Sefer ha-Levanah (Book of the Moon)

Sefer ha-Levanah, the Book of the Moon, is a Hebrew handbook of lunar and astral magic preserved in British Library Oriental MS 6360, a sixteenth-century manuscript in an oriental rabbinic hand. The Anglican Hebraist Albert William Greenup published the Hebrew text in 1912 in a small edition printed for private circulation. The work opens with an introduction attributed to Hermes and then gives twenty-eight procedures for making talismanic images according to the moon's position, a scheme closely related to the twenty-eight lunar mansions of Arabic and Latin astrology. It continues with twelve recipes for potions, some benevolent and some harmful, image magic linked to the names of the hours of day and night, brief notes on the divisions of the zodiac, and a magical alphabet. Its contents parallel the Latin Liber Lunae, which circulated under Solomon's name, and it belongs to the same stream of Hermetic image magic that produced the Picatrix and the Latin works on lunar mansions. The manuscript also contains a fragment of Mafteah Shelomoh, the Hebrew Key of Solomon, which has made it important for debates about the Hebrew Solomonic tradition. Don Karr, with Greenup's text and a translation by Calanit Nachshon, published an English edition alongside the Latin Liber Lunae, first in 2011 and in a second edition in 2017. The text illustrates the close interchange of Jewish, Arabic and Christian astral magic.

What it contains

• Introduction attributed to Hermes
• Twenty-eight talismanic images by the moon's positions
• Twelve potions for good and harmful purposes
• Images tied to the names of the hours of day and night
• Notes on the divisions of the zodiac
• A magical alphabet