Islamicate Occult Sciences & The Picatrix | Liana Saif

the Islamic ER called Sciences is at least to me one of the most fascinating fields of study right now partly because it is um a relatively new and um emerging field of study in the The Wider academic world um and because of that there's also so much new things to discover and new things to study that is also why I'm extremely excited to be talking to one of the leading scholars in this field Dr Lanna safe welcome to the channel Lanna thank you so much for having me on your show I'm a big fan and

I'm very happy to be here likewise I'm I'm a huge fan of your work uh Dr safe is um an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam uh who has studied well like I mentioned she's one of the the Pioneers I would say in this in the field of the Islamic C called Sciences she has published several books and anthologies among them this wonderful uh book called the Arabic influences on early modern Occult Philosophy sorry that was my computer um as well as anthologies like um your latest one is the Islamic ult Sciences in theory

and practice right yeah which was published the other year um so among the things that you've studied at least if your Twitter handle is to be believed is the this correct really fascinating work of astral Magic from from uh from the Middle Ages and that is what I wanted to talk to you particularly about today um so just to begin maybe you could talk about like for someone who's never heard about this book before what is the yes what is the um that's a question that I have been grappling with for a long time so

um the immediate answer is that it's a text on astral magic that includes the theory of Astral magic but also a lot of practices that the author is compiling and putting together and integrating from different uh communities and from different sources that the author had at his disposal um and you can think about it as um I would say the first truly systematic exposition of Astral magic integrated within natural philosophy and the most current cosmological discourses of the time but also in addition to the the the the the Naturalization the astralz and the book and

the recipes it's also uh it also positions itself as uh an esoteric project not just an occult one and by that I mean that the practice of magic and astrology and Alchemy uh according to the author of The are both are all branches of knowledge uh that um get ultimately legitimized not not only through natural philosophy but by a deliberate pursuit of wisdom of hikma and in that sense that this knowledge is part and parcel of a process of a lot of soul work uh that the sage uh uh needs to uh go through that's

why it's called the goal of the sage so um so um the the practice of magic um and and the practice of astrology and the practice of alchemy are all tools in the path of a kind of Enlightenment so to speak um and magic and Alchemy but especially magic as Charles Bernett uh has written about is that Apex of of abilities that a sage can master and so the is basically a systematization of this way of thinking and um it's both concerned with occult practices but also their integration into a system or a path of

of esoteric um Enlightenment so to speak right so it's it's it's almost like a encyclopedic work would you say in a certain sense of yeah it's been described as being encyclopedic it's also being it been described as compilation I am a little bit careful about calling it compilation or just emphasizing the compilation aspect that is because um it it the word compilation sometimes indicate a a a process an exoteric process of just bringing together material and putting them in one place but the author I think was doing something way more uh deep and sophisticated than

that where um he was integrating everything that he's read uh whether that was on the front of magic or the occult Sciences or natural philosophy and putting them um uh together from the perspective of the time and from the perspective of the individual who wrote it it's definitely encyclopedic uh and and and in the sense of systematizing right this knowledge that I've talked about yeah so speaking of that um the author um what what so what do we actually know about who wrote theim and when it was written and the sort of environment in in

which it was written like who who is this this author of this book yeah good question simple answer is that we don't know much about about the author but the question of the author is still very interesting because historically speaking so not just in the context of modern scholarship the the the author has been um thought to be and and you see that manuscripts as well so it's as I said it's not just a new uh a misattribution this has been going on for a while in fact G de and Sebastian Moro wrote I think

several like two articles maybe more about this historical era uh where um individuals throughout history scribes as well of some of the manuscripts have attributed to muslam mati and muslam mati um died at the of the 11th century and he was like a very prominent mathematician and and astronomer who yeah a very very important uh thinker uh as well but um discrepancies between the dates of the texts as we came to know it and the life of Muslim mati meant that Scholars were eventually realized that this could not be written by Muslim and mati and

it was marel Fiero uh in an article called bism in Al andalos who makes a strong case for uh the author being uh masl Al so uh still An Andalusian uh author and thinker and he was a scholar of Hadith but also an occultist uh who's had a a little bad reputation according to uh marel F's article for being uh an occultist so he it seems that he was uh according to if we accept that it's to be then um that puts the dates in the right sequence that it makes sense with what we know

