Clavicules of King Solomon by Armadel, Book IV (Lansdowne MS 1202)

British Library Lansdowne MS 1202 contains a French Key of Solomon titled Les vrais Clavicules du Roi Salomon, credited to a translator called Armadel. It is a late copy in an eighteenth-century French hand, and it was one of the manuscripts Mathers drew on for his 1889 edition, praising it for its concise style. The fourth book, presented separately online, is largely devoted to pentacles. It opens with a scheme of thirteen superior intelligences, each commanding a number of subordinate spirits, and describes their offices. A long series of pentacles follows, each with notes on its purpose and on the planetary day and hour for its making. Peterson's edition compares these with Mathers' versions and other witnesses, showing how the designs drifted in transmission. The book also contains extracts that overlap with the Grimorium Verum, a short treatise on twelve rings, and a separate devotional piece called Le Livre d'Or that ends with the Athanasian Creed. The mixture illustrates how eighteenth-century French compilers combined the classical Clavicula with spirit catalogues of the kind found in the so-called black grimoires. The name Armadel also appears on a different work, the Grimoire of Armadel, which Mathers translated from an Arsenal manuscript; the two should not be confused. Lansdowne 1202 is a useful window onto the Parisian manuscript trade in magic that flourished in the decades before the Revolution.

What it contains

• Thirteen superior intelligences and their subordinate spirits
• Offices and powers ascribed to each intelligence
• Extended series of planetary pentacles with timing notes
• Comparisons with Mathers' pentacle designs (editorial)
• Extracts paralleling the Grimorium Verum
• Treatise on twelve rings and Le Livre d'Or