Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison (Papyri Graecae

Magicae, Picatrix, Munich Handbook)

David Porreca

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, Volume 5, Number 1, Summer 2010,

pp. 17-29 (Article)
Published by University of Pennsylvania Press
DOI: 10.1353/mrw.0.0168

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mrw/summary/v005/5.1.porreca.html

Access provided by University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor (28 Mar 2013 21:47 GMT)

Editors Note: This article and the following one by Julien Verone`se were both originally presented as papers in the session Divine Names and Traditions of Use at the
43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies held at Western Michigan University in May 2008.

Divine Names
A Cross-Cultural Comparison
(Papyri Graecae Magicae, Picatrix, Munich Handbook)
DAV I D P O R R E C A
University of Waterloo

What do these meaningless words mean anyway, and why are the
foreign ones preferred to our own?
Porphyry, letter to Anebo

The celestial and infernal hierarchies have been part of the traditional sources
of potency for ritual practitioners from the very beginning of the Western
magical tradition. The names of angels and/or demons were seen as inherently powerful in themselves. Since ritual magic is, to an extent, illicit religion, the names of supernatural powers employed in magical operations were
often culturally marginal or from the outside, originating from neighboring, alien cultures. The presence of Hebrew and Egyptian divine names in
the Greek Magical Papyri is one manifestation of this trend.
This paper examines the extent to which there was continuity in the transmission of divine names between the ancient Greek corpus of the Greek
An original version of this paper was presented at the 43rd International Congress on
Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 9 May 2008. I am grateful to Tyler
Chamilliard for his assistance in producing the diagram that appears in this paper, to
Joni-Ann Tait for her revision of assorted drafts, and to Steve Brown for the inspiration to write it.
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Summer 2010)
Copyright 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.

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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

Magical Papyri,1 the Latin translation of the Medieval Arabic magical treatise
Picatrix,2 and the late medieval Latin/German text from MS Munich, Bayerischiche Staatsbibliothek, Clm 849, known as the Munich Handbook.3 The
tables and diagram below lay out the raw results of this study. Before highlighting the discoveries themselvesexamples of continuity not only in the
lexemes of divine names, but also in the understanding of the entities behind
the namesa few words are needed to address the methodology of this study.
In order to keep the volume of material under consideration to a manageable size, only three corpora were chosen as sources on which to focus. It
should be noted that a similar examination of other magical compilations
whether that be psuedo-Roger Bacons Thesaurus Necromatiae,4 the pseudoSolominic Ars notoria,5 or the Hebraic magical texts from the Cairo Genizah
collection6 may yield equally interesting results. The choice of sources for
this paper was motivated both by the availability of the material and by the
desire to compare texts originating in different yet related cultures. The Demotic and Coptic spells in the collection of magical papyri assembled by
H. D. Betz were not included in this analysis because their cultural link to
the later Arabic and Latin worlds of Picatrix and the Munich Handbook is
likely to be even more tenuous than that of the Greek material.7 In selecting
the names that appear in Table I below, only those that refer to nonterrestrial
1. Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992).
2. David Pingree, ed., Picatrix: The Latin Version of the Ghayat al-Hakim (London:
Warburg Institute, 1986).
3. Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancers Manual of the Fifteenth Century (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
4. Pseudo-Roger Bacon, De Nigromancia, ed. and trans. Michael-Albion Macdonald (Gillette, N.J.: Heptangle, 1988).
5. Julien Verone`se, LArs notoria au Moyen Age: Introduction et edition critique (Florence: SISMEL Edizioni del Galuzzo, 2007).
6. Gideon Bohak recently completed a survey of the entire corpus of extant fragments of the Genizah collection to identify all those related to magic. He presented
his findings recently at the first Societas Magica conference held at the University of
Waterloo, June 1115, 2008, as a paper entitled Science, Magic and Religion in the
Cairo Genizah.
7. In Betzs collection, the Demotic material is identified by subpunction of the
text, while Coptic writing appears as underlined text. Examples of excluded material
are too numerous to list exhaustively. Here are some representative exclusions: PGM
I.2523, in Betz, 9 (Coptic); PGM III.41820, in Betz, 29 (Coptic); PGM III.633
87, in Betz, 35 (Coptic); PGM IV.76153, in Betz, 3840 (Coptic); PDM xii, in
Betz, 15253 (Demotic); PDM xiv, in Betz, 195251 (Demotic); PDM lxi.1158, in
Betz, 28690 (Demotic); PDM Suppl., in Betz, 32330 (Demotic).

