Transcription
The Renaissance contained an elegant internal tension, one of the most productive intellectual dialectics in history, I think. On the one hand, it was a period of decisive daring and innovation at virtually all fronts of intellectual, scholarly, religious, and spiritual development. And at the same time, this innovation was fueled by a turn not to the future, but to the remote past. Thus, the futuristic and the ancient were fused in a singular progressive arc where radical innovation and antiquarian interest mingled perfectly.
The progress of Renaissance futurism was fueled by a return to what it took to be the very primeval sources of human wisdom, divine wisdom even. Just as this dialectic can be seen in everything from art to architecture, literature to spirituality, it can also be decidedly detected in the innovations of magical theory and practice. One such late Renaissance, early modern manual, depending on how you want to cut it up, of magic actually captures this rather elegant tension perfectly: the *Arbeitel de Magia Veterum*, or the *Orbital on the Magic of the Ancients*.
It reaches back to invoke the ancient spirits of the Olympic Pantheon, at least in their spiritual, planetary form, but also represents an infusion of Reformation, that is to say, something like Calvinist doctrine permeating the text, along with a strong, strong adjunct of Paracelsianism. Somehow, both incredibly ancient and yet, for the time, hyper-modern.
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But now, let's turn to the *Arbeitel*, one of the clearest and most beneficent grimoires ever produced, whose effects could be felt from the early Rosicrucians all the way to the magic of the Caribbean. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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Even the title of the *Arbeitel de Magia Veterum* flags it as an extension of Renaissance values. For the period of that time, the term *moderna* referred to what they took to be barbaric obscurantism, that of the Scholastics. They even invented the term *Gothic* to refer to the medieval period, the period just preceding them, as fundamentally unlettered and backwards, you know, responsible for the sacking of Rome.
Now, as misguided as this position may have been, they took the pinnacle of clarity and reason to be the pristine inheritance of the Hellenic world, of certain primeval wisdom, like that of the famed Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, which, to their mind, had become corrupt through the various ages, especially the ages just prior to them. Thus, they sought to return to the font of these more ancient, and thus more true, forms of wisdom. So, we wouldn't be surprised at everything from the fonts, the printing fonts they preferred for producing their books were named *Antiqua*. And just as well, that the truest forms of magic would be *Magia Veterum*, or the magic of the ancients.
Unsurprisingly, further, the main title is a similar callback to primeval wisdom. The word *Arbeitel* is written in Hebrew letters, though oddly *manuka*, or strangely vowed. The language thought by many Kabbalists to have been the language by which God spoke the cosmos and to being, and thus, by extension, was imbued with magical power. If you've ever seen magical circles surrounded by all kinds of Hebrew letters, then there you go.
However, the word *Arbeitel* is mysterious. It seems to be the Hebrew word for four plus a Tav plus the theonomic L, or God. Now, this might be a reference to the four-letter name of God, YHVH, or it could be a similar kind of idea we find dating back to the Greek Magical Papyri with the four and the God combined together. It also might be a reference to the angel that is said to have revealed this text, although I doubt that, and I can't find a single other reference to any other type of angelic being in the literature named for God. In fact, any further Hebrew terms, aside from a vague mention of the Kabbalah, the text really doesn't feature much in the book. This is the only time that Hebrew really makes an appearance. But regardless, the Hebrew title, fused with the magic invoking the Olympian spirits that work in the book, again anchors this grimoire, this magical textbook, firmly in the dual fonts of primeval wisdom: Jerusalem and the Hellenic world more generally.
The text was unknown prior to appearing in print in Basel in 1575, though internal and external evidence seems to triangulate the composition of the text was probably roughly accurate to that time period. It was very likely printed by Peter Perna, known for publishing a wide range of esoteric volumes, such as the works of Paracelsus, Ficino, etc. Indeed, scholarship has established that the text emerged primarily from Paracelsian circles, though the exact author remains elusive.
Whoever they are or were, we can deduce a few things about them from the text of the *Arbeitel* itself. They had a pretty strong command of the Bible, often just quoting it in paraphrase from memory from the Vulgate, along with a pretty strong command of Paracelsian ideas. Again, just get used to Paracelsus; he could be all over this episode. Further, they were also very much up to date on the theoretical developments in magic flowing from the Florence milieu from about a century prior, especially Neo-Hermetic ideas, along with the thought of folks like Ficino and Della Porta. And they appear to have some proficiency in Greek as well, if Greek phrases dot the text.
