Transcription
I recall once during an October thunderstorm, back when I was still living down south, that the power got knocked out. I decided to sit up and listen to the storm rage outside and read a bit. I have a bit to drink, so I went to the shelf and pulled off the volume, the first volume of the Babylonian Talmud, Masechta Berakhot. This is a tractate mostly dealing with the laws of blessings, the lore of blessings.
Opening to Daf 8a, I was reading along, and though I had studied this topic before at length, something about it gave me the chills. Something about it, it creeped me out, frankly. Maybe it was the storm, or the cool autumn air finally breaking the summer heat, or just being alone in a big, dark, old house. But as I read along, I came to the line: "And in another version, it was taught that Abba Binyamin says, 'If the eye were given permission to see, no creature could withstand the abundance and the ubiquity of the *shedim* (of the Demons) and continue to live unaffected by them.' Similarly, Abba said, 'They are more numerous than us.' So, demons are more numerous than us, and they stand over us like mounds of earth over a pit. And Rav said, 'Each and every one of us has a thousand demons to his left and ten thousand demons to his right.'"
And though the text says that the Divine does protect human beings from such creatures, there's no denying that the Talmud imagines our world to be a pandemonium, a literal pandemonium. This term was invented by John Milton in his *Paradise Lost* for the capital of Hell itself. The word usually means something like chaos, but the Greek reveals that it actually means something like "full of demons," "replete," "overflowing with demons." In the imagination of the rabbis, reality itself is infested, and every nook and every cranny, with *shedim* and with demons. The idea, whether I believe it or not, doesn't matter. That just beyond the reach of that candle, as I was reading the text, that malevolent entities were lurking in untold thousands, was a truly uncanny notion to me.
No text in the history of demonology has better attempted to catalog and describe, and perhaps most important, most infamously of all, to conjure and control that very pandemonium than the mysteriously named *Le Megaton*, or more commonly known, the *Lesser Key of Solomon*. In this episode, we're going to explore the early history of the role of Solomon in controlling demons, the history of the genealogy of demons and their various hierarchies, and the composition and construction of that most famous, infamous textbook of black magic, the *Lesser Key of Solomon*.
And this episode's also really special because it's a collaboration with my colleague and my dear friend, and of course, fellow academic researcher of all things esoteric and occult, Dr. Angela Puka, over at her wonderful channel, Angela's Symposium. Now, Angela specializes in the academic study of magic and magic-practicing religions and traditions, and comes from my shared background in philosophy. So you can expect that she's going to be just as sympathetic as I am, but also just as critical to the literature. She now focuses on contemporary esoteric and occult practices, which is great as a compliment, as a terra-cup. We mostly focus on past things. Now, Angela's going to pick up where I leave off and cover this incredibly important history of this text, and most importantly, its practices into the occult canon of the late 19th and the 20th century, and all the way into contemporary practitioners of both Solomonic magic, and a little bit into popular culture. In fact, she has two videos that you can check out on the topic. So again, make sure to check out Angela's Symposium for the continuation of this episode, and of course, make sure to subscribe to her channel and support her project, her symposium, if you're interested in this kind of material.
And of course, if you're interested in magic, or hermetic philosophy, alchemy, Kabbalah, or the history of the occult, make sure to subscribe here to Esoterica and check out my content on esotericism topics as well, including curated playlists. And if you want to work like this, long-form, accessible, scholarly, and free content on topics in esotericism in the academic study of the occult, I'd hope you'd consider supporting my work either on Patreon. You can hook me up with a one-time donation if you like. You can use the Super Thanks option just below the video, or we have some pretty cool black metal style merch over on the channel if you're kind of down with that aesthetic.
But now, let's turn to the early history of Solomonic magic and to the *Lesser Key of Solomon* itself. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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So, first off, you should know that this video is actually a remake and an update, a significant update, of an earlier episode I did on the *Lesser Key of Solomon* a few years ago, really at the very early days of the channel. Now, I'll be both updating the information with new scholarship and also just improving the overall quality of the video. Now, if you've seen that older *Lesser Key of Solomon* video, I hope you'll stick around because there is a good bit more material in here. In fact, this video is about 10, 20 minutes longer than the first video that I made because while I'm packing more material in.
