The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals

This short scrying ritual was printed by Francis Barrett in The Magus (London, 1801), where it forms part of the second book and is presented as a translation of a Latin manuscript by Johannes Trithemius. Barrett’s compilation borrowed heavily from earlier sources, and modern editors regard the Trithemian attribution as doubtful. Joseph Peterson points out that the text uses a sigil of the archangel Michael that first appears in the Heptameron, a work in circulation only decades after Trithemius died, and that its framework of four angelic princes and four spirit kings of the cardinal directions resembles material in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy. The ritual describes how to make a crystal set in a gold plate engraved with divine and angelic names, mounted on an ivory or ebony pedestal, together with a consecrated circle, a table and a wand. The operator prays, purifies himself, consecrates the equipment and calls the angel of the day, or one of the planetary angels, to appear in the stone and answer questions, before licensing it to depart. The text ends with tables of planetary hours and their ruling angels. Though brief, it became one of the most widely reproduced crystal-gazing procedures in English, partly because Barrett’s Magus was the main printed occult handbook in Britain during the nineteenth century, and it illustrates how Renaissance angel magic was repackaged for a Romantic-era readership.

What it contains

• Description of the crystal, its gold plate and engraved names
• Preparation of the pedestal, table, circle and wand
• Prayers and consecrations for the operator and instruments
• An invocation calling an angel or spirit into the crystal
• Questions to the spirit and a licence to depart
• Tables of planetary hours with their ruling angels