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The Lesser Key of Solomon #1
The Lesser Key of Solomon: Geotia for Invocation and Convocation of Spirits, Necromancy, Witchcraft and Black Art
Compiled from original manuscripts and fragments in the British Museum Library, Joseph Peterson's new presentation is the most complete and accurate edition of this famous magical grimoire, "The Lesser Key of Solomon the King." He goes to great length to establish the provenance of each part, and possible derivative works, including critical analyses of all major variations, utilizing fresh translations of earlier magical texts such as Johann Trithemius's Steganographia, The Archidoxes of Magic by Paracelsus, and newly discovered Hebrew manuscripts of the original Key of Solomon. Abundantly illustrated, Peterson includes reproductions of the original magical circles, tools, and seals of the spirits with variations of certain drawings from various sources and notae missing from earlier editions. Source list. Appendicies. Index.
132 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1650
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About the author
S.L. MacGregor Mathers
173 books127 followersSamuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, born Samuel Liddell Mathers and having allegedly added MacGregor as a claim to a Highland heritage for which there is little other evidence, was an English occultist best remembered as a founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
His translations of medieval grimoires and other obscure occult texts, while often criticized for their accuracy or incompleteness, served to make this otherwise inaccessible material more widely available to English-speaking audiences, and remain among the most popular of his works.
His translations of medieval grimoires and other obscure occult texts, while often criticized for their accuracy or incompleteness, served to make this otherwise inaccessible material more widely available to English-speaking audiences, and remain among the most popular of his works.
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January 27, 2022
এই বইটা যে ঘরানায় পড়ে সেটাকে বলে অকাল্ট গ্রিমোয়ার, বা জাদু-সংক্রান্ত জ্ঞানের বই।
অকাল্টিস্টরা সাধারণত কালো বা সাদা জাদুর মতো শিশুতোষ পার্থক্যে বিশ্বাস করেন না। তাদের মতে জাদু হচ্ছে ইচ্ছাশক্তিকে প্রয়োগ করার বিভিন্ন পদ্ধতি। মানুষের ইচ্ছাশক্তি সরাসরি বাস্তবতা বদলে দিতে পারে, যা ভাবছি সেটাকে সত্যে পরিণত করতে পারে। জগতের অন্য সবকিছুর মতো ইচ্ছাশক্তিকেও খারাপ বা ভালো দুইয়ের জন্যই ব্যবহার করা যায়।
দ্য লেসার কি অফ সলোমনের বিভিন্ন সংস্করণ আছে। আমি অ্যালেস্টেয়ার ক্রাউলি-এর লেখা সংস্করণটা পড়েছি। বিংশ শতাব্দীর শুরুর দিকে ক্রাউলির কালো জাদুকর হিসেবে যথেষ্ট বদনাম ছিল। সেই বদনামের বেশ খানিকটা সে নিজেই ছড়িয়েছিলো, কারণ আজকালকার সেলেব্রিটিদের মতো খ্যাতি আর কুখ্যাতির মধ্যে ক্রাউলি তেমন বিভেদ দেখতো না।
ক্রাউলির নামডাক ছড়ানোর একটা কারণ ছিল তার লেখার হাত। সে প্রাচীন লেখার সুন্দর আধুনিকায়ন করতে পারতো। শুধু তাই নয়, হাজার বছর আগের জাদুর জ্ঞান আধুনিক পৃথিবীতে কাজে লাগানোর জন্য যে পরিবর্তনগুলো দরকার, সেগুলো প্রয়োজনমতো ব্যবহার করতো।
ক্রাউলির দ্য লেসার কি অফ সলোমন বেশ কিছু অংশে ভাগ করা। শুরুতেই সে লিখেছে কীভাবে একজন অকাল্টিস্ট জাদুর বিভিন্ন রিচুয়াল আর উপাদানের মাধ্যমে নিজের ইন্দ্রিয়গুলোকে সজাগ করতে পারবে। মেঝেতে আঁকা জাদুর বৃত্ত, পরনের আলখেল্লা, মোমবাতি-এসব দৃষ্টিকে জাগিয়ে তোলে। মন্ত্র উচ্চারণ জাগায় কান আর কণ্ঠকে। তেমনি একে একে স্বাদ, স্পর্শ, গন্ধ-এসব কিছু জাগানোর জন্যই রিচুয়াল। যখন সব ইন্দ্রিয় এক উদ্দেশ্যে একত্রিত হবে, সতর্ক থাকবে, তখন সেই উদ্দেশ্য সাধনের জন্য ছুটে যাবে ইচ্ছাশক্তি।
তবে শুধু জাদুর নির্দেশনার জন্য এই বই বিখ্যাত (বা কুখ্যাত) নয়। লেসার কি-এর নামডাকের কারণ হচ্ছে একটা তালিকা। এই তালিকায় ৭২ জন ডিমন বা পরাশক্তির নাম পাওয়া যায়। প্রতিটা নামের সাথে আছে সেই ডিমনের পরিচয়, নরকে তার ক্ষমতার পরিধি, এবং তার সঙ্গে যোগাযোগ করার পদ্ধতি। কোন ডিমনকে ডাকতে হলে ঠিক কী ধরনের বৃত্ত আঁকতে হবে, কী নামে ডাকতে হবে-এ সবকিছু দেওয়া আছে বইটায়। কেউ কেউ বলে রাজা সলোমন যে ডিমন বা অতিপ্রাকৃত শক্তিদের নিয়ন্ত্রণ করতে পারতেন, এরাই হচ্ছে তারা।
কেউ ডিমন কেন ডাকতে চাইবে? কারণ তাদের বিভিন্ন ক্ষমতা আছে, যেসব ক্ষমতা মানুষের উদ্দেশ্য সাধনে কাজে আসতে পারে। আমন নামে একজন ডিমন আছে, যে অতীত আর ভবিষ্যতের সবকিছু বলতে পারে। মারবাথ নামে আরেকজন আছে, যে যন্ত্র আর প্রযুক্তির জ্ঞান দিতে পারে মানুষকে। সাথে ঝুঁকিও আছে। আমনের আরেকটা ক্ষমতা হচ্ছে বন্ধুদের মধ্যে ঝগড়া মিটিয়ে দেওয়া। তবে সে চাইলে ঝগড়া লাগাতেও পারে।
যেহেতু ক্রাউলি বইয়ের শুরুতে জাদুর রিচুয়ালগুলোকে বিভিন্ন মানসিক আর শারীরিক বৈশিষ্ট্যের সাথে জুড়ে দেয়, তাই আমার মনে হয় এই ডিমনরাও আসলে মানুষের অবচেতন মনের বিভিন্ন প্রতিরূপ। তারা হচ্ছে নিজের সাথে কথা বলার একটা মাধ্যম। মনের গভীরে যে শক্তি লুকিয়ে থাকে সেগুলোর সাথে সরাসরি কথা বলা যায় না, তারা যুক্তির ভাষা বোঝে না। তারা বোঝে আদিমতা আর আনুষ্ঠানিকতা। নির্দিষ্ট পরিস্থিতিতে পড়লে সেই গভীর শক্তি জেগে ওঠে। এই রিচুয়ালগুলো হচ্ছে তেমন পরিস্থিতি তৈরি করার কিছু উপায় মাত্র। এমন আরও অনেক উপায় আছে।
আমার বড়ো ভাই ইংল্যান্ড থেকে আমার জন্য বইটার হার্ড কপি নিয়ে এসেছিল। তবে সেক্রেড-টেক্সট্স ওয়েবসাইটে বেশ ভালো একটা ফ্রি ডিজিটাল কপি আছে। এই লিংকে গেলে পড়া যাবে:
https://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks...
