To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Picatrix. The astrological techniques are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of medieval cosmology most of the praxis will go over a typical reader's head. There's also al-Qurtubi's polydeistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his esoteric commentary--his personal philosophy draws heavily from al-Kindī's De Radiis Stellarum, for instance. The practitioners understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these allusions, to realize they're not just apropos--they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Picatrix truly ARE idiots--of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the insight in Picatrix's existential aphorism, "Matter is a coadunation of the elements ordered for the reception of form," which itself is a cryptic reference to Calcidius' Middle Platonic commentary on Timaeus. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as al-Qurtubi's genius unfolds itself across Picatrix's pages. What fools... how I pity them.

And yes by the way, I DO have a Venus sigil tattoo from bk II ch 10. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only--and even they have to demonstrate they're within range of my operative magical ability (preferably lower) beforehand.



Original here.