The Book of the Twelve Images of the Hours of the Night of Hermes

This short Hermetic text on talismanic images belongs to a medieval Latin literature of works on the ‘twenty-four hours’ ascribed to Hermes, which assigned angels, names and operations to each hour of the day and night. The version published online, edited and translated in 2021 by Mihai Vârtejaru, renders a French manuscript copy whose translation from Latin is credited to a ‘Maistre Jean Hulet’. Its prologue argues that images made at night are more powerful than those made by day, because the night is silent and the planetary spirits are more receptive. Twelve chapters follow, one for each hour of the night, giving the name of the hour, its ruling angel and subordinate princes, and the figure or seal to be made, along with its purpose: binding speech or tongues, silencing frogs, extinguishing fire and binding serpents, causing concord or discord, raising storms, sending sleep and prophetic dreams, winning the favour of rulers, protecting crops, preventing fornication, fostering love and peace in marriage, and inspiring terror. A concluding list gives the twelve angels with their numbers, and an appendix compares the hour names with those in Trithemius’s Steganographia, Book II, showing that the same spirits passed into the Ars Paulina of the Lemegeton. The text illustrates the medieval Hermetic image magic that Trithemius placed among his ‘suspect’ books.

What it contains

• Prologue on the superior power of images made at night
• Twelve chapters, one for each hour of the night
• Names of hours, ruling angels and their princes
• Talismanic figures and their purposes
• List of the twelve angels with their numbers
• Comparison with Trithemius’s Steganographia and the Ars Paulina