What is the Right Sigil?

: Mathers' Use of Sigils in the Clavicula Salomonis

Francisco Santos Silva

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Introduction

In the late 19th century, Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers, founder of the Hermetic Order of the

Golden Dawn and one of the most important composers of modern magical ritual in the rites for the

inner circle of that same order, composed a translation of the Clavicula Salomonis, or Key of

Solomon which would become one of the most influential texts in the development of ceremonial

magic in the 20th century, influencing not only Wicca, Thelema and Neo-Paganism, but also being

extremely influential in the depictions of magical acts in popular culture. Used either in the

versions that Mathers used for his edition of in modified forms, the sigils of the Clavicula are

nearly ubiquitous in occulture. That being said, Mathers was using seven different manuscripts to

create his final version, so the questions arise: From where did he get the sigils which are present in

his widely available edition of the Clavicula Salomonis? Was he following one particular

manuscript or collating from several? Are his choices representative of his source material? Are his

sigils original works by Mathers? Are they modifications of original sigils? If so, why and how are

they modified? How was Mathers able to create a visually unified collection of sigils for his edition

when his sources are so disparate?

In this paper we will then first look at the manuscripts used by Mathers, at their variety not only in

terms of language and visual style but also in terms of content. However, in order to understand
how Mathers comes up with the sigils that he ends up using in his edition we have to understand

how he viewed the text itself and the manuscripts that he was using. For Mathers this was a text

which was Solomonic in origin, and which had been corrupted down the centuries. Thirdly we will

look at the solutions he arrived at in his edition, how he created his own versions of the Solomonic

sigils which are not necessarily fully faithful to the manuscripts he was using. And lastly, bringing

this study of the particulars of the Clavicula to a wider, more macrocosmic, point, we will see how

Mathers' decisions are emblematic of a wider problem with emic translations of works which are

lacking an Ur-text or a non-controversial original manuscript. This becomes then also a problem for

the etic scholar who might not necessarily be aware of the modifications made by the emic

translator, taking the translator's choices as correct, when in reality they are a product of the emic

considerations of the translator.

The MSS of the Clavicula Salomonis

Mathers uses seven different manuscripts in creating his version of the Clavicula Salomonis. He is

helpful enough to let us know which manuscripts he used in his own preface to the translation.

These were all manuscripts which are today in the British Library and were then in the British

Museum. I will show you images of each Manuscript Mathers used, all the pages I will be showing

are representations of the same sigil, easily recognizable by having a scorpion as its main visual

feature. This is the Fifth Pentacle of Mars, which is purported to be terrible unto demons and that

at its sight and aspect they will obey thee, for they cannot resist its presence. 1

As can be easily seen the style of the sigils differs significantly from manuscript to manuscript, they

1 Mathers, Clavicula Salomonis, pp. 71-72.

generally agree in the Latin text surrounding the drawing, while the Hebrew letters surrounding the

scorpion itself vary, most likely due to a lack of knowledge of Hebrew on the part of the copyists. A

notable exception in the general agreement of these images can be seen in Lansdowne 1203, which

uses a different Latin text in the border and inside the sigil itself, as well as adding new symbols to

the pentacle. In fact even the description of the pentacle in Lansdowne 1203 is substantially

different from that in the other manuscripts. This occurs because Lansdowne 1203 is in fact a

completely different text, sharing a few things in common with the other manuscripts, but being in

its bulk a wholly different work, and seemingly using the name Clavicula Salomonis as a way to

borrow authority from what was at the time of the composition of this manuscript already a famous

text.

But if Lansdowne 1203 does not correspond to any of the sigils in other manuscripts, neither does

Mathers'. In no other sigil is the text on the border in Hebrew writing, this is Mathers' innovation to

the Clavicula Salomonis. Why would Mathers' bother to make this change? Not only in this sigil

but in all the sigils of the Clavicula Salomonis? If Mathers is producing a translation it would make

no sense to change the very alphabet in which the text is written, I would think that he would either

keep the text in Latin as in the original manuscripts, or translate the texts surrounding the sigils into

English. No other solution would make much sense to an etic translator. But to understand the

decision we need to understand how Mathers viewed the text itself.

