Venus in Angel's Garb: History of a Rite in the Context of Occult Tradition

The study starts with a single ritual, which appears in the celebrated magical anthology Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh (Amsterdam, 1701) and, in the aftermath, describes various similar practices from Antiquity to the present day. The goal of the research is far from being only descriptive or evaluative. The rite is a point of departure. We move through ages and cultures in our search for parallels in the attempt to detect any inner logic and roots of the ritual. Such a methodology is not new. It is quite widespread in ethnography and anthropology, at least since the 19th century. Perhaps the most well-known work in this direction is The Golden Bough by James George Frazer (1854–1941).1 However, the problems raised in our study are not identical. Here the general philosophical questions behind the facts are: 1) What is occult tradition? Does it exist? 2) Can the study of a practical magical rite tell us something about ideas? 3) How can the same or similar magical practices be absorbed by different rival religious traditions? These problems may appear to belong to anthropology and comparative religion studies. Yet here the focus is on literate, so-called civilized societies. The emphasis on written texts and intellectual succession in the Western tradition (which, in this case, includes the Middle East and rival monotheistic religions), places the study beyond the usual framework. The rite, in such a case, preserves unspeakable and unexplainable actions within a society that simultaneously requires explanations and clear, logically verified descriptions. Moreover, the stress on the so-called “occult tradition” introduces a “forbidden” aspect to established scholarly inquiry. Nevertheless, we always remain within an entirely academic framework.