Munich Manual of Demonic Magic

Documented history: The Munich Manual of Demonic Magic (Latin rubric: Liber incantationum, exorcismorum et fascinationum variarum) is a fifteenth‑century manuscript codified as CLM 849 in the Bavarian State Library, Munich. The work is presented as a practical magical manual rather than a named‑author treatise; no author is given in the surviving sources. The manuscript is composed mostly in Latin, with two appended sections in German and Italian. Paleographic and bibliographic accounts in the supplied sources date the codex to the fifteenth century and describe it as nearly complete except for the first two folios, which once contained the beginning of the first ritual. Modern scholarly access to the text has been facilitated by Richard Kieckhefer's 1998 edition (Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century), and a Russian translation was published in 2019. Contents and claims (as recorded in the manuscript and modern descriptions): The manual is largely concerned with demonology and necromancy. It contains instructions, conjurations, ritual diagrams (more than forty illustrations of magic circles and symbols are reported), and seals intended for the invocation, summoning, binding, and questioning of demonic or diabolic entities. Named spirits and demons occur in the text (sources report invocations or instructions concerning figures identified as Satan, Lilith, Astaroth, Volach/Valac, Samael and others). The manuscript includes a ritual called the Bond of Solomon, presented as a means to bind demons to act as guardians, provide treasures, or answer questions, and a rite titled De Responsione Spirituum described in the sources as deriving from Solomonic ritual material and setting up a space for summoning. A short list of eleven demons with ranks and names appears in the manuscript (pp. 130–133 in the cited edition), some of which overlap with names known from later goetic compilations. Legends, cautions, and limits of evidence: The supplied sources describe the manuscript's rituals as promising specific favors (for example, obtaining a woman's love, achieving invisibility, acquiring wealth or treasures, and gaining knowledge). These are claims made by the text itself as reported in modern descriptions; the supplied materials do not provide independent attestations that such effects occurred. The sources do not ascribe any specific folkloric curse upon the physical book or attest contagious supernatural dangers uniquely associated with owning or reading the manuscript beyond the inherent risks implied by engaging in demonic invocation. Several descriptions characterize the codex as seemingly compiled from multiple earlier sources, but that compilation hypothesis is reported in summary form and is not exhaustively documented in the supplied material.