The Book of Saint Cyprian with José Leitão

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this engaging podcast episode, Doug, the host of 'What Magic Is This?', discusses the fascinating world of St. Cyprian with his guest, José Leitão, an expert in historical magic from Portugal. The episode explores the origins, history, and influence of the Book of St. Cyprian, a legendary text in Western magic often shrouded in mystery and fear. José provides insights into how these texts evolved, their cultural significance, and their modern interpretations. The discussion also delves into the various magical and practical uses of the Cyprian grimoires both historically and in contemporary times, particularly focusing on treasure hunting and divination.

Highlights

Doug introduces José Leitão, an expert on St. Cyprian and magic in Portugal 🎙️.
The historical tale of St. Cyprian, a fictional character, is linked with magic and mysticism 📖.
José shares insights into how the Book of St. Cyprian is perceived and its legendary status in various cultures 🌌.
There's a focus on treasure hunting in these grimoires, often tied to local folklore and legends of buried treasure 💰.
Modern perceptions and adaptations of St. Cyprian's influence demonstrate its lasting impact on contemporary magic practices 🔮.

Key Takeaways

St. Cyprian is a legendary figure in magic, often mistaken for historical figures with similar names 🧙‍♂️.
The Book of St. Cyprian is a culturally significant text with roots in Iberian folklore and magical traditions 📚.
Cyprian grimoires have evolved over time, incorporating elements of Christianity, local folklore, and European magic ✨.
These books are not only magical manuals but also cultural artifacts reflecting societal fears and curiosities 🌍.
Treasure hunting and divination are significant themes in the Cyprian literature, reflecting historical and cultural contexts 🏺.

Overview

The podcast kicks off with Doug and José exploring who St. Cyprian is and how he became a central figure in magical texts. They discuss the historical context of these stories and the intriguing narratives that surround this mystical character.

José then delves into the evolution and significance of the Book of St. Cyprian, highlighting its cultural impact in Iberia and beyond. He explains how these grimoires were used for various purposes, including treasure hunting and divination, and how they adapted to incorporate local and international magical practices.

In the final segment, the discussion turns to the contemporary relevance of St. Cyprian's magic, examining how these texts continue to captivate modern audiences. José notes the sustained interest in Cyprian grimoires and their role in today's magical practices, suggesting that these books, steeped in history and mystery, remain pivotal in the study of magic.

Chapters

00:00 - 01:00: Introduction Doug introduces the podcast 'What Magic Is This?', which will explore topics such as magic, the occult, the esoteric, the paranormal, the supernatural, and the weird. This episode is the first in a series focused on books of magic.
02:30 - 15:00: Story of St. Cyprian The chapter discusses the figure of St. Cyprian, who is frequently inquired about by those visiting the speaker's website. It aims to explain the relation of Cyprian to magic, focusing on the 'Cyprian Grimoire and Books of St. Cyprian.' The chapter will feature insights from a special guest.
15:00 - 28:00: Differences in Witchcraft in Portugal The chapter explores various aspects of witchcraft in Portugal, focusing on the study of magic within the records of the Portuguese Inquisition. The guest speaker is a former experimental physicist, now researching magic at the University of Kimbra. They hold a physics PhD and a master's degree in religious studies, specializing in Western esotericism, particularly the folk magic traditions in Portugal and early modern and contemporary magic books. Additionally, they have translated the Book of St. Cyprien.
28:00 - 35:00: Personal Interest in St. Cyprian The speaker warmly welcomes J leau Jose, expressing excitement over his contribution to the collection of texts known as opuscula cypriani. The chapter sets a pleasant, relaxed tone with J leau mentioning the enjoyment of rum in the sunny setting where students are audibly singing outside, emphasizing a sense of atmosphere and engagement with the environment.
35:00 - 51:00: History of the Book of St. Cyprian This chapter discusses the fascination and frequent questions surrounding the story of St. Cyprian. It indicates that the story of St. Cyprian is a well-known topic, frequently asked about by audiences. Despite the author's possible fatigue with retelling the tale due to its popularity, the chapter hints at the intriguing elements of St. Cyprian's story that continue to captivate interest.
51:00 - 61:00: Types of St. Cyprian Books This chapter explores the different texts associated with St. Cyprian of Antioch, a fictional character from the 4th century. The focus is on three primary texts: 'The Conversion of Cyprian,' 'The Confession of Cyprian,' and 'The Martyrdom of Cyprian,' which are sometimes collectively referred to. These works provide varying stories and accounts about St. Cyprian's life and significance.
76:30 - 82:00: Content of Portuguese St. Cyprian Book The chapter provides an account of the life and transformation of St. Cyprian, describing his journey from being a Pagan sorcerer born to Pagan parents to becoming a symbol of Christian superiority over Pagan practices. This narrative draws from the early Christian apocryphal texts, specifically the acts of St. Cyprian and St. Justina of Antioch, which emphasize the primacy of Christianity during that era.
85:29 - 98:00: Cyanic Divination The protagonist, recognized as extraordinarily gifted from a young age, was introduced by their parents to various mystery cults and initiations, dedicating them to several gods. As they matured, they gained fame, knowledge, and wisdom, eventually becoming a magician for hire.
108:00 - 123:00: Treasure Hunting and St. Cyprian This chapter delves into the intriguing nature of ancient texts, particularly focusing on those that highlight the superiority of Christianity over other beliefs. The author, presumably a Christian, demonstrates significant knowledge of Greek mystery cults. This expertise allows these texts to serve not just their intended religious purposes, but also as valuable resources for understanding Greek mystery traditions. Thus, these writings are a treasure trove for historians and scholars interested in ancient religious practices.
146:00 - 166:00: Spread to New World and Modern Impact The chapter discusses the rise of Neoplatonism during Julian the Apostate's time. It highlights the story of Cyprine, who becomes a magician for hire. The narrative touches on cultural and historical facets, particularly focusing on Cyprine's interactions and how various texts present him.
170:00 - 180:00: Reputation and Cultural Impact The chapter 'Reputation and Cultural Impact' revolves around a narrative set in Antioch involving a wealthy individual who falls in love with a local Christian woman. Despite his intentions and the willingness of her parents to consider the match, the woman, known by the names Justtina or Youa, is committed to dedicating her life to Christ and is not interested in marriage.
196:00 - 211:00: Future of St. Cyprian Interest In this chapter titled 'Future of St. Cyprian Interest', the story centers around a Christian woman named Yustina and a man named Cyprian who is hired to use magic against her. The plot unfolds as Cyprian repeatedly sends demons to tempt Yustina, attempting to inflame her heart. Despite his relentless efforts, every demon fails in their mission, demonstrating Yustina's strong resolve and faith.
211:00 - 227:10: Conclusion and Sign Off In the conclusion, the story focuses on Cyprian, who attempts to demonstrate his power by summoning the Devil himself to justify the strange happenings. Despite the Devil's reputed superiority, he admits to being powerless against a girl who possesses the sign of the cross, symbolizing the ultimate divine power and protection.

The Book of Saint Cyprian with José Leitão Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hello everybody Welcome to what magic is this a podcast about magic the occult the esoteric the Paranormal the Supernatural and the weird my name is Doug and welcome to the first episode in the series of books of magic and we are going to start this one off with an
00:30 - 01:00 absolute bang because this is something that I know so many folks have asked me about indeed I get asked when people go to the website what's this strange figure that you have on your website who is this cyprian fow that you keep talking about what does he have to do with magic all of these things so hopefully by the end of this episode you will know because today we are talking about cyprian grimoire and books of St cyprian and we have the only guest in my
01:00 - 01:30 mind who I could talk to about this my guest is a former experimental physicist currently studying magic in the records of the Portuguese Inquisition at the University of Kimbra holding not only a physics PhD since 2014 they also have a master's degree in religious studies with a major in Western esotericism from the University of Amsterdam specializing in examining folk magic traditions in Portugal as well as early modern and contemporary books of magic they are the translator of the book of St cyprien the
01:30 - 02:00 sorcerer's treasure and a myriad of cyanic texts collected in the work opuscula cypriani I am beyond privileged to welcome to what magic is this J leau Jose how are you um I'm very well and I'm uh I just had some rum I'm very happy right now amazing it's a very sunny afternoon over here students are singing outside so it's fine yes students are is that something that happens quite a bit where you are yes it's September SRA students are outside
02:00 - 02:30 celebrating oh fantastic well hopefully this will be some kind of a celebr in some way the celebration of all things to do with st cypri and now I know that you get this question so often in fact I had it on a question form you're like I'm tired of talking about this I'm tired of saying this story but with a little bit of uh of twisting of the arm I would love to hear what you think of the story of s cyprien so who is St
02:30 - 03:00 cyprian and what is his story in a nutshell if you could all right okay St cyprien of Antioch as distinct from St CPR of Carthage is a fictional character from the 4th Century um his name shows up in I think about three texts um the conversion of cyprian the confession of cyprian and the marthom of cyprian sometimes colle collectively referred to
03:00 - 03:30 as the acts of St cin of Antioch and these are early Christian pical texts whose purpose and objective is simply to underline the inherent superiority of Christianity U as opposed to more traditional at that time Pagan practices and beliefs and they basically relate collectively they relate um the story of of cyprian who was this uh Pagan sorcerer was a born to Pagan parents and
03:30 - 04:00 was taken to be extraordinarily gifted from a young age and his parents introduced him to various um mystery Cults and initiations and devoted him to various Gods um and he grew in Fame and knowledge and wisdom and all that and eventually became um a magician For Hire now the the story The text of St CPR of Antioch the ACT
04:00 - 04:30 uh they're all um besides their objective as as the text that they were written out to be um contemporarily you you these texts are extremely interesting because whoever wrote them this supposed Christian author who wanted to really um highlight the the superiority of Christianity whoever wrote them was a rather informed individual and actually these texts can be mined for really a lot of information on Greek mystery Cults and um even they
04:30 - 05:00 seem to have a particular I wouldn't say Obsession but a certain focus on the rise of neoplatonism around Julian the apostate okay but anyway that's that's the text in the story cyprine becomes this magician for higher um eventually he is contacted by uh by a young man um the name kind of varies a little bit depending on if you're reading Greek or Latin sources AAS sometimes is referred
05:00 - 05:30 to um who had fallen in love with uh a Christian um a Christian damsel a local antiochian christian woman um and he was trying he he was well off a well off individual he was trying to marry her but um while her parents weren't um opposed the idea this girl referred to as either justtina or youa um she wasn't she wasn't having any of that uh she wanted to dedicate herself to Christ she
05:30 - 06:00 was a Christian um and con constantly refused AAS so his solution was just to hire cyprian and and try to have him um do his magic and just conquer this this young woman um cyprian started working on the matter and the story gets a bit repetitive here because cyprian starts just sending demons after yustina to tempt her and and inflame her her heart um um and and all the demons fail
06:00 - 06:30 because she she knew the sign of the cross which banishes demons uh eventually cyprian um summons the Devil Himself and uh and asks for justification what is happening you are supposed to be the superior power in this what what's going on and the devil confesses that well sure that's all true but uh this girl she has the sign of the cross Ah that's out of my Lee I can't do anything about that and uh faced with
06:30 - 07:00 this confession by the devil cyprien um rebukes the devil he rebukes his weakness and joins the Christian church as the the superior um the superior power at play here um now the story then be converts um becomes I don't if he I think they they mentioned that he becomes a bishop eventually and USA becomes the the head of a Convent or something um but anyway their Fame grow
07:00 - 07:30 and uh eventually they are arrested as Christians um they try to firstly um boil them um in a in a cauldron of pitch and wax and uh they they throw ususa and cyprian into this cauldron and they uh they are nothing happens they are like invulnerable um there's a very interesting point here where there's um there's another magician that shows up in the story at this point a guy called athanasius
07:30 - 08:00 who some stories claim that he was a former student of cyprian although I don't think the older ones mentioned this I think this is more of a recent development um and he says no no no this has nothing to do with with any Jesus or anything now this is CPR doing his magic I know his magic and he tries to also summon I think Apollo and he throws himself into the cldr and he dies H and then yusa and um and cyprian are sent to uh Emperor the oitan and and he he doesn't play games
08:00 - 08:30 he just beheads them um so they die um there's also a Christian that was just randomly passing by at this point of the story and says hello to them and he Al is also killed okay uh and all three are then buried but then some some Christians retrieve their bodies and and supposedly send them to Rome um and that's basically it that's the story of sin of anoch uh
08:30 - 09:00 that's the three texts the three fourth Century texts now What Becomes of the story after that that's a whole other business but that is the story as as presented in the acts of St zpr of Antioch sure I know we only got so much time but how did the figure of St cyprian and his story become so big that we're talking about him now as opposed to say somebody like King Solomon who is huge within the Western magical tradition cyprians there I mean if you
09:00 - 09:30 go a little bit further uh East in Europe you have Tales of f but within within Western magic it's it's King Solomon and Then followed up by by St cyprian how did how did this happen since the 4th Century well the evolution of the story or its reception um I mean we have some some points along history um but it's really not clear uh and we know that um there's a sermon by Gregory
