Latest / The Occult Rejects / The Real History of the Magic Circle Part 1: From Ancient Boundaries to Renaissance Ritual Architecture

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The Real History of the Magic Circle Part 1: From Ancient Boundaries to Renaissance Ritual Architecture · The Occult Rejects

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You see, something's going to happen. What?
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: What's going to happen?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Something wonderful.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: What? I understand how you feel.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: You see, it's all very clear.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: To me now. Welcome back to the Occult Rejects.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Today, we are dealing with one of the most immediately
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: recognizable images in Western occultism. The magician standing inside a
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: circle surrounded by divine names, crosses, planetary signs, candles, and
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: ritual weapons, perhaps facing an exterior triangle into which some
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: spirit is expected to appear. After centuries of grimoires, occult revivals, theater, fiction,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: horror films, and modern witchcraft, That image has become almost
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a universal visual abbreviation for the act of magic itself.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: We recognize it before we necessarily understand what any part
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of it is doing. That familiarity creates an immediate historical trap.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Once a symbol becomes this recognizable, people start finding it everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: A prehistoric stone ring becomes a magic circle. An Egyptian
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  Speaker 1: cartouche becomes a magic circle. A Mesopotamian exorcism becomes a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: magic circle. A circular amulet, a temple enclosure, a ritual dance,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: an Ouroboros, a mandala, and a medieval conjuration diagram all
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: get pressed into one supposedly unbroken lineage, until the story
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: becomes that human beings have been casting essentially the same
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: ceremonial circle since the dawn of civilization. The surviving evidence
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: gives us something messier and much more interesting. Human beings
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: have been ritually encircling, enclosing, and separating protected spaces for
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: thousands of years. But the elaborate ceremonial circle familiar with
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: later Western magic does not appear fully formed in the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: ancient world. What eventually becomes the magic circle is better
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: understood as the convergence of several ritual technologies. Physical enclosure,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: protective encirclement, purification, sacred geography, powerful names and characters, directional orientation,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: astrological timings, supernatural hierarchy, the separation of human space from
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: spirit space, and eventually the creation of a location from
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: which a magician claims both protection and authority. That means
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: there is no single date at which somebody invented the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: magic circle. There are several historical thresholds. If we mean
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: the broad idea that encirclement can create or symbolize protection,
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  Speaker 1: we can reach far back into ancient Egypt.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And the Near East.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: If we mean a deliberately manufactured ritual boundary made from
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a physical substance, Mesopotamia gives us extraordinarily early evidence. If
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: we mean an operator literally standing upon or within a
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: drawn ritual circle, late antique Egypt gives us a rare
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and important example in the Greek magical papyri. If we
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: mean a circle whose boundary has become loaded with divine names,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: celestial information, directions, angelic hierarchies, and a protected position from
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  Speaker 1: which spirits are invoked or compelled, the evidence becomes clearest
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: in the medieval and early modern grimoire tradition. So this
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: is not the history of one symbol traveling unchanged across 4,000 years.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: It is the history of how a boundary became a
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  Speaker 1: ritual technology, how that technology accumulated information and authority, and
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  Speaker 1: how a line on the ground eventually became something close
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  Speaker 1: to a diagram of the universe itself. Because there is
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: too much history here to flatten into one episode, we
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: are splitting this into two parts. In part one, we
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: are going from the ancient logic of protective enclosure through Mesopotamia,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Greco-Roman Egypt, Arabic astral magic, medieval necromancy, the sworn book
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: of Honorius, the Summa Sacrae Magis, the Key of Solomon,
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  Speaker 1: the Heptameron, Agrippa, and the pseudo-Agrippan ritual tradition. By the
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: end of the first part, the circle will already have
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: become a fortress, a calendar, a map, a chain of command,
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  Speaker 1: and a piece of temporary ritual architecture. Then part two
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  Speaker 1: will pick up when that architecture escapes the manuscript page
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: and enters early modern culture, becomes standardized in the Goetia,
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  Speaker 1: gets reinterpreted by Eliphas Levi, internalized by the Golden Dawn
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  Speaker 1: and Crowley, transformed again by Wicca, and finally examined through
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the psychology and neuroscience of ritual space. But before the
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  Speaker 1: circle becomes a cosmic machine, we have to begin with
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: something much simpler. We have to begin with the human
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: discovery that drawing a boundary can make the inside different
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  Speaker 1: from the outside. One of the earliest places we can
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  Speaker 1: responsibly begin is ancient Egypt. Not because Egyptian priests were
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  Speaker 1: secretly performing the key of Solomon thousands of years before
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  Speaker 1: medieval Europe, but because Egyptian religion developed an extraordinarily durable
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: language of encirclement as protection. And that language can be
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  Speaker 1: documented very early. The Egyptian Shen sign, represented as a
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  Speaker 1: closed loop formed from a rope, was associated with ideas
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  Speaker 1: of enclosing, surrounding, continuity, and protection, and surviving examples belong
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  Speaker 1: to the Old Kingdom, including the Third and Fourth Dynasties
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  Speaker 1: during the 3rd millennium BCE. Egyptian iconography later depicts protective
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: deities such as Horus and Nekbet carrying the Shen in
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  Speaker 1: relation to the king. while the elongated development of the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: same general enclosing form becomes what Egyptologists call the royal cartouche,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: literally surrounding the royal name and visually separating it from
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: the space around it. The Global Egyptian Museum describes this
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  Speaker 1: shen specifically as a protective sign and magical aid. Geraldine
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Pinch's broader work on Egyptian magic places protective signs, amulets,
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  Speaker 1: spoken formula, and ritual objects within an Egyptian religious world
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  Speaker 1: in which supernatural protection could be materially and visually constructed.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And Mark Robley's study of circle performances in Egyptian religion
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  Speaker 1: further emphasizes that encircling could be enacted through ritual movement
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  Speaker 1: as well as represented symbolically. What matters for our story
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  Speaker 1: is not that Shen was secretly the first ceremonial magic circle,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: because it was not, but that the underlying principle is
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  Speaker 1: already present at an extremely early date. Enclosure itself can
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  Speaker 1: communicate protection. Something inside a boundary can possess a different
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  Speaker 1: ritual status from what lies outside it, and the act
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  Speaker 1: or symbol of encircling can participate in establishing that distinction.
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  Speaker 1: That idea will become enormously important much later, but we
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  Speaker 1: should resist turning similarity into genealogy, because Egyptian protective enclosure
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: operated within an Egyptian religious and royal system whose meanings
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: belonged to that culture. And nothing about the existence of
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the Shen proves that a medieval European necromancer inherited his
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: conjuration circle directly from an Egyptian priest. This distinction between
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: parallel ritual logic and demonstrable historical transmission is going to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: matter throughout the entire episode, because virtually every stage of
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the circle's history tempts us to discover an ancient prototype
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: and then declare that we have found the original. The
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: ancient circular symbols are not automatically floor circles. A circular
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: amulet is not automatically a place where a magician stood.
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  Speaker 1: Ritual succumbulation does not automatically constitute circle casting. A sacred
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: enclosure is not automatically an evocation chamber, and two traditions
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: using boundaries for protection do not automatically belong to one
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  Speaker 1: interrupted lineage. The history only becomes useful when we allow
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: different practices to remain different until the surviving evidence actually
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: gives us a reason to connect them. When we turn
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: eastward into ancient Mesopotamia, however, we encounter evidence that comes
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  Speaker 1: considerably closer to what most people would instinctively recognize as
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a deliberately constructed magical boundary. Ancient Mesopotamian ritual literature preserves
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  Speaker 1: a technical expression written in Sumerian as Zisura and conventionally
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  Speaker 1: rendered in Akkadian as Sisuru, which the electronic Pennsylvania which
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  Speaker 1: the Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, maintained through the University of
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania's OROC project, glosses directly as a magic circle of flower.
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  Speaker 1: The lexicographical tradition places the expression in Old Babylonian material
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  Speaker 1: and preserves it again in Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Hellenistic sources,
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  Speaker 1: meaning that explicit textual evidence for this ritual technology reaches
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: back into the early 2nd millennium BCE. roughly 4,000 years
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: before the present day. That gives us one of the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: oldest securely documented examples relevant to this history in which
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: we are no longer dealing only with the symbolism of enclosure,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: but with a boundary intentionally manufactured from a physical material
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: as part of ritual practice. That statement still requires qualification,
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  Speaker 1: because the old Babylonian ritual specialist was not a medieval
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  Speaker 1: ceremonial magician wearing a robe and standing behind the names
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  Speaker 1: of Hebrew angels. nor does the existence of a Mesopotamian
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  Speaker 1: flower boundary prove some secret transmission from Babylonia into the Heptameron.
