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This design for an amulet comes from the Black Pullet grimoire.


While the term grimoire is originally European and many Europeans throughout history, particularly ceremonial magicians and cunning folk, have made use of grimoires, the historian Owen Davies noted that similar books can be found all across the world, ranging from Jamaica to Sumatra,[3] and he also noted that the first grimoires could be found not only in Europe but in the Ancient Near East.[4]


It is most commonly believed that the term grimoire originated from the Old French word grammaire, which had initially been used to refer to all books written in Latin. By the 18th century, the term had gained its now common usage in France and had begun to be used to refer purely to books of magic, which Owen Davies presumed was because "many of them continued to circulate in Latin manuscripts".[citation needed] However, the term grimoire also later developed into a figure of speech amongst the French indicating something that was hard to understand. It was only in the 19th century, with the increasing interest in occultism amongst the British following the publication of Francis Barrett's The Magus (1801), that the term entered the English language in reference to books of magic.[1]


Ancient period[edit]

The earliest known written magical incantations come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), where they have been found inscribed on various cuneiform clay tablets excavated by archaeologists from the city of Uruk and dated to between the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.[5] The ancient Egyptians also employed magical incantations, which have been found inscribed on various amulets and other items. The Egyptian magical system, known as heka, was greatly altered and enhanced after the Macedonians, led by Alexander the Great, invaded Egypt in 332 BCE. Under the next three centuries of Hellenistic Egypt, the Coptic writing system evolved, and the Library of Alexandria was opened, and this likely had an influence upon books of magic, with the trend on known incantations switching from simple health and protection charms to more specific things, such as financial success and sexual fulfillment.[6] It was also around this time that the legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus developed as a conflation of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek Hermes; this figure was associated with both writing and magic, and therefore of books on magic.[7] The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that books on magic were invented by the Persians, with the 1st-century CE writer Pliny the Elder stating that magic had been first discovered by the ancient philosopher Zoroaster around the year 6347 BCE but that it was only written down in the 5th century BCE by the magician Osthanes—his claims are not, however, supported by modern historians.[8]

The ancient Jewish people were also often viewed as being knowledgeable in magic, which, according to legend, they had learned from Moses, who himself had learned it in Egypt. Indeed, amongst many ancient writers, Moses himself was seen as an Egyptian rather than a Jew, and two manuscripts likely dating to the 4th century, both of which purport to be the legendary eighth Book of Moses (the first five being the initial books in the Biblical Old Testament), present him as a polytheist who explained how to conjure gods and subdue demons.[7] Meanwhile, there is definite evidence of grimoires being used by certain, particularly Gnostic, sects of early Christianity; in the Book of Enoch found within the Dead Sea Scrolls for instance, there is various information on astrology and the angels. In possible connection with the Book of Enoch, the idea of Enoch and his great-grandson Noah having some involvement with books of magic given to them by angels continued in various forms through to the medieval period.[8]


Acts 19, c. 1st century

Israelite King Solomon was a Biblical figure also associated with magic and sorcery in the ancient world. The 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus mentioned a book circulating under the name of Solomon that contained incantations for summoning demons and described how a Jew called Eleazar used it to cure cases of possession. The book may have been the Testament of Solomon but was more probably a different work.[9] The pseudepigraphic Testament of Solomon is one of the oldest magical texts. It is a Greek manuscript attributed to Solomon and likely written in either Babylonia or Egypt sometime in the first five centuries CE, over a thousand years after Solomon's death. The work tells of the building of The Temple and relates that construction was hampered by demons until the angel Michael gave the king a magical ring. The ring, engraved with the Seal of Solomon, had the power to bind demons from doing harm. Solomon used it to lock certain demons within jars and commanded others to do his bidding, although eventually, according to the Testament, he was tempted into worshipping "false gods", such as Moloch, Baal, and Rapha. Subsequently, after losing favour with God, King Solomon wrote the work as both a warning and a guide to the reader.[10]

Notwithstanding the accounts of Biblical figures like Moses, Enoch and Solomon being associated with magical practices, when Christianity became the dominant faith of the Roman Empire, the early Church frowned upon the propagation of books on magic, connecting it with paganism, and burned books of magic. The New Testament records that St. Paul had called for the burning of magic and pagan books in the city of Ephesus; this advice was adopted on a large scale after the Christian ascent to power.[11] Even before Christianisation, the Imperial Roman government had suppressed many pagan, Christian, philosophical, and divinatory texts that it viewed as threats to Roman authority, including those of the Greek mystic and mathematician Pythagoras.

