The Pact Grimoire

The Grand Grimoire, later reissued as Le Dragon Rouge (The Red Dragon), is notorious among the French grimoires for abandoning the pious tone of the Solomonic books in favour of frank spirit coercion and a diabolical pact. Its centrepiece is a rite to summon Lucifuge Rofocale, the "prime minister" of the infernal empire, and to negotiate with him for wealth, together with the making of the Blasting Rod (baguette foudroyante), with which the magician compels the spirit to terms. It claims great antiquity, sometimes a date of 1522, but it is an eighteenth- to nineteenth-century compilation belonging to the French "Bibliotheque bleue," the cheap popular chapbook trade, and its false antiquity is part of its sales pitch. Owen Davies treats it as a characteristic product of the point where the learned grimoire tradition met mass-market print and folk sorcery; it circulated widely in the nineteenth century, was carried to the French Caribbean, and left a mark on the folk-magical traditions there. It is best read as popular occult literature of the early-modern print trade rather than as a medieval magical text.