Maṇḍalas of Medieval Arabic (and Latin) Magic

Tibetan studies hardly ever get old or boring. They can lead in unexpected directions, at times drawing you far outside the boundaries defined by and for that semi-(?)academic discipline(/s?). And I have to say, sometimes magic happens. 

I was flipping through some of the impressive and often, for myself, impenetrable products of David Pingree’s sheer genius the other night. I’ve been familiar with his work for decades, even once had the chance to meet and chat awhile with him while he was still living. I remember he was very courteous without being formal. And when I told him some crazy ideas I had about what the various colors of eclipses might have to do with the black magic of Milarepa’s youth, he at least avoided dismissing those ideas out of hand.(1) 

Never one to get overly excited about crossing borders the way most people do, Pingree had an admirable knowledge of early languages ranging from Europe and the Middle East through to India. A historian of science, he didn’t care much for the divide between sciences and the so-called ‘pseudosciences’ as they are bound to be called by the modernist supremacists of our day. Hardly anyone can hope to be his match, not me, and, I’m guessing here, probably not you either.

So just imagine my unjustifiable surprise to find a bit in one of his writings yesterday about the Arabic borrowing al-mandal — used in a context that, leaving Jungianism to one side, does some justice to the original Indian Buddhist referents of maṇḍala — in an 11th-century Arabic text from Sana’a, the ancient city in Yemen.* Not content to stay there, it was known to a very few savants like Albertus Magnus in 13th-century Europe but then went on to become a best seller among European conjurers of the 15th, when it transformed into Almadel and such & sundry spellings as it entered the vernaculars. I dare say (because I’m feeling daring) that the Solomonic magic it forms a part of is still today one of the main inspirations for occultists in Europe and the Americas.

*Sana’a appears to be in a contest with Jericho that will decide which of them is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. I cast my vote for Jericho if only for that 7,000-year-old tower.

I won’t belabor the point, but will supply the quote from David Pingree down below, and send you on a quest for the words “al-mandal” and “Almadel” on the internet. What you are likely to notice is a remarkable confusion. In some European minds Almadel was the name of an Arab magician, and/or author of a text known as the Six Firm Sciences on six types of divination. And those sciences might be anything from scrying (gazing into crystal balls and the like), to angelic or jinn invocation, to geomantic practices (randomly pick a square from a grid-work and get your answer). I won’t even try to sort all this out right now. In any case it is al-mandal as an object that interests us here, and it is this that is featured in that quite distinct Arabic text from 11th-century Yemen.

If you were to make me confess, my real motive for going into it is this: I have been drafting an upcoming blog on what I believe is a loanword — most likely from Arabic directly or indirectly via Persian, although with very deep roots in the ancient Middle East — found in the 1245 manuscript of the works of Padampa and his followers. My reasoning is, If I can persuade you that a Buddhist Sanskrit term was being adopted in an 11th-century Arabic manuscript with longterm effects in Europe, you might find it easier to see another word borrowing going in the opposite direction. And when and if we do go a little further into it, that instance of a word borrowed from east to west does have some strong and meaningful connections to the word borrowed from west to east. All in good time, all in good time.

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A note:

