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87:2 This manifestation seems to have been seated on a throne, with a raven in his breast
and a globe under his feet.
87:3 Other forms were a woman with the head of a bird and the feet of an eagle, who held
a dart in her hand; also a little maid in long white garments, with a comb in her left hand
and flowers in her right.
88:1 There is another riding on a peacock, with eagle's feet and crested head.
§ 6. The Heptameron
The Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa was much too informal, and left too much to the
discretion of the operator, to be satisfactory for a science so exact as that of Ceremonial
Magic. A form of procedure which bequeathed nothing to the imagination and asked no
other skill than the patient exactitude of the rule of thumb was necessary to the weakness
of the ordinary sorcerer. The Heptameron, or Magical Elements ascribed to Peter de
Abano is an attempt to supply the want and to offer to the neophyte a complete wizard's
cabinet. Cornelius Agrippa, says the introduction, which might, ex hypothesi, be that of a
later hand, seems to have written for the learned, for the well-experienced in this art; he
does not treat specially of the ceremonies, but mentions them in a general way. Those
who have not "tasted magical superstitions" may here find them ready to their hand. "In
brief, in this book are kept the principles of magical conveyances." It may be conceded at
once that the undertaking is scrupulously fulfilled; what the operator must do and how he
should perform it, so as to "draw spirits into discourse," are matters set forth so plainly
that the wayfaring man need not err therein. Assuming the sacerdotal office of the
operator, or a priest for an accomplice, it is all so simple that failure could not well be
ascribed to a blunder on his part.
It would be invidious to suppose that the Heptameron is more authentic as regards its
attribution than the work to which it is professedly a sequel; its real authorship is
involved in much the same kind of obscurity as that of pseudo-Agrippa. There are several
grave reasons why the pupil of Trithemius should not have written the spurious Fourth
Book, but Peter of Abano is not an unlikely personage to connect with the Magical
p. 90
Elements, if it were not for a trifling chronological disparity of about three hundred years.
It is true that Agrippa professedly wrote upon Magic, and the other upon Astrology and
Geomancy, unless his imputed works in these departments of occult science are also
forgeries; but the Heptameron was never heard of for the space which I have mentioned
after the death of its reputed author, which occurred in 1316, and it is too obviously later
in its tone, too obviously a sequel 1 to a much more recent work, for it to have been
possibly a memorial of the fourteenth century.
Peter of Abano, a town in the vicinity of Padua, was born in 1250 and was a learned
physician of his period, who attempted to conciliate the different medical systems and is
supposed to have been the first European who quoted Averroes. He established himself at