Of Cat’s Blood and Lion Skins: The Difficult and Grotesque Items of the Grimoires
“The lion is the emblem of strength and of the Solar Spirit… and he that hath power over it is king not only of beasts, but of the lower world.”—Agrippa
Part 1: Introduction and Initial Encounter
I think every aspiring magician remembers the first time they opened a grimoire.
The pages seem to vibrate with mystery. There’s a gravity to them—as if you’ve stumbled upon a dangerous inheritance. Between the seals and spirit names, you feel a kind of forbidden welcome, an unspoken initiation into a world long hidden behind dusty bindings and arcane words spoken in lost tongues.
There’s an undeniable pull in that moment—the sense of standing at the threshold of ancient power. The promise isn’t merely ability, but presence: a deeper communion with the hidden architecture of reality. These books don’t offer casual suggestions or speculative theories; they speak in the language of ritual, of demand, of transformation. They are maps drawn from another order of knowing—meant to be followed, not merely read.
But then you read further.
You find that to consecrate the black-hilted knife, you need the blood of a black cat taken on a specific day and hour. That the magician must wear a belt made of lion’s skin. That other tools require the blood of a bat, the brain of a raven, and the skin of a serpent.
Suddenly, the thrill becomes uneasy. What seemed like a spiritual endeavor now demands what many modern minds perceive as grotesque. You're faced with materials not only difficult to obtain—but ethically, legally, and practically problematic.
I recall my first personal experience with this all too well. The first time I saw a grimoire was when I stumbled across an old copy of the Key of Solomon at my local occult bookstore, Wildflowers Unique Gifts and Books (sadly, no longer open). I remember that the book smelled of incense and had been on the shelf so long its pages had begun to yellow. When I checked out, the proprietor asked me if I had any experience with this type of magick. I told her no, and she softly smiled, saying, “This will be a whole new world for you.” And she was certainly not wrong.
It took me years to work any real magick out of a grimoire. It’s an overwhelming process. I had no context or theory to make sense of the strange implements and brutal requirements—but I knew in my heart that this was “real” magick.
So, what is a modern practitioner to do? Should they dismiss these requirements as outdated? Assume they know better than those who recorded them? Or should they seek to understand the logic behind them—so they can evolve the work without unraveling it?
The process I followed to answer those questions eventually led me to the topic of this essay: the lion skin belt—one of the more difficult, extravagant, and symbolic items found in the Solomonic tradition.
Part 2: They Meant What They Said
It’s tempting for modern readers to assume that the grotesque elements of the grimoires were symbolic, exaggerated, or intended as placeholders. But a closer reading—and historical context—suggest otherwise. There is little evidence that the original practitioners modified or softened these instructions. The grimoires record recipes and rituals that appear to have been taken quite literally by those who used them. They are not written like philosophical treatises but like procedural manuals: detailed, specific, and often adamant.
These texts also often assume access to such ingredients without offering guidance on how to acquire them—strongly suggesting that practitioners of the time had the means, whether through hunting, trade, or the knowledge of local cunning-folk. In an early modern context, the use of animal blood or body parts was not inherently transgressive. It was part of a larger worldview in which the physical and spiritual realms were bound together by correspondences, sympathies, and sacrificial logic.
The lion skin belt—which we’ll explore in depth—might seem extravagant by today’s standards, but it was not entirely out of reach for someone with aristocratic ties or access to exotic goods. Many grimoires appear to presume a practitioner of some wealth, education, or courtly access. These were books copied, preserved, and worked by clerics, scholars, and literate occultists—not by the average individual.
In short, the strange requirements were likely followed—not because they were arbitrary, but because they were believed to matter. These were not optional embellishments, but materials meant to resonate with the divine forces being invoked. To command spirits, the magician needed more than words. They needed commitment, spiritual authority, and a working knowledge of the secret correspondences that bind the visible to the invisible.