(1) I just checked, and found that the source of my chromatic speculations was an article by another historian of science, Winfried Petri (his article listed below). But anyway, a world-class expert on celestial lore, Pingree was the perfect person to ask a question like this. And he did in fact write something on that subject of eclipse colors in India, in his article “The Indian and Pseudo-Indian Passages in Greek and Latin Astronomical and Astrological Texts,” Viator, vol. 7 (1976), pp. 141-95, at p. 166, even if I didn’t know this at the time. I might add that al-mandal, or “the mandal” in the Arabic texts should not be connected with the offering maṇḍal (མཎྜལ་) of Tibetan Buddhist preliminary practices, but rather with the maṇḍala (དཀྱིལ་འཁོར་) of divine invocation and initiation. The distinction between these two different objects has eluded or confounded many great minds. And it is true that even with several clear points of similarity, the usage of al-mandal in its magical context is different from the maṇḍala (དཀྱིལ་འཁོར་) used in Tibetan empowerment rituals. The motives and rationales are different, even if both might entail evocations of lofty transcendent entities. If you look into some of the readings that follow this should become clear enough. Some may want to object that the use of al-mandal is magical, while the maṇḍala is religious. I shouldn’t have to say that the placement of a dividing line between religion and magic has often caused troubled thinking, but that’s understandable if you see how that boundary has often shifted back and forth as part of historical efforts at self-definition. Examples: exorcism is magic, but when recognized religious authorities within your own religion do it, it isn’t. Impressive prodigies are magic, but if done by saints they’re miracles (and yes, if scientists do them it’s science). Prayers for success and wealth are magic, but when done as a part of religious practice (as in ‘petitionary prayers’), they aren’t. Hell, even casting curse spells, the one thing we most often associate with magic, can be religious when taking the form of anathemas or condemnations. Nobody condemns more people to hell than the holy. If hearing me say these things upsets you, at least ask yourself why before you snap back at me for saying them. But wait, how did I get off on this train of thinking anyway, here in what was meant to be an innocent bibliographical footnote?

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Reading suggestions

I leave it up to you, depending on how comfortable you may or may not be, if you want to delve into such matters as divination and occultism. But if you do count yourself among the brave or foolhardy ones, I recommend above all else a look at this particular webpage. It appears to be an authorized digital version of a book by Joseph H. Peterson on the very texts of interest here, and the illustrations are particularly necessary to see.

Mark R. Cohen, “Goitein, Magic, and the Geniza,” Jewish Studies Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4 (2006), pp. 294-304. Goitein's works are significant here for showing the general context of the word borrowing. That means the extensive sea trade between India and Egypt during the 10th to 13th centuries. And this article has good references in case you would like to explore this further.

A.W. Greenup, “The Almadel of Solomon, according to the Text of the Sloan MS. 2731,” The Occult Review, vol. 22, no. 2 (August 1915), pp. 96-102. I despaired of ever seeing this until I discovered there is a complete archive of the contents of this periodical online. 

Genese Grill, “Almandal Grimoire: The Book as Magical Object,” The Georgia Review, vol. 69, no. 4 (Winter 2015), pp. 514-541. Despite the title, this is more about what happens when, with no more spines or bindings to hold onto, and no more paper pages to flip over, books are dematerialized into digital streams on a screen. Very worth reading and reflecting about even, if you really must, on a screen. I went ahead and read it on screen myself, something I find I do more and more, even feel myself coerced into it against my will by the rocketing prices of postage and print cartridges.

Csaba Kiss, “On Yantras in Early Śaiva Tantras,” Cracow Indological Studies, vol. 16 (2014), pp. 203-233. Try this. 

Roger A. Pack, “Almadel Auctor Pseudonymus: De Firmitate Sex Scientiarum,” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, vol. 42 (1975), pp. 147-181. At p. 153:

“What we find here is al-mandal, the ‘mandala’ or mystic symbol, either round or square or a combination of both, which the writings of C.G. Jung and his disciples have made familiar to us...”

Winfried Petri, “Colours of Lunar Eclipses According to Indian Tradition,” Indian Journal of the History of Science, vol. 3 (1968), pp. 91-98.

David Pingree, “Learned Magic in the Time of Frederick II,” contained in: Isabelle Pingree and John M. Steele, eds., Pathways into the Study of Ancient Sciences, Selected Essays by David Pingree, American Philosophical Society Press (Philadelphia 2013), a special issue of Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. vol. 104 (2014), pp. 477-484, at p. 486:

“[These Florence manuscript treatises] are all representative of Salomonic magic. The first two concern almandal of Salomon. This mandal is in shape and inscriptions completely conformable to an Indian mandala; it is remarkable to see the Sanskrit word transmitted so purely through Arabic, in which it is still used to refer to a magical object, to Latin. The figure is a square ‘wall’ with a circle in the center and spokes pointing to the four cardinal directions (indicated by ‘gates’) and to the four intermediate directions. On each of the four side walls are inscribed the names of angels...”

