White-hilt knife

What the source describes

Book II is unusually clear about the exception: the white-hilt knife may perform the necessary operations of the art, but not the circles. The separate black-hilt knife or sword serves there. The white knife is therefore a prepared craft and ritual instrument, not simply a ceremonial badge.

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

Its work includes the cutting and preparation that support the book's experiments, while the chapter reserves circle-making for the dark-hilt blade. The distinction gives the two knives complementary jobs without assigning either one a classical element.

Form, materials and reconstruction

The edited text appoints the day and hour of Mercury, with Mars in Aries or Scorpio and the Moon full or waxing. Aub. 24 specifies a white-boxwood hilt cut in one stroke; characters are engraved on the hilt, while AGLA and ON run on the blade from point toward grip. The historical tempering recipe uses animal blood and pimpinella juice, followed by perfume, sprinkling, and silk storage. These details identify the textual object; they are not a recommendation to reproduce an animal-based rite.

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

The precise names, astrological conditions, ingredients, and inscriptions differ among witnesses. This account follows Peterson's collation and flags its historical preparation rather than smoothing the variants into one supposedly universal knife.

Primary account used here

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

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.