Missing Daemon & the Secret of the 73rd Quinarian

I have been puzzling over a minor conundrum lately about the Goetic daemon named Pruslas, and how he had just dropped out of the list of Goetic daemons that appeared in the Goetia, only to reappear later in the Grand Grimoire. This mere fact would appear to give ammunition to those who insist that the Goetia, which is the first book of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, is a very late grimoire whose origin is no earlier than the mid 17th century. However, I think that I have discovered a solution to this puzzle and found a way to re-insert the lost daemon into the Goetia under a special category. Let me seek to explore these ideas with you in greater detail. You may recall that I wrote a previous article that looked at the history of the list of daemons as it was used in Goetic evocation. You can find it here.

With the exception of the first book, called the Goetia, the other four books that make up the Lemegeton have been mentioned in other works and can be dated to at least the early 16th century, and a couple are quite earlier than that. It seems obvious that the Lemegeton was a late compilation and collection of much earlier works. The one book whose date is highly questioned is the first book. We can examine the very scanty evidence available and conjecture that the list of daemonic spirits was built up from the 14th century to the 16th century, where the list appears to accumulate new names over time. At the advent of the 16th century, there was a prized book, a copy of which was in the hands of the monk-magician Trithemius, that listed the demons and their associated magickal seals. That book was called “Liber Malorum Spirituum,” and is now lost. No one knows the exact count or order of the daemons that were listed in that work, but speculation on one side of the argument states that there were 72 spirits in that book. Another argument would state that there were only 69 spirits. Still another argument would speculate that there were 79 spirits in all.

Later on in the 16th century, a physician scholar named Johann Weyer, who was a student of Agrippa, wrote and published a book entitled “Praestigiis Daemonum” (1563), which argued against the persecution of witches as put forth in the notorious Maleus Malleficarum. In the appendix of this work was another document entitled “Pseudomonarchia Daemonum,” which contained a list and description of 69 daemons. Weyer said that he had purposely changed the work from its original source so as to make it unusable, should anyone be foolish enough to attempt to evoke a daemon. What exactly was meant by this statement is a mystery, since he did include some simple rituals to do just that - the only thing apparently missing were the seals. This document was later translated into English at some unknown date, and it was ironically used in Reginald Scot’s book refuting witchcraft, magick and occultism entitled “Discovery of Witchcraft,” which was published in 1584. Somewhere in that translation process, one of the spirits was dropped from the list, which then had only 68 daemons, and that spirit was, of course, Pruslas. Like the Weyer document, the Scot version omitted the seals, although Scot implied that the total number of evil spirits was 79.

“..and with authoritie they call up by name, and have at their commandment seventie and nine principall and princelie divels, who have under them, as their ministers, a great multitude of legions of pettie divels; as for example.” R. Scot, book XV, chapter 1.

Joseph Peterson has probably pretty much summed up one side of the opinion by stating that the Goetia appears to have used a poor Latin translation of Weyer’s document to build up the list of daemons for that work, even though the Weyer document omitted the seals and had three less spirits than the Goetia. As if to prove that point even further, both the Scot version and the Goetia are missing the daemon spirit named Pruslas. Perhaps I might find this a closed case if it were not for the fact that four additional daemon spirits have been added to the list to bring it up to 72 spirits total. A cursory glance at the seals for the 72 daemons appears to show a continuity between the original 68 seals and the additional four - I don’t see an obvious deviation in form. That might mean that the seals were developed at the same time, however, the original source document had the seals in it as well, so one could argue that there were more spirits listed in the original.

One inexplicable item is that the order of the daemons is completely different between the Weyer document and the Scott version, as if the list of spirits were a deck of cards and were thrown into the air and randomly reassembled, or that’s how Peterson has stated it. The spirits in the Goetia have the same sequential order and rank as compared to the Scot version, so it would seem at least that they were compiled from the same source document, although the verbiage used to describe the daemons is quite different between the two. Keep in mind that Weyer made certain that he violated the contents of the original document to make his version unusable, so it could even be argued that the order of the spirits was changed from the original. He may have omitted some spirits as well, but it’s obvious that the omission of Pruslas shows that the source for the Goetia was at least different than the source that Weyer used for his document. Another difference is that the Goetia and Scot’s version include the daemonic hierarchy, but Weyer’s document excludes that information.

