Book Discussion Shams al-Ma'arif wa Lata'if al-'Awarif

[MacLu69]

Al-Buni - The Sun of Knowledge (Shams al-Ma'arif), An Arabic Grimoire in Selected Translation

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Thank you very much for this book, you helped us, we were looking for it in the Group Buys on occult clicks. We were there, trying to get it, and then hop we saw it here and thank you for that.

 

[Milton]

So anyone studied this book yet? Opinions here would be interesting on a Quran/Arabic based grimoire as we don't get to see that happening often.

I have compared the contents of this book to the original manuscripts/books. The majority of them have 40 chapters. The facsimiles had 300-500 pages. The printed versions were around 600 pages. The version that was printed in 1985 in Beirut had 4 extra letters at the end of it.

Meanwhile, this translation has only at 10 chapters, 320 pages. It is quite obvious that the translator modified the chapters according to some criteria.

To add further, another lesser known book is circulating that also goes by the name: "The Lesser Sun of Knowledge."
There was a pdf copy of it circulating online, at 130 pages. There's not much information about it, and manuscripts seem scarce. It might possibly be a redacted version of the main work.

While I have not studied the system (nor actually am interested) it does seem quite similar to Kabbalah. There's a strong emphasis on Arabic Gematria and the 99 divine names along with some astrological elements.

The Sufi system presented also gives me the sense of having potential influences from, or perhaps influencing, ATR traditions. I'm not certain about this, though. Any thoughts or opinions on this connection would be welcome.

 

[MacLu69]

At the moment, here are the well-known translations into French, English, Indonesian, and Spanish. And some languages close to Arabic
But we are mostly interested in printed versions where the text can be placed in the text recognition box in the OSR language from the editors and it quickly translates through the translator into any of the languages. We have been interested in this topic for a long time. We found that this version of the Main Ones exists in 4 volumes - That is, the main big sun - Then the middle sun - the Small sun and there is another 4th Sun of knowledge that has not yet been explored.

 

[Milton]

At the moment, here are the well-known translations into French, English, Indonesian, and Spanish. And some languages close to Arabic
But we are mostly interested in printed versions where the text can be placed in the text recognition box in the OSR language from the editors and it quickly translates through the translator into any of the languages. We have been interested in this topic for a long time. We found that this version of the Main Ones exists in 4 volumes - That is, the main big sun - Then the middle sun - the Small sun and there is another 4th Sun of knowledge that has not yet been explored.

Interestingly enough. I did find the "Middle" Sun of Knowledge. I hadn't realized there were multiple versions of this book. This one is indeed shorter than the main version. I will need to verify if it's the case that the 'Big,' 'Middle,' and 'Small' versions are simply "chapters" of the main work by comparing to the manuscripts.

I did find a lot of manuscripts of this work available online which reminds me of the Lemegeton in terms of its apparent popularity.

I'm not sure why I'm even researching this book, as I don't intend to study it. Yet, for some reason, I find it interesting.