Going through my library, I dug these out and decided to write about them. A Black Book is manual, novel, treatise or written account that explores the dark, seedy underbelly of a topic or deals with a topic that is of itself dark and seedy or generally shunned by the mainstream. The attitude of the author or authors is not critical but either sympathetic or ambivalent towards the subject matter. This is a compendium of Black Books of all types. Some of them you have at least heard of and may even have read or browsed, most you probably never knew existed.
The Book of Black Magic and Ceremonial Magic by Arthur Edward Waite
Waite, a Christian mystic, was a member of the Victorian English secret society called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The membership included other noted occultists as Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Samuel Liddell MacGregor-Mathers, Moina Mathers, Constance Wilde (wife of Oscar), William Butler Yeats, Israel Regardie and others. Waite also made perhaps the most popular tarot card deck—the Waite-Rider pack. This book by Waite is an invaluable source of the type of magic that flourished in Europe from the 18th century that were originally disseminated in pamphlets that would almost certainly be permanently lost to us today. Waite also criticizes various translations and providing what he feels are more accurate readings and this gives us a bit more latitude in understanding the material.
Books of true Black Magic, Hollywood notwithstanding, are often brutish. Waite mentions a magical treatise called
The Method of Honorius which contains a sacrifice that goes thus:
“After sunrise, a black cock must be killed, the first feather of its left wing being plucked and preserved for use at the required time. The eyes must be torn out, and also the tongue and heart; these must be dried in the sun and afterwards reduced to powder.”
And if you think that’s bad, to become invisible, Honorius instructs the magicians thus:
“Begin this operation on a Wednesday before the sun rises, being furnished with seven black beans. Take next the head of a dead man; place one of the beans in his mouth, two in his eyes and two in his ears. Then make upon his head the character of the figure which here follows [
Waite does not reproduce it as it has been deleted from all available source material]. This done, inter the head with the face towards heaven, and every day before sunrise, for the space of nine days, water it with excellent brandy. On the eighth day you will find the cited spirit, who will say unto you:
What doest thou? You shall reply:
I am watering my plant. He will then say:
Give me that bottle; I will water it myself. You will answer by refusing, and he will again ask you, but you will persist in declining, until he stretch forth his hand and shew you the same figure which you have traced upon the head suspended from the tips of his fingers. In this case you may be assured that it is really the spirit of the head, because another might take you unawares, which would bring you evil, and further, your operation would be unfruitful. When you have given him your phial, he will water the head and depart. On the morrow, which is the ninth day, you shall return and find your beans ripe. Take them, place one in your mouth, and then look at yourself in a glass [mirror]. If you cannot see yourself, it is good.”
Honorius does not say where or how to procure the head of a corpse. Why so brutal? Magicians of the Middle Ages, as Waite points out, were brutish people shunned by the rest of society. They lived on the fringes of society. They practiced as they wished, had no regard for the law or morals. Waite does not point out, however, that most of these magicians were born as Jews. Indeed, qabala was a fixture in medieval magic and is still practiced to this day (Madonna is a confirmed qabalist). I have been informed by Jewish qabalists that the type practiced in Christendom is not true qabala which requires many years of intense study of the Hebrew language and alphabet under a master qabalist of the type that can only be found in Jewish schools. Christian qabalists, however, have also informed me that this is not true and the medieval brand of qabala practiced in Europe is the true qabala. Be that as it may.
We should point out, however, that kings and aristocrats were often fascinated by occultism and were avid practitioners themselves. Some were placed under the instruction of these magicians and believed wholeheartedly in black and white magic. Many privately rejected the Christian god and embraced the Infernal One. The French king, Henry III (who reigned from 1574-1589), at least made a show of practicing devil-worship and kept an altar which had an alleged piece of the true cross which Henry had had mounted in gold. This was, in turn, laid in a crucifix upon which two devils wrought in silver are rubbing their posteriors. Small wonder then that most of the Black Magic information in Waite’s book came from French pamphlets.
