The fifteenth-century magical text of Italian origin called the Pauline Art [of Seven Figures] (Ars Paulina) claims its mythical origins come from the New Testament account of Paul of Tarsus who had a divine vision of being taken up into the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:1-4). The text contains seven figures dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the nine angelic orders,and the saints in order to acquire religious literacy of the Holy Scriptures in three months. These seven figures are only given modern reconstructions in my book. The figures themselves are drawn from the following t ..read more

The Ars Notoria (Notory Art) reveals evidence of scribal tampering and rewriting, and the reason for this is probably a simple one.  The foundational and magical textbook of the Ars Notoria, the Flores Aurei (Golden Flowers) of Apollonius of Tyana, survives only in a fragmented state.  There are reasons to suspect that the original composition of the Flores Aurei was of a Byzantine Greek and Hermetic provenance.  In my book, I have given my reasons to believe why it was drastically refitted to suit a Christian agenda formed in northern Italy.  In any case, we know ..read more

The magical figures of the Ars Notoria hold a strange fascination over the viewer. The magical figures are key to unlocking the doors to the disciplines of knowledge. The most sought after disciplines of the medieval practitioner included the seven liberal arts - grammar, logic/dialectic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Other disciplines included necromancy, astrology, and theology. Through angelic assistance and inspecting the figures by the art of memory, the practitioner is able to acquire the knowledge he or she seeks in a short amount of time. I have chosen a selecti ..read more

“There are other books having to do with such calculation, such as the books of Pythagoras, who gives many letters and figures, and for each letter there are certain numbers; by means of these one determines who will win, which is surely a superstition.  Further, one of these books, also ascribed to Pythagoras, teaches which of two spouses will die sooner.  The same book has caused frequent and serious conflict between married couples, which is the source of great pity and lament.” --- Johannes Hartlieb (c. 1410 – 1468), The Book of All Forbidden Arts, Chapter 49: About the books of ..read more

As mentioned in the previous post, onomancy (Greek ὄνομαμᾰντείᾱ; Latin onomamanteia) is the divinatory practice of taking the letters of a person’s name, converting each letter into a numerical value, and then applying certain algorithms to achieve a numerical result, which is then interpreted to assess a person’s fortune. Both genethlialogy (i.e., natal astrology) and onomancy were interlinked in the body of medieval and astrological literature. This article has two parts. The first part will focus on those onomantic calcuations described by the Roman bishop Hippolytus (170-235 CE) in his Ref ..read more

New Latin Edition of the Ars Brevis, a Derivative of the Ars Notoria The Ars Brevis is a mid-fourteenth-century treatise on angelic magic belonging to the ars notoria tradition. An introduction and English translation is presented in my book, Ars Notoria: The Notory Art of Solomon: A Medieval Treatise on Angelic Magic & the Art of Memory, (Inner Traditions, 2023). This Latin edition of the Ars Brevis has been collated from the following three manuscripts: (1) Erfurt, Amplonianum Collegium, Octave 79, f. 63-66, (2) Vienna, Scot.-Vindobonensis 140 (61), f. 140-153v, and (3) London, British L ..read more

The Ars Brevis instructs the reader to perform votive masses as part of the magical experiment(s). There are two versions of the Ars Brevis, which describe what and how the magical experiment(s) are conducted. In one version, there is an understanding that there may only be a single magical experiment which is related to a single magical figure which takes place over the course of one week. The second version indicates that there may be up to four magical experiments and that the text presents the basic template of any one of these experiments which occurs over the course of four days. The num ..read more

The Ars Brevis instructs the reader to perform votive masses as part of the magical experiment(s). There are two versions of the Ars Brevis, which describe what and how the magical experiment(s) are conducted. In one version, there is an understanding that there may only be a single magical experiment which is related to a single magical figure which takes place over the course of one week. The second version indicates that there may be up to four magical experiments and that the text presents the basic template of any one of these experiments which occurs over the course of four days. The num ..read more

The Ars Brevis instructs the reader to perform votive masses as part of the magical experiment(s). There are two versions of the Ars Brevis, which describe what and how the magical experiment(s) are conducted. In one version, there is an understanding that there may only be a single magical experiment which is related to a single magical figure which takes place over the course of one week. The second version indicates that there may be up to four magical experiments and that the text presents the basic template of any one of these experiments which occurs over the course of four days. The num ..read more

The Ars Brevis instructs the reader to perform votive masses as part of the magical experiment(s). There are two versions of the Ars Brevis, which describe what and how the magical experiment(s) are conducted. In one version, there is an understanding that there may only be a single magical experiment which is related to a single magical figure which takes place over the course of one week. The second version indicates that there may be up to four magical experiments and that the text presents the basic template of any one of these experiments which occurs over the course of four days. The num ..read more