Mathers view of the Clavicula Salomonis

The view espoused by Mathers in the preface to the Clavicula Salomonis neatly summarizes his

position when it comes to the origins of the text:

I see no reason to doubt the tradition which assigns the authorship of the 'Key' to King
 Solomon, for among others Josephus, the Jewish historian, especially mentions the magical

works attributed to that monarch; this is confirmed by many Eastern traditions, and his

magical skill is frequently mentioned in the Arabian Nights. 2

However, according to Joseph H. Peterson, who has studied the MSS of both the Clavicula

Salomonis and Goetia , most of the Clavicula Salomonis manuscripts can probably be traced to the

manuscript Harleian 5596. This is a 15th century manuscript in Greek known as The Magical

Treatise of Solomon, which has contents that are very similar to those in the Clavicula Salomonis3

The Harl.5596 MS also presents a partial version of the 4th century Testament of Solomon bundled

with the Clavicula, the Testament of Solomon is a text related in theme but not content

to the Clavicula, describing the demons that Solomon enslaved to build the temple and how to

control them. Although Harl. 5596 contains the oldest known copy of the Clavicula, this does not

mean that the Clavicula Salomonis is a pure 15th century creation. The Clavicula Salomonis and the

Testament of Solomon were both in circulation in 15th century Byzantine Greece. In Harl.5596, the

texts were a part of the same MS and the Clavicula Salomonis has some themes which were

inspired by Talmudic and Kabbalistic thought, making it, therefore, later than the spread of

Kabbalah after the 13th Century redaction of the Zohar by Moses de Leon (Scholem, 1974a, [1941],

p.186). In 1903, Hermann Gollancz published a version of the Clavicula in Hebrew, dating from

the 1700s. As most earlier copies claim to be translated from the Hebrew this find does not permit

us to give an older date to the text but hints at its possible older age and at a possible Jewish origin

for the early versions of the text. A good estimate of the age of the Clavicula Salomonis would be

that it falls between the end of the 13th century, with the writing and spread of the ideas expressed in

the Zohar and the beginning of the 15th, taking the date of the earliest proto-Clavicula MS.

Mathers belief in the Solomonic origins of the text help explain his changes to the sigils

2 Mathers, Clavicula, Preface p.viii

3 Peterson, Esoterica Archives website
themselves, what Mathers is creating is not a translation of the manuscripts that he found but a

reconstruction of an imaginary Solomonic text. This explains the use of Hebrew letters in the

borders of the sigils, Mathers translates what in his mind should be there, not what is actually there

in the text. Mathers saw all MSS of the Clavicula as degenerations of a Solomonic urtext, with

"black magicand medieval interpolations"4. By not being faithful to his sources he thought that he

was being faithful to the original Solomonic source, which he never saw, and which all signs point

to it never having existed. Mathers ends up mangling a text and its sigils because he translates

based on a false premiss.

The Sigils in Translation

Further evidence of how Mathers ends up mangling the sigils in order to create an imaginary

Solomonic text can be seen nowhere better than in the second pentacle of Saturn. This is a typical

magical square sigil which is very different in the several manuscripts.

In Mathers' version of the sigil the whole thing is neater, the border text has again become Hebrew

writing, and the letters in the square make up the famous SATOR AREPO TENET OPERAS

ROTAS double acrostic palindrome, only this time in Hebrew letters. How can Mathers justify the

appearance of what is clearly a Latin palindrome in what would be King Solomon's time? It would

seem that this would be a good place for Mathers to realise that the texts are not at all Solomonic,

or if they are that they are corrupted beyond saving. However this is not the case, and Mathers adds

a helpful note in order to explain what happens here:

This is the celebrated:

4 Mathers, 2002, [1889], p.x

 SATOR

AREPO

TENET

OPERA

ROTAS

the most perfect existing form of double acrostic, as far as the arrangement of the letters is

concerned; it is repeatedly mentioned in the records of medi?al Magic; and, save to very

few, its derivation from the present Pentacle has been unknown. It will be seen at a glance

that it is a square of five, giving twentyfive letters, which, added to the unity, gives twenty

six, the numerical value of IHVH.

