First published in 1898, The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts is Arthur Edward Waite’s extensive study of ceremonial magic and the European grimoire tradition. Rather than presenting a single magical system, Waite examines, compares and reproduces material drawn from numerous historical magical texts, combining their rituals with his own critical commentary.

The book is divided broadly into two parts. The first, The Literature of Ceremonial Magic, surveys the history and classification of magical rituals. Waite considers the distinction between what earlier occult writers described as white and black magic before examining texts including the Arbatel of Magic, Key of Solomon, Lesser Key of Solomon, Fourth Book of Cornelius Agrippa, Heptameron, Grimorium Verum, Grand Grimoire, Grimoire of Honorius and The Black Pullet.

The second part turns more directly to ritual practice. Its subjects include the preparation of the operator, magical instruments, planetary influences, conjuration, hierarchies of spirits and the ceremonies associated with Goëtic magic. Waite also discusses traditions surrounding magical pacts, infernal invocation, necromancy, invisibility, divination and the invocation of spirits.

Waite did not approach these texts simply as a practitioner assembling a manual. His commentary is frequently critical of the claims, legends and supposed antiquity surrounding grimoire literature. The result is both a collection of historical magical material and a late nineteenth-century attempt to examine and organise the ceremonial magical tradition.

The original 1898 edition was extensively illustrated, containing full-page plates as well as numerous smaller figures and diagrams drawn from the magical texts under discussion.

For readers interested in grimoires, demonology and Western esotericism, the book provides a revealing record of how ceremonial magical literature was collected and interpreted at the end of the nineteenth century.