But it is perhaps unsurprising that Solomon, the famed Israelite monarch, would become the most celebrated Magus of occult wisdom in the European theater, right there next to someone like Hermes Trismegistus. While Solomon is famous for being wiser than the man of the East and of Egypt, at least according to the Israelite sources who were not at all biased, he specifically is noted for his skill in botany and mentioning him already to a kind of spagyric wisdom, often associated with poisons and magic. You couldn't really separate those in the ancient world. Further, he's credited with the construction of the first temple in Jerusalem for the Israelite God, and allegedly, the gate complex is the so-called Solomon Gate complexes that survive in that area, which are archaeologically contestable and maybe even testimony to a centralized, well-run kingdom, though again, depends on what chronology you take looking at U. Finkelstein.
Despite this, the text also reveals a character which is also willing to seek out wisdom and pleasure well outside of orthodox bounds. The text chides his merged in Nama, the Ammonite, who becomes a demon, by the way, in the Zohar. Nama, the importation of foreign worship, and the mysterious mentions of his relationship with the Queen of Sheba, which has produced its own super fascinating lore, takes like the Cabernet. Here, though, Solomon is something of a transgressive character, a kind of Israelite Faust, whose pleasures and wisdom leave him dejected and reeling, if we take Koheleth, or the Book of Ecclesiastes, to be in his voice. I love that book, Ecclesiastes. Well, it is just the best book in the world, in my opinion.
The transgressive wisdom and liminal character of Solomon make him the best candidate for widely supernatural powers that stretch beyond common bounds of good and evil, are frankly even Israelite and non-Israelite, Jew and Gentile. As early as Aristobulus in the second century BCE, Solomon is already being described as one of his predecessors as a kind of general philosophical wisdom. And by the turn of the Common Era, the apocryphal *Wisdom of Solomon* describes the Israelite King as: "For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, like all of it, metaphysics, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements, the beginning and the end and the middle of things, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycle of the years and the constellation of the stars, the nature of animals and the tempers of wild beasts, the power of spirits and the reasoning of men, the variety of plants and the virtue of roots. I have learned both what is secret and what is manifest, what is esoteric and what is exoteric. For Wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me."
Now, this is an incredibly important advertisement for the general wisdom of Solomon. Indeed, here we have the universal knowledge of Solomon enumerated beyond the mere botanical knowledge of the Book of Kings into a full panoply of cosmological, astrological, biological, even metaphysical, spiritual reality of all things seen and unseen. Here, his wisdom is said to contain both exoteric and, as I mentioned, esoteric wisdom, properly befitting an Alexandrian philosopher of this period. I mean, these are the days of Zosimus of Panopolis. Now, as I've noted in another episode, many philosophers at this time, from Pythagoras to Democritus to Empedocles, and many others for that matter, were seen as not only possessing just worldly philosophical wisdom, but also esoteric secrets and magical powers. Even Plato is known to have had esoteric teachings. Indeed, there are spells in the Greek Magical Papyri attributed to these very philosophers. They're not just philosophers, they're also Magi, they're Mages.
This ability to control demons, however, is not unique to the Alexandrian context. At Qumran, in the Judean Desert, we have a pretty fragmented Psalm of the Desi Scrolls, 11Q11, an exorcistic psalm that's been recovered that also mentions the power of Solomon and his ability to control demonic forces. In fact, it's one of the earliest mentions that we have of this power of Solomon. And in the first century of the Common Era, around the same time, properly as the composition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Jewish Roman historian Josephus, self-promoter Josephus, extended Solomon's power over demons in his writings. In the *Antiquities of the Jews*, there, in section 8:25, "God also enabled him to that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. It makes them sane, restores their sanity. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are also alleviated, and he left behind the manner of using those exorcisms by which to drive away any demons, such that they never return." That was a problem, demons often tended to come back. "And this method of cure is of great force on down until this very day."
Now, the manner of this cure was this: He put a ring on that had a foot of one of those sorts of the demons mentioned by Solomon, to the nostrils of the person possessed, the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through the nostrils. And when the male, when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him not to return into that gentleman, making still mention of Solomon, using Solomon's name as a kind of appurtraic, in reciting the various incantations which he composed. In fact, the demon would fly out and split some water in a basin. Now, this whole episode, by the way, which was recorded of an exorcism performed by a certain Eleazar before Josephus, but also in the presence of the Roman Emperor of that time during the Jewish Wars, they took a break from the war to watch an exorcism, but that was how renowned this magic was at that time. But here we have an early mention of a Solomonic ring with a power over demons, a feature that will reappear again and again and again, and will get its own episode. The ring and seal of Solomon, of course, is going to get its own episode soon.
