Eighth Book of Moses / PGM XIII
The “Eighth Book of Moses” is a ritual instruction and cosmogonic narrative that is grouped among the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri.[1] The codex was produced in the 4th century CE, and copied from material written potentially as early as the first century CE.[2] It is the only handbook in the magical papyri that presents its contents as a unified book rather than as a compilation of miscellaneous spells.
The purpose of the ritual is a direct encounter with the Supreme God, who in turn reveals and ameliorates the astrological conditions that determine the practitioner’s life. It promises a close bond with the god invoked, and the power to perform a series of further magical spells included in the codex.
The determining power of fate and the attempt to transcend it are at the heart of the ritual. That goal is emphasized by the astrological imagery throughout the text; fate is imagined as determined by the stars’ position. The ritualist must demonstrate astrological knowledge during the preparation of the ritual, including the literal act of ingesting images of the astrological hours. Astrological motifs and the goal of transcending fate are shared with the contemporary practices of theurgy, alchemy, and the Hermetica.[3]
The practitioner’s relationship to the god is initially characterized by distance and separation. The practitioner is able to call upon the god not because of a shared bond or history between them, but because of his claims to sacred and secret knowledge—that is, the knowledge inscribed in the magical codex. But upon successfully performing the ritual, the practitioner refers to himself as an initiate; the ritual has provided him with personal knowledge of God through direct experience, along with supernatural abilities and improved material conditions. He thus has a new identity as someone with a personal connection to the Supreme God. The reference to “initiation” places the text within the tradition of the transformational mystery rites of antiquity, and it indicates one of the vital meanings of the ritual: the transition from an old self into a new identity following a transformational spiritual experience.[4]
Various identities have been proposed for the Supreme creator-God of the ritual. The divine names “Agathos Daimon” and “Aion” both appear within the text and are therefore possibilities.[5] The ritual appears to share features with the “Gnostic” myth of Sabaoth, son of Yaldabaoth, in NHC II, 4 and 5, and the latter may be the Supreme God of PGM XIII. [6]
A central feature of this ritual is the use of voces magicae. These are ostensibly meaningless words used to call upon the divine. Reciting them encouraged the practitioner to face the trans-rational nature of the divine.[7] Some of the voces magicae used in the ritual function as names of divinities and appear in other religious texts, including Hermetic treatises and magical amulets. Certain voces magicae are used in the same contexts throughout the ancient sources, indicating that the names had associations with specific deities.[8] Voces magicae could also take the form of strings of vowels, which were chanted, possibly in a musical way.[9]
The written and spoken word is essential to the practice of the ritual.[10] The codex functions as an archive of sacred knowledge, transmitting divine knowledge secretly through the ages; its tangible, inscribed pages were as vital to the god’s appearance as was the performance of the magician. The emphasis on the oral performance of the text includes the need for both verbal recitation and the uttering of non-verbal sounds, including popping, clapping, and laughing. The oral recitation serves to reenact in the present moment the god’s historical role as the creator of the cosmos; it also allows the voces magicae to come to life as the magician chants them, for it is only by so doing that the god can be invoked. Neither the written nor the oral dimension of the text was alone sufficient; both were needed.
The ritual instructions conclude with remarks on how to engage with the expected divine apparition. These latter instructions—like most instructions in the magical papyri—are presented to the reader as composed by a ritual authority: someone with expertise, who knew from experience the results of the spells.[11] Thus the text describing the divine apparition, while presented in the form of practical instructions, is also intended to be understood as a record of personal experience.
After its first publication in 1885, scholars focused initially on the creation story embedded in the ritual instructions, to the exclusion of the ritual itself.[12] By depicting the creation of the cosmos through the laughter of the Supreme God, the text draws on Egyptian cosmogonic narratives that date back as far as the Coffin Texts (ca. 2200–1750 BCE), in which a god creates the world by uttering names.[13] More recently, scholars have focused on understanding the practices and meanings that comprise the ritual itself—e.g., the use of astrological motifs, the identity of the invoked god, and the purpose of voces magicae—and how these relate to the contemporary spiritual beliefs and practices of Late Antiquity.[14]
Source
The selections below are translated from the Greek text of PGM XIII, printed in Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae.[15]
The magician has prepared for the ritual by remaining pure for 41 days, calculating precise astrological conditions, and obtaining the required items (including a house in which no one has died for the past year, an altar, 10 pinecones, and two white roosters). He has written the spell upon a tablet, and begins to recite it:
I call on you, who are greater than all, the creator of all, you who are self-begotten, he who sees all but is not seen. You granted the sun its glory and whole power, and that the moon waxes and wanes and possesses a fixed course, taking nothing from the earlier-born darkness, instead sharing everything equally. When you appeared, the cosmos was born and light shone forth. To you are all things subject, whose true form none of the gods can see. You are the invisible that transforms into all, Aion of Aion.[16]
[...]
