Goetic Evocation in the Lesser Key of Solomon: A History

Goetic evocation is the art, described in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the seventeenth-century Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton), of calling one of seventy-two named spirits, traditionally regarded as demons, into visible appearance and commanding it by the names of God and the authority of King Solomon. It is the most notorious practice of Western ritual magic and a major subject of the history of demonology. The Spellbook describes it as history only: it does not give instructions for summoning spirits, and the rite was designed to compel beings its own authors considered evil.

How it was done§

The Ars Goetia opens with a catalogue of the seventy-two spirits, from Bael, "the first principal king", to Andromalius. For each it gives a rank (king, duke, prince, marquis, president, earl or knight), the number of legions under its command, the forms in which it appears, the services it can render (teaching sciences, finding treasure, reconciling friends, revealing past and future and many less benign things), and a seal or sigil.

The apparatus followed. The magician stood within a double circle inscribed with divine and angelic names and a coiled serpent, with lamps or candles around it. Outside, two feet away towards the appropriate quarter, was drawn the Triangle of Solomon, where the spirit was expected to appear. The operator wore a linen robe, a hexagram of Solomon on the skirt and a pentagram on the breast, a lamen bearing the spirit's seal made in the metal of its rank (gold for kings, copper for dukes, silver for marquises and so on), and a ring of Solomon to be shown to the spirit. A brass vessel, sealed with Solomon's seal, recalled the legend that Solomon had imprisoned the spirits in a vessel and cast it into a lake at Babylon.

The rite itself consisted of a series of conjurations of increasing severity, invoking the divine names and threatening the spirit with the curses of God if it delayed, then, once it appeared, a "welcome", the putting of questions or demands, and a formal license to depart. The text assigned times of day to different ranks of spirits and stressed the operator's ritual purity and faith.

Origins and history§

The catalogue of spirits has a clear ancestor. In 1577 the physician Johann Weyer, an opponent of witch trials, appended to his De praestigiis daemonum a list of sixty-nine demons, the Pseudomonarchia daemonum, copied, he said, from a magical book called Liber officiorum spirituum, to show the absurdity of such works. Reginald Scot translated it into English in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584). The Ars Goetia reorganised this material, added spirits and seals, and set it within Solomonic ritual drawn from the Key of Solomon tradition. Its earliest manuscripts, in the British Library's Sloane collection, date from the mid-seventeenth century.

The legend of Solomon commanding demons by a seal ring is far older, appearing in the Testament of Solomon (perhaps third to fifth century) and in Jewish and Islamic traditions. The word goetia, from the Greek for sorcery, had long been used in contrast to theurgia, the "divine work" of late Neoplatonism.

In 1904 Aleister Crowley published The Goetia from a translation prepared by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, adding a "Preliminary Invocation" (an adaptation of a Graeco-Egyptian papyrus) and his own essay interpreting the spirits as portions of the human brain. This edition, and Joseph H. Peterson's scholarly edition of the whole Lemegeton (2001), made the text central to modern occultism. Historians such as Owen Davies and Richard Kieckhefer read it as a late product of the clerical "necromancy" of the Middle Ages, in which ritual magic adapted the forms of Christian exorcism.

Why this is presented as history§

The Spellbook gives practical instructions only for benign workings and never for summoning spirits or demons. Goetic evocation is presented here as part of the history of religion and magic. Readers interested in the Solomonic tradition will find protective material in the Key of Solomon pentacles and further background in the Goetia entry of the texts catalogue.

Safety and good sense§

Accounts of evocation describe states of intense fear and suggestion; anyone experiencing frightening presences, voices or persistent anxiety should talk to a doctor or mental-health professional rather than to a grimoire. Historical study is no substitute for medical, legal or financial help.

Sources and further reading§

• The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis — Joseph H. Peterson, 2001
• The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King — S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley, 1904
• The Goetia of Dr Rudd — Stephen Skinner & David Rankine, 2007
• Grimoires: A History of Magic Books — Owen Davies, 2009
• Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer's Manual of the Fifteenth Century — Richard Kieckhefer, 1997
• Of the Arte Goetia — Colin D. Campbell, 2015