Babylonian Magic and Sorcery: Being the Prayers of the Lifting of the Hand Hardcover - 2000

First line

The plan on which the following pages have been arranged requires perhaps a word of explanation.

From the jacket flap

The purpose of Babylonian Magic and Sorcery is stated in the first sentence of the Preface: "The object of the present work is to give the cuneiform text of a complete group of tablets inscribed with prayers and religious compositions of a devotional and somewhat magical character". But this is not all that King provides. He transliterated and, where the tablets are complete, translated in full. All of the tablets come from one site: Kuyunjik, the site of the ancient city of Ninevah, where King would later conduct his own excavations, and on whose inscriptions he was the acknowledged authority.

The texts and translations are accurately presented and definitive. King's notes are concise, to the point, and easy to follow. But this is a highly technical book, designed for the professional, whether that professional be Assyriologist, paleographer, or magician. What, then, is its value to the non-professional reader? The answer is clear. Babylonian Magic and Sorcery offers us the means to gain an insight into the magico-religious concepts of the Semitic nations. And it is these concepts, and the magic based upon them, that underlie the worldview of the Western esoteric tradition, for that tradition is essentially Judaeo-Christian -- it does not, save indirectly, derive from ancient Egypt.

-- From the Foreword by R. A. Gilbert