Texts

Lynn Thorndike's multi-volume history framed magic and experimental science as intertwined parts of medieval intellectual history, even where later scholarship has revised its assumptions.

The Ars Almadel is a Solomonic angelic ritual text transmitted in early modern grimoire compilations and linked to older angelic invocation traditions.

The Ars Goetia is an early modern Solomonic demon catalogue and conjuring text whose roots and reception belong to the wider grimoire tradition.

The Ars Notoria is a ritual art of memory and learning transmitted in medieval Latin manuscripts.

The Ars Paulina is a Solomonic text of planetary and zodiacal angelic invocation preserved in early modern Lemegeton traditions.

The Book of Oberon is an early modern English ritual magic compilation that preserves and transforms medieval Solomonic and spirit-conjuring materials.

The Book of Soyga is an early modern angelological and cryptographic ritual text associated with John Dee and earlier learned magical traditions.

Johannes Hartlieb's Buch aller verbotenen Kunst, or Book of All Forbidden Arts, is a fifteenth-century German treatment of prohibited arts, witchcraft, and magical practices for princely and moral instruction.

The Key of Solomon is a major Solomonic grimoire tradition transmitted in late medieval and early modern manuscripts, important for ritual purity, seals, conjurations, and textual instability.

Augustine's De divinatione daemonum helped shape Christian explanations of divination, demons, signs, and illicit curiosity.

De imaginibus is a Latin astral-image text attributed to Thabit ibn Qurra and important for theories of talismanic images and celestial timing.

Albertus Magnus's De mineralibus is important for scholastic discussion of stones, occult properties, natural powers, and lapidary traditions.

De occultis operibus naturae names a scholastic problem field concerning hidden natural powers, occult properties, and the boundary between nature and magic.

De radiis, associated with al-Kindi in Latin tradition, theorizes rays, celestial causality, and the efficacy of words and images in medieval natural philosophy.

William of Auvergne's De universo is central to theological discussion of spirits, demons, image magic, and the created order.

Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae transmitted influential classifications of magic, divination, and pagan learning to medieval encyclopedic culture.

The Flowers of Heavenly Teaching names John of Morigny's revised ritual and visionary project for divinely assisted knowledge.

Richard Kieckhefer's Forbidden Rites edits and studies a fifteenth-century necromantic manual.

Grimorium Verum is an early modern printed grimoire important for the post-medieval reception and reorganization of spirit conjuration traditions.

Richard Kieckhefer's translation and study of Johannes Hartlieb's advice for princes places witchcraft, magic, and prohibited arts within fifteenth-century political and moral counsel.

The Heptameron is a ritual magic text attributed to Pietro d'Abano in print tradition and central to early modern angelic and planetary conjuration.

The Hygromanteia is a Byzantine Greek Solomonic ritual tradition that stands behind later Key of Solomon materials and complicates Latin-centered grimoire histories.

Claire Fanger's edited collection studies theurgic ideas and practices from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries.

The Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon is an early modern Solomonic compilation whose parts preserve angelic, demonic, and planetary ritual traditions.

The Liber Juratus Honorii, or Sworn Book of Honorius, is a major Latin ritual text concerning divine vision, angelic hierarchy, and sworn secrecy.

The Liber Lunae is a Latin lunar and astral ritual text associated with image magic, timing, and the broader learned magical manuscript corpus.

The Liber Razielis is a Latin textual complex associated with angelic revelation, astral knowledge, and the figure of Raziel.

The Liber Theysolius is a medieval text associated in recent scholarship with wisdom, familiar spirits, and the pursuit of knowledge through ritualized contact.

The Liber de angelis names a family of Latin ritual texts concerned with angelic knowledge, invocation, and the textual authority of revealed ritual.

Liber experimentorum names a family or genre of experiment-books in medieval learned magic, where recipes, trials, secrets, and operations circulate as textual experiments rather than stable authored treatises.

The Liber visionum is associated with John of Morigny's visionary and ritual reworking of Ars Notoria materials.

Sophie Page's study examines medieval manuscript evidence for magical texts and the codicological contexts in which occult, devotional, and scientific materials circulated.

Sophie Page's monograph examines monastic and clerical engagements with occult approaches to the medieval universe.

The Munich Manual is the fifteenth-century necromantic manuscript edited and analyzed by Richard Kieckhefer in Forbidden Rites.

Roger Bacon's Opus Majus is central to medieval discussions of experiment, language, optics, astrology, and the status of knowledge later associated with magic and science.

The Latin Picatrix is the principal medieval Latin witness to the Arabic Ghayat al-hakim and a central source for astral image magic.

The Secretum Secretorum is a pseudo-Aristotelian mirror-for-princes and knowledge compendium whose medieval reception intersects with astrology, physiognomy, medicine, and occult counsel.

The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses are early modern/modern grimoire traditions relevant to the long reception of biblical magical authority.

The Speculum astronomiae classifies astrological and image-making texts and became a crucial witness for scholastic attempts to distinguish licit astronomy from illicit image magic.

The Sworn Book of Honorius is a major medieval ritual magic text concerned with divine vision, angelic hierarchy, and ritual discipline.

The Testament of Solomon is a late antique demonological text that made Solomon a paradigmatic commander of spirits in later magical and literary traditions.

Frank Klaassen's study examines illicit learned magic in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Benedek Lang's study of manuscripts of learned magic in Central European libraries foregrounds codicology, ownership, and library context as evidence for learned magical transmission.