However, unlike their contemporaries, the *Arbeitel* is marked by an extremely clear style and direction, free from all of the avant-garde jargon and diatribes and general obscurantism that actually mark out Paracelsian works from that time period. Paracelsianism's like the postmodernism of the 16th century.
Further, the author is familiar with more medieval grimoire-style ceremonial magic and, at the same time, self-consciously breaking with those techniques and practices. Specifically, they're rejecting the Solomonic necromantic tradition, in which demonic beings are bound and then forced into servitude by the magister, for a much more cooperative system whereby the magus actually graciously interacts with the angelic and Olympian planetary spirits. So, it's a bit more humane.
Further, the rituals to do so are positively streamlined, as we'll see in just a bit. Gone now are the elaborate furniture and robes and rings and incense and all those foul ingredients that require you to hurt poor animals, along with the garbled incantations and barbarous words, etc. All of that has been replaced here in the *Orbital* with simple invitational prayers.
All in all, the writer was very likely a highly educated Hermetic Paracelsian seeking to create a kind of streamlined form to ceremonial magic, much more in line with Renaissance humanistic values of simple piety and clarity, utterly divorced from the demonic necromantic magic that marked the Middle Ages. This is ceremonial magic meets Hermetic Paracelsianism meets Calvinism. Yeah, Calvinism.
The text was printed in Basel in 1575, as I mentioned, in the Calvinist heartland, and the doctrine of predestination actually peppers the text, though not in the really radical TULIP sense of the term that develops later. In fact, the text would actually end up in the hands of none less than Theodore Beza. Theodore Beza had a copy of the *Arbeitel* given to him. Of course, he was the spiritual and political successor to Calvin himself, so there's that. He especially hated this book because it seems to equate the Apostle Paul and Hermes Trismegistus. Oh, and when I said Paracelsianism, the *Arbeitel* also equates Paracelsus, or should I say, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus. It conflates him with Hermes Trismegistus as well, thus elevating him, if we were to employ a kind of hypothetical syllogism, to the rank of Paul. The Apostle Paul, Hermes Trismegistus, the Apostle Paul, and Paracelsus are all basically equal in the *Arbeitel*. So, you can imagine this just, you can imagine this did not go over really, really well when it was published. Yeah, no.
When the text appeared in Basel in 1575, it was immediately condemned for a wide range of reasons. It was even preached against several times from the pulpit of the *primarius pastor* of Simon Sulzer, along with several calls for an investigation into the author and the printer, which would have been bad for them, considering that this whole area was a Calvinist totalitarian dictatorship. This all seems to have blown over relatively quickly, however, because the text would actually be printed in that area in the collected works of Cornelius Agrippa, the author of *The Three Books of Occult Philosophy*, along with a grab bag, a grab bag of other types of ritual magic, along with a bunch of Paracelsian works over there in Basel as well. That *Opera* edition of Agrippa's collected works would probably be released, partially responsible for the meteoric rise in popularity of the *Arbeitel* in the ensuing decades, especially in Rosicrucian circles, where magic, Paracelsian alchemy, and humanism were very much at home with one another.
In fact, in Germany and England, the text actually enjoyed an independent, very complex manuscript legacy that I can't get into in this episode, but it was actually copied, translated into German, and then translated back from German into Latin several times in the manuscript tradition, along with several manuscripts actually ending up in England as well. In fact, Dr. John Dee mentions the *Arbeitel* during the so-called Enochian or angelic scrying sessions. And the text would endure in popularity for centuries, influencing virtually every single text of ritual magic to come in its way. Indeed, were it not for the renewed popularity of texts like the *Lesser Key of Solomon* or the *Book of Abramelin* in the early 20th century by the occultists, folks like Aleister Crowley and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the *Arbeitel* would probably still be the most popular text of magic from that time period in the Western World.