uh about the text so there is now a general um acceptance that the author is mus although uh it is fair to say that although this is the best candidate for the position but um I I I still don't think it's 100% verifiable that it was M but that's the best informed um um speculation I think that we have yeah the fact that they both seem to have similar names masl is is is both do you think that has contributed to that confusion or that misattribution in history is that possibly possibly I think the the

the confusion arose from the historical attribution yeah um you know um you have someone like IB khun and other prominent thinkers um um saying that it's if I if I if I remember correctly I'm not 100% sure but also I think uh mentions that it's and so when the attention came to the picatrix and the possible dates in which it was written that's when the discrepancy popped up and it made Scholars rethink that attribution yeah um but what we know is and and and the text also uh confirms is that it came from An Andalusian

context but one that was globalized clearly the author um had access two sources not just from within the Western Islamic context the the Spanish context but also um from more the Eastern context as well and if I also recall corre correctly some details in Marbel faroh's article is that um musl has traveled and so and and and and there is evidence of him uh having been exposed to um different Traditions is esoteric and oul traditions from from from various parts so it it really is uh um um a text that reflects uh Magic in a

global Islamic context yeah I I was going to ask you particular about the the context in in Andalucia and if there's anything in particular in that environment that made it especially um appropriate or or fruitful for for this text to appear in that place but I think you answered that pretty nicely and that it is there is something about that culture but it's also a globalized um environment and that um Al might have traveled and encountered traditions and and figures further east in the Islamic or the Islam but also there were interesting things happening in

10th Century Al OS as well um there it's been argued that there is due to the again um the global context surrounding alelos where there's influences from the isi context that was active in the North African situation and also there was the tradition of IB masar um um and the idea of esoteric contemplation that uh enables one to arrive to Divine truths but also um uh entrenching wisdom with this idea of of it's not just contemplation but it's also practice um I mean I masar to IB masar was attributed a text on uh the significance

of the letters for example but um the is not interested at the same time um in this context although one of the chapters of the uh which um is um I forgot which book I want to say the second book chapter four where the author does allude to um a practice involving letters but he attributes that to the sufis and he explicitly says that's not what I'm doing and he even claims he even claims to and you know I've written a book about this which I would love to find uh but this is not what

I am doing uh here because the focus of the text is really astral magic and and in this context you see the influence for example of saf the Brethren of Purity you see the influence of jabb hyan uh you see the influence of the pseudo Aristotelian hertica um so um yeah and and that contributes to what I described as like a a global magical outl Outlook um so there are different things that reflect the Andalusian context but also the ambition of Andalusian thinkers that involved um open up opening the doors to Eastern knowledge uh whether

that was occult philosophical or or esoteric right that's really interesting so he so so he sort of actively distances himself from this the Sufi or the masaran group yeah he seems he he he seems to be saying that that's not what I'm doing here he he he refers to a mysterious text in that chapter called to a certain ja which Scholars have not been able really to identify but it's interesting that you know it's albas so indicating Iraq and and Bas and so um H and and I have not been able to identify that but

that's where the author explicitly mentioned um things that you say in you see in the science of letters and divine names like is the greatest name of God and he says that some of the the verifiers of Truth you know a name for the esoteric Elite associated with Sufism he says that they have the secret of the of the God's greatest name and they do wondrous things with it but this is a small chapter uh and and as I said the author does not give any details and basically you know is not what he's doing

what he's doing is something something else um but you know what I it's an odd chapter yeah to be there and so and and it it's it's not present in all the manuscripts it's present in most manuscripts not all manuscripts uh and so I W I do Wonder Maybe that um either that some scribes felt that that was a really odd chapter in the book or that um it was an interpolation but I am not sure about this um but a a a a a deep look into that chapter in relation to other chapters indicates

that the the the the author was definitely aware of Sufi context even IB masin context M but that's not what the text is about so it's more as I said to theity in Hera ja and and and and the Materia Meda of that time agriculture so it draws more from these sources right I was not to drag on too long about IB Mas but I I was fascinated about that connection because at least according to the possible biography of Al that Fier presents is again if not Mis misremembering is very similar to the biography of

