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Dr Angela Puca:
Hello, Symposiasts. I’m Dr Angela Puca, Religious Studies PhD and University lecturer, and this is your online resource for the academic study of magic, esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, and all things occult.
Before we start, I’d like to remind you, as always, to do a bit of symposium-keeping. This project of delivering academic knowledge to you on all topics in esotericism is really only possible thanks to your support. So, if you want to keep this project going, please support my work. If you can afford it – but really, I have options for everybody – please consider supporting my work on Patreon, PayPal, or Ko-fi. You have YouTube membership, super chats, super thanks… there are lots of options. Everything is listed in a pinned comment, in the info box, and in the bio. So, thank you all for considering, and I also hope that you’re going to share this interview around so that the Symposium can grow.
Now, I guess after the symposium-keeping, I can bring on our special guest for today, and here he is. Hi, Andrea.
Meet Andrea Franchetto
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Hi, Angela, and hi everyone, it’s a pleasure to be here.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
How are you? I think the last time we saw each other was in Cork for the ESSWE conference, which is the Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. People normally are not familiar with our acronyms, so it’s always important to—
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, long names. Also, yes, it was Cork, and it was about a year ago, I think more than a year ago, and yes, I’m doing well. I’m about to defend my dissertation in October, so I’ve submitted the final draft, and it’s now in printing. It’s a very stressful moment but also a very special one. I mean, you’ve been through this, so you know what it means to get the physical book in your hand. It’s a very special moment, yes.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, so I’m glad that you’re at the final stage of your PhD, and I’ve heard that— because you’re already in Sweden, right?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And I heard that there are swords involved in the defence, is that true?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
That’s Finland, yeah.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Oh, it’s Finland, okay.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
No, Sweden is also very ceremonial, but no swords for us. It’s what is called the Laurel Crown.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
The Laurel Crown, like in Italy? Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t know that. But yeah, I guess I assumed that all the Northern European countries would involve swords, which I think is very cool. But obviously, as you know, I did my PhD in the UK, and we don’t have swords or anything like that.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Robes, right? This kind of thing, yeah.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, that’s only when you do your graduation ceremony, which is different from the defence.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, also here it’s the same. The defence is pretty informal, I would say. I mean, it is public, but there’s no ceremonial aspect. The ceremonial comes afterwards, and there is some ritualistic aspect to it, but also related to that, I would say.
Andrea Franchetto’s PhD research
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, speaking of rituals, tell us something about your PhD research, and then we will go a bit deeper into the concept of the grimoire and why that might not be the best term to use. But tell us a bit more about what your PhD is about so people also have a bit of reference regarding your work.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, so my PhD focuses mostly on medieval learned magic. I’m covering a period that stretches from the 13th to the 15th century, roughly, and my focus is on ritual space. I want to understand why and how practitioners of magic designed specific spaces for interaction with spirits, demons, and angels. I investigated these modalities of creating space from cosmological, theological, and ritual perspectives. So, this is, in general, let’s say, a very short way of saying it. Yeah, I deal with many—it’s comparative, so I deal with different textual traditions of magic. Some of the most popular—probably some of you know about them—are “The Sworn Book of Honorius,” “The Key of Solomon,” “The Armandal,” and “The Munich Handbook of Necromancy,” which was edited by Richard Kieckhefer and was a very popular reference for medieval magic, as well as the “Picatrix” and the “Astromagia.” Many sources I’m dealing with.
Is Grimoire the correct term for all magical texts?
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Interesting. So, tell us a bit more about the concept of the grimoire. What does it mean? I know that’s your argument, so it’s not a leading question; it’s based on what I know you’re arguing for. So, why do you argue that ‘grimoire’ is not the best term to use for these magical texts?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, so I have nothing against grimoires per se. I mean, I’m also using, you know, like this very famous reference book (“he shows “Grimoires: A History of Magic Books” by Owen Davies”) in my courses on magic. So, I think it can work—’grimoires’—if we are working at a very general level of description of these kinds of sources, i.e. magical books that circulated in different forms and shapes. But when we go into medieval magic, I think that this term, which is very general, lacks some sensitivity to the diversity of sources we have and that practitioners used, and that circulated in different environments. Therefore, I think that maybe to better represent the diversity of medieval magic—medieval learned magic in particular—there are perhaps three other categories that could be used, or three other terms that could represent specificities about magical texts and these are magical handbooks the first one, magical miscellanies and holy books.
So, I can briefly introduce them.
The magical handbook was the proper reference book for the practitioner. It introduced the neophyte to the practice. These kinds of texts gave the practitioner an overview of what it’s about—summoning spirits, going through the ritual procedures—they gave instructions on how to construct ritual objects, how the parts of the magic circle should be assembled, what about the clothing of the practitioner, the purification of the practitioner, and so on. But they also involved other aspects, like the time for the rituals, but they were not specific to magical experiments. So, they didn’t have a specific goal for the practice—a specific aim. Magical experiment-oriented texts with specific aims are what we find in magical miscellanies, which resemble recipe books. They are basically lists of experiments that practitioners collected, and they reflect the interests and desires of an individual practitioner.
