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The Seven Governors: Who Are the Olympic Spirits? · The Occult Rejects

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Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen. What?
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Speaker 2: What's going.
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Speaker 1: To happen?
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Speaker 2: Something wonderful. What? I understand how you feel. You see,
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Speaker 2: it's all very clear to me now.
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Speaker 1: They are called Olympic spirits, which do inhabit in the
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Speaker 1: firmament and in the stars of the firmament. Seven names
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Speaker 1: have survived in Western magic for more than 400 years. Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel, Ful. Today,
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Speaker 1: if you open a modern book on planetary magic, search
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Speaker 1: through occult forums, or look through tables of ceremonial correspondences,
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Speaker 1: there's a good chance you will eventually encounter them. Aratron
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Speaker 1: is placed beneath Saturn, Bethor beneath Jupiter, Phaleg beneath Mars,
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Speaker 1: Each has a strange character or seal attached to it.
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Speaker 1: Each is credited with powers that resemble the qualities traditionally
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Speaker 1: attributed to its planet. Together, they are usually introduced as
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Speaker 1: the Seven Olympic Spirits, a celestial hierarchy that seems, at
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Speaker 1: first glance, as though it must have descended from some
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Speaker 1: ancient magical tradition.
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Speaker 2: But there is a problem.
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Speaker 1: When we follow these seven names backward through the surviving
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Speaker 1: magical literature, they do not lead us to classical Greece.
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Speaker 1: They do not take us into the Greek magical papyri.
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Speaker 1: They do not appear as a complete group in the
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Speaker 1: medieval Solomonic grimoires. They do not emerge from an ancient
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Speaker 1: list of planetary gods carved into a temple wall. As
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Speaker 1: far as the surviving evidence presently allows us to say,
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Speaker 1: this exact group steps onto the historical stage in a
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Speaker 1: small anonymous Latin book printed at Basel in 1575, the
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Speaker 1: orbital of the magic of the ancients. The 1575 Basel
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Speaker 1: printing is the first known Latin edition. Robert Turner's influential
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Speaker 1: English translation followed in 1655. And even that description creates
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Speaker 1: a second problem, because the book that gave the Western
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Speaker 1: magical tradition these seven famous names also appeared to warn
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Speaker 1: its readers not to become too attached to names at all.
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Speaker 1: In Aphorism 18, the arbitel states that different names of
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Speaker 1: the Olympic spirits are transmitted by different people. It then
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Speaker 1: says that the names which are generally efficacious are those
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Speaker 1: delivered to the individual by a revealing spirit, visible or invisible,
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Speaker 1: according to what the text calls predestination. The original Latin
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Speaker 1: goes even further. These names, it says, rarely retain their
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Speaker 1: efficacy beyond 140 years. Robert Turner's influential English translation of
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Speaker 1: 1655 printed 40 years, but the 1575 Latin clearly reads 140.
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Speaker 1: Then comes an instruction that should make anyone familiar with
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Speaker 1: modern ceremonial magic stop for a moment. The Arbital advises
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Speaker 1: beginners that the safest course is to work through the
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Speaker 1: offices of the spirits alone, without their names. For centuries,
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Speaker 1: occultists have copied the names Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
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Speaker 1: and Ful from one book into another, reproducing their characters
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Speaker 1: in magical manuals, correspondence tables, talismans, and modern grimoires. Yet
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Speaker 1: the source that introduced those names tells us that the
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Speaker 1: office may matter more than the name, that different operators
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Speaker 1: may receive different names, and that even an effective name
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Speaker 1: may have a limited period of usefulness. If we take
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Speaker 1: the text seriously on its own terms... Aratron may therefore
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Speaker 1: be less important as the eternal personal name of a
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Speaker 1: fixed supernatural personality than as a name attached, under particular circumstances,
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Speaker 1: to a Saturnian government and celestial function. That changes the question.
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Speaker 1: Instead of asking only who is Aratron, we also have
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Speaker 1: to ask why an anonymous Renaissance author presented the familiar
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Speaker 1: planetary universe as seven governments, gave those seven governments unfamiliar names,
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Speaker 1: described their rulers as inhabitants of Olympus, and then immediately
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Speaker 1: complicated the idea that those names are permanent. The book
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Speaker 1: itself gives us a clue in aphorism 16. Robert Turner
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Speaker 1: translated the opening as, There are seven different governments of
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Speaker 1: the spirits of Olympus, but the Latin is more revealing.
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Speaker 1: Seven governors or distinctions of office of Olympus. The word
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Speaker 1: office keeps returning. Seven governors are not presented merely as
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Speaker 1: seven colorful spirits only, who happen to correspond with the planets.
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Speaker 1: The Arbital says that God appointed the entire frame and
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Speaker 1: universe of the world to be governed through the celestial administrations.
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Speaker 1: It calls their visible stars Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
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Speaker 1: and Ful.
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Speaker 2: After the Olympic speech.
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Speaker 1: Each commands what the book describes as a mighty militia
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Speaker 1: in the firmament. Their territories are divided into planetary provinces,
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Speaker 1: Their activities descend through the hierarchy of the cosmos, yet
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Speaker 1: above all of them remains God, whose permission ultimately determines
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Speaker 1: what they may or may not accomplish. That last point
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Speaker 1: is essential, because the Olympic spirits were not introduced in
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Speaker 1: 1575 as seven demons waiting to be coerced by a magician.
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Speaker 1: Immediately before the arbitel begins speaking about them, Aphorism 14
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Speaker 1: gives a prayer. The operator asks God for one of
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Speaker 1: his spirits to teach those things that God wishes the
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Speaker 1: operator to know, for divine glory and for the benefit
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Speaker 1: of one's neighbor. Then aphorism 15 defines the Olympic spirits
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Speaker 1: as inhabitants of the firmament and the stars of the firmament,
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Speaker 1: whose office includes declaring destinies and administering what Turner called
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Speaker 1: fatal charms, only as far as God permits. The text
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Speaker 1: repeats the point almost obsessively. An Olympic spirit may reveal
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Speaker 1: what its star portends, but it cannot bring that thing
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Speaker 1: into action unless divine power permits it. Celestial things, sublunary things,
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Speaker 1: and infernal things all remain beneath the authority of the creator.
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Speaker 1: This is not the cosmology most people imagine when they
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Speaker 1: hear the word grimoire. There is no smoky medieval chamber yet.
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Speaker 1: No magician stands inside a circle threatening a rebellious demon
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Speaker 1: with divine names. The surviving arbitel is instead saturated with
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Speaker 1: Christian piety, Renaissance natural philosophy, astrology, revelation, divine providence, and
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Speaker 1: the conviction that legitimate magic is one expression of a
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Speaker 1: universe whose hidden levels remain ordered beneath God. And that
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Speaker 1: distinction matters, because if we begin by treating the Olympic
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Speaker 1: spirits as another branch of the Goetia, we will misunderstand
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Speaker 1: almost everything that makes them historically interesting. Their story does
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Speaker 1: not begin with the lesser key of Solomon or the
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Speaker 1: golden dawn, and despite the name Olympic, it does not
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Speaker 1: begin with Zeus sitting on Mount Olympus. To understand how Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
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Speaker 1: and Ful came into existence as a magical system, we
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Speaker 1: have to walk backward from Basil in 1575 into a
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Speaker 1: much stranger Renaissance world. A world of planetary intelligences, celestial governors,
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Speaker 1: Christian magic, alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, the macrocosm reflected inside the
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Speaker 1: human microcosm, and an older seven-spirit system that existed before
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Speaker 1: anyone had apparently heard the name Aratron. Because before Aratron
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Speaker 1: ruled Saturn, another spirit sat in his chair. And before
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Speaker 1: the arbitels spoke of the spirits of Olympus, one of
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Speaker 1: the most influential and controversial physicians of the Renaissance was
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Speaker 1: already talking about something he called the Olympic Spirit. His
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Speaker 1: name was Paracelsus. and once we get there, the seven
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Speaker 1: governors begin to look very different. Before we follow the
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Speaker 1: trail backward to Paracelsus, there is one detail about the
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Speaker 1: orbital itself that changes the scale of the mystery. The
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Speaker 1: book printed at Basel in 1575 presents itself as a
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Speaker 1: work of nine tomes, but the text we possess is
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Speaker 1: only the first. The Issigot, an introduction to magic arranged
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Speaker 1: into seven groups of seven aphorisms, 49 in all, The
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Speaker 1: remaining eight tomes are described in the opening program, but
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Speaker 1: no completed copies of them are known. We therefore cannot
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Speaker 1: assume they were ever finished and later lost. They may
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Speaker 1: have existed only as a plan. What matters is what
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Speaker 1: the author says those projected books were supposed to contain.