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

beings were included. It is for this reason that names such as Adam, Moses,
Jacob, Abraham, Aaron, and Jesus have been left out, even though all of these
appear in at least two of the texts under consideration under the guise of
divine names being invoked for their magical power.
It should be understood that the list of divine names picked for this study
is a tiny fraction of the whole corpus of thousands of different angels, demons,
and other beings whose supernatural power and influence was sought by the
magical practitioner. Despite the vast differences in time, space, and culture
that separate the three collections under examination, the fact that there is
any overlap at all is remarkable evidence of cultural continuity at some level.
These connections prove that there was a common thread of belief regarding
not only the power of words in magic generally, but of the power of divine
names, and of these divine names in particular.
The task of gleaning individual names from the various corpora of spells
would have been facilitated enormously by the existence of keyword-searchable electronic versions of the three collections examined here. David Pingrees edition of the Latin Picatrix contains a handy alphabetized list of
celestial names and magical words, and Richard Kieckhefer kindly supplied
me with an electronic version of his edition of the Munich Handbook, but
no such systematic compilation is available for the Greek Magical Papyri. As
it is, however, human error and the sins of unintentional omission make
this study an expression of preliminary results, to be built on by the closer
examination of these and other collections of spells.
It is important to be aware of the limitations imposed by the nature of the
surviving material. Several hazards threaten the unwary reader:
1. Variant spellings and the textual artifacts of manuscript copying and transmission can make different names evolve to seem identical or, more frequently, can make a single name vary enough to be mistaken for different
entities. This problem is particularly acute for names derived from Semitic
languages, discussed further below.
2. The problem of variant spellings is exacerbated by the very reliance of
magical practitioners on names from cultures different from their own.
Their ignorance of the spelling of the name in its original language can
only have increased the likelihood of mangled transliterations, making the
study of continuity in divine names more difficult for the modern reader.
3. It can also be a problem to distinguish between the meaningless syllables
included among the voces magicae from the names intended to designate
supernatural beings or to call on their power. Moreover, in some cases
names were either randomly generated, or, as in cabalistic texts, generated

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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

according to defined methods.8 Creativity in the generation of divine

names is particularly remarkable in the use of verba ignota in the Ars notoria.9
4. The problems related to the identification of divine names are compounded by the inherent lack of meaning, for whatever reason, to the
scribe of these portions of spells. Carelessness in the copying and transmission of the texts is the direct result, further exacerbating problem 1.
5. The syncretism and the multilingual cultures from which the magical material emerged leads to multiple possible interpretations of the same name.
Is a mention of Set referring to the Egyptian god equivalent to the
Greek Typhon or is it the Gnostic Seth who is one of the Seven Archons?
The shorter the name, the more acute this problem becomes.
The presence and prominence of foreign or mysterious names in magical
collections is no accident. Indeed, it is their very foreignness that often grants
them the aura of occult power. The magical power associated with foreign
nations and, by extension, foreign names, is a trope common to all three
cultures whose grimoires are examined in this paper. In Apuleius Metamorphoses, the Egyptian priest Zatchlas is called on to resolve the cause of a
mysterious death by summoning the spirit of the deceased and questioning it
by means of his magical powers.10 In al-Kindis De radiis, the author discusses
at length the power of words,11 including that of foreign words, of names
attributed to a higher power, and of the names of God or of spirits or stars
or signs.12 Thomas Aquinas seems to take for granted that verba ignota are an
essential part of the magical procedures he condemns.13 The ars notoria is the
explicit target of his critique. The treatise entitled Ars notoria contains numerous passages where the author invokes the power of names originating from
openly listed ancient foreign tongues: Chaldean, Greek, and Hebrew.14 Belief
8. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken
Books, 1965), 3743.
9. The difficulty in dealing with divine names at the editorial level is addressed
plainly by the editor of the Ars notoria: Nous avons du renoncer . . . pour ne pas
trop alourdir lapparat critique, a` reproduire lensemble des verba mistica proposes par
chacun des manuscrits, Verone`se, Ars notoria, 30.
10. Apuleius, Metamorphoses 2.28.
11. Marie-There`se dAlverny and Francoise Hudry, eds., Al-Kindi: De radiis, in
ge 49 (1974): 139260, at 23350.
Archives dhistoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen A
12. Ibid., 238, 245, 249, respectively.
13. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 2.2.96.1.
14. Verone`se, Ars notoria, 36, 37, 41, 52, 266; ibid., 36, 266; ibid., 30, 36, 52,
266, respectively.

