The Picatrix and astrological talismans: the goal of the sage

In 1256, at the court of Alfonso X the Wise, King of Castile, a voluminous Arabic treatise on astral magic was translated into Castilian. Its original title was Ghāyat al-ḥakīm, “the goal of the sage”. In Europe it became known by a mysterious name, Picatrix, and it had a lasting influence on the magical culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, above all in the theory of talismans.

An author who is not the author

For centuries the work was attributed to Maslama al-Majrīṭī, an astronomer and mathematician from Madrid who died around 1007. Modern scholars believe instead that it was composed by an anonymous author in the eleventh century, probably in al-Andalus, and therefore speak of pseudo-Majrīṭī. The name Picatrix, which in the Latin version designates a supposed author, may be a corruption of an ancient name, but its origin remains obscure.

Of the Castilian version only a fragment survives, while numerous manuscripts of the Latin translation derived from it are preserved. The Arabic text was printed only in 1933 by the orientalist Hellmut Ritter, as part of research promoted by the Warburg Library, and a German translation followed in 1962. The critical edition of the Latin text, edited by David Pingree, appeared in 1986.

The theory of the talisman

The Picatrix devotes much space to defining the talisman, which it describes as a spirit enclosed in a body. The underlying idea is that the stars emanate spiritual forces and that a skilled maker can fix them in a material object by choosing the corresponding celestial moment and material. In the author's view, the talisman thus becomes a kind of bridge between the celestial and the earthly worlds.

This theory draws on Neoplatonic philosophy, Hellenistic astrology and traditions attributed to the Sabians of Harran, a community that long preserved astral cults in northern Mesopotamia. The Picatrix also cites Indian, Persian and Greek sources, often with fanciful attributions. The result is an encyclopaedic and disorderly work, in which philosophical reflections alternate with descriptions of images and ceremonies.

The images of the decans and their fortune in Europe

Among the most studied materials in the Picatrix are the descriptions of the images of the planets and of the thirty-six decans, the divisions of the zodiac into segments of ten degrees. Each decan is depicted as a figure with precise attributes, often of Egyptian or Indian origin. Figures from this tradition had a long life in European art, well beyond the realm of magic proper.

In 1912 Aby Warburg, in a famous lecture given in Rome, recognised decan figures of this ancestry in the frescoes of the Hall of the Months in Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, painted around 1470 for Borso d'Este. His research, which traced the migration of astrological images from the East to Italy, is considered one of the origins of modern iconology.

The Picatrix is a precious witness to the meeting of cultures. A text written in Arabic in Muslim Spain, translated at the court of a Christian king, read by scholars and artists, and finally studied by twentieth-century art historians. Its idea of the talisman as a spirit enclosed in a body crossed centuries and languages, shaping the way Europe thought about the relationship between images and the heavens.