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| MS. Rawl. D. 252 fol. 028v-029r |
A friend and I studied The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King
together about twenty years ago. My friend had been studying magic already for a few years and had expensive esoteric books and obviously knew much more than I did. When we came to the Hexagram of Solomon we saw a footnote. After much squinting, I was finally able to read the footnote: "This sigil is frequently reversed thus:" and then there appears to be a reversal of the sigil appearing in the bottom triangle of the Hexagram of Solomon.After a few weeks of study in his library, my friend was certain he had identified the spirit that belonged to the sigil. He was also certain the correct form was the one shown in the Hexagram.
My friend and I had a sudden parting of ways and I never found out what spirit belonged to that sigil. I have been searching for it again over the last year, but to no avail. And then...
This February I decided to visit some of my browser bookmarks and see if there was anything new and interesting. I visited one of my bookmarks and read a great blog post. There is a link to MSS Folger V.b.26 Book of Magic, with Instructions for Invoking Spirits - ca. (1577-1583). This is, in more than one way, interesting and important for anyone interested in Solomonic evocation. For now, though, I would like to point out that the manuscript contains two versions of the Pentagram of Solomon and also of the Hexagram of Solomon.
Toward the end of the manuscript you find the Hexagram of Solomon as it appears (complete with explanatory note on the reversed sigil) in the Mathers/Crowley GoS. But in another part of the manuscript you can see the origin of the reversed "sigil".
As you can see, the "sigil" originally had four pieces. Looking more closely at this and other manuscripts, you should be able to tell that what we are looking at is a stylized form of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton. I had actually seen this representation of the Tetragrammaton before, but never connected it to the sigil in the Hexagram of Solomon.
Some people may be skeptical that these four characters are the Tetragrammaton. Look at this web page about Tractatus de nigromatia [necromancy]: 16th century Mun.A.4.98. There are five images of the document on this page. Look at the left half of the second image. There you will see the Tetragrammaton in the text of the book. Look at the fourth image. There you see the stylized Tetragrammaton written over a sword or knife (turn the image upside down to read the word). In De Nigromancia
you can see this same circle and see the four characters written in a more recognizable Hebrew form. In the fifth image on the page you should see the stylized Tetragrammaton not once, but five times.Look closely at that last image. Now compare that image to the form of the same circle as it appears in Folger V.b.26. It's almost as if the person copying Folger V.b.26 was unaware of exactly what he was copying.
If we strip away the other elements of the Hexagram of Solomon and compare different manuscripts, we can see the progression and draw a rough timeline.
This is the old form in Folger V.b.26
As it appears in Sloane Ms. 3824. You will find it on page 114 of The Book of Treasure Spirits
by David Rankine. The Hexagram of Solomon is used in that manuscript as a "Magic Circle for Fairy Conjuration".
This is the form in the earlier versions of the GoS. You can find this version in Joseph H. Peterson's The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis
.
And then, in later versions (seen in the Mathers/Crowley GoS).
Within Folger V.b.26 you can see two versions of the Hexagram of Solomon which were brought together in one document after hundreds of years of separation. The version of the Hexagram appearing at the end of the document tells us:
"At the bottom of the sheet 212 verso are two diagrams which indicate a familiarity with the "LEMEGETON.""
The text by the Hexagram reads:
"see: THE LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON.
GOETIA
THE BOOK OF EVIL SPIRITS
Ed. de Laurence 1916". This is a reference to the plagiarised de Laurence edition of the GoS. And mention is also made to "Waite/Shah/etc." These versions of the Hexagram and Pentagram of Solomon are found Idries Shah's The Secret Lore of Magic: Books of the Sorcerers
(1958). Although they were added by someone who could see their relationship to the Lemegeton, the nature of the "sigil" still escaped them.Now I will stop looking for what spirit belongs to this sigil and in which direction it should be made. As you can see, this sigil is not reversed because this sigil is not a sigil.
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