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

in the power of foreign, mysterious, and/or ancient words is therefore a

demonstrably common feature in the magical traditions of Europe and the
Mediterranean from antiquity through the Middle Ages.
This affection for foreign words in magical writings tends to complicate
their study. In the Greek Magical Papyri alone, the list of languages and
cultures is daunting to consider: beyond the Greek, we see sections written
in Demotic and Coptic, Hebrew names and characters, hieroglyphs, Aramaic,
Phoenician, Babylonian, and Persian influences. Picatrix adds Arabic and Indian names to the mix, not to mention Latin spellings of foreign names filtered first through Arabic, and then through the mouths and ears of medieval
Spaniard team-translators.15 By comparison, the Munich Handbook is linguistically straightforward: Latin with some hints of German.
Other scholars have noted the problems involved in cross-linguistic analyses of ancient writings. Gideon Bohak rightly warns scholars of the hazard of
seeing Hebrew, Hebrew everywhere, and not a word makes sense.16 He
points out that a randomly generated word of two or three syllables is likely
to have a parallel in Hebrew. Moreover, nearly every root in the Hebrew and
Aramaic languages can be transformed into an angelic being by adding the
suffix -el; the angel governs whatever the root word refers to. So, any name
that happens to end in -el could be mistaken for an angelic being. The exercise of comparing the divine names from different texts allows one to weed
out the false positives by correlating the presence of the same name across
the centuries. If a name was still worthy of being invoked more than once
after several centuries, some power must have been attributed to it, even if it
had been merely a random collection of syllables originally. Its presence and
use at a later time helps to confirm the angels power and existence, at least
in the mind of the practitioner using the name. The same applies not only to
Hebrew-derived names but to all the voces magicae from the Greek Magical
Papyri, whether they had Greek, Egyptian, or any other etymological root. It
is the subsequent invocation of the same name that, from our contemporary
perspective, unambiguously gives meaning to that name in particular.
This argument leaves open the possibility that the same (or sufficiently
similar) random syllables converged more than once in similar ritual/magical
15. B. Bakhouche, F. Fauquier, and B. Perez-Jean, eds. and trans., PicatrixUn
traite de magie medieval (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 2427.
16. Gideon Bohak, Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere? Notes on the Interpretation
of Voces Magicae, in Prayer, Magic and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World,
ed. S. Noegel, J. Walker, and B. Wheeler (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 6982, at 82.

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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

Diagram I: A Visual Representation of Continuity in the Use of Divine Names

contexts to give an impression of continuity when one is in fact absent. If the

examples of continuity in the use of divine names were isolated and small in
number, the probability of such random convergence in each case would be
great. But, as Table I and Diagram I show, there is a substantial number of
examples in which the same name is invoked in two different cultural contexts some 800 to 1300 years after first appearing in the Greek Magical Papyri. Even if they represent a small proportion of the total population of
angels in the practitioners headspaces, they are sufficient to demonstrate the
continued and perhaps even continuous use of certain names throughout the
time period spanned by the texts under consideration.
So, where does the cultural continuity lie? As the symbols on the left of
Table I indicate, broadly speaking there are five cultural springs for those
divine names that end up having a life beyond their society of origin. By far
the most common source of divine names in all three of the collections examined was the Hebraic tradition (see Table II). This should come as no

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Table I: Continuity in the Use of Divine Names

Legend:
U Hebraic name
V Muslim name

Greco-Roman name
Egyptian name
Persian / Babylonian name

Greek Magical Papyri

?

Picatrix

Munich Handbook

Achalich (IV, ix, 43)

Achalas (p. 245)

Adonai (II.146 et al.)

Aion (I.309 et al.)

Ayn (I, v, 27)

Eon (p. 261)

Ayn (p.344)

Anael (XC.10)

Anael (IV, vii, 23)

Anael (pp. 300, 305, 308,

321, et al.)

Apollo (I.262 et al.)