In fact, we can see influences of it from Rosicrucian circles to the Caribbean, where the influential *Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses*, which include the same spirits idiosyncratic to the *Arbeitel*, would actually make a very strong mark on Caribbean and Hoodoo traditions, primarily in African-American magic, all the way over here in the United States and North America. While the *Goetia*, with its edge core focus on summoning demons, remains popular now for whatever reason, much of the *Lesser Key of Solomon* would have been regarded as theoretically regressive, even laughably old-fashioned, by Continental Rosicrucians, Paracelsians, and humanist magicians, such as those that actually composed the text, like the *Arbeitel*. In fact, even the demonic listing of the *Goetia* probably began as a kind of ironic mockery of the entire idea by the student of Agrippa, Johann Weyer, who, it should also be mentioned, also condemned the *Arbeitel*, although in his later works and for reasons that are not really related to the business of demonic magic. He thought they were both kind of silly.
In the end, of course, the text would also burn the ire of Martin Del Rio in what is probably the greatest political encyclopedia of magic, probably just the greatest encyclopedia of magic ever produced in the early modern period, his monumental 1599 *Disquisitionum Magicarum*, which is, I think, now just coming out. I think the first volume just appeared, which is shocking, considering just how important that text was.
All right, enough about the text. But what does the actual *Arbeitel* contain? The text itself is made up of 49 aphorisms of various lengths, divided into seven groups of seven, because of course they are. Further, we learn that the *Arbeitel*, as we have it, is actually just meant to be the first of nine volumes and serves as a general introduction or *isagoge* to magic in theory and practice, with the other volumes meaning to go into greater details on the various forms of magic it delineates. Actually, in the introduction of the text itself, those other volumes were likely to have never been produced.
In fact, it makes some sense if you get into the later text. The first septenary actually mostly contains sage advice, heavily informed by biblical teachings, which urge things like simple piety, thoughtfulness, being studious, and kindness to others. And that theme of being kind to others, especially one's neighbors in the practice of magic, is actually a core theme. It's a very refreshing theme to be found all through the *Arbeitel*. That's why it's often referred to as a book of purely transcendental or white magic by white and other people.
The secondary describes how God has directly infused power into the celestial world, rather than magical words or magical signs inherently having power on their own. Thus, piety and reverence are again mainstays themes. The magic of the *Arbeitel* being cooperative with the divine planetary intelligences and the spirit world more generally, than the more coercive techniques of magical power found in medieval texts of Solomonic magic or necromantic magic, where you bind and control demons. Here, we're cooperating with these spiritual beings.
The text also introduces the classical biblical angels Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel, and the powers for which they are named, namely healing, strength, and communication. Though, strictly speaking, Gabriel is actually also named after the mightiness, the power, mightiness of God, the power of God, the *gabor* of God. We're also provided with the first invocatory prayer, which is a simple petition asking God to allow communion with the angels or the spirits in question. Again, the ritual is marked by its simplicity and humility. No ritual get-up, no weird lion clothes, no incomprehensible magical words, no elaborate rituals. Now, whether that's a bug or a feature is up to you. I mean, who doesn't want to get dressed up in lion pelts or whatever? But it is still a sharp contrast with so many other medieval necromantic manuals that we've discussed in other episodes. This is just like the clear air after a rain compared to the turgid necromantic manuals we often find.
The third septenary introduces the Olympic spirits that are at the heart of the text and its magic. These are planetary spirits associated primarily with fate. Here, ancient notions of fate and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination dovetail nicely, somehow, but also have a range of specific powers unique to each individual spirit. The names of the Olympic spirits are also here, self-consciously idiosyncratic to the *Arbeitel*: Irotron, Bethorph, Fileged, Opio, and Fool, all of which are said to rule over the cosmos, which is divided into 186 provinces and for periods of 490 years of peace. Hence, we've been under the rule of the Mercurial spirit Ophel since around 1900 and will be under that one until the lunar general Fool takes over in 2390, if we make it that long.
Like many grimoires of the day, the spirits are also arrayed in a vast range of feudal administrations, much like previous texts of magic. The specific powers of these Olympic spirits are relatively typical, with a specific alchemical bent, alchemical flare, again revealing the Paracelsian influence, along with their characteristics, their feudal administrations, and their specific powers. Each spirit is also identified with a character or a kind of magical sign, again, a typical holdover from medieval magic, though again, these symbols are greatly simplified compared to those found in previous necromantic texts. And again, I should remind you, the *Arbeitel* notes that they have no power in themselves. They're not talismans or magical signs in that sense. They are the power is actually just their name, and God gives the power directly to the planetary spirits, and the magical signs are simply reflective of that.
