Left: Cover of the most recent translation of The Book of Abramelin, published by Ibis Press and translated by George

Dehn. Photo Courtesy of Georg

Dehn and Ibis Press. Right: Grave of Yaakov ben Moshe Levi Moelin, also known as MaHaRIL, Jewish cemetery Heiliger Sand in Worms, Rhineland-
Palatinate, Germany. Photo by Dietrich Krieger and published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

The Sacred Magic of Boleskine

The Rite that Brought Aleister Crowley to However, there are the hot stories that
hit the press like pancakes on a Sunday
Boleskine House – Part I brunch griddle, and then there is the
sober history of events. The following
INTRODUCTION article intends to explore the latter.
By Keith Readdy
The curious activity of what twentieth– The following essay will take the
century esotericist Aleister Crowley reader on a journey less intense than the
engaged in at Boleskine House is now One only needs to consider the tales of ‘black magic’ and ‘satanic rituals’
the story of legend and remains one of popularity of Hollywood blockbuster so often associated with Boleskine House.
the main reasons for the house’s fame. films or the fantastical television series Instead, I will examine the mystery that
Popular sources ranging from such as Outlander or Game of Thrones to brought Crowley to Boleskine House: a
mainstream media to independent know that escaping reality and engaging dusty old, yet fascinating manuscript
Youtubers often repeat the tales of in make-believe can be an enjoyable known as The Sacred Magic of Abramelin
Crowley’s alleged use of ‘black magic’ pastime for a large percentage of the Mage.
and ‘the dark arts’ at Boleskine House, the populace.
perpetuating the estate’s reputation as a Indeed, even embellished recountings MAGIC AND THE WESTERN
haunted and ghastly ‘house of sin.’ of events surrounding Aleister Crowley’s RELIGIOUS TRADITION
Some sources have even held that life have more recently hit prime time Contrary to what is commonly
Crowley was responsible for opening television with CBS’ Strange Angel, known outside of niche scholarship
a portal to hell and allowing strange giving the viewer a sensationalised on religion, ‘magic’ was a standard
creatures to be unleashed upon depiction of Crowley’s movement in practice in the Western world up until
Inverness-shire, including the Loch 1940s California with the involvement at least the Reformation period
Ness monster!1 of jet propulsion engineer Jack Parsons. (c. 1500 CE).

1 See for example Nick Redfern, Nessie: Exploring the Supernatural Origins of the Loch Ness Monster (Woodbury: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2016).

