Book of Soyga

The Book of Soyga, also titled Aldaraia, is a 16th-century Latin treatise on magic, one copy of which is known to have been possessed by the Elizabethan scholar John Dee. After Dee's death, the book was thought to be lost until 1994 when two manuscripts were located in the British Library (Sloane MS. 8) and the Bodleian Library (Bodley MS. 908), under the title Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor, by Dee scholar Deborah Harkness. The Sloane 8 version is also described as Tractatus Astrologico Magicus, though both versions differ only slightly.

Elias Ashmole recorded that the Duke of Lauderdale owned a manuscript titled Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor that had formerly belonged to Dee. The manuscript was sold at auction in 1692 and is now probably Sloane MS. 8, based on Jim Reeds' identification. Bodley MS. 908 was donated to the Bodleian Library in 1605.

Jim Reeds notes that the Bodley 908 MS consists of 197 pages including Liber Aldaraia (95 leaves), Liber Radiorum (65 pages), and Liber decimus septimus (2 pages), as well as a number of shorter and unnamed works totaling approximately ten pages. The final 18 pages of the MS contain 36 tables of letters. The Sloane 8 MS consists of 147 pages, mostly identical to the Bodley MS, with the exception that the tables of letters appear on 36 pages, and the Liber Radiorum is presented in a two-page summarized version.

Amongst the incantations and instructions on magic, astrology, demonology, lists of conjunctions, lunar mansions, and names and genealogies of angels, the book contains 36 large squares of letters which Dee was unable to decipher. Otherwise unknown medieval magical treatises are cited, including works known as liber E, liber Os, liber dignus, liber Sipal, and liber Munob.

Jim Reeds, in his short work John Dee and the Magic Tables in the Book of Soyga, notes a proclivity to record words backwards in the MS, citing as examples Lapis reversed as Sipal, Bonum reversed as Munob, and the title of the MS, Soyga, as Agyos, literis transvectis, revealing a practice which sought to obscure some of the works cited. 'Soyga' is ‘Agios’ (Greek for "Holy") spelled backwards.

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