Grimoire

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This article is about medieval books of magic. For the operating system term, see Source Mage GNU/Linux.

This design for an amulet comes from the Black Pullet grimoire. Embroider it upon black satin, and say "Nades, Suradis, Maniner", and a djinn is supposed to appear; tell the djinn "Sader, Prostas, Solaster", and the djinn will bring you your true love. Say "Mammes, Laher" when you tire of her.

A grimoire (IPA [grɪˈmwɑr]) is a book describing magical beliefs and practices, written between the late-medieval period and the 18th century. Such books contain astrological correspondences, lists of angels and demons, directions on casting charms and spells, on mixing medicines, summoning unearthly entities, and making talismans. "Magical" books in almost any context, especially books of magical spells, are also called grimoires.

The word grimoire is from the Old French gramaire, and is from the same root as the words grammar and glamour. This is partly because, in the mid-late Middle Ages, Latin "grammars" (books on Latin syntax and diction) were foundational to school and university education, as controlled by the Church — while to the illiterate majority, non-ecclesiastical books were suspect as magic. But "grammar" also denoted, to literate and illiterate alike, a book of basic instruction. A grammar is a description of a set of symbols and how to combine them to create well-formed sentences. A Grimoire is, appropriately enough, a description of a set of magickal symbols and how to combine them properly.

Notable historical grimoires include:

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage
Liber Juratis, or, the Sworn Book of Honorius
The Black Pullet
The Greater Key of Solomon
The Lemegeton, or, the Lesser Key of Solomon
Le Grand Grimoire, The Grand Grimoire

In the late 19th century, several of these texts (including the Abra-Melin text and the Keys of Solomon) were reclaimed by para-Masonic magical organizations such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis. Aleister Crowley, a prime mover of both groups, then served as a vector for a number of modern movements, including Wicca, Satanism, and Chaos Magic.

A cottage industry has existed since the 19th century in selling false or carelessly-translated grimoires (many original texts are in French or Latin, and are quite rare), although faithful editions are available for most of the above titles.

A modern grimoire is the Necronomicon, named after a fictional book of magic in the stories of author H.P. Lovecraft, and inspired by Sumerian mythology and the Ars Goetia, a section in the Lesser Key of Solomon which concerns the summoning of demons.

The Voynich manuscript may also be a grimoire, although its text has never been deciphered, and it may be a centuries-old hoax.

Books of spells ('magical papyri') are also known from ancient times and are sometimes called grimoires by modern scholars. Most were rescued from the sands of Egypt and are written in Ancient Greek and Demotic Egyptian.

[edit] In fiction

The term commonly serves as an alternative name for a spellbook or tome of magickal knowledge, particularly in fantasy fiction. In the TV series Charmed the "Grimoire" was the name given to "The Book Of All Evil", as an opposite to the Charmed Ones' "Book of Shadows".

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the Unseen University's library contains many grimoires. In extreme cases, when a person has attempted to read a grimoire, he vanished -- and the grimoire was notably thicker than before. The magical mishap that turned the Librarian to an orangutan has proven an advantage to him in part because these grimoires can work terrible fates on men who try to read them.

A supernatural version of The Grand Grimoire figured prominently in the 1989 motion picture, Warlock. In that film, the book was separated into three sets of pages that, when united, would reveal a long-secret, "true" name of God (the utterance of which would lead to the uncreation of the world). This name was apparently different from the Hebrew Tetragrammaton.

Also, in the novel and Broadway musical "Wicked", the magic book used by Elphaba is called the "Grimmerie". This name was derived from "Grimoire".

In Chuck Palahniuk's novel Lullaby (Doubleday, 2002), a certain grimoire from which the novel's titular "culling song" derives is an important plot element and source of conflict among the characters.

"Grimories" are available for purchase in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, and are used by the warlock class to train their demonic minions.

In the fantasy book Torments of the Traitor (published as The Fate of the Fallen in the UK) by Ian Irvine, one of the central characters uses a grimoire to perform the dangerous and morally ambiguous Art of "renewal" on himself.

In the video game series Xenosaga, a man by the name of Grimoire Verum creates a summoning tool for the Gnosis -- one of the series' main antagnoists -- referred to as Lemegeton. Lemegeton is part of the latin name for a real world grimoire, The Lesser Key of Solomon.

In the Disney animated television series, Gargoyles, the Grimorum Arcanorum is a spellbook used by the Archmage for various magical purposes, most notably turning the Gargoyles to stone for a thousand years. Its name is latin for "grimoire of secrets." The Gargoyles wiki has a page detailing it here.