Transcription
The imagery is, at first sight, rather shocking. Solomon, the third king of Israel, surrounded by misshapen demons in his bid to build nothing less than the temple for the Israelite God. This legend of Solomon and his esoteric powers over demons has inspired art, religion, and the occult practice for centuries, millennia even. But how did Solomon come to be associated with the arcane? How did Solomon become the occult king? From his origins in the narrative of the Hebrew Bible to the early modern grimoires, such as the Lesser Key of Solomon, this is the first of a couple of episodes in a series exploring these more arcane dimensions of that great third Israelite king, Solomon. Make sure to subscribe here for weekly explorations of topics and the history of esotericism. And if you'd like to support the work of providing evidence-backed, free, and accessible content like this, I hope you consider checking out my Patreon and some of the cool merch that we have on the channel. If you're new to the study of esotericism and you want to get the lay of the land, I'd recommend checking out my study guide, which will orient you to this topic with reliable sources. And if you're interested in actual historical books on topics of the occult and the mystical, check out my bookstore over at Esoterica Rare Books. You can find all those links down in the description and in the pinned comment. But now, let's turn to the esoteric history of King Solomon. I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and welcome to Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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Byakabus Dearamo's Consolatio Ptorum, also simply known as the Book of Belial, was as popular as it was controversial, even forbidden at times. It describes a lawsuit launched by Satan against Jesus Christ for his illegal trespass into hell itself. Representing the forces of the devil is Beiel, and presiding over the trial is, of course, none less than Solomon. First printed in 1473, the text went into numerous editions and translations and was made infamous for its lurid woodcut depictions of various demons testifying before Solomon. Of course, by the first generation of printing, Solomon was already very well known as both a judge, but also someone with a profound familiarity, maybe someone with a bit too much familiarity, with demons and diabolical magic. Handbooks of black magic had circulated in his name for centuries, and the widespread of texts like the Consolatio Ptorum only cemented Solomon as the arcane king of the esoteric.
Solomon first appears in myth history as the third king of the ancient kingdom of Israel. Following a relatively Game of Thrones-y succession narrative, the second child of King David rises to the throne, solidifies his political situation by marrying a daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh, and makes his first direct contact with the Israelite God. At Gibeah, Solomon makes sacrifices and undergoes a process of ritual incubation. That is to say, sleeping in a holy area such as a shrine or a temple in order to contact the divine through a dream. And in that very dream, Solomon admits that he actually lacks the knowledge of going out and coming in. This is perhaps his admission of his lack of knowledge around political or military acumen. And he requests of his God, Yahweh, a listening heart, able to distinguish good from evil, such that he can justly rule over Israel. For such a request, Yahweh grants Solomon just that: a wise and discerning mind, along with promises of both riches and glory and a long life, if and only if he walks in the ways of Yahweh. Thus, very early in the narrative, we find Solomon being granted his famous wisdom through apparently supernatural means in this dream vision with Yahweh. That wisdom, of course, is immediately put on display with the dispute over the two women and the baby, such that we learn that Solomon possesses *kmat Elohim*, divine wisdom. Now, the nature of that *kmat Elohim* would prove to be the foundation of the Solomon legends more generally.
From there, the text puts Solomon's acumen for political administration on display at length, followed by the power of his divine wisdom, said to outmatch other nations, namely the Egyptians, known in antiquity for their esoteric knowledge, along with several named wise men whose nature is now obscure to us. Specifically, however, we're told of his profuse generation of proverbs and songs, along with knowledge of trees from the cedars of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. Basically, all of trees. And also how he discourses on beasts and birds and creeping things, rendered reptiles in the Greek, and of course, fishes. The focus on various creatures at this point seems to be symbolic of his knowledge of all of nature. Elements of plants, along with the creatures of the air, sea, and those beneath the earth, or even the elements of the cosmos: air, fire, water, and earth. Indeed, his knowledge and kingship are said to be world-renowned, thus making him into a kind of world king.