masarra and his travels I believe both of them claim to have studied in in Mecca with the same sui Abu yeah and and and also I think both have a connection I could be Mis but connection to S study or that would have been actually earlier but anyway I I just found that the similarity between those also yeah I mean the the the the notion of the is seems to be the Practical one of the Practical or pragmatic aspects of gaining wisdom and so you know you hear a lot of thinkers and and Scholars and

philosophers from Al andalos doing this doing this this this journey for attaining knowledge and in that Journey often Scholars would stop at you know cultural centers yeah and way that we would describe them and those were things like uh madrasas things like Sufi lodges uh you know and so it's it's not surprising that similar stops and similar stations um are treaded by a different array of Scholars um and and Mecca of course is you know the ultimate uh Journey from from from the perspective of religion as well and so if you're are esoteric Ally inclined

you know maybe symbolically at you know reaching Mecca is akin to reaching a kind of like proximity to the Divine which was the concern of someone like the author of or you know the list goes on yeah so so if is is the possible author this would place the text around like the mid 10th Century somewhere around there yeah I mean I do not have a reason to discredit the author's own dates and what the author says is that the book was completed in the 950s after after the completion of the book The sister text

of the which is the rank of the sage which is its alchemical counterpart so the 950s make sense to me yeah and so he writes this book or these these these these two books that seem to be interconnected the and what what do we actually find in the text more concretely so so what is he doing in this text is he um is is is it theories about astral magic is it more practical like what's going on in the text it's both it's it's it it's it's not divided into like a bit about practice and

a bit about Theory it's they they are intermingled in the text so you have practices from different communities like um what he refers to as you know the Indians or the sabians or or uh uh the Babylonians Etc so there's like many traditions and so what he does is that he takes these practices and wraps them up often with with theories whether and these theories and these this cosmological settings he often contextualized them within those communities right and so um but ultimately he is concerned with placing those practices in their right astrological context like the

place of these practices as astral Sciences so he gets a lot into the place of the celestial world in the cosmos he gets in a lot into how the celestial World influences the world below in order to understand how magical outcomes take place and so um in that sense he draws on a tradition that arguably you know Abu someone like Abu mashar really um um gave shape which is the idea that the celestial world is acts as the efficient causes of generation and Corruption so the application of Aristotelian uh cosmology in this context where um

the the practice of making a Talisman is is is akin to the practice of generation and corruption in the sense that the magician is like the Aristotelian crafts Craftsman or Carpenter H as as the allegory that Aristotle uses often is the carpenter who brings form and matter and brings them together and as a result you have like a kind of informed or uh an active U uh object and and the argument is that this object becomes active and becomes alive through the influences of the stars and this is something that the author attributes for example

to uh to um uh translated as the fruit where explicitly he says you know the powers of the Talisman or it comes from the celestial world at the same time he attributes uh he connects this to theories that are found in the Jabber and uh so that's very important in in in the theorization and he also um places these practices within a neoplatonic emanative scheme so you know he connects the ability of the Mage with uh their status as a microcosm uh where the Mage as a human uh is a copy of the bigger world

the macrocosm and so with the powers you know the powers of the universal intellect are reflected in the particular intellect of the human being the um Universal Soul which is emitted by the intellect is reflected in the particular uh soul of the human being Etc and so the sage is basically the person who is able to align their existence in all its Dimension the soul intellect and body to the celestial world and in a more inflated way to the entire Cosmos and that's what gives this age really the legitimacy to to practice this so the

the the author um is constantly reminding the the the reader that um this practice is an application of natural philosophy and that um um the the sage is the person who is able to look and the at the cosmos and understand it both in a causal type of way but also in a semiological type of way he's he's able to to read the signs and and this way uh this reflects the kind of neonize aristotelianism and Aristo alanized neoplatonism of that time uh where um um to gain wisdom you need to know the effects and

their causes but but also you follow what platinus uh says in the nads which is that the wise person is the person who can see in one thing another thing so this is correspondences but also a semiological way of thinking um being able to read things as signs of truth but also being able to attain the truth through understanding causes and so that reflects the amalgamation and the reconciliation of Aristotle and and and and neoplatonism in this text and and in that sense it's a very typical text of natural philosophy of that time but that

