Reddit reviews Grimoires: A History of Magic Books

I would say that it was widely used. I’m reading through Owen Davies’ Grimoires: A History of Magic Books right now and he has a whole section dedicated to the SATOR square. It shows up in grimoires all throughout the Middle Ages from the Arab world to Spain and continues to appear all the way up until the 18th century. You’re correct that no one now has any idea why it was so important but it’s clear from the historical record that it was important enough that magicians kept spreading it about. No one thought to write down, however, why the SATOR square exists, what it means, or how to use it so it exists an enigmatic and intriguing magickal artifact, much like these items from Pompeii.

For low magic, there is a wealth of witchcraft and folk magic that predates Gerald Gardner. It is not really initiatory, despite what a few people claim about coming from a long line of witches. Historically, it mostly came from books, folklore, and local customs. This book by Owen Davis is a great way to learn about magic and witchcraft that existed prior to Wicca (and was largely appropriated by Wicca).

The African diaspora in the Caribbean and the Americas created numerous magical practices (some associated with religion, some not). This includes hoodoo, Palo Mayombe (the black magic side of Santeria), Maria Lionza, and probably others that I don't know about. Magical practitioners in these traditions typically don't call themselves "witches," but their practices definitely fall under the category of witchcraft.

I'm afraid I can't give you a book that functions as a good and popular introduction to the history of Alchemy – there's one for the Grimoire tradition, for example. My interests are more academic, so my recommendations are going to be academic works. That being said, the history of alchemy intersects very well with other interests (say, the development of Renaissance Humanism, or medieval philosophy). My own focus is the development of Boyle's New Science, and so a figure like George Starkey is of particular interest. Despite my own reservations regarding their work, William Newman's Gehennical Fire, along with his and Lawrence Principe's Alchemy Tried in the Fire serve as excellent introductions to this particular era (17th century).

But I'll do some digging through my own notes in a few hours, and see if I can't come up with some more recommendations.

I really like Grimoires: A History of Magic Books by Owen Davis. It covers magical books that were influential in western Europe, and is a good place to start for people interested in reading old grimoires.

On my list is Grimoires: A History of Magic Books.

If she's a good reader, I'd recommend Grimoires, one of the smartest non-fiction books I've ever read on the subject. About 1/5 of it is references/bibliography. Advanced my knowledge by more per hour than anything I can remember reading.

From a purely academic and historical perspective, I would recommend a book published by Oxford Press (a pretty large and prolific academic publisher) called Grimoires: A History of Magic Books.

​

>do you believe in the spiritual/magic aspects of the occult?

As a someone who works in the field of Biology, you asking if spiritual properties are real sort of irks me. Spirituality is an abstraction of things like pro-social behavior where humans are wired to seek it. As someone who looks at genes all day long, I can tell you it is literally written into our DNA. Humans have needs that are more abstract like the need to have a purpose, the need to feel like there is something sublime, the need to feel interconnected with things, etc. That's spirituality. When a person goes to a church, does a ritual, or even volunteers, they experience those things. The reason behind this is clear - being pro-social increases our fitness and the predilection to believe in teleological things sort of is an extension of our ability to think of abstract things so you we can, you know, build things like this computer I am speaking to you through. This means there is a measurable and empirically observable correlation between pro-social behavior, the stability of human populations, and spirituality. Really useful things like Science and Math and Technology are consequences of this. In short, if humans didn't have spiritual dimensions to themselves, you wouldn't have technology because our ability to think of abstract things is an extension of those abstract spiritual dimensions of human psychology which are correlated with human physiology.

​

Basically, you can measure how spiritually a developed a person is by looking at an observable metric called pro-social behavior that is an abstraction of things like altruism and a few other things. You say you don't believe in the occult. What about science? Spirituality is an abstraction and within that abstraction you can have different attributes like pro-social behavior, altruism, self-efficacy, and a whole host of other things that are metrics that you can define as an observable. When spiritual needs aren't met, humans sort of go off the deep end and if you have addiction genetics you'll likely get hooked on something.

Oh! Another one I read that was fascinating was Grimoires: A History of Magic Books. As it gets closer to modern day, it shows how capital M Magic (spells and such) started to intersect with magic and illusion.

I read all the major medieval grimoires, and have read even Owen Davies academic book on the history of the occult.

https://www.amazon.com/Grimoires-History-Magic-Owen-Davies/dp/0199590044/

So tell me what I don't know.