Crossed Keys

This is a truly excellent grimoire in a line of them - Scarlet Imprint has quite a record of putting out really great grimoire translations now. I would go so far as to say that Crossed Keys in particular is probably the closest thing on the market these days to the 'daily carry' book that so many seem to dream of being printed. It's a great balance between several disparate elements, providing basic simple charms, complex spells (and some commentarial errata on how to apply them more widely) and involved summoning procedures. I think it is a great text for any magical student who is ready to move past simpler exercises into grimoire working, before branching out into the more advanced techniques covered in the more familiar grimoires. There are very few jack-of-all-trades grimoires on the market, and even fewer good ones. This one is worth looking into.Of personal interest to me is the book's focus on the sort of well-known Christian mythology that would have colored all of the spiritual language of the culture for which this book was written. I think that this is still largely true- even non-Christians hold in some awe the powers of a Catholic exorcist for instance- and so books like this which couch their magic in Christian language provide a kind of background context that is easily comprehensible to western people in the way that tantric Buddhist or Hindu texts are for eastern students.HOWEVER, there is one extremely important thing that keeps me from being able to give the book five stars. There is a really grievous error in the second part of the book, probably due to the translator's lack of familiarity with the fiddly bits of Christian ritual (not exactly a well-known discipline in the occult community to be fair). The second half of the book revolves around the usage of the 'Seven Psalms', a well-known sequence of particularly powerful Psalms used to call God's intercession in the medieval and renaissance church. But there is a disconnect with the numbering of these Psalms, caused by the slight difference in the enumeration of the book in Greek and Hebrew. The Medieval church used the Greek system, while nearly all modern Bibles use the Hebrew. It seems like only the numbers and first lines of the mentioned psalms were listed in the original grimoire, and the translator simply opened a Bible and pulled the ones he found under those numbers there. You can tell by the fact that the Latin first lines he lists do not match the English first lines of most of the Psalms under them.SO: in order to use the second half of the book you have a modern Bible you need to use the following Psalms: 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143. Only the first of these is listed correctly in the book.Great book overall! The user will just have to know that last bit.

The people of Magus books sent me a very nice note upon receiving the book.But, onto the book itself; it is basically a fusion of two books, the Red Dragon and the Enchiridion of Pope Leo III, which concerns the use of Christian Magic, with the making of charms, the uses of Psalms and conjuring Demons to do one's bidding. Added to this interesting and polarizing volume is the writer's own M.D. to describe how he when about summoning Frimost, including some extra bits from his own Practice.

This book is pretty darned good, and it looks like it's all there is in English. I'd like to see a second edition talkin' about the first part's connections with other grimoires, and etc. And, the second part is oh so good, however, in a second edition, he could definately expand everything by adding stuff from other manuscripts, or even Waite. Also, commentaries would be swell--and expanded footnotes/endnotes. But, I definately say this book is worth havin'.

An intelligently written grimoire for the serious Goen. Two ancient tomes: - The Black Dragon & The Enchiridion Of Pope Leo III, combined for the english speaking world!HIGHLY ... HIGHLY ... HIGHLY ... RECOMMEND

I don't know if maybe the hardback copy is larger but people with poor eyesight may find the paperback too small without glasses.That's not a problem for me, though. Otherwise, everything seems to be there.

boundless tome in theory and practice. i use the rogue edition which is an excellent operator companion. mikhail arkanghel's orison is none more effective. but there's still a lot more to learn in this gnostic endeavor and mi mano izquierdo is holding on to the fire.

I enjoyed the content of the two books however the first book, The Black Dragon has some unfortunate spells in it which i think are somewhat odd and straight out of a cheesy horror movie for teenagers, for example if you want to turn invisible there is a spell involving boiling a black cat that has been stolen. Hopefully thats intended to be a blind to throw people like me off ;p i'm new to all this stuff i wouldn't know. also i strongly believe that it is important for one to be a good honest person that is virtuous and loving if you are going to practice anything in this book, following the teachings of christ would be a good start. if you aren't a good person it would be pretty hypocritical and dare i say stupid to threaten a demon with hell fire when eventually you're going to be going there.

This is one of those grimoires out at the fringes of barbarism. Having at least two instances of animal cruelty. Animals are to be neither abused, sacrificed nor deified as in the PGM. And rites of bad taste and poor judgement have no place in a productive grimoire. They just cannot have it both ways, as in orthodoxreligion.