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Speaker 1: The second was microcosmic magic, concerning what the human microcosm
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Speaker 1: could accomplish through its spirit and genius. The third was
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Speaker 1: Olympic magic, described in the Latin as the art of
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Speaker 1: how a human being may act and be acted upon
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Speaker 1: through the spirits of Olympus. After that came projected books
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Speaker 1: on Homeric and Hesiodic magic, Roman or Sibylline magic, Pythagorean magic,
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Speaker 1: the magic of Apollonius, Hermetic or Egyptian magic, and finally
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Speaker 1: prophetic wisdom depending upon the word of God. The surviving
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Speaker 1: 49 aphorisms are therefore not presented as the complete book
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Speaker 1: of Olympic magic. They are introductory principles that contain a
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Speaker 1: concentrated glimpse of a larger Olympic system the author intended
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Speaker 1: to discuss elsewhere.
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Speaker 2: The order is also hard to ignore.
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Speaker 1: Microcosm magic immediately precedes Olympic magic. That does not prove
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Speaker 1: that projected books form the deliberate macrocosm and microcosm pair,
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Speaker 1: but it fits the Paracelsian world we are about to enter,
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Speaker 1: where celestial forces above correspond to powers within the human being.
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Speaker 1: The author never signed his name. The basal catalog attributes
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Speaker 1: the 1575 printing to Peter Perna, a printer closely involved
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Speaker 1: with Paracelsian publishing. Joseph Peterson has proposed the French Paracelsian
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Speaker 1: Jacques Gauhory as a plausible author because of Gauhory's ties
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Speaker 1: to Perna and strong thematic parallels. but that remains an attribution,
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Speaker 1: not a solved identity. The Safest Picture is an anonymous
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Speaker 1: book emerging from a strongly Paracelsian basal environment and announcing
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Speaker 1: an entire projected tome devoted to the spirits of Olympus.
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Speaker 1: Paracelsus died in 1541, more than three decades before the
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Speaker 1: Arbital was printed. That matters because the strange word Olympic
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Speaker 1: was already being used in his writings in a way
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Speaker 1: that brings us remarkably close to the cosmology we encounter
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Speaker 1: in 1575. Paracelsus, born around 1493, was a physician, alchemist,
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Speaker 1: theological writer, and one of the most disruptive intellectual figures
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Speaker 1: of the 16th century. He rejected much of the medical
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Speaker 1: orthodoxy inherited from Galen and Avicenna, attacked university physicians, emphasized
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Speaker 1: chemical remedies, and constructed a vision of nature in which medicine, astrology, theology,
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Speaker 1: and what we would now call occult philosophy were inseparable.
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Speaker 1: For Paracelsus, the human being was not isolated from the heavens.
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Speaker 1: Man was a microcosm, a little world containing correspondences with
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Speaker 1: the greater world outside him. That is where the Olympic
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Speaker 1: spirit first comes important.
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Speaker 2: Joseph H.
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Speaker 1: Peterson, in his study of the orbital, points to Paracelsus'
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Speaker 1: De Causis Morborum Invisibilum, written around.
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Speaker 2: 1531 or 1532, and printed posthumously in 1564.
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Speaker 1: There, Paracelsus discusses the Olympic spirit in language that is
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Speaker 1: considerably stranger than a simple catalog of planetary beings. He
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Speaker 1: connects it with imagination, invisible operations of the body, and
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Speaker 1: what he calls the stars within human beings. In Peterson's
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Speaker 1: translation of the relevant passage, Paracelsus says that the Olympic
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Speaker 1: spirits of creation are the stars in people. That sentence
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Speaker 1: is worth stopping on. The stars are not merely above us.
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Speaker 1: In Paracelsian thought, the celestial world has a counterpart within us.
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Speaker 1: The macrocosm and microcosm correspond. This does not mean Paracelsus
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Speaker 1: believed tiny physical planets were somehow sitting inside the human body. Star,
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Speaker 1: in this context, belongs to a much broader Renaissance vocabulary
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Speaker 1: of astral influence, invisible qualities, and forces through which the
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Speaker 1: greater cosmos is reflected in the human being. The external
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Speaker 1: heavens and the internal constitution of man belong to one
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Speaker 1: connected creation. That makes the expression Olympic Spirit very different
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Speaker 1: from the image most modern occultists have when they hear
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Speaker 1: the phrase. At this stage, there is no list of
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Speaker 1: seven names. There is no surviving Paracelsian passage telling us
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Speaker 1: to summon Aratan on the day and hour of Saturn.
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Speaker 1: What we have instead is a concept, an Olympic or
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Speaker 1: celestial spiritual operation intimately connected with the stars and their
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Speaker 1: manifestation inside human beings. Paracelsus apparently intended to take the
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Speaker 1: idea much further. His Philosophia Sagax, written later in the
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Speaker 1: 1530s and printed in 1571, announced a third book called
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Speaker 1: Olympici Novae, roughly The New Olympics or New Olympic Matters,
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Speaker 1: but that projected book is not preserved as part of
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Speaker 1: the authentic work. Peterson has suggested that the orbital may
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Speaker 1: even represent an attempt within the Paracelsian environment to fill
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Speaker 1: the conceptual space left by that missing Olympic material. That
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Speaker 1: remains a scholarly possibility rather than something we can prove.
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Speaker 1: But chronologically, the sequence is striking. Paracelsus develops Olympic terminology,
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Speaker 1: his followers publish and debate his works, Philosophia appears in
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Speaker 1: print in 1571, and four years later, in Basel, an
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Speaker 1: anonymous magical text presents an entire system called Olympic magic.
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Speaker 1: So when the arbitel tells us that Olympic spirits inhabit
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Speaker 1: the firmament and the stars of the firmament, we are
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Speaker 1: not looking at a term invented out of nowhere. We
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Speaker 1: are looking at a language already circulating inside the Paracelsian
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Speaker 1: intellectual world. But Paracelsus alone does not explain why there
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Speaker 1: are exactly seven governors. For that, we have to move
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Speaker 1: into another stream of Renaissance occult philosophy. And this one
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Speaker 1: gives us one of the strangest parallels in the entire story.
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Speaker 1: In 1508, Decades before the arbitral, the German Benedictine abbot
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Speaker 1: Johannes Trithemius wrote a short work called De Septum Secundis,
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Speaker 1: usually translated as On the Seven Secondary Causes or Seven
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Speaker 1: Secondary Intelligences. Trithemius is already a legendary figure in the
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Speaker 1: history of Western esotericism. He was an abbot, scholar, historian,
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Speaker 1: and cryptographer whose steganographia became notorious because its apparent angelic
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Speaker 1: conjurations concealed systems of secret communication. He also influenced Heinrich
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Speaker 1: Cornelius Agrippa, whose three books of occult philosophy will become
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Speaker 1: one of the foundational encyclopedias of Renaissance magic. But Deceptim
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Speaker 1: is important to us for a very specific reason. Its
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Speaker 1: universe is governed beneath God by seven planetary spirits. Trithemius
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Speaker 1: begins by saying that according to the opinion of of
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Speaker 1: many ancient authorities, the lower world is directed by what
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Speaker 1: he calls secondary intelligences beneath the first intellect, who is God.
