The Construction of Christianity through Conjuration: An Exploration of the Christian and Non-Christian Elements and Nature of Liber Iuratus Honorii
Medieval Europe has an unusual class of texts known as grimoires. These books claim to grant the reader power over their material and spiritual world, by instructing how to summon angels, demons, and a variety of other spirits. What makes these texts more compelling is that they are apparently Christian in nature; their symbolism, their language, and their purpose all claim to be Christian and appropriate within the religion. Yet the concept of these books –conjuring demons and commanding them to do the bidding of the reader– seems to be non Christian. Considering the witch trials that took place in this period, religious and secular laws against the practice of magic, and the pre Christian religions of Europe, it would not be unreasonable to consider the grimoires may not have been truly be Christian. Liber Iuratus Honorii, or The Sworn Book of Honorius is one of earliest surviving grimoires, and like the rest claims a Christian heritage. This paper analyzes Liber Iuratus Honorii using links with other texts and traditions, the internal Christian elements, and the internal logic and narrative of the text to show that Liber Iuratus Honorii is a genuinely Christian text likely written by a member of the clergy who disagreed with the establishment of the Church, but not Christianity. Historical Background of Liber Iuratus Honorii Liber Iuratus Honorii attributes itself to Honorius of Thebes, son of Euclid. It is unlikely that such a figure ever existed, as grimoires are often pseudopigraphical in authorship and the name seems designed to make the reader associate the text with Euclid of geometric fame. Regardless for ease of reference, I will refer to the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii as Honorius. The earliest surviving copy of the text dates to the fourteenth century, but dates as early as the first half of the thirteenth century have been argued . Dating the text is difficult as it may actually have been composed in parts, some dating to the thirteenth century, and some to the fourteenth. Though six copies of the manuscript survive, in slightly different forms, when compared to each other and by their list of chapters it seems there is not a complete copy surviving. These manuscripts are all written in Latin, and only one critical edition of a manuscript has been produced currently by Gösta Hedegård in 2002. This paper will focus on the only version of the manuscript that has been translated into English, Royal MS 17Axlii, translated around the sixteenth century, though the modern compiler notes textual deficiencies and variant readings from three other manuscripts. The text itself is divided into three or four books (depending on the manuscript), which include: a complex ritual to attain vision of the divine, rituals to attain knowledge in many fields, instructions of specific spirit conjuration, and more conjurations respectively. Other academic works have focused on the textual and religious relationships of Liber Iuratus Honorii, what influenced it and what it influences. Though these works highlight what is and is not Christian in origin in the text, they all assume the Christianity of Liber Iuratus Honorii as certain without challenging that assertion. While I do not disagree with their final position, in this paper I seek to examine and prove the Christian nature of the text, thus further supporting the study and interpretation of Liber Iuratus Honorii as a Christian document.
As some of you know I have a degree in History from a University one of the top three History programs in North America. My final thesis was on Liber Iuratus Honorii, an early grimoire.
The next several posts will be that essay. I could post it all at once, but I know how attention spans on the internet work, so I’ll break it down into more reasonably sized chunks and post it over several days. Unfortunately due to the nature of academic writing there are long thoughts and paragraphs, so there isn’t always a good place to break the essay down. Some entries will be 500 words, others a 1000. I tended to break it along themes whenever possible.
Due to being on this blog, I’ll be removing the footnotes, because they’re a pain in the arte to put onto wordpress, but I will include all the texts I reference in the final post.
My paper is on whether or not Liber Iuratus is a Christian text or not. It claims it is, and I agree (as I’ll say in the intro), so it might seem odd to write a paper on it, but that’s how the historical process works. We can’t just accept at face value a claim in a text, so we have to evaluate it. So the paper is me breaking down the grimoire and looking for clues that really confirm or deny the Christian nature of the text. If you’re not familiar with the process it might seem odd to prove a text is telling the truth. As a historian we can’t just look at what a text says, we have to understand why it would say that, who benefits from it, why has it survived, and what does it tell us. The most fascinating element of history is taking something minor, and fleshing it out to see what it means. Sure, Liber Iuratus is a Christian grimoire, but what can we learn from it, what does it tell us about Christianity at the time, the view of the Church, the social structure of society? That’s the fun, teasing out the information.
Also, as it’s an academic paper written for a general audience of medieval historians, some of my points and explanations will seem really simple and obvious to magickal folks familiar with grimoires, but they have to be said for everyone else.
