What happens to magicians’ stuff when they die? I am, for once, not talking about books and manuscripts, but instead about everything else: robes, wands, discs, pillars, lamens and impedimenta of every other kind.
As far as recent history goes, there are a few answers: very precious tools may be buried or cremated with the individual; others may be dispersed among their students or companions, or returned to any order to which they belong; in Britain, some might find their way to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic; sometimes they simply gather dust in the attic of a child, evidence of “Mum’s weird hobby”, or languishing near the bottom of a to-do list which never gets finished. Sometimes they must make it to landfill, or scatter among curio shops (or eBay); occasionally, sadly, they simply end up on the bonfire. A plea to magicians of all ages: make a clear will, and keep it up to date.
Of course, sometimes tools one thought safely buried resurface: the Golden Dawn tools of Maiya Tranchell-Hayes, ritually buried in a south coast garden, were unearthed only a few decades later – to the great fascination of the press – by coastal erosion. The description makes it clear she buried a full suite of adept’s tools, and perhaps the robes of a Hierophant. The Telegraph story (Oct 17, 1966) on their discovery quotes Masons and Theosophists disowning – vehemently – any association with them; an otherwise baffled expert declares that they ‘probably belonged to a witch.’ Some expert.
But what about earlier? What about magicians prior to the twentieth century?
The history of magic is written primarily as a story of textual transmission. This is a function both of scholarly training and the available evidence. Ritual texts and handbooks survive far in excess of identifiable ritual tools. To my knowledge (which is, of course, imperfect) no inscribed tools survive which are contemporary with the grimoires which prescribe their use. This is even true of those one might expect to be durable: brazen vessels, knives or swords. What should we make of this absence?
Certainly, at any time, the number of armchair enthusiasts outstrips the number of actual practitioners. One should, therefore, expect a predominance of text. But we might speculate on other reasons: it’s possible to pass off a collection of texts as a matter of intellectual interest, but a painted floorcloth or inscribed rod is harder to wave away. In persecutory eras, this difference matters. One might be more careful with tools than texts. Perhaps we should also think of the ‘inscribed’ characters as temporarily painted, rather than etched or carved, so your brazen vessel might double as a cooking pot, or your unassuming quill-knife do magical double-duty.
Much of the material evidence we do have are not tools per se but instead the output of magic: amulets, magic rings, defixiones. There is an additional problem, which is that the posthumous reputations of notorious magicians can inspire a cottage industry in (barely) plausible fakes. There must certainly have been enough ‘authentic’ wands of Aleister Crowley flogged online to rebuild Boleskine. But it is also true of museum objects: the John Dee items on display in the British Museum comprises items which cannot have been his (the golden disc, copied from Casaubon), those which have an uncertain connection (the obsidian mirror, the crystal ball), and those which are very plausibly his (the wax Sigilla, which are attested in the Cottonian collection). This does not make the later objects uninteresting. The gold disc is plausibly associated with the marble copy of Dee’s table now in Oxford: evidence of a sincere, and perhaps wealthy, practitioner working from Casaubon?
One of the most tantalising survivals is an elaborate and carefully rendered Sigillum matrix, patterned according to the Honorius figure, found in Devil’s Dyke, Cambridgeshire. (These sigilla are the precursors to Dee’s famous version of the same figure, derived partly from the version in his manuscript copy of the Summa Sacrae Magicae now in Kassell.)
It is irresistible to see this as an intentional, ritual burial of a magical tool – or rather, an item used in the production of magical tools. The matrix could be pressed into plaster or wax, and produce an instant, fresh version of the seal. It’s hard to avoid speculation: was it used to produce sigilla that could be ritually destroyed after each working? Or for multiple practitioners? Why did the practitioner choose this Anglo-Saxon earthwork to bury this 16th century tool? What did he [?] think that long, unnatural ridge was, what did that landscape mean to him?
Magical objects in collections multiply, vanish, get stolen and reappear. Some things slip through the net. In 1694, the small-coal merchant, rare book collector and musical impresario Thomas Britton (1644-1714) auctioned off a portion of his collection. Britton is chiefly remembered as a minor figure in the history of music, having hosted performances in a cramped room above his warehouses in Clerkenwell, and transcribed much musical work which would otherwise be lost. His ebullient personality and the odd locale gave the gatherings a cult following in late 17th century London. Pepys refers to him briefly as ‘poore’, though this may be more a comment on his social origins; certainly at the time of auction his business was spread across several buildings, and his advice to society bibliophiles had also prospered him. Perhaps the auction was simply making space for more.
