The Book of Ceremonial Magic

A. E. Waite · 1911

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About the book

Waite's grand tour of every grimoire he could find — the Keys of Solomon, the Grand Grimoire, Honorius — retold with visible disapproval and complete thoroughness. He calls the literature absurd and then documents every rite in it, which is exactly what makes the book useful.

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Part 1 · How old are the spellbooks, really?. The first six slides, free.

How old are the spellbooks, really?

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Waite opens his history with a dazzling tour of the country magic promises. There, two straight lines enclose a space, the circle is squared, earth becomes gold, words and wishes have creative power, and the dead are within easy reach.

Then he shuts the gate. The whole domain is like the gold of Faerie: it “cannot withstand daylight, the test of the human eye, or the scale of reason.” Its marvel-working words turn out to be mangled scraps of dead languages, powerless the moment anyone understands them.

So he will not argue about whether a magician can square the circle. What interests him is harder and more useful: why a large literature of spells exists at all, where it came from, and how old it really is.

Inside the course

17 parts

The antiquity of magical rituals, tested against the evidenceFree above
White and black: the distinction Waite draws, and where it breaks
The rituals of transcendental magic: Arbatel and the Enchiridion
The composite rituals — the Keys of Solomon and Abramelin
The Pauline Art, the Almadel, the Heptameron: the lesser composites
The rituals of black magic, held at arm's length
The Black Pullet, and the spurious grimoires
The preparation of the operator
The circle, the instruments and the hours
The descending hierarchy: who is allegedly summoned
Goetic theurgy according to the Lesser Key
The Grimorium Verum, step by reluctant step
Pacts, and the Grand Grimoire's terrible bargain
The method of Honorius, and why Waite despises it
Minor processes: love, hatred, invisibility, the hand of glory
Necromancy — the odds and ends
Waite's verdict on the whole literature

Questions

Is The Book of Ceremonial Magic free to read in Astra Trainer?

Yes. The full book opens free in the app’s reader, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Russian.

What is the short course?

17 short parts that walk through the book’s key ideas in slides, each with a quick quiz. The first six slides are free to try on this page.

Where do I get the app?

Astra Trainer is free on the App Store and Google Play. The Book of Ceremonial Magic is waiting in the app’s library.