So that being said over the next several days I’ll be rolling out my posts on it.
And before it begins, since I know someone will be curious. I got an A on the paper, and my professor only challenged one of my assertions, as she felt it was too biased. It was probably my second favourite history paper to write. (My first one being the creation of the lesbian identity in Western culture due to the World Wars.)
This entry has been stewing in my head for a bit, but reading Davies’s Grimoires really brought it out to the surface.
I’d call myself a Solomonic magickian, a lot of my work revolves around the communion with spirits from grimoires in that style. Yet unlike many I don’t think I’m really “bound” to one text. Granted most of the grimoire spirits I use are from Book I of the Lemegeton, the Goetia, but my summoning circle is based on a design from the Heptameron, using Angel and Godnames I spent over two years skrying, my robes are adorned with the Shem ha’mephorash around the edge, and a variety of angelic and demonic seals on the chest and sleeves. So even though I’m Solomonic, my practice in that regard is all over the place a little.
Why? Because it works. There are some people that this boggles greatly, grimoire-purists. We’ve all seen them, people who are convinced that grimoires can’t and don’t work unless you perform everything exactly to the letter. (These are most notably though people who despite this claim lack the fame, fortune, and harem of King Solomon.)
Now, do not get me wrong, I believe grimoires should be used by the book, or as close to as possible until you are proficient with them. I wouldn’t say everything in them is absolutely necessary, but until you know how they work (and that takes experience, not educated guesses based on other systems or your intuition or lack of drive) I recommend keeping as much of the system intact as possible when you use it. Some things are most definitely symbolic I’d say, others are more relative, others might not be important at all, and some are crucial. If I gave you a recipe for amazing cookies, you shouldn’t make substitutions until you’ve made them my way and think I like my cardamom a bit too much. Follow the recipe the first several times, then you have a sense on what can be shifted.
This is where I get trapped in the middle ground. On one hand “Follow the book” on the other hand “Don’t be a slave to it.” What I wanted to address through was some of the issues with the notion of Grimoire-Purists.
Basically, why do you assume the text is right? Just because King Solomon (didn’t) write it, doesn’t mean it’s perfect. How many of us would pick up any modern occult book and say “The author is 100% right, and we have to do everything as they say or it won’t work”? If you’d do that with any magickal text I think you should re-evaluate your critical thinking skills.
As a subset of that issue, just because it is right, doesn’t mean it’s the only way it can be right. Sure, frankincense might be the right incense to summon a King of the Sun, but that doesn’t mean copal wouldn’t work, wouldn’t work just as well, or even better. Right does not have to be this binary exclusive category. Tied into this is the realism of it being 100% exclusively right. Just because my cookie recipe is awesome doesn’t mean you couldn’t make awesome cookies using a variation on my recipe. Good cookies are good cookies. One thing that came up recently in a discussion group around Solomonic magick is the necessity of wearing a belt made of lion skin. People battled back and forth on why it was or wasn’t necessary, names were called, it was the internet. I made a comment, which largely got glossed over though. Lions are going extinct, and while they’re doing better than they were 15 years ago, they’re still endangered. What happens when the last lion is killed? What happens when the last piece of lion fur deteriorates with use and age? Will these spirits then be forever beyond our ability to communicate with? It seems silly, but that’s the way some people think about it when they go hardcore grimoire-purist.
Lastly I want to question the idea of the texts being 100% right from a historian’s perspective. One of the first things I was ever taught as a historian was “Cui Bono” meaning “To whose benefit?” or “Who benefits?” Thousands, and millions of documents have been lost since humans started writing, and each one that survives there is a reason. The first question a historian asks is “Cui Bono” who benefits from this text still existing? Why was this text preserved when others weren’t? In the case of magickal and religious texts you can say belief, divine intervention, or because it works.
The trouble with this notion is not all texts were preserved on purpose, and not all were lost on purpose. For instance the autohagiography of Christina of Markyate was preserved by chance. The only known copy was in a house that caught fire, and it was one of the few texts near the window that the owner saved by throwing it out before having to flee the fire. If not for its random placement in the library we would have lost the first example of Self-Insert Biblical Fanfiction.