Britton had Rosicrucian and alchemical interests, and seems to have sporadically bought up magical manuscripts. He was certainly pious, and believed in the active intervention of the divine in the world: he is supposed to have died after a friend played a trick ventriloquising the voice of God calling him to penitence. Among the various printed and manuscript magical texts included in the 1694 auction catalogue is included this item, by far the longest and most intriguing:
Lemegeton, Clavicula Salomonis Regis, or the little Key of Solomon, which containeth all the Names, Order, and Offices of all Spirits that ever he had any converse with, together with the figures of the Seals and Characters belonging to each Spirit, and the manner of calling them forth to appearance, being in five parts called books, &c. The first book of Evil Spirits called Goetia, the second of Spirits partly Good partly Evil, called Theurgia Goetia, being all Spirits of the Air, the third of the Spirits governing the Planetary Hours, the 4th part of the Book is called Ars Almadel Salomonis, containing 20 chief Spirits which govern the 4 Altitudes of the 360 degrees of the World, &c. the 5th part is Solomons Orations, used at the Altar, revealed to him by the Angel Michael; also his Ars Notoria, with the additional part of it, done by Magister Apollonius, a Successor in that sublime Study. These Books are said to be first found by a Jewish Rabbi in the Chaldaean and Hebrew Tongues at Jerusalem. There appertaineth and belongeth to this Book a large Magical Circle, with the divers Names of god, Angels, Spirits, &c. being 7 foot square, and fairly done on Vellum pasted to Cloth and rolled up, together with two Magical Tables of Leaves about a yard square each, the one containing abundance of Chaldy and Magical Characters or Letters, with the several Names of God about Triangles, fairly done on Vellam, and colonred; and pasted on board; the other Table contains the Spirit Pamersiels Seal handsomely stained into Cedar Wood. Also two Cherubims Heads on Pedestals, to take off at pleasure. There belongs also to this famous magical collection, a round solid Christall Glass, 3 inches and more diameter, and fixed on a solid Brass Stand. Four more globular and solid green Glasses about 3 and 4 inches diameter. Two oval hollow Glasses with holes at the top, all six fixed in Tin Candlesticks. A very strange fashioned Lamp in Tin in several divisions, and with 7 Lights above 2 foot in length. Another Lamp in Tin with 3 Lights, in the fashion of a Semicircle. A magical Staff about 7 foot wreathed about white and black. Five pair of holy Slippers all stained with several Red Crosses. A magical Table with a Pyramidical Triangle, done on a Sheet of Parchment. The form of an Instrument to command by magical Innovations, Constringations, &c. any Spirit or Spirits of what order soever, to bring in an instant of time any hidden Treasures of what kind soever, now buried and lying his in England, &c. A Book of Invocations and Prayers belonging to the Clavicula Solomonis Regis. The Clavis to the aforesaid Solomons book, with abundance of ruled Tables with Letters, with the magical terms, or denominations of each Table. A brief Introduction explaining the Uses of the magical tables. The Practice of the East Table. The regal Invocation, together with the practice of the West, North and South Tables, and Names of the four Kings governing the 4 Watch Towers set over the 4 coelestial Angles. Book of Invocations, Supplications and Petitions to the Kings and all the dignified Angels, or angelical powers of Light.
I don’t think Britton himself was a magical practitioner, although he certainly had an interest in practical alchemy. This collection, however, is certainly the remainder of a magician’s working kit – or, given the number of slippers, a small magical group. The work comes clearly from the Theurgia Goetia (whence the spirit Pamersiel) and, probably, an epitome of Casaubon’s True and Faithful Relation. Some of the tools – the lamps, the wreathed staff, the cherubim – have no obvious analogue in magical literature. The contents of the texts are easily identifiable. The manuscripts mentioned may well, in time, have found their way to the British Museum: what of the seals, the circles, the slippers or the Table of Practice? Or the curious lamps and glasses? The only trace that remains is in this obscure catalogue.
I’m also certain that this little group of angel magicians left behind the voluminous, and still unedited, spirit diaries now collected in Sloane MSS 3624-8. Much of the furniture matches references in the diaries: the cherubim forming a magical ark of the covenant, with a crystal stone set in the place of God’s footstool; one of the group also seems to have had an interest in complex glass manufacture (this observation is also made by Alan Thorogood.) I understand an edition of these diaries is in preparation. They make fascinating reading for magicians and historians of magic – not least, in some ways, their pragmatism and lack of originality compared to the virtuosic novelty of Dee’s spirit transactions.
(Perhaps the catalogue is not quite the sole survival of this collection. It may well be that it belonged to the ‘Mr Rud’ mentioned in the diaries as a member of the group. The furniture and diaries together may have been the seed for the ‘Dr Rudd’ of Peter Smart’s copious and creative imagination, revived by some editors in recent years. But this remains a speculative, if tantalising, link.)