Further, we're also warned that our own ethical comportment can attract and repulse various beings, spiritual beings. Like attracts like, and thus, a pious, ethical life is a propaedeutic for magical success, because if you're being a jackass, you'll attract jackass spirits, and you can't do that properly with magic.
Finally, we're also given the simple ritual for contacting the spirits, the Olympian spirits, here done in the first hour after dawn on their respective day, with an equally simple invocation and farewell ritual. A further note in these sections are also references to the Paracelsian works, which are supposed to underwrite the notion of these Olympic spirits. We do know that Paracelsus does mention these spirits in his extant texts, though the ones referenced in the *Arbeitel* are either lost, which is very possible, or they're just ghost texts and never existed in the first place.
The fourth septenary details the range of secrets we can learn from these and other spirits, much of which again has a very strongly Paracelsian flair. I told you this is going to be a lot of Paracelsus. From curing sickness or extending life through specific medicine, to summoning a range of elemental beings found in the writings of Paracelsus, such as pygmies, saganis, and dryads and sylphs, knowledge of which, by the way, Paracelsus said he often got from miners who claim to have interacted with these beings deep within the earth in the mines of Moria they dug too deep. Along with natural secrets, the very Hermetic knowledge of the microcosm, and even how to be regenerated as Enoch was. You can get regenerated as Enoch was from the *Arbeitel*. You can get translated into an angel, maybe.
From there, the middle secrets are set forth. Most of these are all chemical knowledge. They deal with metallic cures, you guessed it, more Paracelsianism, and specifically natural magic, and especially wonder-working machines like hydraulic pumps and things. Finally, lesser secrets are also mostly about acquiring worldly status, which is to say, financial or political or military power. Boring, materialistic, normie stuff, as we might say now. Though being a scholar is also listed in the lesser secrets. But if you know anything about Paracelsus, you'll know his very low opinion of the academics of his day.
Further, we also learn that such secrets can also be revealed directly by God to the magus without the use of magic at all. They can be impressed upon your imagination through visions. These can also come from the heavenly intelligences, especially through dreams. Here, Paracelsus actually ranks with Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Hermes Trismegistus. If you don't yet know just how much of a cool kid he was, the *Arbeitel* continuously reminds you. Air results was just the best, better than Celsius.
Finally, you can also just work hard, but without the foreign will of God, you, you're not going to really get far, according to the *Arbeitel*. I mean, sorry, but Calvinism. But hey, why not work really hard to show the results or proofs of God's grace? You can have a Protestant magical work ethic. You hear that? That's the sound of every single Puritan rolling in their grave. Or just an airplane going overhead. Was that an airplane or was it the Puritans rolling in their? The Puritans get a bad rap, actually. They're a lot more complex than people make them out to be.
Aphorism 27 details the construction of the only complex magical symbol of the *Arbeitel*. It's a circle oriented in the directions of the accompanying secrets associated with them, which is then rendered into 112 distinct sections, which the spirits kind of rotate through. East is associated with the highest secrets, South with the middle ones, and the West and the North with the lesser, boring, normie secrets, like how to get rich. This circle allows one to know the names of the spirits responsible for various, often calamitous, goings-on here on Earth, but it can also serve as just a mnemonic device, thus linking the text with the renowned art of memory of the Renaissance, perhaps made the most famous by Giordano Bruno before he was savagely murdered by the church.
The fifth septenary informs us more on the mechanisms of actual magical causation, how this is all supposed to work. Specifically, how magic links the wonder-working human soul, again, another deeply Hermetic idea, with the spiritual being in question to affect change in the world. Again, our souls are being connected through a collaborative process rather than coercion, the way that you find it in texts where you summon and bind the demon and get them to go find treasure for you. That I'm opposed to finding treasure.