09:30 - 10:00 of Naz nazan early Church Father um fourth Century still he does in one of his sermons he does uh mention St zpr of Antioch so the story got disseminated uh although he confuses him with s of Carthage which is some something that will happen throughout history anyway um in the fourth and fifth century we had have a couple of manions
10:00 - 10:30 by a few poets um and the in the fifth century also we have that um Empress Alia osia um actually writes a poem about St cyprien just basically retelling the acts of CPR of Antioch so we know that somehow this story got disseminated and it seems that the figure of St CPR the story if you look at it and if you look at it from
10:30 - 11:00 perspective of the reasoning how people usually approach Saints and they approach geographies The Logical outcome of a story such as this is placing cyprian personally as a martyr which is a a specific category within the the pantheon of Catholicism people don't realize that Saints actually have categories and there's a hierarchy between them and a martyr is is high up there it it places him as a martyr and logically places him as um a patron saint against magic or a protect against
11:00 - 11:30 magic but along the way for whatever reason and I don't know how this happened I don't think anyone has a satisfactory answer for this not only is St cyprian taken to be a patron saint against magic but he also acquires the the the the position of being a patron saint in the aid of magic then in the it's a big time lapse but in then in the 11th century we already had have Coptic sources uh mentioning the name of
11:30 - 12:00 sinin of Antioch as part of a love sorcery so whatever happened we know that he was talked about with some some extent in the up until the fifth century and then you know sixth centuries later um he's already associated with magic okay now what seems to really um like disseminate the story um very widely is uh it's the inclusion of
12:00 - 12:30 a version of the story of sinin of Antioch in the golden legend or the the Flor which is this very popular collection of lives of the Saints which some authors have claimed in it was actually more popular than the Bible which isn't all that difficult to believe because first of all it was written in vernacular right um it was a very popular um literary genre not just a book but the literary genre lives of the Saints um they were disseminated not only for commercial reasons but the Church found that the these small
12:30 - 13:00 stories of lives of the saints were actually a lot more useful in the christianization and propagation of Christianity than the Bible which is a complicated text independently of time frame um and the the story of Santio gets really distributed all over Europe due to that now if you if you're asking me why specific regions of Europe all of the sudden adopt St Cen as a magical hero and book star popping up associated with
13:00 - 13:30 st cyprien that I I I cannot answer I don't know it just seems that certain populations really liked it yeah um I think it probably also has to do with um because parallel to the story of cyprine you also have another text that shows up where nobody really knows where it comes from the Prayer of St cyprien which is a very widely distributed magical religious text um it's a it's a prayer very lengthy one um it's it's us usually perceived to have
13:30 - 14:00 not only power as a as a verbal utterance but also as a as a talismanic text something that you can carry with you and it also seems that the the emergence of books attributed to St C have to do with that prayer because that prayer will frequently feature uh in books of sinian so if you were if if you were to push me against the wall and force me to give you an answer I would just say well I probably in regions where the prayer of sincan got popular people started attaching things to it
14:00 - 14:30 and made books of sincan this this would happen eventually somewhere and happened in a handful of places and that's how we get the books again pure supposition yeah I find it incredibly fascinating just how often the name cyprian pops up in certain things and even as far as what we're talking about specifically for this episode things like um like at thes sorus spiritum uh which is a kind of grim warn you have a text called the neg
14:30 - 15:00 Romania there's a mass of St cyprian I believe that's a a 15th or 16th century English text the cyprian made its way to the shores of England and just we're not going to talk about how grimoires in in Scandinavia they're called um believe cyprianus and black books fart book is let's let's concentrate more on FL this episode at least on your specialty which is was which is Portugal and Iberia so historically how were witches and the
15:00 - 15:30 culture of Witchcraft different in Portugal than it was in the rest of Europe I love this story this is such an amazing thing so how is it different in Portugal all right so that's that's a complicated question and it has several angles to it so um there are two major aspects there um one of them is that um witchcraft as um as a practice let's say um is is something that is constructed
15:30 - 16:00 throughout the early modern period largely by um intellectual Elites it's it's a gradual construction a gradual collection of several elements from several sources um they have to do with certain ideas put forward by um certain Church fathers about the nature of what is the source of Supernatural power in the world which some will say well there is
16:00 - 16:30 only one source of power in the world that is God anything that is not godly and somehow has power needs to be forcibly aligned with the devil because if you're constructing a Christian cosmology framework that's the only two sources of power that is are theologically validated and so that develops into the theory of the fact and then all sorts of practices start to get attached to it and so all sorts of ideas and previous conceptions
16:30 - 17:00 of non-Christian Cults instead of being simply non-Christian they start to be relegated to anti-christian Cults and all gets Clum together and crystallized into this idea of Witchcraft and ironically when when you start having institutions like the inquisitions popping up um this becomes a major tool that the inquisitions have as basically just a framework to identify heresy um and ironically it is the the enforcement of the inquisitions
17:00 - 17:30 and this idea of a learned conception of Witchcraft that actually ends up generating witchcraft because the the population gradually starts to assimilate those narratives which are mostly alien to most regions in Europe but they gradually become assimilated now there is a distinction when we're now looking at Portugal because the Inquisition was established here a bit later than some
17:30 - 18:00 other regions like Spain uh actually Spain is incorrect Castile is the actual name of the Kingdom right um it was institutionalized in 1536 um and the the primary preoccupation of the Inquisition was mostly um Judaism and hidden Jews so a a few for 1497 there was a a forced
18:00 - 18:30 conversion of Portuguese Jews to Christianity it's um the alumbra decree um King Manuel issued it was part of his marriage deal with the Catholic monarchs um you can guess where that is going because they are called the Catholic monarchs um as part of his marriage deal that he needed to make his his kingdom entirely Christian so Jews and Muslims needed to find a way out uh Muslims
18:30 - 19:00 mostly some converted but mostly just went to North Africa which isn't that much of a stretch Jews also tried to leave um but um it was a bit more complicated because they were the economic Elites of the kingdom and if King Manuel allowed them to Simply leave the kingdom would not um um we you would like your your commercial um force would just be destroyed so he end
19:00 - 19:30 basically uh prevent prohibiting Jews from crossing the Portuguese border which means he locked everybody in oh and everybody was was forced to convert to to Christianity to Catholicism making a whole bunch of categories which then become their own things like Maran and crypto Jews hidden Jews and all this and when the Inquisition get gets established in 1536 by King John theii um the main preoccupation when it came to heresy or when it came to non
19:30 - 20:00 Catholic stuff was the notion that it was pretty prevalent in society that there are hidden Jews everywhere yeah which wasn't actually a lie but they weren't bothering anybody no um and so the Inquisition begins and is optimized and is almost solely focused on the persecution of hiden Jews and they did that very efficiently um there are you know we can talk about this at length but anyway
20:00 - 20:30 they were they were that was their point their main concern when it came to heresy Portuguese Society was hidden Jews let's find these Jews and let's take their money because that's the other side because they were still Rich right um as a secondary preoccupation there was also protestantism which never really had a particularly strong expression in Portugal we do have small Pockets uh mostly associated with uh foreign Traders or Aries the the king
20:30 - 21:00 would issue some licenses okay you're Protestants but you know you're representative of a different CR we have deals with this CR so you get to hang around here just don't talk about your religion with anybody and sometimes things happen um but then on a a tier very very uh below that below Judaism below protestantism we had magical crimes and just a comparison look 73% of all trials by the lisban Inquisition
21:00 - 21:30 relate to Judaism um about magical crimes are like 3% three nothing yeah it's it's a it's a few thousand trials it's still a very decent number but it's not something overwhelming this basically magic was a crime uh it was a secular crime and it was a religious crime so uh um if if somebody was found
21:30 - 22:00 practicing magic of whatever sort he could be tried in a secular tribunal or the Inquisition um there was a period of time where the Bishops could also B uh try them the Episcopal courts which is always a big mess when you have three tribunals with distinct uh legal um Frameworks that all want to persecute the same people but it was mostly the secular and the and the inquisitional parts and if somebody got found they would be tried would be arrested and tried but nobody was out there looking
22:00 - 22:30 for them there was no there was no process there was no no historical movement that might be referred to as a Witch Hunt right yeah the Inquisition wasn't actually interested in them there was there were Jew Hunters you had plenty of those but witch Hunters not really yeah um and also and this is these are fine fine theological points the the dominant um theological conceptions in the Portuguese Kingdom that the
22:30 - 23:00 Inquisition really really pushed forward were mostly based on Thomas aquinus um and he doesn't place too much emphasis on the power of witches and the devil he he's a bit skeptical about it he's not denying that the devil has power but let's take it easy um and so the the the very inquisitors weren't always that much of Believers in the reality of magic in the reality of Witchcraft particularly witchcraft they didn't really care too
23:00 - 23:30 much about it um so during most most of the period this this enforcement of the Witchcraft narrative didn't get imposed on the population all that hard because they they it didn't even have the resources to do that they simply you know if magic gets fine so we'll try them we'll call him a heretic maybe we'll we'll slap a Packa on him but it's not a big deal and and the penalties were very light compared to other uh other regions we had a handful of of witch burnings
23:30 - 24:00 really a handful and when when those happened most people were horrified and so it was bad publicity the Inquisition didn't really like that they like burning Jews but um which is only if something really serious would have happened would you burn a witch U most often you would just light penalties maybe a fine maybe banish them to Brazil or something like that and um and I time moves on when you
24:00 - 24:30 enter into the 18th century this is the only time period when you start to have more formally uh conceived Witchcraft Trials because it is only in the 18th century which is rather late compared to the rest of Europe that the population actually starts to appropriate the narratives of Witchcraft okay they've been around long enough that people start to uh integrate those into their own beliefs uh but even still fre ly when the inquisitors found
24:30 - 25:00 anyone which they could project witchcraft upon or who would themselves start to talk about things identifiable as learned witchcraft frequently the narratives that these people told were extremely heterogeneous so they they still possessed a lot of local elements more relegated to Folklore and and and folk magic that really didn't fit entirely the mold of of um of learn witchcraft which frequently results in
25:00 - 25:30 in frustration by the inquisitors that they they they really can't pin this one down as witchcraft they they say yeah it's the devil but we can't pin everything on this guy um and so yeah that's that was basically how witchcraft was working now obviously you there's another aspect to Witchcraft um I think Richard kfer mentions this that there are always two distinctions among witchcraft you have this learned witchcraft this is what I'm talking about but then you have a folk concept
25:30 - 26:00 of Witchcraft which is as variable as there are cultures in the world there will be a category a social category in in small rural communities which you might call witch or that they there will call witch but their conception of what a witch is is entirely distinct than what a theologian who think of witch is the most um rapid easy distinction between these is that from a theological
26:00 - 26:30 perspective a witch does not have intrinsic power the power is given externally to them by the virtue of their P it's a demon or it's a devil that enacts the supernatural abilities and not the witch itself from a folk perspective witches have in inherent power and they're usually associated with instances of remarkable birth so we do have those in Portugal brues um which are again they are it's it's a social category um um and it it serves a social
26:30 - 27:00 function and but they are mostly it's a folkloric concept right so the the issue of Witchcraft if this is what you're talking about is that is that um there is a folkloric issue here but the the the the enforcement of the Learned witchcraft theory was very weak here and so we have all these other forms of magical practice happening but happening autonomously outside of these Force theological projections fantastic such an interesting historical
27:00 - 27:30 period of time for sure certainly and thank you so much for putting that as clear as you did that's amazing J I'm gonna ask this right now before we start talking about the books themselves it's a personal question Jose does such incredible work he's going through inquisitional records just thousands of these things to mind and so this takes a lot of effort and a lot of work to say so why is the book of St cyprian why are
27:30 - 28:00 cyanic Portuguese cyanic grimor why are they so fascinating to you why have you dedicated such an enormous part of your life to looking at these these texts that's an issue of personal history um I probably don't have a good um rational reason for that I I look I um I I come from a low middle class run of the male Portuguese family uh my
28:00 - 28:30 grandmother was fairly an attentive Catholic my my parents were what you call um what here we call non-practicing the Catholics which is a concept that it's basically they're culturally Catholic just the same way that you have in secular societies you have cultural Jews you have cultural Muslims you know people who just go with the Motions but their beliefs aren't really there but they respect the culture um so they were culturally Catholic and
