But despite its influence, the Lesser Key is mostly plagiarized: entire sections were simply ripped out of other books circulating at the time. Most prominently, it reproduces much of the Steganographia, a book of magic written by Johannes Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot and polymath, around 1499.

In places, it was as thin as yarn. Other spots looked burned. Some of the rope rungs were ripped off entirely. The ladder didn’t even go all the way to the bottom of the gorge, just down maybe eighty feet before disappearing into a tiny patch of scrawny trees.