Pseudomonarchia Daemonum: Johann Weyer's Catalogue of Demons

The Pseudomonarchia Daemonum ("The False Monarchy of Demons") is a catalogue of sixty-nine demons — kings, dukes, princes, marquises, presidents and earls — with their appearances, powers and numbers of legions, printed by the Protestant physician Johann Weyer in 1577 as an appendix to his book against the witch trials, De praestigiis daemonum. Weyer published it to expose what he saw as the fraud and folly of ritual magicians; ironically, through Reginald Scot's English translation it became the main source of the seventy-two spirits of the Ars Goetia.

Johann Weyer and De praestigiis daemonum§

Johann Weyer (also Wier or Wierus, 1515/16–1588) was born at Grave in Brabant and as a young man lived in the household of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, the author of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy. He studied medicine in France, served as town physician of Arnhem, and from 1550 was physician to Duke Wilhelm V of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, whose court was known for its moderate religious policy.

In 1563 Weyer published at Basel De praestigiis daemonum ("On the Tricks of Demons"), one of the most important books in the history of the witch trials. He did not deny the existence of the Devil; on the contrary, he believed demons were active and powerful deceivers. But he argued that the women accused of witchcraft were, for the most part, elderly, melancholic and deluded: the Devil filled their imaginations with false beliefs, and they could not in fact cause the harms they confessed. They needed medical care and spiritual instruction, not the stake. Weyer reserved his severity for the "infamous magicians" — learned men who deliberately conjured spirits — and for fraudulent clergy and healers. His relationship with his teacher is discussed in the article on Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy; Weyer defended Agrippa's memory against the legend that his black dog had been a demon.

The book went through several enlarged editions. To the edition of 1577 Weyer added the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum as an appendix.

The source: a Book of the Offices of Spirits§

Weyer states that he took the catalogue from a manuscript known as the Liber officiorum spirituum, a book "of the offices of spirits" said to be by Solomon, concerning the princes and kings of demons. He presents it as one of the books that magicians used and treasured, and he prints it so that readers may see how absurd and impious its contents are.

Weyer's claim is plausible. Catalogues of spirits with ranks, appearances and powers circulated in late medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. A fifteenth-century French Livre des esperitz lists several dozen spirits, many with the same names as Weyer's, and the English magical miscellany now known as the Book of Oberon, compiled in the later sixteenth century, contains comparable lists. Spirit catalogues of this kind were a recognised genre of the Solomonic tradition — the medieval descendants of the demon-interrogations in the Testament of Solomon — and Weyer's appendix is the first to have been printed.

The structure of the catalogue§

The Pseudomonarchia begins with Bael, "the first king, of the power of the East", who appears with three heads — a toad, a man and a cat — speaks hoarsely, makes men invisible and commands sixty-six legions. It continues with Agares, "first duke under the power of the East", an old man riding a crocodile with a hawk on his fist, who teaches languages and causes earthquakes; with Marbas, a president in the form of a lion; and so on through sixty-nine entries.

Each entry follows a pattern:

• Name and rank: king, duke, prince, marquis, president, earl or knight, imitating the hierarchy of a royal court.
• Form: often animal or monstrous at first, then human on command — a lion, a raven, a bull with griffin's wings, a camel, a leopard.
• Powers: teaching sciences and languages, revealing treasure, procuring love, transporting people, answering questions about past, present and future.
• Order and legions: the angelic order to which the spirit belonged before the fall (thrones, powers, virtues), and the number of legions it commands.

Weyer's text also includes a narrative about Solomon shutting the spirits and their legions into a brass vessel and throwing it into a lake in Babylon, a legend that links the catalogue to the older lore of Solomon's ring and seal.