অকাল্টিস্টরা সাধারণত কালো বা সাদা জাদুর মতো শিশুতোষ পার্থক্যে বিশ্বাস করেন না। তাদের মতে জাদু হচ্ছে ইচ্ছাশক্তিকে প্রয়োগ করার বিভিন্ন পদ্ধতি। মানুষের ইচ্ছাশক্তি সরাসরি বাস্তবতা বদলে দিতে পারে, যা ভাবছি সেটাকে সত্যে পরিণত করতে পারে। জগতের অন্য সবকিছুর মতো ইচ্ছাশক্তিকেও খারাপ বা ভালো দুইয়ের জন্যই ব্যবহার করা যায়।
দ্য লেসার কি অফ সলোমনের বিভিন্ন সংস্করণ আছে। আমি অ্যালেস্টেয়ার ক্রাউলি-এর লেখা সংস্করণটা পড়েছি। বিংশ শতাব্দীর শুরুর দিকে ক্রাউলির কালো জাদুকর হিসেবে যথেষ্ট বদনাম ছিল। সেই বদনামের বেশ খানিকটা সে নিজেই ছড়িয়েছিলো, কারণ আজকালকার সেলেব্রিটিদের মতো খ্যাতি আর কুখ্যাতির মধ্যে ক্রাউলি তেমন বিভেদ দেখতো না।
ক্রাউলির নামডাক ছড়ানোর একটা কারণ ছিল তার লেখার হাত। সে প্রাচীন লেখার সুন্দর আধুনিকায়ন করতে পারতো। শুধু তাই নয়, হাজার বছর আগের জাদুর জ্ঞান আধুনিক পৃথিবীতে কাজে লাগানোর জন্য যে পরিবর্তনগুলো দরকার, সেগুলো প্রয়োজনমতো ব্যবহার করতো।
ক্রাউলির দ্য লেসার কি অফ সলোমন বেশ কিছু অংশে ভাগ করা। শুরুতেই সে লিখেছে কীভাবে একজন অকাল্টিস্ট জাদুর বিভিন্ন রিচুয়াল আর উপাদানের মাধ্যমে নিজের ইন্দ্রিয়গুলোকে সজাগ করতে পারবে। মেঝেতে আঁকা জাদুর বৃত্ত, পরনের আলখেল্লা, মোমবাতি-এসব দৃষ্টিকে জাগিয়ে তোলে। মন্ত্র উচ্চারণ জাগায় কান আর কণ্ঠকে। তেমনি একে একে স্বাদ, স্পর্শ, গন্ধ-এসব কিছু জাগানোর জন্যই রিচুয়াল। যখন সব ইন্দ্রিয় এক উদ্দেশ্যে একত্রিত হবে, সতর্ক থাকবে, তখন সেই উদ্দেশ্য সাধনের জন্য ছুটে যাবে ইচ্ছাশক্তি।
তবে শুধু জাদুর নির্দেশনার জন্য এই বই বিখ্যাত (বা কুখ্যাত) নয়। লেসার কি-এর নামডাকের কারণ হচ্ছে একটা তালিকা। এই তালিকায় ৭২ জন ডিমন বা পরাশক্তির নাম পাওয়া যায়। প্রতিটা নামের সাথে আছে সেই ডিমনের পরিচয়, নরকে তার ক্ষমতার পরিধি, এবং তার সঙ্গে যোগাযোগ করার পদ্ধতি। কোন ডিমনকে ডাকতে হলে ঠিক কী ধরনের বৃত্ত আঁকতে হবে, কী নামে ডাকতে হবে-এ সবকিছু দেওয়া আছে বইটায়। কেউ কেউ বলে রাজা সলোমন যে ডিমন বা অতিপ্রাকৃত শক্তিদের নিয়ন্ত্রণ করতে পারতেন, এরাই হচ্ছে তারা।
কেউ ডিমন কেন ডাকতে চাইবে? কারণ তাদের বিভিন্ন ক্ষমতা আছে, যেসব ক্ষমতা মানুষের উদ্দেশ্য সাধনে কাজে আসতে পারে। আমন নামে একজন ডিমন আছে, যে অতীত আর ভবিষ্যতের সবকিছু বলতে পারে। মারবাথ নামে আরেকজন আছে, যে যন্ত্র আর প্রযুক্তির জ্ঞান দিতে পারে মানুষকে। সাথে ঝুঁকিও আছে। আমনের আরেকটা ক্ষমতা হচ্ছে বন্ধুদের মধ্যে ঝগড়া মিটিয়ে দেওয়া। তবে সে চাইলে ঝগড়া লাগাতেও পারে।
যেহেতু ক্রাউলি বইয়ের শুরুতে জাদুর রিচুয়ালগুলোকে বিভিন্ন মানসিক আর শারীরিক বৈশিষ্ট্যের সাথে জুড়ে দেয়, তাই আমার মনে হয় এই ডিমনরাও আসলে মানুষের অবচেতন মনের বিভিন্ন প্রতিরূপ। তারা হচ্ছে নিজের সাথে কথা বলার একটা মাধ্যম। মনের গভীরে যে শক্তি লুকিয়ে থাকে সেগুলোর সাথে সরাসরি কথা বলা যায় না, তারা যুক্তির ভাষা বোঝে না। তারা বোঝে আদিমতা আর আনুষ্ঠানিকতা। নির্দিষ্ট পরিস্থিতিতে পড়লে সেই গভীর শক্তি জেগে ওঠে। এই রিচুয়ালগুলো হচ্ছে তেমন পরিস্থিতি তৈরি করার কিছু উপায় মাত্র। এমন আরও অনেক উপায় আছে।
আমার বড়ো ভাই ইংল্যান্ড থেকে আমার জন্য বইটার হার্ড কপি নিয়ে এসেছিল। তবে সেক্রেড-টেক্সট্স ওয়েবসাইটে বেশ ভালো একটা ফ্রি ডিজিটাল কপি আছে। এই লিংকে গেলে পড়া যাবে:
https://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/lks...
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July 28, 2013My take away from the Goetia is how similar the language of the conjuring rites is in style and form to modern legal petitions or complaints.
"Comes now the magician 'M,' by the authority of (insert obscure name for God), and does command spirit 'N' to appear in tangible form and answer rationally all reasonable questions asked in order to accomplish 'X.'
I guess the answer is that the same guys who imported the text into English society were basically from the same strata as the magistrates and lawyers who preserved English law and thus would have been informed by style rules proven to establish and maintain order.
Still, it's weird.