I call on you, lord, as the gods appear by you, so that they have power, Echebukrōm of Helios, to whom belongs the glory. aaa ēēē ōōō iii aaa ōōō Sabaoth, Arbathiō, Zagourē, the god Arathu Adonai. I call you, lord, in bird-glyphic: arai. In hieroglyphic: laïlam. In Hebraic: anoch Biathiarbath berbir echilatour boufroumtrom. In Egyptic: Aldamaeim. In dog-headed-baboonic: Abrasax. In falconic: chi chi chi chi chi chi chi tiph tiph tiph. In hieratic: menephōïphōth, cha cha cha cha cha cha cha.” Then clap three times, make a long popping sound, and hiss at length. “Come to me, lord, blameless and misery-free, who defiles no place, since I have been initiated into your name.[17]
Then ritualist recites the cosmogonic myth. Upon resuming the invocation, the god appears. The spell provides instructions on how to engage with the divine manifestation:
When the god enters, dο not stare at his face, but look at his feet while praying as prescribed, and giving thanks that he did not scorn you [...] and he will tell you about your star, and of the kind of daimon you have, and your horoscope, and how you should live, and how you will die. If you should hear something bad, do not cry, do not lament, but ask that he erase it or work around it. For this god is capable of everything.[18]
Notes
[1] The single-quire papyrus codex is P. Leiden I 395 = AMS 76, held in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. Its full title is “Holy book entitled Monad, or Eighth (Book) of Moses, concerning the Holy Name.”
[2] On dating the text, and the related debate on whether the codex contains two versus three copies of the same ritual, see Richard Gordon and Rachel Yuen-Collingridge, “GEMF 60 (= PGM XIII) A Study of Mateiral, Sribal, and Compositional Issues,” in The Greco-Egyptain Magical Formularies: Libraries, Books, and Individual Recipes, ed. Christopher Faraone and Sofía Torallas Tovar (University of Michage Press, 2022), 264–68.
[3] For transcending Fate in theurgy, see Iamblichus, de Mysteriis X.5; and in alchemy, see Zosimus of Panopolis, On the Letter Omega. See discussion in Michela Zago, Tebe Magica e Alchemica: L’ida Di Bibloteca Nell’Egitto Romano: La Collezione Anastasi (Libreria Universitaria Edizioni, 2010). On astrology in the Hermetica, see, e.g., NHC VI, 6.62.16–20 and commentary in Christian H. Bull, The Traditions of Hermes Trismegistus (Brill, 2018), 370.
[4] On initiation in the ancient Mediterranean: Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Harvard University Press, 1987); Jan Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the ncient World (De Gruyter, 2014); Einar Thomassen, “Becoming a Different Peron: Baptism as Initiation Ritual,” in Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Graeco-Roman Religions, ed. Luther H. Martin and Panayotis Pachis (University Studio Press, 2003); Christian H. Bull, “The Notion of Mysteries in the Formation of Hermetic Tradition,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Literature: Ideas and PRactcies: Studies for Einar Thomassen at Sixty, ed. Christian Bull, et. al (Brill, 2012).
[5] The Agathos Daimon is the Hellenistic equivalent of the Egyptian Shai, for which see Quaegebeur, Shai. On the god Aion, see A.J. Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, Vol. 4 (J. Gabalda, 1954), 182–99.
[6] For the proposal that NHC II 4 and 5 incorporate the theogonic myth of PGM XIII see: Michel Tardieu, “Gnose et manichéisme,” École pratique des hautes études. Section des sciences religieuses 96 (1986–1987): 298. For the proposal that Yaldabaoth is the Supreme God of PGM XIII: Attilio Mastrocinque, “Ialdabaoth’s Boat,” in Plutarco, Entre Dioses y Astros: homenaje al Profesor Aurelio Pérez Jiménez de Sus Discípulos, Colegas y Amigos, Vol. 2, ed. J.F. Martos Montiel, et al. (Libros portico, 2019), following a proposal by Michela Zago, “Le nom physique, du dieu” in Noms barbares I. Formes et contexts du’une practique magique, ed. M. Tardieu, et al. (Turnhout, 2014), 220.
