(title page from The Sixth Book of Moses, a Kabbalistic grimoire)
On this page I've gathered together some brief texts and images from the grimoires (grammars) of Western ritual magic. The grimoires are how-to manuals written by magicians for magicians. A basic level of practical knowledge in magic is presumed by the authors of these texts, which are in the form of outlines, the primary contents being barbarous names of power and incantations. The magician consulting the texts was expected to fill in the missing details of ritual procedure.
Comprehension is rendered even more difficult due to the chaotic structure of works that have been copied and recopied by hand numerous times by scribes with little on no understanding of their subject. Compounding the difficulty, some grimoires are not cohesive literary compositions, but unintegrated compilations of parts from earlier works. If you imagine trying to make sense out of the hastily scribbled notes of a first-year university student, you will gain some idea of what it is like to study the grimoires.
Despite their shortcomings, they are a precious heritage from the past, representing as they do the actual practices of ceremonial magic, a discipline that was always in disrepute and that in some centuries and societies was punishable by death. Magicians did not write down their art as a literary exercise. It was too dangerous. They wrote down what they wished to preserve for their children or disciples as a legacy, and what they needed to remember in exact detail without error, such as the long strings of barbarous names. They set down on parchment what they considered too valuable to lose.