Medieval period[edit]

In the Medieval period, the production of grimoires continued in Christendom, as well as amongst Jews and the followers of the newly founded Islamic faith. As the historian Owen Davies noted, "while the [Christian] Church was ultimately successful in defeating pagan worship it never managed to demarcate clearly and maintain a line of practice between religious devotion and magic,"[12] and the use of such books on magic continued. In Christianised Europe, the Church divided books of magic into two kinds; those that dealt with "natural magic" and those that dealt in "demonic magic". The former was acceptable, because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God; for instance, the Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, which contained simple spells designed for medicinal purposes, were tolerated. However, the latter, demonic magic was not acceptable, because it was believed that such magic did not come from God, but from the Devil and his demons - these grimoires dealt in such topics as necromancy, divination and demonology.[13] Despite this, "there is ample evidence that the mediaeval clergy were the main practitioners of magic and therefore the owners, transcribers, and circulators of grimoires,"[14] while several grimoires were actually attributed to various Popes.[15]

An excerpt from Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, featuring various magical sigils (or סגולות,seguloth, in Hebrew)

One such Arabic grimoire devoted to astral magic, the 12th-century Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr, was later translated into Latin and circulated in Europe during the 13th century under the name of the Picatrix.[16] However, not all such grimoires of this era were based upon Arabic sources; the 13th-century the Sworn Book of Honorius, for instance, was, like the ancient Testament of Solomon before it, largely based upon the supposed teachings of the Biblical king Solomon and also included ideas such as prayers and a ritual circle, with the mystical purpose of having visions of God, Hell, and Purgatory and gaining much wisdom and knowledge as a result. Another was the Hebrew Sefer Raziel Ha-Malakh, translated in Europe as the Liber Razielis Archangeli.[17]

A later book also claiming to have been written by Solomon was originally written in Greek during the 15th century, where it was known as the Magical Treatise of Solomon or the Little Key of the Whole Art of Hygromancy, Found by Several Craftmen and by the Holy Prophet Solomon. In the 16th century, this work had been translated into Latin and Italian, being renamed the Clavicula Salomonis, or the Key of Solomon.[18] Also in Christendom during the Mediaeval Age, grimoires were written that were attributed to other ancient figures, thereby supposedly giving them a sense of authenticity because of their antiquity. The German Abbot and occultist Trithemius (1462–1516) supposedly had in his possession a Book of Simon the Magician, based upon the New Testament figure of Simon Magus. Magus had been a contemporary of Jesus Christ's and, like the Biblical Jesus, had supposedly performed miracles, but had been demonised by the Medieval Church as a devil worshipper and evil individual.[19] Similarly, it was commonly believed by mediaeval people that other ancient figures, such as the poet Virgil, astronomer Ptolemy and philosopher Aristotle, had been involved in magic, and grimoires claiming to have been written by them were circulated.[20] However, there were those who did not believe this; for instance, the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1214–94) stated that books falsely claiming to be by ancient authors "ought to be prohibited by law".[21]

Early modern period[edit]

As the early modern period commenced in the late 15th century, many changes began to shock Europe that would have an effect on the production of grimoires; the historian Owen Davies classed the most important of these as being the Protestant Reformation and subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the witch-hunts and the advent of printing. The Renaissance saw the continuation of interest in magic that had been found in the Mediaeval period, and in this period, there was an increased interest in Hermeticism amongst occultists and ceremonial magicians in Europe, largely fueled by the 1471 translation of the ancient Corpus hermeticum into Latin by Marsilio Ficino (1433–99). Alongside this, there was also a rise in interest in a form of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah, which was spread across the continent by Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin.[22] The most important magician of the Renaissance was Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535), who widely studied various occult topics and earlier grimoires and eventually published his own, the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, in 1533.[23] A similar figure was the Swiss magician known as Paracelsus (1493–1541), who published Of the Supreme Mysteries of Nature, in which he emphasised the distinction between good and bad magic.[24] A third such individual at the time was Johann Georg Faust, upon whom several pieces of later literature were written, such as Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, that portrayed him as consulting with demons.[25] The idea of demonology had remained strong in the Renaissance, and several demonological grimoires were published, including The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, which falsely claimed to having been authored by Agrippa,[26] and the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, which listed 69 different demons. To counter this, the Roman Catholic Church authorised the production of many works of exorcism, the rituals of which were often very similar to those of demonic conjuration.[27] However, alongside these demonological works, grimoires on natural magic also continued to be produced, including Magia naturalis, written by Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615).[28]


