Thursday, 9 January 2014

Coded Magical Manuscript of Kassel




I ve recently stumbled upon this treasure: an 18th century magical manuscript, written in a code.
Currently experts Brigitte Pfeil and Sabina Lüdeman are working on the transcript and translation.

From  the moment of the discovery I was fascinated with it and studied it thoroughly, managing to break the code the same night and beginning my read. The code is fairly simple as it uses few characters, most of which represent one sound (but many sounds are spelled with two variations). Once figuring out the endings of spirit names, like -EL, I managed to reconstruct the angelic and demonic hierarchy and seals attributions. 


Seal of the demon Barbiel


However I will not attempt a complete transcription myself due to fair-play to the aforementioned researchers, whose merit it truly is, and I would not attempt translation because it is mainly in German. 

Miss Pfeil was kind enough to answer my questions and assured me that they will employ my assistance in a few tricky interpretations, to which I would be more than honored to oblige.

The entire manuscript, formally called  8° Ms. astron. 7 is available for free in high definition scans here:


I have aso taken the liberty, for my study and for the sake of others that might find this useful, to compile a printer-friendly pdf version of it, available here:



Enjoy! 

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5 comments:

  1. Mihai Vârtejaru9 January 2014 at 23:47

    Please let me know if you are unable to see or download the PDF. I m still new to google docs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tomas B.10 January 2014 at 12:06

    The PDF is working fine, Mihai. Thank you for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Humberto Maggi11 January 2014 at 12:37

    Mihai, do you see resemblances between the first image in your post on the 18th century magical manuscript (Brigitte Pfeil and Sabina Lüdeman) and the sigils of the Three Chiefs in Grimorium Verum? Could the sigils in Verum be a degraded copy?

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  4. Mihai Vârtejaru11 January 2014 at 14:37

    I m afraid no connection. The symbols in the circles simply spell out JHS, the traditional sigla for Jesus, and I know for a fact that this grimoire has the seven princes of Hell, from the Faustian tradition, so no connection whatsoever to the Grimoirum Verum.

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  5. Anonymous21 January 2014 at 18:09

    Fascinating. Reminds me of the 'magic book' attributed to Michael Scot at the John Rylands Library:
    http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/xsg778

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