What it is
A grimoire is a handbook of magic: a book of instructions for calling spirits, making talismans, finding treasure, healing, harming, and gaining knowledge. The word is French, a variant of grammaire, "grammar", which once meant any book of Latin learning. Ceremonial magic is the practice such books describe: elaborate ritual with circles, consecrated tools, prayers, and names of power.
The literature is ancient, continuous, and almost entirely pseudonymous. Its authors borrowed the names of Solomon, Moses, Hermes, Saint Cyprian, popes, and learned doctors. Its texts were copied by hand long after printing was invented, and each copyist felt free to add and to cut. There is seldom a single correct text.
Where to begin
Read the first book of Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy for the theory, the Key of Solomon for the practice, and E. M. Butler's Ritual Magic for the story. Our essay What Is a Grimoire? introduces the genre.
Late antiquity
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The Greek Magical Papyri Greek, Demotic, and Coptic. Roman Egypt, about the second century BCE to the fifth century CE. L 1
Working handbooks and single spells written on papyrus: invocations, recipes, divinations, love charms, and rites for obtaining a divine assistant. The gods of Egypt, Greece, and Israel mingle freely. The standard collection was edited by Karl Preisendanz in 1928 to 1931, and a complete English translation followed in 1986.
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The Testament of Solomon Greek. Early centuries CE. L 1
King Solomon, given a ring by the archangel Michael, summons the demons one by one, learns their names, their mischief, and the angels who thwart them, and sets them to build the Temple. The root of the whole later Solomonic tradition.
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Sefer ha-Razim Hebrew. Late antiquity. L 1
The "Book of the Mysteries": a tour of the seven heavens and their angels, with the rites by which each may be asked for help. Reconstructed in 1966 from scattered manuscript fragments.
The Middle Ages
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Picatrix Arabic, tenth or eleventh century. Latin from the thirteenth century. D 1
The great handbook of astral magic and talismans. Described in the guide to Hermetic literature.
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Ars Notoria Latin. In circulation by the early thirteenth century. L 2
The "notory art": prayers, strange names, and diagrams called notae, by which the operator hopes to receive from God, through the angels, a perfect memory and mastery of the liberal arts. It was a student's magic, and it was repeatedly condemned.
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The Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber Iuratus) Latin. Thirteenth or fourteenth century. L 2
Attributed to one Honorius of Thebes and presented as the decision of a council of magicians to preserve their art in a single book. Its long ritual aims at nothing less than a vision of God. John Dee owned a copy.
The Solomonic handbooks
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The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis) Latin and Italian, with versions in many languages. Manuscripts mainly of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. L 2
The most widely copied of all grimoires. It prescribes the preparation of the operator, the circle, the knife, the pen and parchment, and the pentacles of the seven planets. No two manuscripts quite agree. The English edition of 1889 by S. L. MacGregor Mathers was pieced together from several of them and left out what its editor found distasteful.
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The Heptameron Latin. Attributed to Peter of Abano. Printed in the sixteenth century. L 2
A concise ritual for calling the angels of the seven days, complete with circle, perfumes, and conjurations. Its brevity made it the practical core of many later compilations.
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The Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton) English. Compiled in the middle of the seventeenth century from older sources. L 2
Five books: the Goetia, with its seventy-two spirits and their seals; the Theurgia-Goetia; the Pauline Art; the Almadel; and a version of the Notory Art. The catalog of spirits descends from a list printed by Johann Weyer in 1577.
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The Book of Abramelin German. Earliest manuscripts of 1608. The text claims the date 1458. L 2
A father's testament to his son, describing a long retreat of prayer that ends in the knowledge and conversation of one's guardian angel, after which the spirits may be commanded. Mathers translated an incomplete French version in 1898. The German text is fuller and differs in important ways.
Learned magic of the Renaissance
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Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De occulta philosophia) Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Latin. Drafted 1510, printed in full 1533. English translation 1651. L 2
The encyclopedia of Renaissance magic: natural magic in the world of the elements, celestial magic of number and the stars, and ceremonial magic of the angels and the divine names. Nearly every later Western magical book borrows from it, usually without saying so.
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Steganographia Johannes Trithemius. Latin. Written about 1500, printed 1606. L 2
By Agrippa's mentor. Ostensibly a method for sending messages by means of spirits, and in fact largely a work of cryptography in disguise. Its reputation as a book of black magic outran its contents for centuries.
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The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy Latin. Printed 1559 under Agrippa's name. English translation 1655. L 2
A short practical supplement on ceremonial magic that appeared after Agrippa's death. His pupil Johann Weyer denied that it was his. Usually printed with the Heptameron.
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Arbatel Latin. Printed at Basel, 1575. L 2
Forty-nine aphorisms on a pious magic of prayer and the seven Olympic spirits who govern the planets. Unusual among grimoires for its gentle tone.
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A True and Faithful Relation John Dee, edited by Meric Casaubon. English. 1659. L 2
Dee's records of his conversations with angels through the scryer Edward Kelley in the 1580s, published long after his death by an editor who meant to discredit him. The source of what later came to be called Enochian magic.
Popular print
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The Petit Albert, the Grand Grimoire, and the Grimorium Verum French. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. L 2
Cheap printed handbooks sold by peddlers, promising treasure, love, and pacts, with false early dates and grand attributions on their title pages. These, far more than the learned Latin books, were the grimoires that ordinary people owned and feared.
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The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses German. Printed 1849, with many later editions in German and English. L 2
Seals and conjurations said to have been revealed to Moses beyond the five books of the Bible. Carried by emigrants to North America, it spread widely in folk magic there and in the Caribbean and West Africa.
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The Long Lost Friend John George Hohman. German. Reading, Pennsylvania, 1820. English editions from the 1840s. L 6
Charms, prayers, and remedies used by the Pennsylvania German healers known as powwowers. A charm book and not a book of conjuration, and a reminder that most practical magic was domestic.
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The Magus Francis Barrett. English. London, 1801. L 2
A handsome compilation, drawn almost entirely from English translations of Agrippa and the Heptameron, that reintroduced ceremonial magic to English readers at the start of the nineteenth century.
The modern revival
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Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie Eliphas Levi (Alphonse-Louis Constant). French. 1854 to 1856. English as Transcendental Magic, 1896. D 5
The book that recast magic for the modern age as a single secret tradition uniting Kabbalah, tarot, and the "astral light". More rhapsody than handbook, and the direct inspiration of the magical orders founded later in the century.
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Magick in Theory and Practice Aleister Crowley. English. 1929. L 2
The fullest statement of the system Crowley built from the ceremonial tradition, yoga, and his own religion of Thelema. Difficult, deliberately provoking, and immensely influential on later practice.
For the general histories by Thorndike and Butler, and the survey of the printed grimoires by Waite, see Reference and Bibliography.
Things to watch for
- Title pages lie. The author and date on a grimoire are usually false. A book "printed at Memphis in 1517" was probably printed in France two centuries later.
- Editions differ. A printed Key of Solomon is one editor's selection from many manuscripts. Compare two before quoting either.
- "Black" and "white". The labels were weapons in old arguments. One writer's holy theurgy was another's demonic goetia, and the same rite could be called either.
- Not a manual. These are historical documents. Some of their recipes are poisonous, some of their rites are cruel, and none should be attempted.
On the shelves
Ancient magic is shelved at the South Gate in class L 1 and the grimoires in L 2, with charm books in L 6. Related guides: Hermetic Literature, Astrology, and Kabbalah.