And when you think about summoning rituals with legal logic, a couple of questions are raised:
1. The magician has to stand in a protected square and the spirit is locked in a binding triangle. The magician has protective gear that prevents the spirit from poisoning him with noxious fumes and commandeering his brain. But what happens when the ritual is over and the parties have left the ceremonial grid? Do either the language of the spells or the magic itself protect the magician against future retaliation? I imagine some of the spirits would be pretty resentful for being ripped from their rarefied plane to teach geometry to eccentric shut ins living on the fringe of normal religious experience. Those spirits are constrained from harming the magician DURING THE ACT, but is there anything to prevent them from waiting by the back door to jump the magician on the way to his car?
2. If the magician inadvertently summons the spirit from a plain where he is being held in captivity or being punished, is the magician indemnified against damages the now unleashed spirit may cause in the future? A magician could theoretically upset some serious cosmic plans if his actions release a spirit who has been hunted, captured, and imprisoned by archangels as punishment for misdeeds. Such a spirit is likely to offend again. Is the magician liable?
Alas, the answers to these questions were not to be found in this book.d
"Comes now the magician 'M,' by the authority of (insert obscure name for God), and does command spirit 'N' to appear in tangible form and answer rationally all reasonable questions asked in order to accomplish 'X.'
I guess the answer is that the same guys who imported the text into English society were basically from the same strata as the magistrates and lawyers who preserved English law and thus would have been informed by style rules proven to establish and maintain order.
Still, it's weird.
And when you think about summoning rituals with legal logic, a couple of questions are raised:
1. The magician has to stand in a protected square and the spirit is locked in a binding triangle. The magician has protective gear that prevents the spirit from poisoning him with noxious fumes and commandeering his brain. But what happens when the ritual is over and the parties have left the ceremonial grid? Do either the language of the spells or the magic itself protect the magician against future retaliation? I imagine some of the spirits would be pretty resentful for being ripped from their rarefied plane to teach geometry to eccentric shut ins living on the fringe of normal religious experience. Those spirits are constrained from harming the magician DURING THE ACT, but is there anything to prevent them from waiting by the back door to jump the magician on the way to his car?
2. If the magician inadvertently summons the spirit from a plain where he is being held in captivity or being punished, is the magician indemnified against damages the now unleashed spirit may cause in the future? A magician could theoretically upset some serious cosmic plans if his actions release a spirit who has been hunted, captured, and imprisoned by archangels as punishment for misdeeds. Such a spirit is likely to offend again. Is the magician liable?
Alas, the answers to these questions were not to be found in this book.d
August 8, 2020
There are hundreds of D&D / RPG supplements out there to choose from, and in general I don't buy third-party supplements anymore, especially since my campaigns have been on hold for a while now. I bought this on a whim during the campaign of one of my long-term gaming partners in which my character intended to create a fake demonology book to give to the asshole necromancer who had raised us as various forms of undead and was keeping us in his thrall.
This supplemental is actually not D&D or D20 specific, and is more descriptive, potentially useful for providing flavor to the campaign. The only real strength of this book is in the illustrations of the seals and the magic circles, which could easily be dropped into a broad range of settings, with or without modifications. Additionally the names of the various spirits could be lifted - some will be familiar, and other not as much. It would have been nice if the authors had chosen to fit more of these entities into the various pantheons of D&D, but they stuck with a Judeo-Christian background making this of limited value in most D&D settings.
The presentation of the material is poorly organized, repetitive, and surprisingly unimaginative. The 72 "Mighty Kings and Princes" are each described in paragraph form giving name and variations, typical and alternate form of appearance and other descriptions, realms of knowledge and influence, and number of legions over which each governs. Most of this could have been presented much more efficiently and effectively using stat tables, but it's almost as if the authors were padding out their very thin gruel of ideas to make it fill enough pages to be worth publishing. Over half of these descriptions literally end with "etc." indicating that maybe even the authors recognized the repetitiveness of their material. And therein lies another weakness of this supplement - the complete lack of stats. We get no hit points, challenge ratings, attribute stats, or abilities. Nothing to make any of these entities unique and interesting. Even the realm of knowledge each specializes in are so general and broad, and repeated among so many of them that there is no real hook to tie any particular spirit into a campaign. All the real work will be left to the DM. And there are not even any illustrations, but then again, most of these demons appear as pretty bland and boring creatures with the most creative being something like Volac who appears "like a child with Angel's Wings, riding on a Two-headed Dragon" which barley rises to a level mild intrigue. The Fourth Edition Demonomicon, for example, will provide you and players with far more interesting denizens of the other planes than this fairly tedious book.
Another aspect in which the authors fail to deliver is the descriptions of the rituals themselves. For the most part, these are a series of pleading and threats, in which the summoner basically says "Do what I say or I'mma get god to banish you to the lake of fire forever". Which of course makes one wonder how that work in a setting where multiple sorcerers are attempting to invoke the same spirit - at some point Bael is going to say, yeah you're the 18th bloody person who has made that threat to me today, so what the hell do you expect?
Continuing the established themes, there are a few other illustrations of symbols that are nicely designed, and could be adapted for flavor - the magical triangles, hexagram, rings, etc., but again there aren't good tables to define the stats, rarities or costs of making or obtaining the items necessary to handle the rituals. Maybe useful for adding a bit of mystical verisimilitude to the game, but little more than that.
And one more final criticism before I close this out, the completely unnecessary dose of sexism in the section on the secret seal of Solomon, which is to be made by "one that ... hath not defiled himself by any woman".
Overall I can't recommend this gaming supplement, even though it was quite cheap. If these authors want to produce high-quality, useful rule books, they have a lot to learn, and would do well to expand their creativity beyond their current pedestrian boundaries.
This supplemental is actually not D&D or D20 specific, and is more descriptive, potentially useful for providing flavor to the campaign. The only real strength of this book is in the illustrations of the seals and the magic circles, which could easily be dropped into a broad range of settings, with or without modifications. Additionally the names of the various spirits could be lifted - some will be familiar, and other not as much. It would have been nice if the authors had chosen to fit more of these entities into the various pantheons of D&D, but they stuck with a Judeo-Christian background making this of limited value in most D&D settings.
The presentation of the material is poorly organized, repetitive, and surprisingly unimaginative. The 72 "Mighty Kings and Princes" are each described in paragraph form giving name and variations, typical and alternate form of appearance and other descriptions, realms of knowledge and influence, and number of legions over which each governs. Most of this could have been presented much more efficiently and effectively using stat tables, but it's almost as if the authors were padding out their very thin gruel of ideas to make it fill enough pages to be worth publishing. Over half of these descriptions literally end with "etc." indicating that maybe even the authors recognized the repetitiveness of their material. And therein lies another weakness of this supplement - the complete lack of stats. We get no hit points, challenge ratings, attribute stats, or abilities. Nothing to make any of these entities unique and interesting. Even the realm of knowledge each specializes in are so general and broad, and repeated among so many of them that there is no real hook to tie any particular spirit into a campaign. All the real work will be left to the DM. And there are not even any illustrations, but then again, most of these demons appear as pretty bland and boring creatures with the most creative being something like Volac who appears "like a child with Angel's Wings, riding on a Two-headed Dragon" which barley rises to a level mild intrigue. The Fourth Edition Demonomicon, for example, will provide you and players with far more interesting denizens of the other planes than this fairly tedious book.