28:30 - 29:00 um I I heard about the book of St cian primary school or something like that um I think my brother mentioned it he was doing some work in school with his colleagues and he went to the library and there was this this book of St cban there and everybody was horrified and then they told me about it and I was horrified for them um and my then my grandmother also uh chipped in and said oh that's that's evil that's that's the devil right there don't touch
29:00 - 29:30 that book that book will they'll mess you up and then you you start talking with other people and everybody had like an urban myth about the book of sin cban back then uh if you read the book If you read the book uh like fully first of all you if you start reading the book you can't stop I never I was never told why I don't know if it was like an obsession like a lovecraftian thing right or or if you just died I don't know you can't stop and when you finish it then the devil shows up and and all sorts of
29:30 - 30:00 things yeah so look and and I wasn't I was a good boy I didn't touch it uh but just eventually you know you grow up um you become interested in in whatever it is that you're interested in I I I started getting interested in first of all history which is always good and then particularly in college started getting interested in esotericism and certain forms of magic uh back in those days particularly in Portugal um there there is still
30:00 - 30:30 somewhat limited access to Magic literature over here uh we do we do have a few Publishers now but they mostly just published the the popular stuff if so if you want to really some interesting thing out of the box kind of stuff like grimoire it's still kind of hard to find uh but I was I was looking into magic you know the your damic chaos magic sort of thing which is always very attractive to adolescent boys um um but then eventually um I I honestly
30:30 - 31:00 got bored with that Crowley is a very subductive author but he is very because he has an answer for everything everything fits to Lima um but at a certain point I got tired of I got tired of all the Egyptian stuff I don't like Egypt um I'm a bad esotericist everybody's supposed to love Egypt I can't stand it okay and I got tired of the Egyptian names and [ __ ] this guy so I
31:00 - 31:30 started I started looking for something else and um it was about that time that um Scarlet imprint came out with with howlings still one of my favorite books ever published of this of the Contemporary magic Revival haulings and diabolical beautiful books absolutely and I read those and it was like a a breath of fresh air just some people I never heard about talking about books I never heard about beautiful beautiful
31:30 - 32:00 Publications H and then I remember the book of sin Cen that there is something here Ain to this that I heard about Once Upon a Time leted me look into that uh and I eventually did it took me a while because I was really broke back then and the books of cion aren't that expensive but they it does cost money and when you don't have any money a lot of money or little money is still money so um it took me a while to find the book of in cpan and then I did around that time Jake Straton K was
32:00 - 32:30 already I think he already published his his translation of the uh oh [ __ ] um true gmor the B and he had a section in there about the books of s cyprian which was oh [ __ ] oh he's talking about us and and the the way that he went about his his book um really got me thinking that something like that could be done about the book of sin CPR and eventually I just ended up doing it
32:30 - 33:00 um for a while I did rationalize it that there's probably better people than me to do this but I I guess at some point I got tired of waiting and said okay [ __ ] it I'm gonna write this myself I I I I have found out as a writer that you end up writing the books you wish you could have read uh when you were young so I decided to write it and um I don't know it clicked to me it's um I'm I'm not I can defend my original translation of the book of St
33:00 - 33:30 cian as I published in 2014 I will put a little asterisk and saying some of the comments might not be historically accurate anymore because it was a long time ago yeah but I did I did my best and it um it clicked um somehow I just it felt right felt right at home um I'm not saying it was easy it was a struggle still it's a there are cultural issues you have to deal with um but but you
33:30 - 34:00 know it was like I said felt right felt like something I could do and I I've kept doing it um tried my best to always um go at it from angles that seemed right and fair and academically informed which ultimately is what I won't say forced me but really informed my decision to maybe stop being a physicist because I was I was very
34:00 - 34:30 bored there yeah it was a good job as a nine-to-five job it was very good because it paid a lot and it wasn't unpleasant but overall it was still quite boring to me and I um it this informed my decision to eventually just take a second master's degree in history and esotericism and just see how far I can take this and and provide proper informed um translations and understandings of of this line of literature fantastic and all of us owe
34:30 - 35:00 you a huge Deb of gratitude if if this stuff is interesting because you do the work you really do and Jose has a wonderful YouTube account and you can watch some of the videos there in which he has the records of all of these inquisitional papers and they're they're really quite fascinating and there's that's that takes a ton of work I have to say how far back can we say that something called a book of St cyprien was was being
35:00 - 35:30 used right um from from the records of the Portuguese Inquisition there is a date um and for a long time I thought this date was the oldest I could find no no I'm just put an asterisk in there this is based on the Inquisition yeah which is the database I'm specialized in because it was the one I thought and I think greatly so if I want to study magic this is where I'm going to find a more abundant number of sources um and let me just underline the
35:30 - 36:00 full extent of the Portuguese Inquisition while the magic trials are fairly rare comparatively to the Judaism trials uh it is a near unexhausted source of information because it's not only the words that are written there it's the every single word implies context implies ideas um Spirit heart it's it's you can look at this massive
36:00 - 36:30 resource of information from so many different angles and you can extract so much information from there just that is nearly inexhaustible and if I manage to have an academic career I will not exhaust this so first of all there's room for everybody so if anybody wants to help me out so it's nice recruitment anyway the Portuguese Inquisition and referring to references to book of s cban there for the longest time I thought that the oldest reference to a
36:30 - 37:00 book of sin cian was 1620 the trial of a guy called Pedro aons Pedro aonso we can go into his trial in more detail a bit later but petons mentions in his trial and he was he was an old dude he was like 70 when they got him he mentions that he the book he had which is explicitly mentioned as a book of St cian had been produced 30 years before meaning 1590 so end of the 16th century
37:00 - 37:30 and it was copied from another book so there was an older book so I'm gonna I'm gonna the spitballing this is the rough period when books of sinin start to appear I'm going to say late 16th century this is as far as we can push them now having said that more recently I did become aware of another document um not Portuguese Inquisition Spanish Inquisition uh for the longest time I
37:30 - 38:00 thought the Portuguese cyprian books were the oldest but maybe not so I didn't discover this document this document had been discovered somebody just called my attention to it more recently the the great researcher the Galan researcher Felix Cent okay who is a precursor to everybody contemporarily looking at books of sinan and he mentions that there is a denunciation it's not really a process a trial it's a den iation against a guy called Juan de Toledo
38:00 - 38:30 Spanish guy in Toledo from the Toledo Inquisition who is mentioned as having an object referred to as a li the Sano which is basically the Spanish for Book of San in 1610 so 10 years before Pedro so the reference Pedro fonso makes that his book was produced 30 years before his trial is still the oldest date but the earliest document is 1610 to Le the Inquisition
38:30 - 39:00 nice as far as things that we have concrete things that we can look at as far as documents are concerned how far back do we go for an actual document that is stashed away at an archive that we can point to and say that is a book of St cyprian look there sure um there is there is also a matter of debate there because we we need to there needs to be
39:00 - 39:30 a definition of what constitutes the book of ccan okay and and we at this point it's it's hard when we just have two examples the 16 and 1620 and we don't have those books they are referred to as books of sincan we don't know what is causing this name to be attributed to them is what did the book have the title written on it or was this some kind of uh cultural projection that a book shows up it has certain
39:30 - 40:00 characteristics and these characteristics identify it as a book of sinan we don't know this uh we can make certain suppositions that like I said before I assume that early on a book of sincan would be something that would be collected around a prayer of sin cian okay this is my working definition um we don't know anything about the one to B it's just a small denunciation there is no description of
40:00 - 40:30 content we do have the description of the content of the Pedro F book which does contain a prayer of sinan as a extremely relevant section of that book it's it basically the the prayer of sin cpri is believed to have certain characteristics Tellis manic characteristics and those same characteristics are given to his book which suggest that there was this let's say qu air quotes a contamination from the characteristics of the prayer to the whole book book and it was this prayer that was giving the title prayer of
40:30 - 41:00 sinia now having said that that means that every time we find a prayer of sin cian um in the 15 16 17th century 18th century anytime we find a prayer of sinan this is a potential instance of a book of sincan depending on its material characteristics or if it has other stuff attached to it yeah with that in mind there are some manuscripts that are mentioned in
41:00 - 41:30 Inquisition trials that kind of fit that definition but again these are mostly descriptions of them there seems to be a reframing of books of sincan in the 18th century you know um magic follows fashion um 19th century people like to say that magic is like The Perennial tradition exists continuously from no no it doesn't it follows fashion yeah yeah uh in the 18th century U books of St cin
41:30 - 42:00 get largely reframed as treasure hunting books and I'm going somewhere with this I promise um treasure hunting books um and I I believe that the reason why books of sinin become treasure hunting books is again because of the Prayer of St cyprian which is a method to in the 16th century and 17th century it's a method to banish um evil spirits you read the prayer and you banish the spirit and treasure hunting is is frequently this is nearly Universal the
42:00 - 42:30 concept of treasure hunting that a Buri treasure will frequently have a treasure Guardian uh a spirit of some kind and it seems that the Prayer of St cpri started being used by treasure hunters in the 18th century as a method to banish this spirit so books of St cin become heavily associated with treasure hunting and the first book of St CPR that we can first manuscript that we can point at and say that book over there fills every
42:30 - 43:00 requirement to be called The Book of St Cen is a treasure hunting book um currently housed in the manuscript section of the library of the University of qura where I speaking to you from cool it doesn't have a title it's just it's it starts off it's it's one book like a 30 folios long not not very big it contains one single ritual the ritual is largely a repetitive recitation of
43:00 - 43:30 the Prayer of St cian and then you have some instructions to use some some rapdom mancy and how to make a couple of circles and stuff like that but it is on all accounts a book of a book specialized in treasure hunting that basically uses the pre of St cyprian to banish treasure which if you look at the Inquisition trials from the 18th century qualifies it as a book of sinan so this is a book of sinan as far as I can tell yeah now that is that was until very
43:30 - 44:00 recently the only manuscript example of a book of St Cen we found and I I already published this a few different um times uh it's present I published it in the the book you mentioned before the opan and I also published it as a standalone small book as the qura book of Stan right um so anybody who's interested can look at it um it's a very interesting historical document very useful if you're interested in finding treasure so you know that's up to you um
44:00 - 44:30 but again recently last year or something um once again the the great researcher and gentleman Felix CB that same Galan individual he has managed to locate a second manuscript book of sinc okay yeah uh very very exciting um he found it I think I think it's in private with hands he he did take photos of the whole thing he showed
44:30 - 45:00 me the photos it is not my place to talk extensively about this it's it's his work he he should be the one to to discuss it I can say that it is again seems to be 18th century without without careful examination I cannot say which one is older the quebra book or his book um written in Latin which is a bit rarer qura book is written in vernacular in Portuguese and it's um very a lot more
45:00 - 45:30 visually impressive than the gbra book the gber book is just text that one has beautiful circles beautiful like stuff it's really exciting so those are the two the two older books we don't know which one is older yet at least uh we can do that by various methods one you know just um usually the paper manufacturer will have a a sign and you can usually date the paper so that's one way to go about it but we don't know which one is older it's but that that has been that is currently available to the public it's
45:30 - 46:00 the qura book um which is right here in quebra nice I think a lot of people when we try to think about grimo we always think that they're these old ancient they're they're from the fifth century and things like that a lot of times these are far more modern than than people realize and it's it's very very fascinating U we got we got to switch gears here in your 2014 book uh the book of St cypri and the Sorcerer the introduction to that you talk about
46:00 - 46:30 how there are two major distinct versions of books of St cyprian are you able to take the listeners through these two uh these two distinct categories and the major differences between the two okay um I'm assuming probably if if I remember myself from 2014 um probably I was talking about contemporary books books available right now yeah yeah so right now uh um in Iberia you have two main lines of books
46:30 - 47:00 um you have one book that's mostly dominant in Portugal and you have one that's mostly dominant in uh Spain um one I usually refer to as the sorcerer treasure because if you just look at the title it's if you translate both of them to English it's the book of s cyprian right H the Portuguese one usually uh tends to be a little more Grandeur about it he likes to call itself the grand book of s CPR or the Great Book book of sinban and the Sorcerer treasure that one is just the
