I didn't even open the book for months, apparently the warning had an effect on me. I believed every word of it.
But months later I found out Mather's translation was weakened severely by these things:
One of the four books by Abramelin was left out of the French manuscript with which he worked.
... possibly due to a mistranslation, Mathers changed one of the ingredients within the recipe for Abramelin's oil, specifying galangal instead of the original herb calamus. The oil in the German manuscript sources also contains cassia and is nearly identical to the biblical recipe for Holy anointing oil.
The differences between the recipes cause several notable changes in the oil's characteristics, including edibility, fragrance, dermal sensation, and spiritual symbolism.
Slso, there are 242 word squares in Mathers' translation, while the original German has 251. Most of the squares in Mathers are not completely filled in, and those that are differ markedly from the German sources.
A German translation, credited to Abraham of Worms and edited by Georg Dehn, was published in 2001 by Edition Araki.
NOTE: In the Dehn version, the fourth book is included and Mathers' galangal substitution is reverted back to calamus (though not in the English translation — see Abramelin Oil). All 251 of the word squares are completely filled in. An English translation of Dehn's edition was published 2006 by the American publisher Nicholas Hays.
