Olympian spirits (or Olympic spirits, Olympick spirits) refers to seven (or sometimes fourteen) spirits mentioned in several renaissance and post-renaissance books of ritual magic/ceremonial magic, such as the Arbatel de magia veterum, The Secret Grimoire of Turiel and The Complete Book of Magic Science. The Arbatel of Magick (1655, London) writes of the Olympian spirits: "They are called Olympick spirits, which do inhabit in the firmament, and in the stars of the firmament: and the office of these spirits is to declare Destinies, and to administer fatal Charms, so far forth as God pleaseth to permit them."
In this magic system, the universe is divided into 196 provinces (a number which in numerology adds up to 7: 1+9+6=16; 1+6=7) with each of the seven Olympian spirits ruling a set number of provinces (see below). Aratron rules the most provinces (49), while each succeeding Olympian rules seven fewer than the former, down to Phul who rules seven provinces. Each Olympian spirit is also associated with one of the seven luminaries which figure in ancient and medieval Western magic.
Read more about Olympian Spirits: The Seven Olympian Spirits, The Seven Archangels and The Seven Olympian Spirits
Famous quotes containing the words olympian and/or spirits:
“The feelings that Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and there was a touch of hellfire in his mirth.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“I was glad to have got out of the towns, where I am wont to feel unspeakably mean and disgraced,—to have left behind me for a season the bar-rooms of Massachusetts, where the full-grown are not weaned from savage and filthy habits,—still sucking a cigar. My spirits rose in proportion to the outward dreariness. The towns needed to be ventilated. The gods would be pleased to see some pure flames from their altars. They are not to be appeased with cigar-smoke.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)