Adonai (passim)

Apolin (pp. 193, 195)

Araz (III, vii, 27)

Arath (pp. 304, 340)

Araz (p. 269)

Aziel (IV, ix, 53)

Asyel (pp. 22930)

Aziel (XXXVI.174)

Azariel (XXXVI.173)

Azariel (p. 309)

Baroch (XII.156)
Barouch (XLV.2)

Baruch (p. 239)

Braruth (p. 344)
Baruth (pp. 337, 339)

Basym (IV.1377, LXX.3)

Basemm (XIII.147)
Basymm (XIII.593)
Bessyn (XIII.166)
Besen (XIII.478)

Baysyn (p. 261)

Brasym (p. 274)
Byasim (p. 274)

Bel (IV.1030)

Bel (pp. 229, 231, 290,

2934)

Bariz (III, vii, 24)

Berith (pp. 193, 195, 201,

225, 312, 334, 339)
Berich (p. 195)
Berit (p. 330)

Beryenuz (III, x, 9)

Berien (p. 222)

Beryen (pp. 221, 223)

Cabil (IV, ix, 33)

Cebal (p. 287)

Dius (IV, ix, 58)

Dies (p. 330)

Diruez (III, ix, 5)

Dyrus (pp. 334, 339, 340)

Eduz (III, ix, 11)

Edus (p. 319)

23

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

24

Table I (Continued)
Greek Magical Papyri

Picatrix

Munich Handbook

El (XLVII.1)

El (pp. 231, 250, 269, 318,

320, 337, et al.)

Eloai (I.311 et al.)

Heloe (p. 230)

Eloe (pp. 2489, 261, 269,
337, et al.)
Eloy (passim)

Emanouel (XC.5)

Emanuel (pp. 244, 269,

274, 337, et al.)

Foruz (III, ix, 2)

Feruz (III, ix, 12)

Fyrus (p. 340)

Gabriel (pp. 276, 318, et al.)

Gabriel (IV.1815 et al.)

Gabriel (IV, vii, 23)

Helios (passim)

Helyus (III, ix, 15)

Helix (LVII.21)

Heyluz (III, ix, 5)

Horus (passim)

Herus (IV, ix, 58)

Isis (passim)

Kattiel (XXXVI.172)

Captiel (IV, vii, 23)

Castiel (pp. 22930, 328)

Captiel (pp. 300301,
32728)

Michael (IV.1815 et al.)

Michael (IV, vii, 23)

Michael (pp. 276, 318, 332,

et al.)

Mithras (IV.475829)

Mihyraz (III, ix, 13)

Mehyras (IV, ix, 60)

Moloth (VII.500)
Mouloth (IV.1582)

Meloth (p. 268)

On (XIII.171)

On (pp. 248, 269, 274, et

passim)

Orion (CI.28 et al.)

Orion (p. 248)

Osiris (passim)

Usirion (p. 261)

Usyrion (p. 274)

Ouriel (IV.1815)

Uriel (p. 194)

Raphael (X.43 et al.)

Halix (p. 320)

Esyon (p. 269)

Usion (p. 269)
Isiston (p. 289)

Raphael (IV, vii, 23)

Raphael (pp. 276, 318, et

al.)

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Table I (Continued)
Greek Magical Papyri

Picatrix

Roubel (XXXVI.171)

Raubeil (III, vii, 21)

Raubel (IV, ix, 37)
Raubeyl (III, vii, 25)

Sabaoth (passim)

Saoumiel (XXXVI.174)

Sabaoth (passim)

Selene (passim)

Thooth (passim)

Thouriel (IV.1815)

Samuel (IV, vii, 23)

Samael (pp. 298, 301, 303,

308)
Samuel (pp. 308, 318, 321)

Satquiel (IV, vii, 23)

Sacquiel (p. 305)

Sarquiel (pp. 305, 320, 326,
327)
Satquiel (pp. 300, 3023,
308, 320, 328)

Selehe (IV, ix, 35)

Munich Handbook

Tamiz (III, ix, 2)

Tamyz (III, ix, 12)

Tami (p. 212)

Tamy (p. 214)

Tos (IV, ix, 58)

Toz (III, ix, 1; III, ix, 11)
Zahudaz (III, ix, 16)

Toth (p. 287)

Turiel (p. 316)

Table II: Totals for Each Culture

Culture

Number of Divine Names (from Table I) *

Hebraic

2122

Greco-Roman

79

Egyptian

Persian / Babylonian

03

Muslim

unknown

49

* Number ranges reflect the uncertainty of ascribing a cultural origin to certain names