14 Boleskine – The Journal of the Boleskine House Foundation

 Even within the Christian tradition, practitioners of witchcraft, but it was been the subject of some debate in
relics, amulets and talismans were believed rather a common method employed by scholarship. A number of manuscripts
to hold pervasive supernatural power. As much of the populace. The ‘sacred magic exist, the two oldest known to be in
Keith Thomas has noted in his Religion of Abramelin’ (hereafter referred to as the German from the Library of Duke
and the Decline of Magic: ‘Abramelin work’ or the ‘Abramelin August in Wolfenbüttel, Germany and
operation’) of which Aleister Crowley dated 1608.5 The full title of the text in
Nearly every primitive religion is came to Boleskine House to perform, English is The Book of the Sacred Magic
regarded by its adherents as a medium is one of many examples of a magical of Abra-melin the Mage as delivered by
for obtaining supernatural power. This grimoire that emerged out of the Judeo- Abraham the Jew unto his son Lamech,
does not prevent it from functioning as Christian world. A.D. 1458.6 The work appears to be
a system of explanation, a source of The manuscript describing the written in a semi–epistolary fashion from
moral injunctions, a symbol of social Abramelin work, which we will explore a supposed learned Jew named Abraham
order, or a route to immortality; but it very shortly can be understood to fit to his son, Lamech in the year 1458, CE.
does mean that it also offers the within this Judeo-Christian Western Consisting of four parts, the
prospect of a supernatural means of magical tradition. manuscript details Abaraham’s journeys
control of man’s earthly environment. Its instructions to summon and through Egypt, where he was taught by
The history of early Christianity offers constrain lesser spirits in order to a wise mage various methods of magic.
no exception to this rule. Conversions commune with God, for example fit For example, the book outlines an
to the new religion, whether in the time well into late medieval and early extensive collection of what may be
of the primitive Church or under the Renaissance grimoires that preceded it. considered folk tradition in Jewish
auspices of the missionaries of more Such ‘ceremonial magic’ is typified in culture during this time of the late–
recent times, have frequently been the books attributed to King Solomon medieval period, with a number of
assisted by the view of converts that such as the Ars Notoria (‘Notary Art’), recipes from the mixed Kabbalah
they are acquiring not just a means of a fifteenth–century manuscript for healing.
other-worldly salvation, but a new concerned with obtaining knowledge There are also the addition of word
and more powerful magic. Just as the of God through a systematic method squares, in the form of ‘magic squares’
Hebrew priests of the Old Testament of invoking angels, mystical figures that give various names of spirits that,
endeavoured to confound the and using magical prayers.4 upon inspection were clearly derived
devotees of Baal by challenging them There are many other manuscripts from Hebrew names.
publicly to perform supernatural acts, from this period similarly associated What makes this text the tale of
so the Apostles of the early Church with what was known as ‘Solomonic legend is part three, or ‘Book Three,’
attracted followers by working magic,’ attributed of course to the which outlines a detailed mystical
miracles and performing wisdom of King Solomon in the Bible. methodology of self-initiation by which
supernatural cures.2 These works, particularly the Ars the practitioner comes to witness
Notoria describes practices very conversation with the guardian angel.
Indeed, magical garments, trinkets, similar to that of the Abramelin It is this aspect of the text that has
jewellery, words, gestures and inscriptions work. This is no surprise, as these intrigued esotericists throughout the
were entrenched within the Catholic manuscripts emerged during similar nineteenth– and twentieth–centuries.
Christian world. periods of history, and therefore should According to the contents of the
In fact, it was one of the many be considered within the same milieu manuscript itself, this work appears to
explanations given by the supporters of Renaissance theurgical literature. originate from within a mystical Jewish
of the Protestant Reformation for the current around the late–fourteenth –
corruption of the Catholic Church.3 In ABRAHAM OF WORMS or early-fifteenth century. Scholars
short, magic was part of the Western The manuscript that has come to be however have disputed this, arguing that
religious tradition all the way up to the known as The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the work is most likely not of Jewish
early modern period. It was not at all the Mage has its own uniquely mysterious provenance and was simply a Christian
reserved for ‘devil-worshipers’ and story, and its origins and authorship have forgery authored in the sixteenth or

2 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth– and Seventeenth–Century England (London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1973), 27.
3 See for example Wouter Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 77–152.
Hanegraaff notes that one of many ways the anti-apologists removed Catholicism from rational discourse in the modern era was by connecting it with its pagan,
“superstitious” roots.
4 A thorough discussion on Ars Notoria can be found in Julien Véronèse (trans. Claire Fanger), “Magic, Theurgy and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars
Notoria,” in Claire Fanger (ed.) Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 2012), 37–78
5 Georg Dehn (ed.), The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation, by Abraham von Worms, translated from German by Steven Guth (Lake Worth: Ibis Press, 2006), xxiii.
6 From the English translation from French in 1898 by Samuel Mathers and published by John M. Watkins, London.

Issue 2 – June 2020 15

seventeenth centuries.7 However, Georg period, and may have been none other Dawn. Although never officially placed
Dehn has recently noted that in his long than the Jewish intellectual of this within its curriculum of teaching, the
quest in verifying the supposed period, Rabbi Jacob ben Moses ha Levi Abramelin work became an important
historical person attributed to the work’s Möllin, also known as the MaHaRIL concept within the Golden Dawn. There
authorship, ‘Abraham of Worms,’ that (c. 1365–1427).9 will be more on this later, however we will
there is reason to believe that such an The manuscript itself was first first need to describe in further detail the
individual existed. Around the time the made popular by Samuel ‘MacGregor’ fascinating subject in the work regarding
text was written, ‘Europe was ravaged by Mathers, when in 1898 he translated it into the Holy Guardian Angel.
the Great Plague, which was blamed on English from an anonymous French
the Jews. The parents of Abraham were version he found in the Bibliothèque de The Sacred Magic of Boleskine continues
among the few who survived the plague l’Arsenal in Paris.10 The Sacred Magic of in the next edition of ‘Boleskine –
and the subsequent pogrom against the Abra-melin the Mage was one of many The Journal of the Boleskine House
Jews.’8 Dehn has argued with fairly esoteric texts that Mathers would translate Foundation’, which will be out in
convincing evidence that Abraham of and place into the repository of literature December 2020.
Worms did in fact exist around this time for the Hermetic Order of the Golden