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Speaker 1: Seven spirits were appointed over the seven planets and each
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Speaker 1: governs the world for a fixed period of 354 years
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Speaker 1: and four months. Trithemius even tells Emperor Maximilian, to whom
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Speaker 1: the work is dedicated, that he is reporting this doctrine
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Speaker 1: rather than asserting it as certain truth. The seven are
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Speaker 1: Orophil for Saturn, Anil for Venus, Zachariah for Jupiter, Raphael
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Speaker 1: for Mercury, Samael for Mars, Gabriel for the Moon, and
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Speaker 1: Michael for the Sun. If that basic architecture sounds familiar,
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Speaker 1: it should. God stands above the system, beneath God are
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Speaker 1: seven celestial governors. Each is connected to one of the
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Speaker 1: seven traditional planets. Each influences the condition of the terrestrial world,
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Speaker 1: and each takes a turn governing an age of human history.
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Speaker 1: That is extraordinarily close to the machinery we later encounter
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Speaker 1: in the orbital, even though the names and chronology change.
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Speaker 1: But then Trithemius says something that should immediately remind us
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Speaker 1: of the orbital's warning about the Olympic names. When introducing Orophil,
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Speaker 1: the spirit of Saturn, Trithemius explicitly states that Orophil is
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Speaker 1: a name of Orpheus, not of nature. It is a
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Speaker 1: name attributed to the spirit because of its action. There
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Speaker 1: it is again, the Orpheus. Nearly 70 years before the
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Speaker 1: Arbitel tells beginners to work through the offices of the
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Speaker 1: Olympic spirits rather than depending upon their names, Trithomius is
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Speaker 1: already describing the name of a planetary governor as belonging
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Speaker 1: to its office rather than its essential nature. This does
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Speaker 1: not prove that the anonymous author copied this exact idea
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Speaker 1: directly from Trithomius. But we know the Arbitel was familiar
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Speaker 1: with Trithomius and the broader planetary governor tradition exists. and
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Speaker 1: the conceptual resemblance is impossible to ignore. More importantly, Trithemius
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Speaker 1: himself was not inventing the seven-governor system from nothing. Joseph
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Speaker 1: Peterson traces the doctrine behind Deceptim back to 13th century
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Speaker 1: Padawan physician and astrologer Pietro di Abano, or Peter of Abano.
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Speaker 1: In his Conciliator, Peter had already associated seven spirits with
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Speaker 1: the planets. Cassio with Saturn, Satio with Jupiter, Samuel with Mars,
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Speaker 1: Michael with the Sun, Anio with Venus, Raphael with Mercury,
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Speaker 1: and Gabriel with the Moon. Trithemius retained several of those names,
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Speaker 1: changed others, and developed the idea into a repeating chronology
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Speaker 1: of planetary ages. So now we can see something that
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Speaker 1: was hidden when we began with the seven strange names
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Speaker 1: in the orbital. The structure is older than the names.
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Speaker 1: Long before anyone printed Eretron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
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Speaker 1: in full together, European occult philosophy already possessed the idea
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Speaker 1: of a cosmos administered beneath God through seven planetary spiritual rulers.
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Speaker 1: Peter of Urbano had one list, Trithemius modified it, and
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Speaker 1: then the Arbital modified the system again. But the Arbital
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Speaker 1: does something radical. It does not merely change Cassiel to
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Speaker 1: Orophiel or Satchiel to Saccharile. It replaces the familiar angelic
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Speaker 1: names almost completely with a new vocabulary that and calls
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Speaker 1: these governors not simply planetary angels or secondary intelligences, but
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Speaker 1: spirits of Olympus. Saturn is no longer governed by Cassiel
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Speaker 1: or Orpheal. He is governed by Aratron. Jupiter no longer
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Speaker 1: Satchiel or Zechariah. He becomes Bethor. Mars is no longer Samael.
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Speaker 1: He becomes Phaleg. Michael gives way to Ach. Anel gives
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Speaker 1: way to Haggith. Raphael gives way to Orpheal. Gabriel gives
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Speaker 1: way to Fulch. The old celestial bureaucracy remains recognizable, but
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Speaker 1: someone has changed names on every office door, and the
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Speaker 1: clock governing history changes with them. Trithemius gives each planetary
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Speaker 1: intelligence 350 years and 4 months. The arbitel gives each
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Speaker 1: Olympic governor 490 years. What happened in 1575 was therefore
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Speaker 1: more than the publication of seven unfamiliar spirit names. The
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Speaker 1: arbitel presents a new naming scheme and a new 490-year
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Speaker 1: chronology inside an older seven-fold model of planetary government while
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Speaker 1: surrounding that structure with strongly Paracelsian language about Olympus, stars, magic,
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Speaker 1: and the human microcosm. The evidence does not let us
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Speaker 1: prove that the anonymous author consciously set out to replace
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Speaker 1: Trithemius' governors one by one, but it does show that
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Speaker 1: the structure is older than the names. The question is
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Speaker 1: why this familiar planetary architecture reappears in the Arbital Transformed
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Speaker 1: so dramatically. And to answer that, we have to open
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Speaker 1: Aphorism 16, then look at what the new seven governors
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Speaker 1: were actually given control over.
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Speaker 2: When the arbitel.
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Speaker 1: Finally names its seven governors, it does not describe them
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Speaker 1: as isolated spirits floating through an otherwise empty universe. Aphorism
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Speaker 1: 16 gives them territory, hierarchy, time, and administration. The language
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Speaker 1: is political. God has appointed seven governors, or in the Latin,
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Speaker 1: seven distinctions of offices, through whom the machinery of the
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Speaker 1: world is administered. Their visible stars are Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
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Speaker 1: and Ful. Named, the text says after the Olympic speech.
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Speaker 1: Beneath each is a vast militia of the firmament. What
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Speaker 1: we are being shown is not merely a list of
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Speaker 1: seven magical names. It is a celestial government. The numbers
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Speaker 1: immediately reveal how deliberately this system has been constructed. Aratron
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Speaker 1: governs 49 visible provinces. Bethor, 42. Phaleg, 35, Ach, 28, Haggith, 21, Orfeal, 14,
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Speaker 1: and Ful, 7. Each step descends by 7. Together, they
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Speaker 1: total 196 provinces of Olympus. Some early printings and later
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Speaker 1: copies contain numerical errors. Turner's English edition gives Bethor 32
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Speaker 1: and consequently totals the provinces as 186. But the descending
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Speaker 1: sequence and the stated total make the intended numbers clear.
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Speaker 1: 49 down to 7, producing 196. And the sevenfold pattern
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Speaker 1: does not stop there. When the text later describes Eretron's
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Speaker 1: own court, it gives him 49 kings, 42 princes, 35 satraps,
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Speaker 1: 28 dukes, 21 ministers, 14 familiars, and 7 messengers.
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Speaker 2: He commands 36,000 legions.
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Speaker 1: And the Arbitel adds the bizarre detail that a legion
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Speaker 1: numbers 490. The same numbers keep returning at different scales,
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Speaker 1: as though the author has built Olympus according to a
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Speaker 1: mathematical blueprint. The Arbitel then moves from cosmic administration into
22:49
Speaker 1: actual magical contact. Aratron, it says, appears on Saturday in
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Speaker 1: the first hour of the day and gives true answers
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Speaker 1: concerning his provinces and their inhabitants. The other governors follow
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Speaker 1: in order of their corresponding days and hours. Aphorism 17
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Speaker 1: makes the method even more explicit. The princes of the
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Speaker 1: seven governments are called during the times in which they rule,
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Speaker 1: visibly or invisibly, through their names and offices, and by
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Speaker 1: presenting the character that the spirit has either given or confirmed.