Anne Regourd, “Le Kitāb al-Mandal al-Sulaymānī, un ouvrage d'exorcisme yéménite postérieur au Ve/XIe S.?” Res Orientales, vol. 13 (2001), pp. 123-138. The first footnote has a long and valuable discussion about the meanings of al-mandal, without neglecting its Indic and Buddhist sourcing, but the rest is mainly about the dating of the manuscripts, the Solomonic lore of the lost and recovered magic seal (a seal of dominion over human, animal and spirit realms), and the question of how much local Yemeni herbal knowledge is represented in the text. I see it mentions misk, but this is not surprising since musk was Tibet’s primary claim to fame in the Middle East back in those centuries. And Yemen was a trading powerhouse for east-west commerce starting from Roman Empire days, just read into the five-volume set by S.D. Goitein on the Genizah documents from Cairo. Goitein wanted to find ‘rationally profit-motivated’ traders and so took minimal notice of the magic evident in those documents (see the Cohen essay, listed above). 

Anne Regourd, “A Twentieth-Century Manuscript of the Kitāb al-Mandal al-Sulaymānī (Ar IEW 286, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia): Texts on Practices & Texts in Practices,” contained in: Marcela A. Garcia Probert and Petra M. Sijpesteijn, eds., Amulets and Talismans of the Middle East and North Africa in Context: Transmission, Efficacy and Collections, Brill (Leiden 2022), pp. 47-77. I’ve just learned this article is open access (that means anybody) at the Brill site.

Lynn Thorndike, “Alfodhol and Almadel: Hitherto Unnoted Mediaeval Books of Magic in Florentine Manuscripts,” Speculum, vol. 2, no. 3 (July 1927), pp. 326-331.

——, “Alfodhol and Almadel Once More,” Speculum, vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1945), pp. 88-91. 

——, ”Solomon and the Ars Notoria,” a chapter in: Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science during the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, Columbia University Press (New York 1923), vol. 2, pp. 279-289. Truly fascinating are the defensive justifications given by Honorius, “Master of Thebes,” for the Christian employment of magical arts that can make them turn out to be sacred arts. Notice, too, at p. 288: 

“Very elaborate directions are given for the composition of the seal of the living God. Circles are drawn of certain proportions emblematic of divine mysteries, a cross is made within, numerous letters are written down equidistant from one another. A pentagon and two hexagons have to be placed just so in relation to one another ; characters are inscribed in their angles ; and various sacred names of God, Raphael, Michael, and other angels are written along their sides. Different parts must be executed in different colors...” 

Jan R. Veenstra, “The Holy Almandal: Angels and the Intellectual Aims of Magic,” contained in: Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra, eds., The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Peeters (Leuven 2002), pp. 189-229. This ends with some remarkable drawings of the mandal altar setup based on early manuscripts, so have a look at this if you can.

 

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What is your reaction to all this? Do leave a comment. 

 

Sana’a

PS (April 17, 2022):

I heard a qualm questioning how I could feel so certain that the Yemen magic text got its word al-mandal from Indian Buddhists. Why not from non-Buddhists, from Hindus? To the best of my knowledge, and the late famous Hindu tantric studies expert André Padoux once assured me (in Cambridge MA in 1993 or 1994) it is true, Hindus of various lines of tradition never made use of a ritual device they called maṇḍala before the 20th century. Some people in the art business made up the idea that “Hindu mandalas” did exist because the word ‘mandala’ was much better known to the international art public, because the word had purchase and they could fly with it.* Yes, various types of Hindu tantra did make use of objects like maṇḍalas, sometimes very like maṇḍalas, but they were called yantras. If the Yemeni contacts were non-Buddhists they would have borrowed the word yantra instead. Don’t get me wrong here, I actually think that the term yantra is the broader term. It has a lot of interesting usages that I’ve gone into in an earlier blog, Do Dampa’s Droids Dare Dream of Desire? It means a ‘device’ of any kind and for a variety of sublime and mundane purposes. Hindu tantra does use yantras for divine invocation and visualization practices, in general much like Buddhist Vajrayānists make use of their maṇḍalas.