47:00 - 47:30 book of sinban sometimes it also it also has a subtitle the sorcerer treasure which makes it very complicated but anyway you have those two versions and the the the content is fairly distinct they do have common points so whatever their Origins at some point they did communicate so they aren't isolated from each other particularly they have a few common like small sorceries like for for you know your mundane preoccupations but overall the the the
47:30 - 48:00 version that's dominant in Portugal it's a very extensive long book contains like tree Parts uh the the organization is really at times odd um there are sections that you would assume somebody would have just put these together in safe space there's actually repetition of of content in it um it seems to follow from my understanding of the history of the books of sincan seems to follow that tradition a lot closer namely that um the first part of the
48:00 - 48:30 book which I consider the most interesting part um contains an extensive ritual to banish Spirits which has as its base the prayer of sinan so that makes historical sense besides this it also contains a very extensive treasure hunting ritual that again uses the Prayer of St cban so makes historical sense and then it has these collections of folk remedies and um particularly the later sections have um
48:30 - 49:00 like whole block quotes from obscure iridite Portuguese sources fictionalist like from a guy called oh what's his name Jesus um oh forgot his name anyway it's a Barack author that's kind of popular in Portugal but then you also have a guy that was basically he just wrote jokes okay he wrote this this joking history of the city of aora which is a city in
49:00 - 49:30 the south of Portugal rather at the time a rather relevant City not so much anymore although it's still beautiful but he wrote this joke history of the city of aora uh full of outlandish stories of magic and Witchcraft and this this and that and there's a whole section of this book present in the book of ccan for no apparent reason this just there it's just their so it has these weird elements but but the the beginning of the book makes is historically consistent to what I
49:30 - 50:00 understand of this history of the book of sinan now the Spanish version um is usually very distinct um it it has a very characteristic opening which um the book is attributed to a a German monk called jino Sul Jones srey Jones um from the the broken mountain that he received the book of St CPR from the devil or some [ __ ] like that
50:00 - 50:30 yeah really strange narrative so I usually refer to as a shorthand reference I call this the suino book just everybody know if you're into books of sin you know what that means yeah and uh like I said it contains some elements similar to the Portuguese book but then it it really breaks away with the the historical development of it particularly when it comes to treasure hunting right because while the book of sinan still relies on the Bri of s cin to do its treasure hunting stuff this
50:30 - 51:00 one largely reuses material from the grand grimoire which is an early 18th century French and Italian grimoire that does have a significant presence in Magic practice in the 18th century in Spain and at the end of the 18th century early 19th century this is stuff I'm working on right now also has a very significant presence in Portugal but it does have a significant presence in Spain and material from that gets incorporated into the books of sin Cen somehow and the treasure hunting section
51:00 - 51:30 of that book seems to relay Bas rely basically on the grand gmar methodologies of basically summoning the prime minister of Hell lucif FAL who is who has the stewardship of all buried treasure um it largely forego the use of the Prayer of St cyprian uh which is interesting I'm not I'm not going to say it's an inferior book because there is no such thing because if you start from the beginning and CPR is a fictional character so what is true it's it's all valid yeah um it's
51:30 - 52:00 very so it's it's it has elements from other from other Grim Mars it has elements from the from the Solomon um the more extended versions also have uh elements from the the black pet and like and this book also generates a few upshots and the largest of the most has that material from the grand the P Al be so yeah it's more of a collection of of let's say European magic clumped together with some cian material which
52:00 - 52:30 makes a very interesting book nonetheless yeah but yeah those are the two two main versions for folks that are living in say like America uh if you were to go into like a bodega or or a place that's uh that's owned and run usually by people from Mexico most likely if you find El Libro the San cypriano in one of these bodegas most likely it's going to be one of the suino books of saints it's the version that I got when I went down to Mexico I've seen I used to spend a lot of time in Mexico whenever you go there they're going to
52:30 - 53:00 have this book and so it's it's very distinct from the Portuguese uh book of St cyprian so uh just something to keep in mind if and perhaps if you go to places where there's a larger Brazilian population you might find although it might be a little bit harder because the Brazilian sanos are an entirely different Beast as well so there's a lot run with this yeah they really did I usually the covers to the Brazilian books of St San are like they're they're pretty hardcore they're the ones for the the Spanish suino ones they're pretty um cartoonish but the uh but the the
53:00 - 53:30 Brazilian ones man they they they go full out um so for those who may be unfamiliar with uh books of St cpan let's let's hone down a little bit more on the the Portugese book of St cyprian what sort of spells and rituals are usually to be found in this particular book of St cyprian well first like I said the the what I consider the main section of the book has an extended exorcism using the pr then you have the treasure stuff yeah
53:30 - 54:00 so on top of this you also have um a whole bunch of divination right thology cartomancy cartomancy is very relevant in the in the cyprian books and this also has historical reasons um during the 16th and 17th century that's 17th century is more accurate there's a there's a great deal of Divination in urban centers some forms of which are very much attributed to St cyprien uh this this is a form of urban folk magic um it's divination is usually associated
54:00 - 54:30 with sinin in this form of magic and it seems to continue into the book so you have camany as particularly Associated from the 19th century onward with st CPR so that's heavily present in these books um then you like I said you have these near nonsensical blocks from iridite Portuguese sources that you know any it's anyone's guess what they're doing there but besides that you have several collections of small sorceries
54:30 - 55:00 small procedures small recipes small this this and that most of which tend to um circle around fairly mundane preoccupations some of them associated with a certain stereotypical world of urban female preoccupation let's say how do I get a man how do I get rid of a man man um how do I keep a man that sort of thing um
55:00 - 55:30 and other others are a bit more a bit more interesting there are a couple of small sorceries like how to speak with souls in purgatory um you know these small small procedures that wouldn't be out of place in in an ethnographic collection of folk magic or folk Superstition just these tiny things a couple of paragraphs so if you want if you want this do this this and that use this liquid use that herb
55:30 - 56:00 burn this incense and it's really small sort of things that you know it's it's meant for I guess everyday life it's not a technically it's learned magic because when once you write anything down it becomes a learned object because you need to know how to read but the preoccupations are pretty much the same as Folk magic which is pragmatism it's uh I need money I need health I need sex that's typically what it goes about the uh the angel thing
56:00 - 56:30 that magic has always been used for getting paid and getting laid it's just that's that's where we're standing very cool I I I don't want you to give away absolutely everything because it's a fascinating text and I want people to to run out and find it but there's a cyanic divination that you wrote a book on uh called clearing the waters are you able to give people a short summary of of this fascinating divination process that you that you found sure well that that book was a direct um
56:30 - 57:00 I didn't set out to research this I just kind of stumbled upon it like I said in the in the book of sincan the one I translated there are a few sections of camany yeah and they are particular they're slightly something doesn't make sense about them so it's they're very simple they're not they're not this elaborate esoteric T they're quite simple it's uh um you you grab a deck uh the quart
57:00 - 57:30 cards symbolize people the other cards symbolize events and uh locations and moments and stuff and then you you you you do this spread and then you construct a narrative based on all that so the people that the the court cards represent they are doing things in accordance to the to the cards that are next to them so it it's really simple yeah but there was associated with one of these div one of these cardany systems there was a specific incantation
57:30 - 58:00 that you were supposed to say if if if a certain combination of cards shows up it's it's something that's you have you don't always have to do but you if something happens you need to pray this and it's this really strange incantation um referring to um a supposed seafaring Journey that St cyprian did at some point in his in his life that somehow this has to do with divination and that never sat well with me it didn't sit well with Jake Straton Kent either he has a whole whole essay
58:00 - 58:30 on Ciana old world about it because he was also quite confused by it yeah um so this never sat well with me but then when I started doing my current Research into the Magic in Portuguese Inquisition for my thesis I started finding these these incantations completely that that were very similar to this bunch of incantations talking about St cyprian and saying that he took a sea journey
58:30 - 59:00 and was found his lots and and and was something about divination all these these things so I started paying attention to this that there was you you had this incantation in 19 century book but then you were finding the same incantation in the 17th century so 200 years of difference the same incantation usually that's a red flag for something not sure what but there is something here there is a continuity here from these from these divination procedures
59:00 - 59:30 I'm finding among Urban dwelling illiterate individuals mostly women um there is a continuity between whatever is happening here and this printed book in the 19th century so I'm going to try to figure this out right so I collected a whole bunch of them really a lot of instances of these incantations and the procedures behind them and these incantations were used for hydromancy is divination using water it was basically um there are obviously this is
59:30 - 60:00 a form of folk magic so there are variations of the procedure but you you would basically grab usually a chamber pot um chamber pots are really stressed some some people used uh glass bowls but they weren't the indicated one it needs to be a chamber pot you would fill it with water and then you would most frequently cast some straws into this and the straws would be referred to as the lot and the incantation goes St CPR seven years the sea though roamed seven
60:00 - 60:30 Lots you cast into into the sea and then you took them out which when you're talking about cards doesn't make a lick of sense but then you read the original hydromancy and the the straws are the lot so the the incantation makes thematical sense with the procedure being done H and then you needed a frequently A specialized Seer usually needed to be a virgin girl and you could also cast other things into the to the Bowl but the the straws were typically the more common ones and then the SE
60:30 - 61:00 would look at the at the bowl and supposedly have a vision okay now this system of divination was not the most popular in this particular time period among this particular social group because it seemed to be specialized on seafaring Travelers which obviously makes sense in 16 Century 17th century Portugal we had a fairly extensive Empire men were constantly being drafted into boats and so this is a female type
61:00 - 61:30 of divination it was mostly widows or people who were being separated by their husbands just trying to figure out if they were alive yeah um and not for romantic purposes because if they were dead they needed to find a new man right right for survivability it's about money at the end of the day you don't want to be a widow right um uh so I found this but as I was researching this I also found another divination technique which
61:30 - 62:00 was faany or the the lots of the fav now faom Mani isn't exclusively Portuguese you have various forms of faany but this one was particular and this was probably the more popular version of of divination this was widespread and this basically had that you would collect a number of fav beans and and there's a whole procedure around this you have to baptize them and they all need to be distinct from each other you need to be able to tell the fathers part you need to baptize them and give them names and a whole bunch of things
62:00 - 62:30 and then when you want to do the Divination you grab the favs or the the appropriate number of favs to represent the individuals who you want to Divine about and then you mix this with a whole bunch of other objects small trinkets like pieces of like coins or pieces of stones or pieces of wood and you mix all of these and then you you cast these over a surface and and then you have several Arrangements of of
62:30 - 63:00 objects and looking at the relative position of the different favs with the different objects you basically construct a story of the individuals the fa represent and the the the things that the objects represent this was a complete parallel to the camany system present in the 19th century book but instead of favas you have the support cards and instead of the object you have the PIP cards right
63:00 - 63:30 so I don't know exactly how this happened because this is ongoing research although I already published a book on it um because I was so excited about it so the 18th century is still unclear to me but somehow what seems to have been the case is that these two systems of early modern divination 17th century divination the hydromancy with its sinan incantation and the pom mancy with its methodology of constructing a story somehow in the 18th century gets
63:30 - 64:00 plumped together around cardany the incantation from one system of divination gets attributed to cartomancy and general methodology from the faany gets attributed to cartomancy and these two things mix and they get published in the 19th century as as a cardany system yeah and basically that book is just evidencing that um trying to track it and making sense of basically resolving this mystery of why is a sea faing incantation associated with camany
64:00 - 64:30 that that the book is just trying to solve that by identifying these other older systems of of divination and how they might have come together fascinating yeah it that's that's incredible I want to put you on the spot J say all right what's your favorite or the most unusual thing you've come across in in in one particular book of saints cyprian because they get they do get pretty wild is there is there something that you're just like man that
64:30 - 65:00 is that is really cool or that is so bizarre what's the one that really without even thinking about it what's the first thing that comes up to you oh uh I I have one I re this one I found during my PhD it's not published yet okay I found one um which is a sinian book um that instructs that has instructions on on how to make a pack with Luc F okay and from a non um a non