is not to say that it's primarily theoretical it's full of practices um but as I said they're all wrapped up with philosophical and cosmological discourse yes so that that perspective or that um approach of natural philosophy that that is used in this text would that make it different from certain later texts like the Sham for example which some have a more has a more sort of esoteric perhaps approach um it has a different esoteric approach I think they are both invested in esoteric aspirations but through different paths right that you had a you know Islamic

esotericism there's different currents and there's different approaches to similar aspirations so I mean the best way to look to to to describe this is that um you can be an astrologer at that time and not care about spiritual ascendants and not talk much about Enlightenment Etc and so for example if you read Abu there isn't much about an esoteric aspect but according to the classification of knowledge at that time astrology is an occult science and it's an occult science in a very straightforward way occult referring toi hidden and this is an ontological category so something

you know the occult sciences and I'm talking about the particular context of let's say the 9th century this is not a stable thing you'll find that the terms start getting different meanings in different contexts and different epistemological Frameworks but in the the framework of it refers to um the occult Sciences as the sciences that deal with phenomena whose causes are not immediately available to the senses and so in that sense Abu mashar was was was doing that he was unpacking and theorizing the reason why the world above influences the world below and legitimizing astrology through

aristotelianism um and and but he was not concerned with any kind of esoteric aspirations but you go toan Safa you go to the picatrix and astrology becomes a tool for understanding the celestial World in order to ultimately attain the status of the sage so here you have an example where astrology fits within an esoteric context and but there are other contexts where that is not uh the case and so like the the the the difference between for example and is that uh or attributed to Ali is that um sh and other texts like it whether

they were um um misattributed to alboni or authentically to alboni they emerged from a more Sufi list cosmology where privilege is given to revelatory experience experience rather than one that is firmly based in natural philosophy and causal way of thinking and so you start seeing that the role of astrology becomes very different so whereas in you really had to know your astrology inside out from like different Traditions at the same time you need to know your Luna mentions very well you need to know astronomy very well you need to know how to put together a

natal chart you know you cannot be an asro magician without being a consumate astrologer but when you get to um the the Sham or lris magic in general astrology is used differently it becomes quote unquote a little bit more Elementary not to mean less important but what becomes more important is more a semiological framework so correspondences so you do a certain thing on the hour of Venus and the day of Venus and because these are associated with this Angel this Jin Etc the does not have this kind of um agency of like Jin or demons

or or angels and and and the author explicitly actually says that but the author is more interested in the astral configuration that determines certain types of influence so you have to know your aspects you have to know your Lots you have to know your houses you have to know conjunctions you have to know a a lot of details in order to um let the very particular astrological influences flow into uh the work and so in that sense they're different um the author of Thea is firmly um intellectual in his style of estarism meaning that um

it's not a passive reception of revelatory knowledge as a result of taking a spiritual path but rather it's the active seeking of knowledge through causality and through symbology uh that would ultimately lead you to the knowledge of the cause of all causes the the the Mover of all things moving and and God so even though the esoteric aspiration is similar but the paths and the tools are very different in that sense yeah and obviously like the author as I said in that weird chapter um see acknowledges there there's there are reference to people of tasa

and sufis but not more than two references and and definitely as a side note whereas like the Lis type of magic emerged from a context where list cosmology competed with this type of like Aristotelian heavy Cosmos of and Etc yeah and that what you mentioned about about the especially the that sort of natural philosophy aspect of it I think is one of the best ways to show also this common I think misunderstanding that U people associate or think that the occult or magic was practiced by the uneducated General masses but the way you describe it

is that for someone to even be able to to work with these things at all you need to have an incredible amount of of knowledge about all kinds of different fields of of philosophy and science absolutely that is not to say though that the only practice that was taken place was through just the natural philosophers and like the intellectual Elite uh what we do observe in the works of you know the the the naturalizers of the occult Sciences including Abu and of course the author of is that they they were basically theorizing practices that people

