--- page_title: "Shams al-Ma’arif vs Picatrix: Astrology, Timings & Bans" summary: "Shams al-Ma’arif vs Picatrix compared: astrological timings, planetary correspondences, Hellenistic influences, and whether the Ghayat al-Hakim was banned." html_url: https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/shams-al-maarif-vs-picatrix-comparison.html text_url: https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/shams-al-maarif-vs-picatrix-comparison.md revised: 2026-10-09 publisher: John Friend Publishing --- An Essay from the Library # Shams al-Ma’arif vs Picatrix: Astrology, Astral Magic, and Two Grimoires From One Tradition By John Friend · May 20, 2026 · 15 min read The two most cited Arabic grimoires in Western scholarship come from the same intellectual tradition — but they took radically different paths through history. One traveled to Renaissance Europe. The other stayed in Arabic. **[Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/al-buni-manuscripts-collection/shams-al-maarif-al-kubra.html)** · The Complete Sun of Divine Knowledge · Vol. I — Al-Buni Manuscripts Collection Formats: - [Kindle — Free with KU](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/30IGj9) - [Read the Translation](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/7cCq5b) - [Read Free Sample](https://read.amazon.com/sample/B0H2Q9RDCN?clientId=share) If you have spent any time reading about the Arabic occult tradition, you will have encountered two texts mentioned above all others: the [*Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra*](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/what-is-shams-al-maarif.html) attributed to Ahmad al-Buni, and the [*Ghayat al-Hakim*](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/picatrix-ghayat-al-hakim-arabic-original.html) — the text the medieval Latin world called the *Picatrix*. Both are Arabic in origin. Both draw from the same deep reservoir of Hellenistic astral science, Neoplatonic cosmology, and late antique operative knowledge. Yet they represent genuinely different emphases, serve different purposes, and traveled through history along entirely different routes. Understanding the difference between them is essential to understanding the Arabic occult tradition as a whole. ## The Same Tradition, Two Different Entry Points The shared intellectual ancestry of these two texts is real and traceable. Both belong to the broader current of Arabic learning that absorbed, translated, and transformed the late antique knowledge of Hellenistic Egypt — particularly the Hermetic, Neoplatonic, and Ptolemaic traditions that circulated through Alexandria and were transmitted to the Arabic-speaking world during the translation movement of the eighth through tenth centuries CE. Both texts reference the Sabians of Harran, a pre-Islamic religious community whose astrological and theurgical practices became a major source for Arabic stellar magic. Both use planetary correspondences, talismanic images, and the framework of a cosmos animated by celestial intelligences. But the family resemblance ends at the level of content emphasis, operative mechanism, and intended use. Deciding which of these two texts is “more important” depends almost entirely on what you are trying to do and which tradition you are entering from. --- ## The *Ghayat al-Hakim* (Picatrix): Astral Magic and Planetary Images The *Ghayat al-Hakim* — “The Goal of the Wise” — was compiled in Arabic around the mid-eleventh century CE, probably in al-Andalus. Its attributed authorship is complex and disputed: it is sometimes credited to the Andalusian scholar Maslama ibn Qasim al-Majriti, though most modern scholars consider the text pseudonymous. What is not disputed is its content: the *Ghayat al-Hakim* is a systematic treatise on astral magic, focused on the construction of *talismans* powered by planetary forces, the use of suffumigations and materials appropriate to each planet, and the theology of a cosmos in which the planets act as intermediaries between the divine and the terrestrial. The text is organized around this talismanic framework. It describes planetary images — the specific figures, symbols, and substances associated with each planet — in extensive detail. It provides directions for harnessing planetary power during astrologically favorable moments. It incorporates material from the Sabian star-worshipping tradition, including prayers directed to planetary deities that have a distinctly pre-Islamic quality. And it draws heavily on Hermetic and Neoplatonic philosophical framework to explain *why* this operative system works: because the cosmos is a hierarchy of emanated spiritual powers, and the skilled practitioner can draw those powers down through properly constructed material vehicles. What the *Ghayat al-Hakim* is **not** is a text saturated with Islamic devotional practice. It does not foreground Quranic verses as operative instruments. It does not systematically deploy the ninety-nine divine names of God as a magical technology. The divine names appear, but they are not the engine. This is, in a sense, what made the text so translatable: the astrological and Hermetic framework it relies on could be received by a Latin Christian readership