Another aspect in which the authors fail to deliver is the descriptions of the rituals themselves. For the most part, these are a series of pleading and threats, in which the summoner basically says "Do what I say or I'mma get god to banish you to the lake of fire forever". Which of course makes one wonder how that work in a setting where multiple sorcerers are attempting to invoke the same spirit - at some point Bael is going to say, yeah you're the 18th bloody person who has made that threat to me today, so what the hell do you expect?
Continuing the established themes, there are a few other illustrations of symbols that are nicely designed, and could be adapted for flavor - the magical triangles, hexagram, rings, etc., but again there aren't good tables to define the stats, rarities or costs of making or obtaining the items necessary to handle the rituals. Maybe useful for adding a bit of mystical verisimilitude to the game, but little more than that.
And one more final criticism before I close this out, the completely unnecessary dose of sexism in the section on the secret seal of Solomon, which is to be made by "one that ... hath not defiled himself by any woman".
Overall I can't recommend this gaming supplement, even though it was quite cheap. If these authors want to produce high-quality, useful rule books, they have a lot to learn, and would do well to expand their creativity beyond their current pedestrian boundaries.
June 20, 2025
“The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King: Lemegeton - Clavicula Salomonis Regis, Book 1” by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley is a companion to the former author’s “The Key of Solomon the King: Clavicula Salomonis” published in 1888.
The crux of MacGregor Mathers and Crowley’s magic is binary opposition. For example, a single male deity (in this case, the Abrahamic God) and Lucifer. The authors focus primarily on seals and sigils and the 72 “chief spirits of the Goetia.”
Like MacGregor Mathers’ 1888 volume, the authors claim that the Goetia and the seals originated with the Israeli King Solomon, but an investigation has revealed that this knowledge was actually produced about two hundred years prior. According the authors, King Solomon placed the seals in a vessel of brass and, like Pandora’s Box, it was opened by the unwitting.
The lack of antiquity doesn’t negate the seals’ importance as part of a magical ritual, however, as it is acknowledged by many Pagans that spiritual beings continue to gain power over time through collective use. Likewise, with gods and goddesses, the power of belief is accumulated over time. In fact, that is why eregores are often destroyed after tasks are completed by practitioners of chaos magic(k).
The Goetia are all arranged according to a European, and particularly British, form of hierarchy of which both authors were familiar (e.g., kings, princes, dukes, marquises, and etc). What I found interesting is that the authors included the more democratic and non-aristocratic title of “president” as well.
For individuals inclined to ritualized magic(k) based upon the Keys of Solomon, I would recommend Konstantinos’ “Summoning Spirits: The Art of Magical Evocation.” For those interested in similar forms, including the use of both seals and sigils but minus the highly ritualized forms, I would recommend chaos magic(k).
The crux of MacGregor Mathers and Crowley’s magic is binary opposition. For example, a single male deity (in this case, the Abrahamic God) and Lucifer. The authors focus primarily on seals and sigils and the 72 “chief spirits of the Goetia.”
Like MacGregor Mathers’ 1888 volume, the authors claim that the Goetia and the seals originated with the Israeli King Solomon, but an investigation has revealed that this knowledge was actually produced about two hundred years prior. According the authors, King Solomon placed the seals in a vessel of brass and, like Pandora’s Box, it was opened by the unwitting.
The lack of antiquity doesn’t negate the seals’ importance as part of a magical ritual, however, as it is acknowledged by many Pagans that spiritual beings continue to gain power over time through collective use. Likewise, with gods and goddesses, the power of belief is accumulated over time. In fact, that is why eregores are often destroyed after tasks are completed by practitioners of chaos magic(k).
The Goetia are all arranged according to a European, and particularly British, form of hierarchy of which both authors were familiar (e.g., kings, princes, dukes, marquises, and etc). What I found interesting is that the authors included the more democratic and non-aristocratic title of “president” as well.
For individuals inclined to ritualized magic(k) based upon the Keys of Solomon, I would recommend Konstantinos’ “Summoning Spirits: The Art of Magical Evocation.” For those interested in similar forms, including the use of both seals and sigils but minus the highly ritualized forms, I would recommend chaos magic(k).
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July 14, 2008Anybody with enough time to read book reviews on the web is simply not devoted enough to this system of magick. Why are you wasting your life time with work, friends, and family when there is so much other-worldly lion taming to do? Get cracking young magicians.
Seriously, this is only fun for serious occult scholars and those that find the pictures cool. I'm willing to bet it is the latter category that keeps this in print. If you know anyone who is wasting serious time trying to make this stuff work, please take them out for a drink and smack some sense into them.
Seriously, this is only fun for serious occult scholars and those that find the pictures cool. I'm willing to bet it is the latter category that keeps this in print. If you know anyone who is wasting serious time trying to make this stuff work, please take them out for a drink and smack some sense into them.
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January 25, 2016An occult Pokedex.
November 2, 2021
Time to summon my own Paimon (/☉‿☉)/
Edit [2-11-2021]: Holy shit, this is about enslaving sexy androgynous spirits through the threat of eternal damnation; transforming a wily and mischievous genderfluid world into rigidly-defined masculine and docile bodies.
Fuck that, cast me into the Bottomless Abyss with all the femme dukes and three-headed beastmen.
Edit [2-11-2021]: Holy shit, this is about enslaving sexy androgynous spirits through the threat of eternal damnation; transforming a wily and mischievous genderfluid world into rigidly-defined masculine and docile bodies.
Fuck that, cast me into the Bottomless Abyss with all the femme dukes and three-headed beastmen.
September 19, 2014
I just finished writing the first draft of a novel that leans heavily on demonology, so reading this book has been very helpful.
The descriptions and seals contain enough detail. The invocation instructions are handy. It's all very interesting. And the individual descriptions of the 72 spirits of the Goetia is great.
I find this book fascinating, and the way it fuels my creativity is fantastic. It's amazing how many things mentioned in this book happen to fit perfectly with what I've already written. This is a great base for me to spring from.
I also found it very easy to read.
Yep. I really liked it. This is a great reference book! And I know it's one I'll keep returning to.
The descriptions and seals contain enough detail. The invocation instructions are handy. It's all very interesting. And the individual descriptions of the 72 spirits of the Goetia is great.
I find this book fascinating, and the way it fuels my creativity is fantastic. It's amazing how many things mentioned in this book happen to fit perfectly with what I've already written. This is a great base for me to spring from.
I also found it very easy to read.
Yep. I really liked it. This is a great reference book! And I know it's one I'll keep returning to.
August 3, 2019
I don't recommend reading this unless you have a scholarly interest in very detailed, very esoteric summoning magic. I don't claim to fully understand it and it makes little effort to explain itself. However, I am fascinated by it's concept and it's very existence.
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December 3, 2022Crowley’s illustration of Foras has me feeling some type of way.
