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The Key of Solomon the King

by Pseudo Solomon

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This book, translated and edited by the occultist Samuel Liddell Mathers (1854-1918) and published in 1889, introduced to Victorian England an important work of Renaissance esoterica. Purportedly the deathbed testament of King Solomon to his son, distilling all the angelic wisdom he received in his lifetime, it provided its readers with detailed instructions in conjuring, divining and summoning God's power to work 'experiments', or spells. For Mathers, it represented 'the fountain-head and storehouse of Qabalistical Magic' and formed a central part of his efforts to lend scholarly respectability to occult research. Mathers edited the text using available manuscripts at the British Museum, and it continues to offer authoritative and fascinating insight into both Renaissance occultism and its Victorian revival. Features of this edition include introductions from three distinct manuscripts, a table of the planetary hours and their magical names, and spells for producing invisibility, creating magic carpets and identifying thieves.… (more)
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For my own personal benefit I’d like to note that the deities of the hours (or whatever) go in the following order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The deity of the day of the week starts off, with the first hour beginning at sunrise; ie probably not 7:00 exactly or whatever.

Since a lot of these rituals are meant to be done at very specific times, I think I’ll just comment on that. Ie, many of them apparently are meant to be done at a specific time of the YEAR, like, oh, it’s not August? It’s December? Well then, don’t need to do it just yet, buddy…. 😹 And I’m not sure that I’d wait months and months to do a spell or ritual, you know. But then, in one of the pagan-perspective YouTube videos from 2009, (yes, I’m in the archive, lol) Cara/cutewitch772 (very much as the portrait of the Millennial as a young person) said although she understood spells worked best at certain times, she wouldn’t even wait for the ‘right’ phase of the MOON to come if she felt she needed magic-right-now, you know. And I don’t know; I’m a modern too, so I get that, but in a normative way, I’m like 😩

You know, it’s like, recentism defeats longer life-spans in terms of what we feel like we ‘have time for’, and whether we can play the long game, you know, as moderns. In the past, I mean, some people were turd-like, but a lot of people played the long game even if that meant looking at their ~next life~, you know, whereas with our medical science, we’ll still be here for much of the future…. But with recentism/youth culture/click bait habits, it’s like, we either think we’ll be as good as dead, or just the thought of the long game just never crosses our addled little minds, you know.

Sometimes life is an emergency, and you have to Move, and not wait, but, realistically, usually it isn’t.

The other point is that also many of the rituals are kinda Christianized/biblical, as the identity of the ‘speaker’, I guess you could call him, (to use the literary term), ‘Solomon’, implies, and my magic will probably be less biblical as I feel like people have more choices now and polytheism provides a lot of choices; however, the exact forms of pre-Christian religion are gone forever for many reasons, and I’m trying to form a type of modern/future religion, not to bow down in loyalty to the departed past, so I think angels and Hebrew words and Bible paraphernalia, although not known to “our pagan ancestors” or whatever, are, at least in part, useful things that the human journey has acquired along the way in its magical journey, and it would be a weird sort of historical re-enactment to pretend that it had never happened. Or that it could never be useful.

Of course, with modern technology versus medieval technology, sometimes a medieval magical intervention doesn’t map obviously onto something that would be helpful now; however, maybe I’m not thinking creatively enough about it all yet.
  goosecap | Dec 31, 2023 |
Although the author of this grimoire was traditionally the biblical King Solomon, it was probably written in the 13th Century A.D. It was translated by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers in 1888; Mathers subsequently had a lot of influence in the Golden Dawn movement, one of the sources of modern ritual magic; it is said that he co-wrote its rituals with W.B. Yeats. Mathers also translated the Kabbalah.
  oldmanriver1951 | Jun 8, 2007 |
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» Add other authors (24 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Pseudo Solomonprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
De Laurence, L. W.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
MacGregor-Mathers, S.L.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Peterson, Joseph H.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Petr z Vlkovasecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Verschure, J.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Warwick, TarlEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Whoever wishes to make progress in the Study, must take care that no part of it is neglected in all of the Circumstances that relate to the Mysteries and Operations of this great Great Art.
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This book, translated and edited by the occultist Samuel Liddell Mathers (1854-1918) and published in 1889, introduced to Victorian England an important work of Renaissance esoterica. Purportedly the deathbed testament of King Solomon to his son, distilling all the angelic wisdom he received in his lifetime, it provided its readers with detailed instructions in conjuring, divining and summoning God's power to work 'experiments', or spells. For Mathers, it represented 'the fountain-head and storehouse of Qabalistical Magic' and formed a central part of his efforts to lend scholarly respectability to occult research. Mathers edited the text using available manuscripts at the British Museum, and it continues to offer authoritative and fascinating insight into both Renaissance occultism and its Victorian revival. Features of this edition include introductions from three distinct manuscripts, a table of the planetary hours and their magical names, and spells for producing invisibility, creating magic carpets and identifying thieves.

