“The good and evill dayes of the moneth to worke in”: Lunaries in European Magic Manuscripts

Abstract

Hemerology, the study of the auspicious and inauspicious qualities of time, plays a role in the astral magic that entered medieval European magic from Arabic sources, although in other areas of magic it seems to have been less present. Yet in three isolated and independent cases from fifteenth-century Germany and early modern England, lunaries, a type of hemerology that originated from the field of divination and prognostication, were adapted to introduce hemerological aspects to a variety of magical practices. These lunaries are here published and analyzed in light of their mantic origins and recontextualized magic uses.