Page 8 (part 2)

Hochmaël ), and thereafter wrote seven volumes of Magical Art, "giving the kernel to us and the shells to others." From these books he seems afterwards to have extracted ninety-three chapters, containing a summary of the whole subject, and made them into a volume which "we term the sacred or sworn book." In the meantime, the princes and prelates, having burned "certain fables or trifles," concluded that they had completely destroyed the art, and were therefore pacified. The magicians, however, took an oath among themselves to preserve the masterpiece of Honorius in the most secret and careful manner, making three copies at the most, the possessor of any example being bound over to bury it before his decease, or otherwise insure its interment in his own grave, unless there were some trusty and worthy person to whom it could be transmitted. It is interesting to note that this is the Law of Transmission in respect of Alchemy. The important point about the MS. itself is that it fixes the source of the mendacious tradition which ascribes a Grimoire of Black Magic to a Pope of the name of Honorius, as will be seen at length later on. The Sworn Book is not, of course, the Grimoire, but the existence and reputed authorship of the one will enable us to understand the attribution of the other. Honorius the sorcerer was identified with Honorius the Pope, firstly by the confused mind of magical legend, and secondly by conscious imposture, much after the same manner that Raymond Lully, the "illuminated doctor" of Majorca, was identified with Lully the alchemist, by tradition at the inception, and not long afterwards by the help of forged treatises. The Sworn Book is in other respects remarkable, and has been unaccountably overlooked by writers on Ceremonial Magic; it may be taken to indicate that an association of magicians was most probably in corporate existence during or before the fourteenth century. While it is clearly of Christian origin, it derives from the supposed works of Solomon, and would appear to indicate that the Solomonic cycle was at that time only in course of formation, as also that the earliest elements approximate not to the Grand Clavicle, but to the Little Key , otherwise, the Lemegeton . As to the operations contained in the Sworn Book, they are those of White and Black Magic, undiscriminated, without, however, any trace of the conventional "dealing with the devil." The MS. under notice need not, of course, be regarded as the original; as to this there is no means of knowing. The British Museum possesses also a later transcript, belonging to the sixteenth century, and a most valuable English translation, written on vellum in beautiful Gothic characters. It is referred to the fifteenth century. The second group comprises two MSS., both in the Sloane collection, and both containing, among other treatises, the important and curious work attributed to Solomon under the title of Sepher Raziel . That numbered 3826 belongs to the sixteenth century. It is an English translation of a Latin original which in this form is unknown to myself; the first line of the original is usually given at the beginning of each section. It is divided into seven books, and purports to have been sent to Solomon by a prince of Babylon who was greater and more worshipful than all men of his time, his name being Sameton, while the two wise men who brought it were called Kamazan and Zazant. The Latin title of the treatise is said to be Angelus [paragraph continues] Magnus Secreti Creatoris ; it was the first book after Adam, was written in the language of Chaldea and afterwards was translated into Hebrew.