The advent of printing in Europe meant that books could be mass-produced for the first time and could reach an ever-growing literate audience. Amongst the earliest books to be printed were magical texts; the nóminas were one example of this, consisting of prayers to the saints used as talismans.[29] It was particularly in Protestant countries, such as Switzerland and the German states, which were not under the domination of the Roman Catholic Church, where such grimoires were published. Despite the advent of print however, handwritten grimoires remained highly valued, as they were believed to contain inherent magical powers within them, and they continued to be produced.[30] However, with increasing availability, people lower down the social scale and women began to have access to books on magic; this was often incorporated into the popular folk magic of the average people, and in particular, that of the cunning folk, who were professionally involved in folk magic.[31] These works also left Europe and were imported to those parts of Latin America controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires and the parts of North America controlled by the British and French empires.[32]



18th and 19th centuries[edit]


From the Grand Grimoire.

The 18th century saw the rise of the Enlightenment, a movement devoted to science and rationalism, predominantly amongst the ruling classes. However, amongst much of Europe, belief in magic and witchcraft persisted,[citation needed] as did the witch trials in certain[which?] areas. Certain governments did try and crack down on magicians and fortune tellers, particularly that of France, where the police viewed them as social pests who took money from the gullible, often in a search for treasure. In doing so, they confiscated many grimoires.[37] However, it was also in France that a new form of printing developed, the Bibliothèque bleue, and many grimoires published through this circulated amongst an ever-growing percentage[citation needed] of the populace, in particular the Grand Albert, the Petit Albert (1782), the Grimoire du Pape Honorious and the Enchiridion Leonis Papae. The Petit Albert in particular contained a wide variety of different forms of magic, for instance, dealing in both simple charms for ailments along with more complex things such as the instructions for making a Hand of Glory.[38]


The widespread availability of such printed grimoires in France—despite the opposition of both the rationalists and the church—soon[when?] spread to neighbouring countries such as Spain and Germany. In Switzerland, the city of Geneva was commonly associated with the occult at the time, particularly by Catholics, because it had been a stronghold of Protestantism, and many of those interested in the esoteric travelled from their own Roman Catholic nations to Switzerland to purchase grimoires or to study with occultists.[41] Soon, grimoires appeared that involved Catholic saints within them; one such example that appeared during the 19th century that became relatively popular, particularly in Spain, was the Libro de San Cipriano, or The Book of St. Ciprian, which falsely claimed to date from c. 1000. Like most grimoires of this period, it dealt with (amongst other things) how to discover treasure.[42]



In Britain, new grimoires continued to be produced throughout the 18th century, such as Ebenezer Sibly's A New and Complete Illustration of the Celestial Science of Astrology. In the last decades of that century, London experienced a revival of interest in the occult, and this was only further propagated when Francis Barrett published The Magus in 1801. The Magus contained many things taken from older grimoires, particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa, and while not achieving initial popularity upon release, gradually became a particularly influential text.[46] One of Barrett's pupils, John Parkin, created his own handwritten grimoire, The Grand Oracle of Heaven, or, The Art of Divine Magic, although it was never actually published, largely because Britain at the time was at war with France, and grimoires were commonly associated with the French. The only writer to publish British grimoires widely in the early 19th century, Robert Cross Smith, released The Philosophical Merlin (1822) and The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century (1825), but neither sold well.[47]


20th and 21st centuries[edit]