One of the most famous secret occult societies was England’s so-called Hellfire Club. They were really known as the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe and contained some of the most powerful men in England. St. Francis was Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, who founded the club. John Montagu, the fourth the Earl of Sandwich and Secretary of the Navy, was also a member and a rather depraved one at that. Benjamin Franklin also joined the club when he visited England at Dashwood’s behest. The club had its own abbey where they gathered to practice ritual sex on various prostitutes. They also had an altar where they would gather to intone Satan to appear before them (it’s not known if Franklin participated in these although the other members would certainly have wanted to see him prove his prowess and he did have illegitimate children and so was not above a bit of rakishness). They had a black scripture although no one is sure what is was but the available information indicates it to be the
Key of Solomon (also known, according to Waite, under the title
True Black Magic).
Dashwood obtained his Black Magic books from a bookseller of low repute named Edmund Curll who ran a bookshop in Covent Gardens in London. Curll specialized in pornography for certain clients (aristocrats and nobility) and Black Magic books were viewed as pornography back then which would obviously hold a fascination for the Friars.
Much of the material in Waite’s book would have been the type of thing that the Friars would have encountered since they lived at the same period. How much of it they incorporated is anyone’s guess. Waite’s book, although more a commentary, contains enough entire manuscripts of various Black Grimoires, many of them too rare to be found anywhere else, that it itself qualifies as a Black Book.
Principia Discordia: The Magnum Opiate of Malaclypse the Younger
For those who have read the
Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson,
Principia Discordia should at least ring some bells. Malaclypse the Younger is Greg Hill who, along with Kerry W. Thornley (Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst), founded the Discordian order and wrote much its material. The First Edition of
Principia Discordia appeared in New Orleans in 1964. Hill wrote it and gave it to Lane Caplinger who worked in the office of the District Attorney who just happened to be none other than Jim Garrison (the person played by Kevin Costner in the
JFK movie). Caplinger typed up the manuscript and ran off copies on the mimeograph machine in Garrison’s office (all without his knowledge). Working from this, Hill added and expanded to the Holy Writ of Discordianism over the next five years. Thornley was himself questioned due to some tenuous ties to Oswald.
In short, Discordianism worships Eris the goddess of chaos and discord. While clearly a gag religion expressed with much humor, as with most gag religions, the founders often find themselves wondering just how much of gag it really is (i.e. a joke disguised as religion or religion disguised as a joke). Oftimes, the pithy and witty comments do seem to have a kind of unintended wisdom to them:
“But before I was a Discordian, when I entered my room only to be reminded by its disarray that it was a mess, I felt a sense of defeat. These days when that happens I just say ‘Hail Eris!’ – our customary salute to any embodiment of chaos – and then I cheerfully carry on, secure in the knowledge that the constellations look no better.”
“You must discipline yourself under a certified Slackmaster until you are capable of drinking beer and watching television with total concentration.”
“Elayne Wechsler was just some broad with a funny bone until she read the Principia and asked the question that led to my great definition of theology. ‘Why,’ she wanted to know, ‘is the Discordian Society, which worships a female divinity, so male dominated?’ Recalling that more women than men are devout about Christianity with its male God and His male Son, I decided that people like religions that blame reality on the opposite sex. So let that be a lesson to us males. Behind every great idea there is a broad with a funny bone.”
The Discordian symbol resembles a tai-chi containing a pentagon and an apple with Callisti written on it in Greek. It is called the Sacred Chao a.k.a. the Hodge-Podge:
Malaclypse the Younger explains it thus:
The Sacred Chao is not the Yin-Yang of the Taoists. It is the Hodge-Podge of the Erisians. And, instead of a Podge spot on the Hodge side, it has a pentagon which symbolizes the Aneristic Principle, and instead of a Hodge spot on the Podge side, it depicts the Golden Apple of Discordia to symbolize the Eristic Principle. The Sacred Chao symbolizes absolutely everything anyone need ever know about absolutely anything, and more! It even symbolizes everything not worth knowing, depicted by the empty space surrounding the Hodge-Podge.
The Greek legend holds that a banquet was thrown by the gods but Eris was not invited. In retaliation, she tossed a golden apple to the banqueters. On it was written “Callisti” or “For the fairest.” Hera, Athena and Aphrodite all began to bicker that the apple was obviously meant for herself. It was decided that the prince of Troy, a fellow named Paris, would award to the fairest one. He gave it to Aphrodite and thus began a chain of tragic events that led up to the breakout of the Trojan War. The golden apple is known as “The Apple of Dischord.” The pentagon within the Hodge-Podge has to do with the Law of Fives which Robert Anton Wilson writes about at great length. Basically, the more one looks for the way five fits into things, the more one finds. For this reason, the number 23 is holy to Discordians (2+3=5). The death of Harlem gangster, Dutch Schultz, was so firmly hitched to the 23 that
Illuminatus! refers to him as “a cluster of synchronicity.”