David Rankine, who with Stephen Skinner, edited and published the book “Goetia of Dr. Rudd, ” defends the age of all five books of the Lemegeton, saying that all five were known to Trithemius, and in fact, he was the author of two of them. Here is a quote from his website that talks about the age of the Lesser Key. You can find it here.

“There are five parts to the Lemegeton, which are the Goetia, the Theurgia-Goetia, the Art Pauline, the Art Almadel and the Notary Art. The German scholar magician Abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) acknowledged de Abano’s influence when he referred in his Antipalus Maleficorum (1508) to the Lemegeton as the ‘key made by Abano’.  As the word key is a translation of Clavicule, and the name given to the Lemegeton was the Clavicula Salomonis, this clearly indicates a supposition of authorship.  We know that all five parts of that book existed in 1500 (though not as a collection together) and all five were known to Trithemius, and indeed he probably wrote two of them.”

However, David Rankine does admit that the Goetia was actually a much later version of the Liber Malorum Spirituum, and that the contents of the earlier source document were redacted into the Goetia. So David’s arguments, although interesting, admit to a problem with the age of the Goetia and the date of the compilation of the Lemegeton. While the books Ars Almadel and Ars Notaria were known as early as the 14th century, the second and third books were written by Trithemius himself. While it would appear that de Abano probably didn’t write the grimoire Heptameron, and that the Heptameron was used exclusively for angelic type invocations, it seems strange to attribute the Lesser Key to him. I believe that Trithemius may have been referring to the Heptameron as being a useful “key” to performing advanced forms of evocation. One could see that as being the more likely meaning of that sentence.

David’s lionization of Dr. Rudd, an obscure English occult practitioner, as one of the great magicians of his time is probably overly generous. Dr. Rudd, like many others in his time, experimented with many forms of theurgy and evocation, and not everything he did turned out either brilliantly or even successfully. Still, he was a pioneer, and there wasn’t much to guide such an avocation in those days. If Dr. Rudd has left us with work that is either dubious or ridiculous, we must consider the distance of time as one of the factors.

Since we are missing the source documents, beginning with the Liber Malorum Spirituum and including the English translation that was used by Scot for his work, as well as the version used for the Goetia, we will probably never know for certain which version is identical to the original source, which was irreparably changed or distorted, and which came first. I believe that we can be certain that the Liber Malorum Spirituum was the original source document, and that it existed at the turn of the 16th century. The Goetia had appropriated and adapted some of the ceremonies and rituals used for Goetic evocation from the Heptameron, which was the very first fully developed Christian ceremonial magickal grimoire. Thus there seems to be little that would keep one from supposing that the Goetia was probably written sometime in the late 16th century or 17th century, whether earlier or later is anyone’s conjecture. Still, the final piece of evidence seems to really settle the matter.

There is one damning piece of evidence that pulls the dating of the Goetia well into the 17th century, stated as a matter of fact by Jake Stratton-Kent, in his book “True Grimoire,” and that is the only versions of the Goetia are written in English. There are no Latin versions of the Goetia extant in any library or referenced in any book list, and the source documents would therefore likely have also been in English, making the source document that Scot used for his version of the list of daemons and the English translation of the Heptameron as the actual source documents for the Goetia, all of which were available, but only by the mid 17th century.

What this means is that the Goetia is very likely not the actual work that was an original part of the supposed Lemegeton, instead the Liber Malourm Spirituum probably functioned as the first book for that kind of magickal work. It would have likely included the infernal hierarchy of seven devils, and the 72 Goetic spirits, including the four that were missing from Weyer’s work, and the one that was dropped from the Scott and Goetia versions. The primitive ceremonies that Weyer included in his work would likely have also been copied from that original work. The daemon Astaroth (29) would have been part of the infernal hierarchy and not a member of the 72 daemons. This is the structure proposed by Jake, and I feel that it has some merit. Still, if we don’t pull Astaroth from the list, and we don’t use the infernal hierarchy, then there are 73 daimons that have to be fully accounted.

What has been bequeathed to us from the Goetia, whether one believes it to be an original work or a poor derivation, is a list of 72 daemons, with one daemon accidentally omitted. The strength of this system is not found in the verification of the source documents or by arguing over precedence, but how well it works and functions as a magickal system today. As I have stated previously, the number 72 is quite auspicious and is already part of the spiritual hierarchy of the angelic spirits (such as the angels of the Ha-Shemhemphorash).

