Forbidden Rites »

Preserved in the Bavarian State Library in Munich is a manuscript that few scholars have noticed and that no one in modern times has treated with the seriousness it deserves. Forbidden Rites consists of an edition of this medieval Latin text with a full commentary, including detailed analysis of the text and its contents, discussion of the historical context, translation of representative sections of the text, and comparison with other necromantic texts of the late Middle Ages. Like many medieval texts for the use of magicians, it is a miscellany rather than a systematic treatise. It is exceptional, however, in the scope and variety of its contents - prayers and conjurations, rituals of sympathetic magic, procedures involving astral magic, a catalogue of spirits, lengthy ceremonies for consecrating a book of magic, and other materials.

Booknews

An edition in the original Latin of a rarely noticed manuscript in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, supported by eight essays on Medieval magical books and magical rites; the manuscript itself; and on various categories of its contents, among them illusionist experiments, psychological experiments, divinatory experiments, conjurations and exorcisms, the spirits conjured, and the magic of circles and spheres. They include extensive excerpts in English. Paper edition (01751-1), $19.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.