Part 3: The Implied Worldview: The Theory Behind the Practice
Although the grimoires rarely spell out their metaphysical assumptions, they operate within a coherent and complex worldview—one inherited from Neoplatonic, Christian, and natural philosophical traditions. These texts are silent on theory because that theory was once assumed. Their authors and readers shared a cosmos in which the natural world was saturated with occult virtues, and every object, creature, and material substance bore hidden properties that could affect spiritual realities.
The logic behind ritual implements and materia magica is not the product of superstition, but of a structured worldview: one in which meaning cascades down the Great Chain of Being, binding celestial causes to terrestrial effects. In this framework, the visible world is shaped and governed by invisible archetypes and divine intelligences. A specific animal, plant, or metal wasn’t “magickal” by chance—it was magickal because it shared attributes with divine energies (e.g., of the Sun or Saturn), embedded throughout creation.
This perspective, deeply rooted in thinkers like Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Albertus Magnus, saw the cosmos as a living web of sympathies and signatures. The magician’s tools were not arbitrary—they were the instruments of a sacramental science. The knife, wand, belt, and circle were not just symbols, but channels of divine force. They had to be crafted from specific substances at specific times, under the influence of particular stars or planets, to ensure attunement to proper spiritual alignments.
As Paracelsus wrote, “All things that are in heaven are also in man, and the Almighty has created man in His own image... Therefore the stars in heaven are nothing else but the external organs of man.”¹ This statement encapsulates the grimoire worldview: that the magician, the tools, and the ritual cosmos all mirror and participate in the celestial order.
Understanding that worldview was a turning point in my development as a magician. It wasn’t just about memorizing rituals or names—it was about entering the metaphysical logic that gave those practices coherence. Once I began to see the cosmos the way the grimoires assumed it was structured—with its correspondences, hierarchies, and hidden currents—I could finally work the system, not merely perform it.
It was like discovering the current beneath the surface—suddenly, the scattered details and strange requirements began to fit. But I wasn’t alone in this realization. I soon learned that later magicians—far from rejecting the grimoires—were wrestling with the same insights, and evolving them into new but faithful forms.
Part 4: Evolution, Not Rejection
The grimoires were not frozen in time. Their worldview of correspondence, sympathy, and celestial hierarchy was never abandoned, but rather translated and reinterpreted by later occultists. Figures like Eliphas Lévi, Francis Barrett, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn didn’t discard the grimoire tradition—they rearticulated it using the philosophical languages of their era.
Lévi’s concept of the astral light and his emphasis on imagination and will were not dismissals of medieval methods, but modern efforts to explain their mechanisms. He saw magic as the manipulation of subtle forces—forces the grimoires did not take for granted but did not explicitly define either. As Lévi observed, “The magical traditions are the same in all times and among all peoples, because they arise from the same needs, the same instincts, and the same aspirations.”¹ His work illuminated the inner metaphysics that had always undergirded traditional magick.
The Golden Dawn did much the same. They didn’t merely systematize and embellish—they offered a ritual and theoretical framework in which older magick could be rendered intelligible and effective in a world shaped by Neoplatonism, Theosophy, Romantic occultism, and early psychological thought. They wove together multiple esoteric systems—Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Enochian, and alchemy—into a highly structured path of ceremonial lodge magick.
In essence, the Golden Dawn took fragmented and often opaque grimoire practices and reframed them within a coherent system of initiatory transformation. Their rituals, correspondences, and spiritual exercises transformed ceremonial magic into a path of mystical training—one that went beyond conjuring spirits to address the purification and elevation of the soul.
As S.L. MacGregor Mathers wrote in the preface to The Kabbalah Unveiled, “Ceremonial magic is the dramatized expression of the soul’s aspiration toward the divine.”² Their innovations—like the use of flashing colors, ritual geometry, and kabbalistic visualizations—demonstrated that spiritual correspondence could be maintained even when the literal form of a tool or material was transformed. A lion skin belt could become a golden sash embroidered with solar symbols. A knife anointed with cat’s blood might become a consecrated wand traced with planetary glyphs. What mattered was not imitation, but resonance.
