Heptameron: The Grimoire of the Seven Days and Its Angels

Quick answer: The Heptameron, or Magical Elements, is a short Renaissance grimoire attributed to the Italian physician Pietro d'Abano (c. 1257–1316) but almost certainly written later. Its name means "seven days," and it organizes angelic magic by the days of the week: each day has a ruling planet, a presiding angel, ministering spirits, and a set of names for the hours, seasons and winds. First printed in the sixteenth century, it became a core source for later ceremonial magic.

Related guides: grimoire meaning and famous grimoires, Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, the five books of the Lesser Key, the Greater Key of Solomon, planetary magic squares and seals, the 72 angels of the Shem HaMephorash.

What Is the Heptameron Grimoire?

The Heptameron is a compact handbook of ceremonial magic from the Renaissance. Its full Latin title, Heptameron, seu Elementa Magica, translates as “Seven Days, or Magical Elements,” and that title describes its structure exactly. The book sets out a general method for calling on angels, then supplies a separate set of names and attributions for each day of the week, from the archangel Michael on Sunday to Cassiel on Saturday.

Unlike the sprawling Greater Key of Solomon, the Heptameron is short enough to read in an hour. It assumes the reader already knows the planetary hours and the basics of astrology, and it reads like a quick-reference sheet rather than a treatise. That brevity is one reason it was copied and reprinted so often: it was the practical appendix that other, longer works lacked.

Do not confuse it with another sixteenth-century book of the same name. Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (1558) is a collection of seventy-two short stories modeled on Boccaccio, with no magical content. Both titles borrow the Greek for “seven days,” but the resemblance ends there.

Pietro d'Abano and the Question of Authorship

Printed editions credit the Heptameron to Peter of Abano, in Italian Pietro d’Abano, a physician, philosopher and astrologer who taught at Padua and died around 1316. Pietro was a real and important figure. His Conciliator tried to reconcile medicine with natural philosophy, and his interest in astrology brought him before the Inquisition. Tradition holds that he died in prison before his trial concluded and that his remains were later condemned.

That reputation made him an attractive name to attach to a magic book, and historians of the grimoire tradition are nearly unanimous that he did not write the Heptameron. The text shows no sign of fourteenth-century Padua. Its vocabulary and its angel names belong to the sixteenth century, and no manuscript is known from Pietro’s lifetime. The attribution is pseudepigraphy of the same kind that gave the world Solomonic and Honorian grimoires.

Who did write it remains unknown. The most likely scenario is that an anonymous compiler, working from medieval lists of planetary angels and from Agrippa’s circle, assembled the material in the first half of the 1500s and borrowed Pietro’s name for authority. The book’s modern editor, Joseph Peterson, dates its earliest printed form to the mid-sixteenth century.

Printing History: From the 1559 Latin Edition to Robert Turner

The Heptameron first reached a wide audience in 1559, when it was printed in Latin as part of a collection that also contained the so-called Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, a spurious continuation of Agrippa’s famous three-volume work. The pairing was deliberate: Agrippa’s genuine books explain the theory of planetary magic, and the Heptameron supplies the tables. Readers who owned Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy usually owned this appendix too.

In 1655 the English astrologer Robert Turner translated the Fourth Book, the Heptameron and several related tracts into English. Turner’s version became the standard text in the English-speaking world and is the basis for most modern reprints and web transcriptions. His translation preserves the Latin names of hours, winds and seasons without explanation, which is why those strange words still puzzle readers.

Later editions multiplied. The Heptameron was folded into eighteenth-century German compilations, quoted by Francis Barrett in The Magus (1801), and treated at length by Arthur Edward Waite in The Book of Ceremonial Magic (1911). Each generation found it useful for the same reason the first printers had: it was the shortest route to a working set of angelic correspondences.

Inside the Heptameron: The Angels of the Days and Hours

The heart of the book is a set of seven tables, one for each weekday. Every table gives the same categories of information, so that the operator can look up whatever the day requires.

The seven days and their angels

• Sunday: ruled by the Sun; angel Michael; ministers including Dardiel and Huratapal.
• Monday: ruled by the Moon; angel Gabriel; ministers including Michael and Samael.
• Tuesday: ruled by Mars; angel Samael; ministers including Satael and Amabiel.
• Wednesday: ruled by Mercury; angel Raphael; ministers including Miel and Seraphiel.
• Thursday: ruled by Jupiter; angel Sachiel; ministers including Castiel and Asasiel.
• Friday: ruled by Venus; angel Anael; ministers including Rachiel and Sachiel.
• Saturday: ruled by Saturn; angel Cassiel; ministers including Machatan and Uriel.

