Theosophia Pneumatica

Theosophia Pneumatica, 'spiritual theosophy', is a German work printed in 1686 by Andreas Luppius in Wesel together with a text styled Claviculae Salomonis, the 'little keys of Solomon'. It is essentially a reworking of the Arbatel of Magic, the influential Latin treatise first printed in Basel in 1575, which taught a pious, Paracelsian and spiritualist approach to the Olympic spirits of the seven planets and to communion with good angels. The German adaptation abandons the Arbatel's aphoristic form and arranges the material as continuous prose, and it adds matter from other sources, most notably an appendix on transcendental medicine that has no counterpart in the Arbatel. Like its model, it emphasises prayer, moral purity and reliance on God rather than ritual compulsion, and it reflects the currents of Lutheran heterodoxy, Rosicrucian enthusiasm and Paracelsian medicine that flourished in seventeenth-century Germany. Arthur Edward Waite drew attention to the work in his Book of Ceremonial Magic, describing it as dependent on the Arbatel. It was reprinted in the third volume of Johann Scheible's Das Kloster in the 1840s, the version from which Joseph Peterson produced his 2008 electronic edition. The text is a useful witness to how the Arbatel's spiritual magic was domesticated and expanded for German readers, and it should be read together with Peterson's 2009 edition of the Arbatel.

What it contains

• Prose reworking of the Arbatel's teaching
• Olympic spirits of the seven planets
• Prayer, piety and moral preparation
• Communion with good angels and spirits
• Material borrowed from other sources
• Appendix on transcendental medicine