October 29, 2012
This book is an examination of the spirits of the Goetia, which are used at the Magician's discretion for whichever purposes he may employ. The character traits and appearances of the spirits are given, as well as the ceremony and temple space required for the operation. This is a book of practical magick, which can be used alongside 777. Caution is to be given however, as any operation of magick that is not focused at the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is an act of black magick. However, we will notice that the Tree of Life lies between the pillars of mercy and severity, of good and evil.
January 22, 2022
Lots of Demons
Purchased this book out of interest for the supernatural and the occult, now I have a pet demon at home. Kidding.
There are 72 inhuman spirits mentioned here, along with their sigils and how to call on to them, like how Solomon bound them using his own signs. Obviously, I didn’t do any of those.
It’s interesting to know that there are different orders of demons, much like angels, and I’d like to read more about them. They’re not portrayed as malevolently here as they are in Christian counterparts.
I just thought that some passages of this book are repetitive. Nevertheless, I liked it.
Purchased this book out of interest for the supernatural and the occult, now I have a pet demon at home. Kidding.
There are 72 inhuman spirits mentioned here, along with their sigils and how to call on to them, like how Solomon bound them using his own signs. Obviously, I didn’t do any of those.
It’s interesting to know that there are different orders of demons, much like angels, and I’d like to read more about them. They’re not portrayed as malevolently here as they are in Christian counterparts.
I just thought that some passages of this book are repetitive. Nevertheless, I liked it.
May 3, 2021
It was alright, extremely difficult language and I felt like I was entering an unknown occult world. Think religious and Latin Shakespeare. Of course, the book is centuries old but I had fun reading about the 72 demons/spirits and their sigil. I really liked Paimon and Amon. A good friend of mine lent it to me because I was doing research for a school project and it was overall educational!
January 17, 2015
An interesting read, but one that will need read several times over for better understanding. Not a book for anyone other than those who wish to learn more about the invocation and evocation of the 72 Goetic demons.
March 18, 2020
a pretty good book, the editor notes help a lot with historical context. not super in depth on history or meaning but rather just a list of names of goetia. crowley had some good theories
June 12, 2021
El Rey Salomón es hijo del famoso Rey David, el de las mañanitas, y desde su tribuna de profeta judío, en algún momento de su vida, logró invocar setenta y tantos demonios que encerró en un frasco y lanzó al mar.
No me queda muy claro en qué momento se dio tiempo de pegarle a tanta invocada, si Yhavéh ya como quiera se le aparecía en cada esquina, pero bueee... ahí hay tarea.
Salomón se armó un manual (grimorio) que se llama Lemegeton (o La Clave Menor del Rey Salomón) que es la mamá de los libros que existen en el mundo sobre demonología.
El Lemegeton se divide en: Ars Goetia, Ars Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel y Ars Notoria.
Este libro abarca solo Goetia, para invocar demonios.
No sirve si no tienes un background sobre qué tipo de espíritu es un demonio, porque obviamente Salomón no tiene tiempo para explicar pendejadas. Hay que trabajarle antes de entrarle.
Muy pocas veces los libros de este calibre son traducidos así de bien, y ni hablar de la editada, una chulada: sellos inmaculados, buenas explicaciones para llevar a cabo el ritual e incluso las invocaciones fueron reproducidas en muy buen estado.
Cinco estrellas para el Rey Salomón. Excelente servicio.
No me queda muy claro en qué momento se dio tiempo de pegarle a tanta invocada, si Yhavéh ya como quiera se le aparecía en cada esquina, pero bueee... ahí hay tarea.
Salomón se armó un manual (grimorio) que se llama Lemegeton (o La Clave Menor del Rey Salomón) que es la mamá de los libros que existen en el mundo sobre demonología.
El Lemegeton se divide en: Ars Goetia, Ars Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel y Ars Notoria.
Este libro abarca solo Goetia, para invocar demonios.
No sirve si no tienes un background sobre qué tipo de espíritu es un demonio, porque obviamente Salomón no tiene tiempo para explicar pendejadas. Hay que trabajarle antes de entrarle.
Muy pocas veces los libros de este calibre son traducidos así de bien, y ni hablar de la editada, una chulada: sellos inmaculados, buenas explicaciones para llevar a cabo el ritual e incluso las invocaciones fueron reproducidas en muy buen estado.
Cinco estrellas para el Rey Salomón. Excelente servicio.
December 21, 2019
The one-star rating is for this particular edition of this work, and not the work itself.
What this edition should have been is a useful edition of the Crowley/Mathers edition of the Goetia, or the Lesser Key of Solomon, and a window onto Renaissance-era ritual magick, concerned with demon summoning, binding and releasing.
What this edition does is present an incomplete version, with many seals and illustrations simply missing. Fortunately this can be remedied by downloading nearly any pdf of the Goetia, which also add footnotes. However if I need to resort to downloading a pdf for a complete version, why the hell am I bothering buying a physical copy of this book? Unforgiveable.
And secondly, why are there ads for a fucking online tarot and rune shop every 6th page or so throughout the text? Seriously?
Don't bother paying money for this edition, it is criminal. Diabolical even (pun intended).
What this edition should have been is a useful edition of the Crowley/Mathers edition of the Goetia, or the Lesser Key of Solomon, and a window onto Renaissance-era ritual magick, concerned with demon summoning, binding and releasing.
What this edition does is present an incomplete version, with many seals and illustrations simply missing. Fortunately this can be remedied by downloading nearly any pdf of the Goetia, which also add footnotes. However if I need to resort to downloading a pdf for a complete version, why the hell am I bothering buying a physical copy of this book? Unforgiveable.
And secondly, why are there ads for a fucking online tarot and rune shop every 6th page or so throughout the text? Seriously?
Don't bother paying money for this edition, it is criminal. Diabolical even (pun intended).
September 7, 2011
Always a blessing, never a curse. A who's who and what what, of Desireland, trailed on by a Certain dead adepts hand. Caution still... Can lead the magician away from conclusion and into confusion if not tyled properly. My review & recommendation is, If you happen upon here, pause, pay close attention. The deal is in the details. My little experience has shown me that the mind chit and the prakritti matter react with Metta. Remember, success depends on if you follow through with said deal.
August 6, 2011
One of a couple goetia - lesser keys I have read, only this one includes "illustrations" by Crowley. I wished someone had not convinced him that he could draw. Aside from this, the information is similar to the other versions, equally as useful.
March 15, 2015
This makes an excellent introduction to demonology because it plunges you right into the technicalities without all the extended introductions and context. sometime what you need is to get a feel for what something really is and not the author's perception of it. and that's what the lemegeton does.
March 25, 2010
A complete sourcebook of Goetic material, with a good introduction by H.B. However, it's largely impractical, and not so accessible as Lon Milo DuQuette's work on the subject
April 13, 2020
Interesting book which claims to allow the reader to summon various demons etc. Some short history in the beginning of the book to contextalise it a bit more and some good illustrations.
June 23, 2023
Um clássico! Impressionante como muito do que tem acabou entrando no imaginário em filmes, livros, séries e mesmo no popular. As inserções do Crowley e alfinetadas no Mathers são divertidas ao mesmo tempo que conversam com o nosso tempo.