Since the number 72 is also analogous to the zodiacal system of the 36 decan faces and the 72 quinarians, we can see that having a list of 72 daemons will allow us to fit them right into that spiritual hierarchy and become defined through an astrological matrix. So the number of spirits does make a difference in the underlying structure that can be used to determine their correspondences. This all seems quite elegant and useful, except that one daemon that was omitted. Counting that daemon makes for 73 total spirits, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole works. Or, is there some other way of explaining this anomaly without having to nullify the use of the quinarians or sweeping the omitted daemon under the rug and pretending that it doesn’t exist? 

As you might recall, I have written a previous article about how the ancient Egyptians used the zodiacal decans as both a time keeping device and a calendar. The decans were used to visually plot the stellar (and magickal) hours of the night. They also used the nightly sighting to determine the date of the year. The ancient Egyptians, like many ancient people, had calculated a calendar consisting of 360 days plus five intercalated days. The 360 days would be represented by a ten day period for each of the 36 decans. The five extra days would represent an extra quinarian. I will quote the exact paragraph here for consideration, you can find it here.

“Another interesting thing about the decans is that every 10 days a new decan would appear at the horizon at the first observable hour of the night. It’s from this array of 36 decans, each lasting 10 days, that the Egyptians determined their solar based calendar, where the last decan coincided with the annual inundation of the Nile river. They had a yearly calendar of 36 decans with five days added to the end to make 365 days in all. The five additional days would represent a 73rd quinarian in the Egyptian astrological system, but that is another interesting item to discuss in another article.”

If we follow the Egyptian example above, then from the standpoint of the calendar, there is one extra quinarian, symbolizing a kind of mysterious synthesis of the ideal and the actual. That would mean that the additional quinarian would also have associated with it, one angel of the Ha-Shem and one daemon. This extra quinarian would not be represented by a ten degree segment of the zodiac, instead it would characterize a kind of interstice or lintel between worlds. For the Egyptians, this intercalated period represented the advent of the rising of the Star Sothis (Sirius), which presaged the inundation of the river Nile. We have a 73rd daemon, but what about an associated angelic name, representing a 73rd angel of the Ha-Shem?

Since the angel names of the Ha-Shemhemphorash are derived from the three contiguous 72 Hebrew letters verses found in the biblical book of Exodus, chapter 14, verses 19 through 21, the three letters for the 73rd angelic name would be extracted from the first, last and first letters of the three additional verses, from verse 22 through 24. The pattern for extracting the angelic names for the 72 angelic names is to place the letters left to right, then right to left, and left to right, to get the root, then to add either AL or YH to the ending. Because there are 40 angels with the AL ending, and 32 with the YH ending, I felt that the 73rd angel would use the ending YH, thus making 33 with that ending.

Using the above logical structures, I was able to deduce that the 73rd angel of the Ha-Shem would have the name VMVYH, and would be pronounced Vamuyah. This angel would be paired with Pruslas and would symbolize the 73rd quinarian, whose quality is that of a gateway of mystery, material abundance and the currents of ascending and descending Spirit.

One question that you might be asking yourself at this point is why do I always seem to be balancing daemons with angels? Why not go all one way or the other, instead of seemingly hedging everything between opposites? My reason for doing this, and I might add, consistently, is not that I am afraid of the Goetic daemons, but that I seek to maintain a balance between forces and intelligences and their affects. As a witch, I work with both the powers of light and darkness equally, so I would seek to engage both angelic and daemonic intelligences. Also, I don’t subscribe to the myth that daemons are somehow always malefic and evil, and angels always good, since that would be too simplistic, and it would mean that I have bought into the values of an exoteric Christian morality. The World of Spirits is neither simplistic nor easily determined by morality. Because as a witch I do subscribe to the concept of the unnamed One, then both the angels and the daemons serve that One as functioning intermediaries, just as the light and the darkness fuse together to formulate the Unity of Being. Therefore, the angels and daemons would function as “daimones” in the Greek definition of the word, but to realize and fully understand any of them, one must invoke or evoke them.  

Now that all of the issues have been covered and every spirit has its niche and a place through which it is defined using the 73 decans, I believe that the matter is elegantly resolved - for the moment.

