I’m curious as to where these images are coming from.
What you’re showing are pages from an untitled 17th Century book currently in the holdings of the Newberry Library in Chicago. They acquired it in 1988, along with a bundle of medical texts. Although untitled, the library has assigned it the name “
The Book of Magical Charms” for record-keeping purposes.
It’s described as an occult commonplace book written using iron gall ink and likely a quill pen, utilising Latin and archaic English. The subject matter covers medicine, magic and mysticism, including spagiric magic (aka paracelsianism) which claimed to improve the efficacy of existing medicines by separating them into their primordial elements (the tria prima of sulphur, mercury, and salt) and then recombining them. There are numerous passages regarding charms for things such as healing a toothache or recovering a lost voice, as well as how to talk to spirits.
AAlthough the book's principal author is not named, he was identified in 2017 from his handwriting as probably the London lawyer,
Robert Ashley who likely composed the book over the course of his lifetime. He was born in 1565 and died in October 1641.
The book is regarded as unique, with no contemporary copies known to exist. The Newberry Library has made the book's pages available for the public to read and transcribe/translate:
https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/nby_dig/id/2695