In the first few centuries of the Common Era, the trope of Solomonic control over demons, specifically in the service of the construction of the Jerusalem Temple, would appear in numerous texts from the Gnostic Library there found in Nag Hammadi, to the Greek Magical Papyri found in also Egypt, although different places. To begin the scriptures, the Right and Left Ginza of the wonderful Mandaean people, may they be preserved. And maybe most importantly, and most interestingly, in the Babylonian Talmud and *The Testament of Solomon*. These two texts provide two different stories about Solomon's demonic employee in the construction of the first temple. What they share in common is that he both, he used demons in both stories.
In the Talmudic legend found at Tractate 1868a, Solomon's faced with a conundrum in Jewish law. The altar, and by extension, the entire temple itself, must be constructed of unhewn stone, that is, stone that hasn't been shaped specifically with iron tools. Well, how is it possible then to construct a huge structure with unworked stone? Well, the answer, of course, of course, is a magical worm. It's a magical worm known as the Shamir, which is able to cut stone without the use of iron. Well, where do you, where do you get a Shamir from, exactly? Well, and again, this should all be obvious. You capture demons and you torture them until they confess. The only known demon that knows where the Shamir is, is Asmodeus, the king of the demons, who is remarkably temperate. But of course, what you do at that point is you get Asmodeus drunk. You feel what he normally drinks is water with wine. You get him drunk, you chain him up, and then you use a magical chain, and then you drag him back to Jerusalem. There you find out that while Asmodeus knows that the Shamir, the magical worm, is on a distant mountain guarded by a sacred oath by a bird named the Duchifat, and it's a pun in Aramaic here if you're interested, who is then tricked into letting go of the magical worm and then subsequently kills itself for having broken its oath. That kills itself in shame. So the story got real dark there.
At any rate, the Shamir is eventually taken back to Jerusalem. Solomon and Asmodeus oversee the construction of the temple together. Somehow, eventually, Solomon is tricked by Asmodeus into removing his magical chain, and then he eats Solomon's ring, and then actually knocks Solomon hundreds of miles into the air. And Asmodeus then takes over the throne of Israel, and Solomon retakes it after a few years, or maybe not. Towards kind of ambiguous. There's, there's rabbinical disagreement about exactly whose ruling Jerusalem at this time, Asmodeus or Solomon. So rabbis disagree, surprise, surprise. At any rate, this story just needs to be made into a Marvel movie. Why this isn't more of a movie boggles my mind. But you guys can call me, Marvel movie people, and I will help you on the screenplay of this. It can be like, Solomon versus Asmodeus. You can put Magneto in there if you want to. I would like that if you could do that.
Regardless, this is an amazing story. And if you want to read it in the Talmud yourself, I've put a link in the description, and you can go read the entire thing yourself. It is, it's a hoot.
But from a Jewish legend to a Christian one, not any rate, it is in *The Testament of Solomon*. Typically thought to be composed in its current form, which is quite complicated, sometime in the early Middle Ages, but the text probably goes back to the first few centuries of the Common Era. And it will ultimately prove, I think, the really decisively important text, at least in the history of Western magic, because it's couched really in a Christian magical context. And this again, rather complex text, a young man is being tortured by a demon. This demon's name is Ornias. And Solomon prays to the Angel Michael to, well, fix this. Solomon is then gifted a magical ring, a magical ring from the angel, which binds both Ornias and the prince of the demons, Beelzebub. Solomon then uses the bound Beelzebub, not Asmodeus, in the construction of the temple. Here, in the Christian story, further, Solomon is then given the wisdom of all kinds of various demons, their astrological origins, that's going to prove very important for astrological necromancy in the Middle Ages, and the various powers which are excited to have, which can now be brought under Solomon's control.
Now, this includes a catalog of demons, and all of these kinds of catalogs with demons and their powers, could it be at some sense traced all the way back to the third Century BCE *Book of Watchers* or the earlier sections of the *Book of Enoch*? That's the *Book of Enoch*, chapter 8 or so, where we learn of the various corrupting roles of the various fallen angels in human affairs. By the way, that's a uniquely interesting theory of evil, in the Enochic theory of evil, the origin of evil. The angels come down to have sex with women, and they spread evil that way. This is a different and interesting rival to the earlier Christian theory of evil, where the angels, led by the devil, rebel against God, and it's in that rebellion they're cast out of Heaven. These two stories are two different, interesting theories about where evil comes from in the world, in Jewish apocalyptic theology. And that's an interesting distinction about how evil began in either the apocalyptic versions of Judaism or in the more specifically Christian versions. But at any rate, two different theories of evil, the etiology of evil aside.
