History and Later Influence

Phul reached English readers through Robert Turner's 1655 translation of the Arbatel de magia veterum, first printed in Latin at Basel in 1575 and bound by Turner with his own edition of the pseudo Agrippa Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. As the spirit assigned to the Moon, the planet nearest Earth in the classical ordering the Arbatel follows, Phul is often placed last in later summaries of the seven Olympic spirits, closing the sequence that opens with Aratron and Saturn at the far end of that same classical order. His association with healing and with water spirits in visible form gave him a narrower, more specifically medical profile in later popular writing on the Arbatel than the broader promises of wealth, dignity or beauty attached to several of the other six. This atlas keeps Phul and the rest of the Arbatel's seven Olympic spirits as a system distinct from John Dee's Heptarchia Mystica and the Ars Goetia, two other grimoire traditions from a similar period with independent names, structures and manuscript histories.