That said, I want to be clear: the chief purpose of the Golden Dawn system was alchemical change. Its primary aim was the transmutation of the practitioner—not the production of external results, though those may follow. I highlight this because when it comes to practical magick, I’ve found that the use of actual materia magica tends to be more effective than symbolic replacements. Symbolic substitution should be a second choice, not a first. But if the symbolic is all you have—still do the magick.
This is one of the central tensions between grimoire magick and modern ritual systems: in traditional work, the spiritual is not above the material—the material is its vessel. Power flows through things. Change the things, and you risk shifting the current. Understanding this is key to honoring the logic of the grimoires, even when adapting them.
Part 5: Challenge and Invitation
This is the challenge—and invitation—facing modern practitioners: not to strip away the difficult parts of the tradition simply because they are strange or inconvenient, but to meet them on their own terms. To understand their internal logic and, where necessary, evolve them with integrity. Substitution, to be meaningful, must preserve the inner architecture of the work. It must still bind the invisible to the visible and serve as a vessel of divine force.
We must resist the temptation to default to symbolism at the expense of materiality—especially for the sake of ease.
When approached this way, modern adaptations are not a loss of authenticity, but an extension of the tradition. What matters is not whether the belt is made of lion skin, but whether it fulfills the same ritual function—whether it embodies strength, kingship, solar power, and authority within a cosmological framework. In that sense, the belt—like all ritual tools—is not merely something worn by the magician, but something that transforms the magician through the divine energies it channels.
This naturally raises a pressing and practical concern: how do we approach substitution without undermining ritual integrity?
The question is no longer whether tradition allows for evolution—we’ve already seen that it does. Lévi, Mathers, and the Golden Dawn all show us that. The real issue is how to evolve the tradition without compromising the metaphysical structure that gives it force.
If a lion skin cannot be obtained, what then? If bat’s blood is out of the question, how do we preserve the rite’s symbolic and energetic resonance? These are not theoretical dilemmas. They go to the very heart of how we engage with inherited esoteric systems in the contemporary world.
Part 6: A Note on Substitution and Integrity
Before moving on, I want to offer a few extended reflections on substitution as I’ve come to understand it in my own practice:
I believe that a practitioner should follow the prescriptions of the grimoires as closely as possible. Substitutions should only be considered when something is impossible, illegal, or ethically objectionable—not merely difficult. Magick, in my experience, was never meant to be easy.
I don’t say this to gatekeep or sound elitist. Rather, it’s a recognition that the entire process is magick. Obtaining the ingredients is magick. Crafting the tool is magick. Fasting is magick. Prayer is magick. Every step is part of the operation—each one drawing the practitioner into deeper alignment with the rite, the intention, and the spirit being conjured.
If we reflect on the Solomonic method in particular, it becomes clear that the entire system is a kind of ritual choreography—a symphony of sympathetic acts meant to bring the magician and the spirit into resonance. To shortcut those steps for convenience is to ignore the engine that powers the work. Authors like Stephen Skinner and David Rankine refer to this as magickal tension or magickal momentum—concepts that have been foundational to my understanding.¹ I also believe these terms apply to lodge-based rituals, such as the LBRP, LBRH, and the Middle Pillar. The buildup of aligned acts generates potency.
I too find it important to note that substitutions should arise not just from theory, but from experience. We are magicians—we experiment, we verify, we learn through praxis. Results matter. But results must come from within the system’s integrity, not from casual improvisation. Experimentation is crucial—but it must be methodical. That’s how we discover what doesn’t work, what works, and what works best.
