Grimoire of St Cyprian Clavis Inferni

by Stephen Skinner

There have been many grimoires attributed to St. Cyprian of Antioch due to his reputation as a consummate magician before his conversion to Christianity, but perhaps none so intriguing as the present manuscript.

This unique grimoire addresses the summoning and use of the four Archangels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel as well as their opposite numbers, the four Demon Kings, Paymon, Maimon, Egyn and Oriens. The latter are shown in their animal and human forms along with their sigils, a resource unique amongst grimoires. The text is a mixture of magical scripts, Greek, Hebrew, cipher, Latin, (and reversed Latin) made plain by the editors.

Genres: Occult, Witchcraft, Magic

96 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2010

About the author

Dr. Stephen Skinner, Ph.D. (Classics, University of Newcastle, 2014) author, editor, publisher, and lecturer. He is known for authoring books on magic, feng shui, sacred geometry, and alchemy. He has published more than 46 books in more than 20 languages.

Reviews

[Petros Lamprides · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, Skinner and Rankine produced a valuable text. This short book, is very informative, well documented and methodologically written. It sheds bright light on an obscure subject and its bibliography is verry useful. Apart from being very interesting itself, it also serves as a reading manual on other solomonic (and not only) texts. Highly recommended!

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard not be amused by the title of this book since Clavis Inferni in English means Key to Hell and the ouroboros on the front cover is beautiful. The original text is only twenty some odd pages, Skinner does a great job of adding historical and religious context. The Cyprian that is falsely attributed to this book is the one from Antioch. Prior to Cyprian's conversion to Christianity, he indulged in magic. Skinner makes the case that this text falls under Solomonic magic (i.e. The Key of Solomon, Lesser Key of Solomon, The Grand Grimoire, etc.) and the spells focus on using spirits for finding or receiving treasure. Many of the colored facsimiled pages look great, most of the facsimiled pages with only text look grainy and pixelated, which is unfortunate since the book isn't very long. It has almost been 10 years since its original publication, maybe it's time to go back and rescan the text? Touch Me Not! A Most Rare Compendium and Grimoire of the Whole Magical Art, another grimoire, provides high quality, full-page facsimiles of the original text; then again, it came out about 7 years after this version of the Clavis Inferni. Aside from my gripes about the picture quality, this is a great grimoire worthy of any collection.

You can read more about this text here: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014...

[Karen Kohoutek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book for a very specific audience, and for them, it's well worth checking out. For everyone else, it's probably incomprehensible. This is a facsimile manuscript, with annotations and background, on an 18th-century magical manuscript purported to be written by St. Cyprian of Antioch. It's basically a short document on how to summon demons and then send them away again. I don't have the real background in ceremonial magic, grimoires, or the angelic languages to really give it its due, but it's lovely to look at, and I really appreciate being able to read a translated version.

[Anu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I forgot I read this when I was spiralling lol but yeah this is the book you read when you need to summon a demon from hell. The footnotes admits to patchy translations but I can't read any of that shit so I wouldn't have known any better to fault it

In any case I found it telling that one must beg thy "Merciful Father" for forgiveness in these spells for complete success rate. Goes to show there is no power greater than him I guess. So why are you summoning demons in the first place silly billies (me off my meds)

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short grimoire with illustrations, magick texts, and cyphers to the language that was used for the invocations. I love the historical context regarding the knowledge of the authorship, and how St. Cyprian was associated with the grimoire itself (St. Cyprian of Antioch was apparently a well learned magician before his conversion to Christianity). Beautiful imagery and pictures in a book about summoning and controlling the demonic princes.

[Lenny SB · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully published book on utter superstitious bullshit.

[Karolina Ratajczyk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cheaply printed and not fully translated