23:22
Speaker 1: That last detail matters. What modern occult books usually call
23:26
Speaker 1: the sigil of an Olympic spirit is called a character
23:30
Speaker 1: in the orbital. And the text does not treat every
23:33
Speaker 1: character as an eternally valid graphic logo. Later in the
23:37
Speaker 1: same aphorism, it says that a character given by a
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Speaker 1: spirit has efficacy for the particular business for which it
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Speaker 1: was given and for the appointed time, and should be
23:47
Speaker 1: used on the planetary day and hour which it was given.
23:50
Speaker 1: The magical technology described here is more conditional and personal
23:54
Speaker 1: than the modern practice of simply copying a seal from
23:57
Speaker 1: a chart. Then the arbitel gives us the seven governors individually.
24:02
Speaker 1: Aratron governs what belongs to Saturn. The text distinguishes between
24:07
Speaker 1: what a governor accomplishes naturally, according to the powers attributed
24:10
Speaker 1: to the corresponding planet, and what the governor may accomplish
24:14
Speaker 1: by free action if God does not prevent it. Aratron's
24:18
Speaker 1: list contains seven extraordinary abilities. He can turn an animal
24:23
Speaker 1: or plant into stone while preserving its outward appearance. He
24:27
Speaker 1: can transform treasure into coal and coal into treasure. He
24:31
Speaker 1: grants familiar spirits with defined powers. He teaches alchemy, magic,
24:36
Speaker 1: and what Turner translated as physic, meaning medicine or natural philosophy.
24:41
Speaker 1: He reconciles subterranean beings to human beings, produces invisibility, makes
24:47
Speaker 1: the barren fruitful, and grants longevity. Even without adding anything
24:51
Speaker 1: from later Saturnian correspondence tables, this symbolism is unmistakable. Stone,
24:58
Speaker 1: subterranean beings, hidden treasure, invisibility, sterility becoming fertility, old age
25:04
Speaker 1: and longevity all orbit the Saturnian office. But the Arbital
25:09
Speaker 1: also refuses to make Saturn simply evil or destructive. Aratron
25:13
Speaker 1: can teach medicine and alchemy, restore fertility and extend life.
25:18
Speaker 1: The planetary force can restrict, harden and conceal, but it
25:22
Speaker 1: can also reveal, teach and preserve. Bethor governs the things
25:27
Speaker 1: attributed to Jupiter. He is described as arriving quickly when called.
25:31
Speaker 1: Those whom he dignifies with his character may be elevated
25:34
Speaker 1: to great honors. He reveals treasures, reconciles spirits of the
25:40
Speaker 1: air so that they give truthful answers, moves precious stones
25:43
Speaker 1: from place to place, provides medicines with extraordinary effects, grants
25:48
Speaker 1: familiar spirits of the firmament, and if God wills it,
25:52
Speaker 1: can prolong life to 700 years. His court repeats the
25:56
Speaker 1: descending sevenfold pattern. 42 kings, 35 princes, 28 dukes, 21 counselors,
26:03
Speaker 1: 14 ministers, and 7 messengers, with 29,000 legions of spirits. Again,
26:10
Speaker 1: the old planetary logic is visible underneath the marvels. Jupiter
26:14
Speaker 1: is expansion, dignity, authority, beneficence, and abundance. Bethor does not
26:20
Speaker 1: merely hand someone money. His offices elevate status, opens treasures,
26:25
Speaker 1: supplies knowledge through truthful spirits, and enlarges life itself. Then
26:30
Speaker 1: comes Phalic, governor of Mars, and his description is shockingly brief.
26:35
Speaker 1: He rules the things attributed to Mars, and whoever receives
26:38
Speaker 1: his character may be elevated to the highest dignities in
26:42
Speaker 1: military affairs. But between those statements, the Latin gives him
26:46
Speaker 1: a title that should make us stop. Prince of Peace.
26:50
Speaker 1: The governor of Mars... The planet of warfare, iron, conflict,
26:55
Speaker 1: and military action is called the Prince of Peace. The
26:59
Speaker 1: arbitral does not explain the contradiction. We should resist the
27:03
Speaker 1: temptation to solve it for the author. It may suggest
27:06
Speaker 1: mastery over martial force rather than blind violence. It may
27:10
Speaker 1: carry a theological meaning. It may conceal a wordplay or
27:13
Speaker 1: tradition no longer obvious to us. But whatever its explanation,
27:17
Speaker 1: Prince of Peace belongs to the original Latin text. It
27:21
Speaker 1: is not a modern reinterpretation, and considering that the biblical
27:24
Speaker 1: name Phaleg will give us another possible trail later, this
27:28
Speaker 1: is one of the seven governors whose name and office
27:30
Speaker 1: deserve much closer investigation. Ach, governor of the sun, receives
27:35
Speaker 1: one of the most extravagant descriptions in the entire passage.
27:39
Speaker 1: He grants 600 years of life with sound health, bestows wisdom,
27:44
Speaker 1: supplies excellent spirits, teaches perfected medicine, converts things into pure
27:49
Speaker 1: gold and precious stones, gives gold in what Turner renders
27:53
Speaker 1: as a purse continually producing gold, and can cause the
27:57
Speaker 1: person honored with his character to be revered like a
28:00
Speaker 1: divine being by the kings of the world. The text
28:03
Speaker 1: assigns Ark 36,536 legions and says that his spirits serve
28:10
Speaker 1: him by hundreds. Ark is therefore not simply the sun's spirit.
28:15
Speaker 1: His office concentrates several of the great solar themes of
28:18
Speaker 1: Renaissance magic into one figure. Gold, health, medicine, wisdom, sovereignty, honor,
28:25
Speaker 1: and extraordinary longevity. Haggith governs Venus. The person who Haggith
28:32
Speaker 1: defines with his character is made exceedingly beautiful and adorned
28:36
Speaker 1: with beauty. Haggith can convert copper into gold and gold
28:40
Speaker 1: into copper, and provide spirits that faithfully serve those to
28:44
Speaker 1: whom they are assigned. 4,000 legions are placed beneath Haggith,
28:49
Speaker 1: with kings appointed over each thousand at designated times. The
28:53
Speaker 1: copper reference is especially important because copper was traditionally the
28:57
Speaker 1: metal of Venus. The transmutation, therefore, is not random treasure magic.
29:02
Speaker 1: The planetary metal itself becomes part of the operation. Venusian
29:07
Speaker 1: beauty and alchemical transformation are fused together. Ophiel governs the
29:12
Speaker 1: things of Mercury. The description is short, but its implications
29:16
Speaker 1: are enormous. Ophiel easily gives familiar spirits, commands 100,000 legions,
29:23
Speaker 1: and most importantly, teaches all arts. The person dignified with
29:28
Speaker 1: Ophiel's character is said to be able to transform Quicksilver, Mercury,
29:32
Speaker 1: into the Philosopher's Stone in a moment. Mercury governs the arts, learning, communication, dexterity,
29:40
Speaker 1: and the unstable metallic substance that bears the planet's name.
29:44
Speaker 1: The orbital collapses all of those mercurial associations into one office.
29:49
Speaker 1: Knowledge and alchemy become two expressions of the same planetary intelligence.
29:55
Speaker 1: Finally comes Full, governor of lunar things. Full transforms metals
30:00
Speaker 1: into silver, heals dropsy, provides spirits of the waters that
30:04
Speaker 1: may serve human beings in corporal invisible form, and grants
30:07
Speaker 1: a lifespan of 300 years. Here again, the correspondences are
30:12
Speaker 1: embedded directly in the primary text. Moon, silver, water, bodily fluids,
30:18
Speaker 1: and healing appear together without needing later ceremonial tables to
30:22
Speaker 1: connect them. And after describing all seven, The arbitral gives
30:26
Speaker 1: us the principle that explains what these spectacular powers are
30:30
Speaker 1: supposed to mean. A governor, it says, may act naturally
30:34
Speaker 1: in the same manner every time, or may act freely
30:37
Speaker 1: if God does not prevent it. More importantly, a governor
30:41
Speaker 1: can accomplish suddenly what nature ordinarily accomplishes slowly. Ach becomes
30:46
Speaker 1: the example. The solar power prepares gold naturally in the
30:49
Speaker 1: mountains over a long period. Chemical art accomplishes the process
30:54
Speaker 1: in less time. Magic accomplishes it in a moment. Nature, alchemy,
30:59
Speaker 1: and magic are therefore not presented as three unrelated things.