Furthermore, it is worth noting: some effective ritual items are not explicitly named in the grimoires. Some tools and insights only emerge after years of practice and spiritual prompting. I’ve personally had experiences where implements, words, or structural additions came to me through the act of magick itself—what some might call gnosis, others simply accumulated craft—I call it spiritual i
Finally, substitutions won’t always be historical—and that’s okay. The evolution of magick has never been purely historical. It has always been theoretical, practical, and initiatory. What matters is that any adaptation preserves the internal logic and metaphysical resonance of the system. If that structure is intact, then we’re not breaking tradition—we’re participating in its ongoing unfoldment.
This reminds me of how certain herbs and roots have been integrated into folk traditions as they migrated geographically. The logic behind them changed—but the spirit of the work remained. The lineage of magick isn’t defined by rigidity. It’s defined by fidelity.
Part 7: Modern Substitutions—The Belt of Authority Reimagined
“The lion is the symbol of the rising sun, of dominion, and of the soul’s courage in facing the beasts within.”
And so, we return to the lion skin belt—that stark emblem of spiritual kingship.
In the worldview that birthed the grimoires, this was not a costume piece. The lion was not merely a strong animal—it was a solar creature, long associated with royalty and divine strength. Most significantly, as John R. King IV reminds us, the lion is closely tied to the throne of Solomon—the patron of many a magician.¹
Today, legal, ethical, and practical constraints rightly discourage the use of actual lion skin. But if we understand the lion as an emblem of solar authority, courage, and rulership, we can ask: how might those same spiritual forces be invoked through other materials?
Examples of Contemporary Approaches
Some practitioners turn to ethically sourced animal hides from creatures that carry a similar symbolic resonance—such as stag leather, long associated with nobility and solar vitality. Others opt for fine-quality fabric dyed in solar colors—gold, deep yellow, or white—then embroidered with astrological symbols or angelic names associated with the Sun, particularly the archangel Michael.
Still others take a more herbal or alchemical route, incorporating solar herbs—such as frankincense, bay laurel, or sunflower—into hidden pouches sewn into the belt. The belt itself might be consecrated at the planetary hour of the Sun, on a Sunday, under specific astrological conditions.
These substitutions are often made in addition to the nomina magica prescribed in the Lemegeton and other Solomonic texts—names typically inscribed around the outermost part of the magician’s circle.²
The point is not mimicry, but metaphysical resonance. If the grimoire magician wore lion skin to clothe himself in solar kingship, the modern practitioner can achieve something similar through intentional, informed substitution that preserves the tool’s symbolic and energetic function.
From Emblem to Engine: The Role of the Belt
To wear a lion skin belt in the Solomonic tradition was not just to identify with the lion. The belt marked the magician as a sovereign—not merely over spirits, but over the fragmented, instinctual elements of the self. It was a solar crown wrapped around the body.
The belt’s placement also matters. It encircles the solar plexus—the body’s energetic center of will, identity, and power. In Hermetic, yogic, and esoteric anatomy, this is the seat of inner fire. The belt is not just worn—it charges the core of the magician’s being with symbolic and energetic significance.
Thus, in any substitution, the goal is not appearance but empowerment. The belt must still function as a ritual conduit.
In this spirit of faithful evolution, I began to ask what other solar beasts might serve the same ritual function—not as replacements, but as extensions of that current. That question led me not to compromise, but to deepen—and ultimately to Sobek, the crocodile god of Egypt.
Part 8: Theoretical Foundations of Thoughtful Substitution
This may seem like a strange turn—to go from Solomon to Sobek, from Judah to Egypt. But I want to make the case that such usage and association is not a departure from the grimoire tradition, nor from the legacy of the Western esoteric tradition. Rather, it is a continuation—an extension of the very evolutionary arc I’ve been tracing throughout this essay.
I hope to show that this is not eclectic dilution, but an example of thoughtful substitution, rooted in both theory and practice.
The grimoire tradition itself is not culturally monolithic. It absorbed Jewish, Christian, Greco-Egyptian, and Arabic elements, blending them into a functional and often syncretic magical corpus. From the grimoires of Renaissance Europe to the Greek Magical Papyri, magicians have always worked across pantheons, merging names and forces in pursuit of spiritual authority and effective ritual.
