victims of the prosecution. Guibourg was a corrupted, debauched, and defrocked priest who reputedly performed several black mass rites; Lesage was the magician and spell caster of the accused group. These individuals were part of the informal group that the principle suspect, called La Voisin (Catherine DeShayes), ran as a profitable underground business. They, unlike many of the women, were not executed, but lived the rest of their lives imprisoned through the legal artifice “lettre de cachet.”

I have already started examining the manuscripts, and as I stated, translated the four pages after the end of the Armadel MS #826, and I have carefully looked over that text and found some remarkable things. The last four pages of this book were never translated by Mathers in his manuscript, which was published finally in 1980. The amazing great seal of the Uriel Operation was published, but not the accompanied text. Of course, all this appears after the end of the book, and it was not deemed important enough for Mathers to translate and include in his book. That omission turned out to be an incredible mistake, since those four pages in MS # 826, (129 - 132), contained the whole key to the grimoire. As it turned out, those four pages, translated by AI, were the key to the whole grimoire, and that surprised me. I am sure that it will astonish my readers as well, since this is the key that unlocks the process of activating the grimoire. I will keep that article from the public for now, but it will be an important part of my own rendition of this grimoire. 

By a most curious turn of events, I have managed to teamed up with a French translator, Eric Gazano, who also happens to be a French national and lives just outside of Marseilles. We met on my author's Facebook page, where he introduced himself. I have shared the two online documents with him, and we have shared messages with each other. I won't be using ChatGPT to translate the manuscripts. That was just a one-time deal, and what it translated will be checked over by Eric. There isn't actually a lot of translation work to be done, because Mathers did a respectable job of translating the two manuscripts, at least the Liber Armadel part. Also, the second manuscript has a lot more material that is completely outside of the my target grimoire, which is of doubtful interest to me.

Here is one of the books that Eric has published. 

Still, I want to compare the two manuscripts with the English translation that Mathers has done, looking for any text that was omitted that would be useful for building a modern grimoire. That is my sole purpose to writing this book. However, MS #2494 is a full grimoire manuscript with Armadel enclosed within it, but additionally, it has many pages of untranslated and never published material. There is obviously two different hands writing this larger book, and some of the pages in the middle are very difficult to read because the ink has faded so badly. I have told Eric that translating and publishing this unknown material would impress the English occult audience, thus making the contents of MS #2494 more accessible. I promised to get him some needed contacts to do this task, and some of my friends could help as well.

One question that I do have is what sections from the two manuscripts were used by Mathers to produce his manuscript, or if only MS #826 was the sole source as some have speculated, and that's where a translator will come in handy. We can also see if Mathers made any translation mistakes or omissions, and where the two manuscripts differ from each other. I am not able to pay Eric for his work, since he has the option of translating the bulk of the second volume, which has a hundred or more extra pages of an eclectic period grimoire to examine, translate and publish if he wishes. I will put his name on the future book as the translator when it is published, and give him some useful PR, and help him publish his work in the U.S., depending on what he has to offer. Getting publishers to publish occult books in France these days without academic credentials is tough for someone who doesn't have the right connections, unlike the U.S. in that regard. At least that is what Eric has told me during our conversations. 

My plan is to take the translation that Mathers has already made, including material that he did not include in his work, and produce a modern magical grimoire that can be used by pagans, witches and ceremonial magicians in the English speaking world. Right now, the translated book that was first published in 1980, and later, a second publisher came out with a new version that was practically the same. Both were eminently fascinating, but was not very usable. In other words, it requires someone to develop a methodology for working magic with the incredible seals found in that book. So, it not only requires translating and deciphering, but also organizing and structuring so that it fits into a modern system of magic. I have my work cut out for me.

All of these occurrences, discovering PDFs of the manuscripts online, connecting with Eric, and getting a lot of support from my publishers seems to be telling me that now is the time for me to start working on this project. This is so exciting and it will be one of my life's long ambitions to publish a workable version of the Liber Armadel for English speaking occultists and magical practitioners.

Here and here are the links to the two BNF manuscripts:

Frater Barrabas