[Andrea Centore]

Thanks to @drangelapuca and all those who participated today for the engaging discussion on the Ars Notoria!

I really enjoy to see how different viewpoints can enrich our understanding of the text.

For those interested in delving deeper into the text before our next session, here are some references:

https://www.esotericarchives.com/notoria/notoria.htm

Castle, Matthias. Ars Notoria: The Notory Art of Solomon. Inner Traditions, 2023. (new translation of the major variants)

Véronèse, Julien. L'”Ars notoria” au Moyen Age: Introduction et édition critique. Sismel, 2007. (in French)

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by  Andrea Centore.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by  Andrea Centore.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by  Andrea Centore.

[Dr Angela Puca]

looking forward to the next discussion!

[Joshua Michael Zintel]

Hello, everyone,

Thank you for creating this forum! Thank you to @drangelapuca for all your work, and to @Andrea for the helpful citations.

The first two meetings have been quite enjoyable and informative!

Before I make a couple more posts, I should ask: is the present post-thread “Ars Notoria” the intended forum room itself, or is that the parent-title, “Monthly Study Group”? I should probably know from the specificity of the subgroup Ars Notoria that it’s likely the former case but thought I should ask before populating one thread. (It being the former case makes sense when I consider that there could be multiple study groups in the future).

[RENSEP]

Hi @Zoshua , yes, you are correct, the present post-thread is the forum room on the Ars Notoria itself. You can post here your reflections and/or questions.

[Joshua Michael Zintel]

Prior to preparing for this study group, I’d never looked into the Ars Noria. I have worked with a number of ‘spirits’ and grimoires as an experienced practitioner, but that particular text was not among them. The opportunity to study it now reflects one of the primary benefits that a practitioner enjoys as a part of RENSEP and other such scholastic projects. These benefits include bolstering and correcting one’s historical knowledge and expanding one’s range of artistically inspiring material culture.

The benefits ripple outward as well, or at least, that’s my aspiration. As a scholar (albeit an amateur and under-trained one), I have the opportunity to implement corrective and expansive restructuring within my pedagogical duties by using updated research methodologies and engaging with contemporary scholars’ work. Even if I never use the text myself, I’m better as an instructor and practitioner for having learned about it and its cultural threads.

I’ve appreciated everyone’s input and questions in the first two discussions so far. Although I was not able to retain everything, a couple of points stand out.

First, in doing a close reading of one of the orations, Andrea mentioned that “mind” may not be the contextually correct choice for translating anima. That brought up further discussion about the contextuality of terms and their contingencies of connotation: it depends on the conventions of the time and place and the cultural intersections that they host. Not only that, but it is also unlikely that there is an exact match between the connotation of the author and that of the translator ~400 years later. Additionally, there are significant conceptual and temporal gulfs between the 17th-century translator and us.

It reminded me of the importance of not projecting anachronisms onto the past, whether back to the translator or to the author(s). It’s a challenging but rewarding process to tease apart those nuances, ultimately delivering a more robust picture.

I’ve a few more ideas percolating that I’ll share later, so I’ll leave it here for now. Thanks everyone!

[Joshua Michael Zintel]

No edit button (or delete, for that matter!) so I just have to make fun of myself for the embarrassing typo, Ars Noria. Ha! Another tricksie lesson reminding me to proofread more carefully.

[RENSEP]

Hi @Zoshua ,

Just so you know, the edit button is available for up to ten minutes after the post is published.

Hope this helps!