 The
Grimoire of Saint Cyprian
Clavis Inferni
Stephen Skinner & David Rankine
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Deluxe Limited Edition
of 100 hand-bound half leather and green buckram, hand numbered
and signed by both authors.
96 pages, 176mm x 250mmm, RRP £72.00,
ISBN: 9780955738746
Clavis Inferni (The Key of Hell) is as unusual
and captivating a manuscript as its title suggests. From the
moment when the authors first found the small leather-bound
manuscript languishing in obscurity in the Wellcome Library,
they had every intention of publishing it. The stunning colour
images jump out at the reader, showing the high level of intent
put into every aspect of the manuscript by its author (or
copyist). Astonishingly for such a desirable magical tome,
they could find no written reference to it prior to their
first declaration of intent to make it available in The Keys
to the Gateway of Magic (volume 2 of the Sourceworks of Ceremonial
Magic) back in 2005, when they included one of the stunning
images as the cover of that work.
It is unique in that instead of being weighed
down with many prayers and conjurations it addresses the summoning
and use of both the four Archangels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel
and Uriel as well as their opposite numbers, the four Demon
Kings, Paymon, Maimon, Egyn and Oriens. The latter are shown
in their animal and human forms along with their sigils, a
resource found nowhere else amongst grimoires.
There have been many grimoires attributed
to St. Cyprian of Antioch due to his reputation as a consummate
magician before his conversion to Christianity, but perhaps
none so intriguing as the present manuscript. This unique
manuscript (unlike the more rustic examples attributed to
St Cyprian called the Black Books of Wittenburg, as found
in Scandinavia, or the texts disseminated under his name in
Spain and Portugal) is directly in line with the Solomonic
tradition, and therefore relevant to the series of Sourceworks
of Ceremonial Magic.
Publishers Notes:
The Grimoire of Saint Cyprian is bound in
a beautiful green buckram and black leather, with gold lettering
on the cover and spine, this deluxe edition is limited to
100 copies only. The stunning black and red endpapers hint
at the infernal nature of the material within, including nine
gloriously coloured plates depicting the four demon kings
and a number of other magical seals and beings.
The text is in a mixture of three magical
scripts, Greek, Hebrew, cipher, Latin, (and reversed Latin)
with many contractions and short forms, but expanded and made
plain by the editors. The title of the manuscript, Clavis
Inferni sive magia alba et nigra approbata Metratona, literally
means ‘The Key of Hell with white and black magic as
proven by Metatron'. With the aid of experts on three continents,
the authors managed to decipher this complex manuscript over
a period of four years, making it available in English for
the first time ever in this volume. The reader gains an idea
of the scope of this task through the included magical alphabets
and tables of symbols with their decoded meanings.
All of the colour images from the manuscript
are reproduced, along with the original text, the expansion
of the text and its translation. The style found in Clavis
Inferni of conjuring a demon preceded by its corresponding
controlling archangel is found in earlier grimoires, particularly
The Goetia of Dr Rudd , and
the early proto-grimoire The Testament of Solomon.
And like both The Goetia of Dr Rudd
and The Veritable Key of Solomon,
this manuscript is heavily influenced by the classic 14th
century text, the Heptameron of Peter de Abano. There
is also evidence of Germanic influence from Faust’s Magia
Naturalis et Innaturalis in the shape of the bestial forms
of the demon kings Egyn and Urieus.
The authors provide an absorbing background
to the manuscript, including discussions of the archangel
Metatron, the Demon Kings, and St Cyprian and his various
attributed works. St Cyprian ranks with King Solomon and the
Patriarch Enoch as one of the most significant pseudoepigraphical
figures in the history of magical texts. And of all the texts
attributed to him, none are as intriguing or colourful as
this finally deciphered arcane cipher.
We have a small number of these books available now, to
secure a copy of this highly collectable work please select
your destination below:
UK £72 + postage & packaging (depending on your
destination)
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