Quill knife

What the source describes

The Latin artavus is rare enough that later copies and translations turned one tool into a sickle, scimitar, pruning hook, or even several different blades. Peterson's edition returns to the practical sense 'craft-knife' or 'quill knife.' In Chapter IX it is planted at the exact centre of the working place and the measuring cord is fastened to it.

Historical setting

The Key of Solomon survives as a family of manuscripts rather than one authorial master copy. Instrument names, drawings, preparation details and even which tools appear can differ between witnesses, so this page follows the cited edition and records its variants.

Common uses

It sharpens a writing quill elsewhere in Book II and anchors the radius when the circle is laid out. Once the cord has described the circumference, the boundary itself may be marked with the sword or black-hilt knife. This is a good example of an ordinary craft tool becoming ritually prepared without losing its practical job.

Form, materials and reconstruction

Chapter VIII groups the artavus with the iron stylus and short lance under the day and hour of Mercury. Some witnesses specify white-boxwood handles and historical tempering materials, then perfume and silk wrapping. The editor's manuscript drawings range from a small knife to a curved, sickle-like form, which explains the later translation history; no single silhouette should be presented as certain.

Element: No fixed element

This source does not assign this particular instrument a fixed element. Its materials or effects should not be turned into an elemental correspondence without a named source.

Sources and variations

Mathers's influential English version rendered artavus as 'sickle or scimitar' and multiplied the instruments in this paragraph. The manuscripts do not all agree on its shape, but the philological note supports one quill knife, not a standard modern athame.

Primary account used here

Key of Solomon, Book II, Book II, chapter IX ↗

Further references

• Key of Solomon: introduction and contents ↗Editorial history and an overview of the manuscript-based edition.
• Hebrew Key of Solomon ↗A different witness with its own section on magical instruments and requisites.