Clerkenwell seems to have been a hotbed of magical activity in the 17th and 18th centuries. Hans Sloane, whose collection is well-known to magicians because it includes numerous grimoire manuscripts as well as the bulk of the surviving Dee materials, relates an amusing but frustrating story in a 1740 letter to an esteemed French correspondent, the Abbé Jean-Paul Bignon. The subject is putatively the naturalist and occultist John Beaumont, a longstanding friend of Sloane’s whom he also treated medically. He seeks to explain Beaumont’s perception of spirits as a malady of the brain – a kind of wakeful dreaming – for which he has devised novel treatments. But along the way he relates numerous anecdotes about magicians and seers, usually in relation to manuscripts he has acquired. He writes in French:
Souffrés, Monsieur, qu’a cette occasion je vous racconte une chose un peu divertissante, qui arriva ici il y a plusieurs années. Un Pretre de l’Eglise de Rome, un Ministre Presbyterien et un Procureur Banqueroutier, qui avoient peu d’argent et beaucoup de Foi a ces sciences mystiques, s’associerent ensemble et louerent une grande maison a Clerkenwell (un des fauxbourgs de Londres) a cent livres Sterling de rente; afin de decouvrir des trésors cachés par ces sortes de pratiques. Comme la rente n’etoit pas payé à terme, le Proprietaire voulant se saisir d’une partie des Meubles pour se payer, n’y trouva pas son compte. Il trouva a la verité dans une Chambre haute sur une Table, une copie anglois du Livre intitulé Clavicula Salomonis tres bien ecrite, qui contenoit des Prieres devotes à chaque Esprit des differens quartiers du Monde, les conjurant par leurs noms de paroitre et decouvrir les Tresors ou autres choses qu’ils demandoient à scavoir. La Table etoit placée au milieu de la Chambre, dont le plancher etoit couvert de Satin blanc, sur lequels on avoit tracé plusiers Cercles concentriques: et entre ces Cercles etoient les Noms de Dieu en plusiers langues (orientales sur tout) pour empecher que les Esprits n’approchassent pas trop, et ne nuisissent pas au Magicien, qui etoit assis au centre ou milieu, portant une paire de Pantoufles consacrés et armés de Croix. Mais enfin tous les meubles ne furent evalués qu’a sept Livres Sterling: don’t j’ay payé une partie pour les Manuscrits &c. Cette relation m’a eté faite par celui qui acheta les meubles.
(Let me Sir, at this point, tell you about something rather entertaining that happened here some years ago. A Catholic priest, a Presbyterian minister and a bankrupt prosecutor, who had little money and much faith in these mystic sciences, got together and rented a large house in Clerkenwell (one of the suburbs of London) for one hundred pounds sterling, intending to find hidden treasures using these kinds of practices. As the rent was not paid on time, the owner wanted to seize part of the furniture to pay himself, but did not find enough there to cover his account. He found, in fact, in an upper room, on a table, a very well-written English copy of a book entitled Clavicula Salomonis, containing prayers devoted to each spirit from the different quarters of the world, conjuring them by their names to appear and reveal the treasures or other things that they wanted to know. The table was placed in the centre of the room, the floor of which was covered in white satin, on which were traced multiple concentric circles, and between these circles the names of God were written in several languages (oriental ones above all) to prevent the spirits coming too close and harming the magician, who was sat at the centre or in the middle, wearing a pair of slippers that were blessed and bore a cross. But in the end, all of the furniture was only valued at seven pounds sterling, part of which I paid for the manuscripts &c. I was told this story by the person who bought the furniture.)
(French text: BNF, Fonds Français 22229, fol. 260 r-v. Sloane’s own copy survives as Sloane MS 4069 fol. 94 ff.)
There are some lovely details in this story: not least that it starts in a classic joke-like structure (a priest, a minister, and a bankrupt lawyer walk into a magic circle…), or that the roguish magicians skipped out on their rent. Or the baffling frequency of holy slippers. But most notable – and frustrating – is Sloane’s insistence on buying only the manuscripts, having little interest in the effects and practical tools. It’s a brazen separation of text from material context that would make a modern archivist scream. The manuscript probably survives as Sloane MS 2731, a rather competently put together version of the Lemegeton with nicely chunky sigils and a few other odds and ends thrown in. Joe Peterson used it as one of the comparator sources for his edition. But the effects – the satin floorcloth, the holy slippers – are vanished into dust.
The Three Kings – or the Three Magi – are famously patrons of magicians. When I spend time in Clerkenwell, therefore, I like to raise a glass to those three roguish rent-skipping Solomonic Magi in the pub of the same name, and leave a little offering to the Three Kings in the churchyard nearby. You never know, in a place like Clerkenwell, home of angel magicians and Templars, what kind of person you might meet across the bar.