What the contents reveal
A shelfmark identifies a physical volume, but the contents show how magical knowledge was actually assembled. Sloane 3825 joins an angelic Janua, a short Egyptian section, and a French Clavicle; Wellcome MS.3203 moves from a Wheel of Wisdom and a reported spirit experiment to ritual objects, hundreds of spirit records, and a divine cabal. Those sequences are arguments made by compilers. They place diagram beside prayer, recipe beside catalogue, and older material beside later interpretation. The articles below follow those internal structures so that a manuscript is more than a date, owner, or storage location.
Four features change across witnesses
Prose, names, numbers, and figures travel at different speeds. A copyist can modernize a sentence while preserving an old seal; an editor can regularize a spirit name while retaining a disputed legion count; a printer can sharpen a circle while moving its words to the wrong compartment. Layout adds another layer because adjacency tells a reader which prayer, table, or suffumigation belongs to an operation. Each close reading separates those features before comparing them. Agreement in one layer does not prove agreement in the others, and a dramatic spelling variant may matter less than one quiet omission from an office or instruction.
A worked comparison: one planetary tradition, two structures
Reg. lat. 1115 preserves an Elucidarius magiae relative of the Heptameron inside a manuscript, while Turner’s 1655 print places the Heptameron among geomancy, ceremonial theory, a classification of spirits, and Arbatel. The weekday framework is recognizable in both contexts, yet it performs a different editorial job. In the manuscript it belongs to one local sequence of folios and figures. In Turner it becomes the procedural center of a printed anthology, translating broad ceremonial ideas into seven timed operations. Comparing the structures explains more than choosing an older date: it shows how the same ritual material could serve a manuscript miscellany and a marketable English system.
More edition histories
Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses: nineteenth-century printings and English editions →
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum: Weyer, Scot, and later Goetia lists →
Book of Soyga: John Dee, manuscripts, and letter tables →
Grimorium Verum: editions, spirits, and related manuscripts →
Grand Grimoire / Dragon Rouge: dates, editions, Lucifuge, and the Black Pullet →
Galdrabók: the Stockholm manuscript, 47 entries, and related Icelandic books →
Lemegeton
- Sloane MS 3648 and the Lesser KeyManuscript · Seventeenth-century witness · British Library · Sloane MS 3648A manuscript witness for the Lemegeton with a catalogue description that needs to be read alongside a critical transcription.
- Sloane MS 3825: A Catalogue ConflictManuscript · Seventeenth-century material; catalogue accession date 1740 · British Library · Sloane MS 3825An often-cited Lesser Key witness whose present library summary and modern edition describe its contents differently.
- Wellcome MS 3203: A Nineteenth-Century Goetia CopyManuscript copy · 1843–1869 catalogue range · Wellcome Collection · MS.3203Henry Dawson Lea’s later compilation preserves a Goetia and Theurgia-Goetia copy within five treatises on magic.
Heptameron
Heptameron and Arbatel
- Robert Turner’s 1655 Magic CollectionPrinted translation · 1655 · Wellcome Collection · 1655 London printingRobert Turner’s 1655 English collection brings pseudo-Agrippa, Heptameron, geomancy, and Arbatel together under one printed title.
- The 1783 Turner Reprint in WellcomePrinted reissue · [1783] in catalogue · Wellcome Collection · EPB/B/10379A later English reissue illustrates why “Turner’s translation” still needs an edition date and copy identifier.