ceremonial magick

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The faith and devotion of the practitioner are constantly referenced throughout the text. In the introduction it is said the book can only be given to a man “both Godly and faithful, whose Godly behavior had been tried for the space of a whole year.” He is to be not just a devout person, but observed and tested for a year to prove himself worthy. When actually performing the rituals the practitioner is to be clean, to fast, and pray with devotion. That he must be “very penitent and truly confessed of all his sins.” Very similar requests appear throughout the text. Anyone undertaking this practice must attend Mass and take communion daily for a period of at least a month, which indicates the level of faith and devotion the practitioner must have. Coming at it from another angle it is warned that undertaking parts of the ritual “for an evil purpose” would lead to “death unto him.” It makes a case for the notion that the practitioner truly must be, not just a Christian, but a devout and Godly practitioner, undertaking the rituals in the text for only the highest ideals.
The Christian nature of the text and practitioner is repeatedly highlighted by the idea of divine authority. From the introduction it is said that “it is not possible that a wicked and unclean man should work truely [sic] in this art, for men are not bound to spirits, but the spirits are constrained against their wills to answer men that are cleansed or clean, and to fulfill their requests.” This is internal justification through the practitioner’s own holiness, it is saying that for this to work the practitioner must be cleansed or holy, and that the art of this book cannot work for those who are not holy. It is not just a personal devotion that enables the practitioner to commune with angels and spirits; it is asserted that such an ability is through the grace of YHWH. The ritual prayers say that they are completed “through God’s help” or “through … [God’s] mediation” . These rituals are framed that it is through the power or permission of YHWH that they have any effect. Contrasted with the earlier notion that the text cannot successfully be used by pagans or Jews it further supports the idea that the text is meant to be used by a Christian, and is dependent on their Christian faith and devotion.
When considering the author and audience of Liber Iuratus Honorii it becomes clear that the most likely candidate for both is a member of the clergy. The practitioner is required to be very devout and pious, and the author is highly skilled in Latin, knowledgeable in Greek, Hebrew, very familiar with Church prayers, rituals, scriptures, and Christian writings. On its own this suggests a priest or another member of the church. Such education would be largely the domain of the clerics, the scribes, and the nobility, limiting potential authors and audiences. The depth and breadth of knowledge, along with the literacy and devotional requirements leave very few potential authors or readers, but a priest would be on the top of that list.
This isn’t as unlikely as it initially seems. Despite being linguistically inaccurate the practice of summoning spirits was regarded as necromancy, regardless of the purpose of the summoning, or the nature of the spirit. To repeat a question and answer of Richard Kieckhefer “Who were the necromancers? Both in legend and before the law it was clerics above all others who stood accused of necromancy.” He goes onto explain that “cleric” is a hard word to define, for it can include anyone who has any level of ordination which includes doorkeeper and acolyte. The training was not through a seminary, but more of an apprentice relationship with another priest. Sometimes their ordination was not about a holy calling, but a way of getting an education, and one of the lower orders of ordination was that of exorcist “and in the ordination ceremony he would receive a book of exorcisms as a symbol of his theoretical function.” They were given the book as a “symbol” of office; it wasn’t something they were trained in, but more something if needed they would turn to the text for. This is another peculiarity, as one might assume these rituals would require training, but the Liber Iuratus Honorii was also passed on at the time of the master’s death , meaning the practitioner also received no training in the use of the text. Kieckhefer suggests there was a “clerical underworld” which is not really defined in terms of structure (if any) or purpose (if any), but that to some extent there was a collection of priests who studied and practiced this type of conjuration. Considering the amount of knowledge displayed all throughout the formation of Liber Iuratus Honorii, and the proposed existence of the clerical underworld it is reasonable to assume that the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii was a priest.
Concluding Thoughts
The Christian identification of Liber Iuratus Honorii is evidence of a complex process of religious thought and religious exchange. Initial readings reveal seemingly contradicting ideas: summoning angels to stir up war, devotional prayers and confession to Jesus, condemning the pope as a puppet of demons. Yet each of these contradictions are a thread in a complex textual and ideological tapestry, evidence of Jewish Qabalah and Islamic conjurations, intensely devotional Christian worship, and anti-Church sentiments. Individually these threads conflict and confuse, but if the reader slows down and reads the text as a whole from a distance, than the picture begins to become clear. Liber Iuratus Honorii becomes hard to conceptualize as anything but a thoroughly Christian text, written in such a way that makes it inaccessible to the laity, but perfect for a priestly audience. Clerical in origin and Christian in nature, Liber Iuratus Honorii shows the detailed and complex currents of medieval Christianity through an unusual but devout text.
