Books and texts of the world

Magical texts are the books, scrolls and papyri that record spells, rites and lore: the Greek Magical Papyri, the Hebrew Sefer Yetzirah and the Zohar, the Picatrix, the Key of Solomon, the Grimorium Verum, the Hindu Atharvaveda, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Chinese Taoist ritual manuals and the grimoires of the European cunning folk. This page asks what these texts are, who wrote and read them, and why their authority is complicated.

What the texts are

Some are scripture, such as the Atharvaveda, which contains charms and healing hymns beside its worship. Some are handbooks, like the Greek Magical Papyri from Roman Egypt, which mix Greek, Egyptian and Jewish elements. Some are medieval compendia, such as the Arabic Picatrix. Many European grimoires were printed cheaply and passed hand to hand, and names such as Solomon were attached to give them credit. Some are tiny, such as a few lines on a papyrus strip folded into a case, and some run to hundreds of pages, but all were handled by a small number of people.

Readers and gatekeepers

Literacy mattered. A text of magic could only be used by someone who could read, copy and, often, read Latin, Hebrew or Arabic. That made the learned magician a figure of the elite and left village healers with oral knowledge. In Ethiopia, the debtera, a church-trained scribe, writes protective scrolls. In Java and Malaysia, Quranic and Sanskrit-derived texts are kept by family teachers. Where a text was in a sacred language, the ritual use sometimes outran the meaning, and people recited words they could not translate because the sound itself was held to matter.

Censorship and burning

Texts have been burned. The Church placed books of magic on its Index, Chinese dynasties restricted books of divination, and Qing and later authorities attacked books they saw as superstition. The Nazi regime closed occult lodges and seized their libraries. What we now know of some practices survives because inquisitors, in transcribing confiscated books, kept copies. Preservation depends on accident as well as intention: papyri survived in the dry sands of Egypt, while many paper books of village healers were lost when families moved or owners died.

Authenticity and the market

Many famous grimoires are not as old as they claim. The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is a nineteenth-century compilation. Scholars study such works to see how people imagined power, not to test it. Modern editions and online copies are popular, and some publishers present them as ready-to-use manuals, which the guide treats as a matter of belief and not of instruction. Collectors, museums and antiquarian dealers now trade in old manuscripts, and some forgeries sell as originals, which is another reason scholars check provenance.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

Alfonso X of Castile: Otto Posse (1847-1921), Public domain, source

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa: Jean-Louis Durant (1654-1718), Public domain, source

Ahmad al-Buni: Khalili Collections, CC BY-SA 3.0 igo, source

Dendera zodiac: Shonagon, CC0, source

Sibylline Oracles: Domenichino, Public domain, source

William Lilly: Simon Harriyott, CC BY 2.0, source

Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi: User:Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0, source

Oracle bone: Unknown author, CC0, source

Gematria: Bethsheba Ashe, CC BY-SA 4.0, source

Runes: Bengt Olof ÅRADSSON, CC BY 1.0, source

Natural magic: Unidentified painter, Public domain, source

Nostradamus: After César de Notre-Dame, Public domain, source

Renaissance magic: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Mother Shipton: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Picatrix: Unknown author, Public domain, source

Books and texts