The Donkey King
by Emily Selove
- First published:
- 21st century
- Language: English
- Content type: Fiction
The 13th-century Arabic grimoire, al-Sakkākī's Kitāb al-Shāmil (Book of the Complete), provides numerous methods of contacting jinn. The first such jinn described, Abū Isrā'īl Būzayn ibn Sulaymān, arrives with a donkey. In the course of offering an explanation for his ritual, this Element reveals the double-sided nature of asinine symbology, and explains why this animal has served as the companion of both demons and prophets. Focusing on two nodes of donkey symbology—the phallus and the bray-it reveals a coincidentia oppositorum in a deceptively humble and comic animal form. Thus, the donkey, bearer of a demonic voice, and of a phallus symbolic of base materiality, also represents transcendence of the material and protection from the demonic. In addition to Arabic literature and occult rituals, the Element refers to evidence from the ancient Near East, Egypt, and Greece, as well as to medieval Jewish and Christian texts.
Provenance
Why this book is in the catalog
Included because retained bibliographic metadata links this work to Demonology, angelology, and possession, Occultism and esotericism, and Ritual magic and grimoires.
Retained metadata contains “occult” in the description and “occult” in the subject metadata.
- “occult”· in description
- “occult”· in subject
Controlled discovery queries from openalex matched “grimoires”. Retained metadata contains “grimoire” in the description.
- “grimoires”· via OpenAlex
- “grimoire”· in description
Retained metadata contains “demons” in the description.
- “demons”· in description
Membership records how this book met the catalog’s discovery criteria — relevance to a tradition, not a judgment of the book’s claims.
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Editions
One edition cataloged here.
| Edition | Date | Publisher | Language | ISBN | Access | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
OpenAlex scholarly book record | 2023-11-24 | Cambridge University Press; Cambridge University Press eBooks | English | — | Unknown |
Subjects
- History
- Social Sciences
- Philosophy
- Arts and Humanities
- Art
- Literature
- Archeology
- Archaeology
- Anthropology
- Sociology and Political Science
- Art history
- Law
- Aesthetics
- Occult
- Linguistics
- Archaeology and Historical Studies
- Historical and Linguistic Studies
- Arabic
- Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
- Materiality (auditing)
- Comics
- Element (criminal law)
- Donkey
- Phallus (fungus)
Identifiers & provenance
How this record was assembled, and the authority identifiers it carries.
Identifiers
- OpenAlex
Cataloged from
- OpenAlexprimaryW4388961664 (opens in a new tab)
Found via
- Catalog id
- openalex:W4388961664
- Edition coverage
- Openalex source record
- Retrieved