For example, this is the case with the “Demonic Handbook of Necromancy,” edited by Richard Kieckhefer.
And then we have the holy books. We don’t have physical artefacts remaining from these sources, but these were proper magical artefacts—magical tools that were used in practice. They usually contained orations, Divine names, and Words of Power that should have been uttered in the ritual, in the conjuration of spirits most of the time. These kinds of artefacts were made of special, precious materials, and special inks were used. So, differentiating is very important in terms of the materiality of magic because magic circulated in very different kinds of media. Using ‘grimoires’ prevents us from acknowledging all these differences.
So, this is basically the main argument. I mean, I still employ the word ‘grimoire’ sometimes—there’s nothing wrong with using ‘grimoire’—but when we want to go into the details of the practice, and what they were actually doing and why they were doing certain things in specific ways, then we need to go down to the sources. I think it’s wiser to become more sensitive to these diversities.
Rituals in Magical Texts
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. Can you tell us a bit more about the rituals that we find in the books you’ve studied? Can you give us an overview of the types of rituals, and then actually, you know, explain the practical rituals themselves?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Alright, so, well, maybe I could talk a little bit about the genre of magic because I think the genre of magic tells a lot about the different kinds of practices that we encounter in rituals, as well as in the sources. So, well, we can talk about natural magic, astral magic, demonic magic, and angelic magic in the Middle Ages. My focus is mostly on angelic, demonic, and astral magic. I don’t deal so much with natural magic because it doesn’t involve, at least explicitly, interaction with spirits in the ritual space, the physical space of the practitioner. That’s what I’m interested in, and that’s what my dissertation has focused on. Natural magic, instead, focuses mostly on the manipulation of the sublunary world—so, the natural world—and the parts of the natural world that the practitioner can assemble, manipulate, and transform to act on the occult forces that exist, or that they believe exist, in nature to produce changes and modify the course of nature.
Part of natural magic could also be linked with the construction of amulets, while astral magic—
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And also the preparation of concoctions.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Exactly, yes, like potions as well. It’s also very interesting how these kinds of texts circulated in different codices than those of ritual magic, angelic magic, and demonic magic. They were more associated with “naturalia”, such as experiments with magnetism, natural phenomena, and what people wrote and discussed about what could be the causes of these things.
The Meaning of Sublunary
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Sorry to interrupt, but someone in the chat wanted a clarification about what ‘sublunary’ means.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, so the sublunary world is whatever existed—so, according to medieval cosmology, the universe could be divided into two parts: the sublunary sphere, which exists below the sphere of the Moon, and the superlunary sphere, which includes the planetary spheres and the sphere of the fixed stars. There are also degrees of corporeality between these dimensions. The sublunary world is the corporeal universe, while the superlunary world is the spiritual universe. So, that’s what it means, basically. Humankind, along with animals, plants, and all the natural elements, dwell in the sublunary world.
Natural Magic v Demonic Magic
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, and that reminds me, because you said you haven’t worked so much on natural magic, whereas I have for my Master’s degree. My Master’s thesis was on “Magia Naturalis” by Giovanni Battista Della Porta, another Neapolitan.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
That’s true, exactly. And, yes, it’s a bit of a later period, of course, than what I’m dealing with, but it was very influential, especially the distinctions between natural magic and demonic magic.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
What was accepted and acceptable, and what was not acceptable?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Acceptable—natural magic happened to become more acceptable by Renaissance philosophers, who also tried to dignify it as a legitimate form of magic, because it doesn’t deal so much—at least explicitly—with the interaction with spirits, demons, and other intermediary beings, which ritual magic, angelic magic, and demonic magic do.
So, coming back to what I was saying before, in terms of the rituals we find, in my thesis I argue that we can distinguish two kinds of forms of interaction with spiritual beings in medieval magic. One is when the practitioner aims to enter into contact with a spiritual being—either a demon, an angel, or a planetary spirit—in the physical space, what I call the “veridical” space. The practitioner is in an awake state, so they are awake and want to interact with them in the here and now. Then there are other forms of techniques that enable the practitioner to enter into contact with spiritual beings in dreams or oneiric visions—what I call the “nonveridical” space. So, it’s an internal vision of spiritual apparitions.
