Ars Goetia: The 72 Spirits of Solomon and Their History

The Ars Goetia is the first book of the seventeenth-century Lesser Key of Solomon, a catalogue of seventy-two spirits that King Solomon is said to have bound and sealed in a brass vessel. Each entry names a spirit, gives its rank, appearance, powers and the number of legions it commands, and pairs it with a seal; the list descends mainly from Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577.

What the Ars Goetia Contains§

The book opens with a short narrative frame: Solomon, having gathered these spirits, shut them in a vessel of brass sealed with his seal and cast it into a lake near Babylon. The Babylonians, hoping for treasure, broke it open and released the spirits, who returned to their former places, except for Belial, who entered an image and gave oracles. This story connects the Goetia to a long tradition, visible in the Testament of Solomon and in Arabic tales of sealed jinn, in which Solomon is the great binder of spirits.

The main body of the text is the catalogue itself. It is followed by descriptions of the magic circle, the triangle of art in which spirits were said to appear, the hexagram and pentagram of Solomon, the magic ring, the brass vessel and the secret seal, and a set of conjurations and curses intended to compel a reluctant spirit. Our article on the Lesser Key of Solomon places the Goetia among the compilation's other four books.

Structure of the Catalogue: Ranks, Legions and Seals§

The Ranks§

Each spirit bears one or more titles taken from the vocabulary of European nobility: king, duke, prince, marquis, president, earl (or count) and knight. Some spirits hold two titles, such as Glasya-Labolas, described as both a president and an earl. The ranks were associated in the text with metals for the seals: gold for kings, copper for dukes, tin for princes and prelates, silver for marquises, mercury for presidents, a mixture of copper and silver for earls, and lead for knights. They were also linked to times of day in which spirits of each rank could be called.

Historians see this as a projection of the early modern court onto the spirit world. Demonologists of the period, both those who condemned magic and those who practised it, imagined hell as an organized monarchy with offices and hierarchies, which is why Weyer could satirically title his list a "pseudo-monarchy."

Legions§

Most entries specify that the spirit governs a certain number of legions of lesser spirits, typically between ten and seventy-two. Bael, for instance, rules sixty-six legions; Paimon two hundred, according to some readings. The numbers convey a spirit's relative power, but the text never explains how these legions are organized.

Seals§

Each spirit has a seal, a linear figure often enclosed in a circle, sometimes incorporating letters of the spirit's name. The seals are the Goetia's most visually recognizable feature and appear in many modern reproductions. They vary noticeably between manuscripts, and the versions in the 1904 edition were redrawn. Weyer's printed catalogue does not include seals at all; they come from the manuscript tradition.

Notable Spirits of the Goetia§

Descriptions of the spirits combine animal features, human features and occasional regal trappings, often with a specific function such as teaching sciences, revealing treasure, procuring love or answering questions about past and future.

Bael, the first spirit, is described as a king ruling in the east who makes people invisible and appears with the heads of a toad, a man and a cat. His name is generally connected with the Canaanite title Baal.

Agares, the second, a duke, rides a crocodile and carries a goshawk; he teaches languages and causes earthquakes. Vassago, the third, a prince, is said to be of a good nature and to discover lost things; he is one of the spirits not found in Weyer.

Paimon, the ninth, is a king who appears as a man on a dromedary with a crown, preceded by musicians. He teaches arts, sciences and secrets, and is described as obedient to Lucifer. His entry is one of the longest.

Beleth, the thirteenth, is a mighty king who rides a pale horse with trumpets sounding before him. The text instructs the operator to show him particular deference, reflecting his rank.

Asmoday, the thirty-second, is a king with three heads, those of a bull, a man and a ram, with the tail of a serpent and feet of a goose, riding a dragon. He descends from Asmodeus of the Book of Tobit and the Talmud, whose story is told in our article on Solomon and Asmodeus. In the Goetia he gives a ring of virtues and teaches arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and the mechanical arts.

Belial, the sixty-eighth, is described as a king created next after Lucifer, appearing as two beautiful angels in a chariot of fire. His name comes from the Hebrew Bible, where beliyya'al means worthlessness, and from Second Temple literature in which Belial is a leader of evil forces.