Names of the hours

The Heptameron lists twelve names for the hours of the day (beginning with Yayn, Janor, Nasnia) and twelve for the hours of the night (beginning with Beron, Barol, Thanu), each with its own angel. The planetary hour system, in which the first hour of each day belongs to that day’s planet, lets the operator choose a time matched to the intention.

Seasons, winds and the four quarters

Each season has a name (Talvi for spring, Casmaran for summer, Ardarael for autumn, Farlas for winter), along with names for the earth, the sun and the moon during that season. The angels of the four winds, the air of each day and the direction of each angel round out the system. The result is a dense web of correspondences that connects time, direction and spirit.

The Heptameron Magic Circle

The second famous feature of the book is its circle. Unlike the fixed circle of the Lesser Key of Solomon, the Heptameron’s circle is rebuilt for each operation. Its outer rings are inscribed with the name of the hour, the angel of the hour, the sigil of the angel of the day, the name of the day’s angel and ministers, the name of the season, and the names of the earth, sun and moon for that season. Four pentagrams and divine names mark the quarters.

The text describes the circle as made of two concentric rings with a third inner ring, drawn on the ground with the names written in the spaces between. Because every name changes with the calendar, two circles drawn a week apart would differ in almost every detail. The book supplies a worked example and expects the reader to generate the rest from the tables.

Around the circle the Heptameron adds consecrations of the place, of the garments, of the pentacle and of the instruments, together with prayers drawn from Christian liturgy. The whole apparatus is explicitly religious: the operator is portrayed as a devout Christian addressing angels in the name of God, and the book’s spirits are angelic ministers, not the demons of the Goetia. This site describes these procedures historically and does not provide ritual instructions.

How the Heptameron Influenced Later Grimoires

The Heptameron’s compact tables were borrowed almost everywhere. The Ars Paulina, the third book of the Lemegeton, builds its angels of the hours directly on the Heptameron’s lists. The Grimoire of Pope Honorius reuses the day-by-day structure. Early modern English manuscripts of “Solomonic” magic routinely bind a copy of the Heptameron alongside the Key, and the seals of the seven day-angels migrated into charm books and almanacs.

In the nineteenth century the book entered the occult revival through Barrett and Éliphas Lévi, and from them into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, whose planetary attributions of the archangels (Michael to the Sun, Gabriel to the Moon, and so on) match the Heptameron’s. The angelic names in the table above, and the seals associated with them, remain the standard set in most modern books of planetary magic.

It also sits within a wider family of texts organized by number: the planetary magic squares of Agrippa assign each planet a numbered grid, and the angel tables of the Heptameron give each planet a day. Readers interested in how these systems interlock will find the same seven planets and the same archangels in both.

Common Misunderstandings About the Heptameron

The first misunderstanding is that it is medieval. Because Pietro d’Abano died in 1316, websites often date the book to the early 1300s. The evidence points instead to the sixteenth century, which places it among Renaissance rather than medieval magic and explains its debt to Agrippa.

The second is that it is a book of demons. The Heptameron names no spirits of the Goetia, assigns no legions and includes no infernal hierarchy. Its spirits are angels and “ministers” of the planets, and its prayers are addressed to God. Readers coming from the wider world of grimoires sometimes lump it with the black books, but the text itself is theurgic in tone.

The third is that its odd names are ancient. Words like Yayn, Casmaran and Farlas look like corrupted Hebrew or Arabic, and some may be, but no scholar has traced them to a confirmed source. They are best treated as the inheritance of a copying tradition in which errors became fixed and then sacred. The Heptameron is a snapshot of that tradition at one moment in the 1500s.

Reading the Heptameron Today

The easiest way to read the Heptameron is in Joseph Peterson’s online edition, which prints the 1559 Latin alongside Turner’s 1655 English and notes the variants. Reprints of Turner’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy volume contain the same text, usually with modernized spelling. Because the book is public domain, many free scans circulate; check that any copy includes the tables of hours and the circle diagram, which cheap editions sometimes drop.

When reading, keep three questions in mind. What did the compiler take from Agrippa? Where do the angel names match earlier Jewish and Christian lists, such as the archangels of the planets? And which elements, like the season names, appear nowhere else? Answering them turns the Heptameron from a strange list into a map of what a sixteenth-century magician thought he knew.

Finally, read it next to its relatives. The Lemegeton shows what the Heptameron’s hours became when adapted; the Greater Key shows what a fuller Solomonic method looked like; Agrippa shows the theory. Seen together, they make clear why a slim book of seven days has stayed in print for nearly five centuries.

Disclaimer

This article describes the Heptameron as a historical text in the European grimoire tradition. It explains beliefs and procedures for educational purposes only, does not endorse them, and provides no ritual instructions.