![]() The first firmament contains seven camps of angels, the second has angels positioned on twelve stages, and the third divides its workings among three angelic princes. The first six are each staffed by a hierarchy of named angels, among whom the magical workings 3 are apportioned. The core of the book is structured around a cosmology of seven heavenly firmaments. A prologue describes the origins and powers of the book. Collation of all these sources produces a fairly reliable text. Sefer HaRazim survives in complete – though corrupt – medieval Hebrew manuscripts in addition to important Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic fragments from the Cairo Geniza and a thirteenth-century Latin translation. 2Ģ Sefer HaRazim – A Jewish Magical Handbook In this paper I examine Edmonds’s findings in relation to the ancient Jewish magical and mystical traditions found mainly in Sefer HaRazim, “The Book of the Mysteries,” a late-antique ritual handbook written in Hebrew. The same rite may be considered forbidden magic or normative ritual activity depending on the evaluation of the ancient audience. Its aims are culturally illicit and its practitioners inhabit a deviant social location. Its performance fails to fit into an approved cultural script. The more the following features are present, the more clearly we are dealing with “magic.” Magic is viewed as either extraordinarily efficacious or entirely fraudulent. ![]() ![]() 1 Edmonds takes “magic” to be non-normative ritualized activity which is marked by several features. In his wonderful book, Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World, Radcliffe Edmonds provides us with a new etic framework for understanding ancient magic, but one steeped in the emic perspectives of the actual practitioners and clients as preserved in the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence.
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