Who was the first person to identified Shem angels with Mercurial spirits?
It was not Franz Bardon. My research lead me to Franz Buchmann-Nagg, but I might be wrong, so what I wrote here is open to discussion (as everything else is).
Franz Buchmann-Naga, inspired by Papus and some other sources, wrote in 1925 a book “Schlüssel zu den 72 Gottesnamen der Kabbalah” (“Key to the 72 Names of God of the Kabbalah”), in which he claimed that Shem angels are actually Mercurial spiris.
Franz Buchmann-Naga was experimenting with his partner from September 1916 till January 1917, 450 km apart from each other. In their evocations, Vehuiah appeared in different occasions clothed with a gown as common in the middle ages, a foggy structure with “lovely but loud sound of a bell”, or with the number of ball-lightnings, making the impression of “fiery eyes”.
Mumiah was called for the protection in the astral sphere. He appeared in a “gentle bell sound”. Damabiah, evoked in order to provoke levitation, appeared with the strange cracking sounds coming from south, upholding three fingers in a swearing gesture, after which Naga’s partner fell asleep dreaming about floating in the sky and to flying. The next time they evoked Damabiah, his partner had the impression that he became weightless and lifted a little bit.
Buchmann-Naga and his partner used special Shem talismans containing the related Divine names (from Kircher which was later also applied by Bardon) and Psalm verses (in Latin). The reversed side of their talismans contained the name of the Genius and his Divine attribute written in Latin (in the case Vehuiah his attribute is “Deus Exaltator”: “The God standing high and exalted above all things”).
Buchmann-Naga left a fascinating material, but admitted that during his experiments he realised that he did not have the proper training to work effectively the information he had. Buchmann- Naga’s research was most probably a source for Bardon’s system of magic.
Talerman