In April last year I made a small post announcing the translation of this tiny but important manuscript of the Grimore of Honorius. The day I announced my forthcoming translation of this manuscript, a gentleman from the Goetia Facebook group called Jae Cro, whom I commend, correctly identified that one of the seals of the manuscript i was translating, that of Smodo, bears striking similarities to the seal of Scorpio from the Archidoxes of Paracelsus. So it s taken from Paracelsus.
Is that a correct statement? Yes. And no. Well, let me
explain. Yes, it does ultimately derive from the Archidoxes, I will grant him
that. And no because, well.. one, there are actual doubts if Paracelsus wrote
the Archidoxes in the form we know and love and more likely this treatise was
the handiwork on one Jacques Gohory, who possibly authored a number of texts,
such as the Forth Book of Occult Philosopy or the Arbatel of Magic,but we
digress.
A second no would be that somebody didn t simply take an Archidoxis book
and copied the seal from there and wrote Smodo underneath, and that did not
happen with the Grimorium Verum either, where this seal became associated with
Astaroth.
But there are links and treatises that suffered changes along the way.
As you can see, in the same edition from 1603 from Frankfurt, we have two seals with minor differences: one on page 336 which we shall call A and one on page 344 which we shall call B.
The
most similar to our seal is B, so we can make some comparisons. The most
striking thing we observe is the seal of Smodo has an outer ring full of
gibberish that is not present in seal B, so we will do away with it for the
moment. We can start to see similarities, despite their differences: the top seal
is somewhat similar, with the second seal adding a martial glyph, the middle seal
is quite similar, with to added circles in our figure and the third seal is
basically the same thing.
But there are some missing links. Other than this part, the small grimoire has a third part detailing the 12 rings with which spirits can be conjured, the so called ”Douze anneaux”, and these can be found in a class of French manuscripts called The True Clavicles of Solomon by Armadel, exemplified here by the Lansdowne 1202 manuscript. On page 158 we fiind this curious talisman, in red and black.
Is It similar to the Archidoxes? Yes. Except the outer ring with seals, the words are identical, the top seal is quite similar, if we ignore the small Moon, the middle seal is similar as well, with modified termination while the bottom seal suffered a modification, making the Saturn-like seal of the Archidoxes look more… jovial. Is it similar to the Character of Smodo? Yes again. The outer circle is present on both, despite the latter s legibility, the top seal is strikingly similar, the middle seal is migrating from a trident to the 3 shape and the bottom seal seems to keep to the similarity to the Archidoxes.
I have here my personal copy of the color facsimile edition of manuscript Lansdowne 1203 that Jeremie Segouin published (with cover art by myself of course), and here we have a slightly different seal, colored in blue. and the description for this seal is as follows:
this pentacle receives the virtues of
the spirits of Jupiter and of Scorpio, which procures it the force of
dissipating terors and panics, like for instance having bindings done with
needles or other similar malefices. It is to be done on copper also because we
can engrave it with the burin, around the day of june 20th, in the day and hour
of jupiter with a new moon.
The version in 1202 tells us that it is the pentacle of the angel Barbiel,
ruler of Scorpio.
And that is precisely why we have his name on the outer circle along with
his seal. 1202 has added the name of Samael, the Archangel of Mars. And where can we fiind this Barbiel, angel of
Scorpio, with this seal? The Magical calendar of course, that all purpose
paracelsian classic from 1620 published by Johannes Baptista Grosschedel, In
Frankfurt of all places. And in the same column that is headed by the name and
sigil of Barbiel we fiind at the bottom the pentacles of Scorpio, among which
our figure from the Archidoxes, that corresponds closely with figure B.
But that is not all. Our seal of Smodo evolved into something much more well known, namely the seal of Astaroth of the Grimorium Verum, which you can fiind in old books of magic or on t-shirts and keychains on etsy. Why? Because people are are greedy as well as untalented and they would sell their grandma ass on a stick if they thought people would pay money for it.
The Similarities are striking. The top seal inside the circle is similar,
although the cross with circles is new, the character in the middle as both
endings in that speciffic 3 shape, the letters are missing, and the outer
circles are a hot mess. But still, we can recognise among the magled characters
3 shapes that are reminiscent of the seal of the angel Barbiel.
So now we have the full picture: Our grimoire with the seal of Smodo
probably influenced the Grimorium Veru,m , through some missing link, itself
being influenced by Les Veritables Clavicules de Salomon par Armadel, which
got their seals and sigils from the Calendarium Magicum which got them from the
pseudo-paracelsian Archidoxis magica.
Grimorium Verum
↑
Le Vraie Grimoire de Pape Honorius (1736)
↑
Missing link
↑
La Veritable Clavicule (Lans.1203 and 1202,
mid 18th century)
↑
Calendarium Magicum (1620)
↑
Archidoxes of Paracelsus (1591)
The treatise bears the name Alberti Parvui Tractatus Scientiarum, published
in the year MDXLIIII (1544), which is obviously spurious, by one Jhoan Janllon
in the city of.. take a guess.. Frankurt.
This is my rendition of the seal of Astaroth from Sloane 2879.
As you can see, it is our missing link. And perhaps other similar
manuscripts may be. As much as can
gather the Hebrew letters in the outer circle are random, at least they do not
bare any resemblance to any Hebrew rendition of Astaroth, Barbiel or Samael.
This would be only a comparison of Sloane 2879 with Grimorium Verum. The
top seal is of course identical and we know that it is part of Barbiel s seal
and the inner seals are, as expected, without the letters Irmo and Labum,
strikingly similar, except from the crposs with circles at the top of the
Grimorium Verum.
This concludes our study of only one of the seals but believe me when I say
that all of the seals in this grimoire share a similar path, up to the Archidoxis of magic, and an exhaustive presentation of all of them would render
me homeless.
In conclusion I d like to thank my honorary patrons who have sent me
manuscripts and books and without which this episode would not have existed,
namely Daniel Clark, Joseph Peterson, Daniel Harms and Jeremie Segouin and of
course, my current Patrons: Erzebet
Adley Nichols
Justin Sledge
Alexander Cummins
M. Allcock
Belle Wood
Anneliese Anthoinette
Nethop Avis
Davin Maki
Zachary Murray
Stian Kulystin
Arias
Joe
Peter DiMauro
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