There are different techniques, for example, on how to construct the ritual space depending on what kind of vision or experience the practitioners want to have. For example, in the case of the corporeal presence of spirits—when the spirits appear in the physical space of the operator, and the operator aims to have a physical and social interaction with them—the magic circle is probably the key ritual tool for such interaction. The magic circle is basically a ritual device that aims to separate the two bodies, right? The body of the operator or practitioner, and the ambiguous corporeality of the spirit. It’s usually traced on the ground by means of ritual knives or swords. But there are many kinds of magic circles. There are also circles made of moulded semispheres, where the spirit is supposed to appear on top of the moulded semisphere while the practitioner stays outside the circle. So, there are different dynamics of how the practitioner should use the magic circles. I can go more into detail if you want, but… yeah.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, maybe go a bit more into detail about how these evocations occur, because I think most people watching are familiar with the magician within the circle and the entity in the Triangle of Manifestation.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, yeah. Also, this is interesting—there’s not so much use of triangles of manifestation in medieval magic. It seems like a later appearance, becoming very famous in the Golden Dawn practices and with Aleister Crowley and so on. But no, in medieval magic, spirits can also be contained, and they can be contained in objects or surfaces like mirrors, polished nails, bones, and so on.
But coming back to your question—how did the ritual go about? So, usually practitioners were Christian practitioners. What we are talking about here is learned magic in the late Middle Ages in Europe, and so the practitioner should first prepare themselves morally and spiritually—to be a good Christian, basically.
Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Magic in the Middle Ages
>> Dr Angela Puca:
There’s a strong Christian element.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Exactly, there’s a strong Christian element in the practice. For example, in angelic magic, there’s a lot of asceticism involved. The practitioner should seclude themselves from social interactions, fast for a long period of time, avoid sexual intercourse, and pray for many days, even months. Then, usually, comes a vision or an apparition of an angel that reveals to the practitioner that they are apt for continuing the procedure. So, the purification phase has been successful, and therefore they can go on with summoning angels, in this case. It’s always God who grants the practitioner the power to summon angels. This is also a very interesting dynamic of learned magic in the Middle Ages. The power never comes from the practitioner themselves; it’s the grace of God that grants the practitioner the possibility to compel an angel to descend from the heavenly sphere and appear in front of them or in a dream.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, that kind of makes sense because it’s Europe, so obviously the dominant religion was Christianity. But there’s also a strong influence from Islam and Judaism and, arguably, paganism perhaps.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Exactly, and indeed we can find a lot of ritual elements, especially when it comes to divine names, formulas for conjuring spirits, angels, and demons. But also, in terms of angelology—so when we talk about angelology and demonology, the Christian world was very straightforward. There existed angels and fallen angels; they were bad and good, benevolent and malevolent creatures, and that’s it. While in the Islamicate and Jewish traditions, in terms of angelology and cosmology, we see a much broader array of possibilities for how angels appear and also what the characteristics of these beings are. There are neither benevolent nor malevolent spirits—neutral spirits. There are spirits of nature, spirits of the forest, and spirits attached to the planetary spheres that can descend from the heavens. There are angels that appear with fiery bodies and threatening appearances.
So, this played a role in shaping, of course, the modalities of interaction and how practitioners expected this interaction to happen. But, of course, the context is important. Maybe it’s better to introduce that a lot of this material came from Arabic sources, mostly, and was translated in the “scriptoria”—so, basically, sort of translation centres of the royal courts, for example, in Spain and Southern France. These were translated into Latin, and that’s how the literate and the clerics happened to learn about these techniques and these magical books. Then they started to alter them, changing certain things and retaining others. There’s an interesting dynamic about what they preserved and what they altered, and how they hybridised certain ritual techniques with Christian ones, and so on.
So, of course, as you correctly pointed out, we are still dealing with syncretic sources. They’re not entirely Christian. Of course, there are Christians who were interested in these practices and translated them into Latin, but from a history of religion perspective, there are much more cross-cultural dynamics involved.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, I guess a question would be—I don’t know if it’s something that happened to be part of your research—but what would compel learned magicians, who were Christians quite likely, to include elements from the Islamic and Jewish world? Why did they include these elements? Why did they have this syncretic approach, since they considered themselves Christians and, in some cases, believed everything was happening through the intercession of God?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Well, I think it’s for a reason that has a lot to do with what we see in magic at large, and that is—simply put—when something is exotic, when something is unfamiliar, when something is opaque from a semiotic perspective, meaning it’s difficult to understand, complex, it also seems more effective. That’s why a lot of things were retained, because they elicited a sense of efficacy in the procedure. So, when there’s no direct symbolism, it’s easier to perceive something as more effective, and this, I think, is one of the reasons.
I’m not the only one who thinks that, of course. For example, a scholar named Nicolas Weill-Parot contends that there were two approaches when medieval practitioners and people interested in magic translated books. One was disjunction—preserving the unfamiliar, the exotic, and the strange. The other was reinterpretation—reinterpreting certain things in Christian terms.
There were probably certain things that were perceived as, how to say, immoral from a Christian perspective. A very exemplary case is the “Picatrix”. When it was translated from Arabic to Latin, there was an experiment involving homosexual magic, which was then turned into heterosexual magic in the Latin version. So, in that case, we see reinterpretation.
