A Magic Square for Every Day of the Week: What the 1327 CE Arabic Grimoire Shams al-Anwar Prescribes

There is a 700-year-old Arabic manuscript that assigns every day of the week its own planetary spirit, its own divine name, its own incense, its own ritual hour — and its own wafq, the Arabic magic square. It is not a theoretical curiosity. It is an operational system, complete and consistent from Monday to Sunday, requiring nothing from the practitioner beyond timing, preparation, and the will to work it. It was written in 1327 CE by Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani al-Maghribi, a North African scholar working in the lineage of the great al-Buni. For seven centuries it circulated in manuscript form across the Arabic-speaking world, copied and recopied by practitioners who understood its value. It has never before appeared in English — until now.

What the Awfaq System Actually Is

The word wafq (plural awfaq) is usually translated as “magic square,” but that translation loses something important. A magic square in the recreational-mathematics sense is a curiosity — a grid where the rows and columns sum to the same number. A wafq in the Arabic occult tradition is something closer to a materialized divine formula: a spatial arrangement of numbers or letters whose internal harmony reflects and participates in the harmonic order of creation.

In Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar al-Kubra — “Suns of Lights and the Great Treasures of Secrets” — Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani devotes an entire chapter to the construction of these squares. Chapter Nine (al-Bāb al-Tāsiʿ fī Waḍʿ al-Awfāq, “On the Magic Squares”) provides the theoretical grounding. But the operational deployment of awfaq runs through the entire book — tied, at every point, to the seven classical planets and their governing days.

The correspondence table is fundamental. Each Arabic letter carries an abjad numerical value, a planetary affiliation, and an elemental quality. The manuscript makes this explicit:

“Letter Alif, abjad value 1, element Fire, planet Sun. Letter Bāʾ, abjad value 2, element Air, planet Moon. Letter Jīm, abjad value 3, element Water, planet Mars…”

— Shams al-Anwar, p. 44

Every wafq built from these letters is simultaneously a numerical structure and a planetary invocation. The choice of which names to embed in a square, which numerical values to arrange, which grid size to use — all of these decisions are planetary decisions, tied to the day and hour of operation.

The Seven Planets, the Seven Days, the Seven Systems

The planetary-day correspondence is the backbone of the entire system — the same system that governs the timing of jinn summoning. In classical Arabic astrological tradition (inherited from Hellenistic sources and embedded in Islamic practice by al-Buni and his predecessors), each day of the week is ruled by a planet:

Sunday — the Sun (al-Shams)
Monday — the Moon (al-Qamar)
Tuesday — Mars (al-Mirrīkh)
Wednesday — Mercury (ʿUṭārid)
Thursday — Jupiter (al-Mushtarī)
Friday — Venus (al-Zuhra)
Saturday — Saturn (Zuḥal)

What Shams al-Anwar provides is not merely this general table — which any medieval student of astrology would have known. It provides the complete operational protocol for each day: the specific divine names (asmaʾ ) appropriate to that planet, the incense (bukhūr) to burn, the planetary hour within which the operation must be conducted, and the form of the wafq that embeds and amplifies the planetary power.

Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani is explicit about the necessity of timing. The practitioner must calculate the planetary hours in advance and act at precisely the right moment:

“The timing of the fumigation must coincide with the planetary hour of the operation, and the incense should be placed upon the brazier at the exact moment the planetary hour begins. The practitioner must have calculated the planetary hours in advance and have his incense and brazier prepared so that no time is lost in preparation when the hour arrives. These are the seven planets and their correspondences, and these same rules apply throughout all the operations described in this book. The practitioner who masters these correspondences has mastered the foundation of the art, and all subsequent knowledge builds upon this base.”

— Shams al-Anwar, p. 61

This passage is characteristic of the text’s voice: rigorous, systematic, and concerned above all with the practitioner’s ability to execute correctly.

How the Planetary Angels Are Invoked

The awfaq system is inseparable from the angelology that runs through Shams al-Anwar. Chapter Five (al-Bāb al-Khāmis fī al-Malāʾikah al-Thāniyah min al-Buyūt — “On the Angelic Beings of the Houses”) establishes the planetary angel hierarchy. Each planet has a governing angel whose qualities mirror the planet’s astrological character and who responds to invocations conducted in the appropriate spirit.

