The Book of Ceremonial Magic (A.E. Waite) · 36 of 175 · tr. Arthur Edward Waite
Page 11 (part 4)
There are prayers for voyages, prayers addressed to the Cross, and then under the Tau symbol, commencing with the curious exclamation, Per signum ✠ Domini Tau, libera me , there follows a long conjuration, as express as anything in Magic, designed to prevent the petitioner from injury by any steel weapons whatsoever.
Forming part of this ceremony is the pseudo-epistle addressed by Jesus Christ to King Abgar, explaining why our Saviour could not come Himself to that monarch, and promising to send His disciple Thaddeus when He had fulfilled the work given Him by His Father.
It goes on to say that Christ has written it with His own hand, and that wheresoever the recipient shall be, in house or field, by sea or stream, sive in prætio Paganorum seu Christianorum --such is the stultification thereof--his enemy shall never prevail over him.
The king received the epistle with many tears and prayers, all which being duly described, the conjuration of the baculi, gladii, lanceæ, enses, cultelli, sagittæ, claves, funes, et omnia alia genera armorum , is continued.
As it is difficult to say where the original Enchiridion actually begins, so it is uncertain where it ends.
A variety of miscellaneous prayers are, however, attributed to well-known saints quite outside the Carlovingian period, and to Innocent IV.
and John XX., without prejudice to a further orison of the great Pope Leo himself.
Then come the "curious secrets"--to conciliate and discover one's proper genius, to become invulnerable, to prevent a gun from going off, to behold a future husband or wife, all effected by means of formal prayers--a kind of royal road to the chief ends of Magic, without apparently exceeding the devotional discipline of the Church.
To complete the analysis of this curious collection, its most important practical part is here added, namely:--
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The pseudo-epistle mentions Christ promising to send His disciple Thaddeus and ensuring enemies shall not prevail, reflecting a belief in divine ordering of protection.
Divine names or formulas that carry ontological power, used in prayer, liturgy, or magical practice.
The passage references the 'Tau symbol' and the exclamation 'Per signum Domini Tau', indicating the use of sacred signs and names for protective power.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The text describes conjurations and formal prayers as a 'royal road to the chief ends of Magic', implying the spoken word carries causal magical force.