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  Speaker 1: What the Mesopotamian evidence demonstrates is something more basic and
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  Speaker 1: more defensible. A person, object, or location could be physically
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  Speaker 1: enclosed by a ritually significant substance in order to alter
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  Speaker 1: its relationship with threatening supernatural forces. Later Mesopotamian evidence shows
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  Speaker 1: such boundaries being employed around beds, gates, buildings, ritual spaces,
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  Speaker 1: and vulnerable objects. While Barbara Bach's study of Mesopotamian medicine
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  Speaker 1: and magic discusses ritual instructions in which substances are poured
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: or drawn around a patient's bed and around an entrance
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  Speaker 1: as part of procedures intended to exclude dangerous powers. This
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  Speaker 1: takes us decisively beyond abstract, circular symbolism, because the boundary
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  Speaker 1: now acts upon actual space. A vulnerable interior is deliberately
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  Speaker 1: separated from the environment surrounding it. A ritual specialist establishes
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  Speaker 1: that separation. A prescribed substance gives the perimeter physical form,
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  Speaker 1: and spoken incantations accompany the procedure, producing a remarkably sophisticated
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  Speaker 1: structure long before anything resembling a Solomonic grimoire exists. The
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  Speaker 1: crucial elements are already recognizable. There is an interior that
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  Speaker 1: requires protection, an exterior from which danger may approach, a
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  Speaker 1: manufactured boundary between them, and a ritual action that declares
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  Speaker 1: those two spaces no longer equivalent. The material forming that
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  Speaker 1: boundary could possess significance of its own, which is another
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  Speaker 1: reason we should avoid imagining flower as nothing more than
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  Speaker 1: ancient chalk. Mesopotamian ritual traditions distinguish among substances and serial
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  Speaker 1: products according to different supernatural threats and ritual circumstances, suggesting
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  Speaker 1: that the efficacy of the perimeter did not derive merely
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  Speaker 1: from abstract geometry but from the combination of shape, substance, incantation,
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  Speaker 1: and ritual intention. That principle will repeatedly reappear in completely
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  Speaker 1: different historical environments when later magical texts prescribe consecrated knives, swords,
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  Speaker 1: and charcoal, chalk, specially prepared inks, blood, or other materials
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  Speaker 1: for creating ritual boundaries, although once again, resemblance between practices
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  Speaker 1: should not be mistaken automatically for direct historical descent. The
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  Speaker 1: Sisuru tradition is particularly valuable because it is not represented
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  Speaker 1: by one isolated ritual instruction that modern occultists have seized
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  Speaker 1: upon and inflated into an ancient ceremonial system. The terminology
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  Speaker 1: and related practices survive across different periods of Mesopotamian history,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: while later therapeutic, exorcistic, and anti-witchcraft traditions preserve the broader
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  Speaker 1: logic of physically enclosing vulnerable spaces with ritual substances. In
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the Maklu tradition, for example, protective actions around the bed
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  Speaker 1: belong to a much larger sequence designed to combat witchcraft
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  Speaker 1: and hostile supernatural influence, demonstrating that the perimeter function within
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  Speaker 1: an established Mesopotamian repertoire of protection rather than an accidental
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: geometrical curiosity. Once we understand that, the question, why a circle,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: begins to look slightly different, because at this stage, the
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: more fundamental question may be, why a boundary? The geometrical
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  Speaker 1: form matters, but the decisive ritual operation is the transformation
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  Speaker 1: of continuous ordinary space into differentiated zones, allowing a patient, object, house,
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  Speaker 1: or other vulnerable target to occupy an interior whose relationship
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  Speaker 1: to the threatening world outside has been intentionally altered. The
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  Speaker 1: boundary declares that two places, which remain physically adjacent, are
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  Speaker 1: no longer ritually identical, because something is being granted protection
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  Speaker 1: on one side while hostile forces are being denied ordinary
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  Speaker 1: access from the other. Once that basic grammar exists, far
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: more complicated ritual architectures become possible, because a dangerous being
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  Speaker 1: is can be excluded from one zone while being assigned another.
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  Speaker 1: An opening through the perimeter can become a controlled threshold.
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  Speaker 1: Particular directions can acquire supernatural guardians. Sacred names can eventually
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  Speaker 1: inhabit the circumference. Celestial timing can determine when this space
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  Speaker 1: should be established. And the practitioner can ultimately stand at
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  Speaker 1: the center of a diagram whose boundary represents not merely protection,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: but divine, angelic, and planetary authority. None of that later
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: complexity is present in the Mesopotamian flower circle itself, but
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the underlying structure of inside, outside, boundary, protection, and controlled
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  Speaker 1: access is already unmistakable. We also need to resist imposing
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  Speaker 1: our own categories upon the people performing these rituals, because
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamian practitioners did not necessarily divide medicine, religion, and
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  Speaker 1: magic according to the conceptual boundaries familiar to modern Western culture.
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  Speaker 1: Healing could involve pharmacological preparations, incantations, divine appeals, protective substances,
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  Speaker 1: and exorcistic procedures within the same therapeutic environment, particularly when
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: illness could be interpreted as having supernatural as well as
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  Speaker 1: physical causes. A practitioner drawing flour around a sickbed was
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  Speaker 1: therefore not necessarily thinking in anything resembling our vocabulary that
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: he had switched from medicine into into occultism and was
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: now casting a magic circle. Those are categories we bring
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: to the evidence, whereas the ancient ritual system could treat healing,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: supernatural causation, and divine protection as interconnected dimensions of one
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: coherent practice. So if we want the oldest defensible answer
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: at this point in the story, we can say something
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: considerably more precise than the usual claim that magic circles
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: go back to Sumer. Old Kingdom Egypt gives us very
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: early evidence for the protective symbolism of encirclement, although not
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: yet the magician's conjuration circle, while Mesopotamian sources from the
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Old Babylonian world preserve the Zishura or Zishuru, the magic
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: circle of flower, giving us direct evidence for the deliberate
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: construction of a protective ritual perimeter from physical material. Those
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: are not two chapters of one secret tradition. and there
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: is no reason to pretend that one necessarily descended from
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: the other. They are two ancient witnesses to the much
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: larger human discovery that space can be ritually divided and
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: that what lies within a boundary can be treated differently
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: from what lies beyond it. The next major development occurs
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: when the boundary begins acquiring something far more complicated than
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: physical substance. Because the perimeter will increasingly acquire language as
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: sacred words and supernatural identities become organized, within ritual space.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: The magical literature surviving from Greco-Roman Egypt gives us one
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of the richest bodies of practical ritual material preserved from
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean. Particularly, the collection Modern Scholarship calls the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Greek Magical Papyri, conventionally abbreviated PGM. Hans Dieter Betz's Major
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: English Edition brings together hundreds of spells, prayers, invocation, divinatory procedures,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: voces magicae, magical drawings, astrological operations, fumigations, and techniques for
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: approaching gods, daemons, and other supernatural beings. The collection is
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: not the scripture of one unified magical religion.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: It is a.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Surviving archive from a highly hybrid ritual environment in which Egyptian, Greek, Jewish,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: and other religious languages and technologies could be combined according
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: to the needs of individual operations. For the history of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the magic circle, The PGM matters because they show sacred
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: language becoming spatial. Divine names can be written around images,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: arranged inside figures, enclosed with other signs, placed upon rings
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: and amulets, repeated according to numerical structures, or written in
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: circular form so that the physical arrangement of the words
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: become part of the operation. One spell instructs the practitioner
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: to draw a typhon on a seashell and write his
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: names around the figure in a circle. before throwing the
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: shell into a heated bath. Other procedures place formulas around
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: objects or inside circular outlines. The point is that magical
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: words are no longer only things spoken into the air.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: They can acquire position, orientation, enclosure, and geometric relationships. And then,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the PGM gives us something even closer to what most
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: modern people would recognize as circle work. In PGM 7, 846-861,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: A ritual usually translated as shadow on the sun, the
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: practitioner purifies himself, approaches the sun at the fifth hour,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: wears a cat's tail as part of the rite, and
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: recites a long sequence of magical words. The instructions say
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: that after the invocation, the operator will perceive a shadowy
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: figure and may question it. The phylactery for the operation
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: consists of the tail, magical characters, and a circle drawn
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: with chalk on which the practitioner is to stand.
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  Speaker 2: That does not give.