65:00 - 65:30 solomonic perspective so it it explicitly denies Divine Magics as Solomon and Noah and Adam they're all fools I know a lot better and in order to do actual magic you need to do a PCT and it's such a wild book it's it's antagonistic to everything that I thought I knew about St cyprian books no it's a curveball it's a real curveball and it's such a cool like it is a small text so you can read it in one setting and be bewildered by it uh
65:30 - 66:00 it's such a cool small text um and it's it's specialized in in finding moish treasure which is a very a very local Portuguese folkloric concept so it's a book of sincan that invokes lucif Fu to find folkloric treasure and then it has instructions on how to make this this complex mechanism of rotating parts that of different Woods that some how points to treasure and then says [ __ ] Noah and
66:00 - 66:30 I know better it's such a wild weird text and I'm I'm still fascinated by it yeah um yeah it's that's GNA be one of my future Publications hopefully oh man really looking is it in some way related at all I mean because lucif Fus is there is to the Grand grimore or does it kind of just take the name and then throw everything else out it needs to be somehow yeah yeah because the interesting part is that like like like I said the Spanish cian books do call on lucif Fu but they use the methodology of
66:30 - 67:00 the grand grimoire which is a solomonic derivative right these it's just it's lucif Fu and I'm not goingon to use the grand grimma methodology I'm gonna use something else right yeah incredible oh man I can't wait for that that that should be so fascinating let's hang on this idea of of treasure so when somebody is familiar with something like uh the clavicula or a key of Solomon there might be in some of the iterations there might be a spell or two about finding treasure but when one takes a
67:00 - 67:30 look at the Portuguese cyanic Grim Wars they will notice that treasure finding and hunting is a huge aim of the book as as you've mentioned l so much about how they go about it why was treasure hunting such a big deal in the cyprian material in Portugal the the easy answer for that is just you know that and it's a copout uh historical CC circumstance yeah um look it's I've touched upon this um you have
67:30 - 68:00 this method uh of banishing spirits that is very popular in the Iberian Peninsula the Prayer of St cyprian um it's really popular like um I think I've lost count of how much how many prayers of sinan I found in the Inquisition um just the records just attached to the to the trials um the 18th century spells a number of Novelties in Magic practice
68:00 - 68:30 and new fashions um and this is in all of Europe and America too uh treasure hunting becomes in increasingly popular in the 18th century all over the place and you do have books popping up that specialize in this again the grand grimoire is one example of those internationally um treasure hunting becomes a also a Fame in in the aan peninsula and and we already had some previous I'm not and
68:30 - 69:00 I'm not saying we're special about it everybody has particular concepts of of local treasure usually these Concepts tend to be folkloric in nature or cultural specific they're contextual in Portugal we have this um this very very dense web of narratives about Berry treasure um basically when when we're talking talking about bu treasure in the aan peninsula it's usually referred to as Mish or Mo
69:00 - 69:30 treasure basically it's associated with narratives of the which is the historical moment uh that when the Iberian Peninsula was reconquered by Christian kingdoms uh from uh their Muslim occupants so the Iberian Peninsula got conquered in the 8th Century by uh by a Muslim Force entering through North Africa it wasn't so much of a conquest as a simple change
69:30 - 70:00 of administration okay yeah the the idea of Conquest is wrong because they conquered the Iberian Peninsula like two years or something it's you can't conquer a territory like that it took the Romans 200 right they just walked in because hello people didn't care right there's other things to do the the there the fields there's there's things to grow yeah uh So eventually there's there's the theist the the process which
70:00 - 70:30 the there were a few Christian enclaves in Northern Iberia and then they start reconquering territory and and the stories about this are highly idealistic they they are meant to the like the Legends and the folk stories they are meant to underline the the specialness and the usess of Christianity and they basically say that well as as the Muslim as the the Christian armies were advancing on Muslim territory some individual Muslims
70:30 - 71:00 they would bury their treasure um before escaping in the hopes that perhaps in the future they would be able to return to to dig it back and this actually isn't a Preposterous things people have done that in the past frequently y um actually interesting story this happened in the Napoleonic invasions in Portugal that there was a whole village that buried their wine in the graveyard and when they came back the wine was excellent so now they have their own they have their own category of wine
71:00 - 71:30 where they they bury it so this amazing well that's way I want that is so cool oh man I want some I mean I mean who doesn't but the wine of the Dead oh man that's that's necromantic delicious yeah tasty uh so this this is stuff that happens so uh people were saying okay so as as the Christian armies were advancing uh Muslims were retreating uh certain individuals who buried their riches and then you get into the more Fantastical elements and they say well
71:30 - 72:00 obviously Muslims they were great Sorcerers and so they would frequently place this um this enchantment an Encanto over the their treasure H and not only that they would sometimes also place an enchantment over like an individual uh usually a girl and making her a moda andant an enchanted Moore to act as a treasure Guardian the the Encanto is is a complex concept and you have also iterations of this in South America if nothing else I
72:00 - 72:30 think there's a movie called in yes right like like I don't know it's a Pixar movie I don't follow those um uh the the inant is is a complex concept um usually individuals under a name kantu uh they're like in this suspended state of Animation they're not dead or alive and they they can manifest within certain U limits particularly if try to mess with their treasure they will manifest frequently in in monstrous forms like like giant
72:30 - 73:00 serpents and G lizards um and so this is this the these stories there are hundreds or thousands of them throughout the Iberian Peninsula these buried Muslim treasure this moru treasure um and the books of when when treasure hunting becomes popular these are the treasures that people are thinking about so it's not solely the phys IAL money being buried it's more of a of a local religious cosmological
73:00 - 73:30 thing um so books of sincan get brought in as a method to banish these Guardians using the prayer of sincan U now i' I've done a small survey of mentions of books of St cyprian in the 18th century um so far I found seven I think which is which is significant yeah seven manions but these are a lot more individuals than seven
73:30 - 74:00 because frequently treasure Hunters tended to act in groups so you can have one of these one of these seven can have like 10 individuals involved but but I can't say that the the the survey is complete because I need to have access to some documentation which is really hard to access uh but anyway I have seven instances of books of sincan six of which refer to treasure hunting so it it seems to have become the major identifier of of what makes a book of
74:00 - 74:30 sincan in that period and not only this but you also have uh mentions by or or rather I there's another weird case uh an inquisition trial um of one of these groups where they keep talking about the book of sin cian okay we're going to go find treasure going to use this book of San do this and going to do that but when they describe sections of this book it's clear that the book they have
74:30 - 75:00 is a grand grimoire okay so it seems that the association with books of sincan and treasure hunting became so strict that books of treasure hunting in Portugal simply got referred to as books of ccan that became the identifier it wasn't not it was not so much do these have the Prayer of St CPR is it a treasure hunting book yes then it's probably a book of St C this becomes the identifier um and it's stuck so when you
75:00 - 75:30 get to the 19th century the whoever composed the Portuguese book um you can't say that he was historically informed he simply followed what was the what was the book at that point which was a treasure hunting book and so the this this always features preeminently in in cyprine literature wonderful thank you so much for taking us through that yeah there it's when one first gets if somebody's familiar with grimo most European Grimms as I said
75:30 - 76:00 there's not a ton of stuff about treasure in there there it's there it's always there but then when I first got a copy of of of your translation of the Sorceress treasure it's just like this just page after page of finding treasure and it's it's still fascinating but it's like I was not expecting that no it's a it's an incredible thing I'm going to share a little bit of a personal story um when I was first dating my my current girlfriend um I had books lying about of course one of them happened to be a book of St cyprian and I watched her she was
76:00 - 76:30 sitting on my couch and she was just flipping through it and she was there for about an hour or so and of all of the things of all of the things that should draw her attention she said to me Doug what's with all these stories of St cyprien falling in love with a girl and then like murdering their family and what's what what's with this this horny Randy stories of St cyprien in these books of St cyprian why are they there I think there's like names like Alvera and
76:30 - 77:00 and Adelaide I might get that wrong but like what it just kind of it's kind of jarring that they just just pops up there's the stories of St cyprian of course the martyrdom and all of those kind of things sometimes uh but then there's these stories of of St cyprian trying to get with a girl why include these again your anyone's guess is as good as mine um look those stories U first of all they seem to serve a narrative function within the text okay uh those stor they are they
77:00 - 77:30 are quite random yeah but they usually appear as context for some sorcery that's going to be talked afterwards so they tell this story of cyprian doing all these horrifying things and he uses particular magic in doing that yeah and then after the story you have the magic that he used so there is a narrative purpose to them uh and the stories are rather they have their own individual Quirk but they're not they're probably repetitive
77:30 - 78:00 it's no it's St CPR the Leer sorceress once once a woman people try to get in his way and he messes everybody up with magic yeah he gets the woman yeah um I this is a portrayal of supposedly a pre-christian cyprian so the if the Portuguese books also contain a reduced version of the of the story of sinine of Antioch so placing these narratives within the text
78:00 - 78:30 kind of it's kind of a call back to the opening of the book this was an evil sorcery back in the day so there is some context like that but otherwise I have to say that I have no idea where these stories come from it might be that they were small like um uh chat books or pamphlets that were in circulation in the 19th century about cyprian I know there were a few like those in Brazil the stories of St cyprian and the
78:30 - 79:00 adventures of St cyprian like a like a captain kid kind of thing like this Fulk hero yeah I know there are a couple of those in Brazil I don't know if they existed in Portugal from where these stories could have been lifted because the 19th century editorial Market of books of St Zin is a wild country people were stealing everything from everybody at all times U there were no copyrights so if you publish something that was fairly popular somebody's going to republish it eventually so maybe it came from these these chap books yeah that
79:00 - 79:30 that might have been circulating I don't know where they came from yeah is what I'm trying to say they make sense somehow in the book but their origin is really unknown okay okay yeah they it's all part of what makes these things so fascinating because I know a lot of people when they they get these grimor immediately you want to go to the Spells you want to go to the rituals you want to go to The Exorcism of St cyprian but it's part of the package then what makes them truly incredible cultural artifacts and even particularly with the more
79:30 - 80:00 contemporary books of St cyrian is that it shows to in a way that these books were trying to appeal to people as well as not just be functional instructional guides but they're they're just meant to appeal in somewhat incredibly broad way would you agree with that or is yeah yeah there there is a commercial concern to all of this yeah and there is there there is that and there is all these I don't want to sound like romantic about it but then the history
80:00 - 80:30 of the books implies these these scars on it okay that you have these artifacts these strange things that pop up of nowhere that if you're just reading them they don't make sense they add character to it but they don't make sense but then you when you look at the history oh [ __ ] that one sentence that's there like a dangling something there that doesn't make sense this has a SE this has a 300 year old history and it it contains all these scars all these marks that that just they retell their its history and
80:30 - 81:00 the commercial aspect of the 19th century books is really a major aspect of that that there is this moment when books became cheap printing press became available people were interested in Magic and literacy was Rising so let's pump this full of insanity and let's make these new books and sure yeah it's it's it's a mark of that it's a it's a step in that in that story for sure definitely in in your translation
81:00 - 81:30 of the sorcerer's treasure you stated that some of the magic within that book might be from the continent of Africa but we we had a recent conversation in in working on this episode before it was recorded you basically said this might not be the case uh it might be due to something uh but are you able to talk the listeners through how this might have happened oh sure no I have no problems admitting my my mic shortcomings um sure no this is a this is an inevitable aspect of academic
81:30 - 82:00 research into history uh which will hit you harder when you're not really an academic like I was you said that you sorry to interrupt you said that you you never expected you expected the source of treasure to be a one-off and then you just be like done it's here and then you can move on with say but it didn't but that wasn't the case so I understand years later still talking about it anyway so um when I was reading the book of sin cian there
82:00 - 82:30 were and translating it among these smaller like loose um sorceries and recipes there were a few that had these particular forms of incantation particular preoccupation which were slightly consistent between them which is saying something because the book is not consistent at all so there were these bits that made sense together and while trying to figure them out I was reading some academic literature on on Magic in Portugal uh and
