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completely filled in and there is a previously unpublished Book Two, a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
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