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  Speaker 1: Us the later Heptameron or Goetia, 1500 years early. The
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: circle is not described as a nine-foot fortress packed with
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Hebrew divine names, archangels, planetary rulers, and a separate triangle
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: of art. But it matters because we no longer have
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: to speak only about circular amulets or symbolic enclosure in
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: late antiquity. Here, the practitioner's body is explicitly positioned in
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: relation to a drawn circular figure during a rite intended
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to produce contact with a supernatural or visionary presence. That
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: single example makes the historical sequence more precise. Ancient ritual
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: enclosure is not merely an abstract precursor to medieval circle work.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: At least, some late antique magical practitioners actually used drawn
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: circles as places from which operations were performed. What we
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: still do not have is the mature medieval architecture of
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: supernatural jurisdiction. The PGM, nevertheless, supplies many of the ingredients
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that later coexist inside ceremonial magic. Purification, specialized clothing and tools, fumigation,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: astrological timing, divine names, sacred characters, diagrams, controlled bodily positioning,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: and carefully structured approaches to supernatural beings. Most of those
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: techniques do not depend upon circles, and it would be
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: a mistake to force every PGM ritual into a later
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: grimoire template. What matters is that the broader technology is
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: already available. The boundary can now carry language. The operator
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: can stand in relation to a drawn figure. Names and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: signs can be arranged around a ritual center. Once those
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: ideas meet the Christian exorcistic, Jewish, Arabic, Astral, and Solomonic
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: traditions of the medieval world, the circle is going to
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: become something far more elaborate than chalk on the ground.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: If the ancient material gives us the long prehistory of
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: ritual enclosure, the medieval evidence is where several previously separate
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: technologies begin converging into something recognizably close to the ceremonial
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: magic circle familiar from later grimoires. Even here, there is
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: no single moment of invention, because the developing circle draws
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: upon Christian exorcistic practice, Jewish and Solomonic traditions of sacred
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: names and seals, Arabic astral magic translated into Latin, contemporary
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: ideas about the concentric structure of the heavens, protective amulets
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: and the practical culture of educated clerics who possess the literacy,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: liturgical knowledge and access to books required to combine these
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: materials into working ritual systems. Sophie Page's study of medieval
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: magical figures argues that by the late 13th century, the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: magic circle had become a significant instrument of Christian ritual magic,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: while identifying several important influences upon its development, including astral circles,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Solomonic seals and pentacles, protective circular amulets, and the scholastic
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: model of the cosmos itself. That date matters because it
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: pushes the recognizable European conjuration circle considerably earlier than the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: 15th century date necromantic manuscripts that are often used to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: illustrate it. Writers including Odo of Cheriton, Caesarius of Heisterbach,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: and William of Auvergne were already referring to magical circles
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: during the 13th century, meaning that the image was sufficiently
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: familiar to appear not merely inside secret magical handbooks, but
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: within theological criticism, moral literature, and stories about dangerous dealings
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: with spirits. The circle had therefore become culturally legible before
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: many of the elaborate surviving grimoires were copied, and one
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: of the most remarkable pieces of evidence for that familiarity
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: is not even an instruction manual, but an illuminated manuscript.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: The Cantigas di Santa Maria, associated with Court of Alfonso
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: X of Castile and Leon, produced during the king's reign
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: between 1251 and 1284, contains the illustration associated with Cantiga 125,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: one of the earliest surviving medieval representations of the image
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: that would eventually become almost synonymous with ceremonial magic. A
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: learned clerical magician sits or stands with an inscribed circular
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: figure while demonic beings occupy the space outside it, creating
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: a visual grammar that would remain intelligible for centuries. The
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: human operator belongs within the protected enclosure, the spirits remain
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: beyond it, and magical writing or geometry defines the boundary
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: between the two. Alejandro Garcia Avales has identified the image,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: preserved in the El Escorial manuscript Ti1, as one of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: the earliest surviving medieval depictions of a magician operating within
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: a magical circle. An illustration cannot tell us exactly how
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a historical practitioner constructed a working circle, and we should
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: not confuse artistic representation with an operational handbook. but the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: significance of the image is difficult to overstate. By roughly
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the later 13th century, the idea of the conjurer enclosed
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: by an inscribed boundary while supernatural beings remain beyond it
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: had become recognizable enough to work visually, which means that
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: later grimoires are not inventing the basic relationship between operator, boundary,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and spirit from nothing. Instead, they increasingly systematize that relationship,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: explain how the space should be constructed, and loaded circumference
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: with increasingly precise information about divine names, angelic rulers, directions,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and celestial timing. One major contribution to that developing system
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: came through Arabic astral magic, because Christian ritual circles did
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: not emerge solely from Christian exorcism or Solomonic legend. Sophie
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Page draws attention to the Arabic astral travel texts in
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: which practitioners establish specifically demarcated spaces before invoking planetary spirits,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: while the Latin Picatrix preserves operations in which a practitioner
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: stands or sits within a circle while approaching spirits associated
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: with the moon under particular celestial conditions. The boundaries of
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: these spaces could be constructed in surprisingly varied ways, including
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: lines drawn into Earth from or perimeters created through branches, straw,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: trenches of water, animals, eggs, and other materials whose relationship
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to the celestial power or sacrifice formed part of the
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: ritual logic. This is an important bridge because the operator
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: is no longer merely distinguishing safe interior from dangerous exterior.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: The prepared space can now be synchronized with planetary condition, direction, sacrifice, fumigation,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and celestial identity. The ritual boundary becomes a location in
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: which earthly action is deliberately coordinated with a particular configuration
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: of the heavens. And when this spatial technology enters Christian
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: ritual magic, it encounters a theological environment in which many
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of the beings approached through magical practice could be interpreted
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: not simply as morally ambiguous planetary powers, but as deceptive
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: or demonic spirits requiring protection and constraint. The resulting Christian
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: circle should therefore not be imagined as an essentially pagan
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: magical diagram onto which crosses and divine names were pasted
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: merely to disguise forbidden practice. The Christian material increasingly becomes
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: part of the mechanism through which the right claims to operate,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: because names of God, angelic names, psalms, prayers, crosses, and
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: liturgical formulas establish the hierarchy that supposedly places the magician
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: under powers superior to to whatever being is being summoned.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Richard Kikeffer famously describes the learned milieu surrounding much medieval
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: necromancy as a clerical underworld, populated by educated priests, monks, students,
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: and other clerks whose literacy and familiarity with Christian ritual
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: gave them exactly the tools required to read direct prayers,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: exorcistic formulas, and sacred language towards illicit divination and spirit conjuration.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: The paradox is central to understanding the medieval circles. because
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: the practitioner may be carrying out an operation condemned by
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: ecclesiastical authority while simultaneously claiming that Christian divine authority is
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: what makes the operation possible and keeps its dangers under control.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: A cross inside the circle is therefore not simply evidence
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: that somebody wanted the diagram to look Christian. While a
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: divine name is not merely decorative script, each can function
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: as a part of spatial hierarchy in which the operator's
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: personal vulnerability is compensated for by the supernatural powers whose
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: authority is written around him. This is why some medieval
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: circles begin resembling miniature cosmologies, in which divine names can
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: occupy the highest conceptual level, angelic rulers can identify subordinate
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: celestial authorities, planetary characters connect the operation with particular heavenly spheres,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: crosses sanctify or divide the perimeter, and directional markings place
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: those powers within an ordered, sacred geography. The magician consequently
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: stands inside something more complicated than a defensive wall, because
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the diagram becomes a spatial argument stating where the operator belongs,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: which powers surround him, what hierarchy governs the operation, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: why the spirit outside the boundary is supposedly obligated to respond.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: In that sense, the mature medieval circle becomes a kind
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of ritual jurisdiction, not because medieval practitioners would necessarily have
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: used the exact phrase, but because the analogy captures what
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: the diagram is doing remarkably well. Ordinary ground has been
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: temporarily reorganized into a location governed by sacred names and
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: celestial authorities, while the conjuration spoken from within it claims
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: legitimacy through powers the summoned being is expected to recognize
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: as superior. And one of the earliest major ritual texts
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: to make that architecture visible is the Liber Juratus Honorae.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: The Liber Juratus Honorae, usually known in English as the
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Sworn Book of Honoraeus, deserves a central position in this
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: history today. because modern scholarship places the development of the
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: work within the 13th century tradition of ritual magic, even
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: though the physical manuscript witnesses through which the text survives
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: are later. That distinction is essential. We do not possess
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a 13th century autograph written personally by some historical honorius
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: of Thebes, yet the textual tradition nevertheless provides evidence that
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: sophisticated ceremonial circles and carefully differentiated spirit spaces belong to
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Latin ritual magic well before the 15th century Munich manuscript
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: CLM 849. The Liber Ieratus, is particularly valuable because its
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: circles are not treated as interchangeable diagrams appropriate to every
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: spirit operation. Sophie Page's analysis describes different procedures according to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the type of spirit involved, including distinctions between relatively helpful
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: spirits associated with the air and and malign spirits associated
