A spell from a papyrus, printed as a grimoire's preface
The 1904 edition of the Goetia — the printing this whole section reproduces — opens with a spell it calls the Preliminary Invocation. It is not in the Lemegeton. It is an exorcism from a Greek papyrus written in Egypt some fourteen centuries earlier, and it reached this book through a translation made by a Cambridge Egyptologist in 1852.
What the papyrus is
The papyrus is British Museum No. XLVI, six leaves written on both sides, and it is one of several hundred surviving sheets of working magical instructions from Roman Egypt. Those sheets are now called the Greek Magical Papyri. They are not a book and they have no author: they are handbooks, copied and added to by whoever was using them, and they are the closest thing the Western tradition has to a primary record of how ancient ritual was actually performed.
This singular relic, which the sepulchral caves of Egypt have preserved to us, throws considerable light upon the Art of Magic, as practised in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries of our era.
Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852, Introduction
· on archive.org
In plain English
Goodwin's own account of what he had, in 1852: not a literary text about magic but a working manual, and evidence of practice rather than of opinion. That is the whole value of this corpus and he saw it first.
The same spell twice
Charles Wycliffe Goodwin printed the Greek with an English translation facing it. Fifty-two years later Mathers and Crowley put that English at the front of their grimoire, reworded but not retranslated — and renamed its god. Read the two side by side below and the borrowing is plain; nothing has to be taken on trust, because both printings are out of copyright and both are quoted here in full.
1852 Goodwin's English of the papyrus
I call thee, the headless one, that didst create earth and heaven, that didst create night and day, thee the creator of light and darkness. Thou art Osoronnophris, whom no man hath seen at any time; thou art Iabas, thou art Iapos, thou hast distinguished the just and the unjust, thou didst make female and male, thou didst produce seeds and fruits, thou didst make men to love one another and to hate one another. I am Moses thy prophet, to whom thou didst commit thy mysteries, the ceremonies of Israel; thou didst produce the moist and the dry and all manner of food. Listen to me: I am an angel of Phapro Osoronnophris; this is thy true name, handed down to the prophets of Israel.
Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852, §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
· on archive.org
In plain English
The Headless Rite, in the first English it was ever given. A Greco-Egyptian exorcism addressed to a god with no head, which identifies the speaker as Moses and the god by an Egyptian name — Osoronnophris is Osiris Wennefer, 'Osiris the perfect being' — while claiming the authority of the prophets of Israel. Nothing in it is Hebrew practice and nothing in it is Greek religion; it is what late-antique Egypt actually did with both.
1904 The Goetia's Preliminary Invocation
Thee I invoke, the Bornless one. Thee, that didst create the Earth and the Heavens: Thee, that didst create the Night and the Day. Thee, that didst create the Darkness and the Light. Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no man has seen at any time. Thou art Jabas Thou art Japos: Thou hast distinguished between the Just and the Unjust. Thou didst make the Female and the Male. Thou didst produce the Seed and the Fruit. Thou didst form Men to love one another, and to hate one another. I am Mosheh Thy Prophet, unto Whom Thou didst commit Thy Mysteries, the Ceremonies of Ishrael: Thou didst produce the moist and the dry, and that which nourisheth all created Life. Hear Thou Me, for I am the Angel of Paphro Osorronophris: this is Thy True Name, handed down to the Prophets of Ishrael.
The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, Preliminary Invocation
· on archive.org
In plain English
The same spell, fifty-two years later, printed at the front of the book this section reproduces — and it is not in that book. The Lemegeton does not contain it; Crowley put it there in 1904, out of Goodwin. Clause for clause it is Goodwin's English, with the archaisms thickened and the Hebrew names respelled, and with one word changed that changed everything after it: Goodwin's headless god became the Bornless one.
Not read once and believed: script/extract_papyri_passages.rb cuts
both printings from their own scans and refuses to write unless they still agree,
clause by clause. The longest unbroken run of words the two share is
twelve.
Two independent translations of one Greek original do not do that.
The renaming, and what it left behind
One word changed, and it is the word the rite is now known by. The Greek is akephalos, headless, which is what Goodwin wrote. The 1904 text calls the god Bornless — and keeps a detail that only a headless god explains.
1852 Goodwin: the god names himself
I am the headless spirit, having sight in my feet, strong, the immortal fire; I am the truth; I am he that hateth that ill-deeds should be done in the world; I am he that lighteneth and thundereth; I am he whose sweat is the shower that falleth upon the earth that it may teem; I am he whose mouth ever burneth; I am the begetter and the bringer forth (?); I am the Grace of the World; my name is the heart girt with a serpent.
Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852, §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
· on archive.org
In plain English
The second half of the same spell, where the operator stops addressing the god and starts speaking as him. The first clause is the one that settles where the later tradition's name came from: this god's eyes are in his feet BECAUSE he has no head, and Goodwin translates the Greek akephalos exactly so.
1904 The Goetia: the same line, renamed
I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet: Strong, and the Immortal Fire!
The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, Preliminary Invocation
· on archive.org
In plain English
AND THIS IS WHERE THE RENAMING GIVES ITSELF AWAY. The 1904 text keeps the sight in the feet and drops the head that explains it: a spirit with no birth has no reason to see out of its feet, and a spirit with no head has every reason to. The Greek word is akephalos, headless, which Goodwin rendered correctly in 1852. Whatever produced Bornless — a misreading of Goodwin, a guess at the Greek, or a preference for the grander word — it left this clause behind as evidence, and every later version of the rite inherited both the new name and the old detail.
Why the word changed is not answered here, because this study has read no source that answers it. A misreading of Goodwin's print, a guess at the Greek, and a preference for the grander word are all possible. What can be shown is that the change was made and that the evidence against it was left in place.
What happened to it next
Crowley printed the invocation in 1904 and rewrote it, at much greater length and with a commentary, as Liber Samekh. That version opens on the 1904 words and then parts company with them: the invocation is cut into lettered sections, every barbarous name is given a meaning, and the god's name is changed again — from the Greek Osorronophris to the Egyptological Asar Un-Nefer. It is the form in which the rite reached twentieth-century practice.
Samekh recensioncanonical
Crowley rewrote the same invocation again, as Liber Samekh
The recension opens on the words the 1904 text opens on — thee I invoke, the Bornless One, that didst create the earth and the heavens, the night and the day, the darkness and the light — and then parts company with it: the invocation is cut into lettered sections, every barbarous name is given an etymological or Qabalistic meaning, and the god's name is changed from the Greek Osorronophris to the Egyptological Asar Un-Nefer. NOT QUOTED, by this study's choice as much as by the host's: what is needed here is that the rite was rewritten and by whom, and that is a thing a reader can check at the locator without a quotation standing in for it.
Sources (2)
Liber Samekh, Hermetic Library transcription, read via the Internet Archive — Point I, Section A, “The Oath” · systematising, not originating
Read on the Internet Archive capture of the Hermetic Library page. The section heading is the text's own.
The 1929 recension keeps the sight in the feet and explains it as the feet choosing their path
Goodwin's god sees out of his feet because he has no head. By 1929 the head is twenty-five years gone and the feet are still there, so the commentary reads them as free to choose their own way — and the Bornless Spirit is glossed as free of all space. That is a careful reading of a sentence whose plain sense had been removed from it, and it is the clearest demonstration available that the renaming cost the rite something. PARAPHRASED AND NOT QUOTED: the gloss is three lines of a restricted transcription, and a reader who wants the wording has the locator.
Sources (2)
Liber Samekh, Hermetic Library transcription, read via the Internet Archive — Point I, Section Gg, “The Attainment”, and its commentary on line 1 · systematising, not originating
The section prints “I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet” — the 1904 wording — and the commentary beneath it explains the feet. Read on the Internet Archive capture.
The Greek Magical Papyri, Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852 — §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
“I am the headless spirit, having sight in my feet, strong, the immortal fire;”
What the clause meant in 1852, which is the only thing that makes the later gloss legible as a repair.
Nothing of it is reproduced here. The 1929 printing is access-restricted and its own rights statement says it may still be in copyright, so no page of it has been opened; what was read is a modern transcription on a host that restricts reuse. So both are cited by locator, the locators are the text's own section headings rather than page numbers nobody can check, and the one quotation in this part is Goodwin's, who is out of copyright and whose words are the point of the comparison anyway.
What this page does not claim
No printing of the invocation says where it came from. The 1904 edition prints it with no note; the 1929 recension mentions no papyrus, no Egypt and no translator; and Liber O, which supplies the wording of every ritual in this site's Rituals section, never mentions it at all. The rite is also commonly said to have been in Golden Dawn use before 1904. That may well be true, and this study has read no source for it, so it is not asserted — which is why the descent on this page had to be measured out of the two translations rather than read off anybody's page.
