
The Key of Hell: An Enlightenment Sorcery Manual (2014) - benbreen
http://theappendix.net/blog/2014/1/the-key-of-hell-a-sorcery-manual-from-the-enlightenment
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lifeisstillgood
What strikes me is ... The drawings aren't very good. They are at my sort of
level (OK a bit better). But in terms of modern professional illustrators ...
They are childish.

It's amazing just how far we have come.

And worth noting anyone educated enough to read and write, obsessed enough to
create a whole book (even today that's an acheievement) is not going to be a
well balanced thoughtful kind. Hence, manuals of black magic with badly drawn
picture...

~~~
cobralibre
I'm out of my depth in discussions about art history, but comparing the 18th
century illustrations to the 15th century painting in the same article, I find
it hard to infer a notion of progress as you do. Having said that, one could
well imagine that the 18th century illustrator was deliberately attempting to
evoke a medieval style.

Here are some links picked up from quick Google searches that might provide
stylistic comparisons:

18th century - [http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/09/charlie-
charli...](http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/09/charlie-charlie-are-
you-there/) 14th century - [http://io9.com/bizarre-and-vulgar-illustrations-
from-illumin...](http://io9.com/bizarre-and-vulgar-illustrations-from-
illuminated-medie-1456202572)

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mcguire
And, for those of you who are conspiracy theorists, the link to the Wellcome
Images site, item F0002901[1], is to:

" _Sanskrit Beta 1469: this image is from a Sanskrit manuscript thought to be
dated 1469. This manuscript is from the genre of karmavipaka, meaning “the
ripening of karma”. It begins with a salutation to the sage Dhanvantari, the
traditional author of the original works on Ayurveda, one of the world’s
oldest medical systems. It explains the karmic relationship with a given
disaster or disease; listing various sinful acts together with a brief
statement of the alleged consequences that follow. For example; killing a cow
will cause the killer to go to hell and having sex with a priest’s wife, the
wife of another, a widow, or a prostitute, may lead to diseases such as ring-
leprosy, bloody bile, or excessive urination. (?)_ "

which has nothing to do with Pseudo-Cyprianus.

(Just kidding. If you search for "Cyprianus", you'll find the illustrations
from the article such as L0036628[2] as well as some text pages. Apparently
the author just cut-n-pasted the link from the address bar after initially
going to F0002901 and searching---the site doesn't update the address.)

[1]
[http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/F0002901.html](http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/F0002901.html)

[2]
[http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0036628.html](http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0036628.html)

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jejones3141
Darn. I was hoping to learn more about e17.

