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Ann: Picatrix: (Books on Alchemy and Magic) (1256)

(Latin transl. from Arabic book of 1050: Gayat al-Hakim)

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Taken from: The Complete Picatrix: The Occult Classic of Astrological Magic Liber ...By Christopher Warnock, John Michael Greer

Chapter Three

What the Chaldeans (1) held to be the profundities and secrets of this science, and what they said about it.

The Chaldeans (1), indeed, were those magi who made themselves preeminent in this science and these workings; and they are held to have been entirely perfect in this science. They themselves assert that Hermes (2) first constructed a certain house of statues (3), from which he used to measure the flow of the Nile at the Mountains of the Moon; but this house was made for the Sun (Sun-god). He used to hide himself there from men in such a way that no one who was with him was able to see him.

(1) Chaldeans: Latin word for Syrians.

(2) Hermes: The first Hermes, was a "civilizing hero", an initiator into the mysteries of the divine science and wisdom that animate the world. Hermes is here a legendary Hellenistic figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth in the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.

(3) 85 tamatil: or tamafil: the 85 copper or bronze statues build at the source of the Nile by Hermes. They are mentioned by the following authors: Maslamah ibn Ahmad Majriti (1050); Wasif Shah (1209); Murtada Ibn al-Afif (1237); Picatrix: (1256); Nuwayri (1333); Ibn al-Dawadari (1335); al Maqrizi (1441); Ibn al Wardi (1456); Dhikr Kalam al-Nas fi Manba’ al-Nil (15th); Suyuti (d1505).