Frater Barrabbas

Whence Cometh the Demons?

I am doing some intensive research lately on a topic that I have, off and on, continued to study and puzzle over for many years. I have known the answer in my head, perhaps intuitively, to the question “whence cometh the demons”, which is a fancy way of asking the question about the origins of what we in the occult refer to as demonic spirits.

The history of demonic spirits is quite fascinating, particularly since there doesn’t seem to be one actual source. Modern western definitions of these spirits are derived from Christian demonology, a specialized branch of theology. Demons are defined as malevolent spirits and represent a united faction opposed to God and his angels. However, this was not always the case, since the dualistic nature of demons vs. angels appears to have its roots in Zoroastrianism. Since Christianity is a synthesis of the Hellenistic and Semitic cultures of the Greco-Roman and Jewish religions, then our search should naturally begin there. Whatever theological perspectives the medieval church promoted about demons won’t shed much light on their origins and antecedents. Also, the earliest Christian magical grimoires, such as Liber Juratus and the Ars Notoria, not to mention the Heptameron, appear to omit any mention of demons. We have to examine Jewish contemporaneous occult and magical sources in order to find the earliest magical use of demons. So one might think that Christian occultism borrowed the concept of a hierarchy of demons, one which the magician could use to conjure, constrain and make use of their associated powers.

Some have speculated that the lists and characteristics of goetic demons and infernal spirits would have their origin with the Greeks. Prior to Plato, Greeks referred to spirits that were intermediaries to the gods and mankind as “daimones.” These spirits were generally considered to be positive, being minor deities or the ghosts of heros or founders, the collective guardians and protectors of humanity. Some scholars believe that prior to Homer, deities and daimones were interchangeable, others disagree. Walter Burkert, in his book “Greek Religion” is one of the scholars who disagrees, proposing that the word daimon represents an occult or unknown force that drives humanity when no known source for that ambition or inspiration is apparent.

For the ancient Greeks, a belief in demons may have preceded the belief and worship of the gods, much like the Roman belief in individual genius or the numen of unknown spiritual presences. Socrates was reputed to have a daemon that acted as his guide, and in one of his symposiums (Plato’s Symposium), love was revealed by one of the attendees, the priestess Diotima, to be a great daimon instead of a god. In addition, one particular daimon had a place of importance in the rites of Dionysus, and that was“Agathos Daimon” or the Good Daimon, who was depicted in art as a chthonic serpent. Members of the cult would give an offering or libation to this daimon before commencing with ceremonial wine drinking.  All of these points would seem to indicate that early Greeks did not ascribe the moral values of good or evil to daimons. (See “Greek Religion” by Walter Burkert, pp. 179 - 181)

Followers of Pythagorus declared that they could see daimons, who would normally be invisible to everyone else, they also claimed to be able to communicate with them. It would not be too fantastic to consider that they might also be able to conjure and direct daimons, along with their other repertoire of various shamanic and magical practices. Since dead heros and founders were accorded the status of being daimons, then it would also make sense that necromancers and sorcerers would possibly illicitly traffic with them. Perhaps that is why the necromantic summoning of spirits, known as “goetic magic” eventually became associated with the magical evocation of demons.

It wasn’t until the philosopher Plato and his student, Xenocrates, that daimons began to be perceived as having a malefic character. By the third century BCE, the Greeks believed in beneficent spirits that they called “Eudaimons” and malefic spirits that were called “Kakodaimons.”  These beneficent daimons were even considered to be a kind of guardian angel, assigned by lots at birth for every man and woman, to act as their guide and guardian. The term eudaimonia, which meant possessing a eudaimon, became synonymous with feelings of bliss and happiness, the state that one would associate with being warded and aided by a spiritual companion. However, in the myth of Pandora, the evils that were unleashed upon mankind were never considered daimons or even kakodaimons, they were called illness (nousoi) and death-bringing spirits (keres). The tragedian Aeschylus poetically refers to the daimon as a fiend that quenches its thirst for murder and destruction, but only at the behest of the gods and never independently. The spirits of departed great men were still thought of as the manifestation of their daimon, such as that associated with Alexander the Great, but incrementally, the daimon was progressively associated with the manifestations of human misfortune, thus obtaining a decidedly negative characteristic.

