Page 49 (part 1)

§ 7. Concerning the Victim of the Art It is usually supposed that the offering of a bloody sacrifice is an essential condition of success in Black Magic and that the embrutement of the operator is the chief purpose of the ordination. It is true that such an offering is in most cases enjoined, but its object is simple and commonplace rather than diabolical or recondite, and the practice itself is based on the so-called White Magic of the Key of Solomon . It offers another instance that if this text be the head and fount of the Art, it is also the root of its diabolism. The Art--I should explain--has its victim, not because blood is required in the one case more than the other, but because it was customary for pacts and pentacles to be written on parchment or vellum, and, in view of that doctrine of personal consecration already explained, the Black Magician had, as far as possible, to dispense with outside labour, to be his own whitesmith, his own penmaker, and hence also his own tanner. Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest was the maxim of Paracelsus, and it was carried further in Goëtia than mere intellectual independence. Make yourself what you want; do not trust it to others; it will not only possess more of your personal virtue, but you will be sure of the article--such might be the commentary of the Grimoires upon the aphorism of the sage of Hohenheim, and there is the more reason in the counsel because even the accessible substances required by the operator had usually some awkward conditions attached to them, which might remain unfulfilled unless he himself was actively present in their preparation. A particular case in point is the parchment used in the Art. The magician was required to slay a lamb or kid with his own hands, not because there was any symbolical importance attached to the act of destruction--the Grimoires make no such ascription--not because the blood was used-for its use is seldom prescribed--but to insure that the animal was one from which virgin parchment or virgin vellum could be prepared. That is called virgin, says the Book of True Black Magic , which is made from animals that have never engendered, males above all, --from which definition it is obvious that recourse to the professional tanner might jeopardise the entire injunction. But seeing that every operation undertaken in the Art assumed a religious aspect, the slaughter of the animal became a sacrifice and had its accompanying ceremonies, prayers and invocations, each ritual possessing its own variants. The preparation of the virgin parchment is given as follows in the Grimorium Verum : -- CONCERNING THE VICTIM OF THE ART Take your kid; place it on a block with the throat turned upward, so that it may be easier for you to cut it; be ready with your knife, and cut the throat at a single stroke, pronouncing the name of the Spirit whom you wish to invoke. For example, say: I slay thee, N, in the name and to the honour of N . . . . Have a care that two blows be not needed, but let it die at the first; then skin it with the knife, and while skinning it make the following INVOCATION ADIRAM, DALMAY, LAUDAY, TETRAGRAMMATON, ANERETON, and all ye holy angels of God, be ye here and deign to impart virtue unto this skin, that it may be properly conserved, and that all things thereon written may attain their perfection . After the skinning, take salt well pounded; stretch the skin; strew your salt upon it so as to cover the whole surface.