The rest of the corpus
One other manuscript of these papyri is held on this site, in an edition published the same year as the Goetia. The two have a connection nobody had to uncover: Goodwin, introducing his own papyrus in 1852, pointed at a Leyden manuscript as plainly belonging with it, and gave two catalogue numbers for it. They are the numbers the 1904 editors give for the manuscript they were editing.
The London MS. is Pap. No. 10070 of the British Museum (formerly Anast. 1072). The Leiden MS. is known as I. 383 (reckoned among the Anastasi MSS. as A. 65).
The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, Clarendon Press, 1904, Introduction
· on archive.org
In plain English
Where the two halves of one papyrus are kept, and the older numbers they were catalogued under. The second of those numbers is why this edition and Goodwin's belong on one page: Goodwin, introducing his own papyrus in 1852, pointed at Reuvens' No. 65, numbered 383 at Leyden, as a manuscript of the same age and school. It is this one.
It is closely connected with the Greek magical papyri from Egypt of the same period, but, being written in demotic, naturally does not reproduce the Greek hymns which are so important a feature of those papyri.
The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, Clarendon Press, 1904, Preface
· on archive.org
In plain English
The editors of the Demotic handbook saying, in 1904, that it belongs with the Greek ones — and naming the difference as language rather than kind. That is the judgement the current edition acts on: GEMF numbers the Greek and the Demotic in one sequence, because splitting them by language split single manuscripts in two.
It is impossible to estimate how much is lost, as the MS. is not an original composition on a definite plan, but a compilation of heterogeneous material collected together without any logical order.
The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, Clarendon Press, 1904, Introduction
· on archive.org
In plain English
What a magical papyrus is, from the people who edited one: not a book with an argument but a working collection, added to by whoever held it. It is why this corpus has no author, and why its modern numbering is an editorial act rather than a discovery.
What is claimed here, and who says so7 claims, with their sources
Bornless invocation descentcanonical
The Goetia's Preliminary Invocation (1904) is Goodwin's English of 1852
MEASURED, NOT ASSERTED. script/extract_papyri_passages.rb cuts both Englishes and compares them on every run: 9 declared clauses appear in both, and the longest run of words the two share is 12 words — "men to love one another and to hate one another i am". Two independent translations of one Greek original do not agree for eleven consecutive words. WHAT CHANGED IS THE MANNER AND ONE WORD: the 1904 text adds definite articles, sets the pronouns in capitals, respells the Hebrew names (Israel to Ishrael, Moses to Mosheh) — and renames the god. Goodwin's headless one became the Bornless one, and the rite has been called the Bornless Ritual ever since.
Sources (2)
The Greek Magical Papyri, Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852 — §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
The first English of the papyrus. Quoted in full as a Rule on this site.
Lemegeton, The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King — Preliminary Invocation · systematising, not originating
Crowley's addition to the front of the book, not part of the Lemegeton. The 1904 edition's own note already recorded that he added a preliminary invocation; what it did not say is where he got it.
“Bornless” replaces “headless”, and the 1904 text keeps the evidence
The Greek is ἀκέφαλος, headless, and Goodwin translated it so. The 1904 text renames the god the Bornless one AND KEEPS THE DETAIL THAT ONLY THE OLD NAME EXPLAINS: “having sight in the feet”. A spirit with no birth has no reason to see out of its feet; a spirit with no head has every reason to. The extractor asserts that both self-identifications still carry that clause and that each keeps its own epithet, so the argument on the page cannot quietly stop being true. WHAT PRODUCED THE CHANGE IS NOT CLAIMED HERE — a misreading of Goodwin, a guess at the Greek, or a preference for the grander word are all possible and this study has read no source that settles it.
Sources (2)
The Greek Magical Papyri, Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852 — §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
“I am the headless spirit, having sight in my feet, strong, the immortal fire;”
Cut by script/extract_papyri_passages.rb and held by it against the 1904 wording.
Goodwin's “No. 65 … numbered 383” is the Leiden half of the Demotic handbook
JOINED UP BY THIS STUDY, from two sentences in two books. Goodwin, introducing his own papyrus in 1852, names a Leyden manuscript described as No. 65 by Reuvens and numbered 383 in the Description Raisonnée, and says it leaves no doubt of being of the same age and school as the one he is publishing. Griffith and Thompson, editing a manuscript in 1904, record that its Leiden half is known as I. 383 and is reckoned among the Anastasi papyri as A. 65. The two numbers match in both directions. Neither book mentions the other, so the identification is ours and is marked as ours — but it means Goodwin had already seen that these manuscripts belong together, a hundred and seventy years before the edition that numbers them in one sequence.