31:04
Speaker 1: They are three speeds of the same hidden process. The
31:07
Speaker 1: magician is not necessarily breaking nature. In the worldview of
31:11
Speaker 1: the arbitel, magic can be understood as the radical acceleration
31:15
Speaker 1: of powers that already exist within creation. And that may
31:19
Speaker 1: be the key to understanding why these seven governors are
31:22
Speaker 1: given such impossible abilities. They are not merely supernatural wish-granters.
31:26
Speaker 1: They personify or govern the celestial powers believed to be
31:30
Speaker 1: operating behind natural processes themselves. But the Arbital gives these
31:34
Speaker 1: powers another dimension that is even stranger. The Seven do
31:38
Speaker 1: not merely govern planets, metals, medicines, and invisible spirits. They
31:43
Speaker 1: govern time. Each governor, the text says, rules the world
31:47
Speaker 1: for 490 years. And when we calculate the chronology the
31:51
Speaker 1: Arbital actually provides... we discover something extraordinary. According to its
31:56
Speaker 1: own system, the book was published during the reign of Haggith,
32:00
Speaker 1: and if we continue its sequence forward exactly as written,
32:03
Speaker 1: the world we are.
32:04
Speaker 2: Living now belongs to Orphea.
32:06
Speaker 1: The arbitel does not stop at saying that the seven
32:09
Speaker 1: Olympic spirits govern planetary forces. Aphorism 16 says that each
32:14
Speaker 1: of them also preside over a period of 490 years.
32:17
Speaker 1: The book then anchors that cycle to a specific historical date.
32:21
Speaker 1: 60 years before the birth of Christ, when the administration
32:25
Speaker 1: of Bethor began. Bethor rules until the year 430. Phaleg
32:30
Speaker 1: follows until 920. Ach governs until 1410. Haggith then rules
32:35
Speaker 1: until 1900. The text stops there. It does not print
32:38
Speaker 1: the dates for Ophiel, full, or return to Eretron. That
32:42
Speaker 1: stopping point is important, because anything after 1900 has to
32:46
Speaker 1: be identified as a calculation based on the systems. not
32:50
Speaker 1: as a prophecy directly printed in the Arbital. But the
32:54
Speaker 1: calculation is not difficult. If every governor proceeds for 490 years,
32:59
Speaker 1: then Orfeo follows Haggith from approximately 1900 until 2390. Full
33:03
Speaker 1: would follow from 2390 until 2880. Eretron would then return
33:07
Speaker 1: from 2880 until 3370, completing the cycle and bringing it
33:09
Speaker 1: back around to Bethorn. That means that if we extend
33:20
Speaker 1: the Arbital's chronology exactly as the book instructs us to,
33:24
Speaker 1: the present year, 2026, falls under the government of Ophiel,
33:29
Speaker 1: the Olympic spirit of Mercury. And that is one of
33:32
Speaker 1: those coincidences that becomes almost impossible not to stare at.
33:36
Speaker 1: Mercury is the traditional planet of language, writing, calculation, commerce, travel, messages, interpretation, dexterity,
33:46
Speaker 1: and the transmission of knowledge. In the Arbital, Ophiel's description
33:51
Speaker 1: is remarkably concise. He governs mercurial things, easily provides familiar spirits,
33:57
Speaker 1: commands an enormous spiritual hierarchy, teaches all arts, and can
34:02
Speaker 1: transform Quicksilver into the Philosopher's Stone. If someone wanted to
34:06
Speaker 1: manufacture a modern occult prophecy after the fact, it would
34:10
Speaker 1: be difficult to choose a more seductive planetary ruler for
34:13
Speaker 1: an age beginning around 1900. Telegraph networks already crossed continents
34:19
Speaker 1: and oceans, radio followed, telephones multiplied, aviation transformed travel, electronic
34:26
Speaker 1: computation appeared, followed by satellites, digital communications, personal computers, the internet,
34:32
Speaker 1: mobile networks, artificial intelligence, and a civilization increasingly organized around
34:37
Speaker 1: information moving almost instantaneously from one place to another. The
34:42
Speaker 1: temptation is obvious to say that the orbital predicted the
34:46
Speaker 1: information age, but that is not what the evidence allows
34:49
Speaker 1: us to say. The orbital does not predict computers, telecommunications,
34:54
Speaker 1: or the internet. It does not even explicitly state that
34:57
Speaker 1: Orfeo begins ruling in 1900. That date follows mathematically from
35:02
Speaker 1: the sequence. What we can say is more interesting and
35:05
Speaker 1: more defensible. If we continue the chronology supplied in aphorism 16,
35:10
Speaker 1: our period falls under Mercury and Mercury's traditional symbolic territory
35:15
Speaker 1: happens to map extraordinarily well onto some of the defining
35:19
Speaker 1: technologies and social structures of modern life. Whether someone reads
35:24
Speaker 1: that as synchronicity, confirmation, coincidence, or simply the flexibility of
35:29
Speaker 1: astrological symbolism is another question. But imagine how the system
35:33
Speaker 1: looked to the anonymous author in 1575. He believed he
35:37
Speaker 1: was living under Haggith. Venus had supposedly taken the government
35:41
Speaker 1: of the world in 1410 and would retain it until 1900.
35:46
Speaker 1: That places the printing of the Arbital about 165 years
35:50
Speaker 1: into Venusian age. Again, we should be careful not to
35:54
Speaker 1: reverse engineer history to make the scheme look prophetic.
35:58
Speaker 2: But from within the author's worldview, this is fascinating.
36:02
Speaker 1: The 15th and 16th centuries have witnessed an extraordinary expansion
36:06
Speaker 1: of visual art, architecture, luxury production, court culture, music, and
36:12
Speaker 1: the humanist celebration of beauty. The Renaissance itself was transforming
36:16
Speaker 1: the artistic representation of the human body. None of that
36:20
Speaker 1: proves Haggith was governing Europe. It does tell us, however,
36:24
Speaker 1: that the Arbital's author placed his own world inside a
36:27
Speaker 1: cosmic chronology rather than imagining Olympic magic as something detached
36:31
Speaker 1: from history. The governors, in other words, do not merely
36:35
Speaker 1: answer questions when summoned. Within the book's own cosmology, they
36:40
Speaker 1: were already ruling. And the number attached to that rulership, 490,
36:44
Speaker 1: is worth examining because it does not appear to have
36:48
Speaker 1: been inherited directly from Trithemius. Trithemius gave his secondary intelligences
36:53
Speaker 1: periods of 354 years and 4 months. His system cycles
36:58
Speaker 1: repeatedly through Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Moon, and Sun.
37:04
Speaker 1: And he tries to correlate their successive reigns with developments
37:08
Speaker 1: in biblical and secular history. Under Raphael of Mercury, for example,
37:13
Speaker 1: Trithemius associates the period with writing, letters, musical instruments, commerce,
37:18
Speaker 1: and navigation. Under Samuel of Mars, he expected wars, alterations
37:23
Speaker 1: of kingdoms, religious changes, and political upheaval. Whether or not
37:28
Speaker 1: we accept any of that astrology, Trithemius is clearly using
37:31
Speaker 1: planetary qualities as a philosophy of historical change. The arbitral
37:36
Speaker 1: retains the idea that planetary governors preside over historical ages,
37:40
Speaker 1: but discards Trithomius' 350-year clock and replaces it with 490 years.