A modern grimoire is the Simon Necronomicon, named after a fictional book of magic in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and inspired by Babylonian mythology and the "Ars Goetia", a section in the Lesser Key of Solomon that concerns the summoning of demons. The Azoëtia of Andrew D. Chumbley has been described as a modern grimoire.[49]


In the first decade of the 21st century, an assembly of practitioners of esoteric magic, known as the Grey Council, founded the world's first recognised school of wizardry in California, USA. Incorporated on 14 March 2004, the Grey School of Wizardry is a non-denominational, secular non-profit educational institution. The school received a 501(c)(3) tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service on September 27, 2007. The school's headmaster Oberon Zell-Ravenheart wrote and compiled the school's Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard (New Page, 2004) and the sequel Companion for the Apprentice Wizard (New Page 2006).[51]

In popular culture[edit]

The term Grimoire commonly serves as an alternative name for a spell book or tome of magical knowledge in fantasy fiction and role-playing games. The most famous fictional Grimoire is the Necronomicon, a creation of H. P. Lovecraft.[50]

In the film The Sorcerer this type of book was called the Incantus. In the television series Charmed, the Grimoire is known as the evil equivalent of the Halliwell sisters' Book of Shadows. In the television series Witches of East End, a Grimoire is a book of spells used by the Beauchamp witches in the show. In the television series The Vampire Diaries and its spin-off The Originals, a Grimoire is a witch's record of all of her/his spells, rituals, potions, and herbs.

The central book of spells in the Disney animated fantasy adventure series Gargoyles, the Grimorum Arcanorum, is an ancient book of magic used by Demona and David Xanatos in various schemes throughout the series' storyline. In the video game Nier, one of the main characters is a talking grimoire who is usually referred to as Weiss, despite his protests that his companions should use his full title, Grimoire Weiss.

Rose Lalonde from Homestuck had a Grimoire for Summoning the Zoologically Dubious, which she alchemized together with her Needlewands to create the Thorns of Oglogoth.

In Gregory Maguire's series of books set in the Land of Oz: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz (referred to together as The Wicked Years), there is a book of spells and other magical arcana called the Grimmerie. The name is an example of Maguire's subtle changing of familiar words that help to remind readers that while the place they read about is mostly familiar, it is also ever so slightly skewed.


  1. ^ a b Davies (2009:1)
  2. ^ Davies (2009:2-3)
  3. ^ Davies (2009:2-5)
  4. ^ Davies (2009:6-7)
  5. ^ Davies (2009:8)
  6. ^ Davies (2009:8-9)
  7. ^ a b Davies (2009:10)
  8. ^ a b Davies (2009:7)
  10. ^ Davies (2009:12-13)
  11. ^ Davies (2009:18-20)
  12. ^ Davies (2009:21-22)
  13. ^ Davies (2009:22)
  14. ^ Davies (2009:36)
  15. ^ Davies (2009:34-35)
  16. ^ Davies (2009:25-26)
  17. ^ Davies (2009:34)
  18. ^ Davies (2009:15)
  19. ^ Davies (2009:16-17)
  20. ^ Davies (2009:24)
  21. ^ Davies (2009:37)
  22. ^ Davies (2009:46)
  23. ^ Davies (2009:47-48)
  24. ^ Davies (2009:48)
  25. ^ Davies (2009:49-50)
  26. ^ Davies (2009:51-52)
  27. ^ Davies (2009:59-60)
  28. ^ Davies (2009:57)
  29. ^ Davies (2009:45)
  30. ^ Davies (2009:53-54)
  31. ^ Davies (2009:66-67)
  32. ^ Davies (2009:84-90)
  33. ^ Davies (2009:54-55)
  34. ^ Davies (2009:74)
  35. ^ Davies (2009:70-73)
  36. ^ Davies (2009:47)
  37. ^ Davies (2007:95-96)
  38. ^ Davies (2007:98-101)
  39. ^ Davies (2007:101-104)
  41. ^ Davies (2007:109-110)
  42. ^ Davies (2007:114-115)
  43. ^ Davies (2007:121-122)
  44. ^ Davies (2007:123)
  45. ^ Davies (2007:134-136)
  46. ^ Davies (2007:123-124)
  47. ^ Davies (2007:135-137)


External links[edit]