Book

Secrets of the Magickal Grimoires

Aaron Leitch's study asks what the medieval grimoires actually were and how a modern magician might practice them whole. Part one is the philosophy. A survey of the classical texts, from the Picatrix and the Key of Solomon through the Lemegeton, the Sworn Book of Honorius, Abramelin and the Dee diaries, is followed by the book's central argument: that the grimoiric art descends from shamanism, carried through the prophets, Merkavah mysticism and the Baalim Shem into medieval Europe, so that the conjurations read as the urban shamanism of their age. Chapters on the art of ecstasy cover rising on the planes, the old psychotropic ointments, sensory deprivation and fasting; chapters on the art of devotion restore the temple-priest side, with psalmody, confession, words of power and sacrifice in their working roles. Part two is the practice: magickal timing through planetary days and hours calculated in full, and the construction and consecration of the tools, both the celestial implements and the talismanic arts. Six hundred pages of scholarship aimed squarely at practitioners, and the standard reference for the grimoiric revival.

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