Almost nothing in our fields was written in English. The Hermetic dialogues are Greek, the Zohar is Aramaic, the Picatrix is Arabic turned into Latin, and Eckhart preached in medieval German. Whatever you read, you are reading a translator, and the same title on two spines can hide two very different books.
Why it matters more here
Three things make the choice of edition harder in this literature than in most.
- The texts are unstable. A grimoire or an alchemical treatise may survive in dozens of manuscripts that disagree. An editor has to choose, and the choice shapes the book.
- The translators were often partisans. Some translated in order to practice, some in order to refute, and both kinds adjusted what they found.
- Old versions never die. Translations that are out of copyright are reissued constantly, sometimes with the translator's name and the original date removed, so that a version of 1889 can look like a book of this year.
The Victorian inheritance
Between about 1850 and 1920 a handful of translators produced the English versions of this literature that are still the most widely read. Thomas Taylor had gone before them with the Platonists. Then came S. L. MacGregor Mathers with the Key of Solomon, the Book of Abramelin, and parts of the Zohar; A. E. Waite with Eliphas Levi and the alchemical collections; G. R. S. Mead with the Hermetica and the Pistis Sophia; and William Wynn Westcott with the Sefer Yetzirah.
We owe them a great deal. Because their versions are out of copyright, they are also the ones most often reprinted today. Each has limits that are worth knowing:
- They worked from one or two manuscripts where many exist, and often from a French or Latin intermediary instead of the original language.
- They smoothed, harmonized, and sometimes omitted. Mathers left out of his Key of Solomon the material he judged to be black magic.
- They wrote before the great discoveries and critical editions of the twentieth century. Mead translated the Gnostics half a century before the Nag Hammadi library was found.
- Their English is of its time, full of "thee" and "thou", which can make a plain text sound more solemn than it is.
Seven things to check
- Is the translator named, and is the translation dated? If not, be wary.
- What was it translated from? The original language or another translation? Which manuscripts or which printed edition?
- Is it complete? Look for the words "selected", "abridged", and "adapted".
- Does the introduction deal honestly with date and authorship? An editor who repeats the legendary attribution without comment is telling you something.
- Are there notes? Good notes identify quotations, explain technical terms, and record where the manuscripts differ.
- How are technical terms handled? Consistently, with a glossary, or differently on every page?
- Whom is it for? Devotional, practical, and scholarly editions all have their uses. Know which one is in your hand.
Tests you can make at the shelf
- Put two versions side by side and read the first page of each.
- Look up a passage you know. The second sentence of the Emerald Tablet is a good one: no two versions render it alike.
- See whether diagrams and seals are reproduced from a source or redrawn, and whether the source is named.
- Check the index. A serious edition almost always has one.
When the old version is the right one
Sometimes the dated translation is exactly what you need. If your question is what the magicians and poets of 1900 believed the Key of Solomon said, then Mathers is your primary source, because Mathers is what they read. The modern liturgies of ceremonial magic and of Wicca quote the Victorian versions, not the manuscripts. Read the old translation for its influence and a modern one for the text.
Citing what you read
Always record the translator and the original date of the translation, together with the date of the printing in your hand. It is the only way that you, or anyone else, will find the same words again.
At the Athenaeum, different versions of the same work are shelved together so that they can be compared, and the keeper at the desk will gladly lay them out for you.
Further reading
- Starting Your Research
- What Is a Grimoire?
- Glossary, for terms such as critical edition, recension, and provenance