Skip to content
The Grammar of the UnseenPreorder

The reference library

Short pieces on the questions the book keeps meeting, each one worked out from the sources rather than from the usual summaries. A new essay roughly every two weeks.

Start with the first one
A long Ethiopian parchment scroll of prayers against various ailments, written in Ge’ez with painted panels.
Ethiopian scroll of prayers against ailments. Wellcome Collection.
The archangel Phanuel holding a sword, painted in black and ochre on a nineteenth-century Ethiopian protective scroll.
Archangel Phanuel, Ethiopian scroll, 19th century.
A second incantation bowl from Babylon, its Aramaic inscription running in a spiral from the rim to the centre.
Incantation bowl, Babylon. Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

In preparation

The questions the library takes next, in the order the book takes them. Nothing is linked here until the essay exists, because a reference library that promises pages it does not have is worse than a short one.

Corrections are welcome and useful. If a citation here is wrong, or a scholarly position has moved on, write to southerndemonology@gmail.com and the page will be amended.

The Temple Scroll from Qumran, a pale parchment sheet with ragged edges and even lines of Hebrew.
The Temple Scroll, 2nd century BC. Israel Museum.