May 14, 2024
The feminine urge to collect all of them like pokemons
December 9, 2025
To open “The Lesser Key of Solomon: Goetia” is to step into a room where two very different centuries are arguing in the same voice. On the one hand, there is the late–medieval and early–modern Catholic imagination, full of angels, devils, brass vessels, and the terrifying sovereignty of a single God who “created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, and all that is in them contained.” On the other, there is the early twentieth century, with its half–ironic occult revival, its interest in psychology, its hunger to turn ancient ritual into a modern technique. The result is a book that is at once manual, myth, and mirror – a work whose influence is immense, whose content is often dry, and whose real subject may be less the demons it catalogues than the human mind that invokes them.
Formally, “Goetia” is presented as the first book of the larger “Lemegeton”, a compendium of Solomonic magic. This volume concerns itself with seventy–two spirits said to have been bound by King Solomon in a brazen vessel and released in exchange for service. Around that mythic core, the text constructs an intricate architecture of ritual. The operator is shown how to mark out a magical circle, how to inscribe a triangle where the spirit must appear, how to fashion pentagrams and hexagrams, rings and seals, all of them surrounded by divine names. There are conjurations for calling, conjurations for constraining, escalating curses to be applied if the spirit delays, and at the end, a formal welcome and a scrupulous license to depart. This is not a book of stories in the ordinary sense; it is a sequence of instructions and speeches, each designed to situate the reader in a very definite place in a very particular posture: inside the circle, facing the unknown.
The most immediately striking thing about “Goetia” is its voice. The conjurations move in rolling cadences that feel biblical even when the language is plainly post–Reformation. The exorcist “invocateth, conjureth, and commandeth” the spirit by a chain of names that begins in familiar territory – El, Adonai, Elohim, Tetragrammaton – and then drifts into those strange vocables that only grimoires seem to produce: Anephezeton, Primeumaton, Agla, On. Yet for all their flourish, these speeches are curiously legalistic. The magician is forever reminding the spirit that it is bound by ancient precedent: by the names which turned the rivers of Egypt to blood, by the name that caused the sun to stand still for Joshua, by the name that destroyed Bel and slew the Dragon. The tone is not one of intimate mysticism so much as of prosecutorial rhetoric. God is the Judge; the conjuror is His attorney; the spirit is the reluctant witness being dragged to the stand.
That tension – between devotional language and instrumental purpose – is one of the most interesting things about the book. On almost every page, the operator confesses smallness and sin, appeals for forgiveness, and declares that all work is done “as an instrument in Thy hands.” At the same time, the ceremonies are clearly designed to control, constrain, even torment the spirits if they resist. The “Spirits’ Chain” curses the disobedient entity to the abyss until the Day of Doom, unless it appears immediately in a fair and comely shape. The “Conjuration of the Fire” calls upon the created flame to burn the spirit’s seal in a stinking box suspended over coals, so that the spirit itself may be tormented by proxy. The “Greater Curse” envisions a lake of fire and brimstone for any being that won’t answer questions politely.
For a modern reader, there is something unsettling here that has little to do with the nominal subject of demonology. The magician’s God is both loving and terrifying, a deity whose mercy is invoked in the same breath as eternal torment. The magician himself is both humble and strangely entitled, insisting that all power belongs to God while treating angelic and demonic beings as functionaries who must yield treasure, knowledge, or services on demand. One can feel the echo of older legal and social orders in which hierarchy is unquestioned, even within the invisible world. For contemporary sensibilities that are wary of coercion, those passages will either be passed over as historical curiosities or read as a cautionary tale about what it means to drag other beings – whether literal spirits or aspects of one’s own psyche – into fixed, instrumental roles.
The core of the book, though, is not the rhetoric of the conjurations but the catalog of the seventy–two spirits. Each entry gives a name, a rank, a description of the form in which the spirit appears, and a list of offices: what it can teach, reveal, or accomplish. A king arrives riding upon a pale horse, with a leopard’s body and a bull’s face, speaking in a harsh voice until constrained to take human shape. A president comes as a great bird with the tail of a hare and paws like a lion, who procures the love of women and answers questions of hidden treasure. Another spirit appears as a lion–headed soldier, another as a serpent with a virgin’s face, another as a dog–headed man. Each governs a certain number of legions, each has a certain jurisdiction: philosophy, love, theft, book–learning, mechanical arts, the changing of men’s minds, the giving of dignities, the finding of things lost.
Read straight through, this section is less a gallery of horrors than a kind of occult gazetteer of human hopes and anxieties. The powers promised are, almost embarrassingly, familiar. We want knowledge of the past and future. We want to be loved, feared, admired. We want rank and riches, protection from enemies, mastery of arts, the ability to travel, to vanish, to discover what others have hidden from us. We want, above all, some advantage over time: to know what is coming, to undo what we have done, to recover what is gone. One can see why later interpreters were tempted to read the “spirits” as psychological personifications rather than external entities. The desires they serve are ordinary; it is the language that is strange.
“Goetia” itself encourages, in places, this inward reading. The prefatory “initiated interpretation” suggests that the demons may be understood as “portions of the human brain” – patterns of fear, appetite, and imagination which can be personified, invoked, and controlled only when named and ritualised. The elaborate preparation of the operator – the bath and the linen robe, the girdle inscribed with divine names, the anointing of temples and eyes, the recitation of psalms – looks, from this angle, less like a set of arbitrary taboos and more like a technique for inducing a particular mental state. The circle and triangle, too, can be seen as diagrams of attention: a way to mark off the self from the contents of the mind, and to insist that whatever arises must stay within a defined space, appear in a tolerable form, and answer clearly. Even the threats and curses take on a new cast when directed inward. How many times does a person swear that this fear, this compulsion, this habit will be cast into the abyss forever, only to find it again at the edge of the circle?
Yet the book never wholly abandons its literal frame, and that is part of its power and part of its limitation. The language of brass vessels, angelic kings of the cardinal points, planetary intelligences, and angelic choirs gives “Goetia” an imaginative richness that more stripped–down psychological manuals lack. One is reminded that human beings do not only want techniques; we want stories in which to place our techniques. At the same time, the grimoire’s refusal to step outside its ritual persona means that the curious reader is given little in the way of explicit commentary. There is no clear instruction on how to integrate the results of a working into ordinary life, no discussion of discernment, no warning about projection. The apparatus is baroque; the guidance is minimal. The serious student will have to bring their own philosophical and ethical framework to bear.
As a reading experience, divorced from any intention to practise, the book is uneven. The first third – the diagrams of the circle and triangle, the preparation of the other magical requisites, the sequential conjurations and curses – has a kind of grim momentum. You can feel the ritual tightening, step by step, from the first polite invitation through the invocation of the spirit’s King, into the threat of chains, fire, and oblivion, and finally out into the negotiated welcome and gentle license to depart. The middle portion, listing spirit after spirit, is less dramatic. There is a certain hypnotic pleasure in the repeated formulas, in watching small variations introduced into the descriptions and powers, but it is also easy to drift. The final explanations – of the divine names, the two triangles, and Solomon’s triangle – are oddly touching, as if the book were suddenly going out of its way to reassure the reader that all of this elaborate machinery rests on simple prayers: God is the beginning and the end; God is asked to be present, to protect, to direct; the names that look like barbarous syllables are, in fact, nothing more exotic than “Come here, appear human, speak clearly, show what you keep, answer all questions faithfully, and then go in peace.”