But for the aspect of preserving disjunction—preserving the unfamiliar and exotic—we have the “voces magicae”. For example, there are words used in ritual practice, whose meaning is opaque—words you can’t really understand, that are just strange-sounding words. Or we have characters that don’t have a corresponding phonetic value but are meant to be engraved, and their meaning remains hidden. These are part of what they call ritual efficacy—perceiving something as more powerful than what you have in your own basket of systems.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
So it’s a way of perceiving it as less mundane, and maybe there’s an equivalence between magic being something beyond the mundane world, and if something is exotic, it’s more akin to that sense of the ‘other’, you know—that other world that you’re accessing via magic and through magic.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Exactly, but also because it should be powerful. This is another aspect of magic—magic should work. So, you need to find something effective. It doesn’t matter what you use, you want to use something that is effective and brings you to where you want to go. The more a thing has an allure of efficacy, the better it will be absorbed into the practice. This is the case with the “voces magicae” and characters, but also with ritual spaces like the magic circles, which, of course, were also integrated—they didn’t originate in the Christian context.
Viewer Question: Sacred v Profane in Medieval Magic
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And this is a good segue to Vocatus’s question. He says, “Thank you—’just doesn’t do justice for all the hard work you do for our benefit.’ A question: Is that separation meant to designate the sacred from the profane in the context of your research, which is medieval magical grimoires?”
>> Andrea Franchetto:
It’s an interesting question because I think the problem of the sacred and the profane has been at the centre of the discipline of history of religion since, I mean, its inception. There’s a lot of debate about what is sacred, what is profane, and how to demarcate that, right?
In terms of what I’ve just talked about—the fact of exoticism, disjunction, and opacity of magic—I frame sacredness and sacrality in cognitive terms. Without going too much into detail, to put it simply: when something is perceived as sacred, people usually think of it as non-ordinary. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every non-ordinary thing is automatically sacred, but sacrality exists on a spectrum of non-ordinariness. When things are perceived as so non-ordinary that they require some taboos, some protection, some ways of demarcating their non-ordinariness and setting them apart from the rest, then they are more likely to be called sacred.
In ritual magic and learned magic, a lot of the ritual procedures involve the practitioner setting not only themselves apart but also the time and space of the ritual. So, one could say that the rituals of learned magic are procedures for sacralizing the ritual event—to make it non-ordinary, to perceive it as something that can be done effectively. There is a relationship between sacrality, non-ordinariness, and efficacy. So, there is a triangulation, I think, between these domains.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And are there things that are inherently sacred, or are sacred things sacralized from the non-mundane world?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
You mean like, is there something that cannot be sacralized because it is inherently sacred?
>> Dr Angela Puca:
No, I mean you talked about the process of sacralizing things that are ordinary—like a specific room that becomes sacred when you cast a circle and perform the ritual procedures. But what about things that are inherently sacred, so you don’t have to make them sacred by demarcating a difference between the ordinary state and the non-ordinary state? Are there things that are inherently sacred, like entities or anything else?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, but also the sacraments, right? They are inherently sacred, and this is very interesting in ritual magic. For example, in the “Sworn Book of Honorius”, the practitioner has to move from the church, which is a place of sacrality, to the place of the circle, many times, and during this process they often pass from one place of sacrality to a newly established place of sacrality. In this translocation—from one place of sacrality to a place that should become sacred—there is a process of sacralization.
For example, the practitioners bring a ritual object from the church to the place of the rituals. They utter formulas while walking there; they bring swords from the church to the place of the circle. But then there are other dynamics, such as sacralizing objects through places that are inherently sacred—using your words here. For example, in the case of holy books, which I’ve talked about, this magical tool or artifact—the proper book of magic that the practitioner uses—should be sacralized in a church by placing it on or under an altar while the priest is celebrating Mass. So, it’s a secret ritual in the church, but the practitioner perceives the space as sacred, and it doesn’t have to be sacralized because it’s already sacralized by the ceremony of the Mass. But this ceremony has the power to sacralize the book, which can then be moved to the ritual house, room, or chamber of the practitioner. There, they can start summoning spirits and so on with the book.
It’s a long procedure, but what’s also interesting is that this book can lose its sacrality. If the book comes into contact with something considered impure or contaminated, the practitioner would need to re-sacralize it. Sacrality is something that can augment or diminish, be assembled or disassembled. I have a chapter in my thesis called “The Assembling and Disassembling of Sacrality” because there’s a lot of this dynamic in learned magic. Sacrality isn’t granted forever. It’s true there are certain places, but more than places or objects, it’s more like the liturgy or the sacrament that is inherently sacred and can be accessed. But objects, materials, and the body can always lose sacrality, which is why the practices are so complex—to re-sacralize the body, the space, and so on.