Solomon is then allowed to interrogate these demonic planets. Again, this isn't probably maybe an echo of the old Gnostic worldview, where the planets are sort of demonic archons, and their various powers, and their specific angelic adversaries. If you know their adversaries, you can kind of control them via angelic elbow grease and a host of other demonic forces, including a Lilith-like demoness. Also show up here, she's known as Abizoot. It's not clear exactly if she's Lilith, but you also have the various demons of the deacons of the zodiac. Again, you can learn their powers, their astral locations, and how to bind them and use their astral powers to your bidding. And of course, Solomon binds many, if not all, of these demons. He forces them to work in the construction of the temple, even getting them to do menial tasks like carrying water around, which seems like a perfectly good waste of demonic, demonic power. However, the large cornerstone of the temple can't be managed by any of these demons because, well, there's a thwarting angel blocking them. Of course, that angel is Jesus. Yeah, it's Jesus. It's Angel Jesus. Though eventually, the wind demon, maybe this is Asmodeus, along with a demon living in the Red Sea, eventually do put the cornerstone in place. That's again, the Jesus part is important because it's going to enter into Christian mythology.
At any rate, *The Testament* ends with Solomon turning to foreign gods because that Solomon, any out of an intense love for, you know, his mistress. But anyway, he laments and tells the reader, "Don't you know, don't make the mistakes I made." You know, it's kind of like an after-school special, but not drugs, but demons. Demons be fun to make one of those like after-school '80s shows, but instead of drugs, it's in necromancy. Like, make it even medieval, stutter.
It is *The Testament of Solomon* that provides the who, what, when, where about the nature, power, and binding of demonic powers and the cosmos. But, and this is pretty key, *The Testament of Solomon* is not yet a practical magical text. Now, it does contain much in the way of the how, and the "see rescension" does begin to represent a formal reach, a real bridge in the direction of Solomonic magical practice, but we don't learn so much about how to perform the magic of Solomon. Though at least one spell is attributed to him, the so-called Solomonic Collapse. This is a spell that causes someone to go into a something like an ecstatic trance, to be found in the Greek Magical Papyri in the fourth text, 850729. And Solomon's Seal, by the way, is already mentioned there in PGM 4 as well, around 3007. It's part of an exorcism ritual.
Because Solomon, the use of a magical text for binding magic, is also to be found in the late classical *Sefer Ha-Razim*, or the *Book of Secrets*. And such an idea clearly also survives into the Islamic context as well. You can find in Ibn al-Nadim's monumental encyclopedia, the *Fihrist*, that Solomon is mentioned as having power over demons, and some of these demons, as enumerated by al-Nadim. This is also a trope that shows up in the *Arabian Nights*. So again, it's already being funneled into the Islamic context as well, and of course, in the Byzantine context. So it's really spreading in all directions. And this remains a huge area of research, the exact way this all spread.
But here we find what appears to be the first practically explicit text of demonic Solomonic magic appearing by the late 15th century, somewhere in Greece, and specifically in a Byzantine context, made in southern Italy, actually. And that text is the *Hygromancy*, or the *Solomonic Treatise of Solomon to his Son Rehoboam*. And in that incredibly complex Greek text, Solomon describes the evocation of planetary spirits, angels, and demons, the use of elective astrology, and the occult virtues of words, herbs, and stones. In addition, this text also accumulates a vast array of ritual and magical microforms, which kind of get stuck to this structural core and really form the basis of a lot of Western magic, from the knife of art, various forms of divination, the magical circle, and most famously, the powerful ring and seal of Solomon. It's in that text, the *Hygromancy*, that we get our first visual representation of the Seal of Solomon. This treatise is without any doubt fundamental to the history of Western magic and occultism more generally, and the *Hygromancy* is well worth digging into. It's that important.
Shifting to the Western Latin context in the High Middle Ages, the *Ars Notoria*, also linked with Solomon, again, through semi-illicit use of demonic influence, and is meant to facilitate the rapid knowledge of the liberal arts, primarily by piety and concentrating on what are called magical *notae*. These are images that communicate this stuff through their sigils. By the 12th century, William of Conches and Albertus Magnus also mention at least five Solomonic books of necromancy floating around at that time, and would probably become part of the Solomonic corpus as we know it, and even to the lesser, some degree, to the *Lesser Key of Solomon*.