The power of his kingship would reach its zenith with the construction of the House of Yahweh in Jerusalem. Though while the construction of the temple with demonic aid becomes a hugely important popular legend much later on, there's actually no such tale to be found in the Hebrew Bible itself. Though, like the construction of the House of Yahweh, almost every other element of Solomon's life and rule have just become grist for the mill of legends upon legends. I mean, they're just a cottage industry in history of Solomon fanfic. From the trying questions of the Queen of Sheba, to Solomon's partnership with Hiram of the King of Tyre, to his magnificent tiered throne, Solomon has, more than any other Israelite king, truly become the subject of massive amounts of wonderful legend and lore.
But just as Solomon's reign began with a dream vision of Yahweh, it would, in a significant sense, come to an end with just such a vision. With the construction of the House of Yahweh completed, Solomon would again meet his God in a dream vision. And here, the Deuteronomist editor has clearly inserted their very own covenantal theology. Thus, Solomon's wealth and power mean basically nothing, given that his foreign wives and concubines have led him to worship foreign gods other than Yahweh. And thus, his downfall and the division of the Israelite monarchy ought to be laid at the feet of his own apostasy and idolatry. The Chronicler, for what it's worth, is much more interested in Davidic propaganda, focusing much more on Solomon the builder than his purported wisdom, and even attributing some of that building to David in a sense. Though the whitewashing campaign of the Chronicler applies as much as it does to Solomon as to David, whose less savory elements, you know, that time he got that guy killed, those are all conspicuously absent in the Chronicler. Hence, we can perhaps detect at least three editorial layers of the early Solomonic myth history: perhaps an early semi-historical layer of Solomon as a wise ancient Near East ruler, very similar, by the way, to other royal accounts of the time; the theological interpretation of the Deuteronomist into the narrative; and finally, the revision of all of it by the Chronicler.
There are five other texts that are also associated with Solomon in the Hebrew Bible. There are two psalms, Psalm 72 and Psalm 127, along with the Book of *Mish*, Proverbs, *Shirim*, the Song of Songs, and *Kohellet*, or Ecclesiastes. Though while these texts are absolutely fascinating, I mean, my favorite book of all time, full stop, is *Kohellet*, Ecclesiastes. None of these texts really do much to add to the specifically esoteric dimensions of Solomon's legend, aside from generally showcasing his wisdom. Though Song of Songs would, of course, become a kind of mystical allegory in both Jewish and Christian traditions. So, in that way, Solomon has, at least via his name or the attribution, and very much given over something to the mystical tradition. Indeed, it's highly unlikely that the historical Solomon could have actually even composed Song of Songs or *Kohellet*. They were composed hundreds of years after his purported rule, and Proverbs is more of a collection of Israelite and sometimes even Egyptian sayings. Though I will say that Psalm 72 does have some Solomonic themes when compared to the Book of Kings.
Of course, an outstanding question is to what degree any of this data is reliable as history. The Tel Dan Stele provides us some evidence of a House of David, which likely indicates that David was an actual historical figure. And the presence of the six-chambered gates at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer may be evidence of some degree of early Israelite central planning and have been dubbed Solomonic gate complexes by some biblical archaeologists. But this issue is by no means a settled one. To be sure, no ancient inscriptions have come to light mentioning Solomon, an especially conspicuous lack of evidence given how internationally powerful he's presented in the Book of Kings. Indeed, the archaeology points to the Jerusalem of the 10th century B.C.E. only boasting of a population of several hundred to maybe a thousand residents, thus making the kingdom of David and Solomon much more like the garrison of a local warlord. And if you've ever read the stories of Saul and David, local warlords, they were. Thus, while many scholars think that Solomon was a historical personage, his depiction in Kings is much more exaggerated as myth than much in the way of solid historical data, to be sure. But a total lack of historical data won't get in the way of just making up some wild stories about demons. In fact, it might even help.