Did grimoires survive by luck or human choice? Well, according to Davies they survived by sheer volume. Why were there so many grimoires though? Because they were big business, forbidden texts that teach you to find treasure and get laid, who wouldn’t want that. The trouble is twofold though, not every person who manually copied the texts, or later every printer, had access to the grimoires, and eventually if there are only two or three or whatever grimoires, soon enough everyone who wants them, will have them, or know how to do what it is them. What is the solution to these problems? Make up grimoires, and that’s exactly what happened. As an idealist you can look at the similarities to grimoires and say that shows a continuation of thought and practice, and to some extent that might be right. What it probably shows more often is plagiarism. You own two grimoires and a book on herbs. Well include the prayers and circle from one text, the spirits from the second text, and mix in the herbs from the third, then make up a story about how some great mystic wrote it, it was found somewhere amazing, and boom, next grimoire craze.
Now the tricky part is, just because its random stuff cobbled together doesn’t mean it doesn’t work (doesn’t mean it will either). Here is the thing though, we know virtually nothing about these grimoires and their creation, we have myths, and ideas, and historical theories, but we don’t know. For all we know the Heptemeron or the Lemegeton were just forgeries crafted by a bored innkeeper looking to make some extra money, and by fluke they became popular, printed in large numbers, and got preserved.
So if you’re considering being a grimoire purist, think about the issues, rationally and historically with that, and see where it takes you. Remember, I do advocate trying to be as much by the book as possible, especially until you’ve worked with the system, but don’t assume that everything in it is 100% right, and that right information is exclusive of all other.
Vajrayogini: Her Visualizations, Rituals, and Forms – Elizabeth English
Wisdom Publications. 2002. 563pp. 086171329X.
Vajrayogini is one of the primary female figures of Vajrayana Buddhism. Her practice stems from the earliest reaches of Tantric Buddhism and continues to be popular to this day. Beautiful and fierce, loving and powerful. This massive tome is all about her. Let me make this clear though, this text is academic, it’s adapted from a thesis, nearly 600 pages. If you’re curious about Vajrayogini, this isn’t the book for you, if you’re a practitioner of her sadhanas, this still might not be the book for you, but if you’re very serious about understanding her, this is the book for you. (Or if you have a lama like mine who insisted I read this as part of my preparation for her empowerment.)
This book isn’t about Vajrayogini in general, but specifically focusing on her appearance in a twelfth or thirteenth century manuscript that collected sadhanas devoted to her. English states that “I hope the book will serve a double purpose: examining, from out textual evidence, the cult of Vajrayogini in India prior to 1200 C.E., and shedding light on tantric sadhana meditation” (xx). She accomplishes both goals quite well, it’s dense and academic, but thorough and well laid out.
The text follows the origins of the wrathful and erotic in Tantric Buddhism to Saiva praxis. Saiva mythology being adapted into a Buddhist cosmology is explained in a way that really clarifies a lot of the history and connection between the traditions. For those of us who practice Vajrayogini sadhanas and/or rituals of emanations of her (like Machik in some conceptions) there is an explanation of 17 different forms and emanations of Vajrayogini and what they mean and represent and where they came from. For the symbolism of figures like Vajrayogini this is the most detailed and complete writing on the topic I’ve ever come across.
Moving from the figure of Vajrayogini herself English explores the sadhana, breaking it down into smaller parts, while offering remarkably in-depth analysis of these sections. From benedictions, to creating the Circle of Protection, to Generating Vajrayogini to the mandala, and into specific practices. This is 110 pages of how to do the basic rituals, while that might sound like it will teach you, it requires a lot of prior knowledge to understand how to assemble and use all this information.
As someone who has been practicing chöd for coming up on two years, this book was very insightful due to the connection of Machik (founder of chöd) being an emanation of Vajrayogini. This is a book that takes a lot to read, it is long, complicated, and dense, but for those serious in their practice it is a great text to read, though one that will constantly have to be referred to in order to make use of the massive amount of information there in. If you’re interested in the tradition and history of Tantric Buddhism this text also has a lot to offer.
Easter Monday, time for a Judeo-Christian post I think. This is mainly more links and connecting data, but I have a few relevant articles off on the wings I thought I’d bring together.
Over at Remnant of Giants a post just went live “How Do You Know When You’re Having Sex with a Fallen Angel: Some Handy Hints from a Biblical Scholar“. The site is a mix of funny responses to relevant events and scholarly study related to the Biblical and extra-Biblical giants, and occasionally more generic Biblical/extra-Biblical study. As a fan of the Enochic literature (meaning related to the Book of Enoch, not Enochian in the Dee-Kelly sense) I find it is both an entertaining and informative site.
