Recently I acquired a copy of Fulgur’s Touch Me Not, a facsimile, transcription and translation of the Wellcome Library’s notorious Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae (MS1766). This manuscript has circulated quite widely over social media during the last year or so, mostly owing to a fascination with the diversity of demonic genitalia on display therein!
However, little was said about the textual content of the manuscript. We might immediately deduce that it is 17th century, German, and likely connected with the overtly dark and demonic ‘Höllenzwang‘ magical literature, most often associated with Faust. Intrigued by the images, I was excited to discover that an edition was in the works, edited and translated by Hereward Tilton and Merlin Cox, the description of which promised ‘psychedelic drug use, animal sacrifice, sigillary body art, masturbation fantasy and the necromantic manipulation of gallows-corpses.’ My copy arrived last week, and it is a very handsomely produced volume indeed.
Such lurid descriptions as those above undoubtedly make good copy, but what I found most interesting was the way the text interpolated material – chiefly on narcotic salves and fumigations – from the Aufschlüsse zur Magie (1788/1792) of Karl von Eckartshausen. I was only dimly aware of the work of Eckartshausen, but Touch Me Not compelled me to find out more…

Images from MS1766 – a necromantic operation gone awry (and a demon described by Tilton & Cox as ‘dolichophallic’!); sigillic body art, as part of an operation to conjure Astaroth.