Raphael’s Ancient Manuscript of Talismanic Magic, facsimile and transcribed edition. 

The companion volume to Troy Books’ acclaimed facsimile edition of The Little Key of Rabbi Solomon, this handwritten manuscript of Raphael/Robert T. Cross (1850–1923) is a remarkable grimoire of planetary and talismanic magic, penned around 1879–1880 and originally duplicated by the hectographic process in vanishingly small numbers.

Subtitled The Art of Talismanic Magic, the manuscript draws principally upon an earlier translation of the Key or Clavis of Rabbi Solomon — believed to have descended from the library of the physician and occultist Ebenezer Sibly — with additional material selected from the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Francis Barrett. Containing nearly one hundred rare talismanic diagrams, seals of spirits, charms, magical squares, and pentacles, alongside the ritual instructions for the invocation and conjuration of elementary spirits, it represents Cross’s most ambitious compilation of practical ceremonial magic.

The original hectographic editions produced by Cross are of the utmost rarity, with only a handful of copies traceable in libraries worldwide. Troy Books is pleased to offer this extraordinary work reproduced in facsimile alongside a full transcript for clarity.

Together with The Little Key of Rabbi Solomon, this volume completes a portrait of Cross’s singular contribution to the Solomonic magical tradition — a body of handwritten work that circulated among a small circle of Victorian occultists and has remained largely inaccessible for well over a century.