Viewer Question: Heliocentricity
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Thank you, and thank you Chaos15 for the super chat! We also have S. Mill—Sean is asking this question: “How did grimoires deal with heliocentricity? Did they deny it, compensate for it, or make geocentrism allegorical?”
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Well, in the medieval world, we’re in a geocentric cosmos, so I would say that this is for a later period. I’m not an expert on this, so I can’t answer this question from the medieval perspective. But in medieval cosmology, the worldview was geocentric. The Earth—”Terra”—was at the centre, and it was a nested cosmos of spheres. Going up, we find the spheres of the four elements, then the sphere of the Moon, then the seven planets, the sphere of the fixed stars, and outside this is the infinite space of the “empirium”, where the abode of God, the angels, and the holy souls is located. This was the cosmos in which these people oriented themselves and thought about their place in the universe.
Viewer Question: Sacralisation
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Thank you. And also, Vocatus has another question. He says, “It seems like designating a place, thing, or ritual, and therefore an agreed-upon meaning is assigned to it, so the ordinary can become superordinary, so to say.”
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Therefore, an agreed-upon meaning is assigned to it, yeah.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
He’s still referring to the difference between the sacred and profane, and how things are sacralized.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yes, I think there is—well, in this sense, an agreed-upon meaning, yes, there could be a collective agreed-upon meaning of how we can make things sacred. I think that magic, and ritual magic specifically, is a set of agreed modalities or techniques to make things sacred. But this distinction between sacred and profane, ordinary and non-ordinary, is always negotiated by the social context, the cultural context, in which practitioners think about their practices, conceive their practices, and develop modalities to make them so. There’s not a universal answer, I would say, to what is sacred and what is profane. It’s always contextual, historical, and, at times, also individual, right?
Perennialism
>> Dr Angela Puca:
That’s always the answer you’ll get from academics! You probably know that practitioners have a tendency towards perennialism, and that’s been fostered by some scholars in the early 20th century as well—like Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell. You know, there have been a few, especially in the mid-20th century or early 20th century, who really fostered this perennialist idea.
For those who are not familiar, perennialism means that there’s an underlying truth to all traditions, and that all the contextual differences are only layers that you have to remove to find the underlying truth that really binds them all. And for academics, it’s the opposite, because we really see how the context is important. You need to have an essentialist view to think like that, you know? To think that certain things have an essence in and of themselves.
But if you look at how things manifest as a whole, in a holistic way, you can never separate those layers. They’re not just trivial things that you can remove and pretend they’re not there—they are an integral part of the phenomenon that we’re studying. So, I understand that, because I study Shamanism and Paganism, and I find myself in that kind of discourse many times.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
I imagine, because yeah, Mircea Eliade and the distinction between sacred and profane come up a lot, especially when it comes to Shamanism.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Yeah, Mircea Eliade was very interesting as a scholar for his time, but he wasn’t particularly academic by today’s standards.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, there’s still a lot of potential, I think, if we reinterpret Eliade a bit. Of course, we should remove a lot of things—all the essentialist and perennialist aspects. But, for example, when it comes to sacred space, Eliade was more of a situationist. In the sense that, actually, he said that every kind of space in the world can be sacralized. So, he wasn’t saying that places have a sacred essence. He was really pointing attention to the human action of making things sacred. Then, of course, he said that the way of making it sacred reveals certain metaphysical dimensions, and that’s where the perennialist view comes into play. But in his thought, there was already the idea that sacrality—sacredness—is something humans do. It’s not something that happens or comes from above, or just falls onto humankind. Yeah, I’ll stop here, because with Eliade, it’s always difficult.
Astral Magic Rituals in Magical Texts from the Middle Ages
>> Dr Angela Puca:
But yeah, he was definitely an interesting scholar. But back to the rituals that we find in the grimoires—can you give us some more examples of the array of rituals that we find? And how do they differ? Obviously, I know that your expertise is in the Middle Ages, and in grimoires or magical texts that appeared in Europe. So now we have the context in terms of time and location of the magical texts.
Can you give us more examples of the types of rituals that we find? And is there consistency across grimoires in how to perform these rituals? Because, as you said, there are different types of magic. There’s natural magic, as we explained already, then there’s magic to invoke demonic magic, angelic magic, and—what was the fourth one? Astral magic, yes. So, astral magic, I think, is the one that was most influenced by the Islamicate world.
Yeah, so if we could cover astral magic now, then we can move into angelic and demonic magic. In astral magic, what would be the rituals, the aims of the magic, and how would the ritual take place? And is there consistency across the different grimoires?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, so I would say that in astral magic we can see two kinds. Astral magic works according to a specific cosmology and framework that, as you pointed out correctly, comes from the Arabic world and the Islamicate context. This cosmology is very precise, so it’s possible to calculate a link between the supralunary world and the sublunary world, and these two dimensions communicate through astral rays.