So this sigil is not a version of the Sator square, it is the Sator square that derives from this sigil, a

revelation that he seems to be bringing us here. In fact the text of the Sator is irrelevant because

what matters is the fact that it consists of 25 letters, which is added to the unity make up the

number 26, which is the numerical value of IHVH. So, although the arrangement of the letters is

even more meaningless in Hebrew than it is in Latin, this is unimportant, due to Mathers' certainty

of the Solomonic origins of the Clavicula Salomonis. This is not all, however, and he continues

with his explanation:

The Hebrew versicle surrounding it is taken from Psalm lxxii (72). 8, 'His dominion shall be

also from the one sea to the other, and from the flood unto the world's end.' This passage

consists also of exactly twenty-five letters, and its total numerical value (considering the

final letters with increased numbers), added to that of the Name Elohim, is exactly equal to

the total numerical value of the twenty-five letters in the Square.

So Mathers, through some mathematical exercises gets to another reason why this is actually the

origin of the Sator square. It is not an obvious mathematical result, it involves increasing the

numbers of the final letters (a somewhat frequent practice), and in the end arbitrarily adding it to

the numerical value of the name Elohim. It is Mathers' faith in the authenticity of the treaty that

leads to the majority of problems in his translation. It could possibly also be argued that it is not a

question of belief by the part of Mathers but an attempt to sell the Clavicula as an original text to

the prospective reader and buyer of his translation. If this were the case, however, it would have

been easier for him to simply leave incriminating elements in the manuscripts out of the final

translation, as he did for some love spells which he considered to be black magic interpolations,

instead of using convoluted means to get to the answer he would like to be true.

Conclusion: The Problem of the Emic Translator

Due to the format of this paper I have focused only on a few examples of Mathers' problems when

transporting the sigils that he found in his sources to his finished version of the Clavicula. However,

none of the Sigils in Mathers' version correspond exactly to any of the sigils in the seven

manuscripts he used for his translation. This is not due to mistakes or a lack of attention to detail, in

fact quite the opposite, most of the times the differences are explained by the emic nature of the

translator. As an insider, and what he considered to be an enlightened insider, Mathers felt he had

the obligation of bringing the Clavicula to modern man, expunged of the superstitious additions of

the middle ages, or as he would have them, the dark ages. The important detail that Mathers seems

to have missed is the fact that the text itself is a medieval text, and not an ancient solomonic treaty.

His faith in the text is so blind, however, that whenever elements which are clearly later than the

mythical time of Solomon (c. 900 BCE) are present , he feels the need to explain them either as

additions to the text by medieval writers, or as integral parts of the Solomonic text, as is the case
with the Sator square sigil. What we end up with here is a translator which cannot be trusted

because he is blind to the problems in the text itself. His insider perspective, the associated faith

that he has in the affirmations that the text makes about its own origin, as well as the attempt to

make Ceremonial Magic a more respected art through its association with the Biblical tradition of

Solomon which would also lead him to write the translation in a style reminiscent of the King

James version of the Bible make his translations untrustworthy for the academic researcher. This is

not to say that this is a problem inherent in all emic translators, but they are considerations that the

etic scholar should have in mind when approaching translations made by those with a vested

interest in the text they are translating. The fact that this has become, now, the standard version of

the text of the Clavicula Salomonis, as can be seen by its proliferation on the internet and in

occulture, raises other interesting issues, of how the translation, by him who is one of the founding

fathers of 20th century Ceremonial Magic, has become more important than the sources that he used

for a majority of those who read this text. So yes, this is a work by Mathers, and as such it is

valuable, as is the study of his translation process which reveals much about what was a quite

withdrawn figure, but as a translation of the Clavicula Salomonis as it came down from medieval

times it needs to be questioned at every turn.