Grimorium Verum

…vel probatissime Salomonis Claviculæ Rabini Hebraïci, in quibus tum naturalia tum super naturalia secreta, licet abditissima, in promptu apparent, modo operator per nessaria et contenta faciat scia tamen oportet Demonum potentia dum taxat per agantur; Traduit de l’Hébreu par PLAINGIÈRE, Jésuite Dominicain, avec un Recueil de Secrets curieux.

by PLAINGIÈRE (Dominican Jesuit, pseud.) 1517 (ca. 1817)

The Grimorium Verum (Latin for True Grimoire) (Alt. French title, Les Veritables Clavicules de Solomon) (Italian: La Vera Clavicola del Re Salomone, 1863) is an 18th-century grimoire attributed to one “Alibeck the Egyptian” of Memphis, who purportedly wrote in 1517. Like many grimoires, it claims a tradition originating with King Solomon.

The grimoire is not a translation of an earlier work as purported, its original appearing in French in the mid-18th century, as Les Veritables Clavicules de Solomon as noted already by A. E. Waite who discussed the work in his The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911), stating:

The date specified in the title of the Grimorium Verum is undeniably fraudulent; the work belongs to the middle of the eighteenth century, and Memphis is Rome.

Much of this grimoire is also found in the the Armadel Text-group of the Key of Solomon. The manuscripts usually bear the title, Les vraies Clavicules du. Roi Salomon. Par Armadel which happens to be one of the French manuscripts S. L. MacGregor Mathers incorporated in his version of the Key of Solomon: Clavicula Salomonis, but it was omitted from the text with the following explanation:

At the end there are some short extracts from the Grimorium Verum with the Seals of evil spirits, which, as they do not belong to the Key of Solomon proper, I have not given. For the evident classification of the Key is in two books and no more.

Clavicula Salomonis de secretis, extent in only a couple complete manuscripts, is apparently an early prototype to the Grimorium Verum.

Idries Shah also published some of it in The Secret Lore of Magic: Book of the Sorcerers in 1957. The follwoing notice is found in the below from the British Library, NOTE: This copy was stolen in July 1972 and subsequently recovered by the police.

Facsimile Editions



The Prototype



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