Sources (2)
The Greek Magical Papyri, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, Clarendon Press, 1904 — Introduction
“The Leiden MS. is known as I. 383 (reckoned among the Anastasi MSS. as A. 65).”
The Greek Magical Papyri, Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852 — Introduction
CITED BY LOCATOR AND NOT QUOTED. The sentence naming Reuvens' No. 65 and the number 383 is on this page, and the scan's OCR breaks inside it — it reads “a few entire passages im the same language”. The numbers are legible; the sentence around them is not quotable, so it is not quoted.
GEMF volume I prints fifty-one formularies, GEMF 1 to 51, and its contents list pairs thirty of them with a PGM number. PGM V is not among them — so the papyrus behind the best-known ritual in this whole story is the one the current critical edition has not reached. This site therefore cites it by Goodwin's own section and by Preisendanz's PGM V, and gives it no GEMF number at all. A NUMBER INVENTED FOR IT WOULD BE INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM A REAL ONE to anybody reading this site, which is the seal rule applied to a citation.
Sources (1)
The Greek Magical Papyri, Greek and Egyptian Magical Formularies: Text and Translation, Volume I, California Classical Studies 9, 2022 — Volume I, contents · systematising, not originating
LOCATOR ONLY: this edition is copyright restricted and carries no quotation anywhere in this application. The contents list was read; the absence is what it records.
Crowley rewrote the same invocation again, as Liber Samekh
The recension opens on the words the 1904 text opens on — thee I invoke, the Bornless One, that didst create the earth and the heavens, the night and the day, the darkness and the light — and then parts company with it: the invocation is cut into lettered sections, every barbarous name is given an etymological or Qabalistic meaning, and the god's name is changed from the Greek Osorronophris to the Egyptological Asar Un-Nefer. NOT QUOTED, by this study's choice as much as by the host's: what is needed here is that the rite was rewritten and by whom, and that is a thing a reader can check at the locator without a quotation standing in for it.
Sources (2)
Liber Samekh, Hermetic Library transcription, read via the Internet Archive — Point I, Section A, “The Oath” · systematising, not originating
Read on the Internet Archive capture of the Hermetic Library page. The section heading is the text's own.
The 1929 recension keeps the sight in the feet and explains it as the feet choosing their path
Goodwin's god sees out of his feet because he has no head. By 1929 the head is twenty-five years gone and the feet are still there, so the commentary reads them as free to choose their own way — and the Bornless Spirit is glossed as free of all space. That is a careful reading of a sentence whose plain sense had been removed from it, and it is the clearest demonstration available that the renaming cost the rite something. PARAPHRASED AND NOT QUOTED: the gloss is three lines of a restricted transcription, and a reader who wants the wording has the locator.
Sources (2)
Liber Samekh, Hermetic Library transcription, read via the Internet Archive — Point I, Section Gg, “The Attainment”, and its commentary on line 1 · systematising, not originating
The section prints “I am He! the Bornless Spirit! having sight in the feet” — the 1904 wording — and the commentary beneath it explains the feet. Read on the Internet Archive capture.
The Greek Magical Papyri, Fragment of a Græco-Egyptian Work upon Magic, Cambridge Antiquarian Society, Octavo Series No. II, 1852 — §4, “An address to the god drawn upon the letter”
“I am the headless spirit, having sight in my feet, strong, the immortal fire;”
What the clause meant in 1852, which is the only thing that makes the later gloss legible as a repair.
Neither printing of the invocation says where it came from
The 1904 Goetia prints the Preliminary Invocation and says nothing about it: a search of that edition's text for papyrus, Greek, Egyptian, Goodwin and “preliminary” outside the invocation itself returns nothing bearing on its origin. The 1929 recension's transcription carries no mention of a papyrus, of Goodwin, or of Egypt at all. And Liber O — printed in The Equinox I:2 in 1909, and the source of every step in this site's Rituals section — never mentions this invocation either; its two occurrences of the word Bornless are in another article in the same volume. THE USUAL ATTRIBUTION IS NOT MADE HERE. The rite is commonly said to have been in Golden Dawn use before Crowley printed it. That may well be so; this study has read no source for it, and an attribution with no source behind it is the one thing this section exists to avoid.
Sources (3)
Lemegeton, The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King — Preliminary Invocation, and the edition's front matter
Searched for a provenance note; there is none. The edition's own description of its contents records that Crowley added a preliminary invocation and does not say where he got it.