Over the next few centuries, mentions of other texts attributed to Solomon occur in lists of condemned books, and this is in transcriptions of interrogations by the Inquisition. So those are trustworthy indexes, *preparatorium*. These are lists of banned books, various condemnations like the one in Paris, and so on. Though it should be pointed out that while these books, and they bear similar titles to the ones that we see in the *Lesser Key of Solomon*, we can never be quite sure what those books were, because we have lots of books with similar titles that have lots under the hood that are different. These *Sefer Ha-Razim*, for instance, there are two versions of it, one Jewish and one Christian, and they are, while the titles are the same, they're nothing alike underneath the hood. So again, just because we see lists of books in these texts, and inquisitional records are listed the prohibited books, or lists of books that have been confiscated, just because you have a *Clavicula Salomonis*, Key of Solomon, doesn't mean that that text and the text you might be looking at from, I don't know, McGregor Mathers, those texts might not be anything alike under the hood, or in the contents of those texts.
However, one of those texts does remain remarkably complete, and that is a *Heptameron* attributed to Peter of Abano, though he probably didn't write it. And it will contain the conjurations that would form the foundation for the later *Goetia*. In fact, the *Heptameron* is basically where that implication comes from. We also get demonic catalogs, which also will proliferate in this time, such as the one found in CLM 849, the Munich Necromancer's Manual. But also more importantly for the *Goetia* and the French necromantic tradition, such as the *Livre des Esprits*. That text would go on to form the later demonological core to be found in the *Pseudomonarchia Daemonum* of Johann Weyer. *De Praestigiis Daemonum*. At some point, I just should make these episodes in Latin. Which, by the way, the *De Praestigiis* in turn would be translated into English from a manuscript for Reginald Scott's *Discovery of Witchcraft*, which was pretty garbled by the time that Scott translated it, and that forms the hardcore of the *Goetia*'s demonology.
Now, if all of this name-dropping and Latin titles and all of this seems difficult, and well, intimidating, it is. It's super complicated. But I've made in-depth episodes on virtually every single one of the texts I'm discussing in this episode. So if you want to dive into the history of Solomonic magic in a very deep way, half-hour deep dives into just, I don't know, the *De Praestigiis*, check out my playlist on that subject. It is a deep dive on almost every single text on mentioned in this episode. So if you really want to get a more robust idea of what's going into making the *Lesser Key of Solomon* or the *Goetia*, you're going to want to dive into that playlist. And especially, especially make sure to watch to the end because I have critical editions and expanded literature for virtually every episode I make, and that's going to give you access to the best scholarly work on this material as far as we have it. So again, check out that playlist on the rise and the contents of Solomonic magic to get a sense of all the kind of text that go into making up the incredibly complicated *Lesser Key of Solomon*.
But regardless, the *Key of Solomon*, the *Clavicula Salomonis* in some form, had become, for reasons that are still mysterious and require a lot further research, the book of nigromancy, or black magic, in the European Middle Ages. And this status would persist all the way through the early modern period into the rise of occult societies in the 19th and 20th centuries, and of course, all the way into the contemporary period with modern *Goetia* magic. Indeed, the Solomonic magical tradition has reached popular culture and film, art, video games, and beyond. I mean, I've seen *Goetia* seals everywhere from anime to tattoos to random laptop stickers at hipster coffee shops where the coffee is way too expensive. But anyway, I still need to do an episode and circle back on the hugely complex literature of the *Clavicula Salomonis* text, but the scholarship is just in its infancy. And doesn't, at least 150 manuscripts of this text are known to exist in various recensions, editions, and garbled states of transmission throughout the libraries of Europe and the Near East. Frankly, it's just a mess. And I think we are now just beginning to wade into what has remained some of the murkiest waters in the history of Western magic.
From Persia and Iraq over to North Africa, into Spain and Central Europe, we still don't have a good idea about what the landscape of even the manuscript tradition looks like for Solomonic magic. In terms of a calligraphy, *Clavicula Salomonis* literature, I mean, there are Arabic and African manuscripts of these texts. They exist just in manuscript. There are 150 manuscripts of this text just in Europe, in various libraries and various private collections. So getting into the *Clavicula Salomonis* literature is going to be a generation-long scholarly endeavor, requiring half a dozen languages and scholars in numerous fields. So the *Clavicula Salomonis* literature, if you want to get into that as part of your big thing, get you some Latin, get you some Greek, get you some, I don't know, Arabic, and dive into it. You could change the field. Your research would change the field. And this is a place where, if you're interested in the history of ceremonial magic, the *Key of Solomon* literature is going to be one of the greatest scholarly endeavors of our generation to get a critical edition, to get modern studies, to get a handle at all on that literature.