without requiring deep engagement with Quranic Arabic. In 1256 CE, with Alfonso X as patron, the *Ghayat al-Hakim* was put into Castilian, and from Castilian into Latin, becoming the *Picatrix*. That translation transformed European ceremonial magic. Agrippa’s *Three Books of Occult Philosophy*, the planetary magic of the Renaissance, the astrological talismanic tradition that runs through Marsilio Ficino — all of these bear the direct imprint of the *Picatrix*. The text became so influential in European occultism that many Western practitioners know it better than they know any Arabic source. --- ## The *Shams al-Ma’arif*: Letter Science and Divine Names The *Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra*, attributed to Ahmad ibn Ali al-Buni (d. 1225 CE), operates from a different center of gravity. Where the *Ghayat al-Hakim* is organized around *astrological time and planetary materials*, the *Shams al-Ma’arif* is organized around *the Arabic alphabet and the divine names of God*. Its central operative science is *‘ilm al-huruf* — the science of letters — in which each Arabic letter carries numerical, elemental, planetary, and spiritual properties derived from its position in the alphabet and its relationship to the abjad system. Al-Buni’s system works like this: the Arabic alphabet is not merely a writing system but a living grid of divine power. The letters that compose God’s beautiful names (*asma’ Allah al-husna*) are operative forces — not symbols pointing to something else, but actual manifestations of divine attributes. To write these names correctly, in the right configuration, on the right material, at the right astrological moment, is to inscribe divine power into matter. The *wafq* — magic squares built from numbers or letters — is one of al-Buni’s key technologies for concentrating this power into a portable, durable form. The Quranic dimension of the *Shams al-Ma’arif* is fundamental, not decorative. Specific verses (*ayat*) are assigned operative properties — this verse for protection, that verse for influencing a heart, this name of God for opening what is closed. The entire system is embedded in an Islamicate theological framework in which the legitimate channels of power are the names and words God has disclosed in revelation. This makes the *Shams al-Ma’arif* considerably more dependent on Arabic as a sacred language and considerably more rooted in Islamic religious practice than the *Ghayat al-Hakim*. This difference helps explain why the *Shams al-Ma’arif* was never translated into Latin. The *wafq* science and the letter-science depend entirely on Arabic — on the specific numerical values of specific Arabic letters, on the theological valence of specific Arabic divine names. Translating the framework into Latin would require rebuilding the entire operative system from scratch around a different alphabet and a different theological vocabulary. The attempt was never made, and the text remained within the Arabic-speaking world. --- ## Where the Two Texts Overlap Despite their different emphases, the *Shams al-Ma’arif* and the *Ghayat al-Hakim* do share substantial content. Both are deeply engaged with planetary science — the same seven planets, the same hierarchical understanding of celestial influence, the same use of astrological timing as the basis for operative work. The planetary spirits (*arwah al-kawakib*) appear in both. The planetary hour system — dividing each day and night into hours governed by successive planets — is operative in both texts. Suffumigation recipes tied to specific planets appear in both. The shared Hermetic and Sabian substratum means that a reader who knows one text well will recognize content in the other. The letter-perfect version of the Jovian suffumigation in the *Shams al-Ma’arif* deploys the same materials — the same incenses, the same colors, the same timing — that the *Ghayat al-Hakim* attributes to Jupiter. The planetary images that the *Ghayat al-Hakim* describes in detail reappear, often in compressed form, in sections of the *Shams al-Ma’arif*. > Both texts are nodes in a much larger network of Arabic occult knowledge — a network that includes the *Ikhwan al-Safa’* encyclopedias, the works of Jabir ibn Hayyan, and dozens of regional and specialist texts that never made it into Western circulation at all. --- ## *Shams al-Ma’arif* Astrology: Astrological Timings and Planetary Correspondences Because the *Shams al-Ma’arif* is famous for its letters and divine names, its astrology is easy to underrate. Its own table of contents corrects that impression. The second chapter is titled “On Breaking and Expansion and the Ordering of Works According to Times and Hours”; the third, “On the Judgments of the Twenty-Eight Mansions of the Moon and the Celestial Spheres”; the fourth, “On the Judgments of the Twelve Zodiacal Signs.” Before most of the operative material begins, the reader has been given the calendar it runs on — and that calendar is the ground the book shares with the *Ghayat al-Hakim*. ### *Shams al-Ma’arif* Astrological Timings The *Shams al-Ma’arif*’s astrological timings work on three clocks at once. The first is the planetary hour. Under the heading “Auspicious and Inauspicious Times and