A Magician's Answer to Persecution

The Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber Iuratus Honorii) is one of the oldest surviving medieval grimoires, its text going back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It is attributed to Honorius of Thebes, an otherwise unknown master said to have compiled it on behalf of an assembly of magicians, a legendary, not a historical, figure, and not to be confused with either of the popes named Honorius, though later grimoires deliberately traded on that confusion.

The book frames its magic as a sacred science: its centrepiece is a long and demanding operation for attaining the beatific vision of God, the direct sight of the divine, alongside procedures for commanding the angels and the spirits of the planets and the directions. Its prologue casts the work as the magicians' defence against a Church that sought to suppress them, and the "sworn" of the title refers to the oath binding those to whom the secret may be passed and limiting the number of copies. It is a good example of medieval theurgy presenting itself as pious and orthodox rather than diabolical, and it influenced later Solomonic and angelic magic.