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of the Opera had it at hand. The author of the Fourth Book identified himself as Agrippa in the text, but there is reason to believe he was lying. The work is out of character for Agrippa, and in clarity of presentation and evidence of scholarship is inferior to his other writings. Agrippa’s student Johannes Wier flatly stated his conviction that his master had never written it. The earliest known edition is the Marburg edition. Nonetheless, some authorities see no reason to assume that the work is not by Agrippa. The earliest known edition of the Heptameron was published in 1496 at Venice, so it is more than likely that Agrippa knew of the work and had studied it. However, the work he knew was not exactly the same work that was printed in the Opera or translated by Turner. Although the essential information on spirits remained unchanged in the Opera edition, a few introductory passages were added. It is easy to get the false impression from the wording of the Marburg edition of the Heptameron that d’Abano’s text ends just prior to the example of a magic circle that appears to have been inserted by the editor, but the text following the illustration of the circle is integral to the work and likely belongs to d’Abano. The world awaits some enterprising individual to scan the 1496 edition and post it on the Internet for comparison purposes. The Dialogue of Castor and Pollux by Georg Pictorius appeared in a collection of works by this author called the Panto-
polion, published at Basel, Switzerland, in 1563. Since Pictorius only began to write around 1530, and Agrippa died in 1535, it is unlikely that Agrippa had much, if any, awareness of his writings. The grimoire called the Arbatel was first published in 1575, also at Basel, Switzerland, but may have circulated for some time in manuscript form. In Agrippa’s time, many works that circulated in manuscript were later published as books, including his own Three Books of Occult Philosophy, so the date of first publication does not always indicate a proximate date of creation, or even dissemination. Arbatel is sometimes assumed to be the name of the author of this work, rather than of the work itself, which is then called Of Magic, or Of the Magic of the Ancients. The final text in Turner’s collection was considerably older than Agrippa. It was composed, or translated, by Gerard of Cremona, a twelfth-century Latin translator of Arabic texts on medicine, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, and other subjects. It is the general belief of scholars that Of Astronomical Geomancy is his work, but its date of composition is not known.
Robert Turner, Translator Robert Turner (1619–1664) received a bachelor of arts degree from Christ’s College, Cambridge. The introduction to the Fourth Book contains several letters of congratulation on his translation from men of Cambridge, undoubtably friends