Picatrix redux
The other day I received in the mail the Picatrix: Liber Aratus Edition, as translated and edited by John Michael Greer and Christopher Warnock. And while I haven't finished reading it, I do have some observations.
When Ouroboros press released their two volumes of their decidedly lackluster and worthless translation of the Arabic Ghayat Al-Hakim, I noted that the impulse behind that project was something of an aspergers-like tendency in the occult and pagan community to try and get at the source of many of the great texts and ideas. Much like, I imagine, a bookish scholar in some mythos story, not satisfied with Dee's English, or Wormius' Latin, but rather lusting after the original Arabic of Al Azif. It is also predictable that following that impulse when is armed with the particular kind of educational deficit that distinguishes much of the occult and pagan community, the results from such projects are, well, less than spectacular.
I also mused that what is desperately needed, after recovering from my disappointment, was good study or translation of the version of the Picatrix that did profoundly influence Medieval and Renaissance magic, which is to say, the Latin translation. And now, thanks to Greer and Warnock, we have just such a translation.
In what I've read so far, there are many good things to say about it. Christopher Warnock has made something of a name of himself in traditional astrology circles with his developed practice of planetary and astrological magic in the style of the Renaissance magicians - that background of knowledge readily informs this work. The astrological elements of the text are consistently rendered into a language that can be clearly understood by a fellow practicing astrologer - this is in sharp contrast to Ouroboros' Arabic rendering, where is it clear that neither the translators nor the editors had any practical background in astrology, much less traditional astrology. I get the sense that their Arabic translator perhaps was just some unfortunate soul who had been roped into the job by virtue of his knowledge of the language, and as such, left untranslated much of the technical language used in the critical descriptions of the various planetary and astrological operations by virtue of his own ignorance - ignorance that was echoed through the editors and those consulting "occult experts" who were noted advisers on the project.
There is, of course, an interesting difference to note between these two projects. One set out to offer up a translation of the Picatrix, in a beautifully leather bound set of volumes that, really, in all fairness, was meant to sit one's shelf, along with all of the other precious and, truthfully, unread and unstudied, occult texts - essentially, to make a sort of bookshelf fashion statement. The other, ostensibly, is produced to be a useful and working text book for a student keenly interested in practicing planetary and astrological magic.
Though to be fair, Greer and Warnock are also contributing to the occult fashionistas, or at least, the occult fans, in that they have published three different versions of their text in what can only seen as a kind of ego driven indulgence. There is the "Aratus Edition", which I have, and which includes a passage from Ibn Wahshiyya's Book of Poisons. There is the "Rubeus Edition" which includes some passages from the Arabic Ghayat Al-Hakim which are not in the Latin Picatrix. And then there is "Viridus Edition" which, apparently, has something to do with "Green Magic". Granted, if one wanted all that these texts had to offer, you're still saving money by purchasing all three (for the 12 or so different pages) over one volume of the leather bound Ouroboros text. That said, however good the text is, I have no desire to fill my bookshelf with material in triplicate - and their decision to produce these multiple editions wherein which the differences, save the covers of the books themselves, are minor and boarding on trivial was a poor one.