To be sure, the Hebrew Bible presents us with a complicated image of Solomon. On the one hand, he is the archetypal, just, and wise king chosen by Yahweh in a dream vision to construct the central divine shrine in Jerusalem. But on the other hand, he is seen as a man led astray to foreign worship and worldly and desires of the flesh. The king that, in the end, having betrayed the God that empowered his rise, dies surrounded by his enemies, his kingdom rent asunder by his sins. Thus, in a sense, he's kind of an Israelite Faust or Casanova combined. And it's probably precisely that combination of his access to supernatural wisdom combined with his moral ambiguity, to put it mildly, that primes Solomon as a kind of occult king. His wisdom, power, and desire push him into theological transgression, damning him, and thus providing a virtually inexhaustible literary theme upon which to build further and further mythology.
This dual image of Solomon would be further and dramatically transformed during the process of Hellenization. Starting in the 3rd century B.C.E., the Hebrew Bible, along with adjacent Jewish literature, were both being translated and composed in Greek. Judeans making up a sizable part of the population of the new city of Alexandria over in Egypt. Of course, translation, especially from languages as different from each other as Hebrew and Greek, is always going to include a heavy amount of interpretation. And the translation of the narratives about Solomon will prove to slightly transform our picture of Solomon as a king. Specifically, Solomon's kingship is translated from that of an ancient Near East king marked by riches, wisdom, and glory to a more Hellenized king marked by practical reason and the classical Greek virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage. This is especially clear in the translation of that Hebrew phrase *kmat Elohim*, or divine wisdom, as either *sophia* or *phronesis* in the Septuagint, or as *epistemon* in other texts, as these terms have a significant linguistic valence. *Sophia* can refer to a wide range of literary and poetic skills, knowledge of nature and divine matters, to specific philosophical wisdom. *Phronesis*, on the other hand, most often has the sense of practical knowledge in politics and otherwise, while *epistemon* often has a more technical or sometimes even theoretical sense, depending on how it's coming from people like Aristotle.
Further, the sections of 1 Kings 5, when rendered into Greek, expand upon the sense of proverbs and songs in the Hebrew to a different semantic range in Greek, *parabolai* and *odai*, which also carry astrological and magical valences in Greek that don't really occur in the original Hebrew. And while the translation of the Wisdom of Ben Sira and the History of Jewish Kings by Polybius primarily transferred the kingly character from the Israelite to Hellenistic milieu with little interpolation, it would really be the Jewish Roman historian, Josephus, that would most popularize the important esoteric element of King Solomon to the world more generally: his power over demons. In that process of Hellenization, Solomon would be given the kind of numinous power provided to rulers of that period. That is to say, emperors and kings and pharaohs, etc., were all understood to have powers above and beyond those of mere mortal political rulership. They were considered to be either godlike, have godlike powers, or just in some sense to be gods. Thus, when Hellenistic writers like Josephus were describing their own historical kings to Greco-Roman audiences, they followed fashion, giving Solomon and Israelite other kings similar kinds of powers.
Further, Jewish apocalypticism was in full flourish during this time period, as both a literary and religious movement. This apocalyptic mode of Judaism, unlike previous Israelite beliefs, greatly focused on the roles of angelic and demonic entities in world affairs and in just common life more generally. In further possession by demons and treatment by exorcism, long part of the medical theories of the ancient Near East world more broadly, also became a staple feature of Judean religious life. This is most clearly evidenced in several Hebrew and Aramaic exorcistic texts recovered from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now, I've done a whole episode on just exorcistic literature from the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you want to check that out for a deeper dive, you find links below. But in summary, David becomes a kind of prototypical exorcist, given his ability to treat King Saul's bouts of madness via song. Solomon, as the son of David, the *ben David*, would inherit this ability, and that phrase *ben David*, son of David, would eventually develop both exorcistic and messianic valences in Hebrew. This combination is on very strong display in texts like the Gospels, where the character of Jesus embodies both valences. However, our earliest literary evidence for Solomon as an exorcist is, as I mentioned, from the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a text like 11Q Apocryphal Psalms being a great example. This relatively rare and sadly fragmentary scroll is composed of four psalms, one of which is a canonical psalm, Psalm 91, which were all used apparently in the process of exorcism. The core of the ritual was interrogating the demonically possessed person with the phrase *mi ata*, "Who are you?" speaking in this case to the demon to gain power and control over said demon so as to cast them out or subject them to further punishment. This was accomplished by both using the divine name Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh in a ritually powerful way and/or basically threatening the demon with all manner of punishments unless they reveal their true name and basically relinquish power over the possessed person. This structure of using the divine name, the *mi ata* "Who are you?" formulation, along with various supernatural feats, becomes the core of not only Western exorcism but also of Solomonic magical practice more generally.
