the book of ceremonial magic contents - Yankeeclassic.com

empowered thee, whereunto I now adjure thee to appear it; power and presence, that I
may sing with His Holy Angels O MAPPA LAMAN, HALLELUJAH. AMEN.
p. 77
When he appears, says the Ritual, give him a kind entertainment; ask what is lawful,
possible and becoming to his office; and you shall obtain it. If, however, he should fail to
appear, the four candles must be marked with the gold or silver seal, which apparently
will ensure obedience.
There are, however, certain planetary considerations connected with this process, on
which its success depends. The two first Angels of the First Altitude can only be called
on the first and second Sunday in March; the third and fourth on the Sundays in April; the
fifth after the sun has entered Gemini in May. And so of the rest in succession.
§ 5. The Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa
It is a matter now almost of general knowledge that a Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy
is attributed to Cornelius Agrippa, and that it is rejected as spurious. The authenticity of
the famous three books has never been questioned and is indeed beyond challenge; the
fourth is perhaps less interesting from the nature of its contents than from this question of
its authorship. It is, at the same time, a much more skilful performance than the common
run of magical impostures; it connects with and rises out of the genuine work in a very
curious manner; and, having regard to the special magical complexion of the latter, there
might seem no inherent reason why it should not have been the production of Agrippa.
The difficulties concerning it may be reduced to three heads. One is of time; it appeared
after the death of the restless speculating philosopher of Nettersheim. Now, a posthumous
publication is not necessarily open to suspicion unless it is a treatise on Magic, but a
treatise on Magic of the period concerned, not appearing in the lifetime of its writer, is
open to the gravest suspicion, because of the scandalous company to which it belongs.
The
second difficulty is internal, and I do not think that it can be overridden. It is to a
considerable extent a rechauffé of various portions of the three undisputed books, and,
even in the days of Agrippa, it is not likely that any author would have so liberally
reproduced himself. The third difficulty is that it was rejected as a forgery by Wierus, the
pupil of Agrippa, who must have had a good opportunity of knowing; its rejection by
later writers simply follows the lead of Wierus, and is therefore of no moment. The
strength of the case against it lies mainly in the third difficulty, but other objections are
possible. Though not the work of Agrippa, it was evidently produced in immediate
proximity to his period.
The book itself, which is quite informally written, falls into several divisions. There is,
firstly, an elaborate treatise on the method of extracting the names of the good and evil
spirits referred to the seven planets. This is a further development of a subject treated at
some length in the third book of Occult Philosophy. The method is of no importance to
our inquiry, but those who have sought to unravel it confess that they have been baffled. I