This episode, we're going to focus in on one tiny tributary of that literature, the *Lesser Key of Solomon*, specifically. Nevertheless, that tributary has become decisively important in the history of contemporary Western esotericism. And the *Le Megaton Clavicula Salomonis*, or the *Le Megaton Key of Solomon*, often just called the *Lesser Key of Solomon*, is itself an English language anthological book of ritual magic, anonymously composed sometime in the mid-17th century. I think the fact that it's in English has actually had a huge impact on why it's so popular. Even the name of the text is frankly complicated and mysterious. The *Lesser Key of Solomon*, as it is in many manuscripts, is actually "the little key." And what that means, that it implies a bigger key, which is the *Greater Key of Solomon* text. No text calls itself that, really. And it's often attached with this phrase, *Le Megaton*, which looks like a Greek term, but it's not clear what that means. Now, that word does occur in the *Ars Notoria* as a reference to another Solomonic text that we don't have. But the text there calls it a "spiritual and secret experimental text." It seems as if the writer of the *Lesser Key* attached that name to this text, thus making a real text that either was lost to history, or it never existed, you know, kind of like people making Necronomicons. Needless to say, that the term remains pretty mysterious.
However, the *Lesser Key of Solomon* is an anthology of texts, meaning that the book is actually several texts under one title, which just isn't unusual for medieval and early modern books. Magical books were often copied together despite their otherwise contents being pretty, I don't know, heterogeneous. It's pretty common to find manuscripts with several texts, often bound together with some vaguely underlying theme, like it's magic, then bound together in one volume, even though the magical systems described in those manuscripts don't really make sense together. The *Lesser Key of Solomon* is, with the exception of the *Ars Notoria*, concerned with the invocation and binding of both good and evil spirits. In this case, the *Lesser Key of Solomon* is, in its maximal form, composed of five texts, though often the fifth is missing. For a reasonable talk about these, include the *Ars Goetia*, the *Ars Theurgia Goetia*, the *Ars Paulina*, the *Ars Almadel*, and it's the *Ars Notoria* that appears in some manuscripts, though often missing the necessary *notae*. We'll come back to this in a minute.
This composite text, as we have it, dates to the mid-17th century, as I mentioned, though it includes material going back centuries, back to the 13th century at least. For instance, the very medieval conjurations of the *Heptameron* is here being combined with demonological lists, often emerging from the French necromantic tradition, which forms, frankly, an ingenious hybrid magical practice. And that hybridization, by the way, would not end with the *Lesser Key of Solomon* by any means.
Now, the most famous of these texts is the *Ars Goetia*, with its title deriving from the Greek *goēs*, which means sorcerer, which almost always has a negative, malevolent magic connotation. And this might reach back to the Greek word *goēo*, which means something like "to groan," "to wail," or "to howl." Which is the text is a demonic catalog enumerating some 72 demonic figures with their appearance, rank, seal, and magical function, along with a complex series of conjurations for invoking them, and how they are resistant to the Magus, or otherwise, well, how to make them do their demonic duty when they don't want to. It's like unruly children. The catalog here contains some of the most famous demons in all of Western, at least Christian, demonological traditions. And here we have Asmodeus and Astaroth, Baal, Belial, even Paimon is in there for some reason. Again, this might mean demon in a sense of spiritual creature, not an evil demon, along with a myriad of others, relatively unknown or somewhat scared demons. I've often liked the 31st demon, Foras, because he can teach you ethics. You can learn ethics from a demon. I mean, they know it's bad, so they must know what's good.
At any rate, their seals are typical of the period, with similar devices stretching all the way back to Greco-Egyptian magic, but likely here emerging from a separate French magical tradition, where they have, well, frankly, feudal demonological hierarchies, which just express the social structure of the day. And these sigils likely emerge from astral magical practices, maybe sort of tied up there to things like Picatrix, but there's lots of astral symbolism as well. And those astral symbols often sort of get tied to these demonological symbols, and we think that there's a sort of a relationship, a dialectic between those forms of magic, generating the specific demonic seals.
Now, as we've seen earlier, such demonic inventories stretch back millennia, all the way back to the *Book of Enoch* in some sense. But this specific list seems to have somewhat, seems to have somewhat ironic origins. In the end, while the list itself probably reaches back into the High Middle Ages, maybe a little later than that, there's good reason to believe that Trithemius had access to such a list himself. And similar demons also appear in the Munich Necromancer's Manual, though there it's only about 40 demons compared to the 72 of the *Goetia*.
