Verus Jesuitarum Libellus

The Verus Jesuitarum Libellus, 'true petition of the Jesuits', is a short Latin grimoire for compelling spirits to bring gold and reveal treasure. Its title page claims printing in Paris in 1508, an impossible date for a work named after the Society of Jesus, which was founded only in the 1530s and approved in 1540. The attribution to the Jesuits reflects the popular Protestant image of the order as possessed of secret and dangerous arts rather than any real connection. The book belongs to the German treasure-hunting literature of the eighteenth century, together with the Faustian Höllenzwang texts, and it was reprinted by Johann Scheible in the second volume of Das Kloster in the 1840s. Its contents are a series of seven conjurations, each invoking God, Christ and a battery of sacred names, ordering spirits to appear and deliver gold; a conjuration of the spirit Usiel; a citation of angels attributed to Cyprian; a conjuration of the spirits that guard buried treasure; and dismissals. Its pseudo-Hebrew seals and invocations reappear in the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, which drew heavily on it. A. E. Waite translated parts of it in his Book of Ceremonial Magic, and Joseph Peterson's 2000 edition provides the Latin with a substantially corrected English translation. The text is a good example of the overlap between Catholic exorcistic language and magical compulsion in popular grimoires.

What it contains

• Seven conjurations to compel spirits to bring gold
• Invocations of God, Christ and sacred names
• Conjuration of the spirit Usiel
• Citation of angels attributed to Cyprian
• Conjuration of spirits guarding treasure
• Formulae of dismissal