Works Cited (In order of reference)
Joseph H. Peterson trans. Liber Juratus Honorii, or the Sworn Book of Honorius. Esoteric Archives. http://www.esotericarchives.com/juratus/juratus.htm (accessed February 25, 2013)
Robert Mathiesen. “A Thirteenth-Century Ritual to Attain the Beatific Vision from the Sworn Book of Honorius of Thebes.” in Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic. ed. Claire Fanger. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. 143-162.)
Richard Kieckhefer. “The Devil’s Contemplatives: The Liber Iuratus, the Liber Visionum and Christian Appropriation of Jewish Occultism.” in Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic. ed. Claire Fanger. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. 250-265.)
Katelyn Mesler. “The Liber Iuratus Honorii and the Christian Reception of Angel Magic.” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. ed. Clair Fanger. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. 113-150.)
Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (New York: Oxford Press, 2009)
Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. James Freake, ed. Donald Tyson (Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications)
Clair Fanger. “Covenant and the Divine Name: Revisiting the Liber Iuratus and John of Morigny’s Liber Florum.” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. ed. Clair Fanger. (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. 192-216.),
Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
Philip T. Weller, trans., The Roman Ritual (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1964)

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To reiterate and expand an earlier point, a variety of Christian texts are incorporated into or referenced by Liber Iuratus Honorii. A partial list drawn from Mesler’s work on the text includes: “passages from scripture, the baptismal rite, the preface for Easter, the Ave Maria, the Salve Regina, the Apostle’s Creed, the Pater Noster, the Sanctus, and the Creed of Athanasius” as well as Jerome’s letters and Pseudo-Augustine. It is obvious that Honorius is very well read in matters of Christianity, and educated in general. Mathiesen attests “the Sworn Book is clearly not a translation from Arabic, Hebrew or Greek, but an original composition in Latin by a person who was fully conversant with the liturgy and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church” and more than that “it is clear that the author had some knowledge of the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church.” We are dealing with an author who knows Latin, Catholic and Greek Orthodox ritual, Greek, and at least some Hebrew. His knowledge is not just appropriated; it permeates the text in overt uses of prayers, to subtle references and even hidden messages. When the pope and his cardinals decided that books like Liber Iuratus Honorii had to be eliminated, Honorius said that a council of 811 “masters” came together to decide what should be done to preserve the tradition. The idea that there were 811 masters using texts like this seems odd, as well as the specificity of the number, but 811 is the numerological value of IAO (ΙΑΩ), a Greek name for God, the equivalent of the Hebrew YHWH. This, Mathiesen suggests, is a mirroring to the Council of Nicaea having 318 members, as that is the same numerological value as “the name of Jesus and his Cross.” The author is trying to validate the nature of the book as coming from God himself by having as many masters as the value of IAO. Knowing the Greek numerical value of a name though is not a matter of simple information or appropriation, but seems to show more understanding and a broader knowledge base as well as an ability and desire to integrate this knowledge into the text.
Having looked at the knowledge of the author, the character of the practitioner should be examined. The text itself recognizes that there are “three kinds of men that work this art: Jews, Christians, and pagans.” Honorius asserts that only Christians can use the rituals of this book properly. The pagans do not “constrain or bind” the spirits, and the spirits pretend to help the pagans but are in actuality deceiving them farther away from Christianity. The Jewish people are in the same predicament. The spirits will not obey them for they are not Christian, for they are not “signed with the sign of God…the cross” which is another way of saying they are not baptized . Even worse they are accused of not using the text for Divine vision, and are barred from entering Heaven for not recognizing Jesus. It seems unusual to condemn Jewish people more heavily than pagans, but perhaps the author is responding to the atmosphere of the time, or perhaps Honorius is trying to hide his connection with Judaism and Jewish sources evidenced earlier in the paper. It is made clear that only a devout Christian can make the rituals in the text work properly. Pagans and Jews can use it, but unsuccessfully. While the pagan usage of the rituals is left open, Jews are accused of using it not for Divine vision, but rather the other goals listed .
It is claimed that Christians would “only [work] truely [sic] to come to the vision of the Deity.” For the Christian the only purpose of the text is this “vision of the Deity” and all the other goals mentioned are to be taken as superfluous, though their inclusion is likely evidence of the attitudes and actions drawn from Honorius’s source text.

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Christian Elements, the Depth of Knowledge, and Authorship and Audience
Though the Christian identity of the text is well supported at this point, the Christian elements should be examined to support this idea, and to further the argument that the author and audience of the text was not just Christian, but of the priestly orders, part of what Kieckhefer terms the “clerical underworld.”