By the time of the Neoplatonists during Roman imperial times, daimons had become earth bound spirits tormented by their lusts and passions, unlike the remote and pristine gods. Neoplatonic philosophy began with an elevated ideal of the daimon, but this changed over time. It was completely reinterpreted by the early church theologians, who perceived all pagan gods and spirits as being of the category of malefic demons. Philosophers had been distinguishing between noble daimons and trouble making ones, but Christianity lumped them together into one category, as malefic spirits. The only exception was the eudaimon, which was incorporated and redefined as an angelic guardian spirit. However, lists of the names of daemons from Greek sources were not built up or established in early Christian times, as this would have a different and later source.

The Hebrew Torah was translated into the Greek Septuagint in Alexandria during antiquity, and that translation had an impact on later Christian theologians, since the terms “Malakh Adonai” or messenger of the lord, became translated as “angelos” and the idols, nature spirits and alien gods of other people as “daimones.” However, the Torah specifically mentions only the names of two specific demons, just as it only mentioned the names of three specific angels and referred obliquely to the messenger of the lord as some kind of angel.

There were two classes of demons mentioned in the Torah, known as the “se’irim” and “shedim”, “hairy” nature spirits and storm spirits, respectively, both of which may have been given offerings and oblations by the ancient Hebrews to aid in their appeasement. Azazel, who is mentioned in Leviticus (ch. 16, v. 10), is probably of the class of ser’irim and may be their chief, and Lilith, obliquely mentioned in Isaiah (ch. 34, v. 14) is an example of a female demon. Most notably were the “Beni Elohim”, the Sons of God, in chapter 6 of Genesis, who came to earth to mate with human women, and who produced off-spring who were called “men of renown” (literally, men of names). The passages are a bit confusing, but these same angels or their off-spring could have been called the Nephilim, which means either fallen ones or giants.

Jewish folklore, on the other hand, was replete with the names and characteristics of many demons, some of these were discussed and written down during Talmudic times. However, most scholars seem to agree that the complex demonology that Jewish folklore seemed to possess in such abundance supposedly began to appear in Jewish culture during the Babylonian captivity, perhaps influenced by contact with both the Chaldeans and later, the Persians. Prior to the Babylonian captivity, Jewish belief about demons was simple and not developed, certainly not to the point that it later became. The Zoroastrians of Persia introduced the concept of dualism to Jewish thought, but it was not until much later that some Jews began to believe in a unified power of evil (as Satan), which stood against the power and authority of their God. This change was probably due more to Christian influences and was considered uncanonical by Jewish rabbinical authorities.

There seems to be a host of demons referenced in various Jewish writings, and they had specific habitats and characteristics. These spirits could be found in obscure places, such as inhabiting wastelands, ruins, cemeteries, privies, middens or even desolate places unfrequented by humanity. Demons usually shunned daylight and wandered around the fringes of communities at night. They were believed to be the sources of pestilence, disease and natural disasters, yet all these calamities were allowed or directly caused by the wrath and anger of the Hebrew God. Demons would seize their victims and enter into them, possessing their bodies, either by force or cunning. Exorcism was the only cure, performed through incantations, exhortations and the use of herbs and alternative animal victims. Solomon was reputed to have received from God the wisdom, authority and power to control and exorcize demons, and many attributed their knowledge of such practices ultimately to him.  

The Chaldeans and Persians had intricately developed systems of either chthonic deities (Anunnaki) or demonic allies of Ahriman. Like the Chaldeans, the Jews had three classes of demons, having expropriated them from that source as well as other sources. It would seem that the idea of a world of light and darkness, populated by a battling hierarchy of angels and demons was drawn from Persian beliefs, since like Judaism, they would not have given credence to any kind of chthonic deity as the Chaldeans apparently did. Demons were allowed to perform the will of God, but did not engage in any strife against that Deity, since all supernatural powers had an exclusive source in their one god. I quote a source from the online Jewish Encyclopedia:

“It was the primitive demonology of Babylonia which peopled the world of the Jews with beings of a semi-celestial and semi-infernal nature. Only afterward did the division of the world between Ahriman and Ormuzd in the Mazdean system give rise to the Jewish division of life between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of evil. Rabbinical demonology has, like the Chaldean, three classes of, demons, though they are scarcely separable one from another. There were the "shedim," the "mazzi im" (harmers), and the "ru in" or "ru otra'ot" (evil spirits). Besides these there were "lilin" (night spirits), " elane" (shade, or evening, spirits), " iharire" (midday spirits), and " afrire" (morning spirits), as well as the "demons that bring famine" and "such as cause storm and earthquake"

