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 A Masterpiece of Occultism –

The Ghayat al-Hakim of Maslama Ibn Ahmad al-Majriti

This is the magnificent lost source of all of Abramelin, the Goetia, Agrippa - and of most of the entire tradition of Western Ceremonial Magick starts with this book! Go to the source! This is Magick. This is the native Arab tradition that everyone from Agrippa to Dee to Mathers to Crowley has had to deal with second hand. An extremely important book, recommended to both serious students of Arabic and Western esotericism and collectors of rare books.*

 * From an Amazon review

The "Goal of the Wise" (Ghayat al-Hakim fi'l-sihr) is well known in the Latin translation made in 1252 C.E. by order of King Alfonso X, "the Wise" under the title Picatrix. The attribution of the book to al-Majriti is today considered false as the internal critique suggests that this work was written after 1009 C.E., while al-Majriti died c. 1007 or 1008 C.E., and since this attribution is doubtful, the author is sometimes listed as "Pseudo-Majriti". Of course, it could just be that, as with the Rutbat al-Hakim, the Ghayat al-Hakim was compiled into the known edition posthumously, from a previous edition by our author. Susanne Diwald suggests that the Picatrix was composed before 343 AH / 954 CE.

Composed in Arabic, in Andalusia around 1000 C.E., the Picatrix is an encyclopædic work, perhaps the largest and most comprehensive of the grimoires, or manuals of magic, truer than any Victorian compendium of "magick". Offering talismanic and astrological guidance, the text clearly comes from a non-European and non-Rosicrucian ethos. 

The book had a major influence on West European magical thinking from Marsilio Ficino and Thomas Campanella to Ivan Chtcheglov. The Picatrix is mentioned by Johannes Trithemius in Book 2 of his notorious Steganographia (1500) and in his Antipalus Maleficiorum (c. 1500). The edition in the British Library (Sloane manuscript 3679) passed through several hands: Simon Forman (d. 1611), Richard Napier (d. 1634), Elias Ashmole (d. 1692) and William Lilly (d. 1681).**

** The above two paragraphs and the summary list below are derived from the Twilit Grotto Esoteric Archives website

This 1933 edition has its shortcomings - the publication of the Arabic Picatrix was a rather rushed and difficult affair, and as a result the text lacked a proper introduction (for which see Ritter’s article in the Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg, I, 1921-22, pp. 94-124.) It lacked also a list of the manuscripts consulted, so that the abbreviations of these in the apparatus are incomprehensible. This material is instead printed in the German translation of Picatrix, published by the Warburg Institute in 1962 (which also includes a reprint of Ritter’s article and an English summary of the contents of the book). Apparently, source "C1" is MS Marsh 155 (dated 1369 C.E.), held by the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The Warburg published the Latin version, edited by David Pingree, in 1986.

Some recent editions of the Picatrix:

(German) "Picatrix" Das Ziel des Weisen von Pseudo-Magriti, Translated into German from the Arabic by Hellmut Ritter and Martin Plessner, London, The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1962

(French) B. Bakhouche, F. Fauquier, B. Pérez-Jean: Picatrix Un traité de magie médiéval. 388 p., 130 x 210 mm, 2003, Paperback ISBN 2-503-51068-X, EUR 37.91. Newest critical edition.

(French) S. Matton, La magie arabe traditionelle, Paris, 1977 (incomplete)

(Latin) Picatrix: The Latin Version of the Ghâyat Al-Hakîm, ed. David Pingree (London, Warburg Institute, 1986).

(Spanish) Abul-Casim Maslama ben Ahmad: Picatrix (El fin del sabio y el mejor de los dos medios para avanzar). Edición de Marcelino Villegas Editora Nacional. Colección «Biblioteca de visionarios, heterodoxos y marginados». (Madrid, 1982).

(English) An English translation of the first two books of Picatrix was released in August of 2002 by Ouroboros Press, translated from the Arabic by Hashem Atallah.

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For a thorough survey of the work, please visit the Twilit Grotto Esoteric Archives website. The description there is referenced to Ritter and Plessner's German translation, and not Ritter's critical Arabic text offered by Antioch Gate. However, the description goes into some depth about the contents of the text.

Another useful article on the Picatrix concerns lunar mansions in Western astrology. It presents a number of theories on the origin of the name Picatrix, a topic not commented on here due to the complexity of the matter, except to say that the name “Picatrix” could relate to the book being used for constructing talismanic pictograms (this seems to be an idea original to the Antioch Gate website).

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