Liber Nephilim

Liber Nephilim: A Grimoire of Fallen Angels
Frater Barrabbas
Crossed Crow Books
ISBN 978-1-959883-55-5
$25.95

Enochian magic, ceremonial magic, grimoire magic — these systems can be as confusing as they are empowering, and there comes a moment in reading every grimoire when you think to yourself that this would all make so much more sense if you could just see the magician doing it one time. Well, this is your chance. In Liber Nephilim, Frater Barrabbas invites the reader to join in on a magical operation he began decades ago. He describes his original workings in detail, what he learned from them, how he has altered them and why.

Barrabbas explores the Nephilim, fallen angels mentioned in the Book of Enoch who fathered a race of giants with human women and taught humankind angelic magic before being imprisoned by Michael, Gabriel, Rafiel and Uriel. Finding it curious that these spirits have largely been left out of the grimoire tradition, in Liber Nephilim, he reframes the corporealization of the Nephilim as manifestation rather than fall and their imprisonment less as punishment and more as protection. He lays out a system of 200 spirits and describes their four chiefs — Shemihazah, Azazel, Ramat’el and Turiel—as they appear when evoked, outlines their functions and elemental associations and offers the reader two paths to contacting them, the lawful path in which the operant invokes the archangels, and the unlawful path in which the operant contacts Samael. Barrabbas includes seals and sigils he received from the archangels in his workings along with diagrams and detailed instructions for the reader to invoke the angels and contact the Nephilim.

He also suggests several avenues of exploration along this path that he hopes the reader might engage in that he has not — for example, he believes that the four demon queens who are the wives of the Nephilim and the daughters of Lilith hold keys to further mysteries. Frater Barrabbas invites the reader in to explore this magical system that is just being discovered because he enthusiastically believes that the spirits of the Nephilim still have a great deal of magic to teach. If you feel the beckoning of these powers, he gives you the tools and techniques you need to contact them. However, even readers who are not particularly interested in working with these spirits will find it worthwhile to learn from Barrabbas, a ritual magician with decades of experience, by following along with the workings of a living magician in as close to real time as a practice based on centuries-old tomes allows. Until we have a time machine that allows us to peer through the keyhole during Dee and Kelley’s operations or listen through a wall in Worms to the devotions of Abraham, Barrabbas’ Liber Nephilim is your best chance to ride along on the shoulder of a magician while he works out his magic.