Their Hours,” the book walks through each day of the week hour by hour, naming the planet of each hour and the work it suits. On Sunday the first hour belongs to the Sun, for love, acceptance, and entering before kings and rulers; the second belongs to Venus and is “a blameworthy hour, so do not do anything at all in it.” On Friday the first hour belongs to Venus, for works of passion, betrothal, and marriage. The second clock is the Moon’s passage through the twenty-eight lunar mansions, beginning with al-Sharaṭayn — the subject of a separate essay on the [Shams al-Ma’arif lunar mansions](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/lunar-mansions-secret-timing-system-arabic-magic.html). The third is the state of the sky itself: the Moon’s aspects and the rising sign. A single instruction shows all three clocks working together. A lettered seal is to be engraved on a square sheet of purified tin “on Thursday in the hour of Jupiter at sunrise, with the Moon safeguarded from Jupiter and the Sun, and Gemini as the ascendant,” and then fumigated with mastic and white sandalwood every Thursday. Day, hour, lunar condition, ascendant, metal, and incense are all specified; nothing about the timing is left to the practitioner’s preference. ### *Shams al-Ma’arif* Planetary Correspondences The *Shams al-Ma’arif*’s planetary correspondences are classical astrology, stated in full. Each planet receives its names in other languages, its sphere, its signs, its nature, and its dignities. Saturn is Kaywān in Persian, Qūrūnus in “Roman and Greek,” and Shamanshar in Hindi; it holds the seventh sphere and the signs Capricorn and Aquarius; it is masculine, diurnal, earthy, cold, and dry; its exaltation is in the twenty-first degree of Libra and its fall in Aries. Mercury, the planet whose name “in the foreign language is Hermes,” holds the second sphere and the signs Gemini and Virgo, with its exaltation in Virgo and its fall in Pisces. Alongside this astrological data run operative correspondences that any reader of the *Picatrix* will recognize: works of love written on a Friday at the hour of Venus, a ring engraved in the hour of Venus on Friday, a sura written on a blue cloth on Saturday in the hour of Mercury “while the moon is fortunate.” Where the two books differ is in what the timing serves. In the *Ghayat al-Hakim* the hour empowers a planetary image; in the *Shams al-Ma’arif* it empowers a divine name, a Quranic verse, or a *wafq*. --- ## *Shams al-Ma’arif* Hellenistic Influences, in the Book’s Own Words The shared Hellenistic inheritance described above is not only a modern reconstruction; the *Shams al-Ma’arif* names its sources. In one passage its author lists the works he examined in search of a science he describes as effaced and forgotten: the Codex of the sage Faythāghūrus (Pythagoras), around two hundred books by Jabir ibn Hayyan, the sage Abu Bakr al-Razi, and “the books of Buqrāṭ, Hermes, and Galen” — Buqrāṭ being Hippocrates. Plato appears repeatedly: certain letter derivations are given “according to the doctrine of Plato,” and one talisman is said to have been made by Plato for Dhū al-Qarnayn. The author even claims that beneath the Great Pyramid lay books “that the Greeks placed there before the flood of Noah,” whose talismans he says he deciphered. These are the *Shams al-Ma’arif*’s Hellenistic influences as the book itself presents them, and they explain why a reader of the *Picatrix* feels on familiar ground in its astrological chapters. What they do not explain is the book’s center: the letters of the Arabic alphabet and the divine names, which give al-Buni’s system its distinctive character. --- ## Was the *Ghayat al-Hakim* Banned? The Picatrix and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum Both books carry a reputation for danger, and readers often ask whether the *Ghayat al-Hakim* was banned. Its Latin version, the *Picatrix*, fell squarely within the kind of book the Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum condemned: the Index’s general rules rejected books of magic and sorcery as a class, and the *Picatrix* is a manual of talismanic magic, planetary invocation, and astrological images. For the book itself — who has been credited with compiling it, what its four books contain and how it reached Latin — see the companion essay on [the Ghayat al-Hakim, the Arabic original of the Picatrix](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/picatrix-ghayat-al-hakim-arabic-original.html). The *Shams al-Ma’arif* met its condemnations inside the Islamic world instead — fatwas against its use, periodic burnings, and restrictions on printed editions — a history told in [Why the Shams al Ma’arif Was Banned and Burned](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/magic-book-banned-burned-al-buni.html). It is the *Shams al-Ma’arif*, too, that people call [the most dangerous book](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/why-people-say-shams-al-maarif-will-drive-you-mad.html) in Arabic magic. --- ## Transmission: One Stayed, One Traveled The most consequential difference between these two texts is not what they contain but what happened to them after they were written. The *Ghayat al-Hakim* crossed into Latin