Talk:The Book of Abramelin

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Plenty of google hits, but as it goes with magick, it is hard do separate fantasy from myth, if you know what I mean. The topic seems vaid for wikipedia, but it looks like the author of the article smokes pot. Mikkalai 23:13, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This is definitely something real, and I've tried to give this a bit of context and factual basis. While you are expected to abstain from drinking while you are preparing for this magical ritual, it doesn't mention smoking pot one way or another. Smerdis of Tlön 01:14, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I am going also to remove the accuracy dispute label. I think it's a fair summary of the contents of the book, and anyone who disagrees can check it out themselves since it's online. The fact that it's about magic doesn't make it automatically fantastical. Smerdis of Tlön 13:37, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] What is this about the "personal demon"?

I think we need an edit on this entry. It states that one of the primary goals of the Abramelin Rite is to gain control of one's "personal demon"- the inverse of one's HGA. However, I have not seen this in either the French (Mathers) version or Dehn's English translation of the German original. In both cases, one is to summon the 12 rulers of Hell, who then give over any number of familiar spirits (four primary familiars, plus dozens to use with the Talismans). There is no "inverse Angel" or "personal demon" anywhere in the system. (Unless we consider the familiars to be "personal demons"- which is fine, but that's not what the article is saying at all.) If no one objects, I'll take this part out of the entry. Kheph777 08:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Relevance and content of ‘Abramelin Article’

Firstly I think it is important to note the relevance of the Abramelin system within modern magickal practice and philosophy. Crowley considered the ‘Great Work’, first mentioned in the Sacred Magic, to be the most important spiritual practice of the modern adept. The entire Qabalistic structure of spiritual attainment within his order, Argentium Astrum, being based upon the Abramelin concept of the Great Work. It seems to me that it is as relevant to any discussion of magick as Crowley himself, whose influence is huge not just within magick but also within wider culture.

I am also concerned about the tone of this article, which seems to take a slightly biased angle. Statements such as those relating to the reputation of the Book of Sacred Magic due to it’s connection with the Golden Dawn, seem at best untrue. When we consider that the Golden Dawn was also highly influenced by the Key of Solomo and in fact, Samuel L. MacGregor Mathers (Head of the Golden Dawn) translated both texts, the bias is illustrated further. Then we find statements such as ‘As is typical of such works, the preparations are elaborate and difficult; if the experiments fail, the magicians can always find some flaw in their obedience, rather than blaming the procedure itself.’ This seems emotive and not neutral, would this language be acceptable when describing say the practices of Tibetan Buddhism?

I also think that comments on pot smoking and the conduct of others does not show fairness but instead shows stereotyping and prejudice.

I would be interested to hear comments before I edit the article directly.

If you have further data as to how and why the Abramelin magic got a better reputation than the Key of Solomon, by all means add it. My familiarity with the Key of Solomon comes from A. E. Waite's The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, which from my recollection is far more condescending than this article ever was. It was my understanding from my reading --- mostly, in Crowley's autobiography --- that this grimoire was more respected than its cousins. I went and edited out some of the editorial comments myself.

This article came to my attention when it appeared a couple of weeks ago on Wikipedia:Cleanup. I actually had a copy of the book before me when I added to this article, and I think my additions to the article are a fair summary. -- Smerdis of Tlön 14:28, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think the changes are much clearer, and fairer. Thanks. -- Solar 18:12, 18 Oct 2004 (GMT)

Is there really a manuscript in that parisian library? The book mentions that but it's the only reference I've ever found.

