I was gratified by the number of public and private emails and enquiries I have received since my blog about the fairies and grimoires. A number of people have asked for more information about my sources, and I am happy to oblige so that people can go direct to the texts with the material in. As I mentioned, conjurations of the fairy king Oberion and the Seven Sisters who are part of the fairy court are to be found in Sloane MS 3824, which I transcribed and made available in The Book of Treasure Spirits. However some of the material describing types of fairies, including Robin Goodfellows and knockers, is found in Sloane MS 3825. This latter manuscript, also from the mid seventeenth century, was written in the same hand, and from the headings it is clear they were once par tof the same document.
Part of Sloane MS 3825 was published by Golden Hoard as The Keys to the Gateway of Magic. I say part because half of the MS is a copy of the Lemegeton written in a different hand which has been bound with it. As well as giving a lot of interesting lore about types of fairies, Sloane MS 3825 also contains details of the celestial hierarchies, showing, e.g., how the Enochian angels fit in with the other classical orders of angels. It is an amazing piece of work, and draws attention to the fact that a number of these old works included such sections of old lore that would otherwise have been lost.
When we look at the work of people like Scot, Agrippa and Paracelsus, we must remember that these men were largely responsible for shaping modern magic through preserving older ideas and knowledge, standing at the crossroads between the disappearing wisdom of the ancient world and the industrial age.