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: with the earth, and in one of the most dangerous operations,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the spirits are summoned into a concave circular pit excavated
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: in the ground, while the magician occupies a separate circle
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of invocation approximately nine feet away. That arrangement is enormously
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: important because it gives us, centuries before, the famous Goetia
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Circle and Triangle of Art, the underlying architectural principle upon
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: which that latest system depends. human space, and spirit space
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: are deliberately separated. The practitioner does not simply surround himself
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and allow whatever has been summoned to appear anywhere beyond
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: the perimeter. Another location is assigned specifically to the supernatural manifestation,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: while the magician remains within a distinct protected zone from
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: which communication and command take place. Contact with the supernatural
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: is therefore made possible through separation and rather than through
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: the elimination of boundaries. The operator wishes to encounter the spirit,
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: but the rite does not require the two parties to
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: occupy the same undifferentiated space, because magical architecture gives each
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: participant a designated position and controls the relationship between them.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: When we eventually reach the Lamegaton, this principle will become
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: visually unforgettable through the pairing of the magician circle and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: an exterior triangle. Yet the Liber Iurates demonstrates that the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: underlying problem had already been solved through differentiated ritual zones
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: centuries earlier. The text also shows that medieval practitioners did
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: not necessarily think of the magic circle as one universal
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: shape possessing one universal function. Circles could change according to
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the beings approached and the purpose of the operation. While
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: another medieval work attributed pseudonymously to Virgil, De Circulus classifies
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: circles according to functions such as discernment, invocation and provocation,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: and elsewhere describe circles intended for defense, obtaining particular goals, love,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and consultation with spirits. Medieval ritual literature, therefore, gives us
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: an entire taxonomy of circles, suggesting that geometry was being
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: treated as a family of specialized ritual instruments rather than
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: one sacred diagram copied identically for every operation. The famous
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Sigillum Dei, associated with the Libra Gerardus, belongs to the
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: same intellectual world but needs to remain conceptually separate from
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: the floor circle itself. Because modern occult reproductions frequently blur seals, pentacles,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: and ceremonial circles together as though any complex circular figure
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: covered in divine names serves the same function. The Sigillum
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Dei is an elaborate sacred seal composed from circles, polygons, crosses,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: in divine or angelic names.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: And can be worn or otherwise used in.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Conjuration with spirit operations, whereas the conjuration circle organizes the
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: physical environment surrounding the magician. The practitioner can therefore operate
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: inside one layer of protection while carrying another layer directly
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: upon the body, revealing that medieval ritual magic could construct
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: multiple concentric forms of magical security and authority rather than
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: relying upon one diagram to accomplish everything. Combined with other
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: 13th century references to magic circles and the image in
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the Liber Iurates pushes the
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: history of the European magic circle back earlier than scholars
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: once thought. By the late 13th century, we already have
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: strong evidence that Christian ritual magicians were using protected circles
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and were deliberately separating the magician space from the place
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: assigned to the spirit. What comes later in the 14th
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and 15th centuries is not really the invention of the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: magic circle, but a much better surviving record of how elaborate, specialized,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: and sometimes downright bizarre these rituals became. The 14th century
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: gives us another source that deserves far more attention than
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: it usually receives in modern histories of ceremonial magic. To
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Summa Sacrae Magicae of Berenguer Ganel, a Catalan author-magician who
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: completed the enormous compilation in 1346. Gunnell's work matters because
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: it catches medieval ritual magic in the middle of becoming systematic.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: It is not one short experiment or one isolated circle
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: copied into miscellany. De Suma is a vast compendium in
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: which prayers, spirit, invocation, celestial powers, divine names, magical figures,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: and ritual preparations are organized into an ambitious body of practice.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: Modern scholarship has also shown that De Suma preserves material
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: related to one of the textual traditions, a liber uratus,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: which makes it an important witness to the circulation and
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: reworking of learned magic in 14th century Spain and southern France.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: Even the table of contents tell us how central the
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: circle had become. Early chapters include a prayer for the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: journey to the circle, a prayer for blessing the place,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: and a chapter devoted to forming or strengthening the circle.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Other sections deal with winds, powerful names assigned to the
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: regions of the world, invocations of spirits within a house,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: the calling of holy angels into a circle, and different
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: procedures for approaching various classes of spirits. We are no
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: longer looking at a generic recommendation to make a circle.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: The circle has become a ritual problem with its own preparation, prayers, orientation,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and technical variations. One surviving diagram for the conjuration of
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: airy spirits makes that sophistication visible. The figure uses concentric rings,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: directional divisions, and a square placed inside the inner circumference.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: The letters of A-G-L-A occupy triangular divisions created within the square,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: while additional sacred lettering and directional information are distributed around
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the structure. The result looks less like a simple defensive
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: boundary and more like a compact map in which geometry,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: divine language, and orientation are forced to cooperate. That is
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: important because it shows the circle becoming information-bearing architecture before
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the famous early modern grimoires standardized the image. A practitioner
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: is not protected merely because a continuous line has been drawn.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: The line is strengthened by prayer, the place is blessed,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: directions matter, sacred names matter, the type of spirit matters,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and the geometry organizes those relationships around the human operator.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: The Summa also helps correct another common distortion in the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: history of magic. We often jump from the sworn book
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: of Honorius directly to 15th century necromantic handbooks, and then
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: to the printed grimoires as though the 14th century were
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: only an empty corridor between them. Gunnell shows that it
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: was anything but empty. Ritual magic was being copied, expanded, reorganized,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and integrated into huge technical compilations whose authors were actively
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: comparing inherited materials and building systems from them. The surviving
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: manuscript history itself is a remainder of how these texts moved.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: One of the principal Latin witnesses is now at Cassell,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: and Joseph Peterson notes that its foliage was made by
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: John Dee, who once owned and annotated the manuscript. That
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: does not mean Dee invented the material, or that every
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: later Enochian practice descends from Gunnell, but it gives us
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: a strikingly physical connection between a 14th century compendium of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: and one of the most famous magicians of the 16th century.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: The same manuscript tradition could literally pass through the hands
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: of later practitioners who belonged to very different magical worlds.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: For the history of the circle, the significance is straightforward.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: By 1346, the circle is not a marginal superstition or
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: an occasional protective trick. It has become a repeatable ritual
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: technology with procedures for forming it, blessing it, orientating it,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: and adapting it to different spiritual operations. The medieval circle
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: is becoming a system. The manuscript cataloged as CLM 849,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: containing Lieber Incantation of Exorcismorum, survives from the 15th century
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and preserves such an extraordinary concentration of practical magical material
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: that Richard Heikever devoted an entire scholarly study, Forbidden Rites
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: and Necromancer's Manual of the 15th Century, to reconstructing its
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: contents and historical environment. CLM 849 is therefore not our
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: first European evidence for the Conjuration Circle, but it is
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: one of the most valuable surviving documents for understanding what
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: late medieval practitioners expected circles actually to do. The manuscript
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: immediately destroys the idea that medieval magic possessed one standard
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: circle copied for every occasion, because different operations used different
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: figures according to the spirits, participants, and objectives involved. Sophie
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Page identifies several CLM 849 circles especially saturated with Christian
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: protective material, including operations for attaining responses from spirits and
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: divinatory procedures involving a young scryer, while Kai Keffer's broader
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: analysis shows circles arranging supernatural names, human participants, ritual implements,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: and directions according to the requirements of individual experiments. Some
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: of these figures are surprisingly simple compared with the elaborate
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: grimoire circles that became famous through 19th and 20th century
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: occult publishing. Kai Keffer describes one diagram in which a
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: circle is principally organized through directional markings, a sword positioned
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: toward the east, the designated place of the master, four
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: spirit names, and only a small number of additional characters,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: which is historically useful because it reminds us that greater
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: visual complexity did not automatically mean greater magical authority. The
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: important question was whether the figure contained the information required
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: by the operation, and in some circumstances that might mean
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: divine hierarchies and complicated inscriptions while in another could mean
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: little more than names, orientation, and implement in the position
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: of the operator. Other experiments are anything but restrained. One
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: of the most memorable operations in CLM A49 concerns the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: acquisition of what the text presents as as a magical ship.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: And the procedure gives us one of the most visceral
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: examples of circle construction surviving from medieval ritual magic. According
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: to Kai Keffer's edition and analysis, the master begins by
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: fasting on Monday and later travels beneath a waxing moon
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: to a remote location carrying a rib taken from a
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: dead man or woman, sharpens one end of the bone
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and uses it to trace a complicated figure containing a
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: circle crossed by horizontal and vertical bands together with a
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: crescent-shaped form that Kaykaver suggests may represent the vessel itself.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: The diagram includes the places of the master and companions
