Beneath the Moon: The Long Forgotten Origins of Astral Necromancy
When Necromancy Became a System
How medieval scholars began building the machinery of astral magic
Every history of Western magic has a missing chapter or two. The west know the great grimoires. They know the Renaissance magicians. They know the familiar names that appear again and again whenever people discuss learned magic: Agrippa, Ficino, Pico, Trithemius, John Dee, and the long shadow of the Key of Solomon etc... But somewhere in the fourteenth century, something changed.
Necromancy stopped being merely a loose collection of forbidden rites, whispered procedures, borrowed names, planetary hours, suspicious diagrams, and instructions that always seem to begin with someone being alone at night with entirely too much confidence. Allegedly...
It began to become something else. Not simply a list of rituals, but a theory of how the universe could be operated and that is the part I find fascinating. Not because medieval necromancy was strange. Are ya kidding me homie? Of course it was strange.
The past is not obligated to make itself comfortable for modern readers. What is more interesting to me is that some of the people writing about this material were not village charmers, wandering frauds, or half-imagined witches muttering in forests.
They were educated men.
University men.
Astrologers.
Physicians.
Mathematicians.
Readers of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
Men trained to think in causes, correspondences, spheres, motions, influences, and hierarchies. The best and the brightest.
Little Did You Know...
Cause they absolutely did not!
But it does mean that when medieval scholars discussed planets, spirits, bodies, weather, illness, fate, and moral danger, they were not always leaving intellectual culture behind. Rather, often, they were standing right inside it. This is where the easy modern story begins to fail cause we like our categories tidy. You know... Science over here. Religion over there. Magic somewhere in the attic next to thes quatty potty you got as a gift, making everyone who talks it uncomfortable.
Keep in mind though that the medieval world did not arrange itself according to our filing system. The heavens were not empty space to them nor the planets were not merely rocks.
The sublunary worldmeverything beneath the sphere of the Moon, was a place of change, decay, generation, corruption, weather, illness, birth, death, and influence and above it stood ordered celestial spheres.
Below them lived human beings trying to understand what moved what and between those realms, medieval thinkers imagined chains of causation.
Planetary influence.
Angelic intelligence.
Demonic agency.
Natural properties.
Ritual timing.
Words.
Images.
Seals.
Names.
Intention.
Suddenly, necromancy is no longer merely a forbidden act. Instead ot becomes a question about causation. If astrology could describe influence, could ritual redirect it?
That question is dangerous but it is also so very much intellectually powerful.
Ya see once you ask it, necromancy stops looking like random superstition and begins looking like an attempt, however theologically alarming, to build a working model of intervention.
Prediction was not enough.
People wanted agency.
They wanted to know whether the machinery of the heavens could be read, timed, invoked, and perhaps persuaded. That is where this trail begins.
The Trail Leads to a Burned Professor
Before we arrive at Antonio da Montolmo, we have to pass through the smoke of another figure: Cecco d’Ascoli.
Cecco was an astrologer, physician, poet, and professor associated with Bologna. He was condemned and eventually burned in Florence in 1327, a date that hangs over this subject like a warning nailed to the door. His story matters because it shows how dangerous the borderland had become.
Astrology could be learned.
Natural philosophy could be respectable.
Theology could structure the cosmos.
However if one were to begin speaking too confidently about demons, fate, celestial necessity, or forbidden forms of knowledge, and the university road could become a road to the stake.
Keep in mind this series is not asking whether medieval necromancy was “true” in the modern sense because I don't feel that is the most interesting historical question.
The better question is this:
What did educated people believe about the universe that made these practices appear coherent?
Cecco’s ideas did not end with Cecco because ya see they left a problem behind. Made people wonder if celestial influence was real, where did spiritual beings fit?
If demons were not merely chaotic tempters but actors within a structured cosmos, could their actions be explained?
🤔 If rituals worked or at least were believed to work have worked... what mechanism connected the human operator, the planets, the spirits, and the material world?
These are not small questions.
