CHAPTER 16 , Illness, and Spiritual Aids in Natural and Image Magic

Lauri Ockenström

Demonic possession and are discussed in numerous medieval and early modern written sources and have been the subjects of a great number of modern academic investigations. In the stories concerning possession and exorcism the demons are perceived through an ecclesiastical veil: they appear as the ’s obedient servants, who, led by the black archfiend, seduce peo- ple to indulge in vice and trouble them with illnesses, diseases and misfor- tunes. Unfortunate demoniacs were exorcised by Catholic priests, who tried to reserve a monopoly on diagnosing being possessed by a and on nullify- ing the condition. Nevertheless, the never had a total monopoly on the European mindscape. Along with the official of the Church, sev- eral beliefs, practices and traditions concerning demons and spirits survived. For example, the genres of learned magic known today as and rit- ual magic employed spiritual beings extensively. The basic elements of their demonological views derive from Judaeo-Christian traditions, but the perspec- tive is broader and the relationship with the spirits more complex. The histories of divination and ritual magic in particular have been widely studied during the last twenty-five years, and we have an extensive prelimi- nary understanding of the roles of demons in these areas of magic.1 There are, however, other popular fields of medieval learned magic that have not been much explored from the demonological or spiritual point of view. These include genres that have been called natural magic, image magic and Hermetic magic. The boundaries of these categories are anything but clear.

1 For example, Conjuring spirits: Texts and traditions of medieval ritual magic, ed. Claire Fanger. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998. Láng, Benedek. Unlocked Books: Manuscripts of Learned Magic in the Medieval Libraries of Central Europe. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2008. Invoking Angels. Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries. ed. Fanger, Claire. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012. Klaassen, Frank F. The transformations of magic: illicit learned magic in the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004338548_017 292 Ockenström

Natural magic refers usually to a literary tradition of magic that claims to be based solely on natural influences without demonic interventions. Hermetic magic is based on pseudepigraphical texts ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus. The family of Hermetic writings known as Hermetica contains a wide variety of both religious-theoretical and practical texts dating from antiquity down to the Middle Ages. The magical branch of Hermetic writings is included in the practical text known as the technical Hermetica.2 The majority of Hermetic magical treatises belong to the genre of image magic because of their applica- tion of astrological images, and several treatises of natural magic also employ images. In these groups, the role of spirits is substantially less important than in ritual magic, but sometimes, entities called daemones, spirits, angels or souls appear in different functions. Speculum astronomiae, a mid-thirteenth-century compendium of astronomy and , described the ‘abominable books’ (that is, the Hermetic image magic) as follows: ‘One way is abominable—[that] which requires suffumigations and invoca- tion, such as the images of Toz the Greek and Germath the Babylonian, which have stations for the worship of Venus, [and] the images of Balenuz and Hermes, which are exorcized by using the 54 names of the angels, who are said to be sub- servient to the images of the Moon in its orbit, [but] perhaps are instead the names of demons, and seven names are incised on them in the correct order to affect a good thing and in inverse order for a thing one wants to be repelled. They are also suffumigated with the wood of aloe, saffron and balsam for a good purpose; and with galbanum, red sandlewood and resin for an evil purpose. The is certainly not compelled [to act] because of these, but when God per- mits it on account of our own sins, they [the spirits] show themselves as com- pelled to act, in order to deceive men. This is the worst idolatry . . .’3 This quotation illustrates, among other topics, the nature of Hermetic image magic. Formulas combine astral influences, properties of natural substances and images with and holy names of spiritual beings suspected of being demons. This paper explores this still rather obscure field: demons and other spiritual beings in Latin manuals of natural magic and image magic, most of which are labelled Hermetic. Firstly, I seek to illustrate the frequency and the role of spirits in the selected material. Secondly, I explore how the spirits are linked to illness and how this link is related to other demonological

2 Division into theoretical (or philosophical) and technical (magical, alchemical, etc.) Hermetica is based on Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Princeton, NJ, 1993), pp. xxi–xxii, and 1–12. 3 The Speculum astronomiae and its enigma: Astrology, theology, and science in Albertus Magnus and his contemporaries, ed. and trans. Paola Zambelli (Dordrecht, 1992), chapter 11, pp. 240–41.