However, these specific names and qualities of demons do not seem to be related to the later medieval lists that we find in the early Jewish grimoires. Yet it is likely that by late antiquity Judaism began to propose a kind of hierarchy by electing a king and queen of demons, thereby laying its foundation. Candidates for these positions varied somewhat, with Asmodai or Samael being more frequently sited. The name Satan was used to describe demons, but did not at first become a generalized name for the king of demons. The queen of demons was, of course, Lilith, but another name used was Na’amah, sister of Tubal Cain, who was reputed to be the wife of Samael and mother of Asmodai. Other names were likely a distortion of Caanite gods, such as Beelzebub (Lord of the Flies) whose name was actually Baal Zebul (Lord of Heaven), and Ashtoreth being analogous to the Goddesses Asherah, Anath or Ishtar/Innana. The fact that monotheism was probably imposed on the Hebrew nation in the 7th century BCE, which was much later than what the Bible instructed, allowed for a lot of obvious polytheistic remnants to be either redefined (such as Elohim, for “gods”) or denigrated as demonic. Still, the Jewish tradition carried many examples of what must have been a very loosely defined pagan polytheism despite the vigorous efforts of the revisionists and reformers.

The effects of the loss of the Temple, the diaspora, and the establishment of the Qabbalah upon Jewish thought and belief were quite profound. The Talmudic period forced a high degree of ordering and structuring of religious thought and practice, since the new center of worship was now the local synagogue and the yeshiva instead of the Temple of Jerusalem. This intensive structuring gave birth to a new formalism that lent itself to the derivation of the Qabbalah and methodologies of ceremonial magick. The first glimmerings of this new formulation was to be found in the book Sepher Yetzirah, and in the proto-grimoire Testament of Solomon (4th century CE). It is probably at this time that the demonic hierarchy began to be assembled, most notably for the purpose of performing exorcisms and medical cures, and only later to actually command demons into performing wonders. Josephus mentions actual witnessed occurrences of these wonder working sorcerers and wrote about them in his books.

Several hundred years later and another Jewish proto-grimoire surfaces, this time called the Sword of Moses (10th century CE). One can see that demonic and angel names are being developed for the purpose of working ceremonial magick. We have passed beyond the hypothetical world of the Testament of Solomon, with the story of the demons being coerced into building the Temple of Jerusalem and the establishment of a kind of medical anti-demonic magic, to one that is more an operational book on ceremonial magic. The trail of books disappears for few centuries and then the Sepher ha-Ratziel and the Book of Abramelin appear on the scene, supposedly only a hundred years apart. It is apparent looking at one of these books that demonic magic is still part of the tradition of Jewish ceremonial magic, and in fact it has been developed further, so that it’s starting to look like what was later incorporated into the classical grimoires of the Goetia, Goetia-Theurgia of the Lemegeton and the Grimoirum Verum.

The book Sepher ha-Ratziel (14th century) is a grimoire consisting of angel magic (malachim), Qabbalistic diagrams and words of power, and an extensive list of angels - there is no list of demons. In the Book of Abramelin (15th century), there is a list of demons crafted into the hierarchy of four kings, eight dukes and their associated servitors. Other than the top two tiers, the rest of the demonic spirit names are unique - they are not at all the same as the demons of the later Goetia. Yet one of the four King names and four of the eight Dukes are found in the list of goetic demons. So it would seem that the Jewish grimoire tradition was developing a demonic hierarchy.

Interestingly enough, there is a French manuscript also from the 15th century, called “Le Livre des Espiritz” that has a list of 47 demonic spirit names, 31 of which are possible matches with the later list of 72 goetic demons. (This is according to the book “Goetia of Dr. Rudd”, pp. 32 - 38, and I think that it is very significant.) By the beginning of the 16th century, we have, in the works of Trithemius (i.e., the “Liber Malorum Spiritum” and the “Steganographia”) a fully developed list of goetic demons and their seals, whose possible source material may have inspired the later Grimoirum Verum and the Lemegeton. Both Agrippa, and his student, Johann Weyer, were steeped in this material, and Weyer used it to produce his work, “Pseudomonarchia Daemonum.”

