Image by Multiple/Unknown - Oxford Digital Library (public domain)
Demons, angels and evil spirits have been weaved in occult traditions around the world.
Princeton’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections offers an inside look into an early 20th-century Persian manuscript on magic and astrology.
Titled Kitāb-i ʻAjāʾib-i makhlūqāt (
Wonders of Creation), the manuscript features incantations and 56 painted illustrations on various demons and angels. The text, accompanied by images of the supernatural figures, is written in Arabic and Farsi, and dates back to the years between 1911 and 1921.
Professor at the Department of Religious Studies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania
Ali Karjoo-Ravary decribed that the text detailed about demons and possible ailments tied to each zodiac sign, as well as revealed instructions to exorcise them.
In one of the inscriptions, the sorcerer has to take a handful of soil beneath the feet of a possessed person and chant a sentence seven times. The sentence goes by, “God of the heavens and the earth, hurry, hurry, bring back, bring back, bring back the love for virtue.”
Twitter user @ragbonehair has created a thread of these mystical demons associated with each zodiac sign. Find yours below.
[via
Hyperallergic, cover image by
Multiple/Unknown - Oxford Digital Library, Public Domain]