Of course there are a few mistakes. With number one, the Angels you could sleep with, humanoid ones, didn’t have wings Biblically it was the non-humanoid Angels that had wings. I’m actually writing a personal article on that now which may or may not make it up here in the future. Number two, should have stuck with naming fallen angels, Metatron (either one of them) is an odd choice of name for a fallen angel to assume. Other than that, it is a handy (silly) guide, of course I’d rather use guides not to avoid but to pursue, but to each their own.
The University of Wyoming shared the news that the trial/investigation of the James Ossuary box may finally be wrapping up. It’s only been about a decade. In fact since then the box has dropped off most people’s radar. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it is an ossuary box that is about 2000 years old (that part isn’t questioned) which reads “Ya’akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua.” For those without their Aramaic 101, that translates as “Jacob, son of Joseph, brother of Joshua.” Or when rendered out of Aramaic into Biblical English “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” So apparently we have the bone box of James, Jesus’s younger brother. But so far most of the evidence points to it being a fraud. “Ya’akov bar-Yosef” is generally believed to be authentic, but the bit about Jesus looks like it may be a modern addition, the trial is trying to figure out how modern, as some experts say it is more recent than the box, but still from the first millennium.
Speaking of Biblical forgeries it looks like Indiana Jones’s David Elkington’s codices are not standing up will to investigation. Rather than link to any individual story I want to link to this great resource here which is both a collection of relevant links and articles and a pretty solid analysis of the flaws of the codices. Included at the bottom of the article, the very last link is a collection of all the images of the codices that have been released, for those of us who like to take a look for ourselves. Just a sidenote since I brought it up the first time I posted about it, this man actually has degrees, a BA in Near Eastern Studies and a Masters in Jewish studies, and is working on more. Credentials aren’t the end-all be-all, but by Baal they’re useful.
Now in the spirit of Easter Monday, I’m off to buy discount chocolate.
Oh, and a hoax…
Going with the flow. I have two posts that I wanted to put up this week, but I’m going to hold back because there is something I want to address.
Copper and lead books tell the most contemporaneous account of Christ’s life!
Or so they say. This story has been getting spread about the internet the last week or so. I’ve seen it pop-up several places, everywhere from magick blogs to the facebook page of a friend who is a Catholic priest and very excited about this. So I decided to put aside some time this afternoon and rant and analyze this.
So if you don’t want to read the link above, let me summarize it. A British couple are currently hiding out in Gloucestershire (but don’t tell the Jordanian hitmen) after recovering a collection 70 books believed to contain an early account of Christ’s life written sometime in the first century by early Christians who fled to Jordan in the 70s.
A lot of people are getting into this story, but there a lot of little problems with it that add up to bigger questions. I’ll start with a reading of the news story before I expand my discussion. Yes, I could just link all the data and other people doing the work, but part of my issue with this is that anyone can pick up some of the concerns with the text with reading and googling.
First thing I noticed is the couple are described as archaeologists and David, the hero of the story is also an author. Yet there are no credentials. Granted this could be an oversight, but in pretty much any news story when you mention an expert you put their credentials, where they studied, where they work, what they degrees are, etc. Every expert the Elkingtons consulted within the article have their credentials mentioned yet the Elkingtons are left blank. Where did they study, what is their area of focus, and who is sponsoring this dig? Why is he sometimes called Dr. but often not? Archaeologists, despite the media image of Croft and Jones, don’t fund their own digs, they don’t decide to pack up, go to some random dirt pile and start digging. No, a museum, university, or government branch has a location site, permissions, equipment and hires people to excavate and analyze the findings. The article mentions none of this, and quite frankly if this were real what museum or university wouldn’t fight to get that information included in the press release that they just uncovered the real story of Christ? Suspicious point.
David (who gets all the press, despite the idea that it is a husband/wife team) is also an author. Of what? Well two books, first is In the Name of the Gods, a book about Templars and an energy-sound-spirit connection, and an upcoming book based on how awesomely exciting and dangerous his current quest for these early Christian books have been (this will link up to Feather later). Not only is he writing a book on it, because it is so much like Indiana Jones (his own admission) but Robert Watts, producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark has contacted them about making it into a movie. Amazing how this story is just coming to light and already a book deal and a movie proposal. Don’t worry folks, it gets more suspicious. (Also the constant reference by Elkington to how much like a movie it is seems odd. The researcher was like Ms. Marple, the owner is like a mafia boss, then he’s like Gollum…) But suspicious point two.