[7] See Patricia Cox Miller, “In Praise of Nonsense,” in Classical Mediterranean Spirituality: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, ed. A. Hilary Armstrong (Crossroads/Continuum Press, 1986); also David Frankfurter, “The Magic of Writing,” in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, ed. Frankfurter (Brill, 2019) 635–643.
[8] Bull, Tradition, 339–342, following Michela Zago, “L’emploi des noms divins dans la Kosmopoiia (PGM XIII),” in Religioni in Contatto Nel Mediterraneo Antico, ed. Corinne Bonnet, et al. (Fabrizio Serra, 2008). But for a more skeptical perspective cf. Gordon and Yuen-Collingridge, “GEMF 60,” 262f.
[9] These too have parallels in Hermetic treatises and so-called “gnostic” texts. See: Bull, Tradition, 343–346, and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination: Altered States of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 288–297.
[10] Zago, Tebe Magica, 292.
[11] For ritual authority in the magical papyri, see Radcliffe G. Edmonds, “And You Will Be Amazed: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Greek Magical Papyri,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 21/22 (2020): 29–49. On religious expertise and authority in the late antique world, see Heidi Wendt, At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2016). For the use of rhetorical and imaginative skill in describing the outcome of a spell as a means to claim ritual authority, Richard Gordon, “Dynamics of Invocation in the Magical Papyri: The Example of Klaudianos Selêniakon (PGrMag VII 862–918,” in Plutarco, Entri Doses y Astros: Homenaje al Profesor Aurelio Pérez Himéneez de Sus Discípulos, Colegas y Amigos, Vol. 2, ed. J.F. Martos Montie, et al. (Libros Pórtico, 2019).
[12] First publication: Conrad Leemans, Papyri Graeci Musei Antiquarii publici Lugduno-Batavi, 2 vols. (Brill, 1843–1885). Albrecth Dieterich, Abraxas: Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des späteren Altertums (Teubner, 1891), attempted to reconstruct the “original” cosmology; Richard Reitzenstein, Die Göttin Psyche in der hellenistischen und frühchristlichen Literature (C. Winter, 1917), and Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (Teubner, 1927), tried to claim an Iranian origin to the cosmogony; Adolf Jacoby, “Ein Beitrag zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Kosmopoiie des Leidnener Zauberpapyrus,” Byzantinisch-neugriechische Jahrbücher 10 (1932–1934): 65–92 followed Dieterich in believing the text to be originally written by a Gnostic community, based on the text of Genesis. See an overview of scholarship, see Gordon and Yuen-Collingridge, “GEMF 60,” 254–258.
[13] Serge Sauneron, “La légende des sept propos de Methyer au temple d’Esna,” Bulletin de la Société française d’Égyptologie 32 (1961): 43–48 pointed to a possible link between the seven creative acts of laughter and the seven utterances of creation by the Egyptian goddess Mehet-weret, described in a Ptolemaic-Roman text on the Temple of Chnum at Esna.
[14] See Reinhold Merkelbach ed., Abrasax: Ausgewählte Papyri Religiösen und Magischen Inhalts, Vol. 3 (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1992); Emilio, Suárez de la Torre, “Mito, teología, magia y astrología en PGM XIII (P. Leid. J 395),” in Mito y magia en Grecia y Roma, ed. Emilio Suárez de la Torre, et al. (Libros Pórtico, 2013); Gordon and Yuen-Collingridge, “GEMF 60.” For the relationship of PGM XIII to the Hermetica specifically: Zago, “L’emploi des Noms,” and Tebe Magica; Bull, Tradition, 339–351. The attempt to better understand the Hermetic treatises through the study of the magical papyri in general, and PGM XIII specifically, goes back at least to Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur Griechishe-Ägyptischen und frühchristlichen Literatur (B.G. Teubner, 1904), see pp. 22–23.
[15] Karl Preisendanz, ed., Papyri Graecae Magicae = Die griechischen Zauberpapyri, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1928–31; repr., ed. Albert Henrichs, Stuttgart: Teubner, 1973–74; Munich: K. G. Saur, 2001), vol. 2, 90–91, 119.