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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

surprise, since it is one of the few cultural traditions to have maintained

itself in a continuous process of evolution throughout the time periods under
consideration. Besides, many of the Jewish names had gained truly widespread currency during the Imperial period, becoming part what has been
called the public domain of Hellenistic religious syncretism.17 Indeed, they
had gained currency well beyond their Jewish origins, being adopted into
Gnostic, Christian, and assorted pagan rites of all kindsif, that is, the Greek
Magical Papyri are anything to go by in terms of their widespread use in the
Hellenized Egyptian pagan community.
As Diagram I illustrates, ancient pagan divinities, such as Mithras, Selene,
and Helios, dominate the overlap between the Greek Magical Papyri and
Picatrix (lobe Y), indicating that the disappearance of these powers was a
slow, progressive evolution rather than an abrupt abandonment as the social
structures of antiquity dissolved around the Mediterranean from the fifth to
the eighth centuries. The geographical factor of Arab communities occupying the entire southern half of the former Roman Empire probably is a contributing factor to the presence of the above three deities. It is therefore
quite likely that the author of Picatrixan eleventh-century Arab writing in
Spainhad the cultural contacts and awareness to include these divinities in
his work. It is also noteworthy that the majority of the uncertain and/or
unknown names fall into the category of overlap between Picatrix and the
Munich Handbook (lobe Z on the diagram), perhaps a product of the tortured translation history of the Latin Picatrix text. The names have been distorted into something different enough from their origins that they remain
unidentifiable. Picatrix is known to have drawn from Persian and Indian
sources, so it is no surprise that the only three possibly Persian or Babylonian
names are part of this category.
Remarkably, four of the more prominent ancient Egyptian deities make
appearances in these later magical compilations, long after the heyday of their
religious prominence in antiquity. Considering the geographical factors outlined above, the surprise would not be so great if all four were part of the
overlap between the Greek Magical Papyri and Picatrix (lobe Y). However,
two are part of lobe X in the diagram, skipping Picatrix entirely. That Isis and
Osiris appear in the Munich Handbook should not be too surprising, as they
were mentioned reasonably frequently by the Latin church fathers, especially
by Saint Augustine in his City of God.18 What is more unusual is that they are
absent from Picatrix while also being present in the Munich Handbook. The
17. Bohak, Hebrew, Hebrew Everywhere, 71.
18. Augustine, De civitate dei 6.10; 8.26; 8.27; 10.11; 18.3; 18.5.

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

study of a broader sample of Arabic magical texts may fill the chronological
gap, as the presence of Thoth in all three collections proves that such cases
do exist. The fact that Thoth goes from ubiquitous in the Greek Magical
Papyri to quite frequent in Picatrix (there are at least four instances) to a single
lonely example highlighted by Richard Kieckhefer in the Munich Handbook
illustrates his relative decline in prominence, but nevertheless reveals the longevity of the power associated with the name.19
The same conclusion applies to Isis and Osiris, who are also mentioned in
the Munich Handbook, albeit more obliquely than Thoth, as their names
appear within longer strings of invoked powers. On one hand, the perceived
antiquity and foreignness of these names were key factors in their continued
use; but on the other hand, it is by no means clear that the author of the
Munich Handbook was aware of either the Egyptianness or even of the
great age of the divine names he was using. The latter possibility is appealing
as it keeps the focus on the efficacy of the names toward the desired result of
the spell. Knowledge of the origins or age of a particular name may have
been a positive sign of erudition, but it was by no means seen as necessary
for any given spell to work.
Now that some examples of continuity have been highlighted, can it be
said that this evidence implies an uninterrupted understanding of the specific
nature and powers of the divine beings to whom the names refer? Not all the
names yield any specific insight, so instead of providing a systematic examination of all the names, a handful of representative examples have been selected
for discussion. Certain names, like Sabaoth, Adonai, and Aion were so ubiquitous in the collections in which they appear that little can be gained from
examining their individual contexts.
In the case of the archangels, Anael, Gabriel, Kattiel/Castiel, Michael, Raphael, and, to a lesser extent, Aziel and Samael, we see substantial consistency
in their use in all three collections (portion W of the diagram). When any
one of them is mentioned, at least one of the others is sure to appear in the
same context. At the very least, the association between these names remained part of the cultural memory for the authors of each of the three
corpora being discussed. These seven angels were linked conceptually with
the seven planets and the seven days of the week, giving them added numerological significance, magical potency, and consequently staying power.
Moreover, only three of them, namely Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, are
biblical, implying that the basis for the continuity spans beyond an awareness
of the Bible.
19. Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 287 and note.

