Grimorium Verum: Editions, Spirits, and the Goetia

Grimorium Verum, the “True Grimoire,” survives as a short French printed book with a dramatic Solomonic title, a Memphis imprint dated 1517, and a named spirit hierarchy. The surviving book and related manuscripts frame this account instead of a verified origin story taken from the title page.

1517Date claimed by the Alibeck printc. 1709Wellcome MS.983, related French witness[1817]Supplied date in a BL description quoted by Peterson

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The evidence at a glance

A 69-page British Library copy can be read through the Google Books scan. Its title attributes the work to Solomonic keys, calls Plaingière its translator from Hebrew, names Alibeck the Egyptian, and gives Memphis, 1517. Each assertion belongs to the printed title. Peterson’s edition quotes a British Library description that retains the 1517 imprint and supplies [1817] in brackets. The two numbers must not be silently substituted for one another: one belongs to the print’s presentation, while the other is a later cataloguing judgment reported through an editor.

Witness	What is documented	What it cannot prove alone
Alibeck print, BL 8632.aa.5	Printed Memphis, 1517 claim; 69-page copy	Actual publication in Memphis in 1517
British Library description quoted by Peterson	Supplied date shown as [1817]	An exact first composition date
Wellcome MS.983	Related French pseudo-Solomonic manuscript, c. 1709	Identity with the later Alibeck print
Wellcome MS.4667	French Solomonic manuscript milieu, mid-eighteenth century	A direct Verum copy or ancestor

Wellcome’s L’art Magique MS.983 is catalogued to about 1709 and contains a related pseudo-Solomonic grimoire along with other tracts. It preserves an earlier French manuscript setting in a distinct physical object. Wellcome MS.4667 records more French Solomonic material from the mid-eighteenth century. Neither catalogue calls its item an Alibeck printing. The image below gives this older manuscript family a material presence while preserving that distinction.

Coloured title leaf of the earlier related L’art Magique manuscript, Wellcome MS.983 — **An earlier related manuscript**This coloured title leaf belongs to *L’art Magique*, Wellcome MS.983, catalogued c. 1709. It is not a page of the Alibeck *Grimorium Verum* print. Credit: L’art Magique. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection. View the record and reuse terms ↗

Three views of the surviving tradition

The edition-history article separates the claimed 1517 imprint from the supplied later date. The structure guide traces the book’s three-part promise, major spirit names, Syrach group, and restored seals. The comparison guide sets Grimorium Verum beside the Ars Goetia without combining their lists. Modern edited translations and redrawn figures add later editorial layers.

A printed assertion, an institutional manuscript description, and a modern comparative edition preserve different kinds of evidence. Seals and spirit names can change between witnesses, and an online image may derive from a different version than its surrounding text. The lists look definitive only until the surviving witnesses are set beside one another.

Source records

Historical and bibliographic commentary. Described ritual results are claims in the sources, not verified effects.