In contrast to the adoption of Hebrew god names, the divinity in Liber Iuratus Honorii is referred to as the “Alpha and Omega,” “the father, son, and holy ghost,” and “the destroyer of death.” The references to the trinity and the Alpha and Omega mentioned in the Revelation of Saint John are both common naming conventions in Christianity, but the destroyer of death is a bit more obscure and is possibly a reference to 1 Corinthians that states “the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” This part of the naming convention could possibly show the “sincerity” of the Christian nature of the text, as “destroyer of death” is a more obscure reference and shows a greater familiarity with the Bible than referring YHWH as the Alpha and Omega. Throughout the text common names and titles from Christianity are used repeatedly to refer to YHWH as well as the more uncommon names.
Another element of uncommon knowledge shows up in the ritual structures explained in the text. Part of the work on summoning the angels involves the creation of a complex seal. The creation of the seal includes a set of prayers to say over some blood which is used as ink in the process. The first prayer is the same as “The Blessing of Salt” used by Catholic priests to exorcise salt before putting it in holy water , only the word salt is replaced by blood. The prayer is currently contained in the Rituale Romanum –the ritual handbook of a Catholic priest– which was only standardized in the 17th century. (While predecessor texts have existed since the 15th century they tended to be more regional and temporary. ) After the compilation of the Rituale Romanum anyone who could read Latin and obtain a copy of the text could find “The Blessing of Salt.” Though the text currently sits at more than 700 pages it would be a lot to go through if they were not aware of what they were looking for. Liber Iuratus Honorii was written in the 13th or 14th century though, before these texts existed, at that time such prayers and rituals would have been part of the training of a priest, possibly part of an oral tradition. So the question is how would the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii know the prayer? It is possible they learned it from the local priest, or that it was something the laity might know, but it also opens up the possibly that the text was written by a priest, if not for a priest. Continuing this thread the format of the ritual for conjuration even has some loose similarities to the ritual of exorcism. In both cases the practitioner/exorcist is to attend confession and mass , then they move into prayers of adoration and beseeching divine aid in their task , which finally moves to include the calling of the spirits and commanding their obedience. One of the lower orders of the priestly hierarchy at that time was the exorcist, so the details and structures of the ritual of exorcism would be available to many lower priests . The blood used to consecrate the seal is the prayer said over salt for holy water, while the prayer used to consecrate the magic circle for the ritual is the same used by the priest to consecrate the host in communion. The ritual preparation includes finding a “wary and a faithful priest” who will perform mass and prayers for the practitioner all the while inserting prayers from Liber Iuratus Honorii into the mass service. While this could mean the practitioner himself, it could also be another priest who has the same interest. This builds the case that the author was a member of the clergy, or somehow familiar with their ritual structure and prayers. The requirement of another priest suggests that the author may not be alone in his interests.

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Another place this circumvention of Church authority occurs is in the promise of releasing three souls from purgatory. Again this was part of the classic authority of the Church; souls in purgatory could be eventually released (or released sooner) through the performances of masses in their name. In the final prayer of the first section of the text, just before the vision of the divine is granted there is a request to “breakest the brazen gates and deliveredst thy friends out of the dark places of hell.” Now here the text says hell, but before, and after this section it says purgatory. Regardless, freeing souls from hell or purgatory is quite a claim for an individual to make. Even the priests of the Church could not just release a soul from purgatory. It took continued prayers and rituals to gain that release, but Honorius claims this ritual can offer just such a release immediately.
Twice there is this circumvention of the Church authority, or the Church monopoly, through the personal forgiveness of sins and the release of souls in purgatory. Earlier in the ritual it is required for the practitioner to attend mass and confession, but by the end through prayer, devotion, and ritual they have become an authority of forgiveness unto themselves. Again I feel this should be framed not as a challenge to the Christian nature of the text, but more of a personal liberation and challenge to the structure and monopoly of the Church in such regards. The domain of forgiveness was that of the priests, so this text could be seen as a threat to that domain, or possibly an extension of the priestly authority and power which connects to the idea addressed later that the author was a priest himself.
The text can be conclusively identified as Christian based on the contents. The oaths that prevent the text from being wide spread, coupled with the danger of the text being discovered, suggest that the text’s contents are genuine as there is no need to hide or disguise a text that no one will read. There are also the elements that are contrary and inflammatory to the Church which would have been excluded in a non-Christian text in disguise. Since a non Christian text hiding in Christian imagery and language would strive to be palatable to the Christian masses as a safety precaution, it can be concluded from the statements challenging the Church’s authority and the threat and oaths that Liber Iuratus Honorii was written as a genuinely Christian text.