Now, the immediate source seems to be an appendix that Johann Weyer attached to his *De Praestigiis Daemonum* in one of the later editions, and to be found in the *Opera Omnia* itself. Is reliant, as he tells us, on a French manuscript. Now, he calls that text, that list of demons, which doesn't have the sigils, by the way, the *Synopsis Pseudomonarchia Daemonum*. As they are again reproduced in Reginald Scott's famous book, *The Discovery of Witchcraft* of 1584, on which the *Lesser Key* seems to be immediately reliant. Though the manuscript of Weyer's text, as it goes into original Scott's version, was garbled somehow. We don't understand exactly how it was like it was randomized. The irony here is that both Weyer and Scott's texts were all mentioned to lessen belief in such entities. They were meant to lessen the belief in demons and witchcraft and all of it. But that general list has actually gone on not just to diminish belief in the Demonic, but it has gone on to become the most important source for actually attempting to engage with these entities through magic. I think that Weyer would just roll in his grave, but that's the way history goes.
The other specter looming large in all this, I think, is John Milton and his epic Puritan masterpiece, *Paradise Lost*. Demons were just all the rage at the time. Though it doesn't seem like that poem directly influenced the text of the *Lesser Key*, it's just hard not to take the text in its time period. You're talking about a time period of war and famine, and Milton really bringing these demons to life where they're talking to each other and talking to the reader, in some sense. So it's hard not to put the *Lesser Key of Solomon* in its specifically literary and even historical sense, in terms of its place in the history of sorcery and witchcraft, with people like Johann Weyer and Reginald Scott's *Discovery of Witchcraft*, which again, two other texts that I've covered. Well, at least the Johann Weyer, not covered Reginald Scott yet, but he'll get an episode at some point soon.
Now, as I mentioned a moment ago, the current duration for these demons is very heavily lifted in influence from the general world of exorcism literature of the Middle Ages, but specifically the uptake of that exorcism literature and Pseudo-Abano's *Heptameron*. Here we have the classic devices of black magic with magical circles written with Hebrew divine names, a triangle of art for binding the spirits, and because you don't want them bothering you, Solomonic seals, and a brazen vessel with Hebrew inscriptions for sealing up demonic forces. That's an idea that actually goes back really far. And complex series of conjurations, astrological timings, you get some smelly good incense and ritual attire, including of course, swords, which are very important in the history of demonology, and lion's belts, because you got to look, kind of look good. The genius of the *Goetia* is not so much in its originality per se, but in its ability to synthesize previous material into a truly theatrical ritual that processes and captivates the mind, the senses, and the emotion of the ritual practitioner. It's thus utterly unsurprising on this account that this text has gone on to become the standard textbook for contemporary occultism, beginning in the 19th century. It's also the genius of the *Goetia* as a text of ritual magic that's so overshadows all the other texts of the *Lesser Key of Solomon*.
The second book is the *Ars Theurgia Goetia*, which contains a basically completely separate system of invoking angels, this time good and evil, as opposed to just evil. It principally associates them with the points of the compass, including some various wandering spirits, bringing the total here to 31 spirits as opposed to 72. The text and the third of the *Lesser Key* is the *Ars Paulina*, which derives primarily from the *Stenographia* of Trithemius, and it, and it includes other texts mentioned earlier. Now, the *Ars Paulina*, named in reference to the Apostle Paul's ascent into the third heaven in the book of Second Corinthians, another long episode about that. It's interesting for its specifically astrological focus on good spirits, including the conjuration of the Holy Guardian Angel, which has its echoes in the complex magic of the *Opera Magna* ritual, again, decisively important in the history of 20th century magic. The profusions of spirits in this text also, the mention of a specific date, March 10, 1641, and what frankly might be the earliest mention of firearms in a magical text, guns. The text actually claims that it can protect against any firearms, guns, or the like. An early mention of guns and magic. I mean, who needs armor like AR 500 armor when you have spirits to protect you? And spirits don't have issues with Spalding, you don't even like a trauma plate or anything. But, but I need to circle back and do singular episodes on the *Ars Paulina* and the *Ars Theurgia Goetia*, which really are spectacularly interesting in their own right, especially given their connections to astral necromancy, as that's going to be taken up with folks like Cecco d'Ascoli, who they burned alive for astronomancy. Yeah, they burned Cecco d'Ascoli alive. I have an episode about him as well. Glad times have changed. They would have burned me alive for this episode, probably.
Also, the connection through Trithemius in these texts is fascinating, especially given the larger overlap with themes from his work, which include things like encoding and decoding messages and transmitting them via angels, in where it's kind of an early version of information theory, angelic information theory. Again, looking forward to making all of those episodes in the future.
