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2 scholastic image magic before 1500 The idea of magic is inextricably bound up with the issue of representation in spoken words, visual signs, or physical gestures. In the sense that magical practices employ representations or apparent representations—and even divination may be said to enact the process of fate to predict a future event—all magic is image magic. Although pictorial representations ranging from written charms to necromantic circles appear in almost all late medieval magical practices, our discussion will be limited to a relatively specific library of magic texts that developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their coherence as a group derives in part from their shared intellectual and cultural roots and their claim to operate within an astrological framework. Yet what unites this set of texts is not so much the precise details of the magical operations they contain, which can vary a great deal, but rather something that may be detected in how they were copied and transmitted: the way their scribes and collectors framed, understood, and analyzed them. These texts were regarded as potentially legitimate forms of magic according to philosophical and astrological standards; they were treated as texts in the genre of naturalia; and they were understood to belong to a certain kind of Scholastic debate or discussion . In this way they form a coherent library quite distinct from the collections of ritual magic discussed in the second part of this study, despite the fact that these collections also contained astrological images. The Manuscripts A typical example of image magic from the Liber lune, a text of Arabic origin, runs as follows. It is preceded by chapters outlining the nature of the apothecary’s dilemma 34 the twenty-eight mansions of the moon, suffumigations, and the names of planetary spirits: Said Belenus: Let an image be made in the first hour of the day to bind men so that, once it has been made, they may not say anything else concerning him, not even one bad word, ever. Accordingly, let an image be cast, of which half is of silver and the other half tin, to the measure of four palms, and in the likeness of him for whom you make it, and in the first hour of the day. Let the name of the lord of the image be carved on its head and on the chest the name of the lady of the first hour of the one for whose days it is made. Let there be written on the belly the name of the lord of the image; and those are the names of suffumigation with aloe and sandalwood. And wrap [it] in white and clean cloth. Afterwards, bury it in his doorway. And it is a binding prepared to bind all tongues.1 The reasons for referring to this genre as astrological image magic will be immediately apparent. The Liber lune concerns images that relate to the twenty-eight mansions of the moon; the images must be made in a particular hour of the day; and the names employed relate to astrological spirits or times. It should also be noted that specific metals are to be employed. Al-Kindī could certainly have regarded this as entirely natural. For a Latin interpreter, although the use of suffumigations might be deemed dubious, the rest might be acceptable. And, as we have seen, the idea that particular metals had powers that somehow derived from the heavens enjoyed a very wide level of acceptance. The next example is drawn from a work attributed to Thetel concerning images to be carved on stones. Here is the first sentence of the two-sentence prologue and the first image: This is the most precious book of sigils, great and secret, of Cethel which the sons of Israel made in the desert after [their] departure from Egypt, according to the movements and courses of the stars. . . . If you should find sculpted in a stone a man seated above a plough, long bearded and with a curved neck, having four men lying in/on [his?] neck, and holding in [his] hands a fox and turtle-dove, this sigil, hung about the neck, has power for all plantings and for the discoveries of treasures. This is the artifice of it. Let him take pure undyed black wool, just as nature has produced it, and make from it a pillow which should be filled with wheat chaff, and a cushion similarly, which may be placed on top of the pillow...

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