were practicing in in in the streets and they like it was present as as we know um um in the public yeah there these were services that were available to to the public and and and the difference is that here we have intellectual Elites who are applying natural philosophical Foundation to to its understanding and and I I think looking at the it's difficult to um pinpoint exactly to whom this is directed who is who is the client of this text so I find it um interesting to look at other sources to figure out what's going

on so um this is something that was brought up in a class that I was giving yesterday in in one of my courses here in Amsterdam we were reading we were talking about Abu Mas and one of the students asked me like but who was he talking to because Abu mashar starts his book by saying that the reason why I wrote this book is so that I can show that the science of astrology which is the basis for astral magic that's why I'm bringing up Abu Masha and and astrology a lot that the reason he's

writing the introduction to the great introduction to astrology is because a lot of people people and that's his words a lot of people thought that the science of the stars is based on intuition and conjecture had had and and and and lack of ban lack of proofs and I'm writing this book so that I can show that that is not the case so he is making a point that I am that he acknowledges these are these practices but what I am doing is to apply from his perspective scientific principles to it and he makes a

distinction between um astrology as divination or divinatory practices and astrology as uh a science based on the study of causes uh and and the example that he uses is physiomed to prognostication is different than what I'm trying to do here for example p deduce the gender uh of the child on the basis of the way the mother's belly looked like as she was carrying it and so and and and and how her eyes look like uh during pregnancy but and and he's making a clear distinction that this is a more like physic this is more

a divinatory aspect that is not necessarily based on like causal foundations whereas what he's doing is not a kind of divinatory astrology but rather a scientific astrology and so if we look at in this context I think we can say something similar that what the author was doing is to apply natural philosophical foundations on practices that he says you know were practiced commonly by different communities as well so um and and and unfortunately with his history we end up receiving the works of those who are you know who become Elites in their fields um and

and and we don't see a lot about um the people who practiced the stuff in in in their communities uh I mean George Saliba wrote an article a while back on the role of the astrologer in Islamic Society but also um Christina Richardson on her book on benu sassan in um the Islamic Middle Ages she talks about um their practices of astrology and she points out that they were uh uh behind a lot of the bulhan text so the Bulan here text refers to of course a a genre rather than a particular text like the

famous buan attributed uh to Abu mashar uh in in in also like which is a similar type of text with a lot of images H in fact the images take more space than the words and she argues that the benu sasan uh uh were were were using these texts not only for practice but also for entertainment these were very visually exciting texts so so so we know people practiced all of this stuff magic and astrology uh but our the text that we we we have been studying or I have been studying they definitely belong to

like the intellectual and the spiritual Elite so to speak and they were concerned with in addition to systematizing practices but also presenting these texts as you know legitimate philosophical and high knowledge absolutely fascinating um excuse me I would I would love to get into the to to the weeds to the details of the Practical aspect of of the text um so what what is the author actually doing practically for example in the in the Latin picatrix which we'll probably touch on a bit later on uh it's giving very like instructions basically on on how to

um make a certain person fall in love you with you for example do we find this in the original r or does it have a different approach oh yeah absolutely I mean one of to connect it with your question about what is Thea I think one of the amazing things about the text is that it's user friendly um it gives instructions in details um and recipes so um yeah it's definitely um concerned with systematic breakdown of practices and recipes um from different sources um in different ways definitely um this is a text for practice right

yeah do do you and and you don't have to answer this but do you have any particular like examples you can share like how you don't have to give the actual instructions but like what what is an example of one of those kinds of instructions yeah sure so um for example you get um the type of magical practices where you create objects made from material that correspond to particular planetary configurations or particularly planets and these figures become representatives of the people for example that The Magicians seek to influence so you know there is there's one

for uh getting the Beloved and you basically create an image of yourself and an image of your beloved under very particular astrological configuration and then you bring them together as if in an embrace you wrap them with I think Green Piece of cloth and you bury it in the place of the Beloved and that will cause them to fall in love with you uh you also have the practice of Nan and and Nan is a middle Persian word with a very complex meaning in its original context uh which includes um being protective prayers and I'm