The books are written in ancient Hebrew, a fact we’ll touch more on later, which is odd. Aramaic was more commonly used (and probably Jesus’s mother tongue) though Hebrew and Greek were both widely used in that area and time frame in different circumstances.
The article lacks anything primary. All the research that is done is relayed by David, not cross-referenced to the experts; he’s talking for them, they’re often unnamed, who tested the metals? So that’s the issues with the news story just as it is, time to go down the rabbit hole?
Dr. David (or Paul?) Elkington. An archaeologist, author, real-life Indiana Jones, curious where did he study and get his credentials? Turns out he studied as an artist at the Bath Academy of Arts. Nothing against artists, trained or otherwise, but I prefer my archaeologists making ground breaking discoveries to have some relevant degree in history or archaeology. So not an archaeologist, historian, or anyone qualified for such a dig. Suspicious points abound.
When investigating the source of the books, where they were found and by who, two stories emerge, sometimes on the same website or paper. Five years ago they were uncovered in a flash flood in Jordan, or they were uncovered in a flash flood and in the Jordanian trucker’s family for a hundred years. New stories once you branch past the telegraph (which I’m dealing with because it was the first I came across and the most widespread) don’t always agree. The language it is written in is is often mentioned as Hebrew as well as an unidentified Phoenician language, and then rare occasions in Greek. The name of the man who owns the books changes, not drastically, but enough to be suspicious, then again David Elkington is sometimes Paul Elkington, so many everyone on this adventure have multiple names. Whether there were found in Jordan or Egypt changes. The story shifts more than the sand it was apparently buried under. Now just because news papers disagree on stories doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but it does start to make the story questionable as we have to wonder why are these mistakes present, why aren’t they corrected? 5 years, 100 years, big difference. Jordan, Egypt, big difference. Hebrew, Greek, Unidentified, big difference.
Now one Peter Thonemann, MA, DPhil, lecturer on Ancient History at Wadham and Keble Colleges (look credentials!) was an expert that Elkington asked to help with the translation of the texts a year ago, yet he isn’t mentioned in the news articles generally for some reason. He translated the Greek on the cover (wait, wasn’t this written in Hebrew, or an unidentified Phoenician language?) and came up with an odd sentence fragment that made no sense, but mentioning a name Abgar. A bit of research on Thonemann’s behalf turned up not just the name Abgar, but the entire fragmented sentence on the cover of the book. What profound Judeo-Christian source did he uncover? A Roman tombstone for Abgar from Madaba Jordan c. 108 CE and on display in the Archeological Museum in Amman. Thonemann let Elkington know this, but Elkington, with the academic insight of his art degree, went public anyways.
What makes the story more amusing is that the books were previously discovered/released by Robert Feather as an early Qabalistic text with the location of the treasures of the Temple of Solomon. At that time there were only more then 20, now the number is 70. At that time the Israel Antiquities Authority said they are useless and a hoax because they contain a horrible mishmash of languages, images, and sentence fragments that really don’t match up. Letter soup that is grouped together to look intriguing until you start translation. This was denounced as a hoax, and then a month later with a much better back story Elkington arises with the same documents.
The only thing lending any credibility to this is that apparently the corrosion on the metal dates back about 2000 years (but again not properly cited who did this research, sometimes it was an “initial” test, other times seems more of a proper study) and the fact that the Jordanian government apparently wants them back.
Recently some more data came to my attention while writing this as Ananael posted on it in the process of my editing, and a friend knowing what I was doing sent a link.
The image of Jesus on the codex is considered currently to be Helios, but there is also a theory that it is The Mona Lisa of Galilee. I’m not totally convinced by this, but it makes an interesting case, and if all the data from the author is right it means this forgery is less than 30 years old.
From Ananael’s post there is a link showing how the letters themselves show the age of the books is wrong as some of them are from a form of Aramaic that is from the second and third century it also contains so far to my knowledge the only article so far pointing out that Elkington doesn’t have credentials to be involved with this sort of thing.
When I saw the title of the article I was curious, after reading it I was suspicious after some googling I realized it is a hoax. I can’t say by who or for what end, but all signs point to hoax.
Some good reading for those wanting more information on this: Heavy metal secrets from a Mid-East cave
Due to the convergence of newage and Buddhism I’ve seen the so-called “non-violent” communication for a while. I’m fed up with it, and 
Vajrayogini: Her Visualizations, Rituals, and Forms – Elizabeth English