7 See for example §543 in Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebräischen Übersetzungen des mittelalters und die Juden als dolmetscher (Berlin: Kommissions Verlag des
Bibliographischen bureaus, 1893). More recently, Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead: Basic Concepts in the Kabbalah, Joachim Neugroschel
(trans.) (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 314, n. 24, originally published in German in 1962 by Rhein–Verlag AG, Zurich.
8 Dehn (2006), xxii.
9 Ibid., xxiii. Very little biographical research is available about Möllin, but Dehn provides an excellent outline on pages 221–228. The reader may also wish to
consult Isidore Singer, Eduard Neumann, Gotthard Deutsch, Max Schloessinger, “Jacob ben Moses Mölln (MaHaRIL),” in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive
Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, Volume 8 (New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1906), 652.
10 Its French title being, La sacrée magie que Dieu donna à Moyse Aaron David Salomon et d’autres saints patriarches et prophètes, qui enseigne la vraye sapience
divine, laissée par Abraham à son fils, traduite de l’hebreu.

Boleskine House Foundation receives positive

coverage in local media
One of the aims of the Boleskine House
Foundation – since the house and land
were originally purchased by Kyra and
Keith last year – was to gain positive
feedback from the local community
around Foyers and Inverness.
Whenever we’ve visited local
businesses, we’ve put our point across to
locals who want to know more about the
house and the work we’re doing. So far
we’ve received very favourable feedback
– especially when they find out that Screenshots from The Press and Journal and Inverness Courier websites
something positive is being done to
restore the house and lands to their All of this is greatly helped by the (which, considering the house’s
former glory. coverage the foundation’s work has history is rather a nice coincidence).
Most people we’ve spoken to are received in both the Inverness Courier Thankfully, the local coverage is a
aware of the house and former owners and The Press and Journal (Highland stark contrast to that received in the
and they want to want to see the Edition) newspapers. Tabloid press when Kyra and Keith
foundation being successful in its aims, The recent eBay sale of charred bought the house and land last year,
as they know there’ll be a positive effect remains of the building received with tales of ‘the lair of drug addled
on the local economy with people favourable coverage in the Inverness sex mad occultist, Aleister Crowley’
visiting the house and surrounding area. Courier, written by Alasdair Fraser and so on. Long may it continue. JM

16 Boleskine – The Journal of the Boleskine House Foundation

Sir William Blake Richmond KCB, RA, PPRBSA: The Guardian Angel. Oil on canvas.

The Sacred Magic of Boleskine

The Rite that Brought Aleister Crowley to
Boleskine House – Part 2
Esotericists and scholars of religious By Keith Readdy western religious tradition, particularly
manuscripts have been intrigued for the within esoteric literature.
last two centuries by The Book of experience called the ‘conversation with More generally, Part III of The Book of
Abramelin primarily for the central the guardian angel.’ Abramelin fits within a type of literature
ceremonies outlined in Part III of the The phrase ‘guardian angel’ brings to that stems from pre-Christian antiquity
text. This part describes a very elaborate the western mind images of a benevolent concerning what is typically referred
yet ascetic exercise that includes guardian angel wearing white garments to as ‘theurgy.’ In this next instalment of
embellished medieval-style conjurations with magnificent wings and whose The Sacred Magic of Boleskine I will
of angels and spirits for protective purpose is to look after and protect the therefore provide some historical context
measures and meticulous instructions religiously pious. from which the intellectual tradition
for daily chaste prayers and invocations. However, the guardian angel as a of The Book of Abramelin is rooted by
This practice, which lasts for six months, topic of interest in The Book of highlighting the tradition known
culminates in a peculiar mystical Abramelin has a complex history in the as ‘theurgy.’