Warnings also dot the landscape of this text: not to summon evil beings or associate with those that do, *cacomagia*, but to act with fidelity and a pure heart for the purpose of the common good of self and the common good of your neighbors. Again, this text is really beneficent. Experimentation rather than slavishly following authority is also praised, again, a very famous Paracelsian value. You'll probably recall that he burned the standard medical textbook in public to openly repudiate such appeals to authority over actual experimental medical practice. So again, Paracelsianism really likes experimentation.
Magic is also here divided again into seven counts, seven as opposed to nine that we find in the introduction, with divine magic, the magic effects of the visible and the invisible and vice versa, and theosophic magic, yes, literally named after Paracelsus, being the only illicit form of magical practices that a Christian can take up. One assumes that all three of these are going to be covered here in the *Arbeitel*. The other seven have all kinds of strange forms, one including the *Alim*, which is a strange form of magic.
We're also given seven forms of mental and spiritual preparation tools for engaging in magic, most of which form an inward spiritual meditation on the purpose, purity in one's goal in doing magic in the first place. Again, these meditations strike us as incredibly modern. They're about turning inward, descending into the self, as the text says, to purify oneself to do magic correctly, something you just, you don't quite see in earlier texts in the same way.
Following aphorisms deal with how to interact with the spirits in a more day-to-day affair, the day-to-day affairs of magical practice. Again, the *Arbeitel* holds that we're always impelling and dispelling various spiritual beings that are around us at all times, and thus becoming attuned to this is key for magical success. Spiritual beings are just all around for the *Arbeitel*, and how we act induces and repels them.
The *Arbeitel*'s notion of the true magus is actually revealed in aphorism 41, such that they are the one to whom the spiritual essence is served to reveal the knowledge of the whole earth and of all of nature, whether visible or invisible, through divine grace. Further, the magus is also the one who becomes simply aware of the occult forces all around them, and all around all of us, and rather than being buffeted about by them uncontrollably, rather they understand and learn to control them for the betterment of themselves, but really for the betterment of everybody. That's the real role of the magus in the *Arbeitel*.
The text comes to its conclusion, admonishing the would-be magus to piety and service, reverence and care, to remain obedient to God, with a final chart detailing the division of the divine sciences into basically good and evil. Importantly, the good sciences here are divided into theosophy, concerned with the divine revelation of the occult world, and anthroposophy, concerned with what we would now call things like natural sciences and the wisdom in human affairs. Those terms, theosophy and anthroposophy, while maybe not being used here for the first time ever in history, are actually very probably where they would be taken up by Jacob Boehme and to his theory of theosophy into Rosicrucian circles before eventually ending up in the thinking of someone like Rudolf Steiner in the 20th century, again showing just how much this text had influence down to the very language of contemporary esotericism itself.
The 1575 *Arbeitel de Magia Veterum* remains an outstanding and hugely influential textbook of magic. Despite now being overshadowed by texts like the *Lesser Key of Solomon* or the *Book of Abramelin*, it is a surprisingly lucid, clear, and analytic take on Renaissance magic at the crossroads of the Middle Ages and modernity, and it seems to be self-conscious of its attempt to fuse those two currents in its pages. Its influence from the early modern Rosicrucians to virtually every subsequent grimoire to be published through modernity, to the Hoodoo practitioners in the Caribbean and the New World more generally, to even the words theosophy and anthroposophy, its influence is just astounding, and this episode has hardly had the chance to trace that out at all.
All in all, the *Arbeitel* is a text well worth studying, easy to access, and honestly, just quite, quite rewarding. You can find the standard edition with a helpful introduction by Joseph Peterson, which also contains the original Latin. In general, we should just be deeply thankful for the true internet OGs of esoterica like Peterson and Adam McLean. I know I am. And just a deep thank you if you're watching this from Esoterica. You guys made most of this possible.
A further important text is actually from another OG in the world of esotericism. Carlos Gilly's article, "The First Book of White Magic in Germany," is also just a super helpful introduction to the text. You can actually read it for free over on his Academia page. Finally, if you want to listen to the whole book of the *Arbeitel* on a soothing Canadian reading, make sure to check out Dr. Dana Trell, the modern Hermeticist version and audiobook of the 1655 English translation by Robert Turner, over at his channel. You can find a link in the description below.
But until next time, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.