Reading Guides

Texts and Editions

A photographed manuscript leaf and an edited plate show different things. Knowing who copied, translated or reconstructed a figure helps explain the form in which it reaches the reader. [1][2][5][6]

The English printed editions

A witness is a surviving manuscript or edition of a text. Mathers’s 1889 Greater Key and the 1904 Goetia are printed witnesses assembled from earlier manuscript material. The Goetia presents seventy-two notices with individual seals, then the vessel account and apparatus. The Greater Key gives forty-four planetary pentacles, numbered as figures 11–54, with their notices in Book I, chapter XVIII. [2]

[1]

Mathers describes his Greater Key as an edition drawn from seven manuscripts. Their chapters differ in arrangement, their wording varies, and their pentacles range from badly formed drawings to careful figures in coloured ink. He compares the copies, corrects Hebrew names and magical characters, and sometimes gives the most usual form where he cannot recover a reading. [2]

The Mystical Figure of Solomon appears in Lansdowne MSS 1202 and 1203. Mathers believes its inner words were intended as the ten Sephiroth arranged as a Tree of Life, with Solomon’s name to either side and twenty-two Hebrew letters around it. He states that he restored the figure accordingly. [2]

French pages and a Latin comparison

Français 25314 preserves a different local pairing on manuscript pages 92–93. Its Mars pentacle is a grid of nine characters surrounded by a Latin verse. The French notice requires a thin, well-polished iron plate and says that Emperor Charles V used it successfully and that it was long kept at Innsbruck. These statements belong to the manuscript’s account of the object. [3]

The following portrait is identified as the Eternal. Its notice assigns power over spirits and creatures and prescribes lion skin, a day and hour of the Sun, around the first ten days of August, a swan’s feather and a gold or yellow colour. [3]

Aubrey 24 is a Latin manuscript. In Joseph H. Peterson’s transcription, its letter-square pentacle at folio 36v is credited with frightening spirits, who fall to the ground and obey when it is shown. Peterson’s note compares it with Mathers figure 11, the first Saturn pentacle. [4][2]

A photographed leaf and printed drawings

Gollancz’s 1914 Sepher Maphteah Shelomo is a photographic facsimile of a Hebrew manuscript. Folio 49a shows nine Kandariri in three rows of three, with double-circle borders and different interiors. The photographed page also preserves the paper surface, handwriting and relative positions. The contents place the group at folios 48a–49a among sections on spirits, names and seals. [5]

Delatte’s 1927 Anecdota Atheniensia prints twenty-four drawings from Athens MS 115 on pages 19–20. His description of that manuscript records paper leaves, red-ink titles and magical signs, irregular punctuation and damage. The published drawings reproduce the figures as arranged in his edition; the surrounding Greek text carries the preparation and wearing directions. [6]

At printed page 425, Delatte gives another twenty-four-seal passage from Harley 5596, folio 31. His note refers back to the Athens drawings on pages 19–20. The reference supplies a comparison, while the original Harley leaf remains a separate witness from the printed Athens set. [6]

Sources and editions

The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translation; Aleister Crowley, editor, first edition, 1904. Spirit catalogue, printed pp. 12–31 (PDF pp. 10–28); Observations and classified list, pp. 31–33 (PDF pp. 28–30); apparatus, pp. 34–37 (PDF pp. 31–34), with the original plates.
The Key of Solomon the King
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, 1889. Preface, vi–viii (PDF pp. 5–7); Book I, chapter XVIII, planetary order and Mystical Figure of Solomon note, p. 58 (PDF p. 65); first Saturn notice, pp. 58–59 (PDF pp. 65 and 68).
Les Clavicules de Salomon, Français 25314
BnF, historical French manuscript facsimile. Complete manuscript pages 92–93, Gallica scan 54: the Mars pentacle and portrait of the Eternal, with their notices, materials and timing.
Clavicula Salomonis, MS Aubrey 24
Joseph H. Peterson, editorial transcription of Bodleian MS Aubrey 24. Manuscript f.36v; Peterson’s transcription, printed p. 47 (PDF p. 55), including the full notice and footnote 62 comparing Mathers figure 11.
Sepher Maphteah Shelomo: Book of the Key of Solomon
Hermann Gollancz, photographic facsimile, 1914. Photographed folio 49a, Wellcome canvas 90; contents, printed xxii, Wellcome canvas 26, identifying the Kandariri section at ff.48a–49a.
Anecdota Atheniensia, volume I
Armand Delatte, 1927. Manuscript B description, printed p. 2 (PDF p. 15); preparation passage, p. 18 (PDF p. 31); drawings, pp. 19–20 (PDF pp. 32–33); Harley 5596, f.31, and note 16 on p. 425 (PDF p. 438).

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