Occult Origins of Technology · 2/7 · c. 1274 – 1950 CE

Llull's Wheels → Combinatorial Logic

The machine that was an argument. A 13th-century missionary built paper discs to generate every combination of God's attributes, and argued that reasoning itself could be turned by a handle. He was wrong about what his machine proved. He was right that a machine could do it.

REVISED 2026-07-24 · 10 THE CLAIMS, LABELLED

How to read the labels

Documented influenceA traceable line — texts, apparatus, or people demonstrably carried the practice forward.

Shared techniqueThe same method on both sides of the divide; transmission is likely but not fully papered.

Historical coexistenceSame rooms, same decades; influence unproven.

Later reinterpretationA modern meaning projected back onto the old practice.

DisputedSerious scholars disagree. Both readings are shown.

Popular mythWidely repeated; contradicted by the record.

Plate I — The constellation of descent11 NODES

documented shared technique coexistence disputed reinterpretation extinguished

Each star is a node in the lineage; the line style states how strong the connection is.

Retained by logic

Exhaustive enumerationgenerate every combination of a fixed set, then rule them out — the shape of a modern search
Letters standing for conceptsB for goodness, C for greatness — symbols manipulated without regard to meaning
The claim that inference is mechanisablethe premise every later formal logic assumes, and the one Llull argued first
A device you operate, not readthe volvelle is a user interface: turn the disc, read the result
Combinatorics as a subjectLeibniz's De arte combinatoria takes Llull as its named starting point

Left to the dark

That enumeration constitutes proof
The nine divine dignities as primitive terms
Conversion of non-believers by argument
The elemental and astrological figures of the Art
Llull as author of the alchemical corpus

The claims, labelled

CL-01
Llull built working paper instruments — concentric rotating discs, or volvelles — that mechanically generate every pairing of a fixed set of terms.Ars generalis ultima (1305–1308); surviving manuscript figures are reproduced in Bonner, ed., Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1985).
Documented
CL-02
The Art assigns letters to concepts — B for goodness, C for greatness, and so on — and operates on the letters rather than the words.Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull: A User's Guide (2007), ch. 2.
Documented
CL-03
Leibniz read Llull and wrote about him: De arte combinatoria (1666) names the Art and takes it as a starting point, while criticising its limits.Leibniz, Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (1666), §§ on the ars magna Lulliana.
Documented
CL-04
Llull's purpose was missionary: a demonstration so compelling that Muslims and Jews would have to accept Christian doctrine. He travelled to North Africa to try it in person.Vita coaetanea, the contemporary account dictated by Llull c. 1311.
Documented
CL-05
Kircher's Ars Magna Sciendi (1669) put Llullian combinatory diagrams into wide print circulation, which is how most later readers met them.Kircher, Ars Magna Sciendi sive Combinatoria (Amsterdam, 1669).
Documented
CL-06
Exhaustive enumeration of a combination space, then elimination of the impossible, is the method Llull's discs perform and the shape of modern combinatorial search.The resemblance is structural and uncontested; a direct line of transmission into computer science is not claimed here — see CL-09.
Technique
CL-07
Llull invented the computer, or built the first computer.The discs have no store, no conditional branching, and no notion of a program. They enumerate; they do not compute. The claim appears in popular retellings, not in the scholarship.
Myth
CL-08
Llull was an alchemist, and the alchemical works bearing his name are his.The pseudo-Lullian alchemical corpus was written after his death by other hands. Llull's authentic writings reject alchemy. Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raymond Lull (1989).
Myth
CL-09
Llull's Art is a genuine ancestor of modern computing rather than a structural resemblance noticed after the fact.Bonner (2007) and Fidora & Sierra, eds., Ramon Llull: From the Ars Magna to Artificial Intelligence (2011) argue for real influence through Leibniz; others read the resemblance as retrospective. The documented chain runs Llull → Leibniz; from Leibniz onward it is unambiguous, and it is the first link people overstate.
Disputed
CL-10
The Art was a memory system, in the tradition of the memory palace.That reading comes largely from Bruno's Renaissance use of Lullian wheels and from Yates, The Art of Memory (1966). Llull's own texts present the Art as a method of demonstration, not recall.
Reinterpretation

Plate II — Figure ANINE DIGNITIES

Redrawn from the figures of the Ars generalis ultima. Each chord is one pair the device enumerates — thirty-six for nine terms. The enumerating was the easy part; the hard claim was that enumeration proves anything.

Sources

Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull: A User's Guide (2007)
Bonner, ed., Selected Works of Ramon Llull (1985)
Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raymond Lull (1989)
Fidora & Sierra, eds., Ramon Llull: From the Ars Magna to Artificial Intelligence (2011)
Leibniz, Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (1666)
Kircher, Ars Magna Sciendi sive Combinatoria (1669)
Yates, The Art of Memory (1966)
Imagery: Public Domain Review · Internet Archive · Biblioteca Digital Hispánica

Next in the series: Magic lanterns → cinema and projection