The Studio Esoterico Cornelio and books of magic

Grimoires and Manuscripts is curated by the Studio Esoterico Cornelio, active online since 2014 in the field of esotericism and the esoteric tradition. Alongside its own activity, the Studio curates a network of educational websites devoted to history, symbols and traditions: this is the one that looks at the tradition from a particular point of view, that of the books which handed it down.

Why a website on the books of magic

The European esoteric tradition is, above all, a written tradition. The ideas about nature, the stars and the angels that passed through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have reached us because someone copied them on parchment, translated them from Greek or Arabic, printed them in Venice, Basel or Lyon. Following the life of these volumes means understanding how an entire cultural heritage took shape, and also how it was misunderstood, censored or romanticised.

It is no coincidence that the very name of the Studio recalls a book. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) is remembered above all as the author of De occulta philosophia, printed in complete form in 1533 and destined to circulate for centuries in editions, translations and apocrypha, including the so-called Fourth Book, which is not his. The reference points to a horizon of interests and studies.

How the articles are written

Every page of the site treats the grimoire as a historical object. We start from verifiable facts: where a manuscript is held, when a certain edition was published, what scholars say about its dating. Legendary attributions, such as those to Solomon, to Honorius of Thebes or to Albertus Magnus, are presented as such, and when a story arose late, perhaps in a nineteenth-century edition, this is stated clearly.

The articles describe the content of the texts without turning it into instructions: a list of spirits or a geometric figure matters here for what it reveals about the culture that produced it. Quotations are short and taken from ancient works; for further study readers are referred to critical editions, library catalogues and the digitised collections that now make it possible to leaf through many of these codices.

To learn more about the Studio Esoterico Cornelio, whose name and trademark are registered, you can visit the official website studioesotericocornelio.com, where the Studio presents its activity and the other sites in the network.