Prayer, exorcism and holy names

Use in the book

The opening at scan 22b invokes the Word incarnate, crucified, and seated at the Father’s right hand. Scan 23 adds the merits of the Virgin and the prayers of saints. The cross is called life and resurrection and the confusion of sorcery and demons. The movement from petition to command is then explicit: the speaker conjures hostile spirits of any nature, present or absent, whether summoned, sent, or brought by magical art.²³⁹

The formula gathers biblical types around Christ. The one sacrificed in Isaac, sold in Joseph, slain in the lamb, and crucified in humanity is invoked as the source of victory. These are not separate deities or an accidental accumulation of unrelated names. They present a continuous sacred authority disclosed through earlier figures and fulfilled in Christ. Michael’s battle and the blood of victory bring apocalyptic imagery into the same protective setting.

Scan 24 enumerates states in which the creature is to be free of disturbance: within or outside the body, by vision or terror, day or night, waking or sleeping, eating or praying. The threat against the demons includes curse, excommunication, torment, and destruction in the lake of fire and sulfur. The words are part of the command’s rhetoric. They should not be treated as a separate operative recipe merely because sulfur elsewhere has an alchemical meaning.

The same scan cancels hostile obligations created through worship, incense, inundation, herbs, words, elemental stones, divine or angelic names, characters, and specified times. Explicit and tacit pacts and oaths are all annulled. This catalogue recognizes a broad field of practices in order to deny their hold over the recipient. It does not endorse every listed practice as a technique recommended by the book.

At scan 25 Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are invoked through power, wisdom, and goodness. Further titles include the one who is, was, and will come, the Almighty, holy and immortal, Tetragrammaton, Jesus, alpha and omega, beginning and end. The signs of the cross and the invocation of heavenly orders and saints gather the formula toward its closing command. The reference to Sarah, Raphael, and burned fish material recalls the deliverance in Tobit, though the manuscript’s details do not match the biblical narrative exactly.²⁴⁰

The conclusion states that the command does not belong to the speaker personally but to the one sent from the Father. This supplies the theological frame for the formula’s performative language. Its position between the patriarchal blessings and the first figures also matters: the protected custodian is prepared to receive a secret whose misuse has already been condemned. The prayer belongs to the manuscript’s account of transmission, obligation, and religious purpose.

Places to read

1. Manuscript 4v · Scan 22The protective prayer begins by invoking the incarnate and crucified Word.
2. Manuscript 5r · Scan 23The Virgin, saints, cross, biblical types, and direct command to demons.
3. Manuscript 5v · Scan 24Comprehensive protection and annulment of hostile pacts or operations.
4. Manuscript 6r · Scan 25Trinitarian attributes, sacred names, heavenly invocations, and the final grounding of authority.

Translation

The edition preserves the formula’s direct second-person commands and its first-person assertion of cancellation. It also retains the named creature’s placeholder rather than supplying a recipient. The signs of the cross are reproduced as written signs, while the sequence of titles remains a sequence rather than being condensed into a general invocation.

Tetragrammaton is transliterated and explained as a title referring to the four-letter divine name. The source’s Greek form remains available in the facing French text and here among the attested forms. Differences from the scriptural stories are noted instead of corrected inside the translated formula. This lets readers distinguish the prayer’s transmitted wording from the biblical passages it recalls.

prières

Attested: H001-S022b; H001-S023. Prayer within the invocation of Christ and the saints.

excommunications

Attested: H001-S024. Part of the threatened sanctions against hostile spirits.

Τετραγράμματον

Attested: H001-S025. Greek-written title in the sequence of sacred names.

alpha et omega

Attested: H001-S025. The beginning-and-end title applied within the invocation.