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: as well as the orientation toward east, meaning that even
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: this operation remains spatially organized rather than consisting of indiscriminate
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: sorcery performed around a randomly drawn boundary. Once the figure
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: has been established, the practitioner enters his designated place and
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: fumigates the circle with marrow from a dead person, holds
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the sharpened rib in his right hand, and conjures eight
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: spirits who are expected to appear in the form of sailors.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: These spirits must swear obedience before they are ordered to
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: transport the circle and everyone within it to whatever destination
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the magician specifies, after which the operators are returned to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: their original location, the spirits receive permission to depart, the
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: circle is destroyed, and the rib is buried. The operation
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: becomes even more revealing when Kai Keffer explains what happens
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: if the spirits have sworn to repeat their service. because
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: subsequent performances no longer require the human rib as the
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: instrument used to draw the circle. The magician may reproduce
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: the figure with iron, wood, a finger, or another available implement,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: and then invoke the spirits through the authority of the
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: oath already established during the original operation. That detail is
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: easy to miss beneath the spectacle of human ribs and
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: corpse marrow, but it tells us something extraordinarily useful about
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the magical theory implied by the texts. If the efficacy
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: of the operation depended simply upon some intrinsic occult property
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: residing in human bone, replacing the rib later with a
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: finger or piece of wood should destroy the procedure. Instead,
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the initial use of the special material appears to belong
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to a broader ritual process through which a relationship of
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: obligation is established, after which the prior oath becomes one
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: of the principal mechanisms governing future contact. Material, geometry, timing, fasting, conjuration,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: spirit identity, and oath therefore work together rather than one
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: ingredient functioning as an isolated magical battery. The ship operation
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: also shows why defining the medieval circle purely as protection
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: becomes inadequate. A circle can certainly shield an operator from
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: threatening spirits, but surviving rituals also use circles to identify
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: or summon beings, assign locations to participants, establish places of manifestation,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: organize divination, regulate, sacrifice, and, in this extraordinary example, define
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: a space that spirits themselves are supposedly expected to transport
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: along with the people occupying it. The circle has become
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: less an object with one function than a ritual platform
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: whose function changes according to the operation built upon it.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: CLM 849 also demonstrates how deeply Arabic astral technologies had
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: entered the learned magical environment of late medieval Europe. Kai
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: Keffer identifies astrological timing and fumigation among the areas in
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: which Arabic magical and astrological material influenced Western necromancy, while
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: different operations in the manuscript may require particular lunar phases,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: planetary days or hours, and substances ranging from familiar incense
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: and myrrh to the human marrow used in the ship experiment.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Portions of the collection make use of planetary days, spirits, angels, seals,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: images and suffumigations in ways connected with the same wider
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: astral culture represented by texts such as the Picatrix. By
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: this point, several historical streams that began separately are operating
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: inside the same manuscript environment. Christian exorcistic authority, Arabic astral timing,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: inherited magical diagrams, spirit hierarchies, ritual materials, and the emerging
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Solomonic tradition can all contribute to the construction of ceremonial space.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: The result is not one clean lineage, but a workshop
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: in which ritual technologies from different intellectual worlds are recombined
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: according to the needs of the practicing magicians. And that
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: is why CLM 849 is so much more valuable than
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: simply being a source of medieval horror stories. It allows
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: us to see the circle not as an abstract symbol
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: described by later occultists, but as a working piece of
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: ritual machinery whose dimensions, materials, inscriptions, participants, and supernatural occupants
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: change according to purpose. By the 15th century, the magic
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: circle had traveled an extraordinary distance from the ancient protective perimeter.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Egyptian encircling supplied an early symbolic language of protection. Mesopotamian
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: ritual created physically marked defensive boundaries. Greco-Roman magic demonstrated how
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: sacred words and supernatural identities can become spatialized. Arabic astral
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: practice connected specially prepared spaces with celestial timing and planetary powers.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Thirteenth-century Christian ritual magic placed the conjurer inside a protective
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: enclosure relative to spirits beyond it. Liber Juratis differentiated magician
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: space from manifestation space, and CLM 849 preserves the resulting
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: technology in the hands of the practitioners who adapted circles
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: to divination, conjuration, and experiments far stranger than the tidy
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: diagrams reproduced in most modern occult books. The next transformation
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: does not replace those developments so much as give them
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a legendary author and then an increasingly recognizable vocabulary of
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: divine names, pentacles, sacred tools, celestial hierarchy, and transmitted authority,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: which means that we now have to deal directly with Solomon.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Before we move into the Hygromantea, the Claviculus Solomonus, and
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the Heptameron, we need to separate two histories that modern
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: occult literature frequently collapse into one. because Solomon's reputation as
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: a master of supernatural beings is far older than the
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: medieval grimoires attribute to him. The Hebrew Bible presents Solomon
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: as a king granted extraordinary wisdom, associated with the construction
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: of the temple and with knowledge extending across the natural world,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: but it does not describe him drawing conjuration circles, commanding
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: 72 demons through the later Goetia system, or compiling the
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: key of Solomon. Those developments belong to much larger legendary
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: and pseudo-epigraphic afterlife of Solomon, in which the biblical king
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: gradually becomes not merely wise, but the archetypal human ruler
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: capable of understanding, identifying, and commanding the invisible world. One
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: of the earliest important witnesses to that transformation appears in
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the 1st century CE in Flavius Josephus, whose Jewish antiquities
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: describe Solomon as having received knowledge useful for overcoming demons
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: and relieving afflictions attributed to them. Josephus claims that Solomon
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: composed incantations through which illnesses could be relieved and techniques
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: through which demons could be expelled and prevented from returning.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And he then describes an exorcist named Eleazar, supposedly demonstrating
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: this Solomonic knowledge in the presence of Vespasian and Roman soldiers.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Eleazar places beneath the afflicted man's nose a ring containing
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: a root prescribed according to the Solomonic technique, draws the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: demon out, invokes Solomon's name, and then commands the expelled
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: being to prove that it has departed by overturning a
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: vessel of water. For our history of the circle, what
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Josephus does not describe is almost as important as what
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: he does. Because here we have Solomon's name, a ring,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: a prescribed natural substance, exorcistic formula, and the belief that
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: a human practitioner can command a demon through knowledge attributed
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: to the king. Yet we do not have a ceremonial
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: magician standing within an inscribed Solomonic circle. That absence is
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: useful because it prevents us from projecting the completed medieval
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: ritual system backward into antiquity and instead allows us to
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: watch its ingredients accumulate separately. The Solomonic reputation for commanding
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: spirits is already developing in the first century, while the
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: elaborate spatial technology later attached to Solomon will emerge much later.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: By late antiquity, that reputation has grown into something far
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: more elaborate in the pseudo-epigraphic Testament of Solomon, a composite
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: work generally situated somewhere within the broad environment of late
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: antiquity rather than the lifetime of the biblical king. In
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: this text, Solomon receives a supernatural ring through which demons
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: can be summoned, interrogated, constrained, and assigned labor connected with
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the construction of the temple. And the narrative repeatedly presents
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: the king as someone who understands not merely the names
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and functions of demons, but the hierarchy above them. Individual
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: demons can reveal which angel of superior power frustrates them,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: giving Solomon the information necessary to control an inferior supernatural
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: being by invoking an authority positioned above it. That logic
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: will eventually become one of the central operating principles of
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: the ceremonial circle. The magician does not necessarily claim personal
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: strength sufficient to dominate whatever is being summoned. Instead, the
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: ritual surrounds the practitioner with names and powers higher in
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: the supernatural hierarchy than the target spirit, creating a chain
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: through which divine authority descends toward the human operator. The
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: later Grimoire magician can therefore present himself not as an
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: individual attempting to overpower a demon through sheer will, but
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: as the temporary representative of a larger sacred hierarchy whose
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: ultimate source is God. This helps explain why Solomon became
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: such a powerful synonymous author.
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: For magical literature.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: He carried biblical kingship, divine wisdom, temple mythology, knowledge of nature,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: exorcistic reputation, and command over spirits with one legendary identity.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: making him almost perfectly suited to authorize books that claimed
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: to teach human beings how to interact with invisible powers.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: A magical text attributed to Solomon could therefore present itself
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: not as an invention of some anonymous medieval practitioner, but
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: as the recovery of primordial wisdom supposedly transmitted from a
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: king whose authority had already become legendary. What eventually develops
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: under the name Claviculus Solomonus, however, is not one perfectly
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: stable book copied unchanged for histories, and modern scholarship increasingly
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: treats the Solomonic grimoire tradition as the enormous and fluid
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: textual family in which manuscripts borrow, translate, rearrange, expand, and
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: sometimes contradict one another. Gail Sofer's recent work is particularly
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: important here, because his 2026 article in the Harvard Theological
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Review says, identifies at least 200 surviving manuscript and printed
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: witnesses bearing forms of the title Clavicula Solomonis, and emphasizes
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the degree to which these texts function as open and
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: adaptable magical documents rather than copies of one immutable original.