This duality – a surface of fearsome complexity covering a handful of very ordinary wishes and requests – is everywhere in “Goetia”. It is part of what gives the book its lasting fascination, and part of what makes it so easy to parody. There are moments when the tone tips, unintentionally, into the absurd, as when the operator threatens to consign a refractory spirit to everlasting fire while standing in a chalk circle in his linen robe, muttering doggedly through yet another page of names. There are other moments when the grandeur works, when the invocation of the sea of glass and the four beasts full of eyes, or the image of the brass vessel sunk under the sea, opens a small window into an older religious imagination in which the invisible world is crowded and perilous, and the act of naming is a serious thing.
For a contemporary reader who has come to the book through its reputation – through its echoes in popular culture, in fine press editions, in occult forums – there will probably be a measure of disappointment simply in the mismatch between myth and document. “Goetia” is not a gothic narrative of pacts and hauntings. It is closer to a technical dossier compiled by a church lawyer with an interest in astronomy. But if one can accept that mismatch, the book does have a peculiar integrity. It does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: a record of one strand of Western ritual practice, with all its assumptions laid bare. It takes the existence of spirits, angels, and a sovereign God for granted; it assumes that the human operator can stand, through grace and preparation, as a small but real agent in that larger economy; it believes that words, gestures, and symbols, repeated in the right way, can shape the traffic between worlds.
Whether one shares those assumptions or not, reading “Goetia” today is a way of asking what we do with our own unmanageable contents. We may not believe in the demons of the brass vessel, but we still wrestle with compulsions and fears and desires that seem, at times, to have lives of their own. We may not invoke Michael by name, but we still talk about “setting boundaries,” “holding space,” “integrating the shadow.” To see those concerns in a different vocabulary is not only historically interesting; it can be quietly instructive. The magician who draws a circle and insists that nothing may cross it uninvited is not so far from the person who decides that certain intrusive thoughts will be acknowledged but not obeyed. The magician who spends pages insisting that the spirit must answer “rationally” and “in our mother tongue” is doing, in a melodramatic way, what we do when we try to translate our inchoate impulses into clear, analysable language.
In the end, then, “The Lesser Key of Solomon: Goetia” is best approached neither as a handbook to be followed slavishly nor as a quaint relic to be dismissed with a smile, but as a document of how one culture tried to think about power, fear, desire, and the invisible. It is uneven, at times oppressive in its repetition, at times unexpectedly moving in its piety. It is not a comfortable book; it is not an easy one. But it still has the capacity to unsettle and to clarify, to show us how much of what we call “interior life” has always been imagined at the edge of a circle, facing something unknown and demanding that it speak. For me, that makes it a serious if flawed work, one I would place at about 71 out of 100 – not a universal recommendation, but a worthy, if austere, companion for readers willing to stand in that circle for a while and listen.
Formally, “Goetia” is presented as the first book of the larger “Lemegeton”, a compendium of Solomonic magic. This volume concerns itself with seventy–two spirits said to have been bound by King Solomon in a brazen vessel and released in exchange for service. Around that mythic core, the text constructs an intricate architecture of ritual. The operator is shown how to mark out a magical circle, how to inscribe a triangle where the spirit must appear, how to fashion pentagrams and hexagrams, rings and seals, all of them surrounded by divine names. There are conjurations for calling, conjurations for constraining, escalating curses to be applied if the spirit delays, and at the end, a formal welcome and a scrupulous license to depart. This is not a book of stories in the ordinary sense; it is a sequence of instructions and speeches, each designed to situate the reader in a very definite place in a very particular posture: inside the circle, facing the unknown.
The most immediately striking thing about “Goetia” is its voice. The conjurations move in rolling cadences that feel biblical even when the language is plainly post–Reformation. The exorcist “invocateth, conjureth, and commandeth” the spirit by a chain of names that begins in familiar territory – El, Adonai, Elohim, Tetragrammaton – and then drifts into those strange vocables that only grimoires seem to produce: Anephezeton, Primeumaton, Agla, On. Yet for all their flourish, these speeches are curiously legalistic. The magician is forever reminding the spirit that it is bound by ancient precedent: by the names which turned the rivers of Egypt to blood, by the name that caused the sun to stand still for Joshua, by the name that destroyed Bel and slew the Dragon. The tone is not one of intimate mysticism so much as of prosecutorial rhetoric. God is the Judge; the conjuror is His attorney; the spirit is the reluctant witness being dragged to the stand.
That tension – between devotional language and instrumental purpose – is one of the most interesting things about the book. On almost every page, the operator confesses smallness and sin, appeals for forgiveness, and declares that all work is done “as an instrument in Thy hands.” At the same time, the ceremonies are clearly designed to control, constrain, even torment the spirits if they resist. The “Spirits’ Chain” curses the disobedient entity to the abyss until the Day of Doom, unless it appears immediately in a fair and comely shape. The “Conjuration of the Fire” calls upon the created flame to burn the spirit’s seal in a stinking box suspended over coals, so that the spirit itself may be tormented by proxy. The “Greater Curse” envisions a lake of fire and brimstone for any being that won’t answer questions politely.
For a modern reader, there is something unsettling here that has little to do with the nominal subject of demonology. The magician’s God is both loving and terrifying, a deity whose mercy is invoked in the same breath as eternal torment. The magician himself is both humble and strangely entitled, insisting that all power belongs to God while treating angelic and demonic beings as functionaries who must yield treasure, knowledge, or services on demand. One can feel the echo of older legal and social orders in which hierarchy is unquestioned, even within the invisible world. For contemporary sensibilities that are wary of coercion, those passages will either be passed over as historical curiosities or read as a cautionary tale about what it means to drag other beings – whether literal spirits or aspects of one’s own psyche – into fixed, instrumental roles.
The core of the book, though, is not the rhetoric of the conjurations but the catalog of the seventy–two spirits. Each entry gives a name, a rank, a description of the form in which the spirit appears, and a list of offices: what it can teach, reveal, or accomplish. A king arrives riding upon a pale horse, with a leopard’s body and a bull’s face, speaking in a harsh voice until constrained to take human shape. A president comes as a great bird with the tail of a hare and paws like a lion, who procures the love of women and answers questions of hidden treasure. Another spirit appears as a lion–headed soldier, another as a serpent with a virgin’s face, another as a dog–headed man. Each governs a certain number of legions, each has a certain jurisdiction: philosophy, love, theft, book–learning, mechanical arts, the changing of men’s minds, the giving of dignities, the finding of things lost.
Read straight through, this section is less a gallery of horrors than a kind of occult gazetteer of human hopes and anxieties. The powers promised are, almost embarrassingly, familiar. We want knowledge of the past and future. We want to be loved, feared, admired. We want rank and riches, protection from enemies, mastery of arts, the ability to travel, to vanish, to discover what others have hidden from us. We want, above all, some advantage over time: to know what is coming, to undo what we have done, to recover what is gone. One can see why later interpreters were tempted to read the “spirits” as psychological personifications rather than external entities. The desires they serve are ordinary; it is the language that is strange.
