‘The Hours’ by Mat Hadfield
Mat Hadfield, The Hours – The Katarchai of Hygromanteia, West Yorkshire: Hadean Press 2024
Review by Jae Krodel
Katarchai (Greek): Inaugurations of activity. Initiatives, beginnings, used to determine the best time to start a particular action, mundane or magical. (p. xi)
Hemerology, a method of divination […] that links the outcome of events to the occult nature of the times at which these events occur. Specific units of time, such as seasons, months, days, or hours, were thought to have hidden, intrinsically auspicious or inauspicious qualities that influenced the outcome of actions undertaken and events taking place during these periods. (L.S. Chardonens, “Hemerology in Medieval Europe”, in: Donald Harper, Marc Kalinowski (eds.), Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China, Leiden: Brill, 2017, p. 373)
Anyone with the slightest familiarity with grimoire literature will have encountered instructions regarding magical timing such as cutting a new branch of elder in the day and hour of Jupiter or to perform some rite in the day and hour of the sun, and so on. Such procedures are not simply an offering of inconvenience on the part of the would-be magician (though this may underly part of their purpose). Significantly, these instructions on timing, centering as they do around planets and the days and hours those planets are associated with, have important and all-but-forgotten connections to astrology and astrological magic. It is this connection between ancient and medieval magic and astrology that Mat Hadfield deftly unlocks in his excellent The Hours, available from Hadean Press.
Many grimoire translations include charts of the planetary hours, with some including brief discussion of how these might be used. Hadfield’s The Hours addresses critical details not treated elsewhere and takes as its source key manuscripts: sources containing excerpts of the Hygromanteia, primary texts concerning astrological timing and planetary hours including Liber Razielis Book IV, The Greek Magical Papyri, Lucidarium artis Necromantice, Ghent 1021A, VSG334, VRL 1115, Welcome MS 4670, Heptameron manuscripts, and the pseudo-Agrippa Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. Leveraging these sources, Hadfield compares the various systems of planetary hours, and underlying rationales for planetary amity and enmity that lead to those systems, and suggests a way forward: a direct logic based in the primary literature for a reconciled synthesis of the hours for modern practitioners to make sense of the variation in the primary literature and to use as a practical resource for planning the timing of magical operations.
Seasoned practitioners of grimoire magic will have certainly had the personal, hands-on experience of acquiring some important materia magica or performing some rite during the day and hour of a given planet in accordance with the grimoire they are working. In almost all these cases, the day and hour called for are the same e.g. the day and hour of the Sun, the day and hour of Mars, and so on. Curious practitioners, however, will have at some point asked themselves what the other combinations of magical hours may be good for. What, for example, can be accomplished on the day of Mercury in the hour of the Sun? The answer is obtaining wealth. Hadfield answers these and other critical questions by diving deep into the katarchic timing in the Hygromanteia, precursor to the Key of Solomon, and connecting it to the broader ancient and medieval magical literature. In so doing, Hadfield reconstructs a highly practical and all but lost tool for determining the optimal magical hour for various operations as well as the spirits that direct the virtues of that hour.
The author begins by leading us on a tour of important texts elucidating key astrological concepts that tie together ancient and medieval astrological magical lore related to the four Cardinal Kings and three Chiefs of the grimoire corpus with some highly suggestive hints as to their relationship to stellar myth, the constellations near the North Star, and their connections to magical timing. He then walks us through the competing ideas found in various magical texts concerning friendship and enmity between planets, from which are derived the virtues of the various planetary hours on differing planetary days. Hadfield then presents a complete set of reconstructed tables of the hours, sourced from the various manuscripts of the Hygromanteia, including what kinds of work are best undertaken during each hour, and the angel and demon presiding over it.
As an active practitioner who has experimented with the techniques described in Hadfield’s The Hours, I can think of few better means of effectively supercharging one’s sorcerous endeavors than implementing this near-forgotten system of magical timing. It can be used to great effect (alongside the usual lunar cycle considerations) to select the most auspicious hour for a particular operation and to identify the spirits associated with that hour, which can be called upon to aid and assist in our work. The practical applications are diverse and tantalizing. But Hadfield does not stop there.
The author also includes a section of detailed notes providing a deeper understanding of the hours of each day; and the icing on the cake: a virtual liturgy of ritual selections drawn from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) that lean on the same stellar lore and that can be used with the aforementioned tables of magical hours for a variety of magical aims. These include PGM rites for harvesting materia, opening rituals, invocation of deities, prayers to the planetary deities, as well as spells the work with astrological constellations. Interspersed, are treatments of the magical properties of the signs of the zodiac, those of the ancient planets, as well as several other delightful Easter eggs.
Readers interested in adding a powerful new magical technique to their ritual tool kit will find in The Hours a game-changer in terms of enhancing the results of their practical workings and their knowledge of the connections between astrology, star lore, mythology, and ancient and grimoire magic.