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: That immediately changes the way we should speak about the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: circle from the key of Solomon, because different witnesses can
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: alter inscriptions, geometric arrangements, prayers, divine names, ritual tools, and
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: practical instructions. Latin, Italian, French, Greek, Hebrew, and other textual
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: environments all participate in the broader Solomonic tradition, and individual
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: scribes could reorganize, mistranslate, correct, or deliberately adapt what they inherited.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Whenever somebody therefore presents an image online and labels it
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the original circle of King Solomon, the historically meaningful question is,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: are much less glamorous but much more important. Which manuscript
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: does it come from? When was the manuscript copied? Which
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: textual family does it belong to? And how does its
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: diagram compare with the other surviving witnesses? The chronology of
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: the Calicula has become considerably clearer through modern manuscript research,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and it places the tradition firmly within the medieval world
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: without requiring us to accept legendary authorship or to dismiss
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: the text as Victorian fabrication. Joseph Peterson's manuscript survey identifies
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: what is currently regarded as the earliest explicit reference to
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: a clavicula solomonis in the authentic work of Pietro Diabano,
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: whose Lucidator Astronomia, written around 1303-1310, refers to a work
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: under that title. That reference does not give us the
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: entire text or prove that Pietro possessed exactly the version
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: later printed by Mathers. but it demonstrates that something recognized
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: as the clavicular Solomonus was already circulating or known by
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the 14th century. The surviving physical manuscript
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: evidence follows soon afterward, with Peterson identifying a fragment consisting
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: of two leaves from Trent dated approximately 1380 to 1410,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: while a much more substantial Milanese-Italian witness dated 1446 preserves
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the broad two-part structure recognizable in later clavicular traditions. Solfer
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: likewise treats this 15th century Italian material as crucial evidence
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: for the medieval development of the text, and by this
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: stage we already encounter many of the characteristic elements later
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: associated with the key. Astrological timing, preparation of the operator,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: specialized knives and other implements, fasting, bathing, candles, fumigation, assistance
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: in the deliberate preparation of ritual space. The historical Pietro
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: di Abano becomes especially interesting in this context because the
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: situation demonstrates how magical pseudepigraphy actually forms. Pietro almost certainly
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: did not write the Heptameron eventually printed under his name,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: but his authentic work shows genuine involvement with astrology and
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: celestial correspondences and, more importantly, genuine knowledge of a work
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: called the Clavicula Solomonis. Peterson also notes correspondence between planetary
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: angel lists found in Pietro's accepted writings a material that
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: later appears with the Heptameron tradition. Although the direction and
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: stages of transmission remain more complicated than simply declaring Pietro
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: the author of.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: The later grimoire.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: A real scholar associated with astrology and unusual learning could
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: become legendary after death, and his name could then acquire
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: precisely the kind of authority that encouraged later magical writers
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: or publishers to attach texts to him. That process itself
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: is part of the history of magic. because synonymous authorship
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: is not merely a nuance modern historians have to correct.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: It tells us what kind of names were believed capable
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: of authorizing occult knowledge. Solomon, Pietro, Agrippa, and other famous
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: figures could become textual anchors around which later materials accumulated
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: because their reputations provided the intellectual or spiritual legitimacy practitioners
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: wanted their books to possess. The Greek material generally called
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: the Hygromantia, or the Magical Treatise of Solomon, introduces another
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: complication because it has often been described as though historians
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: possess a neat genealogy in which one Byzantine Greek text
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: simply crossed into Western Europe and became the Latin key
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: of Solomon, whereas the surviving evidence shows a much more
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: tangled relationship in which important Greek witnesses, including British library
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Harley MS5596, belong to the late Byzantine manuscript world and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: contain material closely related to the clavicular, including instructions concerning
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: magical tools, astrological conditions, spirit hierarchies, and the construction of circles.
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: Ioannis Marathicus has argued for the development of the hygromantia
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: in a Byzantine or Venetian Greek environment, perhaps during the
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: 13th or 14th century, while acknowledging that individual components may
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: be older, and earlier scholarship often treated this Greek material
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: as as the direct ancestor from which the Western key descended.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: More recent work by Gail Sofer complicates that model considerably,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: because he argues that the hygromantia can reasonably be described
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: as a Greek clavicular solomonas because the textual and structural
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: relationship is undeniable, but he cautions against treating the surviving
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Greek tradition as the single original source from which every
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Western clavicular ultimately derives. That leaves us with a messier
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: but historically more believable picture in which Greek and Western
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: Solomonic materials belong to closely related textual environments that develop
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: through translation, exchange, and adaptation rather than through one perfectly
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: traceable line of descent. For the history of the circle,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: one of the most valuable features of the Greek tradition
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: is a diagram in which ritual space becomes unmistakably architectural.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Peterson's comparison of the Greek magical treaties with later Key
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of Solomon witnesses preserve a figure whose interior identifies a
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: designated place for the teacher and a place for the disciples,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: while the circumference possesses a controlled entrance associated with the
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: magical knife and geometric figures occupy the surrounding structure. That
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: gives us far more than a picture of somebody standing
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: inside a ring. The circle now organizes rank, personnel, direction, entrance,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: and protections. turning drawn geometry into something resembling the floor
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: plan of a temporary ritual building. The master belongs in
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: one place, assistants belong in another, and the boundary contains
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: a designated point through which people enter rather than functioning
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: as an abstract line crossed wherever convenient. The entrance itself
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: reveals a problem that every protective boundary eventually has to solve,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: because if the circumference separates a ritually secured interior from
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: a dangerous exterior, then crossing through the line carelessly would
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: appear to compromise the very distinction the magician has worked
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: to establish.
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: The solution is to.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Ritualize the threshold, effectively giving the circle something comparable to
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: a door whose opening and closure can be controlled through
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: the magical instrument and the prescribed actions of the operator.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: At this stage, the circle has therefore become something much
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: more sophisticated than a symbol of protection. It has walls
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: without walls, designated occupants a threshold in rules governing passage,
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: and that is precisely why describing these diagrams as ritual
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: architecture is more useful than treating them merely as mysterious
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: occult illustrations. When we turn to the circles preserved within
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: Western clavicular traditions, we finally reach figures dense enough that
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: we can examine the historical development almost inscription by inscription.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: Peterson's manuscript comparisons preserve versions in which an inner circle
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: is surrounded by another concentric boundary approximately a foot beyond it.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: creating a band into which sacred names and figures are written,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: while directional divisions organize the circumference and different witnesses vary
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: over details such as whether certain intermediate figures appear as pentagrams, hexagrams,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: or related geometric forms. That variation is important because there
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: is no reason to pretend every manuscript preserves one identical diagram,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: yet the underlying ritual logic remains remarkably consistent. Space is
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: being organized through sacred language, direction, and hierarchy. Particular witnesses
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: place forms of names such as Yad-Heh-Vad-Heh, or the Tetragrammaton, Eh-Heh-Heh, Elion, Eloah, El, Yah, Adonai,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: and Agalah within or around the circle, although their exact
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: positions and spellings vary across manuscripts. These names are not
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: decorative flourishes placed there because occult books are expected to
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: look mysterious. In the logic of the ritual, those names
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: show that the magician is backed by divine authority and
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: placed the spirit in a lower position beneath that authority.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: The location of those names upon the circumference is therefore
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: crucial because the line separating magician and spirit becomes literally
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: saturated with sacred authority, so that the boundary itself functions
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: as a theological claim. This interior belongs to the powers
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: named here. The operator acts beneath those powers. and whatever
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: is being summoned must recognize the hierarchy those names represent.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: The key also preserves an extremely useful distinction that later
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: generalized circle-casting traditions can obscure, because not every experiment in
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: the text requires a circle. Some operations can proceed without one,
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: whereas rites involving direct communication or conversation with spirits demand
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: a deliberately prepared circle, and some manuscript witnesses add further
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: layers of precaution around the primary working figure. The circle
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: therefore remains especially associated with operations in which the magician
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: expects an encounter with another supernatural agent rather than functioning
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: simply as a universal opening gesture performed before every conceivable
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: act of magic. What happens before the magician ever steps
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: into the circle is just as important as what happens
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: inside it. In the Key of Solomon, the operator is
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: expected to prepare himself through prayer, continence or sexual abstinence, confession,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: ritual bathing, fasting, clean clothing, and consecrated water. The master's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: assistants also have their own roles, and the tools used
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: in the rite have to be prepared ahead of time.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: In other words, the circle does not magically turn an
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: ordinary unprepared person into an authorized magician the second he
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: steps across the line. The person and the place are
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: both prepared for the operation. The magician is separated from
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: ordinary life and the ritual space is separated from ordinary ground.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Timing matters too. The circle does not exist only in