As a practitioner, I remain deeply grounded in tradition. But I am also, as stated earlier, a strong proponent of experimentation. For either of these paths to yield results—whether traditional or experimental—there must be a coherent, intelligible, and functional theory of magick. Only then can syncretic adaptations be integrated without compromising spiritual integrity.
In this context, the use of Egyptian deities, particularly those of the Greco-Egyptian period, has always felt natural to me. My ritual theory and praxis are shaped by a Neoplatonic and Hermetic-Kabbalistic framework—traditions that blend easily, one informing the other. Within this theological architecture, I can affirm a worldview that is at once monotheistic, polytheistic, and panentheistic—without contradiction.
“Regarding the distinction between monotheism, polytheism and panentheism, this distinction hardly exists for the Initiate. Verily there is little difference between a single God and a harmony of Supreme Forces, so absolutely linked that the effect would be that of an indivisible unit, a plurality whose action is unified, a unity whose action is pluralized.”¹
—S.L. MacGregor Mathers
Informed by this approach, I have always felt at home invoking Hebraic divine names, Egyptian deities, and other spiritual powers. These are not arbitrary insertions; however, they arise from reflection, experience, and correspondence. And in my experience, they work.
Why? Because the gods and goddesses have never been static. Their names, roles, and functions have shifted across cultures and ages. This isn’t loss of integrity—it’s the vital process by which these spirits live and remain accessible. They evolve, and that evolution is often what allows them to endure.
Take Hecate, for example. In early Greek religion, she was a relatively minor deity—a guardian of liminal spaces. But by the Hellenistic era, she had become a major chthonic goddess: associated with necromancy, the moon, magic, and transformation. In the Greek Magical Papyri, she emerges as a powerful ritual force, and in later Neoplatonism, even as an expression of the World Soul itself.
The PGM—one of the richest sources of late-antique ritual magic—features spells invoking Yahweh, Hermes, Osiris, and Hecate side by side.²
Hecate didn’t lose power by changing—she gained it.
The same principle applies to magical implements and ritual components. Symbols are not fixed. They evolve with the cosmologies that support them. If lion skin is no longer attainable—ethically, legally, or spiritually—then we must return to the ritual logic behind the tool, not its historical surface.
Just as the lion signified solar authority and dominion in the Judeo-Christian cosmos, so too does the crocodile carry those forces within the Egyptian symbolic system—albeit in a more amphibious and regenerative form. In this way, my turn toward Sobek was not a departure, but a deepening.
Part 9: Clad in Crocodile—Solar Regalia and the Old Magick of Egypt
If the lion skin belt is no longer attainable—what then? We must return to the core of the ritual logic: not the item itself, but the function it performs.
The lion, as we’ve discussed, represents solar authority, kingship, courage, and dominion over the instinctual self. In wearing it, the magician symbolically clothes themselves in rulership, in solar fire, in the divine will that commands both spirit and flesh.
Wherever possible, the practitioner should strive to work with actual materia magica. Physical substance carries a weight, presence, and occult charge that symbolic representations—however meaningful—can rarely replicate. The spiritual world often answers through the material, and when a material is ritually appropriate and accessible, it should be honored as the vessel it is. Symbolism is never a shortcut—it is a last resort. When the hide is available, the hide should be used. This is not dogma. It is devotion to the spiritual architecture that makes magick effective.
So how do we preserve that architecture without betraying it?
Within a theurgic and Neoplatonic framework, the divine may speak through many faces. What matters is not mythology, but metaphysical alignment.
In my own reflections and experiments, I’ve come to see the crocodile god Sobek of Egyptian tradition as a powerful and potent substitute. At first glance, this may seem far afield from the lion. But on closer examination, Sobek offers something both thematically resonant and ritually fertile—a symbol not of compromise, but of mythic continuity, one that can even deepen the magician’s connection to the forces they seek to embody.