“Goetia” itself encourages, in places, this inward reading. The prefatory “initiated interpretation” suggests that the demons may be understood as “portions of the human brain” – patterns of fear, appetite, and imagination which can be personified, invoked, and controlled only when named and ritualised. The elaborate preparation of the operator – the bath and the linen robe, the girdle inscribed with divine names, the anointing of temples and eyes, the recitation of psalms – looks, from this angle, less like a set of arbitrary taboos and more like a technique for inducing a particular mental state. The circle and triangle, too, can be seen as diagrams of attention: a way to mark off the self from the contents of the mind, and to insist that whatever arises must stay within a defined space, appear in a tolerable form, and answer clearly. Even the threats and curses take on a new cast when directed inward. How many times does a person swear that this fear, this compulsion, this habit will be cast into the abyss forever, only to find it again at the edge of the circle?
Yet the book never wholly abandons its literal frame, and that is part of its power and part of its limitation. The language of brass vessels, angelic kings of the cardinal points, planetary intelligences, and angelic choirs gives “Goetia” an imaginative richness that more stripped–down psychological manuals lack. One is reminded that human beings do not only want techniques; we want stories in which to place our techniques. At the same time, the grimoire’s refusal to step outside its ritual persona means that the curious reader is given little in the way of explicit commentary. There is no clear instruction on how to integrate the results of a working into ordinary life, no discussion of discernment, no warning about projection. The apparatus is baroque; the guidance is minimal. The serious student will have to bring their own philosophical and ethical framework to bear.
As a reading experience, divorced from any intention to practise, the book is uneven. The first third – the diagrams of the circle and triangle, the preparation of the other magical requisites, the sequential conjurations and curses – has a kind of grim momentum. You can feel the ritual tightening, step by step, from the first polite invitation through the invocation of the spirit’s King, into the threat of chains, fire, and oblivion, and finally out into the negotiated welcome and gentle license to depart. The middle portion, listing spirit after spirit, is less dramatic. There is a certain hypnotic pleasure in the repeated formulas, in watching small variations introduced into the descriptions and powers, but it is also easy to drift. The final explanations – of the divine names, the two triangles, and Solomon’s triangle – are oddly touching, as if the book were suddenly going out of its way to reassure the reader that all of this elaborate machinery rests on simple prayers: God is the beginning and the end; God is asked to be present, to protect, to direct; the names that look like barbarous syllables are, in fact, nothing more exotic than “Come here, appear human, speak clearly, show what you keep, answer all questions faithfully, and then go in peace.”
This duality – a surface of fearsome complexity covering a handful of very ordinary wishes and requests – is everywhere in “Goetia”. It is part of what gives the book its lasting fascination, and part of what makes it so easy to parody. There are moments when the tone tips, unintentionally, into the absurd, as when the operator threatens to consign a refractory spirit to everlasting fire while standing in a chalk circle in his linen robe, muttering doggedly through yet another page of names. There are other moments when the grandeur works, when the invocation of the sea of glass and the four beasts full of eyes, or the image of the brass vessel sunk under the sea, opens a small window into an older religious imagination in which the invisible world is crowded and perilous, and the act of naming is a serious thing.
For a contemporary reader who has come to the book through its reputation – through its echoes in popular culture, in fine press editions, in occult forums – there will probably be a measure of disappointment simply in the mismatch between myth and document. “Goetia” is not a gothic narrative of pacts and hauntings. It is closer to a technical dossier compiled by a church lawyer with an interest in astronomy. But if one can accept that mismatch, the book does have a peculiar integrity. It does not pretend to be anything other than what it is: a record of one strand of Western ritual practice, with all its assumptions laid bare. It takes the existence of spirits, angels, and a sovereign God for granted; it assumes that the human operator can stand, through grace and preparation, as a small but real agent in that larger economy; it believes that words, gestures, and symbols, repeated in the right way, can shape the traffic between worlds.
Whether one shares those assumptions or not, reading “Goetia” today is a way of asking what we do with our own unmanageable contents. We may not believe in the demons of the brass vessel, but we still wrestle with compulsions and fears and desires that seem, at times, to have lives of their own. We may not invoke Michael by name, but we still talk about “setting boundaries,” “holding space,” “integrating the shadow.” To see those concerns in a different vocabulary is not only historically interesting; it can be quietly instructive. The magician who draws a circle and insists that nothing may cross it uninvited is not so far from the person who decides that certain intrusive thoughts will be acknowledged but not obeyed. The magician who spends pages insisting that the spirit must answer “rationally” and “in our mother tongue” is doing, in a melodramatic way, what we do when we try to translate our inchoate impulses into clear, analysable language.
In the end, then, “The Lesser Key of Solomon: Goetia” is best approached neither as a handbook to be followed slavishly nor as a quaint relic to be dismissed with a smile, but as a document of how one culture tried to think about power, fear, desire, and the invisible. It is uneven, at times oppressive in its repetition, at times unexpectedly moving in its piety. It is not a comfortable book; it is not an easy one. But it still has the capacity to unsettle and to clarify, to show us how much of what we call “interior life” has always been imagined at the edge of a circle, facing something unknown and demanding that it speak. For me, that makes it a serious if flawed work, one I would place at about 71 out of 100 – not a universal recommendation, but a worthy, if austere, companion for readers willing to stand in that circle for a while and listen.
Read
September 30, 2024Putting the uni library to good use.
January 17, 2025
Cool. Now I know where D&D got most of the demon and devil names and their ranks and titles from.
June 30, 2023
“Thee I invoke, the Bornless One.”
An interesting look into early stages of demonologie and what summoning, categorizing, and describing demons looked like. This text provides diagrams, names, and descriptions, and the words used for specific incantations.
Weird, creepy, and a cool reference piece to have for an occult fan. I was surprised how much mainstream media borrows from demonic nomenclature when creating characters in present day. There were lots of names I’d heard in a different context that I wouldn’t have associated with the demonic. Interesting stuff!
An interesting look into early stages of demonologie and what summoning, categorizing, and describing demons looked like. This text provides diagrams, names, and descriptions, and the words used for specific incantations.
Weird, creepy, and a cool reference piece to have for an occult fan. I was surprised how much mainstream media borrows from demonic nomenclature when creating characters in present day. There were lots of names I’d heard in a different context that I wouldn’t have associated with the demonic. Interesting stuff!
May 16, 2023
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May 28, 2020
This is a great reference book for research while writing a horror, paranormal or demonic book. It has what is needed to understand the basics of demonology and what needs to be known to write about specific demons.
What is great about this book in particular is the little drawings of each demon and its representations. It makes it so much easier to look through than searching on the web. You have them all at your disposition and I like having a physical copy of my research books. This one is a good book to have.
What is great about this book in particular is the little drawings of each demon and its representations. It makes it so much easier to look through than searching on the web. You have them all at your disposition and I like having a physical copy of my research books. This one is a good book to have.
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