David Rankine

Ars Salomonis: Being of that Hidden Arte of Solomon Rex

By G. St. M. Nottingham

Mercurius Press, 2009, 126pp

This little book is a fine example of the alchemists art! The author has taken and elucidated on the edition of the Key of Solomon produced by MacGregor Mathers in 1889, the only version available to magicians until 2008.  He reproduces all the pentacles from this work, giving the appropriate translation of the associated Psalms, and also the sigils for the spiritual creatures on the pentacles.  This refining of the material immediately transforms the Mathers edition into something more workable.  Sadly Mathers, in his mixing of documents, lost much of the practical flavour of many of the Key of Solomon manuscripts, which can be seen in The Veritable Key of Solomon (Golden Hoard, 2008).  But the author does not stop here, he goes on to provide practical instructions for the consecration and use of the talismans, without which they are inert and useless.    Gary Nottingham is to be congratulated on this work which unlocks the corpus of one of Mathers’ most significant works, and showing how the application of magical principles is the key to success, and even to other keys!

Somebody asked me if I felt learning techniques was important for magical practice.  The answer is obvious if you have ay experience, but for someone who is new to it all, it can be a bit overwhelming, particularly if you don’t know what path you want to follow,and there are so many options presented that it is easy to go into information overload.  My answer was what it has always been – yes, you have to learn the techniques, so they become like second nature.  It is through the discipline you apply to learning them, the experiences that you gain through doing them, and the resulting insights, that you form the firm foundation for your development.  And fortunately there are basic foundation skills which are useful whatever your path, even if they are not formally part of the path you end up on, e.g. meditation, visualisation, breath control.  All of these help you train your mind and strengthen your intent.

Essentially, the practices which form a tradition are the bones, and the philosophies and correspondences which overlay them are the muscles and flesh.  So whichever tradition you end up following, having strong bones will always be beneficial.  The emphasis on practice, as I mentioned in my last blog, leads to an experiential worldview, not one from an armchair, full of books about Mr X or Ms Y.  This practice-based approach was what led Sorita and I to produce our book Wicca Magickal Beginnings.  When we discussed our views, we realised that it was all too easy to accept what you are told and not question, particularly when it comes from people who are authorities.  This is something that you can do even with experience, it is easy and means not having to be constantly vigilant – anyone can be distracted or tired and just agree rather than think, I must verify and validate that!  The level of accepted ‘truth’ about Wicca which has been perpetuated without being questioned enough was quite scary!  The positive response to Wicca Magickal Beginnings from Wiccans around the globe has also shown us that often people want to have all the facts, but it is not always easy to get access to the pertinent material.

So at the end of the day, technique, discipline, and questions, the bane and delight of both students and teachers everywhere!

I was listening to the album The Looks or the Lifestyle by PWEI earlier and thought of how the title was very true for the study of magical traditions.  People can get wrapped up in the techniques and philosophies, and take them on board and use them to transform themselves and their lives (the lifestyle), or they can get wrapped up in the outer trappings, the uniform, as it were, and the  irrelevant (though admittedly often interesting) details about the personalities of the main practitioners of the tradition.  An obvious example of this is the level of fascination (some might say obsession) which is frequently exhibited about the lives of Aleister Crowley or Gerald Gardner.  At the end of the day it should be a case of judge the work, not the artist – unless you are a historian and study the historical impact of a person.

Of course you could argue that you need to understand a person to understand their contribution, and this is true ot a point, but a level of knowledge to provide context is a world apart from excluding positive change through practice by concentrating on where somebody was on a particular day, what they wore or what they ate!  To make a difference we need to act, and to act we need to be effective at what we do.  So the lifestyle wins over the looks every time, as far as I am concerned!

One of the things which jumped out at me amongst the fascinating material in The Book of Treasure Spirits (which I transcribed from Sloane MS 3824) is the use of Goetic spirits for locating and retrieving treasure.  The seventy-two spirits of the Goetia are a fascinating group of spiritual creatures, with some clearly being derived from old gods, some perhaps more obscurely so.  One also has to wonder if some of them were not originally local spirits taken from folklore who became incorporated into the list of spirits.

The spirits were said to be some of those imprisoned by King Solomon, who ironically were released by a fisherman hoping to find treasure in the brazen vessel they had been bound in!  They were certainly not the type of treasure he had in mind!  It is interesting to note that of the nine Goetic spirits mentioned in connection with finding treasure in The Book of Treasure Spirits, five of them are also mentioned in association with treasure in the Goetia.  Thus Andromalius, Asmodai, Barbatos, Seer and Vassago all occur in the Goetia and in Sloane MS3824.  Of course one version of the Goetia was bound into Sloane MS3825, which suggests that the copyist or author of Sloane MS3824 would have had direct access to the material, and would thus have known which spirits to select.

Once again we are left wondering how much material has been lost or destroyed and did not make it through the centuries.  Ceertainly the hints are that there is a lot still missing that awaits discovery, or will perhaps never be found – unless those treasure spirits are called to help!