Can someone who reads Hebrew assist me?
October 20, 2015 2:20 PM   Subscribe

I always feel awful having to ask people to translate stuff for me, but sometimes I need information that is in a document that I can't read and doesn't have available translations. I have one or two paragraphs of handwritten Hebrew from circa 1700 that I need to at least know the gist of.

https://archive.org/stream/sefermafteashelo00golluoft#page/28/mode/1up

I understand the instructions to be about a magic circle and a magic ring. Details about the circle and ring would be useful to me. (The ring ritual might be translated in other related manuscripts but I need to know what it's describing in order to determine that.) Knowing whether the illustration is of a circle for the magician or a circle for a ring or a circle for a spirit is also important.
posted by Peregrine Pickle to Writing & Language (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: It's hard to read because I'm not familiar with the script. I'm not good with old fashioned cursive Hebrew, and comparing the words I can make out to the chart here it looks like the scribe jumped stylistically around quite a bit. The writing also gets noticeably worse towards the end of the page.

The bits I can read indicate that you confine "a certain spirit" (? ruahh ehhad) in the ring - in Hebrew a ring you wear is a tva'at, a circle you stand on is an igul - with which you can converse day or night, see what's happening everywhere in the world, and also do cool things like seduce women with your finger. I think.

The triangular chart has the cardinal directions marked on it (north to the left, east at the top) and some gibbersih (?) around the edges. Starting from the top and going clockwise, they read "machireus, ariter, mani manika, avikon" or something of the sort. The diagonal beam says something like "di-itmon". The inner circle says something like "agla, aglat (aglas?) aglaon, agla." It apparently finishes with a full stop.

I hope this helps. There's a lot I just can't figure out, and he uses abbreviations and some things that are probably names of spirits and so forth.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:48 AM on October 21, 2015


Response by poster: Thank you! While it's hard to tell so far it's the same as my other MSs ring ritual, you're probably correct about the "gibberish" -- most likely it's notarikon (the word AGLA certainly is, and popular as a 'magic word' for these kinds of instruments.)

That link to the cursive will also be useful to me, I think.
posted by Peregrine Pickle at 12:50 PM on October 21, 2015


« Older Responsive Wordpress Thumbnail Menus?   |   Halloween Costume Idea: Character Portmanteau... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.