The four kings of the cardinal points§

The catalogue assumes a world divided among four great kings ruling the cardinal directions. Amaymon, whom later texts call king of the East, is mentioned repeatedly as the ruler under whose power several spirits stand, and the spirit Gaap is said to be "the guide of the four principal kings". Other texts name the remaining kings as Gorson or Corson, Zymymar or Ziminiar, and Goap or Gaap, though the sources disagree about which king rules which quarter. Agrippa reports a different set, Oriens, Paymon, Amaymon and Egyn, and Jewish tradition named four angels of the directions. The idea of rulers of the four quarters is ancient, with roots in Mesopotamian and Hellenistic cosmology, and it gave the demonic court a cosmic geography.

Reginald Scot's English translation§

In 1584 the Kentish gentleman Reginald Scot published The Discoverie of Witchcraft, a sceptical attack on witch-belief that drew heavily on Weyer. In its fifteenth book Scot translated the Pseudomonarchia into English, as "an inventarie of the names, shapes, powers, governement and effects of divels and spirits", along with conjurations from other magical manuscripts. Like Weyer, Scot intended to expose; like Weyer, he thereby preserved and spread the material. The enlarged edition of 1665, which added further magical texts, can be read in the reading room: Scot's inventory of devils and spirits.

Scot's version gave English readers their first full catalogue of demons in the vernacular, and it was available to the compiler of the Lemegeton in the mid-seventeenth century.

From the Pseudomonarchia to the Goetia§

The Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, contains seventy-two spirits. A comparison shows that almost all of them come from Weyer's list via Scot, often with the same wording. The Goetia omits Pruflas, adds four spirits not found in Weyer — Vassago, Seere, Dantalion and Andromalius — changes the order in places, and, most importantly, supplies a seal for each spirit, which Weyer and Scot did not print. The number seventy-two, matching the traditional count of the divine names derived from Exodus, was probably the target the compiler aimed at. The resulting list is described in Ars Goetia: the 72 spirits.

Weyer's critics and his legacy§

Weyer's argument provoked fierce opposition. The French jurist Jean Bodin wrote De la démonomanie des sorciers (1580) in large part to refute him, accusing him of protecting witches and even of being a sorcerer himself because of his association with Agrippa. King James VI of Scotland, in the preface to his Daemonologie (1597), named "Wierus" as an apologist for witches; the dialogue can be read as Daemonologie. Later historians have hailed Weyer as a pioneer of psychiatry; more recent scholarship sees him rather as a devout Erasmian Protestant whose scepticism about witches grew out of his theology of the Devil's deceptions.

The Pseudomonarchia is a strange part of this legacy. A book intended to free accused women from the stake became, through its appendix, the source of the most influential catalogue of demons in Western occultism. For the broader history of demon hierarchies, see demonology: a complete guide.

Frequently asked questions§

How many demons are in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum?§

Sixty-nine in the usual count, although counts vary slightly depending on how some double entries are treated. The Ars Goetia, which derives from it, has seventy-two.

Why did Johann Weyer publish a list of demons?§

He printed it to expose the impiety and absurdity of ritual magic, which he regarded as a genuine crime of learned men, in contrast to the imaginary crimes confessed by accused witches.

Does the Pseudomonarchia include the seals of the spirits?§

No. Weyer and Scot printed names, descriptions and conjurations but not seals. The seals associated with the spirits come from the later Goetia manuscripts.

Who is the first spirit in the Pseudomonarchia?§

Bael, described as the first king, of the power of the East, appearing with the heads of a toad, a man and a cat. He is also the first spirit of the Ars Goetia.

Sources and further reading§

• De praestigiis daemonum — Johann Weyer, 1563
• Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum — Johann Weyer, 1991
• The Discoverie of Witchcraft — Reginald Scot, 1584
• The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis — Joseph H. Peterson, 2001
• On the Demon-Mania of Witches — Jean Bodin, 1580
• The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook for Elizabethan Magic — Daniel Harms, James R. Clark and Joseph H. Peterson, 2015
• Pandemonium: A Discordant Concordance of Diverse Spirit Catalogues — Jake Stratton-Kent, 2016