What is the coolest book have you ever owned?
Either in physical copy or in ebook form, and tell the reason why you consider it as the coolest book that you have in your collection.
Mine is The Book of Abramelin (also known in its longer name as The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage), I consider it the coolest book in my collection because of its mysterious and fascinating history/background.
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The Book of Abramelin tells the story of an Egyptian mage named Abramelin, who taught a system of magic to Abraham of Worms, a jew from Worms, Germany. The books is a prime example of a Grimoire (A Grimoire is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons.)
The book is framed as a sort of epistolary novel or autobiography in which Abraham of Worms describes his journey from Germany to Egypt and reveals Abramelin's magical and Kabbalistic secrets to his son Lamech. Internally the text dates itself to the year 1458.
The story involves Abraham of Worms passing his magical and Kabbalistic secrets on to his son and tells how he acquired his knowledge. Abraham recounts how he found Abramelin the Mage living in the desert outside an Egyptian town, Arachi or Araki, which borders the Nile. Abramelin's home sat atop a small hill surrounded by trees. He was an Egyptian mage and taught a powerful form of Kabbalistic magic to Abraham. He was a "venerable aged man", and very courteous and kind. He discussed nothing but "the Fear of God", the importance of leading a well-regulated life, and the evils of the "acquisition of riches and goods".
Abramelin extracted a promise from Abraham that he would give up his "false dogmas" and live "in the Way and Law of the Lord." He then gave Abraham two manuscript books to copy for himself, asking for ten gold florins which he took with the intention of distributing to seventy-two poor persons in Arachi. Upon his return fifteen days later, after having disposed of the payment money, Abramelin extracted an oath from Abraham to "serve and fear" the Lord, and to "live and die in His most Holy Law." After this, Abramelin gave Abraham the "Divine Science" and "True Magic" embedded within the two manuscripts, which he was to follow and give to only those whom he knew well.
There are four sections within the book, the first book tells the story of Abraham's travel to Egypt and his subsequent encounter with the Mage, and details the magic that Abramelin taught to Abraham and the latter's instructions to Lamech in safeguarding the magical knowledge that he has inherited, the next 3 books contains the actual magical operations that was discussed in the first book.
The text describes an elaborate ritual whose purpose is to obtain the "knowledge and conversation" of the magician's "guardian angel." The preparations are elaborate, difficult, and long. All of the German texts describe a duration for the operation of 18 months before any divine contact is known. In the Mathers translation, the initial phase of working the system lasts only six months.
During the period of the work, the magician must daily pray before sunrise and again at sunset. During this preparatory phase, there are many restrictions: chastity must be observed, alcoholic beverages refused, and the magician must conduct his business with scrupulous fairness.
After the preparatory phase has been successfully completed, the magician's Holy Guardian Angel will appear and reveal magical secrets.
Once this is accomplished, the magician must evoke the 12 Kings and Dukes of Hell (Lucifer, Satan, Leviathan, Belial, etc.) and bind them. Thereby, the magician gains command of them in his own mental universe and removes their negative influence from his life. Further, these spirits must deliver a number of familiar spirits (four principal familiars, and several more associated with a set of magical word-square talismans provided in the Abramelin's Book Four).
The magical goals for which the demons can be employed are typical of those found in grimoires: the practitioner is promised the ability to find buried treasure, cast love charms, the ability of magical flight, and the secret of invisibility, to list a small number of examples.
Magic squares feature prominently in the instructions for carrying out these operations, as does a recipe for an anointing oil (taken from Exodus 30), popularly used by ceremonial magicians under the name "Abramelin Oil". There are also several further tools - such as a holy Lamp, a Wand made of an almond branch, a recipe for incense known today as "Abramelin Incense" (also taken from Exodus 30), various Robes, a square or seven-sided plate of silver or (bees) wax, etc.
Because the work involves evocation of demons, the Abramelin operation has been compared to Goetic magic, especially by European scholars. However, the text's primary focus is upon the invocation of the guardian angel, and modern works on the subject tend to focus upon this aspect as well.
The practical magic of Abramelin (found in both Book III of the French text, and Book IV of the German original) centers around a set of talismans composed of magic word squares. These are similar to traditional magic squares, though the latter are usually composed of numbers, while Abramelin's squares contain letters. Commonly word squares are used as puzzles or as teaching aids for students. In the context of Abramelin, the focus becomes mystical—so that each square should contain words or names that relate to the magical goal of the square. A parallel is found in the famous Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas word square, an altered version of which is also found among Abramelin's squares.
For example, a square entitled "To walk underwater for as long as you want" contains the word MAIAM (מים), the Hebrew word for "water". A square for recovering treasures of jewelry begins with the word TIPHARAH (תפארה, a variant of Tiferet), which can mean "golden ring" in Hebrew and is also the name of the sphere of "Beauty" (which has the planetary attribution of the Sun) on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
The system of magic from the book regained popularity in the 19th and 20th centuries partly due to Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers' translation, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage; and partly to its importance within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later within the mystical system of Thelema (created in 1904 by Aleister Crowley).
Due to trust issues, Mathers used the least-reliable manuscript copy as the basis for his translation, and it contains many errors and omissions. The later English translation (The copy that I own) by Georg Dehn and Steven Guth, based on the earliest and most complete sources, is more scholarly and comprehensive. Dehn attributed authorship of The Book of Abramelin to Rabbi Yaakov Moelin, a German Jewish Talmudist. This identification has since been disputed.
Overall, the book is very fascinating read, though I'm not a practitioner of occult or magic,I'm just a book lover.
The sheer curiosity of mine led me to research bit more about the book and its history, its importance to western esotericism. Maybe you're gonna ask, do I recommend the book? the answer is both yes and no, if you're into these kind of stuff (history, occult & magic) and more open minded about it, then yes, I highly recommend it, just like I said, it's very fascinating and mysterious book; and no if you're the type person who dismisses these topics as non sense or a type of person who gets easily scared (the book has a reputation to be cursed, according to the stories, the mere ownership of the book brings bad luck and hauntings, though nothing has happened to me thus far, the book has been on my shelf for a year now lol)
