The Grimoirium Verum – “the True Grimoire” – has been called ‘one of the most notorious handbooks of black magic’ in the grimoiric corpus. It represents on the one hand something of a late entry into this milieu of spirit conjuration manuals, and yet on the other hand is a clear descendent of a particular sixteenth-century grimoire, the Clavicula Salomonis de Secretis, and furthermore demonstrably contains a treasury of operations and approaches to spirit-work that firmly originate in the magics of antiquity.

The Verum’s methods of conjuration present instructions on the preparations, tools, and protocols for working with the spirits of its catalogue through summoning, pacting, and sending them forth. It evidences both streamlined approaches to nigromancy and complex engagements with rarefied materia and conjurational etiquette in order to navigate infernal bureaucracies, establish mutually beneficial relationships with spirits, and to deepen and develop one’s sorcerous crafts.

This course will offer students a detailed overview of the Verum family of historical texts, paying particular attention to discrepancies, variations, and even a few mistranslations found throughout the various editions of this potent and practical handbook of black magic to present a cohesive and practical guide to its work. We will study the spirits themselves of this nigromantic grimoire, presenting profiles of their offices, heraldry, instructions for calling and sending them out to work, and their appearances across other goetic works. Students new to the Verum will be given clear guidance and advice for gathering their tools, working the GV’s purifications, navigating its protocols, and preparing their first pact. Seasoned practitioners will find helpful analyses of the workings contained in the various collections of the Verum’s Supernatural Secrets and the means to adapt them to one’s own purposes, as well as deeper discussion of how GV methodologies can be employed for working with spirits outside of its specified catalogue, especially the functions and experiments of the Four Regents of the cardinal directions.

Students who take this course will learn about the historical editions as well as practical instructions of the Grimorium Verum, and will received pragmatic guidance concerning its methodologies, entities, and experimenta from course creator and guide Dr Alexander Cummins, a contemporary cunning-man and historian of magic with many years of personal and professional experience in working this particular nigromantic manual.

The four sessions of this course series break down as follows:

Session 1: Conjuro, or, Overviewing the Text/s
In which we overview a close reading of Jake Stratton-Kent’s recension of the True Grimoire, before offering detailed comparison to Joseph H. Peterson’s recent second edition of the Grimorium Verum as well as especially careful study the Verum’s ancestor-text, the Clavicula Salomonis de Secretis. Along with thorough textual analysis and synthesis, we will consider the fundamentals of GV structure and layout, and begin to better understand its methodologies, workflow, and protocols of action. Students will also be given a detailed breakdown of recommended texts, translations, treatises, and treatments on early modern goetic magic to further their own studies and experiments.

Session 2: Officiorum, or, The Spirits Themselves
In which we chart and profile the wider biographies and specific roles of over forty of the named spirits of the Verum. This will not only include further close cross-comparison of these spirits’ offices, purviews, and powers across different editions of this grimoire, but considered assessment of their associated heraldries, materia, emblems, ‘guilds’, and manners. Such considerations will include how these spirits interact and interrelate with each other, a crucial element of considering Verum as a whole and not merely a cabinet of curiosities. Finally we will examine how the dramatis personae of the GV appear across the wider goetic corpus – often featuring in other handbooks of nigromancy under a dizzying array of aliases and alter egos – and set the stage to consider how Verum can prepare and train the practitioner in goetia more broadly.

Session 3: Praxis, or, Getting Started
In which we lay out the foundational steps of beginning to work with this grimoire and its spirits: from gathering and consecrating the knives, wands, incenses, and other tools and accoutrements of its nigromancy; to memorising and utilising the GV’s Prayer for Success and the other necessary orisons, prayers, psalms, and calls. This foundational guidance will also foreground the importance of proper purifications, and offer advice and instruction for building and deepening relationships with the Three Purifiers of the Verum’s aspering protocols. Newcomers to the GV will find this session especially helpful for working towards initiating their first formal explicit pact; while experienced Verum practitioners will still find much to develop their own experiments from these studies of the grimoire’s fundamentals.

Session 4: Katabasis, or, Going Deeper
In which we consider continuing to deepen and develop our engagements with Verum’s spirits and mysteries, beginning with more detailed analyses of the operations collected as Supernatural Secrets: from classic grimoiric operations of invisibility, to experiments of empowerment to better see spirits ‘in the air’, to constructing and consecrating magic mirrors. Crucially, we will investigate not only these historical operations, but consider their fundamental occult mechanics in order to discuss how we may adapt, re-purpose, and experiment with new operations rooted in traditional modalities of goetic spellcraft. We will also consider the roles and functions of the cardinal courts of the Four Regents – Oriens, Paymon, Amaymon, and Egyn – and their herald-kings for goetic practitioners working with Verum and beyond.

By purchasing this class, you agree that you understand that no part of the material dictated or provided throughout the duration of the course may be reproduced, distributed, or used in any other form (neither electronic nor mechanic, including photocopies and recordings), without the direct and written consent of the instructor, Dr Alexander Cummins.