Today’s ritual considerations are summoned from the Grimoirium Verum or True Grimoire… an infamous book of the blackest sorcery giving instructions on how to summon infernal authorities - like Beelzebuth (sic.) and Lucifer - along with a plethora of demons who can be made, begrudgingly, to enact the fiendish whims of a purportedly pious magus.
Within its pages directions for how to undertake these evocations are populated with sometimes simple and other times elaborate activities. If we take what it describes as prescriptions for literal magical operations, rather than elaborate metaphors for some inner alchemical trials, we find an abundance of garters to be made, talismans, engraved precious stones all done at the exact precise hour and spells for all manner of wondrous occurrences.
Somewhere along the way you'll need to sacrifice a ‘virgin kid’ (a juvenile goat not a juvenile child; practitioners might be evil black magicians but they're not monsters!) This goat will be killed with a special knife forged at a special time on a special day, with a special handle inscribed with specific sigils.
Let's stop here and linger for a second. I have some questions. Not to say I agree, but I certainly understand the rationale behind animal sacrifice. Blood letting and sacred killing are recognised world wide by different cultures as powerful acts sacred or transgressive - particularly in pre-Christian biblical times, which present a mythos that informs the Grimoires.
The virginal or purity of the offering, likewise carries a common rationale; an untainted gift that has no corrupted element is singular in its identity. It is a ‘clean signal’.
Consequently, the rationale behind the creation of a sacred tool for the purpose of ritual killing should be likewise clean and pure in its specific purpose. And this example of the specification of a knife drives to the heart of ritual: that our deeds in ritual are different to those outside the ritual, with extra care and deliberation being given to all ritual components being part of the way in which we distinguish the sacred. This is why so many ceremonial items, even when functional, are typically kept apart from the profane, mundane, everyday objects.
That the knife should be forged - though purchase is also permitted - at a special time is further part of the sacralising of the tool. That the knife should be quenched in the blood of specific animals and the juice of specific plants is similarly understandable as a method for consecrating the tools, if a little distasteful to the sacrificially-disinclined. That specific symbols should be carved into the handle seems entirely understandable. Mostly. Kinda. Really… this is the bit I have a problem with!?
Reading the unreadable
Here are the symbols that should appear on a knife for which great and questionable lengths have gone to consecrate. Words carry power… but what indeed is being ‘said’ by these symbols? What is the power they present?
Now, I really would love to hear what people make of these symbols (comment below), but it is the ambiguity here that raises broader points for consideration in ritual development.
Let’s start with ‘What do the symbols mean?’ The grimoire gives us no explanation, merely that they must carved on the handle. This implies it is not necessary for the magus to know what they mean. Perhaps what is important is that the entity confronted by the knife knows what it means? Can goats read? Is it written in the untranslated script of the devils? Or is it like those ‘bad kanji tattoos’ that people think say one thing like ‘strong' man’ but are hilariously revealed to say something else entirely like ‘chunky beef broth’.
Or could these sigils be corrupted versions of symbols that could at one time be ‘read’ by human authors? In such case, do they still ‘work’? How distorted and corrupted can they become and still be effective? One afternoon in the quad at uni, someone genuinely praised me with the startled revelation that they did not know I could write in Arabic. It was a revelation to me also, because I can’t. We were both embarrassed when I revealed my notes were written in English. Thankfully at least I can make a pretty confident guess what my scrawl means. I wonder what they thought my ‘Arabic’ said?
Or are/were these symbols only ever gibberish, born from an unconscious, whose meaning can only ever be thus?
Or are they solely superstitious symbols that look sufficiently mysterious, foreign or magical that we imbue them with belief and bring the placebo effect into play: it works because I believe it works.
If the symbols don't appear elsewhere, to partake of an established language, then are they unique to this tool? How accurate does their rendition need to be to the drawing for them to be effective? Where did the original come from that we can know it to be the most effective and not, itself, a bastardisation of something more precise?
[To be clear I'm not, in this article, trying to actually discern what the buried, corrupted or forgotten meaning of these symbols is here, and notable work has been done on similar matters by better grimoire scholars. Rather, what interests me is the power of the symbols and the relevance of who does and does not understand them within the ritual and what that means for wider consideration of ritual.]