Sobek as a Solar-Elemental Force
Sobek is a complex and potent figure in Egyptian religion. He is the god of the Nile, of crocodiles, of fertility, and of military strength. He is feared and revered. He represents vital chaos—raw, dangerous, fecund. Yet Sobek is also deeply linked to the solar deity Ra, forming the composite being Sobek-Ra—a hybrid of watery depth and solar fire. As Sobek-Ra, he becomes a being of devouring instinct and divine illumination—a solar engine rising from the waters of chaos. He was a protector of Pharaohs, a god of kingship, of virility, and of magical potency.
In short, Sobek encapsulates many of the same symbolic values as the lion, but refracted through a different cosmology—one that adds fertility, mystery, and amphibious transformation to the equation. He is a beast of both land and water, of life and death, of raw instinct and divine kingship.
This is not just an interesting mythic coincidence—it is a theurgic opportunity. Sobek, like the lion, is one of those sacred beasts whose skin must be ritually mastered, worn, and internalized. He speaks to the same initiatory arc: from instinct to command, from chaos to kingship.
Sobek and the Alchemical Formula IAO
Sobek also dovetails elegantly with alchemical and theurgical themes, particularly with the Golden Dawn’s interpretation of the IAO formula—Isis, Apophis, Osiris.
Isis, in his connection to water and fecundity
Apophis, in his destructive, chaotic, serpentine (or reptilian) form
Osiris, in his link to solar rebirth and divine rulership through Sobek-Ra
Sobek is an amphibious initiator. His nature mediates between land and water, order and instinct, death and rebirth. In this way, he is an expression of the IAO cycle—not merely in symbolism but in mythic enactment.
I’ve also come to associate Sobek with both upward- and downward-facing triangles of the hexagram—the traditional symbol of Tiphareth, the sphere of the Sun. His duality—watery depth and solar fire—makes him an embodied image of spiritual balance, like the hexagram itself.
From this vantage point, a belt consecrated in the name or image of Sobek would not simply mimic the lion skin—it would amplify and reinterpret its purpose. It becomes a vehicle of transformation, a garment that empowers the magician to move between chaos and kingship, between fragmented instinct and solar will.
This is not mere poetic substitution. Its texture, pattern, and presence radiate meaning. Just as the lion skin was never merely decorative, so too is the crocodile hide a ritual link to Sobek’s mythic potency.
To wear it is to honor an old solar force in a new form—one still capable of burning, commanding, and initiating. In Sobek, we find the beast of the Nile. But we also find Ra, the fire that guides Pharaohs, the spirit that reassembles what death has scattered.
Part 10: Sobek and Osiris—The Crocodile and the Dismembered King
The case for Sobek as a meaningful substitution does not rest on solar and martial symbolism alone. There is a deeper, more initiatory resonance—one that further justifies his ritual use in place of the lion: Sobek’s mythic connection to Osiris.
Osiris, as the dying and resurrected god, represents not only kingship and judgment, but the fundamental mystery of death, dismemberment, and return—a formula echoed across countless esoteric systems. In one mythic account, it is Sobek who dives into the Nile and retrieves the scattered limbs of Osiris, acting as a divine agent of reintegration.
This role casts Sobek not merely as a force of chaotic strength, but as a psychopomp—a being who moves between fragmentation and restoration. He becomes an initiator in the deepest sense: one who can navigate the abyss, recover what has been broken, and reweave the image of the divine.
Sobek is amphibious not only in body, but in symbolism. He walks between the elements. He mediates between instinct and spirit, destruction and rebirth, animality and divine kingship. Where the lion may stand boldly in the sun, Sobek swims into darkness and returns with pieces of the eternal.
In Neoplatonic terms, “The soul falls into multiplicity, but seeks reunion with the One.”¹ Sobek’s act is no longer just mythic—it becomes metaphysical. He is the force that moves downward into dismemberment, and then rises upward into divine coherence. He is the pattern of the magician’s own path: descent, gathering, resurrection.
