The Almandal of Solomon

BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, A RITUAL SURVIVED THE CENTURIES.

The Almandal of Solomon: The Arabic Grimoire That Crossed into the West is a historical-critical study of one of the most enigmatic texts in the Solomonic grimoire tradition.

Born within the world of Arabic astral magic, the Almandal travelled across languages, cultures, and religious traditions before becoming part of the Western magical corpus. At the centre of its ritual tradition stands a remarkably simple yet symbolically charged object: a wax tablet inscribed with sacred names, associated with four candles and a system of angelic powers organized according to four celestial altitudes.

This volume follows the extraordinary transmission of the Almandal from its presumed Arabic origins through the translation culture of twelfth-century Toledo, its transformation within medieval European learned magic, its manuscript transmission, and its eventual appearance as the Ars Almadel within the English Lemegeton.

Drawing on the surviving manuscript tradition and the scholarship surrounding the text, this study examines:

• The manuscripts: eight surviving witnesses and the lost Arabic archetype from which the tradition is reconstructed.
• The Arabic origins: the relationship between the Almandal and the wider tradition of Arabic astral magic.
• The Toledo connection: the extraordinary movement of Arabic knowledge into the Latin intellectual world.
• Jinn and angels: the changing spiritual vocabulary of the text across centuries of transmission.
• The ritual object: the construction, symbolism, materials, inscriptions, and consecration of the Almadel.
• The four altitudes: the celestial and angelic structure at the heart of the ritual system.
• The Ars Notoria and other grimoires: the Almandal's place within the broader history of learned ritual magic.
• The legacy of Solomon: why medieval magical texts repeatedly invoked the name of the biblical king as a source of authority.

More than a study of a single grimoire, this book reconstructs a fascinating history of cultural transmission: Arabic, Latin, German, and English; Islamic and Christian; medieval, Renaissance, and modern.

From an apparently modest wax tablet to a text that survived centuries of copying, adaptation, reinterpretation, and controversy, the Almandal offers an exceptional case study in how magical and religious ideas cross borders without remaining unchanged.

A critical journey through manuscripts, Arabic magic, medieval translation, angelology, ritual symbolism, and the Western grimoire tradition.

The Almandal of Solomon is part of the historical-grimoire line of Ediciones Históricas by Luis M. Reyes.