Summa Sacre Magice (Compendium of Sacred Magic)

The Summa sacre magice is a vast compendium of ritual magic completed in 1346 by Berengar Ganell, apparently a Catalan writer about whom little else is known. It is one of the largest and most systematic magical works of the Middle Ages, drawing together material from the Liber Iuratus (Sworn Book of Honorius), the Almandal, the Liber trium animarum, the Picatrix tradition, Solomonic and Hermetic image magic and other sources, many of which it quotes extensively. Ganell organises this material into five books dealing with invocation prayers and conjurations for the seasons; rings, garments and other Solomonic equipment, planetary prayers, spirits and seals; the invocation of spirits within a house, the kings of the directions and the Almandal; the principles of magic, consecration and the Sigillum Dei; and astronomical and cosmological tables, the names of the heavens, winds and stars, and a litany. The principal manuscript, now in Kassel, once belonged to John Dee, who annotated it, and it may have contributed to his understanding of the Sigillum Dei. Because none of the surviving copies is complete, reconstruction requires the Kassel Latin manuscript, a manuscript in Halle and a sixteenth-century German translation in Berlin. Damaris Gehr has argued that Ganell presented magic as an act of devotion promoting God’s kingship, and the work has recently received its first full English translation.

What it contains

• Book 1: general invocation prayers and seasonal conjurations
• Book 2: rings, garments and Solomonic implements; planetary prayers and seals
• Book 3: invocation of spirits, the kings of the directions and the Almandal
• Book 4: principles of magic, consecration and the Sigillum Dei
• Book 5: heavens, stars, winds, Solomonic tables and litany
• Extensive quotations from the Liber Iuratus and other sources