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Conjuring the Planetary Intelligences: A Series of Conjurations found in Sloane 3821
- David Rankine (2018)
“The Planetary Intelligences (or Angels) first appear in Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published in 1531-3, though he drafted it around 1508-9. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) was taught by the extremely important magical Abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), who may have been his source for them. It seems unlikely that Agrippa made up the Planetary Intelligences, but their origins prior to him remain a mystery at present.
From Agrippa onwards, the Planetary Intelligences have usually been associated with talismanic work. The series of conjurations presented in Sloane 3821 (and partially in Sloane 3825) indicate that they were also conjured in the manner of angels and demons. The style of the conjurations is identical in these manuscripts for a variety of other spiritual creatures including archangels, demons, demon princes and Enochian spirits. This suggests a single corpus of work which transcended classifications and worked rather with spiritual creatures as a spectrum of possible non-physical contacts…
…The mention of Euclid of Megara, the “father of geometry” in connection with the kameas or magic number squares is interesting, but not entirely surprising. Euclid was a popular figure amongst Renaissance magicians, with Dr John Dee giving his first public lecture on Euclid and contributing a preface to the first English edition of Euclid’s work in 1570, and Thomas Rudd also publishing Euclid including Dee’s preface. Euclid of Thebes (a separate figure who may have been conflated or confused with Euclid of Megara) was mentioned in the Sworn Book of Honorius as the father of Honorius. This is significant in that the Sworn Book of Honorius is the blueprint grimoire of planetary angelic magic.”
-Eld