Europe and became the *Picatrix*. For several centuries, it was the primary channel through which Arabic astral magic knowledge flowed into the Western occult tradition. When Renaissance magicians wrote about planetary talismans, when Agrippa catalogued planetary correspondences, when Ficino described talismanic medicine — they were drawing, directly or indirectly, on the Arabic text that Alfonso’s translators had rendered into Latin. The *Shams al-Ma’arif*, by contrast, remained in Arabic and expanded through the manuscript cultures of North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, the Levant, West Africa, and South Asia. In these regions, it became the foundational text of the *sihr* tradition — the reference point against which all subsequent operative texts were measured. The texts produced in its wake — including Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani’s *Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar*, translated in the [John Friend Publishing Vol. III](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/uxBVGB) — systematically extend and develop the Buni’an framework of letter science, divine names, and magic squares. The entire Arabic operative tradition from the thirteenth century onward is, to a significant degree, a conversation with al-Buni. Western occultism largely missed this conversation. The handful of Western scholars who knew the Arabic tradition at all — Pico della Mirandola, who touched on Arabic Kabbalah, or later orientalists — were not engaging with the operative *sihr* corpus. The *Shams al-Ma’arif* was invisible to European readers until very recently, and its contents remain largely inaccessible without knowledge of Arabic. --- ## What Each Text Gives the Reader For a reader coming from the Western esoteric tradition — familiar with the *Picatrix*, with planetary magic, with Renaissance ceremonial practice — the *Ghayat al-Hakim* will feel recognizable. The planetary framework, the talismanic images, the Hermetic cosmology: these are the same bones that underlie much of Western occultism. The *Ghayat al-Hakim* is the bridge between that tradition and its Arabic sources. The *Shams al-Ma’arif*, and the texts in its tradition, offer something genuinely different: an operative system grounded in Arabic letter mysticism, divine names, and Quranic theology. This is not a variation on the planetary magic of the *Picatrix* — it is an independent development that draws from the same ancient sources but builds something architecturally distinct. The magic squares (*awfaq*), the letter permutations, the names of God as operative instruments: none of this has a structural equivalent in the Latin *Picatrix*. That is also the short answer for readers who come looking for Picatrix magic squares: the *wafq* is not the engine of the *Picatrix* the way it is of the *Shams al-Ma’arif*, whose squares are built from the numerical values of the divine names. For what the Latin book relies on instead, and what it lost in transmission, see [why planetary talismans fail](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/why-your-planetary-talismans-dont-work.html). For readers seeking entry into the *Shams al-Ma’arif* tradition in English, the closest currently available access point beyond al-Buni’s own works is [*Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar al-Kubra*](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/uxBVGB) (Vol. III), a 1327 CE text that directly continues al-Buni’s system. The full account of that text’s relationship to the *Shams al-Ma’arif* is in [Shams al-Anwar: The Forgotten Arabic Grimoire That Completed Al-Buni’s Work](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/shams-anwar-lost-sequel-shams-al-maarif.html). The *Shams al-Ma’arif* itself is now available in English as well: John Friend Publishing’s [*Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra*](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/al-buni-manuscripts-collection/shams-al-maarif-al-kubra.html) is the first complete English translation, with all forty chapters, so the comparison with the *Picatrix* can now be made from the primary text. --- ## Two Grimoires, One Tradition The *Shams al-Ma’arif* and the *Picatrix* are not competitors. They are different expressions of the same broad current — the Arabic synthesis of Hellenistic, Persian, and early Islamic learning — that produced the richest body of occult knowledge in the medieval world. The *Picatrix* traveled west and shaped European magic. The *Shams al-Ma’arif* stayed east and shaped everything from Ottoman court talismanism to West African Islamic protective practice to South Asian *ta’wiz* traditions. Both lines of descent are active today. What has changed, very recently, is that English readers can finally begin to access the *Shams al-Ma’arif* tradition directly — in translation, with scholarly apparatus, from the primary Arabic sources. The tradition that stayed in Arabic for eight centuries is, at last, available in English. ### Related Topics in This Article - [The Ghayat al-Hakim, the Arabic original of the Latin Picatrix](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/picatrix-ghayat-al-hakim-arabic-original.html) - [Al-Buni