I'm not an expert on middle Persian but in the uh sudo cityan hermetic and also the Raya context they mean basically magical objects that are made not so much from um metals on which you inscribe names or astrological symbols but rather organic material like blood flesh um bodily fluids from animals from humans and that basically creates a kind of powerful objects that um the text seem to imply emit a kind of vapor subtle kind of spirit and spirit here again I don't mean like uh uh genin demons but kind of like uh a subtle power

that uh acts as uh the deliverer of of power and and action and so the N are like these very powerful objects W with which you can for example attract animals and this is completely in the taken from the Sudan hertica the also have it and so yeah you have this kind of practice um you also have some invocations of of the planets so but these invocations they're invoking what you know is described as the rat of these planets which kind of like Treads the line between a quote unquote like spiritual in the sense of

demons Angels uh entities type typ of things and more like the ranat in the pseudo Oran hermetic context which are basically planetary forces they are kind of the manifestation of the cosmos volition rather than um entities so the invocations in this sense is are intended to create uh a space and a mindset that are hypers symbol of the planetary Powers so these invocations end up not being kind of like I bind you I am in the sense that you get in later material that are focusing on entities such as demons but rather calling out the

attributes of the planet oh Venus you who are luxurious you who are beautiful you who you know so it's just um a serenade of the qualities of the planets intended to create this like um hyper intense symbolic uh moment but at the same time you know it is a gray line that is worth looking into um and and it's worth asking um a question about you know what is the mechanic then of listening like what is is are the planets listening are the planets attentive is the is addressive and so what what is the nature

then of that attentiveness in in in in the planets but in any case it's definitely not in the kind of like Angelic and GIC and and and demonic type type of way so you have these uh these these practices as well uh you have more like um uh recipes for incenses and suff fumigations that um have the power to heal but also to have other magical effects um you have descriptions of uh rituals like the famous description of like the the head the the head ritual that um in the text is attributed to the Indians

but in other text it's attributed to the sabians where like um a a a a boy's head is miraculously detached from his body but it says alive and that becomes kind of like an oracle that but the but but here the author is telling us stories rather than like the exact recipes for this um so it's I can talk for hours about practices that are inside the yeah particularly I think the stuff about the nature the questions around the nature of the planets or the stars and their agency Etc that leads me to to the

question of of reception too like how how was this work received in that society and what's what what became the legacy of this book like you can you can imagine that some of of the these ways that the stars and their powers are described would be criticized by certain theologians as as um compromising the monotheism of of Islam for example um but but also if if Al is the author and he was a scholar of Hadith clearly that relationship is a bit more um complicated but what what was the reception of the in in its

time that's that's a very good question and it seems it seems like the reception of Thea is not consistent so um if you compare for example the reception of the since you brought up earlier alon's uh texts including sudo alian text like shra you'll find that it has a much a a richer Legacy than than the riots particularly in the Islamic context um the riim was definitely known um and you know uh and and sometimes negatively like we see in in in in IB khun's famous tyde against the Sorcerer of the Sorcerers of the uh

uh the the Western World and in that sense he means Al and where he uh counts uh Al as the author of but he also has some harsh words to say about Al and ib's voice is a voice of you know a normative voice uh but but but beyond that you don't see actually a very visible um influence of the on later material that is not to say that it doesn't exist um I think the influence of is huge in the sense of like this is the text that established that you can talk about magic

theoretically and and through with natural Frameworks but I think that and and and and I'm saying this tentatively I think we need more work on this is that The List cosmological Foundation became a more successful model or more prominent model let's say for uh legitimizing magical practices more than the natural philosophical so I think by the you know by the time Sufism was institutionalized in the 12th century and the 13th century um and and and and and a more emanative Cosmos that also integrated the science of the D the letters and the Divine name that

took over I think a little bit as the model for understanding magical effects and that the natural philosopher as magician was overtaken by the Sufi as a as someone who attains the ability through a gift from God for their spiritual practice to manipulate Reality by understanding the letters and divine names and I think that became more popular and that became more influential but I say this tentatively because you know uh biob bibliographical sources and do mention the um so it was still known it was still acknowledged but I think yeah the list context takes over

and also um in the 13th century we we we we also see uh uh before like there's before the Boom in lrc Magic we also see a point where astral magic shifts and opens way to more uh to practices that are more influenced by Jewish traditions of magic of we see that in Al sakaki sorry and we also see that sorry and we also see that in M and that is in the 13th century where we start seeing a shift from the the kind of celestial ranat who are a little bit who are more spir

