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On 4/21/07, sheila steinberg <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear Khem,
>
> Thanks for your response. The book was also critiqued by someone in the
> Yeats discussion group, but he tends to be sarcastic, that's why I wanted to
> know what someone in the magical world would say. Here's his critique:
>
> A new translation was published in 2006:
>
> Abraham von Worms.
> The Book of Abramelin: A New Translation.
> Compiled and edited by George Dehn, Translated by Steven Guth.
> Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press, an imprint of Nicolas-Hayes, Inc., 2006.
>
> It is based on two German manuscripts dated 1608. Mathers' translation was
>
> based on a later French translation which is incomplete. The biggest
> difference in this edition is that all the magic squares in the back are
> completely filled in and there is a previously unpublished Book Two, a
> collection of spells for various purposes. These are based on Old
> Testament
> texts, but are otherwise unconnected to the main operation and to the
> magic squares.
>
> This new translation contains a lot of interesting information, but
> doesn't
> really examine the textual issues or the authenticity of the text. It does
>
> not include the German text, except for photographs of a few pages.
> Finally,
> the magic squares are not printed as squares, but written out like this:
> SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, ROTAS.
>
> The editor accepts the book's claim to have been written by a Jew named
> Abraham from the German city of Worms. Yet he also accepts that the book
> was originally composed in German. His proposed explanation, that
> Abraham's
> son might not read Hebrew "because only the learned Jews could read
> Hebrew".
> That might explain why the text is in the vernacular German, but not why
> the
> prayers are--most of which are from the Old Testament. All Jews everywhere
> pray in Hebrew. He asserts that the book was written "during the 14th and
> 15th centuries", but presents no evidence to support such an early date.
>
> The translator, an Australian described on the book jacket as "a gifted
> translator and spiritual healer", makes some very strange decisions, such
> as
> to translate "Herr" (in this context, meaning "Lord") as "Adonai"--which
> in
> the Jewish tradition is used in prayer only. He also used a strange
> procedure: the editor read the German aloud, and the translator freely
> interpreted it, inserting he says his own and the editor's "spiritual
> knowledge". Judging by the appendixes this "spiritual knowledge" is the
> usual
> New Age fare: Rudolf Steiner, Franz Bardon, C.G. Jung. There are few
> footnotes
> and the translation rarely seems hard to understand, which pretty much
> proves that what he gives us conceptually is a 21st century text, not a
> 16th century text.
>
> Still, I was willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt until I came
> across the following in an Appendix:
>
> Yesterday, the day after Anzac Day (Australia's soldiers'
> national memorial day), the meditation group--seven of us--
> met behind the War Memorial at the foothill of Mt. Ainslie.
> Ainslie is a mountain with a kind, loving and caring energy.
> . . . I quickly went into a light meditation, Katherine, my
> wife, sitting five meters to my right, coughed and there
> appeared in front of my meditative eyes a person in a World
> War I soldier's helmet. The face was unclear but ti seemed
> to have been called to the scene by Katherine's barking cough.
> Was it there to give healing? What was it anyway? I projected
> my consciousness into it and to my great surprise suddenly
> found myself in an Australian Camp that was near the Great
> Pyramid in Egypt. . . .
>
> Alas, more astral junketing, more pyramid cliches, more self-delusion.
> Not for nothing did the Golden Dawn teach to challenge spirits and demand
> proof of who they were. Golden Dawn "scryers" would constantly encounter
> visionary "beings" claiming to be higher grade initiates--- Mathers taught
> to ask the apparition for the password and "god-signs" appropriate to the
> grade! (This worked until the scryers reached the highest grade granted
> by the G.D., the T. A. M., and the Order kicked out Mathers.) If you think
>
> you are seeing the ghost of a WW I soldier, ask it its name, rank and
> serial
> number. Then go look it up with the Ministry of Defense [ibid., p. 212].
>
> The Abramelin itself, in Chapter 15 (in both this and Mathers'
> translations)
> explains the demands that should be made upon spirits, how they should be
> forced to swear an oath upon the wand, etc. Indeed, the main point of the
> Abramelin is that spirits must only be called using holy words by a
> magician
> who is holy and under the guidance of his Holy Guardian Angel.
>
> Recently I encountered a guy on a bulletin board who made a big deal out
> of being a US Navy veteran. I asked him what his rating was. He didn't
> know. Wouldn't you think people would be as skeptical about the reality
> of their hallucinations as they are of a person on a bulletin board?
> But it gets worse:
>
> Immediately after that came a view of the passageways inside
> the pyramid that were filled with spirit shapes and energies.
> It quickly came to me that the pyramids were built to draw in
> and keep in a convenient location some of the ghosts that were
> attached to tombs throughout Egypt. The War Memorial, with its
> shrine chamber, has a similar, though perhaps more limited
> function for the Australian nation.
>
> Then came the realization that the Egyptians had a system going
> to turn the dead into their servants. They buried their dead in
> such as way that they remained within the frequency range of the
> living, and so accessible to us--in our physical bodies--to
> perceive and use [ibid, p. 212-213].
>
> Where to begin? This is completely unhistorical and demonstrably false.
> The pyramids evolved from stepped pyramids which evolved from mastaba
> tombs: rather humble affairs clearly intended as tombs. For the Egyptians,
> a person was made up of several parts, none of which exactly corresponds
> to
> our notion of "ghost". The dead did not serve the living, the living
> served
> the dead: special Ka priests made offerings of bread, beer and other foods
> at
> the funerary shrines of anybody whose estate could afford it. The dead
> were
> provided from the Middle Kingdom on with armies of servants: the shabti or
>
> ushabti (meaning: "answerer") figures. These were little statues of
> overseers
> and servants and workmen of all sorts, intended to serve the dead in the
> underworld.
>
> And this stuff about "frequency range" is just laughable: the worst sort
> of
> pseudo-scientific bombast. How many megahertz would that be?
>
> All in all, I was very disappointed. Mathers' translation is more
> scholarly--
> which isn't saying much. Mathers clearly knew more Hebrew than anyone
> involved with this project--which also isn't saying much. And the faux-
> King-James-Version English of his translation is a more suitable vehicle
> for the religious subject matter. It certainly sounds better then
> sentences
> such as the following: "The first master, Rabbi Moses, imagined he was a
> prominent artist in the magical wisdom when with unintelligible words and
> unusual statues he made all the church bells in the town ring."
>
> Nevertheless, magicians will probably buy this book because it contains
> the
> full magic squares (even if inconveniently presented), and for the
> interesting
> spells in Book Two, since there is no other translation of the German
> edition.
>
> What do you think?
> Sheila
>
> On 4/20/07, Khem Caigan <[log in to unmask] > wrote:
> >
> > Sheila Steinberg doth schreibble:
> > >
> > > Someone announced the new and revised edition of The Book of the
> > Sacred
> > > Magic of Abramelin the Mage. I can't find the post, but has anyone
> > read it?
> > > What is your opinion of it?
> >
> > Hi, Sheila ~
> >
> >
> > Although I have heard it referred to as a critical
> > edition of the extant mss., upon reading it is obvious
> > at once that this edition is actually an interpretation,
> > with 'inspired' interpolations from the author-translators
> > throughout and no critical apparatus whatsoever.
> >
> > Cors in Manu Domine,
> >
> >
> > ~ Khem Caigan
> > <[log in to unmask]>
> >
>
>