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Uncovering Christianity through the Internal Logic of Liber Iuratus Honorii
Part of the challenge in understanding the Christian nature of Liber Iuratus Honorii is knowing what to take at face value and what may be a blind, something to throw an unwanted reader off track, such as hiding a non-Christian text in Christian imagery. To do this we must consider the text as falling into one of two major possibilities: either it is a highly unorthodox Christian text, or it is a non Christian text that uses Christian elements as a disguise to protect the owner in case someone managed to read the text. Remembering the church’s attitude toward magic, and the supposed judgement of the pope, it makes sense that a non-Christian magical text would pretend to be Christian in an attempt to protect the owner. Consider the name and nature of the text. It is called Iuratus or Sworn, because the book was to be held and received under an oath. According to the introduction, it is included in the oath that the text would only be passed on when the previous owner is dying, to a man who has been tested for a year and found holy. No copies can be made save for those passed on at the deathbed, the owner should die rather than betray the person who gave him the text, and if no worthy man is found, the text is to buried either by the owner while still alive or with him at the time of death. Considering the pope’s condemnation and “judging [practitioners] to death” it seems that between the oaths and the fear of execution anyone who owned a copy of Liber Iuratus Honorii regardless of its religious origin would be unlikely to share the text.
If this is assumed to be the case, then the inclusion of very specific Christian prayers —from priestly prayers like the Blessing of the Salt, to prayers more likely to be known to the laity like the Hail Mary, the Actiones nostras, the Athanasian Creed, and many others— would seem to be a sincere inclusion. If this was a non-Christian text, under the same oaths and restrictions there would still be the same threat of execution and thus need for secrecy, therefore there would be no need to reframe it in Christian contexts. If Liber Iuratus Honorii was really passed on at death, and under the oaths and threats, then it is not unreasonable to assume that the Christian elements are not there as a disguise, but are part of the system. If no one would ever read the text, save whom the owner approved of and passed the text to at death, then there is no need to disguise the text in Christian theology and language for protection. Under such conditions the Christian nature of Liber Iuratus Honorii would be genuine.
Continuing to look at the internal logic of the text, we must look at the framing narrative, which explains the supposed reasoning for the book being written down and oath bound. The text says the pope and his cardinals , having decided this art is of the Devil, must “pluck up and utterly to destroy this deadly root, and all the followers of this art.” The text has to be hidden and protected because the pope and the Church has decided it is evil. While this is not shocking nor inflammatory the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii continues to claim that “wicked spirits were gathered together, intending to send devils into the hearts of men… sowing hypocrise [sic] and envy, and rooting bishops and prelates in pride, even the pope himself and his cardinals” and this is what led them on this quest against books of magic and spirit conjuration. It was not because the texts were unholy, but because the pope and his cardinals have been coerced by demons, or “wicked spirits,” to this end. Returning to the idea that Christian prayers and symbolism were added to protect the owner if the book was ever accidentally discovered, as a palatable disguise, then the first paragraph would not accuse the pope of being under a demon’s influence and remove that palatable disguise. This again shows the sincerity of the Christian elements. If the text is oath bound and no one will read it there is no need to hide it in Christian terms, and if the Christian terms were a disguise they wouldn’t attack the pope, so it suggests that the text really was Christian.
There are other aspects of the text which support this reading of its internal logic. For instance, divine vision is the goal of the first book, yet several other effects happen in the course of the ritual, either as steps along the way or “side-effects” and one of them is the “forgiveness of sins.” One of the prayers used in the working itself says “this prayer aforesaid … doth obtain remission of sins” and later prayers continue to request and attest that “inward sins may be washed away.” At this time the Church was seen as the sole source of forgiveness, that through confession to a priest and their recommendations and blessings a sin could be washed away. Yet here the text is offering the practitioner the chance to do just that without the intervention of a priest. This should not be read as anti-Christian or non-Christian, but anti-Church as an establishment. The text is asserting the power of an individual to be forgiven through other means than the Church, even if it is a complex ritual. So while still Christian it does display some issues with the hierarchy and policies of the Church.