Celestial forces than spiritual forces we start we start seeing the influence of the Jewish regimentation of angelic orders and and the uh Jin orders that are bound to these uh Angelic hierarchies we start seeing that becoming more of the agent so I think there was a general shift from a natural philosophical foundations to more uh list and Sufi Cosmos while also the influences of the Jewish material um because we see for example um evidence of that as I said in a second II that is currently being studied by uh a a group of Scholars under

the leadership of Emily salov in h exitor and there will be a book published soon and I've written uh a contribution exactly on the subject of like the impact of Jewish practices and the regimentation of angelic orders on that material so I think these these led to a a real shift in the foundations the epistemological foundations of magic but that meant that the picatrix became more influential in the European context when it got translated into into Latin in particular and the Legacy there is definitely more evident and and that's what I talk about a lot

in my in my first book yes it almost in some ways it reminds me of of the situation withb which you know who is also from Andalucia but his legacy is significantly stronger in in the European Scholastic context than it is in the actual Islamic world and this seems this see this seems to be a similar situation with with Thea perhaps because I think so yes it is indeed translated into Latin as the picatrix which becomes as at least as I understand it one of the most famous and and widely used magical like books in

in all of history at least in Europe yeah because it it solved a problem here we have a magic that does not necessarily talk about demons right so um in that sense it became you know as as part of a widespread program of you know Sciences uh um presented through the framework of natural philosophy in Europe from the 12th century onward and so yeah I think it's this context that um this enthusiasm to uh uh Arabic natural philosophy that takes place in the 12th century and later on as well that creates a space for the

influence of the but also sponsorship like for example by um Alfonso the 10th and and and his his uh his groups and his setting where you know they were seeking this kind of texts and translating them and and um so it's a it's a different it's a different context and it's not symmetrical uh at all when it comes to the history of the reception of the piot TR yeah and when a text is translated there's always going to be a bit of of interpretation and and modifying I would imagine that someone translating the into to

Latin would perhaps want to sort of put away some of the the references to to more Islamic themes perhaps if those are prominent in in the work I'm not sure um but what I want to ask you is I guess how how different is the Latin picatrix from the original Raa um I really recommend reading an article that was written by Jean Patrice bod and Jean sha Kong and it is literally about the differences between the Latin and and the Arabic and and there are differences although I I I don't think that the differences uh

weren't to say that they were completely different texts but there was of course some in interruptions that are um uh done by the translator because as you said you know it's not just translation of words it's translation from one culture to another and that's still the case of course today so I because we talked about that weird chapter chapter uh four of of book three I think I'm not sure either I think I'm more towards book three than book two but it's the one where there's reference to a book by jaff basri and to some

letterist practices so the Latin author basically puts the heading like he he he he retains the heading for this chapter but then in one sentence he goes like um in that chapter there's this obscure material that you know there's need to put it here and so he does not include the chapter and you can you know speculate about the reasons it's because compared to the rest of the chapters it is the most quote unquote Islamic chapter because you know it's talking about Sufi practices it's talking about the greatest name of God so possibly it's one

of the reasons or um that that was not particularly um included in in in the in the Latin translation but also there is like um interesting bits that were also removed so um and and as the article by uh Jean Patrice B and Je sh point out so like there are references to um magic that is connected to the Buddha and there is like descriptions of the Buddha and then in the Latin picatrix I think it's just reduced into an A wise man in India um and and and I think they they they they do

speculate that this perhaps is because um the context of the Buddha was not so interesting or well known I don't know so um that was like condensed uh I think the um in the the the story about the divining head is not present I think or or or at least not uh uh completely described in the in the Latin context um there arean context sorry I was just saying I don't think I'm familiar with that with that story or that part um it's it's that it's yeah it's this part is mentioned not just in the

picatrix but it was like uh uh uh mentioned in in in in other sources as well which is yeah this ritual of putting a boy who resembles in some narratives like I think described the boy as looking like Mars like has the features of Mars a martian fomy whereas in the picatrix the boy has a a Mercurial phom okay and then this boy is um if is placed inside a huge container up to here that has sesame oil and other types of oils and he stays in this container that becomes blocked up to here um