The fourth text is also the shortest, but I think, in my opinion, the most interesting for lots of reasons. The *Almadel*. The *Ars Almadel* seems to be a corruption of an Arabic word or name, although it's ultimately of Indian origin from the word *mandala*, and it describes a process for creating a wax sigil for the invocation of various angels. In fact, it's a kind of little portable altar. Now, this magic may reach all the way back into Judeo-Arabic magic, and contemporary versions of such devices occur in at least one other Jewish manuscript. Again, Jewish magic is sort of haunting the background of a lot of this literature in important ways. I mean, that's the reason why you see all that Hebrew in those magical texts. Though this text is incredibly important in the history of scrying, involved in invoking visions, and probably had some impact on the development of the magical furniture ultimately used by Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley during their famous spirit conversations. The key item here is again, is this is a wax sigil revealed by the angels, and still preserved in the British Museum. Again, you can see some images of the table of work from the *Ars Almadel*. I've done a whole episode about it.
The final text of the *Lesser Key of Solomon* is also inconsistently found in the various manuscripts that have survived for one key reason. This is the famed *Ars Notoria*, which invokes angels, typically to rapidly gain knowledge of the liberal arts, which is to say grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music, astronomy, along with other arts, theology, and necromancy. And it also greatly expands one's intellectual abilities. It makes one more eloquent, and maybe one's memory better. The *Ars Notoria* is well known from many manuscripts dating back to at least the 13th century, probably making it one of the earliest texts to be taken up into the text. And it is famous for its beautiful *notae*, which are said to contain all of knowledge of these ideas compressed into a single complex sigil.
Now, the addition that we find in most versions of the *Lesser Key of Solomon* is actually from the Robert Turner translation of the text from the *Opera Omnia* of Cornelius Agrippa, produced originally sometime around 1600. Though that text is missing all those necessary and beautiful *notae*. They're not there. But if you want to check out more of the Solomonic playlist, you can get full episodes again on the *Ars Almadel* and the *Ars Notoria*. Some of these are like half-hour, 40-minute deep dives into both of these forms of magic. If you want to get a more well-rounded understanding of the kind of magic that goes into these texts.
In some sense, what makes the *Lesser Key of Solomon* influential is rather than being a book of magic, it's actually something like a micro magical library, which collects a wide range of magical practices from the early modern period, from demonic magic to angelic magic, to scrying, to astral magic, and just general wisdom acquisition, into one robust, if not really systematic, text. Then after its completion, sometime in the mid-17th century, the text was copied on numerous occasions, and several incongruent manuscripts survive all the way down to this day. Perhaps one of the most fascinating, in my opinion, is the addition attributed to Thomas Rudd, in which 72 angels are actually bound over to control the 72 Goetic demons, along with further exchanges in the manuscript with the Enochian magic of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley. Now, that text has been very carefully prepared by the illustrious, the wonderful duo, Dr. Stephen Skinner and Dave Rankine. Really important scholars in all of this. We owe them a great deal of gratitude. And this is also a great time for me to mention the enormously important *Grimoire Encyclopedia* as well, by Rankine. Fascinating text. You've got to pick them up.
But the text of the *Lesser Key of Solomon* would eventually be passed into the hands of several proto-occultists of the 18th century. This is sort of the period of the occult, the modern occult Renaissance. You got folks like Ebenezer Sibley and his famous associate Francis Barrett, the author of the incredibly influential 1801 anthology, *The Magus*. That text would filter in through those folks until eventually it would see the rise of ritual occultism in the later 19th century. And it's there that the *Lesser Key of Solomon* will become a true canonical text of black magic, from Mathers and Crowley, and the incorporation of things like the *Kephalos* Ritual from the Greek Magical Papyri. It's just stunning what they were to come up with. Again, if you want to check out that episode on the *Kephalos* Ritual found in the Greek Magical Papyri and how Crowley ingeniously developed it into the *Goetia*, check out my episode on that topic.
But to cover the more recent history of the *Lesser Key of Solomon*, I'm going to turn things over to my colleague and friend, Dr. Angela Puka, over at Angela's Symposium. Again, make sure to check out her videos tracing out the important history of this important and decisive text in the history of magic, and also check out her content more generally. I've also included a few book recommendations in the description as well.
Without any doubt, the definitive edition of the *Lesser Key of Solomon* has been prepared by Joseph Peterson. Joseph Peterson, thank you. We all owe a extreme profound debt of gratitude for his years, years of service. Joseph, thank you so much. You have done so much for the occult community and scholarship. Your mensch, man. Thank you. Thank you for your work.
Of course, lots more Solomonic content to come. As I mentioned already in the episode, there's still content in the *Lesser Key of Solomon* that I could work on. I want to get to that soon. Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.