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De Sleutels van Salomo, een verzameling bezweringen waarmee hogere machten opgeroepen zouden kunnen worden, behoort tot de meest authentieke verhandelingen over de ceremoniële magie. Het doel ervan is het voorkomen en ontwijken van slechte invloeden en het creëren van gunstige omstandigheden. Het belangrijkste magische hulpmiddel is het Pentakel, een symbolische afbeelding met figuren en letters die gekozen worden in overeenstemming met het doel dat men ermee wil bereiken. De bezweringen worden zelfs nu nog, tweeduizend jaar later, in veel Europese en Zuidamerikaanse landen zowel door de kerk als door de plaatselijke tovenaars gebruikt.
Hardcover. Large Quarto (11 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches, approx. 28.5 x 22cm). lxiv + [158]pp. Quality deep blue cloth binding, with a gilt sigil & titling stamped on the front cover, and gilt title etc. on the spine. Sewn, printed on library-quality paper. English language texts [64pp.] + facsimile of the original Hebrew manuscript [158pp.]. Edition limited to 358 numbered copies. An Exact Facsimile of an Original Book of Magic in HebrewThe book centers on a Hebrew manuscript entitled 'Sepher Maphteah Shelomoh,' that dates from around 1700. The original manuscript was discovered in the library of a London Rabbi, Samuel Marcus Gollancz (1819-1900), by his son, Hermann, not long after his father's death. Hermann Gollancz, himself an eminent Hebrew scholar, was fascinated by the manuscript, and felt that its study might give important insight into the history and origins of the "Solomonic" grimoires or books of magic, that are a mainstay of the Western occult tradition. In 1903 Gollancz published his preliminary thoughts and translations in a booklet entitled 'Clavicula Salomonis, A Hebrew Manuscript,' and in 1914 he published a facsimile of the manuscript, along with a twenty-page English-language Introduction discussing the text and quoting from it, under the title Sepher Maphteah Shelomo in an edition of only 300 copies. Both works are extremely rare, and have never before been reprinted. This new Teitan Press edition includes the full text of both of Gollancz's commentaries, and a facsimile of the original Hebrew manuscript, coupled with a new Foreword by well-known scholar of the occult, Stephen Skinner, in which he explores the history of the grimoire in the light of modern scholarship. The first section comprises the English-language Foreword and Introductions, and is 64 pages: printed on quality uncoated paper for easy readability. The remaining 158 pages (the facsimile of the original Hebrew manuscript) are printed on special coated paper, that gives a photograph-like quality to the reproduction of the manuscript, with its numerous drawings of seals, talismans etc. In keeping with tradition, it has been printed so that the English commentaries, which are of course read left to right, are back-to-back with the Hebrew facsimile, which is read from right to left. Please note the English materials are commentaries - not a full translation. NEW book in Fine condition. (no dust jacket issued).
The original Clavicula Salomonis is not the text that is generally regarded as the Solomonic Key of the modern era. A short manuscript, it appears predominantly in the form of an ostensibly Catholic text dedicated to the consecration of various tools in order to conjure demonic and angelic forces and cause them to obey the will of the master conducting such ceremonies. Dated to the 16th century, it is the most notorious magickal text of all time, and forms the very core of much modern occultism, both genuine and fabricated, both now-old and modern.
Bezweringsformules om negatieve krachten te neutraliseren en positieve situaties te scheppen.
Met informatie voor het samenstellen van een magisch instrumentarium, zoals het 'pentakel', de zgn. Sleutel.
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