Customer Reviews

The Grimoire of Armadel

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book can help you to understand spirit/demon evocation. Simple as that.

This helps you to understand the principles of these beings and guides you to invoke therir power to you.
Short, but helpful, this is a must for the beginner-advanced magician, but also well-rounded for the non-denominational invocational magician or no matter what your preferences are, this book is still a must for your collection of texts and a great addition to your library of related matter.

My advice is to get this book if you are interested in this subject at all and should be read fully before invoking spirits.

If this doesn't suit you, i suggest the Goetia in conjunction with this, or seperately a book called "Goetic Evocation: A Magician's Workbook".

This book goes along with this subject and is very helpful to even the most advanced magician, mainly due to it's addition of the rarely seen "Testament Of Solomon" along with this book.

Many working occultists view this work as beautiful, but shallow. I think I can show that the truth lies a little deeper than that.

First of all, Mathers only worked on the most useful texts when resurrecting works of the past. Why then would he have spent so much time on this volume? Why would he have held this piece in such high regard, when so many other manuscripts remained outside the reach of the average occultist?

A piece of the answer lies in the heavily veiled sex magic couched in the ambiguous descriptions of "The Visions".
I direct you to the vision of Gimela, for case in point:
"The Beholding of the Serpent that tempted Eve."

The Visions make up a large part of the content of the text in this piece. These visions are revealed by virtue of the proper use of the seals, and are described in detail. That makes this a rare manuscript on the act of Mandela Meditations in the Western Tradition, and the oldest recorded use of "Path Working" we have. This inovation (path working) is often credited to the Golden Dawn. Clearly this is a mistake. This book suddenly becomes much more ground-breaking, when viewed in its historical context. I will grant you, the Christian bent of the text puts the tradition at a relatively later date than the Goetia, and many of the works attributed to Solomon.

Another facet of this literary gem is the spirito-historical context. Almost every spirit mentioned in the text is put in context with Biblical personalities that the reader would be familiar with. For example:

"Gabriel, the spirit that did teach the Prophet Elijah the Mysteries of Divinity..."

It is an exhaustive laundry list of "who did what" from the Fall to the Crucifixion.

As for the actual evocation and banishing portion that gets so much flack, hey, you can find the same format in dozens of other books, but do yourself a favor and don't throw the baby out with the bath-water. Anyone exploring the rich tradition of Western Occultism should give this volume a good look.

Its a good book to start with anyone interested in grimoires,the work itself is quite brief but it was the popular book of choice in france where mathers lived the remainder of his life. Many may find the book to be to simple, but I think that it is really potent...And besides there must be a very good reason why this book caught the eyes of mathers.

The Grimoire of Armadel is the medieval equivalent of one of those big Sierra Club books -- something to browse through over drinks and canapes, not something to be taken seriously. The "instructions for use" are wholly inadequate.
The current publication has the illustrations in black and white, but in the original colors it must have been quite attractive. The sigils grow ever more elaborate and flourishing as the book proceeds, becoming a joyously extravagant riot of abstract figures by the end. Were it not for the art, I would give it one star instead of three.

This is a good grimoire, with plenty of historical information on medieval occultism, but it just goes over much of the same information as other, less expensive grimoires (such as The Book of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage). I don't understand what made Mathers put time and effort into this grimoire over, say, the remaining three or four books of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Nonetheless, this is a complete grimoire with spells that a beginner can use and understand.

This is a good to great text for those who wish to understand angels better. The person who wrote the introduction, William Keith, seems to not like the text that he is introducing very much. He seems to want to condemn Mathers' translation more than give it a place of legitimacy. As for those who are interested in demons, the information given concerning demons is paltry: six pages of 79 are dedicated to demons. The rest are all about various angels. A useful text for those already grounded in reliable magical technique.

This book is a very interesting read and is full of sigils and evocations but it is to old to use the evocations and it doesn't tell you in clear terms what to do. I bought this book thinking that after having read and understood it that I would be able to summon a spirit to the physical plane of existence but I couldn't do it and got a bit discouraged. It wasn't until I bought Summoning Spirits : The Art of Magical Evocation by Konstantinos did I realize that there is a lot of things this text left out for the aspiring Evocational Magican. I recommend starting with Konstantinos' Summoning Spirits : The Art of Magical Evocation and then once you've learned to do it well summon the spirits from The Grimoire of Armadel.

I am a long time occultist, a Z=5 adept of the Golden Dawn and Corresponding Associate and Brother of the American O.T.O. I have a large collection of grimoires and this is one of the best. Simple conjurations for a number of demons in one neat and compact volume. At 79 pages, I read this in one two hour sitting. These occult grimoires of very high quality really improve the individual who takes them seriously on a number of levels: intellectual, spiritual, emotional, health and ambition. This lately in my life has been one of the few books as an advanced practitioner I got something out of. The conjurations do work, but that doesn't mean they will always be successful. S.L. Mathers is an expert on the subject and easily one of the best sources the aspirant can learn from. Yes, it does borrow from Christianity. Christians are all over, especially in America. If you are going to be an occultist you cannot be very hostile towards ChristianS themselves; you might end up literally with no friends whatsoever. This IS NOT satanism! Mathers was not a satanist nor am I. This actually blows away satanism hands down.

This is a very powerful useful Grimoire. The conjuration formulas, unlike some formulas that are pages long, are short and very effective. I have used the conjuraiton formulas in this grimoire to conjure into visibile appearance FurFur and Marchosias. Included are several unique and orginal Sigils of Spirits that you will not find in any other grimoire, that I know of, that have a profound magickal affect if you scry and work with them. There are what I would call "Sigil Narratives" which are descriptive magickal formulas that reveal ancient occult knowledge. This book is a msut have in the library of the working occultist.

The introduction to this grimoire is complete hogwash! Nothing is copied from anywhere and it isn't a synthesis. The introduction, in a blind and foolish attempt, is meant as a blind. This is a supreme book to connect one with angels. The book is simple, to the point, and beautifully written. If you want to connect with angels, read and follow this book. There is none better.