Divinity Atlas

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Powers and Office in the Arbatel

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Powers and Office in the Arbatel

In the Arbatel de magia veterum, Aratron is the Olympic spirit given governance over the sphere of Saturn, and the text credits him with an unusually long list of offices. He is said to teach alchemy, medicine and the secrets of nature, to turn any matter into stone while it keeps its outward appearance, and to transmute treasures into coal and coal back into treasure again. The text also credits him with reconciling the spirits of the earth to human beings, granting familiar spirits with defined powers, causing invisibility, and making barren people, animals or land fertile while extending life.

Aratron is described as commanding a large court of subordinate kings, princes, presidents, dukes and ministers, the same nested structure of ranks the Arbatel gives each of the seven Olympic spirits, though the specific counts vary by copy and translation. His reign, like each of the seven, is reckoned in the Arbatel's scheme as one of seven successive ages of 490 years each, together spanning the history of the world from the text's own point of view. The Arbatel presents this material as instruction for a reader already trained in natural philosophy and framed as a description of what the spirit governs, not as a ritual script, and this entry describes that content rather than reproducing any operative working from it.

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