From this perspective, Sobek does not merely parallel the lion—he completes the initiatory circuit. He brings an alchemical depth that aligns perfectly with the ritual aims of ceremonial magic. Just as Osiris must be reassembled before he can rise, the magician must be torn from illusion, restructured in divine likeness, and crowned anew.
To wear a belt consecrated in Sobek’s name is not only to clothe oneself in power—but in the power to rise from dismemberment. It is to carry on your body the image of the force that journeys into fragmentation and brings back coherence. It is to move not just in strength, but in resurrection.
To wear the belt of Sobek is to remember the self scattered, and to bind it again in the name of light.
Part 11: Conclusion—The Continuity of Magick
In the end, the question of substitution is really a question of continuity—how to maintain the living current of the magickal tradition while navigating a world in which certain materials are no longer accessible.
The lion skin belt, like many other artifacts of ceremonial magick, is more than a historical curiosity. It is a locus of power, a garment of transformation, an initiatory threshold. Its symbolic and energetic function cannot be replicated thoughtlessly. And yet, when its original form becomes unattainable, the ritual logic beneath it remains.
What matters is that the magician engages not just with outward form, but with the energetic, mythic, and cosmological structure of the tool. Whether lion or crocodile, what counts is whether the item participates in the same current—whether it binds spirit to substance, whether it initiates.
Materia magica is not arbitrary. It is the medium through which divine energies become present. When it can be acquired in good conscience, it should be. But when it cannot, the tradition still offers a path—not a loophole, but a living channel for continuity. Sobek, in all his chaotic, solar, and regenerative power, is one such path.
To wear his hide is to honor the old powers through new incarnations. It is to declare that tradition lives not because we preserve it like a fossil, but because we feed it with meaning, and walk it forward with clarity.
What once felt grotesque and overwhelming was, in truth, a summons.
The grimoires did not repel me—they called me.
This essay has not argued against tradition, but for its rightful evolution—rooted in function, animated by spirit, and consecrated through action.
And so I stand—belted not in lion skin, but in a hide that knows both fire and water, kingship and chaos.
Footnotes
Eliphas Lévi, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, trans. A. E. Waite (London: Rider, 1896), 1:62.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, “Introduction,” in The Kabbalah Unveiled (London: George Redway, 1887), xii.
Paracelsus, Paramirum, in A. E. Waite, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus, vol. 1 (London: James Elliott, 1894), 44.
John R. King IV, Imperial Arts Volume One: The Ars Goetia (Gloriam Dei Press, 2021), 174.
The Lesser Key of Solomon, ed. Joseph H. Peterson (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 2001), various sections.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled, xii.
PGM IV. 1596–1715, in Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 106–10.
Plotinus, The Enneads, I.6.7, trans. Stephen MacKenna (London: Medici Society, 1917).
Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 96–97.
Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, Practical Angel Magic of Dr. John Dee’s Enochian Tables (London: Golden Hoard Press, 2004), 23–26.
Bibliography
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translated by James Freake. Edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1993.
Betz, Hans Dieter, ed. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
King IV, John R. Imperial Arts Volume One: The Ars Goetia. Gloriam Dei Press, 2021.
Lévi, Eliphas. Dogma and Ritual of High Magic. Translated by A. E. Waite. London: Rider, 1896.
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor. The Kabbalah Unveiled: Containing the Translations of the Book of Concealed Mystery, the Greater Holy Assembly, and the Lesser Holy Assembly. London: George Redway, 1887.
Paracelsus. The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Paracelsus. Translated and edited by Arthur Edward Waite. 2 vols. London: James Elliott and Co., 1894.
Peterson, Joseph H., ed. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis. York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 2001.
Plotinus. The Enneads. Translated by Stephen MacKenna. London: Medici Society, 1917.
Skinner, Stephen, and David Rankine. Practical Angel Magic of Dr. John Dee’s Enochian Tables. London: Golden Hoard Press, 2004.
Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.