There is some dispute as to the exact sequence of events, whether the Goetia of the Lemegeton is earlier than the Grimoirum Verum. My opinion is that they are probably contemporaneous to each other, since neither can claim an exact date of production nor even identify the original authors. Suffice it to say that the list of goetic demons appears to have evolved over the 15th century to its final form. Also of note, the infernal hierarchy associated with the Grimoirum Verum is different than that established in the Book of Abramelin, representing an apparent divergence of traditional material indicating possible different sources. All of these various lists and methodologies represent differences in a legitimate occult perspective, although how these materials were actually used and by whom is still something of a mystery.

When examining the various names of the so-called infernal spirits of the hierarchy of demons, their servitors, or the goetic demons, one can see a mixture of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, but any other languages, such as Arabic, Akkadian or Parsi seem to be completely lacking. This should at least inform us that the source of these names comes from the European Jewish diaspora, with complex linkages and appropriations occurring in Christian occult and intellectual circles. The source of magical demonology and its hierarchy is therefore Jewish and Christian in origin, even though some of the concepts and terminology used comes from the Greco Roman period.

My final consideration is how should one approach these spiritual entities in order to incorporate them into magical workings? It is my opinion that there are three possible methods of approach, and only two that I find agreeable with my own particular philosophy.

The first approach is basically the same one that the sorcerers of the Renaissance would have used, which is Christian Diabolism. The magician could approach the use of demons either using the angels and the authority of God to coerce and dominate them, or he could instead act as a diabolic agency, worshiping the Christian version of Satan. This approach has been recently made quite popular by a book written by Lisiewski.

There are two other approaches, and both use a form of neopaganism as their base. One could act in a neutral manner and invoke both demons and angels, seeing them as an integral but opposite type of spiritual intelligence - yet both tied to the same unified aspect of the Godhead. That Godhead would be given Qabbalistic qualities, but not specifically defined or given a name, thus avoiding spiritual dualism. Neopagan gods and goddesses would exist, as would the spirits of the ancestors, angels and demons.

One could also redefine and develop a magickal religion whose principal deities are chthonic and based in the underworld. In such a redefinition, the demons would become part of a religious spiritual hierarchy that would represent the mysteries and darkness inherent in all transformational processes. The demons would be completely redefined so that they would function as they did in early antiquity, as intermediaries between the gods and humanity, neither good nor evil.

The first approach accepts the old grimoires and uses them as they presently exist, the second expropriates what is needed and useful in the old grimoires and uses it in an existing magical system, and the third completely reclaims and rewrites the old grimoires, to fashion a completely new system of magic.

I have decided to follow the second path, and since I am not a Christian I find the first path to be unacceptable. However, the most compelling approach is the third path, which involves what is called and practiced by neopagans espousing a chthonic spirituality, demonolatry. Perhaps someday those who follow the third path will produce a total reclamation of the old grimoires. I look forward to that event and reading over their material.

Frater Barrabbas

A New Magickal System

I have been looking over the old grimoires lately, particularly the Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon. This examination was admittedly stimulated by my readings of the Grimoirum Verum, which shares a few common sources with the Lesser Key. Some may consider the Lesser Key to be corrupted or of questionable value, but I have found it to be a very interesting and a useful source for magickal workings that are part of the magickal system of the Order of the Gnostic Star. As in the Goetia of Dr. Rudd, I have paired the 72 Goetic demons of the first book (Goetia) with the Angels of the ha-Shem, and I have considered both sets of spirits to be part of a zodiacal system of magick, based on the 36 Decans and the 72 Quinarians (10 and 5 degree segments of the 360 degree zodiacal wheel). This system seems to work quite well and allows for a balance of angel to demon within an angelic hierarchy. This, to me, seems a much better approach to working with the Goetic demons if one is going to work with them at all. I have problems with any magickal system that doesn’t attempt to balance aligned spirits. I am also particularly against any device or mechanism that proposes that one form a “pact”, bond or spiritual alignment with demonic spirits without first removing them completely from the infernal hierarchy associated with the Judeo-Christian system. One should also consider worshiping the highest entities in this reclaimed hierarchy as pagan gods, from which they supposedly have been originally derived.