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Non-Christian elements are not always as easy to locate as Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldaic names, or Islamic ritual pattern: they are sometimes subtle and easy to pass over. For instance, the text begins with a set of oaths (which will be addressed more later) indicating that if the book cannot be passed on to a suitable man it was to be buried to protect the practitioner and the person who gave him the text. When put into context this seems unusual. The context in this case is the dominance of Christianity and the criminalization of magic and witchcraft and loosely related ideas. Liber Iuratus Honorii was written at a time just preceding the witch trials of Europe, when charges of magic were common and dangerous. According to the introduction of the text, the pope and his cardinals have made statements condemning “the art” (as the practice of these rituals is called within the text) and “judging [practitioners] to death.” A text as “dangerous” to the owner as Liber Iuratus Honorii would be better off destroyed, in a fire for instance, since a buried text can be recovered or discovered which would go against the spirit of the oath. Burying the text could allow a practitioner to be discovered, or an unworthy person to find the text. If the text was really to be protected the only real method would be its destruction. While this might seem odd, interpreted from a Jewish perspective it makes sense as it is a Jewish tradition than any holy text, or text containing the name of God, cannot be destroyed. When a text is no longer useful or usable it is to be buried in a cemetery rather than destroyed in any other way. While there is not enough said about burying the text in Liber Iuratus Honorii to conclusively say it is borrowing the Jewish custom of burying texts with the name of God in it, it does seem to be a parallel especially when contrasted with the issues of burying a text for reasons of security and secrecy.
These non-Christian elements could be seen as detracting from the argument that Liber Iuratus Honorii is really a Christian text, but I think it is more useful to interpret them as supporting and supplementing the text. At this time there is no real parallel to the form of angel communication of Liber Iuratus Honorii in Christian mystic traditions. On the other hand a great deal of the Qabalah at the time was centered on divine communication (despite Honorius’s protest otherwise ) so it is reasonable that the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii would borrow and steal from that tradition. The gaps existing in Christian mysticism could be filled in with Jewish mysticism to make a complete system, in an analog to using frog DNA to complete the sequence of dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park. Taking from Jewish and Islamic sources doesn’t detract from the Christian nature of the next, but instead is merely evidence of the author seeing an element lacking in his system and deciding to appropriate the elements from another in order to make a more complete and potentially functioning system.

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A case has been made by Katelyn Mesler that there is even some evidence of Islamic thought running through Liber Iuratus Honorii. In a later part of the text, when the practitioner is to summon spirits related to the planets and the days instead of conjuring them as before, it is done in a question. “Where is Barthan the king? where are Thaadas, [Caudas], and Yalcal his ministers? Where is Formione the king? where are Guth, Maguth, and Guthrin his ministers?” This is a very different tone from standard conjurations in Liber Iuratus Honorii and other grimoires. Earlier in the text when calling an angel, the oration is given “I humbly invoke and beseech you, that you may condescend to come down and appear here before this circle … I order you through the virtue of that one, whose name is marked.” This is a more traditional conjuration; the iron hand in the velvet glove, a humble call to the spirit backed up by spiritual authority from God. This questioning call is not something that appears in Christian systems, nor is it something that appears in Jewish systems, but as Mesler states it is “found with some frequency in Islamic magical texts.” While it is a minor point, amidst a complex combination of Christian and Jewish influences, this does seem to indicate that the author of Liber Iuratus Honorii had some familiarity with, and access to Islamic texts related to conjuring spirits, making the religious combination of the text just a little more complicated.
There is another reference in the text that is neither Jewish nor Islamic, it is either Greek or evidence of a pre-existing grimoire system drawing on Greek mythology. It only appears once in the text, like the Islamic questioning, so cannot be considered a major part of the thought behind the text, but can again suggest the broad base of traditions that the text was built from. When discussing the appropriate incenses to use, the author explains what Solomon suggests. This is not surprising as Jewish and Christian grimoires often validated themselves claiming connections to Solomon, but it then also contains the suggestions of Hermes that disagree with what was previously said by Solomon. This may be a reference to a person, coincidentally named Hermes, or more likely a reference to the god himself. A form of Hermes, known as Hermes Trimegistus (The Thrice Great), is a similar figure to Solomon in the grimoire system and Judeo-Christian magic systems with a variety of grimoires, alchemical texts, and magical books attributed to him. This section is unusual for this is the only time Hermes is mentioned in Liber Iuratus Honorii, and the inclusion of him disagreeing with Solomon on what incense to use only confuses the matter, rather than clarifies. It would seem that this is an extrapolation from another text; another grimoire or magical book that was patched into Liber Iuratus Honorii without much effort to synthesize or harmonize the texts. The fact you have two figures disagreeing in this way serves no purpose within the text, and the only plausible reason is scribal errors in the creation of the text; adding in different elements without bringing them into line with each other. This shows that this text was part of a tradition; it wasn’t a standalone creation written in solitude by Honorius, but part of something more, an evolution of something within a tradition.