37:47
Speaker 1: Why 490? The arbitral never tells us. But for a
37:51
Speaker 1: text this saturated in Christian and biblical language, one numerical
37:54
Speaker 1: parallel is difficult to ignore. Daniel 9 contains the famous
37:59
Speaker 1: prophecy of the 70 weeks. In Jewish and Christian interpretation,
38:04
Speaker 1: those weeks have often been treated as weeks of years.
38:07
Speaker 1: 70 multiplied by 7, producing a symbolic period of 490 years.
38:14
Speaker 1: Modern scholarship still discusses the 490-year structure as fundamental to
38:19
Speaker 1: the literary chronology of Daniel, even while disagreeing strongly about
38:23
Speaker 1: how the component periods should be understood historically. So there
38:27
Speaker 1: is at least a genuine biblical precedent for treating 490
38:30
Speaker 1: as a sacred historical period. Does that prove the author
38:34
Speaker 1: of the Arbitel took his planetary ages from Daniel?
38:37
Speaker 2: No.
38:38
Speaker 1: We do not have a passage saying that the 490-year
38:41
Speaker 1: governments derive from Daniel's 70 weeks, and we should not
38:45
Speaker 1: manufacture a source the author never gave us. But the
38:48
Speaker 1: numerical environment is suspiciously compatible. Seven governors, 49 aphorisms, 49
38:55
Speaker 1: provinces under Aratron, descending multiples of seven, legions containing 490,
39:01
Speaker 1: each governor ruling 490 years, and a Christian prophetic text
39:05
Speaker 1: in which 70 times 7 produces a sacred historical period
39:09
Speaker 1: of 490 years. At a minimum, the possibility belongs on
39:13
Speaker 1: the table. The number 7 is not a decoration in
39:16
Speaker 1: the arbitral. It appears to organize the book's literary structure,
39:21
Speaker 1: the bureaucracy of Olympus, its subordinate hierarchies, and its conception
39:25
Speaker 1: of historical time. And that makes another contrast with Trithemius'
39:30
Speaker 1: especially revealing. Trithemius presents his chronology almost like a celestial
39:34
Speaker 1: history textbook. He moves through successive planetary administrations and tries
39:39
Speaker 1: to match them with the flood, Babel, kingdoms, wars, inventions, prophets, emperors,
39:45
Speaker 1: and the rise and decline of political powers. At the end,
39:49
Speaker 1: he becomes cautious, repeatedly reminding the reader that he is
39:52
Speaker 1: reporting a doctrine rather than requiring anyone to believe it.
39:57
Speaker 1: The Arbitel takes the basic concept but compresses it dramatically.
40:01
Speaker 1: It gives us only four explicitly dated administrations, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach,
40:07
Speaker 1: and Haggith, and moves on. That silence creates one of
40:10
Speaker 1: the most intriguing features of the system. The reader has
40:14
Speaker 1: to continue the pattern by doing nothing more than adding
40:17
Speaker 1: 490 years the magician moves beyond the author's own lifetime
40:21
Speaker 1: and into future governments that the book itself never describes historically. Haggith,
40:27
Speaker 1: then Ophiel, then Ful, then Aratron, the celestial government keeps
40:32
Speaker 1: rotating whether anyone is paying attention or not. And if
40:35
Speaker 1: that is really how the author imagined the system, then
40:38
Speaker 1: the Olympic spirits are operating on at least three different
40:41
Speaker 1: scales simultaneously. They rule planetary powers, they rule spiritual provinces
40:46
Speaker 1: and subordinate beings, and they rule eras of human history.
40:50
Speaker 1: The magician who contacts one of them is therefore not
40:53
Speaker 1: simply calling a spirit associated with a planet. He is
40:57
Speaker 1: attempting communication with one of the intelligences through which the
41:00
Speaker 1: orbital says the world itself is being administered. Which brings
41:04
Speaker 1: us to an obvious practical question. If these governors are
41:08
Speaker 1: already ruling the heavens, how does a human being actually
41:12
Speaker 1: speak to one? And when we turn from aphorism 16
41:15
Speaker 1: to aphorism 17 through 21, the answer becomes stranger than
41:20
Speaker 1: the elaborate ceremonial rituals most people would expect. Because the
41:24
Speaker 1: original arbitel gives us remarkably little ritual machinery. No sprawling
41:29
Speaker 1: temple construction, no pages of threats, no long list of
41:33
Speaker 1: barbarous names. Instead, it gives us timing, office, character, prayer, revelation,
41:39
Speaker 1: and a warning that the name you copied from the
41:41
Speaker 1: book may not even be the name meant for you.
41:45
Speaker 2: After everything the.
41:46
Speaker 1: Arbitel has told us about celestial governments, legions, planetary provinces,
41:51
Speaker 1: and spirits capable of transforming matter, its instructions for contacting
41:55
Speaker 1: them are surprisingly simple. There is no enormous Solomonic apparatus,
42:01
Speaker 1: no sword pointed toward a triangle, no threats of divine punishment,
42:05
Speaker 1: no endless sequence of constraining names. Aphorism 17 says that
42:10
Speaker 1: the princes of these seven governments were called during the
42:13
Speaker 1: time day and hour in which they rule, through the
42:17
Speaker 1: names and offices God has given them, while presenting the
42:20
Speaker 1: character that the spirit has given or confirmed. Timing matters
42:25
Speaker 1: because the operation is planetary. If the desired spirit belongs
42:29
Speaker 1: to Saturn, the operator works in Saturn-appropriate time, if solar,
42:34
Speaker 1: in that of the sun, and so on. But even here,
42:37
Speaker 1: the arbitel complicates what later magical books often reduce to
42:40
Speaker 1: a fixed recipe. The character is not necessarily something the
42:44
Speaker 1: magician simply copies out of a printed grimoire. Aphorism 17
42:48
Speaker 1: specifically speaks of a character that the spirit has given
42:52
Speaker 1: or confirmed, and later says that a character given by
42:55
Speaker 1: a spirit possesses efficacy for the particular business and period
43:00
Speaker 1: for which it was bestowed. In other words, the relationship
43:04
Speaker 1: between magician, spirit, name, and character can be personal. The
43:08
Speaker 1: printed material appears to function partly as a map toward revelation,
43:12
Speaker 1: rather than a completely self-contained magical machine. That interpretation becomes
43:17
Speaker 1: stronger in Aphorism 18. Here the arbitel admits that different
43:21
Speaker 1: authorities transmit different names for the Olympic spirits. Only those
43:26
Speaker 1: given to the individual through a revealing spirit, visible or invisible,
43:31
Speaker 1: are said to be truly efficacious for that individual. The
43:34
Speaker 1: text describes these names as constellata, something like constellated or
43:39
Speaker 1: star-determined names. and says they rarely possess efficacy beyond 140 years.
43:45
Speaker 1: This is where Robert Turner's 1655 translation accidentally created one
43:50
Speaker 1: of the longest-lived errors in the history of the text.
43:53
Speaker 1: Turner printed 40 years. The original Latin says 140. But
43:59
Speaker 1: either number creates the same basic problem. The names printed
44:03
Speaker 1: in 1575 should not automatically be assumed to function forever.
44:08
Speaker 1: and the arbitel immediately gives the beginner its solution. Work
44:11
Speaker 1: through the offices of the spirits without their names. If
44:15
Speaker 1: the person is genuinely destined for magical knowledge, the other
44:19
Speaker 1: requirements of the art will present themselves in due course.
44:23
Speaker 1: That instruction becomes even more significant when we remember Trithemius
44:28
Speaker 1: describing Orpheal as a name of office rather than nature.
44:33
Speaker 1: Across the history we have followed so far, the same
44:36
Speaker 1: three ideas keep surfacing beneath the names, office, function, and government.
