INTRODUCTION.

Many years ago, I heard of the existence of this manuscript from a famous occultist who has since passed away. More recently, my attention was drawn to it again by my personal friend, the well-known French author, lecturer, and poet, Jules Bois, whose interests have turned toward occult subjects for some time. My first informant told me that the manuscript was known to both Bulwer-Lytton Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), a hugely popular Victorian novelist whose works, like "Zanoni," dealt heavily with Rosicrucian and occult themes. and Éliphas Lévi The pen name of Alphonse Louis Constant (1810–1875), a highly influential French ritual magician and author who triggered the 19th-century occult revival.. He claimed that Lytton based part of his description of the wise Rosicrucian RosicrucianA member of a legendary secret spiritual and cultural movement that claimed to possess esoteric wisdom from the ancient past. Mejnour on the figure of Abra-Melin. Furthermore, the description of the so-called "Observatory" of Sir Philip Derval in the novel "A Strange Story" was, to an extent, copied from and suggested by the "Magical Oratory and Terrace" described in the eleventh chapter of the Second Book of this present work. It is also certain that the method of instruction used by Mejnour in "Zanoni" for the student Glyndon—specifically the test of leaving him alone in his home to go on a short journey and then returning unexpectedly—is very similar to the method Abra-Melin used with Abraham. The only difference is that Abraham successfully passed that test, while Glyndon failed. It is likely that the author of "A Strange Story" had experiments like those described in the Third Book in mind when he had Sir Philip Derval, in the manuscript history of his life, speak of certain books describing occult experiments—some of which he had tried and, to his surprise, found to be successful.

This rare and unique manuscript of the "Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin," from which the present work is translated, is a French translation of the original Hebrew by Abraham the Jew. The handwriting is typical of the style used at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. It appears to be written by the same person who wrote another manuscript, the "Magic of Picatrix" original: "Picatrix"; a famous 10th-century book of Arabic magic and astrology, later translated into Latin and widely circulated in Europe., which is also held in the Arsenal Library original: "Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal". I know of no other existing copy or replica of this "Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin," not even in the British Museum, despite having thoroughly studied their enormous collection of occult manuscripts.

* Probably the same as Gio Peccatrix the Magician, the author of many manuscripts on magic.