Indeed, the bridge to that practice is the Testament of Solomon, the earliest known text in which Solomon is described as using a kind of magical ring to bind and control demons, specifically in the service of the construction of the Jerusalem temple. Of course, the ability to control demons is a logical extension of exorcism. If one can obtain control over demons so as to force them to depart from a possessed person, then why not just use them for something useful? You know, like building a temple. Again, I've done a whole episode on the Testament of Solomon. Find those links below if you want to get really into that text. It's one of the best in history when it comes to, I don't know, Solomonic literature, but just demonological literature more generally. But this first-person text, told as if by Solomon, details how he came to gain control over demons in the construction of the temple via a powerful ring. And that wraps us all the way back to the historian Josephus, where we learned that, quote, "God also enabled Solomon to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanitative to men. He composed such incantations, like the ones we've seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, also by which distempers are alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms by which they drive away demons so that they never return." And we're even told that a certain exorcist, Eleazar, even performed an exorcism in the presence of Vespasian and his sons and his captains and a whole multitude of soldiers by the use of a magical ring and Solomonic incantations. So, Josephus also locates Solomon in this whole world of exorcism/incantation literature.
Further, the *mi ata*, "Who are you, what is your name?" formula is also just found in the Gospels, especially in the case of the demon Legion, but also in the binding mechanism in the Testament of Solomon. Indeed, the core structural unit of the Testament of Solomon is the *mi ata*, "Who are you, what is your name?" though here in Greek and not in Hebrew. Although followed by the name of the demon, their description and astrological information, their respective thwarting angel, that is to say, the angel that corresponds to kicking them out and making them doing things, them being bound over to the power of Solomon or the magus more generally, and their specific service, often very menial, and the construction of the temple. And while most of the Testament is merely descriptive, the sea retention of the text begins to move quite more solidly in the direction of using the text for magical practice.
A specifically Christian text, on the other hand, the Questions of Bartholomew, in which the titular character asks Jesus to see Satan, or Belial, or Beliar. At this point, Jesus then gets a retinue of angels to drag the enchained satanic figure from hell, the sight of which actually kills all the gathered apostles from fright. But of course, Jesus uses his Jesus powers to bring them all back from the dead. After which he guides Bartholomew to tread upon the neck of Belial, questioning him, saying, "Tell me how you are and what is your name?" After which he does further interrogate the prince of the demons, with Jesus noting that such spirits were first subjugated to Solomon. So even here in early Christian literature, the text of Bartholomew was incredibly popular. We already have it that Solomon was first able to have power over demons.
The notion that Solomon employed a magical ring with a specific seal or sign of power on it also appears during this period in earnest. Of course, magical rings are well-attested in antiquity. Perhaps the most famous being the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, which had the ability to make its wearer invisible and also gave them the ability to do evils that they wouldn't normally do, and probably became one of the models, one of the inspirations for Tolkien's Ring of Power. But at least three such magical rings are known to be found in the Greek Magical Papyri. And some early Christian amulets also invoke the power of Solomon's rings as a guard against various demons and fevers, as if there's much difference between the two.