Astral magic aims to exploit this network of forces, from above to below, through astral rays to modify and alter the course of nature and influence events in the sublunary world. So, I would say there are two main techniques, just to make things easy.
One is the construction of talismans, also usually referred to as image magic. This kind of magic uses materials—usually metals, but also many different kinds of materials—to create images, which could be two-dimensional or three-dimensional. These images should resemble the kind of astral force that the practitioner aims to draw into the object.
Astral and image magic involve the calculation of the exact astrological time to be able to absorb and attract the appropriate astral ray, forces, and spirits into the object that the practitioners create and construct, in order to produce the desired effect. For example, it could be an image of Mercury. The practitioner should usually go outdoors, bring fumigations and the ritual object, and then it is believed that the astral ray will infuse the object with the astral spirit.
And then there is the other part of astral magic, which involves the invocation and summoning of planetary spirits—astral spirits. In this case, the spirits appear in front of the operator. Usually, these ritual techniques also involve what I call a “ritual translocation,” which is typically from the house of the practitioner to a field or a specifically designated place, usually in rural areas. Here, the practitioner often brings braziers for fumigations, and it involves other techniques like uttering magical formulas, inscribing the ground, or preparing food as offerings for the spirits.
But central to this is the sacrifice. Sacrificing an animal in these kinds of techniques is key because it’s not only about attracting rays from above. According to the cosmology of astral magic, every element in the world, or in the sublunary world, can produce rays, and killing an animal can produce very powerful rays that can influence things in the cosmos. One of the most powerful tools is precisely the sacrifice because, by killing an animal, the practitioner can attract a spirit to the location of the operation. Usually, that’s how it goes: they kill an animal, and they usually burn some parts of the animal in the—now, I’m simplifying because the techniques of astral magic are many and different, but the ones that appear most often look like this.
While uttering these formulas, as the smoke rises up to the heavens, the practitioner should expect to see the apparition of the spirits, usually in the smoke, behind the brazier, or in the ritual area.
The Influence of Islam and Al-Kindi
So, these are the two main techniques for astral magic, and they rely on this cosmology of rays that was very influential, thanks to the writings of Al-Kindi, especially in “De Radiis Stellarum” (“On the Rays of the Stars”), which were based on theories of optics. Al-Kindi discussed how astral rays hit the surface of the Earth and how this works. By employing optics, he also discussed how magic could work. According to Al-Kindi, the most powerful ray is the one that hits the Earth’s surface perpendicularly—the one that goes from the center of the celestial body to the center of the Earth. According to this view, the practitioner must be very careful in calculating exactly when the astral ray hits the Earth perpendicularly, or at a certain inclination, depending on the aim they want to achieve.
So, there is a lot of astrological calculation and a lot of manipulation of materials and objects to construct images and talismans.
In the case of demonic and angelic magic, we don’t have as much astrological calculation of events and moments as in astral magic. There is still some overlap, and we can find hybridization of these techniques. These are just labels we attach to put things in order, but it’s far more complex, of course.
In demonic magic, as I mentioned before, there is a very strong Christian dimension. There are usually long purification phases, and then the practitioner should move to the outskirts of the town—most of the time, the places are unspecified, but they use the phrase “extra villam”, meaning “outside the town,” so privacy and secrecy are required. Then, they should trace the magic circle and construct the ritual space.
After constructing the ritual space, they go through lengthy orations and conjurations. First, they usually ask for the grace of God to conduct the procedure, and then they start with the proper conjurations. These conjurations resemble exorcisms; they have the same structure as exorcism utterings and the exorcist liturgy. After these long orations, if the spirit does not appear, if the demon does not appear, there are also compulsion formulas—more lengthy orations and even more elaborate procedures to perform.
At one point, the demon is expected to appear, either in an object like a mirror, polished bone, or the fingernails of a boy appointed as a scryer for the operation, or outside the circle. Then the practitioner should ask for what they want from the demon that appears, and they should compel the demon to execute their request.
Why Summon Demons Instead of Angels?
>> Dr Angela Puca:But I guess—sorry to interrupt—but I was wondering, since we are talking about a Christian perspective and that they thought demons were evil spirits, why would they summon demons then and not angels?
>> Andrea Franchetto:Right, because of the aims. There are different kinds of… I mean, usually angels are summoned when the practitioner aims to obtain knowledge, revelation, or beatific visions. But when the practitioner wants to kill someone or, like, have sexual intercourse with a poor girl, they prefer demons.
>> Dr Angela Puca:So it’s more in line with the aims, then?
>> Andrea Franchetto:Yeah, I would say so. We have cases of demons being summoned for knowledge, but that’s just one case. The general idea is that when the Christian practitioner summons angels, it’s usually for revelation and visions of the heavenly spheres, or to know, for example, about the seven liberal arts—those kinds of aims.
Whereas demonic magic often relies on erotic compulsion. The practitioner wants to have sexual intercourse with someone and cannot achieve it, so they try to exploit demons to get it.