Issue 3 – December 2020 13

NEOPLATONISM THEURGY The debate on whether theurgy was
A great deal of the religious literature from With regard to the practices outlined in a ‘low’ magic or a ritual of spiritual
the medieval and Renaissance western The Book of Abramelin, it is relevant here to contemplation aimed to ascend the soul
world is, like The Book of Abramelin, discuss one of the foundational precepts of towards God cannot be explored in depth
situated within a Judeo-Christian Neoplatonic thought – theurgy.3 Many here. What is important for this
construct, yet its roots can be found in various interpretations of theurgy have discussion is to note that it is within these
earlier religious currents that flourished been offered by scholars, and it has proven late-antique and early medieval writings
in antiquity, deriving for example from to be a perplexing topic as Sarah Johnston on the theories and practices of theurgy
cultures in ancient Greece, Hellenistic has noted. that we can trace the developments of the
Egypt, and the Roman Republic. One of concept of the guardian angel.
these dominant intellectual trends of this Much of the uncertainty concerning
pre-Christian (i.e., ‘pagan’) period of theurgy centers on the following ARS NOTORIA
western civilization is known to historians interrelated issues: how does theurgy It would be amiss to exclude
as Neoplatonism.1 compare with magic (i.e., γοητεία ) commenting on the Ars notoria, a text
Although it preceded Christianity by and, on the other hand, with already earlier mentioned and which is a
a good century, Neoplatonism became so philosophical or intellectual means of clear example of medieval theurgy. The
widespread amidst the intelligentsia and obtaining salvation? Should it be earliest manuscripts of this text date
the learned scholarship of the period that thought of, on the one hand, as from the thirteenth–century or quite
its philosophy later became infused with ‘white’ or beneficent magic, or, on the possibly the middle of the twelfth–
Christian and Jewish discourse in the other hand, as a method of causing century and the text was reproduced
early centuries of the common era, the soul’s ascension and unification throughout the fourteenth– and
persisting well into the medieval period. with the divine through ritual rather fifteenth–centuries. The Ars notoria
Many early Christian writers in fact than through spiritual clearly consist of the same theurgical
drew from the mystical philosophies of contemplation?4 content that is found in The Book of
Neoplatonism in order to support their Abramelin. Both texts describe elaborate
arguments for Christian theology and Is theurgy simply the ritual practices rituals and prayers and outline highly
the validity of Christian doctrine.2 of ‘magic,’ operating on the things in the involved preparations that take several
Still, many church fathers that world of matter? Early Christian critics months to complete, all for the end goal
followed these early Christian thinkers such as that of the Bishop of Hippo, St. of experiencing a unification (i.e.,
also believed that Neoplatonism Augustine, seemed to think so. theurgy) with God.7 Yet the Ars notoria
threatened Christian doctrines because Augustine condemned theurgy as the was authored at least two centuries
it was heavily steeped in pagan religious work of demons which led the soul away before The Book of Abramelin.
beliefs, and so its pervasiveness and from the worship of God.5 The Ars notoria, like similar texts that
perceived influence on Christianity Yet a near contemporary to follow it such as Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel
in the medieval and Renaissance Augustine, the early Christian writer and Lemegeton, is attributed to the
periods brought them a great deal Pseudo–Dionysius the Areopagite wisdom of the biblical King Solomon, and
of alarmed concern. described theurgy as the ‘consummation has therefore often been referred to as
of theology.’6 ‘Solomonic magic.’8 What is interesting