82:30 - 83:00 Brazil and I noticed that these same incantations and this same sort of structure were frequent in um the magic practices of some Brazilian slaves um African indentured servants servants some of them in brail in in Brazil and in Lisbon Lisbon we did obviously we had slavery it wasn't as as massive as in
83:00 - 83:30 Brazil there was like a pre-industrial like the American model is a pre-industrial right model of slavery Portugal we had slaves obviously but it wasn't that explosive so but the the the in academic literature I was finding these same incantations associated with these nonwhite magic practitioners which my my initial approach would be well I mean I have this thing here in
83:30 - 84:00 the book of St supran and apparently these were being used couple hundred years ago by these these African individuals there there should be a connection obviously um I'm assuming this this might be just some African magic that's getting in here and no I had no issue with that u a book as historically complex as the book of sincan obviously you would have things coming out of of everywhere so that's fine so I I I made that claim said okay there are procedures here the only evidence I
84:00 - 84:30 found outside of This Book of them is among African magic practitioners I'm GNA say it's African right fair enough now as time moved on again working on my current PhD studying magic in the early modern period in Portugal I came to the realization that these same magical procedures that I was find ing among African practitioners weren't solely African um I I was being myopic because
84:30 - 85:00 scholarship was my opic um there is a lot of magic studies academic magic studies happening in Brazil and those individuals and I'm not saying that they're bad Scholars they they do their thing and they're right to do their thing so they they will study the Portuguese Inquisition but as a method to study Brazil because the lisban Inquisition had jurisdiction over Brazil if you want to study Brazilian magic you need to go to the lisban Inquisition
85:00 - 85:30 it's fair yeah so the issue was that um there was some some myopia going on because this the magic system that these individuals were using was not solely African it was uh iberoamerican Urban folk magic the same exact procedures that these guys were using were being used by individuals of all Races everywhere um in Spain Portugal Brazil South America in the in the The Wider
85:30 - 86:00 iiro American World near Urban centers you had individuals doing these procedures I know that now yeah uh so while I my claim that it's it's African magic here look that's wrong what we have here is a remnant of this wider phenomenon of urban fol magic yeah that was omnipresent in the airo American World and in some ways it still is it's you
86:00 - 86:30 can find traces of it in kimbanda you can find traces of it everywhere if you know what to look for yeah um so it's not so much African magic it's simply Urban folk magic as as widespread as it was in yiran Peninsula so that was the confusion yeah there's a really wonderful YouTube video that Jus has up in his in his channel called the city Between Heaven and Hell uh it'll be in the show notes everybody please check it out it's it's an incredibly fascinating all of the things on J's YouTube are are
86:30 - 87:00 incredible um so I I highly recommend everybody check those out as well particularly just with this idea of of the kind of folk Catholicism that that that Springs forth these certain ideas and it it's so cool and Incredibly fascinating what what happened to the cyprian Grim Wars once they started to reach huge air quotes here the new world world places like Brazil and Mexico uh as well as did what happened there also come back to affect what occurred in
87:00 - 87:30 Iberia um well sure short answer yes yeah um um I know a few things about the Brazilian um cpan books again I'm not um my area of expertise is Portugal so you know I from what I know um the when the the current book of sinin the three-part book that I translated when that gets published um it gets transported to
87:30 - 88:00 Brazil rather quickly the Portuguese national library has a few Brazilian editions which are just just the the regular Portuguese book right they get transported over there and I'm not sure when but they very quickly begin uh the the population over there very rapidly and very eagerly um and rightfully so they appropriate it as they should because it's magic it's supposed to move with with time and with context and very
88:00 - 88:30 quickly they start mixing and matching it with other grimoire uh coming also from Europe they started adding their own new material and content uh they started adding some more urban folk magic which again made me believe it was more African than than General IBO American they start making new variations then you start having spiritism coming in yeah you start having people saying oh [ __ ] I'm talking
88:30 - 89:00 with st cin right now I'm going to write a new book um all that sort of thing and it it it becomes a very very Lively very organic a very um thing that's in continuous growth over there it explodes in a variety of of of new versions collecting those is a challenge I've tried I've given up it's so many good on you I I love that you're doing this but you know uh my my bank
89:00 - 89:30 account is limited yeah um so it that that happens over there yeah and now the interesting thing and again we this is a very specific historical event now the book of sincan gets published in its current form in the 19th century it lives on for a while it it gives rise to a few walk shots over here um we have a very interesting period where we have these these um occultist almanacs and pamphlets that
89:30 - 90:00 are basically just small Publications that are mining the content of the book of sin CPR into smaller form so it's generating its own its own offshot over here but then we get to the early 20th century and uh there's a whole political mess happening um the end result of which is a dict dictatorship uh is established in Portugal uh what was it 1932 it gets formal uh it it formulates itself into the shadov the
90:00 - 90:30 new state before that it was a military dictatorship then it become something else but anyway 1932 by 1939 the book of cin is outlawed it's a it's an illegal object um while the dictatorship the our dictator was a a vocal Catholic but he didn't he he was a shrewd individual U you have you can't be a dictator without being a shrewd individual no he knew how to play
90:30 - 91:00 the game with the church so he could mine the church for Authority but not allow it to gain power over the state which is a very tight rope to walk and he walked it admirably but anyway some of the things he did were U religious in nature such just prohibiting the book of sin CPR and a few other magic texts um as far as I can tell During the period of the no the the books do die out they they disappear from Portugal the only instance I found of a book of
91:00 - 91:30 sinin getting published in Portugal was 1973 so holy smokes yes from 39 to 73 we got nothing and the dictatorship ended in 74 so the following year so it was already crumbling so there was a bit more leeway and uh and we had a particular guy the guy who published it was was a really interesting character and he he he founded the editor afit and he was publishing everything he
91:30 - 92:00 was publishing um mazos and he was publishing Eva and the Marquee thead and the collections of medieval erotic Portuguese poetry which is really runchy nice it's really they they wrote stuff back then makes me blush uh and they had satirical and offensive poetry which is you you would be surprised at how how little swearing has evolved from the
92:00 - 92:30 medieval period they're using [ __ ] I haven't even heard about we are losing our our capacity to offend they were poets back then Jesus H so he was publishing all of that yeah he published The Book of sincan um he got arrested not by the book but just by being himself okay nice uh he got arrested uh he was you know it was common that he would be arrested I don't think he mind um I
92:30 - 93:00 think it was part of his business model do you think that yeah do you think it was for commercial reasons it just to make money was Notorious book let's put it out make some money or I I think it was a bit of that I think it was also a form of performance art getting arrested was his art form okay um anyway that's the only publication of of the book of sinci during the dictatorship then eventually 74 dictatorship Falls uh there's a bit of a rough patch political rough patch over there nobody knew if
93:00 - 93:30 we're going to fall into Civil War nobody knew if Reagan wanted to invade Portugal there were talks about they wanted to take the aors oh but the the Portuguese the American ambass ambassador in Portugal at the time was the head of the CIA very suspicious and he and he told Reagan uh to chill no not Reagan sorry Nixon Nixon
93:30 - 94:00 okay Devil by a different name sorry that's right Nixon he told me that chill Portugal is not a communist country just take it easy and and we built ourselves back up so anyway um no no more censorship no more anything we could publish the book of sincan all we want um and the first books of c i find after the um after 74 they are similar to The 39 books in
94:00 - 94:30 terms of content but if you analyze the the the the language carefully you realize that it's actually Brazilian Portuguese which has slight nuances that aren't sometime aren't always obvious but if you pay attention you notice that the books published after 74 are actually Brazilian books which seems that um Publishers wanting to publish the book of sin cin instead of going through the trouble of trying to find an old version just went across
94:30 - 95:00 the Atlantic they were still being published there just grab one of those and publish it over here which know it's fine um so that was the the dominant version of the book of sincan attached to that we also had for a long time several Brazilian versions being published over here in with Portuguese sources with with Portuguese Publishers but then more recently I think 2 15 perhaps uh no no later than that probably
95:00 - 95:30 2018 there was a because you never run out of books of sincan they're always in print uh but there was a publisher that came up and it published The Book of sin Cen and for the first time since 39 they went to the trouble of going to the Portuguese national library and picking up a pre 39 version and now they're republishing it okay and it seems to be dominating the market right now so there was that Brazilian period and now we're back to the pre 39 version of the book U
95:30 - 96:00 there was a new edition I think just came out a couple of months ago oh yeah so it's it's still happening very cool that's the story nice I I don't know the history of particularly of the the suino uh the more spanish-based um cyprians in in places like Mexico from what I understand there are digitalized copies of of the the Libra Des San ciano in Spanish and it looks like it's almost EXA it's exactly the same I don't think there was any kind of like a disruption
96:00 - 96:30 of those being produced in in Mexico um but again I don't I don't know the the true history of it something worth looking into for sure I don't have the time I don't know about you but you start off your 2024 sorry your 2014 translation of the sorcerer's Treasure by talking about the reputation of the book of St cyprian and you mentioned it a little bit beforehand how did this reputation come to be just Word of Mouth that's uh I don't have a an exact answer for that okay I I do know for for a
96:30 - 97:00 while I thought it might be it might have been a dictatorship thing yeah that as the book got public got banished and um you know just just the state or the church instilled fear but I don't believe that anymore because one of the references I found in the late 18th century uh one of the denunciations I found were uh about this a couple guys were just walking around at night and they heard somebody performing a treasure finding ritual and they
97:00 - 97:30 explicitly mentioned that they were hiding and and listening and they mentioned that as the person doing the ritual said the name St cyprien that they were afraid and they ran away so whatever people were already afraid of books of sincan in the late 18th century how this happened you know it's anyone's guess I mean magic tends to as as a nonnormalized activity
97:30 - 98:00 frequently exclusionary activity from mainstream Society I guess could be simply Church uh sponsored fear-mongering but I I I cannot pinpoint a moment I cannot pinpoint a reason I I can say that by the 18th century people were already afraid of books of St cban for some reason I doubt that they would tell the same f the same urban legends that we were telling each other in the 90s right um but they were already afraid of them back then but the reason for that you
98:00 - 98:30 know it's anyone's guess right it's strange that there is this this reputation and I I can only speak from my own experience of of the time that I spent in Mexico I would walk into these um articulos religioso stores and I'd be looking for cyanic material and and I'd ask I'd go first of all to the person that runs the shop and be like do you have anything for St cyprine and they'd say no and then I just stick around and I'd look and they would they'd have things there it's not that they forgot about it they just weren't G they just didn't
98:30 - 99:00 want me to find it or to have it and I understand there's cultural tabos about around these sort of sort of things it's the um the copy that I I I held up unfortunately listeners can't see it the copy that I got uh when I purchased it from the person in Morelia Mexico I paid the price for it and then when I finally flipped through it the actual price written in the book was three times less than what I actually paid for it you know there's there's always the Gringo tax it cyprian has and and and it maybe
99:00 - 99:30 I'm just trying to notice too much but when I walk into these uh these stores asking about cpri and there's always this kind of like they they kind of take a little bit of a step back so there's this currency to to cyprien that exists within Catholic cultures to this day there's an implicit association with black magic for some reason yeah the book isn't really all that isn't all it's it seems to be more of a cultural projection than anything else more this this imaginary cultural item that uh
99:30 - 100:00 that the the books that you find uh it it's projected upon them but they don't really correspond to the image that people have of them yeah and you don't need to even go to a to a Botanica or to a religious item store I had that experience in in universities that I I want to give a talk and I'm talking about the book of sin people are freaking out I was invited to give a talk on them uh 2019 and the person who was organizing
100:00 - 100:30 the talk went to the this is the University of Porto the philosophy Department right and she went to the to the humanities faculty to the library to ask for some books of sinin just to have a round during the talk people were [ __ ] their pants over it they didn't want to touch them and this is this is a university right where where a Humanity a faculty of humanities where people our our tools are are books it's it's it's
100:30 - 101:00 ink on paper yeah and they were afraid of Ink on paper they were afraid of a printed book look I I I I find it interesting yeah that this exists yeah it's also very frustrating that we are we are Scholars we are supposed to be a couple of steps ahead of this yeah yeah you're supposed to if we need to acknowledge our fear if it's real but we need to be able to walk past it that's our job
101:00 - 101:30 right yeah it it was always funny because I would I did eventually buy a I bought a statue of St cyprian from it I I asked around for like a month and and over a period of years to try and find a nice sized statue of of St cyprien in in Mexico and nobody had it nobody had a statue except for the main Church in the city of Morelia I went there's like just on a whim I was like do you guys have a statue of St San yep there it is it's behind everything they dusted it off but it was there they they gave it to me I
