Picatrix (Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm)

Picatrix is the Latin name of the Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm, 'The Goal of the Wise', the most important handbook of astral and talismanic magic to pass from the Islamic world into medieval Europe. The Arabic work was composed in al-Andalus in the tenth or eleventh century and was long ascribed to the mathematician Maslama al-Majrīṭī; that attribution is now rejected, and some scholars connect it instead with Maslama ibn Qāsim al-Qurṭubī. In 1256, at the court of Alfonso X of Castile, it was translated into Spanish and then Latin, the form in which it circulated widely in Renaissance Italy and beyond. The work is organised in four books. The first sets out a philosophical foundation for magic in a Neoplatonic and Hermetic cosmos, the second explains the astrological principles behind talismans, the third deals with the planets, their prayers, offerings and correspondences and the rites of the so-called Nabataeans and Sabians, and the fourth gathers further philosophical material, spirit practices and recipes. Picatrix is a key source for understanding how Greek, Hermetic, Harranian and Indian ideas were synthesised in Arabic and then transmitted to Ficino, Agrippa and later occultists. The archive offers Martin Plessner's outline of the contents. David Pingree's critical Latin edition of 1986 and the Ritter–Plessner German translation of 1962 underpin modern study, and the complete Latin text is now available in English in the 2019 translation by Dan Attrell and David Porreca.

What it contains

• Philosophical foundations of magic in a Hermetic and Neoplatonic cosmos
• Astrological principles for making talismans
• Talismanic images for the planets, signs and lunar mansions
• Planetary prayers, offerings and correspondences
• Rites attributed to the Nabataeans and Sabians
• Spirit practices, recipes and miscellaneous lore