Cover of Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century

Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century

Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves. Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages. Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, it is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents - prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 392 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation Shares nonfiction, occult, history
  2. The Occult Shares occult, nonfiction, religion
  3. Greek and Roman Necromancy Shares occult, history, nonfiction
  4. Witchcraft and Black Magic Shares occult, nonfiction, religion

“People who read Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History
  2. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath
  3. Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth
  4. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Volume 1

“If you want more of the same (history about religion), start with these.”

  1. The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction
  2. History of Magic and the Occult
  3. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
  4. The Secret Teachers of the Western World

“If it was the occult that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
  2. Compendium Maleficarum: The Montague Summers Edition
  3. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age
  4. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. The Sworn Book of Honorius: Liber Iuratus Honorii
  2. The Complete Picatrix: The Occult Classic of Astrological Magic Liber Atratus Edition
  3. Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
  4. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch