Magical Handbook

These manuscript pages, preserved in the Cairo Geniza, belonged to a magical handbook, now lost. The original work was a formulary, which evidently listed numerous magical recipes and would have been used by professional magicians or even laypeople. These excerpts provide instructions for inducing love, hatred, or suffering. Several of the recipes utilize symbolic or ritualized reenactment of the desired outcome, such as wearing the amulet for love against one’s heart or writing the amulet on deer hide, perhaps to evoke the common Hebrew and Arabic association of the beloved with a deer or gazelle. The abbreviations X b. Y or A b. B are placeholders for the names of individuals.