>> Dr Angela Puca:Demons to get laid!
>> Andrea Franchetto:Exactly, yeah. And also, how to say—to impress people as well.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
To get power.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, power, exactly. There’s also an interesting relationship between… demonic magic is often called necromancy. I haven’t mentioned that, but with necromancy, there’s a relationship between trickery and illusion. Usually, demons are summoned to create illusions. A lot of the time, the practitioner was expected to perform with a small audience to create illusions and impress them. So, these are the main aims of demonic magic. If you’re interested, there’s a very nice list of aims in Kieckhefer’s edition, “Forbidden Rites”, if you want to look at that.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Oh, thank you, yeah. That’s a good reference to have. But, of course, we’re talking about the Middle Ages, because I know that people in the comments will say, “Oh, but there are grimoires like the “Goetia”,” and so on. Obviously, later on, we find that demons have multiple purposes other than getting laid.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Absolutely, yeah. That’s also one of the fascinating aspects of studying the “longue durée”, right? The long tradition of Western learned magic changes, and the way practitioners conceive their interactions with demons changes a lot. They get psychologized, naturalized, and so on. But in the Middle Ages, these were mostly the forms of interaction with them.
Interacting with Angels
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And how would people interact with angels? How was the ritual procedure, although you mentioned a bit of that already?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, so we have different techniques of angelic magic. Probably the most famous, and the one that circulated the most, was the “Ars Notoria”—”The Notary Art”. This technique, or ritual procedure, encompassed a very long ritual of about four months, and the practitioner aimed to obtain knowledge of the seven liberal arts. For those not familiar, this was the university curriculum of the Middle Ages, basically. So, here we can also see a bit of the identity—at least the social identity—of the practitioner, who were probably people attending university. They wanted to, you know, speed up the curriculum, and they tried to enter into contact with angels for such a purpose.
The procedure went like this: after lengthy purification procedures, the practitioner should then go through a ritual where they inscribe angelic names on leaves and place the leaves in a container of water with other substances. Now, I don’t remember exactly, but I think there was saffron and something else. Then, they should drink this concoction, and it had to be repeated every month. This, so to speak, prepared the practitioner to receive the gifts of the angels.
At one point, the ritual goes like this: the name “Ars Notoria” comes because the manuscript carried the “nota”, which were basically images or representations of the liberal arts. There was the “nota” of grammar, the “nota” of theology, and so on. The practitioner should inspect the “nota” while praying, and by inspecting these “nota”, they were supposed to obtain, instantaneously through angelic revelation, a sort of illumination. The practitioner would then gain knowledge of that particular “nota”.
So, the ritual encompasses a first phase where the practitioner prepares themselves through this procedure oriented toward internalizing the angelic names, followed by the inspection of the “nota” and the obtainment of knowledge of the seven liberal arts. The angel did not appear physically; it was more of a proper sort of illumination of the practitioner. That’s why it has also been called a kind of theurgy—a theurgical practice. Theurgy is a term that refers to a ritual tradition of Late Antiquity, so it’s a bit out of context here.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Diachronically.
The Use of the Almandal in Medieval Ritual Magic
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, diachronically. It refers to a technique to basically have the practitioner ascend to the divine sphere and divine triumph. In a certain way, it involved a lot of asceticism—a lot of this kind of preparation, mental, moral, and bodily—that resembled theurgy, which is why it was called that. But angelic magic was very diverse. For example, in the case of the “Almandal”—there are two traditions of the “Almandal”, one demonic and one angelic, to simplify it—the angelic part of the “Almandal” summons angels perceptually. They summoned angels on the top of a small altar and called upon the angels of the altitudes linked to the zodiacal signs. These angels were supposed to appear in different colours, and the practitioner could ask them whatever they wanted.
Usually, these ritual techniques involved first the construction of the “Almandal”, also called the altar of Solomon. It was made of wax and constructed as follows: it had four pillars, four little cylinders, on top of which was placed a board of wax engraved with the seal of Solomon. Small holes were made in the board of wax, and on top of each of the four corners were placed four candles. Beneath the board was a censer, and the smoke would percolate through the small holes that the practitioner had made.
The practitioner should be secluded in a private chamber, and after uttering invocations and orations, they aimed to compel the angel to descend on top of the “Almandal” and interact with them. The “Almandal”‘s colour should be changed depending on the altitudes of the angels being summoned. The expectations of the apparitions in this ritual were very different from those of the “Ars Notoria”. Here, we have very sensorial expectations; for example, the angel should appear smiling in a red light and could even be compelled to descend by the pleasant incense that the “Almandal” was percolating.
There is a very sensorial dimension here, which we don’t find in the “Ars Notoria”.