In what ways was the Book of Abramelin influential in the Golden Dawn? I'm trying to establish whether Ronald Hutton is correct when he draws a sharp distinction between the magic of Abramelin ("an elaborate way of ringing for room service") and that of the Golden Dawn (in which the powers invoked are internal, not external, according to Hutton) (Triumph of the Moon, pp. 82-3). I'm looking specifically for examples of the philosophy of Abramelin being carried through into the Golden Dawn system. Also looking for examples (if they exist) of the subjugation of demons within the Golden Dawn system. Thanks.Fuzzypeg 10:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Most people seem to think that the "qlippoth" or demons in Crowley's book 777 come from Golden Dawn teachings, at least those corresponding to the Sephiroth. That also goes for the angelic names. Presumably members of the Golden Dawn used all these names in some way, although they may have interpreted them metaphorically. Crowley first received the "Abramelin" book from an older member of the Golden Dawn, and Mathers had translated the text (from French to English, I assume). See Sutin's biography of Crowley, Regardie's intro to 777, and several references to that book on the web. Dan 20:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Note that Mathers probably changed the Order somewhat (he may have supplied Crowley and other members with the 777 material). And in 1900 the London members rejected his authority, in the first of multiple schisms. For all I know the truth changes depending on which Golden Dawn you look at, and what date. Dan 18:17, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. that's a help. Fuzzypeg 00:14, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This is not a Thelema article

Upgrading Abramelin as part of the Thelema Wiki project is fine, if that results in better writing, but if the aim is to add to it such "standardization" as the use of the Thelema template box shown at right, i strongly object. I am old enough to recall the Mathers translation of Abamelin via my parents' antiquarian bookstore, and the later paperback reprint during my own young adulthood. I know for a fact that this book was popular in the wider occult community long before Thelema came out of its dormancy, and remains so to this day. I speak here with no offense intended and only good will (Will) assumed. : -) Catherineyronwode 21:16, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please restore the Abramelin page.

Please restore the existence of an Abramelin page and do not automatically redirect the word Abramelin to the "Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage." page you have just created with the text i co-wrote.

The Abramelin page was something that i undertook to rework and expand greatly as part of a project my husband and i spent three days on, namely creating and filling the category of Occut Authors. When you moved the Abramelin article that i had i rewritten away and made the word Abamelin a redirect to a book page, you also deleted the name Abramelin from the categoryof Occult authors, which i am sure was not your intent.

Please, as a favour for having taken my work on this article away, would you be so good as to start an short Abramelin stub page that does NOT redirect to this book page but is instead connected with a link, not a redirect?

I would do it myself, but i have to go to sleep now and will not be able to wikify for the next two days at least, as we are hosting a large party here at our occult shop. I will get to it when i can and will write more. But since i wrote a good deal of the text you moved, i think i can ask you in all fairness to restore the Abramelin entry so that it can be used as i intended it, as part of the Occult Authors project.

Thanks. Catherineyronwode 10:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

You can do this yourself, though the way it's done may not be obvious. If you go to "what links here" on this page, you should see Abramelin among the list you get. Click on that page, and it should take you to the redirect page without actually redirecting. You can then restore a prior version of the page by looking at the history and selecting the last version that contains your text. By editing that version of the page, you can restore it.

You may wish to go through what links to Abramelin to determine whether those links ought to be directed to a page about the magus, or about the book. Smerdis of Tlön 11:52, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I was just gearing up for a merge when I read your strong objection here. I'd added merge tags and everything. I should have read both discussion pages, sorry. However you can see the comment I wrote at Talk:Abramelin the Mage. If we're going to have separate articles, I suggest we keep any description of the book or operation as brief as possible in Abramelin the Mage and let people get all their details through the wikilinks. It doesn't matter if it ends up being a brief article; I have no problem with brief articles if they say everything that's relevant. Fuzzypeg 13:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Repecussions of using mis-blended Abramelin oil

Mathers [...] mistranslated the name of the herb calamus as galangal in the recipe for Abramelin Oil, an error which had interesting repercussions when 20th century magicians tried to recreate the formula for their own use.