Other familiar names include Astaroth, a duke whose name reflects the Canaanite goddess Astarte transformed into a male demon; Focalor, a duke who drowns men and overthrows ships; Purson, a king with a lion's face carrying a viper; and Andromalius, the seventy-second, an earl who returns stolen goods and punishes thieves.

Relation to Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum§

The Goetia's immediate source is the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, an appendix to Johann Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum (1577 edition). Weyer, a Protestant physician at the court of the Duke of Cleves, opposed the prosecution of witches and printed the list to show readers the absurdity of what he called a blasphemous necromantic manuscript. Reginald Scot translated the list into English in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).

A comparison of the two lists shows that the Goetia shares most of its spirits, often with nearly identical descriptions, but in a different order. Weyer's list has sixty-nine spirits, including Pruflas, who is absent from the Goetia; the Goetia adds Vassago, Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius. The Goetia also supplies the seals and the full ritual apparatus. Scholars therefore conclude that both texts drew on a shared manuscript tradition, of which the sixteenth-century Liber officiorum spirituum and the French Livre des esperitz are surviving relatives, and that the Goetia's compiler also used Weyer or Scot directly.

Why Seventy-Two?§

The number seventy-two carries significance in Jewish and Christian tradition. The Shem ha-Mephorash, the "explicit name" of God in Kabbalah, was traditionally derived as seventy-two three-letter names from three verses of Exodus 14, each verse containing seventy-two letters. Later Christian Kabbalists and occultists, including writers in the circle of the Golden Dawn, paired the seventy-two goetic spirits with the seventy-two angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash and with the seventy-two quinances (five-degree divisions) of the zodiac. These correspondences are modern elaborations; they are not present in the Lemegeton manuscripts themselves. The number also echoes traditions of seventy-two nations and seventy-two disciples, and its symbolic weight may have encouraged the expansion from Weyer's sixty-nine.

Modern Reception of the Goetia§

The Goetia became widely known through The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and published by Aleister Crowley. In his introduction Crowley suggested that the spirits could be understood as portions of the human brain and the operations as a kind of psychological stimulation, an interpretation that proved highly influential. Later practitioners have taken a range of positions, from treating the spirits as autonomous entities to regarding them as symbolic personifications.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the Goetia has been reworked in ceremonial magic, in chaos magick, and by some practitioners on the left-hand path, as well as in Thelemic circles. Its seals and names appear widely in fiction, film, video games, heavy metal album art and anime. Scholarly attention has increased alongside this popularity: Joseph Peterson's 2001 edition of the full Lemegeton and the work of historians such as Owen Davies have made it possible to study the text as a document of early modern culture.

Historians of religion read the Goetia as evidence of how Christian demonology, Jewish divine names, classical deities and court culture combined in the early modern imagination. Several of its spirits are former gods or biblical names: Baal behind Bael, Astarte behind Astaroth, and the Hebrew Belial. The catalogue thus preserves, in distorted form, traces of the ancient Near Eastern pantheons that biblical writers opposed. For the broader development see our history of Satan and the Devil.

Frequently asked questions§

What are the 72 spirits of the Goetia?§

They are seventy-two named spirits listed in the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, each described with a rank, appearance, powers, a number of legions and a seal. Examples include Bael, Agares, Paimon, Asmoday and Belial.

Where does the Ars Goetia come from?§

It was compiled in seventeenth-century England, drawing primarily on Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) and related manuscript catalogues of spirits. It has no connection to the historical King Solomon.

Who is the first spirit of the Goetia?§

Bael, described as a king ruling in the east who appears with the heads of a toad, a man and a cat and who grants invisibility. His name derives from the Canaanite god Baal.

Are the Goetic spirits demons or angels?§

The text treats them as fallen spirits constrained by divine names, and early modern writers regarded them as demons. Some modern practitioners interpret them differently, as morally neutral forces or as aspects of the psyche.

Sources and further reading§

• The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King — trans. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, ed. Aleister Crowley, 1904
• The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis — ed. Joseph H. Peterson, 2001
• De praestigiis daemonum (with Pseudomonarchia Daemonum) — Johann Weyer, 1577
• The Discoverie of Witchcraft — Reginald Scot, 1584
• Grimoires: A History of Magic Books — Owen Davies, 2009
• Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe — Stuart Clark, 1997
• Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century — Richard Kieckhefer, 1997