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The Key of Solomon the King

Clavicula Salomonis  ·  S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers  ·  London, 1888
Both books, the plates, and the appendices. What the system is, how its parts fit, and whose hands it passed through on the way.

How to read this edition

Black — The SourceMathers's 1888 English, abridged. Omissions marked. His spelling and capitalisation left alone.
Gold — The QuestionOur voice is a question, never an answer. Gold marks what is genuinely unsettled.
Numbered notes — DecodingMechanisms explained, names traced, editorial choices identified. Tagged by kind.
Boxed — Competing readingsWhere the text or its history admits more than one honest account.
Reference panelsThe architecture of both books, the planetary clock, the workshop, and the pentacles.
Full-bleed page — InvestigationOn whose book this actually is, and what Mathers did to it on the way through.
Provenance — what we can and cannot say

Solomon did not write this. The Clavicula Salomonis is a family of related manuscripts in Latin, Italian and French, circulating in Europe from roughly the sixteenth century onward, with roots in older Greek and Byzantine magical material. Mathers's 1888 edition is a composite: he worked from seven British Museum manuscripts — chiefly Add. MSS. 10862, Lansdowne 1202 and 1203, Harleian 3981, King's 288 and Sloane 3091 and 1307 — and assembled a single readable text from versions that disagree with one another.Record

He says so openly. His footnotes mark which chapters exist in only one manuscript, which paragraphs are omitted elsewhere, and where the Latin and French diverge. Chapter IX of Book II, the formation of the Circle, survives in Add. MSS. 10862 alone. This is a scholar's apparatus, and it is the most trustworthy thing about the volume.Method

A composite assembled from disagreeing witnesses is a text no practitioner before 1888 ever held. Is Mathers's Key a restoration of the tradition, or a new member of it?Open Question

One caution for citation: the page metadata at sacred-texts.com credits this translation to A. E. Waite. It is Mathers. Waite's Book of Ceremonial Magic is a separate work, and a hostile one — he thought most grimoires were rubbish and said so at length.Correction

Part One · The ArchitectureBoth Books, Mapped
Reference · AForty chapters, two functions

What Is Where

The division is not arbitrary and it is not chronological. Book I is the catalogue of operations — what you can do. Book II is the workshop — what you must make, wear, purify and consecrate before any of it will run. Most readers open Book I and try to work from it. It cannot be worked from alone, and it does not tell you so until you are deep in.

Book I — The Operations 18 chapters

The conditions (I–IV)
IDivine love must precede the knowledge. Fear God, invoke Him, prepare the hours and days. One paragraph, and the whole frame.
IIDays, hours, and the virtues of the planets. The operative clock — see Panel B.
IIIConcerning the Arts. The Master, the five Disciples, who carries what, the washing in running water, the white linen.
IVThe Confession to be made by the Exorcist.
The conjurations (V–VII)
VPrayers and conjurations.
VIStronger and more potent conjuration.
VIIAn extremely powerful conjuration. Three grades of escalating force.
The experiments (VIII–XVII)
VIIIThe medals or pentacles, and how to construct them.
IXThings stolen — recovery.
XInvisibility.
XITo hinder a sportsman from killing any game.
XIIThe magic garters.
XIIIThe magic carpet, for interrogating the Intelligences.
XIVMastery of a treasure possessed by the Spirits.
XVSeeking favour and love.
XVIOperations of mockery, invisibility and deceit.
XVIIExtraordinary experiments and operations.
The close (XVIII)
XVIIIThe Holy Pentacles or Medals — their virtues, metals, colours, and the curse that ends the book.
Plates
I–XIIThe Order of the Pentacles and eleven plates of figures. Forty-four pentacles in all — see Panel D.

Book II — The Workshop 22 chapters

The operator (I–VI)
IUntitled opening.
IIHow the Master should keep, rule and govern himself.
IIIUntitled.
IVFasting, care, and things to be observed.
VThe baths, and how they are arranged.
VIGarments and shoes of the Art. Linen spun by a maiden; a crown of virgin paper.
The place and the tools (VII–IX)
VIIPlaces fit for the experiments. The wooden trumpet, sounded to the four quarters.
VIIIKnife, sword, sickle, poniard, dagger, lance, wand, staff. See Panel C.
IXThe formation of the Circle. The nine-foot cord — see Leaf 2.
The consumables (X–XII)
XIncense, suffumigations, perfumes, odours.
XIThe water and the hyssop.
XIIThe light and the fire.
The working itself (XIII)
XIIIPrecepts of the Art — the nine days, the Exhortation of the Companions, the Emperor's reply, the written petition. See Leaf 1.
The materials (XIV–XXI)
XIVPen, ink and colours.
XVThe pen of the swallow and of the crow.
XVIBlood of the bat, pigeon and other animals.
XVIIVirgin parchment or paper, and its preparation.
XVIIIWax and virgin earth.
XIXThe needle and other iron instruments.
XXThe silken cloth — every consecrated tool wrapped and put away.
XXICharacters, and consecration of the magical book.
The close (XXII)
XXIISacrifices to the Spirits. White animals to good spirits, black to evil; woods matched to planets; food and drink laid outside the Circle.
Appendices
—Ancient Fragment of the Key · The Qabalistical Invocation of Solomon · Plate XV, the Mystical Alphabets.
The book is a loop, not a line

Book I Chapter III tells you to wash and robe "as is rehearsed in Book II," to exorcise the fire "as laid down in the Second Book," and to say prayers "which thou wilt find in Book II." Twelve pages in, the text has already sent you forward eighty pages. The Key cannot be read straight through and worked; it has to be held whole.

Is that structure a failure of arrangement, or a deliberate gate — a book that will not yield to a reader who has not already read all of it?

The arc from first chapter to last

Book I opens by commanding fear of God, adoration, contrition of heart. Book II closes with instructions for animal sacrifice to Demons — white beasts to the good spirits, black to the evil. The same volume, forty chapters apart.

Is that a contradiction the compilers did not notice, a corruption of an originally pious text, or an entirely coherent worldview that we have simply lost the ability to read?

What Book I's experiments are for

Stolen goods, invisibility, spoiling another man's hunt, garters for speed, a carpet that answers questions, buried treasure, love, mockery and deceit. Set beside the lofty framing, the actual catalogue is domestic, petty, and occasionally malicious.