What's in a Medieval Arabic Grimoire

Yes, Grimoires were real things. The word just means "grammar" in medieval French, and its use to designate magical texts is not especially old, dating perhaps to the 1600s. But books of magical instruction are ancient and examples survive from Indonesia to Iceland. If, like me, you try to read them without believing that this stuff is going to work, you will likely find them impenetrably obscure and deathly boring. This may have been intentional; all the famous grimoires have introductions explaining that the books' contents are only for adepts who are intellectually and spiritually prepared for the journey.

But YouTubers who talk about arcane religious topic love them, so I have lately been able to learn a great deal about them in a pleasant way. (I recommend Let's Talk Religion.)  The most influential of the medieval Arabic grimoires was the Shams al Ma'arif, or Sun of Knowledge, supposedly written by the Sufi scholar Ahmad al Buni (died 1225). But it was not written by al Buni, any more than the equally famous Picatrix was written by Aristotle. The actual authors of these texts were not keen to draw attention to themselves.

The Shams al Ma'arif has long been considered a cursed book, dangerous to read or even to own. One of the YouTubers I listened to warned his readers when he was about to quote from it, so that any who feared the curse could skip that section. But I have no fear of weird old books, so let's dive in and see what this book, and other like it, actually say.

The first chapters describe how to construct magic squares, that is, squares of numbers that add up to the same sum in any direction. Really. As I have noted here before, this old trick of arithmetic has some kind of hold on the minds of many people.

Then we move onto astrology. This is the real meat of the work, and if you are not prepared for it you will likely be astonished at how much medieval magic is just about ways to leverage astrology. This focus is ancient; our oldest detailed spell books, in Babylonian, are equally focused on astrology. Astral magic is likely another of the Sumerians' legacies to the later western world.

If you ask, where does the power come from that magicians wield, the basic answer is, from the stars and especially the planets. (Actually it derives from the One, which the Muslims equated with God, from which it emanates through a bunch of levels and powers and thus into the mortal world, but in practice you get it from the heavens.)

You leverage this power through correspondences. That is, you find things that are mystically connected to the power you want to draw on, and construct a chain that binds that power into some object. Like this:

To harness the power of Jupiter, which has a protective and fortunate quality, you construct a magic square. Take the letter associated with Jupiter, Dal, which has the numerical value of four. Make a four by four magic square. Then you write the letter itself, Dal, thirty-five times, which is the numerical value of the letter Dal written out as it is pronounced, Dal-Alif-Lam. You can also write various names of God that include that letter, such as al wadoud, “the Loving.” You then inscribe this talismanic symbol when the Moon is in a good and fortunate mansion in the sky, on a parchment or any other object that you can carry with you or hang over your door. You can also write it out with ink, then dissolve the ink in water and drink it. Thus one has harnessed the power Jupiter by using the infinite thread of correspondences, from the sphere of Jupiter to the letter associated with that sphere to the numerical value of that letter to the names of God that include that letter and so on.

Each of the planets is also associated with a metal (Jupiter is tin), so you could add another correspondence by making your object out of that metal.

Notice the emphasis on the names of God, of course an important theme in Islam. The reason al Buni had this magical text foisted on him is likely that he did write a Sufi text about meditation on the names of God, and this text ascribes semi-magical effects to the names and the letters that make them up. This aspect of relatively orthodox Islam was coopted into the ancient system of astral magic as another sort of correspondence.

If you want to do harmful magic, you can, for example use all these correspondences to bind the power of Mars or Saturn (in an unfavorable aspect) to a doll, which you then torture or maim and bury it near the victim's house, or in a place he will surely walk over. 

If you want a woman to love you, you draw on the power of Venus (in a favorable aspect) and somehow channel that power either into an amulet that you wear, or something that you introduce to the victim, e.g., by burying it where she will walk.

The point is to draw on astral power through correspondences and find some way to direct that power toward the desired beneficiary or victim.

Oh my sagely readers, now that you have entered into the house of those that know, go forth and do magic to make the world better.