grimoire

noun

1. A book of instructions in the use of alchemy or magic, especially one containing spells for summoning demons.

   “There is something exceedingly unpleasant in being obliged to answer "No," to a traveller's "Pray, Sir, were you ever abroad?" and to sit mum-chance all the time that he is running over the "grimoire" of outlandish technicalities. For my own part, I am convinced that man is, par excellence, a travelling animal; [...]”

   “The Kabalah for Paracelsus, when it is not something quite fantastic and unimaginable, is a species of practical magic, and here we shall do well to remember that the adept of Hohenheim flourished at a period when, as we have seen, the spurious literature of clavicles and grimoires was fast multiplying.”

   “There is extant among the old Grimoires a prayer attributed to the St. Cyprian of legend, who is possibly the holy Bishop of Carthage: its obscure and figurative expressions may have given credit to the idea that prior to his conversion he was addicted to the deadly practices of Black Magic.”

   “Nevertheless, to generations of writers after Independence, the printed word was a kind of magic, the grimoire that would bring about liberation.”