The manuscript describes the Thursday invocation of Jupiter’s angel in terms that clarify what the system expects of the practitioner:

“The angel of the sixth heaven is the angel of Jupiter, and its governance extends over matters of wisdom, expansion, wealth, and spiritual rank. Jupiter is the greater benefic, and its angel is among the most generous in responding to the sincere practitioner. The invocation is performed on Thursday at the hour of Jupiter. […] Know that the invocation of the angels requires more than mere recitation. The practitioner must embody the qualities that correspond to the angel he is invoking. To invoke the angel of Jupiter, he must embody generosity and wisdom. To invoke the angel of Venus, he must embody love and beauty of character. To invoke the angel of Mars, he must embody courage and righteous determination.”

— Shams al-Anwar, p. 54

This is not the impersonal mechanism of a grimoire instruction manual. Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani is describing an ethics of invocation — a requirement that the practitioner’s character align with the planetary quality being sought. It is, in this sense, an integrated spiritual practice, not merely a set of techniques.

The Friday Night Practice: Venus, Love, and al-Wadud

Among the most vivid operational passages in Shams al-Anwar is the description of Friday night practice, when Venus governs and the divine name al-Wadud (“the Loving One”) is invoked. The manuscript is unusually specific:

“And the practitioner should know that each of the seven nights of the week is governed by one of the seven planets, and each planet has its corresponding angel, incense, and divine name. And whoever aligns his spiritual practice with these correspondences will find that his work is strengthened and his results are multiplied many times over. And among the tested practices for the nights: whoever recites on the night of Friday — which is the night governed by Venus — the name ‘the Loving One’ (al-Wadūd / الودود) in a number corresponding to its abjad value, and fumigates with mastic and sandalwood during the hour of Venus, will find that love is placed in th[e hearts of those around him]…”

— Shams al-Anwar, p. 210

The system extends to each of the seven nights. Monday night carries a particular quality — the angels descend “in great numbers” and prayers made in sincerity are answered. The practitioner is counseled to occupy Monday night with remembrance (dhikr) and supplications. Each night has its own medicine.

Constructing the Talisman: Metal, Hour, and Material

The wafq does not exist in isolation. Chapter Twenty-Nine (al-Bāb al-Tāsiʿ wa-l-ʿIshrūn fī Taṣnīʿ al-Ṭilasm — “On the Construction of the Talisman”) provides one of the most complete accounts in the text of how the planetary talisman is physically made:

“And the practitioner should write the talisman, sealing it with the stamp of authority, using saffron ink during the hour of the appropriate planet, and fumigating it with the corresponding incense. And the writing should be upon the material that corresponds to the planet — silver for the Moon, gold for the Sun, copper for Venus, iron for Mars, tin for Jupiter, lead for Saturn, and a mixed alloy for Mercury.”

— Shams al-Anwar, p. 259

The JFP edition reproduces the talismanic seals and magic squares directly from the source manuscript as images, preserving their visual integrity. These are not reconstructions. They are the same figures that have moved through seven centuries of manuscript culture — the same squares that practitioners in Fez, Cairo, Istanbul, and Delhi once inscribed on parchment and silver.

Why This Is Not the Shams al-Ma’arif

Readers familiar with al-Buni’s Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra — the most famous Arabic grimoire in history, explored in What Is the Shams al-Ma’arif? — will recognize the framework immediately. The planetary days, the divine names, the awfaq, the incenses: all of these are present in al-Buni’s text, which established them as the operational vocabulary of the Arabic occult tradition.

Shams al-Anwar is a different book. Written a century after al-Buni’s death, it is the work of a scholar who has fully absorbed the Bunian system and is extending it — adding new material on the properties of Quranic verses as operative formulas, on the protocols for working with spiritual beings, on the construction of multiple types of talisman. The chapter “On the Manner of Constructing Talismanic Squares” (Fī Kayfiyyat ʿAmal al-Awfāq, p. 124) goes beyond al-Buni in its treatment of the awfaq as a complete system with multiple operational types.

If the Shams al-Ma’arif is the theoretical and encyclopedic statement of the tradition, Shams al-Anwar is the practitioner’s manual — closer to the workbench. It assumes you know the framework. It teaches you how to use it. For the full story of the relationship between the two texts, see Shams al-Anwar: The Forgotten Arabic Grimoire That Completed Al-Buni’s Shams al-Ma’arif.

Read It in English for the First Time

Suns of Lights and the Great Treasures of Secrets is the first complete English translation of Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar al-Kubra, published by John Friend Publishing as part of the Arabic Islamicate Occult Manuscripts in Translation series. The 264-page edition preserves the full text — every chapter, every operative instruction, every wafq — with Arabic terms presented in scholarly transliteration alongside the original script.

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