101:30 - 102:00 was like there you go perfect is all right when I brought it home though uh my mother when she uh would invite people over I knew people saw it because they saw it and they knew exactly who it was they know they could recognize cypri and they're like okay why does your son have have this thing just next to his pile of clothes is there there is a reputation I find it incredibly fascinating as as to you I'm sure you you said when you craft open the the book of St cyprian for the first time that you were disappointed by the content yeah precisely yeah it's it's
102:00 - 102:30 not it's not what you expect yeah you're expecting to have this this great satanic book of of of of child killing and then there is some some gruesome stuff in particularly some of the in the Spanish one I think there's killing cats and you know as that that that's the content that's also common to the Portuguese word yeah I'm not going to say it's all it's all puppy dogs and sunshines yeah but it's not I I was the stories you hear of it is literally the devil Springs out right and I'm looking
102:30 - 103:00 at treasure hunting for some reason right you go to this part and then you go behind the fountain and then you do the spell and then there's your treasure it's right there it's it's literally in a city it's right there there just everybody hasn't found it yet or maybe they have but fascinating I have one last question for you J say let's say some folks are extreme interested in checking out a book of St cyprian to use for for personal practice to take some of the things from within is there any advice
103:00 - 103:30 that you would give them before they start interacting with these books um well yeah um it would depend on the background of this the individual in question I would assume okay um magic practice contemporarily is strongly anglo-american meaning Protestant in in background people tend to forget that they think magic is not is separated it's the a problem of this radical separation of magic and religion
103:30 - 104:00 which is false so it it is contemporary magic practice is mostly a Protestant type of of framework and when you're looking at a cyprian book independently if it's Spanish or um or Portuguese or even Scandinavian um the background is Catholic so you will have a strong um shock on the types of preoccupations on the types of methodologies on the types of um implicit cosmologies although very
104:00 - 104:30 few people care about that and you don't need to care about that if you want to practice magic honestly so there is that that is the first thing I would tell somebody that realize that you are stepping in if you if they come from this anglo-american background you are stepping into somebody else's culture just because we're all white yeah doesn't mean we're exactly the same so you need to be aware of that not for my sake for your sake if you want to be able to navigate this
104:30 - 105:00 with some adequacy um now it's U if if the person involved was a bit um you know if they were I I've had people who who heard stories of the book of sincan never read it weren't from the culture were scared of it I do advise look even if it's just a panace just um just do your do do a bit
105:00 - 105:30 of a ritual do something um because and I I don't want to sound dismissive because it's my job to it's part of my profession to not engage personally with these sorts of things [Music] um but if you're sensitive to let's say spiritual influence and again I'm not saying I'm this it's not it's my
105:30 - 106:00 job is I I I shouldn't get involved in that sort of discourse but I do have friends that are um involved in it and and I did come from that background so I'm not I'm I'm not a dick I do understand the preoccupation so if you are spiritually sensitive somehow and if you have preoccupations about the the spiritual load that a particular object might have this is one of those objects this is from a cultural perspective this is a cursed book so you know if if
106:00 - 106:30 that's the type of person you are make yourself a bit of a ritual um if they're if they're Catholic I would advise them just to ask their patron saint to protect them if they're not Catholic best of luck to you um so yeah it's just it's that that sort of approach I I I can't give you practical advice on a book which is inherently
106:30 - 107:00 impractical it is my it is my experience that the contemporary cyprian books you are supposed to as a practitioner you are supposed to figure out your way around it it's not it's not a stepbystep instruction manual uh it's a complicated thing with several elements that don't make sense and you you you need to navigate yourself through it and find sense in it so I can't give practical advice I I can give just you know just a a approach advice
107:00 - 107:30 just you know be aware of what you're looking into be prepared that you won't understand it first of all even if you're Catholic you won't understand it um and be aware of all of that and and then and I've had this if you buy my version don't complain to me I'm just a translator right definitely cyprian seemed to have had a moment over the last over the last 15
107:30 - 108:00 years uh within contemporary magic with the publishing of of your book The Sorcerer's treasure Jake Stratton Kent's work um uh Dr Alexander cumins and on and on and on what do you see the future of the fascination with cyprine do you think it's going to die out do you think that this was just a fashion again and then it and then things go a little bit quiet or or do you see that the the uh that cyprian continues to go strong for at least another 15 years um there is there is a clear um
108:00 - 108:30 issue of fashion going on yeah and you can tell that just by looking at the past 10 years that there are Peaks and there are vales um I noticed a peak in interest in books of St cyprian and in St CPR in general in 2017 yeah I remember clearly um you can usually tell by I know if you if you're in a couple of Facebook groups if you follow a couple of blogs people will in around SE around this same time period September
108:30 - 109:00 people will start posting about St cyprian because it's the feast day on the 16th and that's when this episode's coming up yay um and usually you can track how much people are paying attention to St cyprien in September and 2017 was a real peak everybody had a blog post about it right it kind of died down since then um but in the meantime and there are a few things I
109:00 - 109:30 can talk about like what for example and and this is information I have access to that I understand other people don't which is I have access to my own sales records okay um the book of St CPR no book ever sells more than when it comes out that's normal that's just the nature of of the publishing industry even still the book of sincan throughout the past 10 years has been a steady sale which is
109:30 - 110:00 unusual um this only happens if a book somehow becomes a part of whatever topic it's about if it becomes a part of of the Canon if the only the only way a book of magic is a steady sale is if new people becoming interested in Magic pain that they should buy it like they should buy the book of the law like they should buy the key of Solomon like it becomes a part of the Canon the type of stuff that
110:00 - 110:30 you're supposed to have if you're interested in this so I don't see it going away um it it probably will not have the same popularity as it had like in 2017 but I think it's it's here to stay also because in the meantime and I've actually recently there's um there's a very good other podcast I'm gonna gonna advertise one of your Rivals sure magic in the US a very good podcast um they're also doing a San episode and
110:30 - 111:00 they're particularly interested in the American manifestations of this okay cool because there are American manifestations there are in the meantime there have been orders formed uh the order of sinin of Antioch is a Fame people are it's an institution centered around this idea of CC of Antioch I'm not a member I find it fascinating that people people will are making an order I'm academically interested in it then you have guys with very relevant internet profile like Jason Miller had
111:00 - 111:30 created his own magic school every year every few months he's talking about it and people are joining the black school of St cyprian that's that's Jason Miller a set of classes that he teaches so this seems to be fairly well established apart from this I I assume that there are other more or less organized or more or less loose organization ations that now have seen CPR as as a patron so at least that will survive for a few years I can't say how
111:30 - 112:00 long but for the time being it seems to have created somewhat of a of a healthy Niche among magical practitioners um and speaking of ups and downs this year so far um there seems to be a a bump it's not 2017 but there is added interest to it not just you know as a case in point this this podcast y there there there
112:00 - 112:30 are public lots of Publications coming up um lots of Interest I've been getting emails all the time so we have a minor bump here but this seems to continue itself I assume at least for a 10 more years for sure this will still be around and I can't say much beyond that okay fantastic I I have to say this is has just been so wonderful and going through all this material again it's incredibly fascinating to me uh please Jose tell us
112:30 - 113:00 what's what's going on in your world what's what's next uh you have a bunch of things I mean obviously the sorcerer's treasure is it's one of my favorite books I I have a hard cover of it it's never it's never far away I just think it's such a wonderful book it's it's just fun to hold there's not a lot of books that I'm like I need to get hard cover of that book that is one um you've also done the precious Apothecary not cyprine related but the introduction to that book everybody should read I
113:00 - 113:30 think it's it's wonderful as well as uh some of the other cyanic materials that you've had what's going on what's what are you publishing next is there is there um is there something that's cyan related or not tell us what's going on in your world over the next uh couple of years perhaps if you can no sure yeah um well first of all I um I've just I'm about to defend my PhD thesis right on on learn of magic in
113:30 - 114:00 Portugal in yearly mod period um this thesis will be made available um to the public PVF it's it's a 700 page long oh my God story of magic in Portugal it it touches on everything we mentioned uh 17 16th century a bit of the 18th century not the Contemporary stuff so if you want a a gigantic cross-section of what is Magic in
114:00 - 114:30 Portugal during the 17th century that's coming up I still have to defend it though um although I'm not expecting that much much trouble um but that's going to be available and then eventually there will be a commercial version of that which might be might have a couple of hundred Pages more so be yeah I I I I I like long books in case that hasn't been made obvious me to yeah so that that that thesis touches
114:30 - 115:00 upon the the presence of several Grims in Portugal it completely covers the whole issue of IBO American Urban folk magic um deals with the overlaps between learned magic and folk magic which is from where the cin books come from and they are not the only books that come out of that they are just the ones who survive um treasure hunting has all of that um all of it um then besides that which was know that
115:00 - 115:30 was my job for a while um I have technically it's already been published a very small monograph on um um some medieval texts on fairies okay um the medieval the book of lineages of count Don Pedro has a couple of it's it's a book of lineages which is they tend to be quite boring but that one has a couple of stories which are about these fairies that create these these
115:30 - 116:00 Noble houses and and they're really interesting stories I really love and uh some of them have ramifications up until the Contemporary period again I I'm never too far away from cyprian books there is a Spanish cyprian book uh that I believe has a mention to one of these fairies so I talk about that there um there's a Portuguese theosophist who also writes a poem about one of these fairies and it has to do it
116:00 - 116:30 connects to English demonology from the early modern period so it's it's tracking the story of these fairies throughout time and how they end up influencing magic and and mystical authors uh so that's that's I think that's technically already published I think you can buy the the hardback from hian press yes the paperback should be available soon I hope then besides that uh I already submitted and it's already accepted for publication again with hadan that other
116:30 - 117:00 weird cyprian book I mentioned with Luc that one is is is on the tracks to be published I suppose it's going to be published sometime during next year it's not a very long book but it's it's a solid one um it contains um it contains a like a summary not a summary but it contains the story that the history of the books of St cyprian as I understand it until this point because you need to know the entire story in order to make sense of that book so if you want uh
117:00 - 117:30 something that contains besides the spectacularly weird magic book it contains the entire story of the cpan books as I understand it that book will contain that besides a whole bunch of other things so that's for publication and then um I have a few other plans but those are kind of dependent on the financing I find because I just finished my PhD um I need to start applying for post dogs I'm already applying for post
117:30 - 118:00 talks and um the the amount of free time I have to work on certain material is dependent on me having money to work on it sure but I can say that I'm right now working on uh another treasure hunting book that I found during my PhD research I found it tucked in uh something called the Prosecutor's notebooks it's a the Inquisition sometimes produced these but every document that the Inquisition produced that did not result in a formal
118:00 - 118:30 trial they would stash them together in these gigantic volumes they're called the prosecutor's notebooks I found a magic book tucked in there and um I'm working on that magic book right now it belonged to the Chamberlain of of the Portuguese Prince oh wow who was a treasure hunter and besides besides gota be besides his magic book he also he also wrote there's a manuscript in the Portuguese national
118:30 - 119:00 library that he wrote about his adventures of treasure hunting so he was not shy it's a book of treasure hunter treasure hunting written in the first person and then you have the magic book that he was using oh man that is gonna be so dope wow when it comes to treasure hunting I don't know if anybody has ever found a document like that it's going to be a really cool book yeah um I'm working on that right now and then after that I'm planning on publishing a couple more I also found a couple of Astral
119:00 - 119:30 Magic books in a in an obscure archive in in the middle of nowhere in Spain a couple of Asal Magic books they're written in Latin they're a bit hard to make out but I think I I can turn them around so I'm right now basically what I'm doing is just all the all the random things I during my PhD that I did not use for my thesis I'm working them into smaller books U and I'll be doing that I guess for a couple of years I also found like a whole bunch