Stipulations of Arte
To call for the knife to be quenched (rapidly cooling the red hot metal through immersion) in variously cat's blood or even more uniquely, mole's blood, has a specificity that plays into the traditions of cats being devilish familiars, and moles being from the chthonic realm, so the are naturally aligned with hellish denizens. Or maybe its all an elaborate metaphor for some inner alchemy. (Actually, here is a great blog post looking at the significance of Moles Blood, the justification of which is outside the scope of my article).
Like the specific translation of the symbols on the handle of the knife, in this article I am, likewise, less interested in the consecratory stipulations themselves as much as what the implications of such stipulations might be for the ritualist:
1: There is a correct way to do things. For the ‘occult sciences’ rules underpin every interaction in the universe, even if you don’t understand them. Making them ‘occult’ or hidden. The upshot of this is that if you get elements wrong the results will vary from those stated in the rite. To this end we must be diligent to adhere even if we do not understand. Through this is a connotation of unknowing on behalf of the ritualist and of mystery on that of the ritual. Further to this is implication of authority and knowing on behalf of the ritual (and its creator) to know and provide access to a thing that might be beyond the ken of the magician.
2: You must be dedicated and obedient to carry out the tasks. Even if they require you to ‘travel left from your house until you reach a ribbon seller’. Are you prepared to do what must be done? If you are not sufficiently prepared to undertake irregular, confusing or plain strange tasks to achieve your desired ends, how much are you really invested in manifesting the apparent results of the ritual? You have to want it, and part of demonstrating that is doing some absurd things. If you want it, you must be obedient to the authority of the ritual.
3: Attention to detail is a powerful focusing tool in ritual, helping marry intent to action. Through submission to the ritual (obedience and adherence), and with attention to detail (diligence), and steely determination (dedication) we ground into the lived experience of ritual the intent that drives us forward.
Even though it is unlikely I’ll ever use the Grimorium Verum as a work book, it certainly informed by teenage occult and ritual development, the connotations it carries and the implications for ritual still ring true. For in point 3 I think there might be some ritual gold, the value of such crosses all different rituals:
Enable your rituals to ask of you Obedience, Dedication, Diligence and your Intent will find its manifestation in the world (without even needing to trouble the infernal realms).
As I write this a different implication arises in mind. One that brings us back to the biblical mythos that underpins the grimoires. If blind obedience to the ritual is really important, then questioning the ritual becomes a way to undermine the presumed authority of the ritual, shaking its capacity to harness your belief in its efficacy. This opens us up to the realm of infernal devilry: to question, to doubt, to undermine. By questioning the ritual, you let the devils over the threshold of your perfect circle. Like the many devils of Cellini in the Colosseum, questions breed questions. And I have so many questions about rituals… I am sooo damned.
Levity aside there are some other really big implications, both metaphorical and literal, about truck with demons but that must wait for another time…
For those that are interested in the True Grimoire, my own teenage romance with it was kindled in the book The Secret Lore of Magic by Idries Shah and rekindled decades later with the magnificent tome from Scarlet Imprint, The True Grimoire by the late Jake Stratton-Kent.
Addendum:
In writing this article I just grabbed the knife from the Grimorium Verum as an example of the many ‘meaningless’ symbols in the Grimoires. Not because I was trying to decipher that particular set of symbols but rather because the grimoire does not feel it necessary to explain them to the magician.
I did however look at those symbols and think ‘they actually just look like G233’. What does this mean? I’ll have a guess (‘Guess’ - another word the symbols look like to my eyes!)…
Well, 233 is the number which in Hebraic Gematria carries the meaning ‘pardon’ ‘forgive’ and ‘atonement’. Three words which might very be appropriate to the pious black magician wanting some absolution for the goat killing. Atonement is already associated in Jewish culture with the Azazel goat, the original scapegoat who carried the sins of the people into the wilderness (and who is also paired with a second goat that is actually sacrificed). So the ‘g’ of G233 could be either ‘g’ for goat, or maybe G for God. Anyway, just thought I'd add that as I didn't find such a reading of the symbols in this manner anywhere else.
It should be said though, and I am inclined to agree with the author, Jake Stratton-Kent asserts that all of the symbols appearing on the different tools are themselves taken from other parts of the grimoire - and certainly we can see something that approximates them around the seal of lucifer. This reading is more internally consistent given the lack of other obvious numbers elsewhere. Such is the labyrinthine joy of occult symbol-diving!
Thanks for reading, let me know what you think of the various subjects traipsed over in this article!