The Book of Gold: A 17th Century Magical Grimoire of Amulets, Charms, Prayers, Sigils and Spells Using the Biblical Psalms of King David

The Book of Gold is truly a golden edition to the library of any magicians with an interest in Psalmic Magic or the Grimoire Traditions. This work is expertly translated and the commentary and appendices alone make it worth the price. Finally a work that catalogs the use of the Psalms throughout various manuscripts of the grimoire tradition in an easy to reference way!This book will make a great supplement to the practices of a wide variety of magicians from ceremonialists to folk magicians. If you use the Psalms in your work, first you need to get a copy of Sepher Shimmush Tehillim (Magical Use of the Psalms), which is usually included in the  The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses , then you need to buy this book!So why only three stars then? Because there are two problems with the book that I received. Firstly, and more likely to effect the average reader is the fact that many of the directions for working with the psalms will instruct you to read or write the Psalm out until a certain line of the Psalm.For example for Psalm 12 it says "If you have fallen asleep in a desert, read this Psalm until 'ne quando dicat'".Okay, so beyond the question of how someone who is sleeping is meant to read a psalm, basically they are giving you the line in the Psalm (in Latin)where you are meant to stop reading. This is excellent for those who have a working knowledge of Latin or an interlinear Bible at their fingertips and want to spend time cross referencing. However, for those who would like to use the psalms in English, this adds an annoying extra step of research to the process of doing the actual work. I'm all for doing research when it is called for, but I am assuming that David and Paul translated and edited this manuscript so that people could actually use it. Which begs the question, if you want to make it easily usable, which much the rest of it is, why not just translate the line into English as you have the rest of the manuscript? Or at least give the English translation in the commentary following the Psalm. Is that so much to ask?The regularity with which translators and editors of various Grimoire manuscripts choose to include the Latin wording and conjurations without offering a translation has a tendency to quickly become annoying. Sorry, but we aren't all proficient in Latin and I really would appreciate avoiding the extra step of translating the parts that you have chosen not to illuminate us on. I'm not saying that the Latin should be omitted. I mean, hey, who doesn't love that oh so magical dead language? But at least include translations in the commentary. I'm not speaking just specifically of this author (who does this with some regularity) or this work, but in general. However, this work stands as an example of this type of an approach, which can be somewhat inconvenient at best or make the translator come across as linguistically elitist at worst.My second issue with my copy of the work is that I have just received it and nearly every third page is either completely or partially unglued. I mean, pages are literally falling out of the book. I know that this isn't the fault of the author or publisher, but the printer. However, the physical quality of the book does play upon my review as well. I plan to exchange it an hope that the poor binding is a fluke. I have purchased other works from Avalonia in the past and not had this problem, so it is most likely a simple error.That all said, I most certainly enjoy this work and give kudos to David Rankine and Paul Harry Barron for putting it together and translating (most of) it. I would recommend it to friends and students in the future. I'll just make sure to recommend that they procure an interlinear Douay-Rheims Bible while they're at it.

I don't usually pay this much for a book. However, The Book of Gold is worth more than it's weight in gold. It's not the type of book you sit and read cover to cover for the enjoyment. My past experience praying the Psalms has been good--using them as described in The Book of Gold raises that practice to a whole new level! One thing the reader should be aware of if you're going to use the Psalms as suggested in the book is that, like the Hebrew, Psalms 9 and 10 are combined into one Psalm. Therefore, if you are referring to a Christian Bible, each Psalm after Psalm 9 in the Book of Gold corresponds to the next Psalm in the Bible. (for example Psalm 10 in The Book of Gold is Psalm 11 in the Christian Bible.) This is very powerful stuff and should be used wisely.

It work perfectly in the simple areas that I used it. There many more things I would have like to do, but the requirement are too odd for me to do. It should be review and updated to meet modern civilization

I chose this rating, because this book is amazing! It works very well, especially with money magic. In time of one week I experienced flow of money and food. It wasn't so big, but it was sufficient.