and the Shams al-Ma'arif tradition](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/what-is-shams-al-maarif.html) - [Ilm al-huruf, al-Buni's science of letters](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/secret-powers-arabic-alphabet-al-buni-letter-breakdown.html) - [Wafq magic squares in the Shams al-Ma'arif](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/arabic-magic-squares-not-what-you-think.html) - [Shams al-Anwar as the continuation of the Shams al-Ma'arif system](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/shams-anwar-lost-sequel-shams-al-maarif.html) - [The Latin Picatrix and Renaissance planetary magic](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/why-your-planetary-talismans-dont-work.html) - [Al-Buni on the divine names, asma Allah al-husna](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/99-names-of-god-what-al-buni-actually-wrote.html) - [The planetary hour system the Picatrix left out](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/articles/picatrix-left-out-planetary-hour-system.html) ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the difference between the Shams al-Ma'arif and Picatrix? The Shams al-Ma'arif focuses on ilm al-huruf (letter science), divine names, and magic squares, and was never translated into Latin. The Picatrix (Ghayat al-Hakim) focuses on astral magic and planetary talismans, and was translated into Latin in 1256, shaping Renaissance occultism. ### Was the Shams al-Ma'arif ever translated into Latin like the Picatrix? No. The Picatrix was translated from Arabic to Castilian and then Latin under Alfonso X of Castile in the thirteenth century. The Shams al-Ma'arif remained in Arabic, circulating within Arabic, Ottoman, Persian, and West African manuscript traditions. ### Which is older — the Shams al-Ma'arif or Picatrix? The Ghayat al-Hakim (Picatrix) was compiled around the mid-eleventh century CE, before al-Buni. The Shams al-Ma'arif is attributed to Ahmad al-Buni (d. 1225 CE), making it roughly two centuries later, though both draw from the same Hellenistic sources. ### Do the Shams al-Ma'arif and Picatrix share content? Yes. Both draw from Hellenistic astral magic and Sabian tradition. Planetary correspondences, suffumigation recipes, and planetary spirit names appear in both. The Shams al-Ma'arif adds a layer of Quranic letter mysticism and divine names that the Picatrix does not have. ### Where can I read the Shams al-Ma'arif tradition in English? John Friend Publishing has translated texts from the same tradition, including Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar (Vol. III), written by a direct inheritor of al-Buni's system in 1327 CE. These are the closest English-language entry points currently available beyond al-Buni's own works. The Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra itself has since been published in its first complete English translation by John Friend Publishing, with all 40 chapters. ### What astrological timings does the Shams al-Ma'arif use? It times its operations by the planetary hours of each day, by the Moon's passage through the twenty-eight lunar mansions, and by the condition of the sky, including the Moon's aspects and the ascendant. One seal, for example, is engraved on tin on Thursday in the hour of Jupiter at sunrise, with the Moon safeguarded from Jupiter and the Sun and Gemini as the ascendant. Its second, third and fourth chapters are devoted to times and hours, the lunar mansions, and the twelve zodiacal signs. ### What are the planetary correspondences in the Shams al-Ma'arif? Each planet is given its names in other languages, its sphere, its signs, its nature and its dignities. Saturn, for instance, is Kaywan in Persian, Qurunus in Greek and Shamanshar in Hindi, holds Capricorn and Aquarius, is cold and dry, and has its exaltation in the twenty-first degree of Libra and its fall in Aries. Operations are then matched to planetary days and hours, such as works of love on a Friday in the hour of Venus. ### Was the Ghayat al-Hakim banned? In Catholic Europe it fell under the ban on magic: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum condemned books of magic and sorcery as a class, and the Picatrix, the Latin version of the Ghayat al-Hakim, is a manual of talismanic magic, planetary invocation and astrological images. The Shams al-Ma'arif faced its own condemnations within the Islamic world, including fatwas, burnings and restrictions on printed editions. ### What Hellenistic influences appear in the Shams al-Ma'arif? The book names Greek authorities directly. Its author lists the Codex of Pythagoras and the books of Hermes, Galen and Buqrat (Hippocrates) among the works he examined, gives some letter derivations according to the doctrine of Plato, and records Greek names for planets, such as Qurunus for Saturn. Its astrology of planetary signs, exaltations and falls belongs to the same inherited tradition. **[Shams al-Ma’arif al-Kubra](https://johnfriendpublishing.com/books/al-buni-manuscripts-collection/shams-al-maarif-al-kubra.html)** · The Complete Sun of Divine Knowledge · Vol. I — Al-Buni Manuscripts Collection Formats: - [Read the Translation — Kindle & Paperback](https://urlgeni.us/amazon/7cCq5b)