Did anyone use Coles Notes, or CliffsNotes in the U.S.? Here in Canada, they’re still available through Indigo. When I was in high school, if you were of the mind to skip reading a required book, you could try to get away with basing your book report on the plot summary in the Coles Notes version. And now, we have information at our fingertips, through the internet.
Simply regurgitating what you can glean from online searches doesn’t imbue you with deep knowledge, though. For that you need months, or more often years, of study. No one becomes an expert overnight.
But what if you could?
If you were a medieval scholar, there was a mysterious document that could endow you with the total knowledge of anything you might need, without all the years of hard work and study.
The Ars Notoria – not ‘notorious’, but literally Notory Art, although it certainly became infamous enough – promised just that.
Ritual practice of magic was call euphemistically called “notory art”. The notae in the Ars Notoria manuscript were said to be conduits to universal knowledge. They were symbolic diagrams that, if one meditated on them, would then load the information into your brain.
Well, who doesn’t love a good shortcut? But, did the document deliver on its promises?
The Ars Notoria is a curious treatise. Even though it was essentially a spell book, now called grimoires, it was said to be handed down from King Solomon, of Biblical fame, and the texts to be recited were identified as prayers. Even though the diagrams themselves were intrinsically magical, with symbolic patterns and symbols, interspersed with pseudo-“words”, faithful use of them would provide direct contact with benign supernatural forces — perhaps even with God.
So what were these diagrams?
They weren’t easy to use, to be sure. The Ars notoria reputedly operates in ways that couldn’t be understood by humans. In between texts to be recited as prayers (orations) and lists of mysterious words, the manuscript expounded on the origins and power of the contents Nor was it always clear in which order passages were to be used. Even the correct pronunciation of the names was up in the air – part of the first “prayer” reads: “Phos, Megale, Patir, Ymos, Ebel, Eber, Helioth, Gezei, Salatial, Sadim, Helgyo, Megis, Micton, Esel, Gecor, Granal, Semaranxai, Gelsemana, Arasamion, Sale, Patir, Agion, Atnas…”
Love it! I’m thinking I might steal some of these for my novels.
The mystery is typical of all so-called ‘mystery cults’ and magical systems throughout history: initiation was for the few and the arcane knowledge was surrounded by obfuscation. (If you’ve ever tried to read a software manual, you’ll know what I mean.) Alchemy was very much like that – its instructions were gobbled-gook unless you knew how to read their ‘code’. If you didn’t know that the Crow’s Head (Caput Corvi) represented the burnt or putrefied stage at the beginning of an alchemical distillation, or that the Red Man meant sulfur and the White Woman mercury, you were out of luck.
Each image was to be studied twelve times, solemnly and piously. Over the next twenty-seven days, more images were added, and those looked at twenty times, plus thirty recitations of the texts. On the final two days, all three figures were used, twelve times each, with thirty-seven recitations.
With such intensive study, first would come the acquisition of the gifts of memory, intelligence, and eloquence. After that boost to the brain power, the practitioner would move on to the “specials”, which were knowledge of the three fundamental arts of the university syllabus, or trivium: Grammar, Eloquence/Rhetoric and Dialectic.
The “specials” would progress into advanced subjects of study: Geometry, Mathematics, Medicine, Music, Philosophy and Theology. And somewhere in there one needed to recite the “triumphals” for eight days during a lunar month.
There was a schedule which followed the same lunar days in the liturgical calendar of the Church, and those used by astronomers – so far, nothing sinister about any of it.
But – and with magic there’s always a ‘but’ – some people felt that the rituals were so powerful they must be demonic. Brother John, an early fourteenth-century monk of the abbey of Morigny, seems to confirm that in his writings. He found his experiences while working with the Ars notoria terrifying, despite his intense, addictive attraction to the document.
Read on, if you dare.
His journey to it began with a loaned copy of a book of necromancy, from a cleric whose identity he didn’t reveal. Not an auspicious start. Desiring to study more, he found a “medical expert” from Lombardy, who told him about the Ars notoria, and where he could find a copy – within the walls of the school at Orléans where John had been sent.
Such works of ritual magic were well known among the educated, even though they were considered dangerous, and were definitely not approved of. Yet Brother John went ahead with his dubious quest for knowledge, just as if he was in a horror story.
At first, he found the Ars notoria beautiful and holy. Like a lot of students, he couldn’t afford to buy all the books he needed, and jumped at the chance to save money and bypass the many lectures.
It seemed to offer miraculous gifts. He even used it to introduce his younger sister to magic.
But over time he felt it a work of the Devil, a “sick pleasure” that was actually poisonous to his soul. He began to have distressing visions, in which figures were demanding worship. Gradually it became clear to him that the beautiful prayers he’d been reciting were actually invocations to demons. Still, he was so drawn to the images that he persisted, only stopping altogether when the Virgin Mary, with St John the Evangelist as her intermediary, appeared and stated that, “the Ars notoria was deeply evil”.
St Thomas Aquinas condemned it specifically. He believed that its “signs” weren’t sent by God (as sacraments are), and thus were precisely the type of thing that lures humans into compacts with demons. Other major theologians at the time agreed with him. But it continued to copied and owned in religious institutions until the end of the medieval period, and it’s been translated (from the original Latin) and is currently in print.
Did John of Morigny learn his lesson from all his troubles? Not so much. He went back to studying necromancy, writing a new work of his own with thirty prayers that he believed would provide all that the Ars notoria had falsely promised. He also claimed to have been able to make the magical Rings of Solomon (said to grant absolute wisdom, the ability to speak with animals and complete command over demons, jinn, and spirits). Clearly, King Solomon is a very unusual and interesting character in himself, but we’ll save him for another blog post.
There’s an old saying that ‘cheaters never prosper’. Especially where magic is involved. So, if someone ever offers you a mysterious book that will make things easy for you: you have been warned.