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Case file

Picatrix

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “known as the aim of the sage”. Today it says “a 400-page arabic book of magic and astrology”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005

Picatrix or Ghâyat al-Hakîm fi'l-sihr is also known as The Aim of the Sage .1 It has been attributed to al-Majriti an Andalusian Mathematician .2 Originally written in Arabic , a Latin translation appeared in 1256 from the court of Alphonso X of Castile of Castille . The book had a major influence on West European magical thinking from Marsilio Ficino and Thomas Campanella to Ivan Chtcheglov .3 The edition in the British Library passed through several hands: Simon Forman , Richard Napier , Elias Ashmole and William Lilly . A translation of the first two books appeared in English in 20024

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 17671598.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “known as the aim of the sage”. Today it says “a 400-page arabic book of magic and astrology”. Read the current article and compare.
2005201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

known as the aim of the sage

Now

a 400-page arabic book of magic and astrology

Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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