This book just keep on dragging on and on. I never got into it, and at 25% gave up and deleted it.

Uses the Bible and the Psalms to help you with life's challenges. The prayers are powerful and they work well.

Basically a great book from both a historical and religious perspective. Those into religious philosophy could possibly find this book to be interesting.

This book is absolutely fascinating!

Everybody must be familiar with the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible. A collection of songs, used to extol the Divine, petition the Almighty for Divine assistance and warn your enemies that their doom is nigh, thanks to your God.These songs, litanies, prayers, supplications, whatever you want to call them have indeed been used by the forlorn, the blissful, the threatened and have found comfort in the the Psalms over the last few millennia. And it is of no great surprise that they have been used to magical ends.This book is a fascinating account of how the Psalms have been used for magical ends and the authors have given a meticulous commentary that cross-references with other works. Of course, this work is fairly modern, as far as use goes, dating back to the 17th century but it does make us wonder how this usage has developed and makes us realise that probably there is a far more ancient tradition of using Psalms as spells.My only criticism of this boo, is that the Psalms were not given in their full. It would have been a nice touch to have had the Psalms in both Latin and English to compare, as it means that you have to have not only your usual Bible next to you and also, a copy of the Vulgate for the Latin.

Magick based on the Book of Psalms crops up throughout occultism, from Jamaican Obeah even to the Golden Dawn (as Pat Zalewski suggests in his  Golden Dawn Rituals and Commentaries . So when I first got hold of this book I sat down with my copy of Anna Riva's  Powers of the Psalms  and did a side-by-side Psalm by Psalm comparison.Anna Riva's book is based upon an old qabalistic text, "Sefer Shimmush Tehillim," as indeed are a number of popular Psalm / Magick works: however "The Book of Gold" is not: at least not directly. What you have therefore is that on a great number of occasions "The Book of Gold" differs in its attributions of the Psalms to various magical effects: whilst on the remainder they seem to agree with books based upon the Sefer Shimmush Tehillim tradition.The "Book of Gold" also incorporates material from grimoires, which may prove a distraction for those wanting a pure Psalm-based magick. It does not, however, contain the English text of the Psalms, although let's face it the full text of almost every translation of the Bible is online for free (at e.g. [...]) so this is not really that much of a problem.Finally, to the person who complained that his pages weren't glued in. I must say that I never experienced that problem at all! Mind you, I was reading it on my Kindle. :-) Golden Dawn Rituals and CommentariesPowers of the Psalms

I always think it's good when when little gems like this are made available to the public. For too long the "magical aspects" of the Judeo-Christian tradition have been hidden from public sight. This little volume allows one to explore the prayer and magic life of previous generations through the use of the psalms which of course pre-date both Judaism and Christianity. Reading the psalms and how they were employed gives you a sense of being part of something bigger. These words of power have been used for over 5000 years and still today are potent magical and healing resources.Whilst this book doesn't come with a huge amount of practice advice for application in the modern world, with some creative thinking and a willingness to "think around corners", ignoring any issue one might have with the inclusion of Latin in places, this is a really useful book!

J0aim acheté la version Kindle. Sans surprise, les graphismes des écritures "secrètes" sortent très mal et son illisibles, mais pour le reste du document, la qualité est très, acceptable. L'auteur met en évidence avec la mise en évidence de ce"grimoire" l'usage fréquent des psaumes bibliques dans la magie. Leurs utilisation vise uniquement des biens mondains, pas toujours bénéfiques d'ailleurs, mais la vie n'est pas faite exclusivement de rencontres amicales. Recommandé pour ceux qui s'intéressent vraiment à cet art.

The Book of Gold offers insight into medieval magical practises. It is essentially a compendium of incantations centred around the book of Psalms. This is merely a collection of these texts (albeit very well presented, if you are looking for more historical or sociological perspectives you may need to look further at other publications.