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: the right place. It also has to exist at the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: right time. Planetary days and hours, the condition of the moon,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: and the astrological factors can determine when a ritual is
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: supposed to happen. So the finished circle brings several systems
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: together at once. Direction matters because the quarters matter. Divine
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: names matter because they establish the religious authority of the right.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: The magician and assistants have assigned positions. And celestial timing
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: matters because the operation is supposed to match a particular
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: moment in the heavens. Once you look at all those
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: pieces together, the circles in the Key of Solomon stop
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: looking like random collections of names, stars, crosses, and strange symbols.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Every part has a job. The outer line marks the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: protected area. The quarters orient the circle in space. Sacred
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: names identify the powers the magician is calling upon. Ritual
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: tools are used to make and control the boundaries. Purification
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: prepares the people who will stand inside it. Astrology determines
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: when the work should happen, and the hierarchy of spirits
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: tell the magician what kind of being he expects to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: deal with beyond the circle. The Key of Solomon, therefore,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: gives us one of the clearest examples of a magic
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: circle functioning as a complete system for supernatural contact. It
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: brings together religion, direction, timing, ritual roles, and spirit hierarchy
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: in one prepared space. The Heptameron takes that idea even further,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: because in that text, the circle actually changes depending on
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: when the ritual is performed. The Heptameron is one of
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: the best examples showing that a ceremonial circle was not
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: always meant to be one fixed design copied the same
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: way every time. The text says the contents of the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: circle have to change depending on the time, the celestial conditions,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: and the spirits being summoned. First though, we have to
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: separate the book from the historical man whose name became
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: attached to it. Pietro di Abano lived around 1250 to 1316,
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: but modern historians do not accept him as the author
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: of the familiar printed Heptameron. The material seems to come
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: from an older magical tradition connected with texts called the Lucidarium.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Joseph Peterson points out that Johannes Trithemius was already referring
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: in 1508 to a Lucidarium attributed to Pietro, and its
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: contents strongly resemble the material that later appears in the Heptameron.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: The version most people know today was printed in 1559,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: when it appeared alongside the pseudo-Grippen fourth book of occult philosophy.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: So the Heptameron was not simply invented from scratch in 1559.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: The printed book seems to organize and publish material from
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: an older tradition of necromantic and angelic magic. Peterson has
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: compared it with the manuscript material called Lucidarius Magice Magistri
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: Petri di Albano, and found important overlap between them. One
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: thing the printed heptameron does especially well is reorganize that material. Angels, spirits, seals, fumigations,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: and other correspondences are arranged under the different days of
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: the week, making a complicated system much easier to follow.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: That tells us something important about what printing did to
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: magical books. Printing did not merely preserve older material. It
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: could also reorganize and standardize it. turning information that had
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: been scattered across manuscripts into something easier for later practitioners
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: to consult and reproduce. The Heptameron directly calls its circles
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: fortifications against evil spirits, so protection is obviously part of
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: their purpose. But the instructions make clear that the circle
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: is doing more than simply putting a wall around the magician.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: The text says the design should change depending on the
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: spirits being called. Where those spirits belong, the season, the day,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: the hour... the relevant stars and regions, and the kinds
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: of jobs or powers those spirits are believed to have.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: This is a huge detail. It means the circle is
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: not considered powerful just because it is round. The circle
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: is more like a ritual template that has to be
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: filled with the correct information for the specific operation being performed.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: The basic design uses three concentric circles roughly nine feet across,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: with about a hand's width between them. Those bands are
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: then filled with information that changes according to the rituals.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: The magician has to include the name of the ritual hour,
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: the angel ruling that hour, and the angel's sigil. He
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: also has to account for the angel of the day
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and that angel's ministers, the sacred names connected with that
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: period of time, the spirits ruling it, the ruler of
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: the relevant zodiacal sign, a name or designation for the earth,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: and names connected with the sun and moon according to
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: the same system. And the text is very clear about
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: the consequences. When the time changes, the names written in
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: the circle are supposed to change too. That means the
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: famous diagram often reproduced today as the Heptameron Circle is
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: not really one finished circle that would work for every operation.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: It is better understood as a template. The magician is
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: expected to calculate the correct information for the day, hour, season,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: and celestial conditions of the ritual, then place that information
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: into the design. The outer part of the circle includes
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: the names of aerial rulers, connected with the chosen day,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: including the appropriate king and ministering spirits. Pentagonal figures appear
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: outside the main circle. Inside, four divine names are separated
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: by crosses, with Alpha toward the east and Omega toward
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: the west, and another cross divides the interior.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: The result is a layered diagram.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Combining Christian sacred names, angelic and spirit hierarchies, planetary timing,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: and earthly direction. So when the magician stands inside it,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: he is not merely standing behind a protective line. According
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: to the worldview of the text, he is standing inside
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: a small map of how the supernatural universe is organized
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: at that particular moment. That makes the Heptameron Circle much
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: stranger than a simple supernatural fence. The magician is expected
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: to know the day, the hour, the angel who rules
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: that hour, the spirits beneath that authority, the spirits connected
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: with the current period, the relevant zodiacal conditions, and the
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: divine names placed above the whole system. Within the logic
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: of that ritual, knowing the correct hierarchy is part of
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: the protection. The magician is surrounding himself with the names
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: and symbols of powers that are supposed to outrank whatever
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: spirit he is attempting to summon. That is why all
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: those divine names, angel names, spirit names, and sigils should
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: not be treated as meaningless decoration. Each one has a purpose.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: A divine name represents authority. A sigil gives that authority
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: a visual identity. The planetary hour tells the magician which
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: celestial power is supposed to be active. Direction tells him
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: where a particular power belongs in space. And the Christian
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: divine names place the entire ritual beneath a higher religious authority.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: The heptameron circle is therefore doing several jobs at once.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: It is a calendar, a map, a fortress, and a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: chain of command, all drawn into the same piece of ground.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: By this point, we can just see how far the
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: magic circle has developed. The Mesopotamian flower circle separated a
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: protected interior from danger outside it. Medieval ritual magic connected
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: protected space with divine names and supernatural hierarchies. The Solomonic
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: tradition added tools, purification, human roles, and celestial timing. Then
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: the heptameron made timing so important that the information written
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: in the circle had to change along with the heavens.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: By the 16th century, the next question was becoming unavoidable.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Why was any of this supposed to work? Renaissance occult
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: philosophers began trying to explain why geometry, numbers, divine names,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and celestial correspondences should have magical power at all. And
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: at almost the same time, the ritual tradition connected with
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: pseudo-Agrippa introduced another major development, a triangle placed outside the
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: magician's circles. bringing us another step closer to the layout
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: later made famous by the Goetia. By the 16th century,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: magicians had already been using circles for centuries. What Renaissance
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: thinkers increasingly tried to explain was why certain shapes, numbers, names,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and celestial correspondences were believed to have magical power in
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: the first place. No writer became more influential in that
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: project than Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Agrippa's authentic Three Books of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Occult Philosophy says, circulated in manuscript before the expanded printed
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: edition appeared in 1533. Agrippa tried to bring together natural magic, mathematics, astrology, angelology,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: Christian theology, Hebrew divine names, and celestial correspondences into one
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: enormous system. In his worldview, different levels of the universe
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: were linked through number, sympathy, hierarchy, and correspondence. When Agrippa
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: discusses mathematical shapes, he gives the circle special importance. because
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: a circle has no obvious beginning or end like a
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: straight line does. He connects it with ideas such as infinity, perfection,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: and the celestial world. He also notes that people who
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: conjure or bind evil spirits commonly surround themselves with circles.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: That matters because Agrippa is doing something different from a
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: practical grimoire. A grimoire may simply tell the magician to
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: draw a circle and follow the instructions. Agrippa tries to
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: explain why the shape itself was thought to matter. In
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: his system, The geometry of the circle reflects ideas about perfection, heaven,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: and cosmic order. That fits into Agrippa's larger theory of correspondences.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: He believed the universe was arranged in connected levels. Earthly substances, planets, numbers,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: divine names, angels, spiritual intelligences, and human abilities could all
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: correspond with one another. A magical diagram could therefore act
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: like a small model of the larger cosmos. The magician
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: could bring the correct shape, number, divine name, planetary correspondence,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: and spiritual authority together in one ritual space. Agrippa did
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: not invent all these ideas. We have already seen many
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: of the pieces in Astral Magic, Solomonic Texts, and the Heptameron.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: His importance is that the three books brought a huge
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: amount of this material together and gave it a more
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: organized philosophical explanation. The circle was not only a practical