44:42
Speaker 1: The name identifies a celestial operation, but the operation may
44:46
Speaker 1: be more permanent than the particular name by which a
44:49
Speaker 1: magician encounters it. This may also explain why the arbitel
44:53
Speaker 1: can simultaneously give seven names and warn us against depending
44:56
Speaker 1: on them. It is not necessarily contradicting itself, it may
45:00
Speaker 1: be giving us the names through which this particular Olympic
45:03
Speaker 1: system was known to its author while acknowledging that spiritual
45:07
Speaker 1: names themselves belong to revelation, circumstance, and time. Then aphorism
45:13
Speaker 1: 19 makes the relationship even stranger. The inhabitants of Olympus,
45:18
Speaker 1: it says, offer themselves voluntarily to human beings in spiritual
45:22
Speaker 1: forms and are presented to perform their offices even without
45:26
Speaker 1: being requested. If asked, the author argues, how much more
45:30
Speaker 1: readily might they appear? But the same aphorism warns that
45:33
Speaker 1: destructive spirits can also approach, which the arbitel interprets, through
45:38
Speaker 1: its Christian theology, as a consequence of demonic malice and
45:41
Speaker 1: human sin. The protection it recommends is not a more
45:45
Speaker 1: elaborate circle or a longer list of divine names. It
45:48
Speaker 1: tells the operator to avoid serious wrongdoing, pray diligently for
45:52
Speaker 1: divine protection, and devote himself to the service of God.
45:57
Speaker 1: That tells us something fundamental about the magical universe of
46:00
Speaker 1: this book. The primary defense is ethical and theological. Aphorism
46:06
Speaker 1: 20 makes that explicit. The magician should be pious, honest,
46:10
Speaker 1: consistent in speech and action, firm in faith, prudent and
46:15
Speaker 1: greedy for nothing except wisdom concerning divine things. The obstacles
46:20
Speaker 1: listed by the text include instability of mind, frivolity, drunkenness,
46:25
Speaker 1: lust and disobedience toward God. Compare that with the powers
46:29
Speaker 1: promised only a few paragraphs earlier gold, treasure, status, long life,
46:35
Speaker 1: precious stones, alchemy, invisible servants, and military dignity. The arbitel
46:40
Speaker 1: openly promises extraordinary material possibilities while simultaneously telling the magician
46:46
Speaker 1: not to be greedy for material things. That tension is
46:50
Speaker 1: central to the book. The powers are there, but the
46:53
Speaker 1: magician obsessed with possessing them may be exactly the person
46:57
Speaker 1: the author thinks should not receive them. Then aphorism 21
47:01
Speaker 1: finally gives an Olympic operation. The magician observes sunrise on
47:06
Speaker 1: the appropriate planetary day and considers the nature of the
47:09
Speaker 1: spirit being sought. The prayer that follows is directed not
47:13
Speaker 1: principally to the Olympic spirit, but to God, asking God
47:17
Speaker 1: to send the appropriate spirit to teach or provide what
47:20
Speaker 1: is requested. The example even leaves the spirit's name as NN,
47:25
Speaker 1: essentially a placeholder followed by its planetary order. That detail
47:31
Speaker 1: is remarkable after Aphorism 18. The practical prayer itself can
47:35
Speaker 1: function without inserting Aratan, Bethor, Ach, or any of the
47:39
Speaker 1: other familiar names. The desired being can be identified by
47:43
Speaker 1: its order. The operator then converses with the spirit, but
47:47
Speaker 1: the orbital warns not to detain it longer than one
47:50
Speaker 1: full hour unless a familiar relationship already exists. At the end,
47:55
Speaker 1: the spirit is thanked for coming peacefully. God is thanked
47:58
Speaker 1: for the encounter and the being is dismissed back to
48:01
Speaker 1: its order until it's called again by its name, order,
48:04
Speaker 1: or office.
48:06
Speaker 2: There it is for a third time. Name, order, office.
48:10
Speaker 1: The name is only one route of identification and suddenly
48:14
Speaker 1: the famous characters of the Olympic spirits begin to look
48:17
Speaker 1: different as well. Modern occult culture often treats them like
48:21
Speaker 1: permanent corporate logos for supernatural personalities. Draw the shape and
48:26
Speaker 1: you have reached this spirit but the arbitral describes characters
48:30
Speaker 1: that may be given, confirmed, assigned to specific operations, and
48:34
Speaker 1: connected with particular times. The system presented in 1575 is
48:40
Speaker 1: therefore much more fluid than its later descendants often appear.
48:43
Speaker 1: What remains stable is the celestial architecture. Saturn has an office.
48:49
Speaker 1: Jupiter has an office. Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon
48:53
Speaker 1: have offices. The governors administer those powers beneath God. but
48:58
Speaker 1: the names and characters through which an individual magician enters
49:01
Speaker 1: into relationship with those powers may be revelatory and temporary.
49:07
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the strange phrase the Arbital
49:09
Speaker 1: used when it first introduced the Seven, after the Olympic speech.
49:15
Speaker 1: If the Seven names are not necessarily permanent, what language
49:18
Speaker 1: are Eretron, Bethlehem, Falag, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel, and Ful supposed
49:23
Speaker 1: to belong to? There is no known ancient language called
49:27
Speaker 1: the Olympic. And when we start pulling those names apart,
49:30
Speaker 1: at least one of them leads us somewhere completely unexpected.
49:33
Speaker 1: Because Falag was already a name before the orbital was
49:36
Speaker 1: ever printed. The Olympic operation also makes more sense when
49:40
Speaker 1: we look a few aphorisms beyond the famous seven governors.
49:44
Speaker 1: Aphorism 24 arranges the greatest magical secrets into another group
49:48
Speaker 1: of seven. Healing disease, prolonging natural life, obtaining the obedience
49:54
Speaker 1: of elemental beings, conversing intelligently about visible and invisible things,
49:58
Speaker 1: governing oneself toward the end appointed by God, knowing God, Christ,
50:03
Speaker 1: and the Holy Spirit, and finally a form of regeneration.
50:07
Speaker 1: The same passage names pygmies, sagini, nymphs, dryads, and woodland spirits.
50:13
Speaker 1: Language that again places the book close to the Paracelsian
50:16
Speaker 1: world of elemental beings. That list puts the promise of Aratron, Bethor, Ach,
50:22
Speaker 1: and the others into perspective. Healing, longevity, spirit contact, and
50:27
Speaker 1: knowledge belong to a ladder whose upper rungs are self-government,
50:31
Speaker 1: knowledge of God, and regeneration. The arbitel can sound intensely
50:35
Speaker 1: material when it talks about treasure and honors, but its
50:38
Speaker 1: own hierarchy places mastery of the self and divine knowledge
50:42
Speaker 1: above those rewards. The phrase the arbitel uses is in
50:47
Speaker 1: the Olympic speech, or according to Olympic language. The text
50:51
Speaker 1: gives no dictionary, grammar, alphabet, or explanation of what the
50:56
Speaker 1: language is supposed to be. And this is exactly where
50:59
Speaker 1: later occult writers can become more confident than the evidence allows.
51:04
Speaker 1: Carlos Gili, in his study of the Arbital, points out
51:07
Speaker 1: that Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Orfeal, and Foll do
51:12
Speaker 1: not appear as a group in the enormous body of
51:15
Speaker 1: medieval magical literature that precedes the book. To the surviving record,
51:19
Speaker 1: the names are a novelty. The author seems aware of
51:23
Speaker 1: that problem because only two aphorisms after introducing them in
51:27
Speaker 1: the Olympic speech, he acknowledges that other authorities transmit other
51:31
Speaker 1: names for the Olympic spirits. So we have to resist
51:34
Speaker 1: the urge to force every name into Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean,
51:38
Speaker 1: or some lost primordial language merely because that would make
51:41
Speaker 1: the system feel older. For most of the seven, no
51:45
Speaker 1: secure historical etymology has been demonstrated. One name, however, already
51:50
Speaker 1: existed in a form that a 16th century Christian reader
51:54
Speaker 1: could easily have known. In the Latin Vulgate of Genesis 10.25,
51:59
Speaker 1: one of the sons of Heber is called Thalic. The
52:01
Speaker 1: name of one was Phaleg because in his days the
52:04
Speaker 1: earth was divided. The Hebrew name is usually rendered Pelag,
52:08
Speaker 1: and the biblical verse itself associates name with division. That
52:12
Speaker 1: does not prove that the author of the Arbitel deliberately
52:14
Speaker 1: named the Olympic governor of Mars after the biblical Phaleg.