1 As its etymology suggests, Neoplatonism refers to a movement that derives originally from the works of Plato. Although Plato’s works are considered today to be the
ancient arbiter of the secular academic discipline we know as ‘philosophy,’ his work also fed into a prevalent religious trend around the turn of the common era that
historians refer to as Neoplatonism.
2 Christianity was new to the world stage by the second-century C.E., and many early Christian works were dominated by apologetics attempting to assert the relevance
of their newly established doctrines, especially amidst criticisms by intellectuals in the Greek and Hellenistic cultures whose philosophies and traditions were
well-rooted. See Arthur Droge, Homer or Moses? Early Christina Interpretations of the History of Culture (Tübigen: Mohr, 1989), 9.
3 The most authoritative source on theurgy from the late-antique period is Iamblichus in his work, De Mysteriis, trans. Emma Clarke (Atlanta: Society for Biblical
Literature, 2003). A good contemporary introduction to the theurgy of Iamblichus is in Gregory Shaw, “Theurgy: Rituals of Unification in the Neoplatonism of
Iamblichus,” in Traditio, Vol. 41 (1985), pp. 1-28.
4 Sarah Illes Johnston, Hekate Soteira (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 77. This uncertainty prompted scholars to differentiate between ‘lower’ forms of theurgy (i.e., magic
acting upon the things of the world) and ‘higher’ theurgy (concerned with the soul’s ascent towards the divine). See for example L. Rosan, The Philosophy of Proclus
(New York, 1949). In A. Smith, Porphyry’s Place in the Neoplatonic Tradition (The Hague, 1974), these distinctions were redefined to include ‘horizontal’ theurgy and
‘vertical’ theurgy.
5 Augustine, De civitate Dei, X:10.
6 Ecclesiastical Hierarchy 436C. Cf. Paul Rorem, Pseudo–Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993), 101.
7 See Julien Véronèse, “Magic, Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars notoria,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices Thirteenth to
Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Claire Fanger (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).

14 Boleskine – The Journal of the Boleskine House Foundation

about the Ars notoria, being written at a of the Ars notoria that may have ensured Levi Moelin.11 In short, the Ars notoria
time when earlier neoplatonic movements its persistence in the medieval period as as a magical, theurgical and mystical
and Jewish and Christian traditions had its study attracted the literate elite. Over Christian text is a clear precept to the
by then crossed many overlapping paths, fifty manuscripts exist in various content we see in The Book of Abramelin.
is that its exact origins are elusive. libraries spread across Western Europe Is The Book of Abramelin then a work
Julien Véronèse comments on its and the United States. It is, as Claire of theurgy? Certainly it shares similar
mixture of theurgic elements and Fanger has argued, a testament that characteristics with its summoning of
Christian devotional practice: magical grimoires from this period are angels and spirits and its devotional
not, as popularly understood, exercises intended to ascend to the
[What is] the real nature of the ars insignificant manuscripts of a deviant heavens. The theme of theurgy will return
notoria: should it be thought of sub–culture existing at the peripheral again once we trace in more detail the
simply as a ‘magical’ art?’ Or might it edges of society. concept of the guardian angel. In the next
still be possible to relate it [...] to late Their study and practice was in fact part, I will look closer at this particularly
antique Hellenistic theurgic practices not a marginal niche in Medieval through the writings of the Neoplatonist,
which were reintroduced to the west Europe; rather ritual magic was in fact Iamblichus and a not-so-distant
in the twelfth century via the part of the learned scholarship of the contemporary to Abraham of Worms, the
Byzantine, Hebrew or Arab worlds? day, a milieu of monks, doctors and ‘author–magician’ sixteenth–century
Or again, might it be related to the clerics of learned society. It is in this hermit of Majorca, Pelagius.
devotional practices more consistent similar vein of learned scholarship that
with Christian orthodoxy evident The Book of Abramelin was also
among mystics? Just how far can we authored. The reader will recall that
travel down each of these paths?9 Abraham of Worms may have been the
Indeed, it is this cosmopolitan theme Talmudist scholar Yaakov ben Moshe

8 Lynn Thorndike, an early scholar on these manuscripts pointed out, “It was only natural that Solomon, regarded as the wisest Solomon man in the history of the world,
should be represented [as a] magician in [the] oriental tradition as the worker of many marvels and that in the course of time books of magic should be attributed to
him [...]” See Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923), 279.
9 Véronèse (2012), 37.
10 See Claire Fanger, “Medieval Ritual Magic : What it is and why we need to know more about it,” in Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic
(University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press , xi.
11 While the identity of Abraham von Worms with Moelin has been debated, Abraham as the author of The Book of Abramelin nonetheless describes himself as a
learned Jewish scholar.

Pseudo–Dionysius the Areopagite, late fourth–early fifth–century

Illustration from the Ars notoria, The First Note of Grammar, Neoplatonist, theurgist and early Christian church father, portrait by
Biblioteca Nazionale, Turin. MS E.V. 13, f. 1. André Thevet (1584).

Issue 3 – December 2020 15