Aramaic Incantation Bowls: Magic Under the Floorboards of Late Antique Mesopotamia
In the houses of late antique Mesopotamia, protection could be written onto an object so ordinary that it might otherwise have served at a meal….
Esoteric Study
The Yijing Before Fortune-Telling: How Hexagrams Became a Philosophy of Change
The Yijing—better known in English as the I Ching or Book of Changes—is often introduced today as an ancient Chinese fortune-telling manual. That description is…
Ethiopian Healing Scrolls: How Geʿez Prayers, Sacred Images, and Däbtära Healers Turned Parchment into Protec tion
A traditional Ethiopian healing scroll can be almost as tall as the person for whom it was made. Its narrow strip of parchment may carry…
Dhāraṇī Before Mantra: How Buddhist Protective Texts Became Spells, Relics, Prints, and Portable Sacred Powe r
A Buddhist sacred formula can be spoken aloud, copied by hand, printed by the thousand, sealed inside a miniature pagoda, worn on the body, buried…
The Book of the Cow: How Pseudo-Plato’s Kitāb al-Nawāmīs Turned Natural Magic into a Medieval Problem
One of the strangest books to cross from the medieval Arabic-speaking world into Latin Europe was attributed to Plato, framed through Galen, linked to the…
The Liber de Essentia Spirituum: Medieval Monks, Spirit Fellowship, and the Theurgy Hidden in a Canterbury Manuscript
Most medieval books of ritual magic survive because several generations of readers copied them. The Liber de essentia spirituum is different. Modern scholarship knows it…
Sefer Yetzirah Before Kabbalah: Letters, Sefirot, Cosmos, and the Making of a Jewish Esoteric Classic
Few Jewish esoteric books have been made to carry as many later meanings as Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Formation” or “Book of Creation.” It…
The Greek Magical Papyri Are Not a Grimoire: How Ritual Handbooks from Roman Egypt Became the PGM
Open a modern English edition of the Greek Magical Papyri and it can feel as though an ancient grimoire has survived almost intact: hundreds of…
John of Morigny and the Flowers of Heavenly Teaching: Visions, Forbidden Knowledge, and a Monk’s Attempt to Re write Magic
Some of the most revealing books in the history of magic are not texts whose authors proudly identify themselves as magicians. They are books written…
Kitab al-Bulhan: The Book of Wonders, Jinn Kings, Astrology, and Visual Magic
Abū Maʿshar al-Balkhī conducting an astronomical experiment, from Kitab al-Bulhan, MS. Bodl. Or. 133, fol. 34r. Bodleian Libraries; image released under CC BY 4.0 via…
Hygromanteia: The Byzantine Magical Treatise of Solomon Behind the Key of Solomon
Explore the Hygromanteia, a Byzantine Greek Solomonic manuscript tradition: its rituals, diagrams, cultural setting, and relationship to the Key of Solomon.
Heka: How Ancient Egyptian Magic Actually Worked — Ritual Speech, Protective Objects, Healing Texts, and Ethic al Modern Practice
Magical stela, or cippus, of Horus, 332–280 BCE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain. This object joined image, inscription, myth, water, and ritual action…