Judika Illes - The Element Encyclopedia of Witchcraft - The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

In a dream-book all components of a dream, anything envisioned or experienced, is assigned a number. For example, according to Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book and Wheel of Fortune should you encounter a woman named Clara in your dreams (or even just see or hear the name) you might want to play 13, 36 or 42. Everything may be assigned a number and the better books are quite comprehensive, inventive, and fun.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inexpensive Hoodoo-oriented publications were marketed with romantic titles like The Mystic Oracle or The Gypsy Dream Book and Fortune-teller. Many were sold in conjunction with dream incense. The incense was burned before bedtime to stimulate clairvoyant dreams and then the book would help you figure them out. Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book , published in the 1890s and still in print, features a cover illustration of a thin gap-toothed black woman with gypsy-style earrings pointing to some lucky numbers with a knowing look. The implication is that she is a conjure woman; she wears a head wrap tied to display horns of power. Aunt Sally’s and many other modern dream-books oriented toward the hoodoo trade are believed to incorporate material from much older sources.

In 1277, the Archbishop of Paris issued a condemnation of “books, rolls or booklets containing necromancy or experiments of sorcery, invocation of demons or conjuration of demons, or conjurations hazardous for souls.” In other words, grimoires.

The term “grimoire” is the name given to the genre of books of magic spells and rituals. Grimoire is a French word and is most usually pronounced “grim-wahr.”

Variants exist in other languages like Latin ( grimorium ) or Spanish ( grimorio ) although an English variant does not exist, the French version being used instead. In general, the grimoires were a European phenomenon. Many of the classical grimoires weren’t translated into English until well into the nineteenth century (S. L. MacGregor Mathers, founding member of the Golden Dawn, is responsible for some of the earliest translations).

The closest English word to grimoire is “grammar,” meaning a textbook or, more specifically, an instructive manual teaching correct construction of language. At their simplest, grammars are spelling books and so are grimoires. They just teach different spelling skills.

The first thing one must understand about grimoires, if one wants to understand the genre at all, is that they were illegal. These aren’t merely textbooks of magic and magical ritual; they’re forbidden textbooks; to be precise, forbidden texts of forbidden practices. Back in the Middle Ages, if you were caught with a magical book, punishment was dire. You’d be arrested and arrest almost inevitably led to torture. Oh, you could confess voluntarily to every charge but it gained you little. It wouldn’t earn you a faster, more painless death because voluntary confession was rarely enough. Inquisitors were convinced that arrested witches and sorcerers were always hiding something; it was in the nature of witches to be cleverly evasive and secretive. So they’d torture you until they deemed that what you confessed under pain, terror, and duress was sufficient. Only then would you be burned alive with your magical book at your feet, lest you forgot what got you into this mess in the first place. The book prominently displayed and burned was also a warning to others to stay away at all costs from forbidden texts. There are very excellent reasons why until recently you couldn’t openly buy any sort of magical work in a regular bookstore.

Historically, however, no matter how many have been willing to kill for a forbidden book of magic or spirituality, many more have been willing to risk their lives and die for these books and the knowledge they contain.

Grimoires are based on awareness of how precious and endangered magical and spiritual traditions were and how difficult they were to access. Persecution of witches and the destruction of their books pre-date Christianity. Roman authority, although pagan, feared and wished to suppress magical information; they destroyed works by the thousands too.

There were always people, however, who regretted this loss and attempted to forestall and prevent it, albeit usually secretly. Fragments, pieces and individual pages of these magical texts were saved and preserved. Those who had read them sometimes attempted to recreate them. A black market for these invaluable suppressed magical texts soon sprang up, as did forgeries.

Magical texts, even in fragments were treasured. People copied them by hand from other people’s copies. These copies, each perhaps slightly different, were circulated and copied again and again.

Few knew what to expect from these books because by definition they were scarce and mysterious. Few could understand or even read them: many texts were in archaic or unrecognizable scripts. Some are written in obscure foreign languages. And for a population that was largely illiterate, perhaps any writing is obscure and mysterious. Those little details didn’t stop people from copying them and making attempts at translation. Some early manuscripts are written in several languages at once; your speculation as to why is as good as anyone else’s. As to whether these manuscripts were authentic or whether translations were anywhere near accurate, there was rarely anyone to ask. Even if there was someone, who could trust that that person wouldn’t inform the Inquisition of your curiosity, especially if they’re arrested and tortured themselves?

The results of these hand-written magical manuscripts are the medieval grimoires. Pretty much across the board, they’re a garbled mess. Some are believed based upon genuinely ancient magical texts. Others may contain fragments of these texts, while still others may be forgeries, written to discredit sorcerers or despised ethnic groups or just to earn small fortunes on the black market. Some are a combination of all of the above.

Grimoires as we know them began to appear in the twelfth century. Authorship is generally unknown. New editions were made by handcopying old ones at great personal risk. It is a dream-like genre. Books were written in code, so that only adepts could understand what they were really saying. Some grimoires are attributed to famous names from the past like King Solomon, Albertus Magnus, and various occult masters. (Many are largely cribbed from the works of Cornelius Agrippa although this is rarely acknowledged.) Inevitably attributed authors are long dead and gone for obvious reasons: dead men tell no tales; dead men can’t be prosecuted for witchcraft. Did these famous authors write the entire grimoire? Definitely not. Did they write some or any of the book? Maybe. It can’t be conclusively determined.

In general, with few exceptions, these books are compilations of materials from varied sources, often reflecting very different and even contradictory traditions. Some may be “made up”—an attempt to gouge money from book collectors. Sometimes however even in a book that seems 99 percent invented, a glimmer of genuine occult wisdom suggests that at some point something was real.

For a living person to actually take credit for authoring a grimoire would have been tantamount to suicide, so inevitably they are always “found” manuscripts. An old trunk was opened and an old book discovered within. Or more frequently the story is that someone was minding their own business when a mysterious stranger handed them the text and disappeared. Are these stories true? Maybe. Books were hidden away in chests; someone transporting an illegal magical text probably wouldn’t stop for a chat, tell you where they came from or give you enough information to find them later. On the other hand, maybe these mysterious stories are the required excuses needed for possession of a magical book, or maybe the person telling the story was really the one who first produced the book.