However, I have been puzzling over the second book of the Lemegeton, which is the Theurgia-Goetia. This system is mostly a list of different spirits arranged in a hierarchy, although there are conjurations (in verba ignota) that one could use to evoke them. These spirits are classified as aerial and emanate from specific directions, which requires the magician to place the triangle of evocation at that compass point on the magick circle. Thus the magick circle becomes a kind of compass round that aligns the working to a specific terrestrial direction. The directions occupy positions that are analogous to 32 directions of the winds, although not as carefully differentiated as wind directions became at a date later than this grimoire. The compass round has basically sixteen points, four for each cardinal quadrant, and the spirits fit into these divisions, more or less. (The wandering princes pose a more difficult aspect of this magickal system, since they can be aligned to more than one cardinal direction.)

So basically this magickal system uses the four cardinal directions (with orientations to the four elements), assigning to them the four spirit emperors. Associated with them are other subordinate structures or lists of spirits. The first such division are the 16 dukes (probably grand dukes, to distinguish them from the lesser servitor dukes), who by merit of their number, would most likely be classified as elemental spirits, being variations or qualifications on the four spirit emperors, who represent the pure element.

The second division consists of 48 servitors of the four emperors and the 16 grand dukes. These spirits, by dint of their number, would represent a combination of the four elements and the twelve zodiacal signs, with the ruling planet acting as the planetary intelligence. What we have here is another variation on the talismanic system of combining planets and elements, producing 28 spirits total in that system. In this system we have the signs of the zodiac being qualified by the element and ruling planet, producing a talismanic matrix of 48 cells.

The third division consists of the 11 wandering princes, who are loosely aligned to the four emperors. One could represent this group as being divided into the seven planetary spirits and the four element spirits, as an adjunct to the elemental and planetary system represented by this overall system of magick. There is an implied relationship to the ruling planets of the 48 sub-dukes as well as a relationship to the elemental system that is the principle organizing factor in this system of magick.

There are also quite a number of servitors associated with the sixteen grand dukes, and each seems to have a different number of these, thus naming only a handful out the large array of possible spirits. These entities may be used in conjunction with the grand dukes or ignored as just more divisions that might not be significant. The basic premise used by me is that each spirit belongs to a specific cell that has a correspondence to elements, zodiacal signs and planets, so the spirit can be defined by the qualification of the cell that it occupies. Lacking a structure to define spirits makes it more difficult to either conjure or work with in the structures of ritual magick that I use.

To recap: There are four distinct but related groups in the system magick found in the Theurgia Goetia.

• 4 Ruling Emperors - corresponding to the four base Elements and cardinal directions.
• 16 Grand Dukes - corresponding to the 16 Elementals and associated compass directions
• 48 Dukes - corresponding to the 12 Zodiacal Signs and four Elements with ruling planet (talismanic system)
• 11 Wandering Princes - corresponding to the Undecigram of seven planets and four elements, representing spiritual aspects found in all of the above three groups.

One other factor to consider is that some of the spirits are thought to be good and others are malefic or destructive. The malefic spirits are not to be confused with infernal spirits and the Lemegeton makes this distinction. The spirits listed in this work come from the list of demons found in the Steganographia, a work attributed to Trithemius (circa 1500 CE). It would seem to me that these spirits, some or all of which are reputed to be demons, are probably more likely to be unaligned than aligned. This is because if they were aligned, then they would be either all good or all evil, not a mixture of both. What might explain this ambiguity is that the spirits themselves are unaligned, and can therefore potentially be used to cause good or ill, particularly if the spirit represents forces in nature that are volatile or destructive. So I would classify these spirits as unaligned, making them analogous to other element based entities, such as those found in the Enochian system of magick.

What I am intending to do with this system is to build an alternative elemental magickal system that will incorporate these spirits, using them in tandem or alternately with the Elemental spirits of the Enochian system of magick. I would assume that the Enochian calls would work with them as well, since they are established in groupings analogous to the four elements, just like the Enochian system of elemental spirits. So I will need to take the seals and various conjurations and put them into a defined context, such as I have outlined above, and use variations of my existing lore to evoke them. However, with the 48 sub-dukes and the 11 wandering princes, I have discovered a completely new magickal system to incorporate into the lore the Order.

Frater Barrabbas