(*But this understanding based on my memory more or less directly contradicts his position in a published work, an article on the use of maṇḍala in an 11th-century Kashmiri tantric work — André Padoux, “Maṇḍalas in Abhinavagupta's Tantrāloka,” contained in: Gudrun Bühnemann, ed., Maṇḍalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions, Brill (Leiden 2003),  pp. 225-235. When he lectured me 30 years ago he may have had in mind maṇḍalas of divine forms [the most typical but hardly the only kind of Tibetan དཀྱིལ་འཁོར་ / maṇḍala], since full depictions of the deities along with their retinues do not seem to appear in early Hindu artistic versions. In any case, Hindu tantric sources are more likely to use the terms yantra and even cakra or ‘wheel’ for their invocation devices, and these tend to be largely geometrical.)

Some of these examples of Hindu yantras do resemble Buddhist maṇḍalas.
and at the same time resemble al-mandal, at least in their form.

One more thing

Were Buddhists in those times sailing to Yemen? I can’t say for sure, but believe they very surely could have been. Socotra Island, off the coast of Yemen and today a part of Yemen, has some inscriptions in its coastal caves made by Indian sailors. Although they belong to a much earlier period than the Yemen magic text, some (not all) of their names indicate they were Buddhists. For clear evidence, look here:

Ingo Strauch and Michael D. Bukharin, “Indian Inscriptions from the Cave Ḥoq on Suquṭrā (Yemen),” Annali [Naples], vol. 64 (2004), pp. 121-138.

Or better yet, find the book:

Ingo Strauch, ed., Foreign Sailors on Socotra: The Inscriptions and Drawings from the Cave Hoq, Vergleichende Studien zu Antike und Orient no. 3, Hempen Verlag (Bremen 2012).

• There are a lot of reasons to care for and even love Socotra. One of them is the fact that it has been a preserve of numerous unusual and unique plant species. I say “has been” because it is reportedly under threat because of new-found wealth, leading to increasing goat ownership, and the resultant plant consumption by those goats that spells death for the Dragon Blood trees. Have a look at Hugh Bigger's essay about it here.

Of course, Yemenis themselves, not to mention Egyptians, were very much involved in the early trading networks, and we ought to be thinking about that as well.

Yes, there are inscriptions of Indian traders in Egypt, too. About them see this:

Richard Salomon, “Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt,”  Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 111, no. 4 (1991), pp.  731-736.  Added note in vol. 113, no. 4 (1993), p. 593.

 

Add on (May 18, 2022):

I located this curiously multiple (person, book, object) definition of Almadel in the “Biographical Dictionary” appended to the following:

Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, tr. by James Freake, Llewellyn Publications (St. Paul 1995), at p. 788:

“ALMADEL: The name of a medieval magician mentioned by the Abbot Johann Trithemius in his Antipalus maleficiorum (c. 1500) as the author of an edition of the Key of Solomon. Also the name of the fourth book of the manuscript collection that goes under the collective name Lesser Key of Solomon or Lemegeton; it is specifically applied to the wax table described therein.”

Add on to add on (August 6, 2024):

Two days ago this Zoom video dated November 5, 2022, was posted at YouTube:  Almandal & Almadel, From Jinns & Shayatin to Holy Angels of God, Texts & Methods, by Joseph H Peterson. The presenter somehow misunderstood why Padampa was mentioned in this blog, and gives the blog's author as one named Roger A. Pack, a person I've never heard of, except as author of an essay I listed in the Reading Suggestions. But apart from those two missteps, I found it all very interesting and illuminating, precisely on the topic, and well worth seeing.

I wonder if J.H.P. had noticed the follow-up blog posted on May 4, 2022: Maṇḍalas of Medieval Jewish Magic.