Then we have another kind of angelic magic related to the “Almandal”, which is found in the second operation of the “Sworn Book of Honorius”, a magical handbook. This is a very comprehensive handbook, as it involves four different procedures. The first procedure is for obtaining a vision of God, and the other three procedures summon different ranks of spiritual beings. The first are planetary angels, the second are aerial spirits, and the third are terrestrial spirits.
For the second operation, the summoning of planetary angels, the practitioner should go from the church to the place where they want to create the circle. They should construct the circle by moulding a semisphere of earth and then tracing concentric circles around the semisphere, inscribing angelic names. The operation takes place over three days.
On the first day, the practitioner should go to the place of the operation and bless the place, then return home. On the second day, they return and utter other orations, different from the first invocation to the angels. The angels do not manifest yet. The practitioner returns on the third day, and after lengthy orations and invocations, the angels descend on top of the semisphere. They will talk, and the practitioner will be able to converse with them, asking whatever they wish to know.
So, yes, this was angelic magic—very diverse depending on the handbook or ritual technique we are looking at.
Andrea Franchetto Recommended Reading
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And what books would you recommend for people to get a better understanding of learned magic in the Middle Ages?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Right, so, well, I would say that starting with the “Routledge History of Medieval Magic” is a very good place to start. In terms of demonic magic, I would recommend “Forbidden Rites” by Richard Kieckhefer. Also, for a more popular or accessible book on the history of magic, again Richard Kieckhefer’s “Magic in the Middle Ages”—he recently published a new edition in 2022. I think those three books are probably the best sources for an introduction.
Another one, specifically for manuscripts and the study of the sources of learned medieval magic, is Frank Klaassen’s “The Transformations of Magic”—I think it’s from 2013.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
That’s great, thank you so much. I think we’ve covered a lot of ground, so we can probably wrap up our interview. Is there anything else you’d like to share—any more thoughts that you think would help people better understand grimoires in the Middle Ages, other than the fact that it might not be the best term to use? I’m still using it for simplicity, but I think we’ve clarified that it’s not particularly descriptive.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, I think that when you come across the texts—imagine the practitioner who wants to put into practice ritual procedures like the ones we’ve discussed today, and that we find, for example, edited in printed books—you’ll find there are a lot of incongruities and inconsistencies. It’s very hard to put the ritual into practice, and this was also the case for medieval practitioners.
Most of the time, what they had to do was to adapt the practice. We should always remember that magic is not dogmatic, so there’s a lot of re-elaboration involved, not only in copying and passing down magic but also in making it work. And by making it work, I mean attempting it.
So, not only for the practitioner but also for academics, it’s important to keep in mind that what we’re reading is just the ritual event—how they thought the ritual should have gone and how they made sense of the ritual technique by copying it down. But it wasn’t necessarily actually practised, nor was it necessarily written by someone who had practised magic. That’s where a lot of incongruities and inconsistencies come from, so it’s important to keep that in mind.
If you’re interested in medieval learned magic, I always recommend going to the manuscripts themselves because they reveal a lot more detail. I think there’s way more detail when it comes to practice, from what the scribes noted in the marginalia and how they used not only the text but the paratext. I talk a lot about this in my dissertation, so if someone is interested, it will be published Open Access soon—in two weeks. There will be a lot of this discussion there as well.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Will it be freely available via a link? How will it work?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yes, it will be available in the University of Stockholm repository.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
When it’s available, you can send me the link so that I can add it in the info box.
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
And when you say to look at the original manuscript, you mean the original manuscript in the original language, right?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yes, yes.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
I think that a lot of English native speakers might—
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Yeah, no, but that’s also one aspect of it. We don’t have so many critical editions of magical books. The ones we have are very well made, but there are few. So we are also lacking translations. There are some translations, but there are always problems when it comes to translating, right? And therefore, especially when we go into the detail of the practice and the actions—every specific action—it’s always better, I think, to compare with the original text. Unfortunately, that’s what I’ve noticed: there are a lot of incongruities in the translations.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Maybe at least having both the translation and the original text for those who are not well-versed in Latin?
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Exactly. To have the translation alongside the original text. But also, it wasn’t only written in Latin. There are sources in Spanish, sources in Italian—of course, ancient Italian. So, for those who know Italian or Spanish but not Latin, they could still have access to those handbooks.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
So, we’re good to go, being Italians and having learned Latin growing up! And Spanish—I think I can read Spanish. It’s probably easier for Italians, not so much to speak it unless you actually learn how to, but when it’s written, it’s different.
Thank you so much for gifting us your knowledge, Andrea. It was great, and I think people have really enjoyed it, looking at the chat. So, where can people find you in closing?
Where to find Andrea Franchetto
>> Andrea Franchetto:
Well, thank you all for having me. It was really a pleasure. To find me, I’m on Academia—academia.edu, exactly. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram, but I don’t use them so often. So, I would say Academia is a good place to reach me if you’re interested.
>> Dr Angela Puca:
Thank you so much again, Andrea, it was really a pleasure.
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