迈克尔·康斯坦丁·普赛卢斯（公元前1018-1178年）是拜占庭时代最著名的作家和哲学家之一。拜占庭领地实际上是以拜占庭（君士坦丁堡，现代伊斯坦布尔）为中心的罗马帝国讲希腊语的东部地区，拜占庭于公元前364年从拉丁西方分裂出来。拜占庭的知识遗产为意大利文艺复兴奠定了基础。正是1453年君士坦丁堡的沦陷，使希腊阅读学者的浪潮涌向西欧，尤其是威尼斯。伴随着他们而来的是希腊人从埃及人那里继承的许多魔法和密宗知识。《所罗门的钥匙》就是这样一本书。因此，要理解这些魔法文本，就必须准确地理解拜占庭人是如何理解守护进程的本质的。普赛卢斯是古代世界、拜占庭希腊语和格里莫尔关于守护进程本质的概念之间的桥梁。普赛卢斯来自君士坦丁堡，他的职业生涯是辉煌而务实的，他是历代皇帝的政治顾问，在不同君主之间的权力过渡中发挥着决定性作用。他成为新成立的君士坦丁堡大学的首席教授，获得了“哲学家领事”的荣誉称号。他是大学课程改革的推动力，旨在强调希腊经典，尤其是荷马文学。普赛卢斯被认为是从亚里士多德思想向柏拉图主义传统转变的功臣，他精通政治、天文学、医学、音乐、神学、法理学、物理学、语法和历史。
Dialogue on the Operation of Daemons
Michael Constantine Psellus (1018-1178 C.E) was one of the most notable writers and philosophers of the Byzantine era. The Byzantine domain was effectively the eastern Greek speaking part of the Roman Empire centred on Byzantium (Constantinople, modern Istanbul) which split off from the Latin West in 364 C.E. Its intellectual legacies helped lay the foundations for the Italian Renaissance. It was the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that released a tide of Greek reading scholars into Western Europe, particularly Venice. With them came much of the magical and Hermetic knowledge which the Greeks in their turn had inherited from the Egyptians. The Key of Solomon was one such text. It is therefore essential to the understanding of such magical texts that one understands exactly how the Byzantines understood the nature of daemons. Psellus forms the bridge between the ancient world, Byzantine Greek, and the grimoire conception of the nature of daemons. Hailing from Constantinople, Psellus’ career was an illustrious and practical one, serving as a political advisor to a succession of emperors, playing a decisive role in the transition of power between various monarchs. He became the leading professor at the newly founded University of Constantinople, bearing the honorary title, ‘Consul of the Philosophers’. He was the driving force behind the university curriculum reform designed to emphasise the Greek classics, especially Homeric literature. Psellus is credited with the shift from Aristotelian thought to the Platonist tradition, and was adept in politics, astronomy, medicine, music, theology, jurisprudence, physics, grammar and history.
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