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Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2010

Other less well-connected divine names survived from the Greek Magical
Papyri into Picatrix, but not so far as the Munich Handbook. Significant
examples in this category include Mithras, the Persian god adopted so enthusiastically by the Roman military, who appears twice in Picatrix among lists
of names for invoking the power of Mars, the planet, but also the Roman
god of war. This implies that a hint of cultural memory associating this name
with martial activities appears to have survived. Helios and Selene, deities of
the two brightest celestial objects, also figure in the category of ancient pagan
survivals, but without as much of a conceptual link to their origins. Among
the Egyptian divinities, Horus is mentioned in a list of powers invoked in a
prayer to Saturn in Picatrix. The likelihood of this being a conscious reference
to Horus and not just a coincidence of syllables is increased by the presence of
Thoth, or Toz, in the same list. The occurrence of Thoth himself in Picatrix is
confirmed by external associations in three of the four instances where he is
mentioned. Beyond the example of Horus just cited, he appears associated
with the pseudo-Aristotelian work entitled in Latin Antimaquis,20 which was
also attributed to Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, Hermes being the Hellenized Thoth. Trismegistus himself is explicitly cited elsewhere in Picatrix.21
Thothpronounced approximately tehowti in ancient Egyptian22
corresponds to the angel Zahudaz in Picatrix (pronounced as it would have
been with the Iberian z equivalent to the English th) who is invoked
not coincidentally in an invocation to the planet Mercury. All of these links
can, to an extent, be explained by the geographical factors of Andalousian
Arab cultural connections with the ancient Mediterranean world.
The Book of Consecrations, which forms a significant portion of the material
in the Munich Handbook,23 represents an interesting case, as it contains extensive lists of names that appear only in the Greek Magical Papyri, but not
in Picatrix (lobe X in the diagram). This is not to suggest that the author of
this book had direct access to anything like ancient papyri, but rather that the
roots of the invocations used here seem to go back farther than those in the
rest of the collection in the Munich Handbook. It is acknowledged that the
Book of Consecrations had a wider distribution during the Middle Ages, as
20. Liber Antimaquis, ed. C. Burnett, in Hermetis Trismegisti Astrologica et Divinatoria,
ed. P. Lucentini et al., Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 144c, Hermes
Latinus 4.4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), 177221.
21. Picatrix II, xii, 39.
22. Brian P. Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin
Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 93.
23. Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 25676.

Porreca  Divine Names: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

several independently circulating manuscripts of it are known.24 Evidence for

its peculiarity also comes from the combinations of names employed in the
prayers it contains. These include two of the four Egyptian names uncovered,
Isis and Osiris, as well as the Hebraic Basym, El, Emanuel, and Moloth, and
the Greek On and Aion. The combined presence of all these names, as well
as others that are employed extremely frequently in the Greek Magical Papyri, such as Sabaoth, Tetragrammaton, Adonai, and Sother, hint at the fact
that this collection seems to draw more consistently from a more ancient
tradition of magical invocation than the rest of the material in the Munich
Handbook. The presence of strings of nonsense syllables in this section adds
to its aura of antiquity. This impression should be taken into consideration
and explored more fully in future studies of the Book of Consecrations.
All the examples cited above seem fairly securely identified as divine names
of actual powers who had some distinct identity in the minds of magical
practitioners. There are some, however, who appear to have no such common identity. To highlight one example, the case of Helix/Heyluz/Halix
seems to be the product of a random association of syllables that happens to
have converged in all three of the collections under consideration. The word
is short, is not associated with a known Mediterranean or Near Eastern deity
of any prominence, and is only cited once in each collection, in totally different contexts each time. This combination of factors indicates that we are
probably not dealing with a real case of continuity, but rather an exercise in
probabilistic name-generation.
All of this, of course, does not explain why some of the most commonly
invoked divine names in ancient magicsuch as Abrasax, Erbeth, and Pakerbethseem to disappear entirely from the tradition. With the study of a
broader range of magical collections, a clearer picture will emerge of the
threads of cultural continuity that link the magical practice of three cultures
that were otherwise so different in terms of their public religious affiliations.

24. Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, 8 and note 25.

29