Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

A Compilation and the Machinery It Describes

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
A Compilation and the Machinery It Describes

La Science Cabalistique, published in 1823, sets out a procedure for producing the names and seals of angelic intelligences. The names are generated from Hebrew letters according to fixed rules and distributed among the planets and the divisions of the zodiac; the seals are drawn by tracing the numerical values of a name across the magic square associated with the relevant planet, so that a figure emerges from the path the pen takes between the numbered cells. The result is a complete apparatus: a spirit for every division of time and heaven, a name, a sigil and a set of attributions.

None of it is new with him. The technique of deriving sigils from planetary squares, the tables of correspondences, the division of the zodiac and the derivation of angelic names from combinations of scriptural letters are all set out in Renaissance sources, above all in the compendium of occult philosophy compiled under the name of Agrippa, and behind those lie medieval Jewish and Latin materials. What the book supplies is a single, orderly, French language presentation of a body of material that was otherwise scattered across Latin folios and manuscripts.

The planetary squares deserve a note of their own. Each planet is assigned a square of numbers, from a three by three square for Saturn up to a nine by nine for the moon, in which every row and column adds to the same total. These are genuine mathematical objects with a long history in Arabic and earlier sources, studied for their own sake. Attaching them to planets and using them as a grid on which to draw a sigil is a later application laid over that mathematics, and the two should not be confused.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.