Everything

In order to benefit a character, a true Grimoire requires dedicated study. You can’t skim such a book, but must focus your full concentration on its contents, and upon their po­ tential ramifications, in order to get the true benefits from that Grimoire. A mage must devote no less than one week of reading and meditation to that book for each level in a particular Grimoire; a two-dot Wonder would require at least two weeks of study, while a five-dot one would demand five weeks or more. Grimoires also tend to feature exercises for the reader: meditations, invocations, purifications, prayers,

chants, equations, quests, katas, and so forth. A reader who skips those exercises, or who employs the Skill: Speed-Reading when perusing a Grimoire, can’t truly grasp the full implica­ tions of the work.

For obvious reasons, the reader has to be able to compre­ hend the contents of a Grimoire before she can get any sort of benefit from that book. Considering that many Grimoires are written in arcane, sacred or “lost” languages (High Latin, Sanskrit, alchemical symbolism, Classical Greek, and so forth), that’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. The reader must not only understand the language itself but also put the writings into their proper context… which can be tricky, especially when you’re trying to parse out the contents of a book from a rad­ ically different time and culture. System-wise, the Storyteller may insist that a character who wants to study a Grimoire must have at least three dots in Research, Esoterica, Occult, and /or an appropriate Knowledge specialty (Medieval Persian Culture, for example) in addition to the ability to decipher the book’s language, before she can even begin to understand a Grimoire. Books that teach physical disciplines require phys­ ical exercise (and the associated Traits) as well. Intelligence, Perception or Wits rolls, combined with those Traits, are perfectly appropriate too.

Beyond all that, the reader must be able to wrap her head around the author’s insights. In game terms, she must share a common focus – a paradigm and practice – with the book’s author. An Akashic sage could peruse De Angelis Libris, and perhaps even find its contents illuminating; because he’s not devoted to a Western angelic ritual tradition, however, he won’t find the kind of cosmic enlightenment that a Hermetic mystic, Templar or Chorister would discover between that book’s covers… and a Hermetic would be just as baffled by the postures and haiku of The Cloud Dance of Eternal Vision and Joy, an Eastern “Grimoire” depicting The 101 Sacred Steps and their associated insights.

Without exception, Grimoires are rare and unique works of art. Often hand-bound, hand-lettered, and illuminated with artwork that may transcend its two-dimensional medium, these hefty volumes cannot be mass-produced. Many editions of a particular Grimoire may exist, but each one must be pains­ takingly crafted with Awakened Arts in order to employ the full effects of its magickal text. Technomagickal books called Principia (see below) may be mass-printed on special presses, but their lessons cannot hope to match the sublime insights of true Grimoire… as any wizard will tell you if given half a chance!

Although wizards love their books, and – much like game designers – tend to amass huge libraries full of them, a Grimoire transcends the “mere” properties of ink and paper. Into each one, the author pours his deepest revelations, expressions of wisdom often gathered into poems, spells, rituals, puzzles, enigmas, and dazzling displays of visual artistry. Glowing ink, moving images, pictures that “come alive” when the reader concentrates on them… whatever odd things a creative author (and Storyteller) can imagine may be found within the pages of

a Grimoire. The mystic tomes featured in the Peter Greenaway film Prospero’s Books suggest the unearthly illustrations within such works – illustrations that often employ the Forces, Matter, Life, Spirit, and even Time Spheres to shape their transcendent designs. For more details about the power of writing and magick,

see Books, Scrolls and Periodicals, Languages, Memes, and Writing, Inscriptions and Runes under Instruments: Tools of Focus in Mage 20, pp. 589, 593-594, and 600.