Author Description

From the Introduction. Many years ago I heard of the existence of this manuscript from a celebrated occultist, since dead; and more recently my attention was again called to it by my personal friend, the well-known French author, lecturer and poet, Jules Bois, whose attention has been for some time turned to occult subjects. My first-mentioned informant told me that it was known both to Bulwer Lytton and Eliphas Lévi, that the former had based part of his description of the Sage Rosicrucian Mejnour on that of Abra-Melin, while the account of the so-called Observatory of Sir Philip Derval in the "Strange Story" was to an extent copied from and suggested by that if the Magical Oratory and Terrace, given in the Eleventh Chapter of the Second Book of this present work. Certainly also the manner of instruction applied by Mejnour in "Zanoni" to the Neophyte Glyndon, together with the test of leaving him alone in his abode to go on a short journey and then returning unexpectedly, is closely similar to that employed by Abra-Melin to Abraham, with this difference, that the latter successfully passed through that test, while Glyndon failed. It would also be especially such experiments as those described at length in the Third Book, which the author of the "Strange Story" had in view when he makes Sir Philip Derval in the MS. history of his life speak of certain books describing occult experiments, some of which he had tried and to his surprise found succeed. This rare and unique manuscript of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, from which the present work is translated, is a French translation from the original Hebrew of Abraham the Jew. It is in the style of script usual at about the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, and is apparently by the same hand as another MS. of the Magic of Picatrix also in the "Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal". I know of no other existing copy or replica of this Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, not even in the British Mus