119:30 - 120:00 of what you can call folk magic rimar just collections of folk of like prayers and bulk recipes and a whole bunch of things that just your random farmer who knew how to read and write with collect I have a bunch of those I have a magic book that is completely pictorical so the guy who wrote it was illiterate so he just made a book filled with symbols and things and he claimed the devil taught him how to read it and I have that book I plan on publishing that eventually so a whole bunch of
120:00 - 120:30 manuscripts I'm working on right now do you sleep at all like is there is there that sometimes yeah oh my God I don't know that might be the that you might be the guest where it's like I'm the most excited usually when I ask people that question like I've got a couple of things I can't really talk about it right now I am jazzed for everything that is going to be coming out that is fantastic as I mentioned everybody uh Jose has an fantastic YouTube channel it
120:30 - 121:00 will be in the show notes here are you you're still going to be putting stuff up there on the on the YouTube yeah my my YouTube channel I'm not I'm not a YouTuber right um what I put up there is um conference presentations okay um because every time I'm I'm a professional scholar I go to conference is a few times a year I usually record myself giving my presentation and then I just match the song with the PowerPoint and I just upload it it's not
121:00 - 121:30 professional I stutter I I make plenty of mistakes but what I said at the conference is is what's there and I just make that available to the audience so whenever I go to a conference I I make a recording actually if you're releasing this on the 16 I'm I'm doing a talk on the 16 uh not for an academic audience but for just people interested on St CPR stuff and I'm going to be uploading that so every time I go to a conference I upload something so maybe at the most
121:30 - 122:00 four videos per year that's all there is yeah but they're still great they're they're wonderful uh presentations as well and some of the documents in there I loved how you had a you had a Grim War that had certain symbols and crosses and you're just like yep that's the medal of St Benedict it's just like that's that's it right there and you can see it right there I think that really helps people so it's it's really wonderful I want everybody to check it out uh your academia.edu what can people find there there's there's some great articles in there uh yeah basically that's the
122:00 - 122:30 probably where you can go to find uh the most amount of content I've I've produced and published um there are obviously some limitations I'm not going to upload my books in there because the there is a direct correlation between my sales and my capacity to pay rent so you know bear with me but when it comes to smaller Publications small papers small chapters I might publish it all ends up there so if people who want to follow my work that's the the safest place to go
122:30 - 123:00 to um yeah yeah that's basically it that's that's that's where I I that's my main online storage of of content sure you also you also have a patreon tell the folks what what they can get when they when they join up to your patreon yeah yeah the patreon is is is a complicated particularly right now because I started it's the second time I've organized the patreon I I started uh I started participating in that platform when I
123:00 - 123:30 wanted to write yushka which is a a very long book um and the content for it was spread out through a bunch of archives and libraries and I didn't have a a job at the time or a Perman or a position or a scholarship so I just opened the patreon and just said look I I I want to write a giant book on San who wants to help and to the credit of the community a whole bunch of people came and they they they paid me to write and I wrote
123:30 - 124:00 the book and it was a great success then uh I took that down and then reopened it when I started my current PhD because when I started I didn't have a scholarship I was still applying for stuff it's getting a scholarship and signing up for a PhD sometimes is do different things so I signed up I was still struggling to find some money to to do the research and in the meantime I opened it and said look if I'm writing a thesis on Magic again whoever wants to help me you can help me and people help
124:00 - 124:30 me um and that that patreon is is really simple um because obviously it's supposed to help me with my job it's not supposed to be my job right uh and I mostly just write monthly updates uh I try to make them of a decent size about 5,000 words so it's it's something that you know you can spend a few minutes reading every month and it's just uh what I call progress reports it's just
124:30 - 125:00 saying look this month I went to this archive I found this I found that I went to this conference I talked to this people uh readers say I'm very funny and and very witty in in the way I write things and it's just that it's and and look it's and and if if you sign up you can you can you can read about my arch of of of horror and depression as every PhD goes
125:00 - 125:30 through I write about my mental breakdowns and some some some posts are very dark yeah okay uh look it's it's it's what happened that month in relation to my work this is what I'm talking about and I I tend to be as honest as I can um uh yeah well there's that um yeah that's basically what the patreon is it's look if you want to help me help me yeah this is all I'm offering
125:30 - 126:00 it's it's an insight into this this academic life this this how do you study magic how do you look into these things and the inherent human difficulties that come from this the the the sleepless nights and the stress and the grinding of the deep and all that yeah yeah I uh and by and by the way this is the important part yeah um as I mentioned I'm about to defend my thesis and I have made the decision that by the end of the year I will discontinue that patreon because I opened it to help me with my
126:00 - 126:30 work my work is done now um if somebody wants to jump in in the meantime and give me a dollar or two I would appreciate it because academic life is very uh you don't have much job security and I will spend considerable amount of months without an income while I apply for post doogs so anybody who wants to help in the meantime I'm obviously very thankful for it but don't feel obliged to it and do know that by the end of the year I'm going to discontinue it and
126:30 - 127:00 then maybe in the future reopen it depending on my prospects of of of um income nice fantastic I will have links to all of Joy's books and all of the relevant cyanic material that uh that they've put out over the years at the show notes to this episode at what magic isis.com trust me if you want to learn more about St cyprien of Antioch and their relation to Magic the show notes for this one are going to be pretty
127:00 - 127:30 special they're going to be pretty good so please head to what magic is this.com to get all of those show notes and as well to find all of Jo's great work on the book of St cyprien say you like what I'm doing here at what magic is this and you'd like to show your support in some way well I've got a few ways and they have just expanded uh as a lot of you probably are already aware but I want to go through uh some of the best ways of supporting me the best way is the first way of supporting me of course the thing I say in every
127:30 - 128:00 one of these episodes uh that I do the best way to support me is through patreon that is patreon.com Magic is this or head to what magic is this.com and click on any number of the patreon links there apparently these little sign offs are getting quite long so I don't want to take up too much of your time but just to say the patreon is awesome it's basically a whole different podcast I've got episodes about Saints and gods and all gnomes again I did an episode about
128:00 - 128:30 gnomes I did an episode about uh as it applies to this episode I did an episode about St cyprian myself and how to magically think about St cyprian and what St cyprian has means to contemporary magicians myself included it's an hour and a half so if you want more St cyprien you have to head over to my uh head over to my patreon to get a a whole other episode about St cban and I truly think that it's one of the best things I've ever done I I know a lot of
128:30 - 129:00 people say that kind of stuff I think most of my patreon episodes is my greatest work and so it's only $7 American a month uh everybody else is raising their prices I'm not still seven bucks come on over to patreon to get just a completely different show and it's amazing people really love it more show notes there about St cyprian so basically if you listen to this episode and you head to my patreon and listen to the cyprine episode you are going to have the best well-rounded education on St cyan that you could ever want if that
129:00 - 129:30 is indeed something that you want uh so my patreon is amazing gives you access to a a Discord community that is super helpful and and and amazing there as well but I also have videos on the patreon it's a whole different thing and it's great and it goes to keep uh this as my day job this is my job I wake up and I do work on the podcast um and things are getting a little bit dicey out there financially but uh if you can see your way to supporting me it's only seven bucks that's nothing that's you
129:30 - 130:00 can't buy anything for seven bucks these days so I would greatly love to see your support on patreon it truly keeps me alive and keeps this podcast going and it keeps me doing what I do because I like to do it and I hope that you like listening to it and I I can't do it without your help and I know a lot of people will go to my my patreon and be like Oh Doug's got 8800 followers no I have more less than half of that basically I've got close to 400 people supporting me right now which seems like
130:00 - 130:30 a lot but could always use more and uh any help would be appreciated in that regard so patreon.com magic is this or head to what magicus this.com find My patreon Links there and please support if you can just keep this podcast thing going and keep it ad free um so let's talk about another way of supporting me which is Paypal hit to what magicus this.com click on on the PayPal link any amount helps I'll just say that don't want to make too much of it not a lot of folks use the PayPal thing anymore so uh I'm just not going to promulgate it as much
130:30 - 131:00 uh somebody was like Doug you say the word promulgate a lot in your videos and they started doing promulgate counts on on YouTube so if you're listening to this thanks bud stay cool I bet you're a real pleasant person in real life YouTube listener YouTube Watcher listener who counts the amount of times I say promate on my episodes good stuff bet you're bet you're the life of the party anyhow PayPal great to support five bucks 10 bucks 20 bucks $2,000 any amount it just goes right
131:00 - 131:30 back to keeping this podcast um ad free and uh pay some of my bills that's another way of supporting um merchandise head to what magic is this.com click on the menu there head to merchandise Shirts Mugs there's tote bags wall hangings throw pillows phone cases all that stuff uh it's got some logos that I've made and some other people help me with logos amazing I'd love to see it don't see a lot of money from that but still love to see if you if you grab some stuff somebody actually grabbed three t-shirts recently so that was cool so thank you
131:30 - 132:00 so much for doing that and the final way of supporting me is the best way of helping yourself and helping me and that is going to the what magic is this podcast Bookshop so I have a virtual Bookshop in which basically almost 90% of the books that I recommend in the show notes and on the podcast T here uh you can go there and find all of these books I've recommended and every time you buy them that they help out independent book stores around North
132:00 - 132:30 America and they also give me a little bit of a they give me a cut so I get a couple of dollars if you buy a book through there how will you find this well you can head to what magic is this.com go to the menu you can find my Bookshop there it just says Bookshop or click the Bookshop button you can also just go to what magic is this.com and click on the episode button in the menu there head to the episode and then basically all of the book links uh that you want if there's a book there that you want to buy just click that and it'll go straight to my Bookshop as well just make sure that that says what magic
132:30 - 133:00 is this podcast Bookshop at the very top when you click byy and then that helps me out so you don't even need to go to the uh the online Bookshop you can just go to my website and then click on the book that I have linked there in my episode web page and uh Robert's your father's brother or you can just head straight there and go to your internet browser enter in bookshop.org sshop what magic is this all one word obviously and uh you can buy any number
133:00 - 133:30 of books and you can also just see all the books that I recommend on the show I'm slowly chipping away at it we're doing really good I actually have somebody helping me out with it so uh it's hopefully going to take me not as long uh knock on wood kind of thing but that's a great way of helping yourself and also helping me because I know you love books and uh and books are fantastic and I know a lot lot of people like Doug my bookshelf is now three times as large as it once was because I listen to your podcast and I'm like great that's amazing so if you want to
133:30 - 134:00 help me out and you want to help out the podcast and you want to help yourself out by grabbing some of the books that I talk about uh the best way of doing that is heading to the what magic is this podcast Bookshop it's a virtual Bookshop go to the website find uh the links there or head to bookshop.org shop what magic is this cuz in indeed this is the uh the books of magic 3 episode Special that we've got going right now and there's no better way of showing your love for books then grabbing some books that help out book
134:00 - 134:30 shops and independent book sellers and helps out your favorite podcaster right but the again the best way of supporting me uh is through this uh this thing called patreon patreon.com Magic is this but of course you can find all all of the relevant links through my web page that is what magic is this.com please head there for all of the stuff I have to say uh if if folks are interested in books of St cyprien and
134:30 - 135:00 cyanic grimoire Jose's work is the absolute best uh the the sorcerers treasure as I said one of my favorite things it's got the greatest disclaimer in the history of translated Magic books I love rereading that disclaimer it's short but so sweet and so amazing it is wonderful every other book that that that Jose has written about St cyprian is well worth getting and looking into it's just you just do the absolute best work and and I'm wishing you absolutely
135:00 - 135:30 the best of luck in in Defending Your your PhD and your thesis I know it's going to go fine um and uh yeah we're we're we're very lucky to have your word to say and and thank you so much for coming on and I really hope if some point in the future I was ask you to come back on to what magic is this you be okay to do so and uh no sure no no issue there amazing fantastic everyone that are books of St cyprien and cyprian Grim Wars please go out and find Jose's work please go to the show notes for
135:30 - 136:00 this episode there's going to be some great stuff there uh get some cyprian into your life that's the show everybody all right take care this is H episode one of three for the books of magic special here on what magic is this start it off with the that that Wy sorcerer St cyprien of Antioch later Bishop of Antioch all right everybody I hope I hope you really enjoyed it uh we're going to talk at you soon I want each and every one of you to stay healthy to stay hopeful and to stay luminous until next time everyone take care and goodbye
136:00 - 136:30 byebye [Music]