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169:2 Psalm viii. and Psalm lxxi. in the Vulgate, together with the Canticle of Simeon.
§ 7. Concerning the Victim of the Art
It is usually supposed that the offering of a bloody sacrifice is an essential condition of
success in Black Magic and that the embrutement of the operator is the chief purpose of
the ordination. It is true that such an offering is in most cases enjoined, but its object is
simple and commonplace rather than diabolical or recondite, and the practice itself is
based on the so-called White Magic of the Key of Solomon. It offers
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another instance that if this text be the head and fount of the Art, it is also the root of its
diabolism. The Art--I should explain--has its victim, not because blood is required in the
one case more than the other, but because it was customary for pacts and pentacles to be
written on parchment or vellum, and, in view of that doctrine of personal consecration
already explained, the Black Magician had, as far as possible, to dispense with outside
labour, to be his own whitesmith, his own penmaker, and hence also his own tanner.
Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest was the maxim of Paracelsus, and it was carried
further in Goëtia than mere intellectual independence. Make yourself what you want; do
not trust it to others; it will not only possess more of your personal virtue, but you will be
sure of the article--such might be the commentary of the Grimoires upon the aphorism of
the sage of Hohenheim, and there is the more reason in the counsel because even the
accessible substances required by the operator had usually some awkward conditions
attached to them, which might remain unfulfilled unless he himself was actively present
in their preparation. A particular case in point is the parchment used in the Art. The
magician was required to slay a lamb or kid with his own hands, not because there was
any symbolical importance attached to the act of destruction--the Grimoires make no
such ascription--not because the blood was used-for its use is seldom prescribed--but to
insure that the animal was one from which virgin parchment or virgin vellum could be
prepared.
That is called virgin, says the Book of True Black Magic, which is made from animals
that have never engendered, males above all, 1--from which definition it is obvious that
recourse
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to the professional tanner might jeopardise the entire injunction. But seeing that every
operation undertaken in the Art assumed a religious aspect, the slaughter of the animal
became a sacrifice 1 and had its accompanying ceremonies, prayers and invocations, each
ritual possessing its own variants.
The preparation of the virgin parchment is given as follows in the Grimorium Verum: 2--
CONCERNING THE VICTIM OF THE ART 3