They are system questions.
And in the later fourteenth century, one author appears to have taken them with unusual seriousness .
His name was Antonio da Montolmo and his De occultis et manifestis, also known as the Liber intelligentiarum, may be one of the clearest surviving attempts to turn astral necromancy into a coherent intellectual system.
So this is where we begin: Not with a spell or a demon. Instead with a medieval scholar asking whether the cosmos itself had operating instructions. Before we start some info if you wanna read further.
Antonio da Montolmo’s De occultis et manifestis / Liber intelligentiarum is edited and translated by Nicolas Weill-Parot and Julien Véronèse in Claire Fanger’s Invoking Angels. See also this scholarly introduction hosted by Societas Magica. For Cecco d’Ascoli’s biography and 1327 execution, begin with the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica entry, then follow into more specialized scholarship.
Why Educated Men Took Astrology Seriously
One of the biggest obstacles to understanding medieval necromancy isn't the rituals rather it's our assumptions. We tend to imagine a sharp line separating science from magic but the medieval university did not.That doesn't mean professors wandered the halls conjuring spirits between lectures and stuf but it means the intellectual landscape looked very different from our own.
Imagine arriving at a modern university and discovering that astronomy, medicine, philosophy, theology, and mathematics all agreed the planets influenced life on Earth.
That wasn't considered controversial.
It was simply part of how many educated people understood creation.
However, to understand why, we need to set aside modern ideas for a moment. The medieval cosmos was not empty space filled with isolated planets.
It was ordered.
Purposeful.
Layered.
Everything around occupied its proper place. The Earth sat beneath the Moon and above it turned the celestial spheres. Beyond them lay the heavens so movement was not random and influence flowed downward.
The heavens shaped the seasons.
The seasons shaped the harvest.
The harvest shaped kingdoms.
Why wouldn't the stars influence humanity as well? Fair point. If heaven governed tides and weather, could it also govern human lives? For many medieval scholars, the answer seemed obvious.
Of course it could. The real debate now concerned how.
Astrology Wasn't Fortune-Telling
This is another place where modern assumptions get in the way. Ya see ,ost university astrologers weren't trying to predict whether you'd meet a tall, dark stranger before Tuesday and stuff.
They were studying causes.
If particular planetary arrangements coincided with particular earthly events, perhaps those relationships could be understood. Not perfectly but systematically because astrology became a language for discussing influence.
Medicine borrowed from it.
Agriculture borrowed from it.
Political advisers borrowed from it.
Even physicians sometimes chose treatments according to planetary timing.
Several medieval universities taught astrology alongside astronomy because the two subjects were not yet completely separated. Ya see understanding the movements of the heavens was considered essential knowledge for astronomers, physicians, and natural philosophers alike.
None of this automatically led to necromancy because most scholars never crossed that line and many condemned those who did. But once you accept that celestial bodies influence earthly events, another question quietly appears.
If the heavens influence the world... can human beings intentionally work with those influences?
Could timing matter? Could symbols matter? Could words matter?
Could spiritual beings become intermediaries between heaven and earth?
Now we're standing at the edge of something entirely different. 🤔
Prediction is becoming intervention.
Natural philosophy is beginning to overlap with ritual practice.
And somewhere inside that overlap, one Franciscan scholar began asking a question that would shape centuries of ceremonial magic.
His name was Antonio da Montolmo.
But before we meet him, we need to understand another professor whose fate became a warning to everyone who followed....
My grandfather used to say that the fastest way to get lost was to become convinced you already knew where the path ended. History is rather like that. You begin looking for one thing and end up finding something far more interesting.
We started by asking about medieval magic and now instead, we found professors, universities, astronomy, philosophy, and a world trying to understand how everything fit together. So next, we'll meet a man whose story ends at the stake.
Not because he was a cartoon villain or anything but because ideas can become dangerous when they wander too close to certain questions. So... put the kettle on... Bring your curiosity And sweeties let's go meet Cecco d'Ascoli.
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