In the first post of this current blog series on the Black Art Books of Cyprian, we discussed the Art and Doctrine of Cyprian, MS 12 NM 40.034: a collection of charms, rites, seals, and sundry operations. Tonight we unlock the shelf-chains to check out the svartkonstbokMS 13 NM 41.652. A singular text, its contents are summarised:

‘Exhortations are presented as those made by St. Cyprian, and call upon the powers of all those biblical and ecclesiastical personages to drive out the four primary Princes of Hell and their minions.’

MS 13 is an exorcism rite for the sick and/or bewitched. Considering this intersection of physical and spiritual dis-eases, the late Dr Johnson notes that, 'as it has the intention of protecting an individual from demonic influence, I have categorized it as a work of healing’; a categorisation and rationale I think concisely sums a necessary mindset for engaging with the exorcisms and healing charms and banishing rites and herbal formularies of these folk magical texts.

The operation itself begins with a brief but extremely illuminating instruction for the administration of the exorcism, which must be accompanied by a bath made in a very particular and thoroughly necromantic fashion.

[Whoever …cousin] then he should go, or another in his stead, to a church yard and ask for permission to take three bones and put them towards the fire, until they become warm, and then throw them into the water and put the bones in the same place, that you took them from, and wash the sick one in the water and recite this […] then with God’s help it will get better.

To reiterate this necromantic methodology: bones are borrowed and taken only with permission, vivified by warming them up to transfer their healing virtue to the water, then are returned; whereupon the prepared bath is used to wash the patient as a prayer is said over them. It should be performed 'early in the new or waning moon’.

Borrowing Bones

What is I think most immediately striking about this rite is that it highlights that borrowing bones to heal does not necessarily only have to be done to transfer disease from the living onto the dead. There is a bone borrowing rite in the black art books examined in this compendium that has an obvious operative basis in such transference, and is worth briefly comparing at this juncture.

MS 3 Es löv #2 [EM 3329 B; “N° 4 Stora katekis”] contains an excellent example of bone transference healing. For 'help for all people’s deformities’, it instructs for a bone to be borrowed from a churchyard in the early morning, and that one should 'dip this bone in the dew, and stroke it upon your injuries’. The short operation’s express transference is explicitly stated in the closing spoken component of the operation, declared when returning the bone: 'put earth over it and say as you throw the earth “Let now my weakness which this bone now owns rot with you in the earth.” The bone of the dead effectuates a transference of the disease from the land of the living to the soil beneath, to decay. It is a rite whose entire process is written out again more concisely in a separate later operation in the same manuscript.

We do not seem to find such a direct transference of malady to the earth and/or dead in our Cyprianic exorcism of MS 13 however. Rather occult virtue is imbued into the cleansing bath. In terms of protocol, permissions are sought and blessings received from the dead of the churchyard to perform the healing. In terms of operation, the bones are heated and their virtue is transferred to the water itself. It is a transference from the dead of sacred ground not to them. The bath itself raises a further crucial similarity shared by these workings. The bones in both operations are quickened through water: a summer morning’s dew in MS 3 and the water of the necromantic bath in MS 13. The dead affect us and are affected by us through moisture.

Our work of healing in MS 13 is of course effectuated by a combination of materia, proper preparation, and incantation. The incantation in question which stirs these waters of the dead begins by praying for God’s mercy before quickly bestowing the operator making the call with the mantle of Cyprian - saint of nigromancy after all - via first person invocation. The opening litany from this assumed mouth of our Good Saint is a veritable anatomy of Christological historiolae:

'I, Cyprian the Eternal worshipper of God, […] Holy birth, by his holy circumcision, by his holy baptism, by his holy miracles and wondrous deeds, by his holy suffering, by his bloody languishing, by those ropes, wherewith Jesus was bound, by the kiss on the cheek that Mattheus gave to Jesus, by the scourging of his back, by those thorns and thongs with which Jesus was scourged, by Jesus’ crown of thorns, by Jesus’ purple robe, by the spear that was stuck up into Christ’s side, by the five wounds, by the 7 (last) words that he spoke on the cross, by the sweat cloth, wherein he was wrapped, by Jesus’ grave, by Jesus’ burial, by Jesus’ resurrection, by Jesus victorious ascension into heaven, by Jesus’ Reign and Lordship at the right hand of the Father, by Jesus’ return to judge the quick and the dead.’

The Exhortation

The Exorcism that makes up the overwhelming majority of MS 13 is first-person Cyprianic, beginning with this opening appeal to the works of Christ. Following this introduction, we begin an extensive litany of invoked ancestors and spirits. Our call to the angels opens with Gabriel followed by that familiar cardinal quartet of archangels Michael, Raphael and Uriel. Appeal to the First Father and Magician Adam leads petition to a cast of Genesis, expanding into calls to the kings of Scripture (starting with David, then Solomon), Christ once more, the prophets, the saints, holy bishops, holy confessors, holy women, and holy virgins.

Having called by these many many names, one exhorts 'you all in the ten thousand regiments of Hell’, and exorcises Lucifer, Belsebub, Belial, and Astaroth and their 'Regements’. These four are referred to as the 'uppermost and principle Princes in Hell’, and description of their domains emerge as they are bound 'that you may not any longer either yourself or by means of some of your servants, harm or hurt’ the patient. A curious ritual geography is explored. Lucifer and his vast retinue are found 'in the lake of death, the pit of fire and the land of shadows’, and 'in mountain and in valley, in forest and the soil, in the air and water’. Belsebub’s warband is located 'in the northern part of Tartarus, in the Earth in Oblivion, in the below’. Belial’s court 'in the South, in Gehenna, in Barratheo’. Astaroth and their deputy-princes lie 'in the west, in Usisge and Lizeronttes’.

Each of these bindings is further emphasised by a ritual naming-and-shaming of specific senior spirits under these four principle Princes of Hell. Agron, Degel, Brisont, Avetzan, and Frischop are singled out in binding the servants of Lucifer. Ragsepedes, Lucermin, Mempes and Averhan are namechecked under Belsebub. Belial’s courtiers include Sersostenes, Slaudiens, Apolexis, and Mesena. Rephorsin, Aequiste, and Parretemene are counted amongst Astaroth’s consorts. Further study of these names is certainly warranted.

The exorcism ends by calling - conjuring in fact - natural phenomena: sun and moon, stars, land and even by the beasts of the land. For me, most immediately there’s at the very least a sense of an expression of life triumphing over disease and death here, of a natural order restored and thriving, and so on. But I leave it to your good selves to consider the meaningful significances of this exorcism’s conclusion yourselves:

'I conjure you by Sun and Moon, by all the shining stars, by the Entire Heavenly Host, by the rainbow, by the snow, by the thunder and lightning, by rain, by darkness […], by the skies, by the Heavens and Stones, by Trees, by mountains, by valleys, by fish in the water, by birds under the heavens, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.’