(Clavicula Salomonis)
http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol.htm
Revised by Joseph H. Peterson,
Copyright © 1999, 2004, 2005. All rights reserved.
Last updated Apr 22, 2022.
(Clavicula Salomonis)
http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/ksol.htm
Revised by Joseph H. Peterson,
Copyright © 1999, 2004, 2005. All rights reserved.
Last updated Apr 22, 2022.
For a new, reformatted edition of Mathers' edition, with new artwork, see:
The Key of Solomon is the most famous and important of all Grimoires, or handbooks of Magic. As A.E. Waite has stated (BCM, pg. 58) "At the head of all, and, within certain limits, the inspiration and the source of all, stands the Key of Solomon. ... Mr. Mathers' presentation of the Key of Solomon, which is still in print, though the work of an uncritical hand, must be held to remove the necessity for entering into a detailed account of the contents of that curious work. ... The Key of Solomon can scarcely be judged accurately in the light of its English version, for the translator, preternaturally regarding it as a highly honourable memorial of lawful magic, has excised as much as possible the Goëtic portions, on the ground that they are interpolations, which is of course arbitrary."
Of course, none of the manuscripts used by Mathers qualify as "ancient";. The earliest reference is 1303-10 in Peter of Abano's Lucidator dubitabilium astronomiae. The oldest ms. known at this point is in Italian, BNF Ital. 1524, dated 1446. It was probably translated from a "copy of the Latin text that was in the library of the Duke Filippo Maria in Pavia in 1426." (Jean-Patrice Boudet, "Magic at Court" in Sophie Page, Catherine Rider, et al., The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, p. 339.) The oldest Latin manuscript (Coxe 25) dates to late 15th century.