[16] Ibid., PGM XIII, 62–71. ἐπικαλοῦμαί ϲε τὸν πάντων μείζονα, τὸν πάντα κτίϲαντα, ϲὲ τὸν α<ὐ>τογέννητον, τὸν πάντα ὁμῶντα καὶ μὴ ὁμώμενον· ϲὺ γὰρ ἔδωκαϲ ἡλίῳ τὴν δόξαν καὶ τὴν δύναμιν ἅπαϲαν, ϲελήνην αὔξειν καὶ ἀπολήγειν καὶ δρόμουϲ ἔχειν τακτούϲ, μηδὲν ἀφαιρήϲαϲ τοῦ προγενεϲτέρου ϲκότουϲ, ἀλλ᾽ ἰϲότητα αὐτῶν ἐμέριϲαϲ· σοῦ γὰρ φανέντοϲ καὶ κόϲμοϲ ἐγένετο καὶ φῶϲ ἐφάνη. ϲοὶ πάντα ὑποτέτακται, οὗ οὐδεὶϲ θεῶν δύναται ἰδεῖν τὴν ἀληθινὴν μορφήν. ὁ μεταμορφούμενοϲ εἰϲ πάνταϲ, ἀόρατοϲ εἶ Αἰὼν Αἰῶνοϲ.
[17] Ibid. , (PGM XIII, 76–90. ἐπικαλοῦμαί ϲε, κύριε, ὡϲ οἱ ὑπό ϲου θεοὶ φανέντες, ἵνα δύναμιν ἔχωϲιν Ἐχεβυκρωμ Ἡλίου, οὗ ἡ δόξα· ῾ααα ηηη ωωω ιιι ααα ωωω Ϲαβαώθ, Αρβαθιαω, Ζαγουρη, ὀ θεὸς Αραθυ Ἀδωναῖε.᾽ ἐπικαλοῦμαί ϲε, κύριε, ὀρνεογλυφιϲτί· ῾ἀραί᾽, ἱερογλυφιϲτί· ῾λαϊλαμ᾽, ἁβραϊϲτί· ῾ἀνοχ Βιαθιαρβαθ βερβιρ εχιλατουρ βουφρουμτρομ᾽, αἰγυπτιϲτί· ῾Ἀλδαβαειμ᾽, κυνοκεφαλιϲτί· ῾Ἀβραϲάξ᾽. ἱερακιϲτί· ῾χι χι χι χι χι χι χι τιφ τιφ τιφ᾽, ἱερατιϲτί· ῾μενεφωϊφωθ· χα χα χα χα χα χα χα᾽. εἶτα κρότηϲον γ´, πόππυϲον μακρόν, ϲύριϲον ἐπὶ μῆκοϲ. ῾ἧκέ <μοι>, κύριε, ἀμώμητοϲ καὶ ἀπήμαντοϲ, ὁ μηδένα τόπον μιαίνων, ὅτι τετέλεϲμαί ϲου τὸ ὄνομα.᾽
[18] Ibid., PGM XIII, 704–14. εἰϲελθόντοϲ δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ ἐνατένιζε τῇ ὄψει, ἀλλὰ τοῖϲ ποϲὶ βλέπε ἅμα δεόμενοϲ, ὡϲ πρόκειται, καὶ εὐχαριϲτῶν, ὅτι ϲε οὐχ ὑπερηφάνηϲεν [...] καὶ ἐρεῖ ϲοι καὶ περὶ ἄϲτρου καὶ ποῖόϲ ἐϲτιν ὁ ϲὸϲ δαίμων καὶ ὁ ὡροϲκόποϲ, καὶ ποῦ ζήϲῃ καὶ ποῦ ἀποθανεῖϲαι. ἐὰν δέ τι φαῦλον ἀκούϲῃϲ, μὴ κράξῃϲ, μὴ κλαύϲῃϲ, ἀλλὰ ἐρώτα, ἵνα αὐτὸϲ ἀπαλείψῃ ἤ μεθοδεύϲῃ. δύναται γὰρ πάντα ὁ θεὸϲ οὗτοϲ.
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Matthew Andrews
Matthew Andrews is a PhD Candidate in Classics at Princeton University. His interests lie in ancient Mediterranean religion, with a particular focus on magic during the Roman and Late Antique periods. For his dissertation, he examines the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri, exploring the role and status of magicians in Roman Egypt and their lived religious experience. He is a research assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study, where he contributes to the project “Transmission of Magical Knowledge,” dedicated to reediting, translating, and publishing the magical papyri. He received master’s degrees in Classics from both Princeton University and the University of Cambridge.