for a a particular a number of days and these oils basically loosen the joints and loosens the skin in such a gradual way that the boy does not die but you can actually grab the head and pull it out easily and then you place it in a niche and that boy is not dead but he turns into an oracle that is able to tell people about prices of crops uh and also other uh other uh uh future events um and if I remember correctly uh in the Latin the details at least the details of this

ritual is not there but I could be wrong I'm not uh uh completely sure also a lot not a lot but some chapters are rearranged in the Latin context um and um there's also a reference to uh a suffumigation uh apparently uh taken from the tah of of Moses and in this context um uh the the the reference is either truncated or removed I'm not sure but the reason is not clear but if I remember correctly Jean shaon and patri Jean Patrice bu uh believe that perhaps for the Christian translator uh uh referring to uh

the Torah and and and the context of um in the context of magic maybe he found that a little bit dodgy uh so they were this kind of like um interruptions but as they also say it doesn't amount to like a qualitative uh destruction I think of the text so so the the core of the text remains essentially the same I think so yes yeah we have a couple of of translations of the picatrix at least into English right um but my question for you then Dr safe is is there any translation of the Arabic

original I mean I I uh there there are some some translations out there uh but there are not necessarily critical trans ations and so um as many of you know and probably are annoyed with the fact that it's been taking me quite long to finish finish my own translation of the picatrix um and this is a combination of Life work but also 24 manuscripts uh plus uh other manuscripts that I'm not even going to collate because that's going to take more time but I'm at the end I'm almost at the end of the last edit

so there's no more collation which is what was taking a long time and so I will be done with the pick a Trix by the end of this year and then submitted um and and yeah that is amazing Almost sure that that will be the trajectory and then after that it's going to go through of course a peerreview process and more editing but um it's just I wanted to make sure that that I present a translation that is accessible and that is I know it's highly anticipated so I wanted to make sure that it's as

critical as as as can make it to be it's looking at it does use the helmet translation but as one text among a cluster of other manuscripts um because the Helmut Manus Edition does not have a critical apparatus and it does not have an introduction they make up for that in the German mhm um addition a little bit but um I basically used 24 manuscripts in addition to the rers Edition and I do point out in the footnotes in the rare times when the r tradition gets Edition gets something wrong and I I point out

these these errors um and and and and so this is what's taken a lot of the time so I wanted to be as critic iCal as possible of an addition but also as accessible as possible it's no doubt going to be a Monumental uh moment for for the study of Islamic ult sciences and just I think I speak for everyone we are incredibly excited to to get our hands on that translation and oh oh me too I'm I'm excited for it to be out I'm kind of excited about having a little break I love it

don't get me wrong I love the P tricks um but um um I'm I'm I'm ready to unleash it uh to the world yeah we're all we're looking forward to that so much um thank you so much before I Before I Let You Go um is there anything that you are aside from this translation obviously which which is the perhaps the main project but is there anything else that you're working on right now that you that you want to share or that you want to promote yeah sure um currently I am really focused on the

pseudo estian hermetica and this is um an Arabic probably 9th century Corpus that um presents um what we can describe as um hermetic knowledged mediated by Aristotelian framework they take the shape of uh Tech text and letters written by Aristotle to Alexander the Great and Aristotle claims that this is knowledge that he'd received uh from books written by heres himself and this is a one of the main sources and I would say one of the most influential sources of and uh my this is going to be the subject of my second book uh which I

am work my second monograph which is going to be completely dedicated to the doctrines the cosmology the influence and the Curiosity and the Curious nature about the pseudo City and hermetica so the picatrix will be back but by focusing on the sity and hertica that's also incredibly exciting we'll have to have you back on the channel to talk about that when in the future perhaps sure uh but for now thank you so much Dr safe for for talking to me today it's been a such a fascinating conversation that I've been looking forward to for for

a long time yeah yeah me too and good luck with with the the the translation at the in the final stretch here as well as all your other future projects um thank you so much and thank you so much for giving me the space and the platform to do this and ner out more about the yeah it's my pleasure and honor thank you so much thank you so much thank you so much see you soon [Music]