52:18
Speaker 1: The book never says that, but it gives us a
52:21
Speaker 1: real linguistic fact rather than a modern occult etymology. Phaleg
52:25
Speaker 1: was already a recognizable biblical name in the Latin language
52:28
Speaker 1: of the author's religious world. and the coincidence becomes difficult
52:32
Speaker 1: not to notice. The spirit associated with Mars, a planet
52:36
Speaker 1: of conflict, severing, force, and warfare, bears a name connected
52:41
Speaker 1: in Genesis with division, while the arbitel paradoxically calls him
52:46
Speaker 1: the Prince of Peace. Maybe the author intended the connection, maybe.
52:51
Speaker 2: He did not.
52:51
Speaker 1: We cannot cross that line without evidence, but that uncertainty
52:55
Speaker 1: may be exactly the point. The arbitral does not invite
52:58
Speaker 1: us to imagine that possession of a printed name gives
53:01
Speaker 1: us a complete possession of a spirit's identity. Again and again,
53:06
Speaker 1: it redirects us toward office, order, revelation, and relationship. Perhaps
53:11
Speaker 1: Olympic speech was imagined as an actual celestial language. Perhaps
53:16
Speaker 1: there were revelatory names claimed by the author or his circle.
53:20
Speaker 1: Perhaps they were deliberately constructed replacements for the older planetary rulers.
53:25
Speaker 1: Perhaps some were altered from words whose sources are now lost.
53:28
Speaker 2: We do not know.
53:30
Speaker 1: And saying we do not know is more interesting than
53:32
Speaker 1: manufacturing an ancient pedigree that the surviving evidence cannot support.
53:38
Speaker 1: What happened next helps explain why these seven names eventually
53:41
Speaker 1: came to look like permanent members of ceremonial magic. The
53:45
Speaker 1: names began escaping the book almost immediately. In 1582, only
53:49
Speaker 1: seven years after the basal printing, John Dee's angelic records
53:53
Speaker 1: contained a marginal note directing the reader to the little
53:56
Speaker 1: book Arbitel for Ach, the solar governor. Whatever relationship we
54:01
Speaker 1: think Dee's later angelic system has to other forms of
54:05
Speaker 1: Renaissance magic, this at least proves that the Arbitel and
54:08
Speaker 1: one of its Olympic names has already entered the working
54:11
Speaker 1: library of a major English magician within a decade of publication.
54:17
Speaker 1: By 1617 or 1618, Johann Baptista's Magical Calendar was was
54:23
Speaker 1: also drawing on the orbital while organizing planetary and magical
54:27
Speaker 1: correspondences into elaborate tables. The seven were beginning to migrate
54:32
Speaker 1: out of their original literary setting long before Turner translated
54:35
Speaker 1: them into English. In 1655, 80 years after the basal edition,
54:41
Speaker 1: Robert Turner published the Orbital of Magic in a large
54:44
Speaker 1: English collection headed by the so-called Fourth Book of Occult
54:48
Speaker 1: Philosophy attributed to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. The same volume also
54:53
Speaker 1: contained the heptameron, or magical elements associated with Peter of Urbano,
54:58
Speaker 1: astronomical geomancy, and material concerning the nature of spirits. A
55:02
Speaker 1: surviving copy of that 1655 edition is preserved by the
55:06
Speaker 1: Library of Congress. That publishing context matters. A reader encountering
55:12
Speaker 1: the orbital there was not meeting it as an isolated
55:15
Speaker 1: Paracelsian Christian work from Basel. Physically, it now sat beside
55:20
Speaker 1: texts associated with Agrippa, ceremonial conjuration, planetary magic, and spirit catalogs.
55:26
Speaker 1: Over time, material that began in distinct intellectual environments could
55:31
Speaker 1: increasingly be read as parts of one vast magical tradition.
55:35
Speaker 1: That is how occult systems mutate. Texts get copied together,
55:40
Speaker 1: tables get compared, names migrate, characters become sigils, planetary governors
55:45
Speaker 1: become grouped beside planetary angels, intelligences, demons, and archangels. Later
55:51
Speaker 1: practitioners inherit the finished chart and assume every row must
55:55
Speaker 1: have originated together. But when we pull the layers apart,
55:59
Speaker 1: the Olympic Spirits tell a different story. The sevenfold planetary
56:02
Speaker 1: structure is older than the orbital. The idea of celestial
56:07
Speaker 1: intelligences governing beneath God appears before it. Trithemius had seven
56:12
Speaker 1: secondary rulers in planetary ages before Aratron existed in print.
56:16
Speaker 1: Paracelsus used the language of Olympic Spirits and connected celestial
56:20
Speaker 1: forces with the stars within the human microcosm. Then, in 1575,
56:26
Speaker 1: an anonymous author in Basel brought those currents together in
56:30
Speaker 1: something new. Seven governments of Olympus, divided into 196 provinces,
56:36
Speaker 1: operating through a mathematically ordered hierarchy, ruling successive ages of history,
56:41
Speaker 1: and bearing the names Eretron, Bethor, Phaleg, Ach, Haggith, Ophiel,
56:47
Speaker 1: and Ful. and then the same author undermined the permanence
56:50
Speaker 1: of the names. That may be the strangest fact of all.
56:55
Speaker 1: We began with the question, who are the Olympic spirits? Historically,
56:59
Speaker 1: the safest answer is not that they are seven ancient
57:01
Speaker 1: pagan gods disguised as angels, nor that they are another
57:05
Speaker 1: class of Goetic demons. In the Arbitral, they are celestial governors,
57:09
Speaker 1: administrators of planetary offices beneath God, inhabiting the firmament, acting
57:15
Speaker 1: through the powers of their stars. and participating in a
57:18
Speaker 1: universe where nature, alchemy, magic, history, and the human microcosm
57:23
Speaker 1: are all connected. Their offices appear more permanent than their names.
57:28
Speaker 1: Their characters may be confirmed or given for particular operations.
57:32
Speaker 1: Their names may differ from magician to magician, and according
57:36
Speaker 1: to the very book that preserved these seven names for us,
57:39
Speaker 1: even a genuinely effective name rarely remains effective beyond 140 years.
57:46
Speaker 1: Yet four and a half centuries later, we are still
57:49
Speaker 1: saying them. Aratron, Bethor, Falig, Ark, Haggith, Ophiel, Ful. Maybe
57:56
Speaker 1: that is because generations of occultists misunderstood the warning. Maybe
58:01
Speaker 1: the printed names became powerful precisely because generations continued using them.
58:06
Speaker 1: Or maybe, according to the logic of the arbitel itself,
58:09
Speaker 1: the names were never the deepest part of the mystery
58:12
Speaker 1: in the first place. Because beneath the name is the office.
58:16
Speaker 1: Behind the office is the star. Behind the star is
58:19
Speaker 1: the machinery of the cosmos. And somewhere between the stars
58:23
Speaker 1: above and the stars within us sits the question the
58:26
Speaker 1: arbitel never completely answers. When a magician calls one of
58:30
Speaker 1: the seven governors, what exactly is answering? And that's the
58:36
Speaker 1: end of another Occult Rejects. Hope you all enjoy, and
58:39
Speaker 1: until the next one.