My interest is piqued. What were these repercussions? Fuzzypeg 01:46, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There are four repecussions:

• Scent: The Mathers oil has an entirely different aroma from the Abramelin oil. Scent is a powerful stimulator of human emotions, and the scent of Galangal (Gingergy and spicy) is so unlike the scent of Calamus (florally sweet yet a bit yeasty) that is makes different connections in the brain. Insofar as occultists such as myself and others in the field of Natural Magic work with plant materials because we value their magical contributions to our rites, we find that the two oils produce different states of mind, of thought, of "being." If one assumes that all magic is "Will" based and that plant scents are only window-dressing, then one could take Peanut oil with fake Cherry scent and use it as an anointing oil -- because anything would do. However, most occultists do value the scents of plants, as well as their symbolism, and this leads the user of Mathers Oil to a different place than the use of Abramelin Oil does.

• Symbolism: The Mathers oil has a partially differing spiritual ascription from the Abramelin oil. Crowley, who used the Mathers mistanslation, gives the following meaning for Galangal (the substituted plant): "Galangal represents both Kether and Malkuth, the First and the Last, the One and the Many." However, this is never the ascription given to Calamus (the actual plant named in the original Abramelin recipe). Thus Crowley's ascriptions, based as they are on a flawed translation, give a symbolical spin to the meaning of the oil that is not in accord with the usual Jewish asctipions, placing Crowley's occultism outside the realm of traditional Kababllistic grimoire magic, thanks, of course, to the error of his mentor, Mathers. For the traditional symbolism of Calamus see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_flag#Cultural_symbolism -- it stands for male sexuality and love in Judaism and, downstream from Greece (but not in Judaism), it stands for homosexual male love. I suspect that Crowley would have preferred this meaning for calamus to his made-up ascription for Galangal, which he was just "fingerpainting" when he wrote that " Kether and Malkuth" line.

• Skin irritation: The use of uncut or insufficiently cut essential oils -- and this is Crowley's error, not Mathers' -- can be dangrously irritating to the skin, and since Galangal is a relative of Ginger, the amount of skin irritation generated by Cinnamon pus Galangal is greater than that of Cinnamon plus Calamus. The result is that, alone of the anointing oils, Crowley's version of Mathers Oil cannot be used as a true aninting oil, because it could, if applied to the wrong places, actually lead to a trip to the ER.

• Digestive toxiicity: Galangal is edible, Calamus is not. It has become popular in the EGC to use Crowley's version of Mathers Oil to flavour the Cakes of Light -- the result being mildly opiated (from the Myrrh) and spicy (from the Cinnamon and the Ginger-like Galangal). Calamus is toxic when ingsted and cannot be added to Cakes of Light. Thus the Crowleyans have made an oil that can be EATEN but not used to ANOINT the body in the normal way for holy oils. This accords well with the spermophagic aspects of Crowley's religion. Other occultists, however, might wish to anoint the body during a rite, not to eat cakes.

If any of the above is useful to you, feel free to place it on the Abramelin oil page, as the page about the book is probably not the best place for further discussion of the oil.

Catherineyronwode 20:32, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I figured out most of this from reading the Abramelin oil article before I posted the question. What I was really getting at is that the way the article is worded it implies particular documented examples of "interesting repercussions"; it made me want to find out what these anecdotal cases were. If the changed formula is expected or understood to have different effects, but we're not citing particular cases of such effects being demonstrated, then the wording needs changing. My addition of the word "potentially" was an attempt to fix this. Fuzzypeg 03:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, i added a note to see the Abramlin oil page for the repercussions and i lifted the above text, in neutralified form, over to that page as well. Catherineyronwode 04:21, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. My comment still stands. I think our misunderstanding rests on the word "repercussion". The word can, strictly, mean any flow-on effect from a certain cause; to my understanding at least, though, it generally implies a concrete real-world incident resulting from some cause (such as: in 1967 ceremonialist Irma Matherite ate Cakes of Light containing oil of the galangal recipe and grew an extra eye.).