And this brings us to an interesting tension in the Solomonic tradition, especially vis-à-vis Christianity. As I mentioned earlier, the phrase *ben David*, the son of David, had taken on both exorcistic and messianic overtones just before the turn of the Common Era. And that valence is quite clear in the Gospels, with the bulk of Jesus's miracles actually being well exorcistic or healing, and those were often combined in the ancient world, both often serving to do basically the same thing. Thus, in the divorce between Christianity and Judaism, Solomon becomes a bit of a complicated character, as he is the literal *ben David* and recognized as the exorcist par excellence. In one sense, Jesus is often depicted as a second, better Solomon, you know, without all the fun, lecherous stuff. But on the other hand, Solomon's reputation as exorcist and chief wasn't easily passed over, and it certainly wasn't going to be forgotten. And you can even see this tension in some Gnostic texts, such as the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, where both David and Solomon are seen as kind of failed precursors to Christ. Thus, in early Christian amulets, you'll have both language like "Jesus Christ conquers," but also right alongside imagery or even incantations invoking the power of Solomon, along with rings and seals associated with him. It just seems redundant to have both. If you have Christ, why need Solomon? That's the tension. And that theological tension continues well into medieval Christian history, with more orthodox factions arguing that the name of Jesus alone is sufficient for exorcism, with any of that Solomonic trapping being either just Judaizing heresy or satanic collusion, or well, both. Thus, Solomon will come to inhabit a kind of liminal space in the Christian imaginary, always associated with not quite orthodox dealings with demonic forces. A tension already apparent in these early Christian amulets and perhaps even already in the New Testament.
Of course, Solomon's going to make a few appearances in the vast collection of the Greek Magical Papyri, a collection of highly syncretistic Greco-Egyptian magical literature. And these would include everything from inducing a trance state known actually as the Solomonic collapse, mysterious references to the glances or the eyes of Solomon, various charms against scorpions, and of course, an exorcism incantation found in the Great Paris Magical Manual, that is PGM 4. Along with his emergent association with magic more generally, Hellenization would also see Solomon painted as a kind of Hermetic sage.
Yeah, Solomon as Hermetic Sage, composed sometime around the turn of the Common Era, the Wisdom of Solomon's perhaps one of the most early important texts of Greco-Hebrew Solomonic lore. And in chapter 7 of that book, we're told of the vast nature of Solomon's wisdom, which is said to include knowledge of all existence, of all being, the structure of the universe, the operation of the elements, along with the cycles of the seasons and the years. Further, he knows the positions of the stars, the nature of all living creatures, of all spirits, and of all human beings, along with the powers of various roots and herbs. The knowledge of what is hidden and the knowledge of what is manifest. The Greek of these sections, if you read them, should ring in the ear as having a distinctive Hermetic quality and perhaps seeks to present Solomon as a kind of rival to Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian sage, or perhaps as a rival to Egyptian wisdom more generally, something that that country was prized for in the ancient world. Josephus, for his part, also extends Solomon's knowledge to include the panoply of received philosophical, spiritual, and textual wisdom of his day. Solomon becomes a kind of Israelite answer to someone like Hermes Trismegistus.
And as I mentioned earlier, Solomon is invoked in a wide range of amulets, both Christian and Jewish, in the first few centuries of the Common Era. He appears in the famous incantation bowls of Nippur and Babylon, Aramaic incantation scrolls carved into lead, and various other elements, often designating him as the son of David, the *ben David*, and along with his magical ring, as all now becoming stable elements of the Solomonic character. Perhaps the most famous class of these Solomonic amulets of this period are the Solomon the Horseman type amulet. Probably based on Roman coinage of the time, these hematite amulets typically depict Solomon mounted upon a horse, spearing a female demon, maybe Lilith, in the chest. Many of these spell out Solomon's name and include the phrase "Seal of God" on the reverse, though no specific Solomonic seal is depicted. That's going to be centuries later. The iconography of these Jewish amulets would eventually migrate to Christian imagery, with Solomon gaining a halo and his spear eventually terminating into a cross. And versions of these amulets would also include various animals, demons, and even the evil eye being attacked, and along with various inscriptions, nomina, and magical signs or characters. These amulets survived in significant numbers, and this probably again attests to their popularity. Solomon was just known all through the ancient world for his ability to deal with demons. That such amulets survive in such significant numbers attests to their popularity and to the idea of Solomon as having this power.
