Semamphoras Table (Berengar Ganell)

The Semamphoras table is a magical diagram from the Summa Sacrae Magicae, the vast compendium of ritual magic compiled in 1346 by the Catalan Berengar Ganell. Its name is a Latin corruption of the Hebrew Shem ha-Mephorash, the 'explicit name' of God, and it reflects the medieval Christian fascination with Hebrew divine names as instruments of power. The table is framed by four alphabets, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and one Ganell calls Chaldaean or Arabic, from which spirit names are extracted, and it carries eight directional labels for the cardinal and intercardinal points, including inscriptions set against Lucifer and Satan in the north. Ganell instructs that it be written on the skin of a deer or calf with saffron, rose water and musk and held while petitioning God. In his system the four alphabets correspond to four 'sects', Christians, Greeks, Jews and Saracens, whose sacred names together give access to the whole spiritual world, an idea that sheds light on Ganell's universalising approach to magic. Peterson's 2024 web study reconstructs the table from the Kassel manuscript of the Summa and compares it with a sixteenth-century St. Gallen manuscript, a Halle manuscript and a Venetian Inquisition file of about 1630, showing how the device persisted in later practice. The page also draws on recent research by Jan Veenstra and Damaris Gehr, who have led modern study of the Summa.

What it contains

• Border of four alphabets for extracting names
• Directional labels for the eight points of the compass
• Inscriptions against Lucifer and Satan
• Instructions for materials and inks
• Ganell's doctrine of four 'sects' and their alphabets
• Comparison with later manuscript and Inquisition witnesses