Antikrisis: A Short Rejoinder and Defense

Trithemius censures them
...they have light through me, [yet] they love the darkness. A strong adjuration A formal command or conjuration used to control spirits. is necessary so that they may be compelled to our needs. But if, while conjuring them, you tremble even slightly out of fear, or if you err in performing the adjuration—whether by omitting a word or changing the sequence of the rite—they will kill you on the spot. Who could be so out of their mind as to argue that these spirits, so ready for vengeance, are good and merciful?

In that work, says Bovillus Charles de Bovelles (c. 1479–1567), a French philosopher and mathematician who famously criticized the occult interests of his contemporaries., I saw several adjurations which he calls "powerful," by which anyone who constantly desires to use the service of spirits can bind a Spirit to himself and compel it to remain in his house forever and serve him in all things. Furthermore, as Trithemius Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), a German Benedictine abbot and polymath. His works on "Steganography" were often misinterpreted as demonic magic rather than cryptography. writes, this Spirit must be kept in a place far removed from the crowd, lest it kill those who enter upon it unexpectedly.

To this we should add the story of how, for a certain man condemned to the gallows in Venice, all the doors were thrown open and the locks shattered by means of just a single herb, over which certain seals signacula: magical symbols or characters believed to hold spiritual power had been chanted. But if such power exists naturally within herbs, why are incantations original: "cantilenae," literally "little songs," used here to mean magical chants. murmured over them, or seals applied? Or if the incantations and seals possess this power...