In the Talmudic legend found in tractate 68a of the Babylonian Talmud, Solomon is faced with a specific conundrum within Jewish law. The altar, and by extension the temple itself, must be constructed of unhewn stone. That is to say, stone that's not been shaped by iron tools. But how is it possible to construct a huge structure with unworked stone? Well, the answer, of course, is a magical worm known as the Shamir, which is able to cut stone without the use of iron. But then, how does one get a Shamir? Well, again, this should all just be pretty obvious. You go and capture a demon. You torture them until they confess that the only person who knows where to get the Shamir is the king of the demons, Asmodeus. And so you need to go get Asmodeus drunk, chain him with magical chains, and then drag him back to Jerusalem. There you find out that while Asmodeus knows where the Shamir is, he's guarded on a distant mountain by a sacred bird known as a Difat. There is an Aramaic pun here for those who care, who actually ultimately tricks it into letting the Shamir go and then subsequently kills himself in shame for breaking the oath of protecting the Shamir. Well, the Shamir is eventually brought back to Jerusalem, and Solomon and Asmodeus themselves jointly oversee the construction of the temple. Eventually, Solomon is tricked by Asmodeus into removing his chains, and then he actually eats Solomon's magical ring and knocks him several hundred miles into the air. Asmodeus then takes over the throne of Israel, and Solomon eventually retakes the throne, or maybe he doesn't. There's rabbinical disagreement about whether or not Asmodeus continues to rule or whether Solomon gets it back. There's disagreement because, surprise, surprise, rabbis.
Finally, by the 7th century, legends of Solomon's power over demons had reached Arabia, with Solomon appearing in the Quran as having power over the wind, over certain animals, especially ants, and being able to compel the jinn to aid him in various construction projects. However, like Jewish and Christian sources of the time, the Quran makes it abundantly clear that Allah had provided such powers to Solomon, and that he never himself practiced magic as taught by demons. Of course, such a disclaimer about Solomon also indicates that Solomon practicing magic as taught by demons was at least in some form or fashion a belief held by enough people that the Quran had to address it. Again, when you say things aren't the case, that typically indicates that people believe that it is. Solomon himself would go on to become a major prophet in Islam and features prominently in Islamic mythology more generally.
Thus, by the late classical and early medieval period, Solomon had become transformed from the glorious, rich, and wise third king of ancient Israel to a sage with vast supernatural powers, often associated with demons. However, with a few exceptions, that wisdom of Solomon was primarily described in the lore. Just described in the lore. That is, that Solomon of these early periods very rarely acts to teach the reader his occult knowledge. But of course, many reading of such vast arcane powers would want just those powers for themselves. And as people are wont to do, the lack of such texts becomes an invitation to produce them. And it would become during this period that the first handbooks of Solomonic magic would first appear. Such that for now, over 1,500 years, handbooks of Solomonic magic have become the core occult tradition of the West. And it's to that literature and to Solomon as magus, as magician, that we'll turn to next.
Claude Lutaud and Pablo Torihano have produced two of the best studies of the esoteric dimensions of King Solomon, and both of their books are well worth reading and diving into. Of course, Dr. Stephen Skinner has written extensively on Solomonic magic and is rightly admired by the occult community, and his works are well worth digging into. But we're going to come back to Solomon the Magus in a future episode. Don't worry. Until then, I'm Dr. Justin Sledge, and thank you for watching Esoterica, where we explore the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion.
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