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: defense anymore. Its shape represented perfection and celestial order. while
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the names and correspondences written into it placed the magician
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: inside a small ritual model of the universe. But there
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: is an important historical trap waiting right after Agrippa, because
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: one of the most influential magical books published under his
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: name was not actually written by him. The so-called Fourth
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: Book of Occult Philosophy was first printed in Latin at
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Marburg in 1559, more than 20 years after Agrippa died.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: Modern scholarship treats it as a synonymous work, meaning somebody
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: else wrote it and published it under Agrippa's name. That
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: distinction matters because the fourth book contains some of the
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: clearest Renaissance instructions for making ceremonial circles. We should not
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: say Agrippa tells the magician to do this when the
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: historical Agrippa did not actually write the book. Whoever did
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: write the fourth book clearly knew the kind of magical
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: system Agrippa had helped popularize. Before calling a spirit, the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: magician is told to determine the spirit's nature, office, and
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: planetary connection. The place of the ritual should then match
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: those qualities. A spirit connected with water, for example, should
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: be approached in a location appropriate to watery powers rather
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: than summoned wherever the magician happens to be standing. Only
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: after the spirit has been classified does the text explain
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: how the circle should be strengthened. The magician adds divine
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: names for general protection, other divine names connected with the
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: planet ruling that spirit, and the names of higher or
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: benevolent spirits believed to have authority over the being being summoned. Characters, pentacles,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: and numerical figures can also be added when the operation
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: calls for them. This gives us one of the clearest
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: explanations for why ceremonial circles can contain so many different names.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: The magician is not simply writing the word God over
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: and over in different languages. The names have different jobs.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: Some protect the magician, some connect the ritual with the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: correct planet, Others call on spirits or angels that are
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: supposed to outrank and control the spirit being summoned. So
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: the circle becomes a chain of command written around the magician.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Within the logic of the ritual, every important name adds
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: another level of authority behind the operator. The fourth book
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: also gives us a ritual where the circle is only
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: one piece of a much larger process. The magician prepares
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: a clean place and covers it with white linen. At
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the proper lunar time, he enters wearing clean white clothing.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: blesses and exercises the area, and draws the circle with
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: consecrated charcoal. Angelic names are written in one part of
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: the design and powerful divine names in another, while censers
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: are placed at the quarters. The work then continues over
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: several days. The magician returns to the space while fasting, praying,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: and burning incense or other perfumes. He wears a golden
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: lamen bearing the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter divine name of God,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: and repeatedly builds up the ritual atmosphere through the same actions.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: On the seventh day, the magician repeatedly walks around the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: circle from east toward west. He continues until the movement
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: produces extreme exhaustion and dizziness. Eventually, he lays down inside
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: the circle and waits for the appearance, vision, or experience
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: of a spirit believed to be able to reveal hidden knowledge.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: This operation becomes especially interesting when we later look at
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: the psychology and physiology of ritual. The magician is fasting.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: He is moving repeatedly in one direction. He is surrounded
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: by incense and sacred language. He is isolated, highly focused,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: and physically exhausted. All of those things can affect the
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: body and the state of consciousness. But we do not
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: have to reduce the ritual to psychology to understand its
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: historical importance. The point is that the circle acts as
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: the framework that brings everything together. Clothing, incense, prayer, celestial timing, movement,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: divine names, and an altered physical state. Ceremonial magic was
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: never just a matter of drawing a shape on the floor.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: And then the pseudo-Agrippan tradition gives us something even more
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: important for the history of the magic circle. The famous
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: triangle placed outside the magician's circle, which many people associate
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: with the later Goetia, did not begin with the Goetia.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: Earlier in the story, the Libra Juratus already gave the
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: magician a protected place while assigning a separate place to
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: the spirit. so the basic idea that the human operator
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: and the summoned spirit should occupy different spaces was already
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: present in medieval magic. The pseudo-Agrippan fourth book moves even
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: closer to the arrangement people later recognize from the Lomegaton
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: because it explicitly places a triangle outside the magician's circle.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: The ritual involves preparing a liber spiritum, or book of spirits.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: The book contains the names and images, characters, ranks, offices,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: and oaths connected with particular supernatural beings. The spirits are
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: summoned according to the ritual instructions, and then the book
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of spirits is placed outside the magician's circle inside a
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: triangle drawn specifically for it. The spirits are then ordered
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: to place their hands upon the images or characters connected
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: with them and swear obedience over the book. The idea
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: is that the book becomes an object through which those
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: spirits can later be commanded. This is not exactly the
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: same thing as the later Goetia's triangle of art. In
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: this ritual, the object inside the triangle is specifically the
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: book of spirits. The triangle is not described simply as
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: the place where a demon visibly appears, but the basic
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: layout is already very close. The magician stands inside one
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: protected area while a separate ritual space is deliberately created
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: outside the circle. Another ritual in the same text makes
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: this separation even easier to picture. It describes a table
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: where spirits are invited to receive offerings such as bread, milk,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: or water. If the magician believes the spirit might be dangerous,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: he is told to position the circle so that his
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: own part of the table remains inside the circle while
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: the rest of the table, including the places prepared for
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the spirits, stays outside. This is a remarkable setup because
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: one physical table is being divided into two ritual spaces.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: The magician can sit close enough to interact with the
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: spirits while still remaining inside the protected area. The spirits, meanwhile,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: are given their own places on the other side of
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: the boundary. So the circle is not always meant to
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: create complete separation. Sometimes it works more like a controlled border.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: The magician and the spirit can interact across it, but
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: they are not given equal access to the same space.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: This is why the later Goetia should not get credit
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: for inventing the idea of a separate spirit zone. The
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: basic problem had already been solved in several different ways.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: The Liber Iurata separated the magician's place from the spirit's place.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Sudo Agrippa put a triangle outside the circle. The same
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: tradition could even divide a table so that the magician
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: remained protected while the spirit's place stayed outside. Medieval ritual
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: diagrams had already been assigning different positions to masters, assistants,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: in supernatural beings for centuries. What the Goetia eventually does
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: is not invent this arrangement from nothing. It standardizes it.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Centuries of experimentation with separate ritual spaces eventually become the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: familiar picture of a magician standing inside a circle where
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: a spirit is called into a triangle nearby. Before we
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: reach that famous image though, the magic circle takes another
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: important step. By the end of the 16th century, it
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: had become recognizable enough that it was no longer confined
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: to specialist magical manuscripts. It was beginning to appear in
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: popular culture and on the theatrical stage. And this is
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: where part one needs to stop, because the middle of
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: the 16th century, the simple idea of drawing a protective
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: boundary had developed into something far more complicated. In Mesopotamia,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: a practitioner could mark off a vulnerable place with a
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: ritually prepared boundary. In late antiquity, An operator could stand
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: on a chalk circle while attempting to encounter a supernatural presence.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Medieval Christian magicians began filling ritual space with divine names, directions,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: and hierarchy of spirits. The Liber Iratis separated the magician's
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: space from the spirit space. Ganahl turned the construction and
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: use of circles into a detailed set of instructions. The
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: Key of Solomon brought together sacred names, tools, purification, direction,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: and celestial timing. The Heptameron made the circle into a
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: changing map of the heavens. Agrippa then tried to explain
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: the philosophy behind the geometry, and Pseudo-Agrippa gave us a
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: working ritual system where the magician's protected circle could face
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: a separate triangle outside it. And we still have not
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: reached the Goetia. That is the point. By the time
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: the famous circle and triangle arrangement appears in the 17th century,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: most of the important questions had already been asked. Where
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: does the magician stand? Where does the spirit appear? What
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: protects the magician? What divine powers are supposed to outrank
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: the spirit? Which direction matters? Which hour matters? Which name
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: belongs on the circle? Which names belong on the circle?
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: How does the magician enter the space? How does he
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: close the ritual afterward? And how do you take an
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: ordinary piece of ground and turn it into a place
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: where supernatural contact is supposed to happen? Part 2 begins
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: when the specialized magical technology starts moving beyond the manuscript
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: tradition and becomes something a wider culture can recognize. We
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: are going into the first Elizabethan working grimoires, the development
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: of the Goetic spirit catalog de la Megaton, the strange
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: counterexample of Abramelin, Elvis Levi, the Golden Dawn, Crowley, Wicca,
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: and finally the question that may be the strangest one
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: of all. After thousands of years of magicians worrying about
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: what the circle does to spirits, what does the circle
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: do to the magician standing inside it?
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: And that's the end of another Occult Rejects. Hope you
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: all enjoyed.