Discordianism has made a lot of inroads into American culture and was even featured on
The Colbert Report (and THAT is making it in America, folks!).
Am I correct to label
Principia Discordia a Black Book? I think so. The Discordians would probably be upset with me if I didn’t.
The Picatrix: Liber Atratus Edition translated by John Michael Greer and Christopher Warnock (2010-11, Adocentyn Press)
Originally four books of astrological magic from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance assembled into one volume. Its origins are murky but legend has it that it was originally written in North Africa in the 9th century and titled
Ghayat al-Hakim (The Goal of the Sage) and attributed to the Sufi scholar al-Majriti although the attribution is likely spurious.
Ever since the Moorish invasion in the 8th century, there has been an avenue open between Spain and North Africa and so the book made its way to Spain where it was translated into both Spanish and Latin by someone in the court of the Castilian king, Alfonso the Wise in 1256 where it received the title of
Picatrix. According to the Latin text,
Picatrix was the name of the author of the book.
As with all Black Magic treatises of that day, you have to wonder if anybody actually performed these rituals to see if they worked or how they came up with the ingredients that they did. “The Operation of Saturn,” for example, calls for sacrificing a cow or calf and “suffumigating” it with a mixture of hemlock, myrrh, St. John’s Wort and the brain of a black cat.
To affect the obedience of men (as per a military leader, for example) “…take equal parts lion brains, leopard fat, and wolf blood. Liquefy the fat, and mix it with the brains; then pour the blood into it, and it will take on a spotted color.” Don’t touch it, get it on your clothing or breath it because it is a deadly poison, says the instruction.
For acquiring the love of a woman, there a couple of nifty formulas given. One requires a half-ounce each gazelle marrow and beef fat. Melt them together then add a half-ounce each of camphor and rabbit brain. Another formula requires two ounces each of rabbit rennet (that’s the stomach lining) and wolf brains and three grains of melted beef fat. Then add in the blood of the person for whom you are doing the working. Yet another formula requires two ounces each of wolf vulva and rabbit penis, one ounce the eyes of white mice and two ounces of the fat of a white dog. Now if that doesn’t win a woman’s love, what will?
But what if you would rather make war and not love? Well, then, a half-ounce each of black cat bile and the brains of a pig, two ounces of the fat of a black dog and two grains of sweet myrrh should do the trick. “When this confection is eaten it attracts spirits of enmity and ill will.” I don’t doubt that but I do doubt that this concoction qualifies as a “confection.”
If that formula didn’t work as planned, try three grains of black dog bile, two ounces each of pig’s brains, black cat bile, pig grease, sulfur, sweet myrrh, black cat’s eyes and oil of caubac. Then add two grains of copper, four ounces of the brains of a black dog, and one ounce of hair from its tail.
And if you really want to cause some enmities, powder up four ounces of black cat brains and mix with the same amount of powdered human feces. “Give this food to whomever you wish, and he will hate.” No kiddin’.
Some of the folk cures surpass belief:
“Whoever has a deadly illness in his thighs, let him wash his thighs in water of feces that has been distilled three times, and put powdered, calcinated feces on it, and he will be quickly healed.” You would only need to threaten to put that on me and I will be instantly healed.
“Take your sweat in a very clean and beautiful basin, and then put it in a glass vessel. Put into it scrapings from the soles of your feet, and a little of your feces dried in the Sun, and one root of the herb that is called
fu in Arabic, and in Latin valerian. Give this in a drink to whomever you wish, and he will delight in you. I, Geber, have tested this, and it is entirely true. Women, however, add water with which they have washed their thighs, while keeping their buttocks turned toward the east.” Yeah, if they were turned toward the west then I’d really be grossed out.
And don’t make me print all the formulas that require toad’s testicles! And since the author identifies himself as Geber then I suppose we know who actually wrote
The Picatrix.