Historical books, manuscripts and ritual texts associated with ceremonial magic, folk magic, occult practice, divination and culturally specific magical traditions. Entries distinguish documented textual history from later attribution, legend and modern occult interpretation.
The Arbatel appeared at Basel in 1575 as an anonymous Latin work. It stresses prayer, gratitude, charity, vocation and dependence on God while describing seven planetary Olympian governors: Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel and Phul. Robert Turner published the first English translation in 1655.
Picatrix is the Latin title of Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, an Arabic work compiled in al-Andalus during the eleventh century. It brings together astrology, cosmology, talismanic images, planetary correspondences, prayers, substances and philosophical explanations. A Castilian translation commissioned by Alfonso X led to the influential Latin version.
Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia libri tres was first printed in a youthful form in 1531 and in its extensively revised three-book form in 1533. It systematises natural properties, astrology, number, language, divine names, angels and ritual theology. The later Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy is pseudonymous and should be kept separate.