Although the wording still seems wrong, what you've done is an improvement, since curious readers wanting to hear about magical "repercussions" will quickly discover that these repercussions aren't what they might have thought. I'm hardly concerned anymore, though. It's a minor detail. Fuzzypeg 05:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Hey, how about:

... an error with interesting repercussions as modern magicians try to recreate the formula for their own use.

Removing the past-imperfect tense removes some of the implication that specific situations are being referred to ("20th century magicians tried" - which particular magicians?). Also, if we can take out that implication, then I don't think we really need the reference to the Abramelin oil article in parentheses, which is rather inelegant. Fuzzypeg 06:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Word Square

The final section is misleading and I'm going to delete it unless someone can substantiate why it's here.

It begins:

"According to Dmitri Borgmann's book Language on Vacation: an Olio of Orthographical Oddities, a 12x12 word square can be made from the names of angels, incubi, demons, and kindred souls found in the English version of the book"

Followed by the 12 x 12 square in question.

First of all, this is misleading as it makes it sound as though Borgmann "discovered" that these names make up a 12x12 square, which is a pretty funny "discovery" being that the square given is the Seventh square of the ninth chapter in the third book (Mathers edition). Second, none of these words are listed as being the names of angels, incubi, demons or kindred souls.

Also:

"Since the incidental occurence of this is practically zero, Borgmann is convinced this is a hoax, and suggested someone named "Ira" created it, as the name appears 7 times in the square."

It's not an "incidental occurance," the magic squares in the work are created intentionally, as is this one.

And lastly, you would think that if someone named Ira was going to create a magic square for reasons of vanity, they would use one that had more substantial purpose than "Turning animals in stone (wild boars accoring to Dehn)" as the square is reputed to do.Worlock93 04:52, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

• In addition to the points you make, it is unclear what "hoax" means here. If I deliberately invent some made-up words so as to form a word square then this by itself is not a "hoax". There needs to be some additional deception. For example, is someone pretending or claiming that they are "real" words when they aren't? Or does this square not actually occur in the original version manuscript, but was introduced as a "hoax" by the translator or later editor? Or what? It would also be good to connect this section better with the earlier statement "Magic squares feature prominently in the instructions for carrying out these operations" and clarify that the square shown is just one example of many, if that is indeed the case. Matt 10:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC).

I agree with both statements above, how is one man's theory (demonstrated to be full of holes anyway) even relevant to this page? Wouldn't this open the door for lengthy sections on individual workings, commentary from Newcomb's 21st Century Mage book, and other related extraneous matter?The One True Fred 15:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely. I'm not sure why this part of the article was added at all. I'm also shocked to see this section is still in the article since July of last year! Since we all seem to agree on the issue, I'm going to remove the text now. I'll put it here in case someone needs it later:

According to Dmitri Borgmann's book Language on Vacation: an Olio of Orthographical Oddities, a 12x12 word square can be made from the names of angels, incubi, demons, and kindred souls found in the English version of the book:

I S I C H A D A M I O N S E R R A R E P I N T O I R A A S I M E L E I S C R A T I B A R I N S I H A S I N A S U O T I R A R I B A T I N T I R A D E M A S I C O A N O C A P E R U N O I B E M I M I L I O T A B U L E L I N E N T I N E L E L A O T I S I R O M E L I R N O S I R A C I L A R I

Since the incidental occurrence of this is practically zero, Borgmann is convinced this is a hoax, and suggested someone named "Ira" created it, as the name appears 12 times in the square.

I can't see why anyone would want the above... but there it is. Kheph777 08:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey Keph, actually I tried to delete it back when I originally posted my query but there was a bot that was automatically reverting the page. After two attempts to excise the passage I gave up and was planning to locate the proper square to foil the offending bot, but forgot ;) Oh well, glad the sillyness was finally purged.

Worlock93 15:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

• The discussion of magick squares shows what is essentially wrong with the whole subject. MAJAM is not the word for water in either Hebrew or Arabic, both of which I read.

4.249.198.103 19:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)