Ars Goetia

The Ars Goetia is the first section of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, an early modern English compilation of ceremonial magic. It is famous for a catalogue of seventy-two spirits, each described by name, rank, appearance, abilities, and a seal or character. In modern occultism the term “Goetia” is often used loosely for demon-summoning or work with these spirits, but historically the Ars Goetia is a particular textual tradition with identifiable manuscript sources.^[1]

The work has become one of the most influential sources for modern demonology, ceremonial magic, demonolatry, occult art, and popular representations of demons. It is also frequently misrepresented online as an ancient book written by King Solomon or as a direct scripture of Satanism. The surviving text is much later, heavily Christian in ritual structure, and assembled from earlier European magical and demonological materials.

The Lemegeton#

The Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, “Lesser Key of Solomon,” survives in seventeenth-century manuscripts and is traditionally divided into several books. Manuscript arrangements differ, but the familiar structure includes the Ars Goetia, Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, and material related to the Ars Notoria.^[2]

Like many Grimoires, the text is attributed to the biblical King Solomon because medieval and early modern legend regarded Solomon as a master of spirits. The attribution is pseudepigraphic: the historical Solomon did not write the surviving English manuscripts. Solomonic authorship functioned as a claim to ancient authority within a much later magical tradition.

The Ars Goetia became the best-known section because of its vivid spirit catalogue and sigils. Each spirit is assigned a noble title—king, duke, prince, marquis, president, earl, knight, or another rank—and is said to command a specified number of legions.

Sources of the spirit catalogue#

Textual scholarship makes it possible to trace much of the Goetic list backward. Joseph H. Peterson notes that the catalogue is based on a variant of the “Offices of Spirits” tradition and is closely related to Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, printed in the sixteenth century.^[1] Weyer’s list contains sixty-nine spirits in surviving printed versions, despite referring to seventy-two.

Weyer was not writing a devotional Satanist text. His demon catalogue appeared in a work arguing against aspects of witch persecution and claims about witches’ supernatural powers. The Pseudomonarchia itself drew on earlier materials. Scholars connect it to manuscript traditions including the Livre des Esperitz.

The Lemegeton compiler expanded and rearranged this inherited list and supplied ceremonial material from other magical sources. This means the seventy-two Goetic spirits were not all first invented in one seventeenth-century document, nor do they form a universally ancient hierarchy. The list is the result of textual transmission.

The seventy-two spirits#

The catalogue begins with Bael and includes names now widely known in occult and popular culture: Agares, Vassago, Samigina, Marbas, Valefor, Amon, Barbatos, Paimon, Buer, Gusion, Sitri, Beleth, Leraje, Eligos, Zepar, Botis, Bathin, Sallos, Purson, Marax, Ipos, Aim, Naberius, Glasya-Labolas, Bune, Ronové, Berith, Astaroth, Forneus, Foras, Asmoday, Gäap, Furfur, Marchosias, Stolas, Phenex, Halphas, Malphas, Räum, Focalor, Vepar, Sabnock, Shax, Viné, Bifrons, Vual, Häagenti, Crocell, Furcas, Balam, Alloces, Caim, Murmur, Orobas, Gremory, Ose, Amy, Oriax, Vapula, Zagan, Volac, Andras, Haures, Andrealphus, Cimejes, Amdusias, Belial, Decarabia, Seere, Dantalion, and Andromalius.^[1]

Spellings vary across manuscripts and editions. Modern websites often present one normalized spelling as definitive, but textual variants are part of the tradition. The same applies to seals: different manuscript witnesses can preserve different shapes.

Descriptions typically combine fantastic appearance with an “office.” A spirit may be said to teach sciences, reveal hidden things, reconcile friends, grant rhetorical skill, discover treasure, influence love, provide familiars, or perform destructive acts. These offices reflect the broader concerns of early modern magic rather than a coherent moral or theological system.

Ritual framework#

The Ars Goetia does not present the magician as a worshipper of the spirits. Its ritual framework belongs to Solomonic ceremonial magic: the operator invokes divine authority, uses protective circles and sacred names, displays seals, and commands spirits to appear and obey.^[1][2]

This distinction is essential. A modern demonolator who offers incense to a Goetic spirit as a respected deity is doing something different from the historical text’s command-and-constraint model. Modern practice may use the same names and sigils while reversing the relationship between magician and spirit.

The text includes elaborate conjurations, constraints, licenses to depart, and ritual implements. Some later printed editions add material that does not belong cleanly to the oldest Lemegeton manuscripts. Students therefore benefit from comparing manuscript-based editions rather than relying only on twentieth-century occult printings.

Mathers, Crowley, and modern publication#

The most influential modern presentation is the edition associated with S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, published in the early twentieth century as The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Mathers prepared much of the translation and collation; Crowley edited and supplemented the publication.

That edition helped bring the Goetia into modern ceremonial magic, but it is not a neutral facsimile of one manuscript. Crowley added his own material, including the “Preliminary Invocation,” adapted from a ritual in the Greek Magical Papyri through earlier occult transmission. Later reprints often blur the boundary between the older Lemegeton text and Crowley’s additions.

Project Gutenberg hosts a 1916 de Laurence edition that reflects this modern publication history.^[3] Peterson’s online editions are more useful for textual comparison because they identify manuscript sources and variants.^[1][2]

Goetia and demonolatry#

From the late twentieth century onward, practitioners increasingly approached Goetic spirits as beings with whom one could build relationships rather than entities to compel. This appears in demonolatry, theistic occultism, chaos magic, and some forms of modern Satanism.

Practices can include meditation on a seal, chanting a name or “enn,” offerings, devotional prayer, dream work, pathworking, or non-coercive invocation. Many of these methods are modern and are not found in the seventeenth-century Ars Goetia. They represent living reinterpretation rather than textual continuity.

Some theistic Satanists place the seventy-two spirits within a broader infernal hierarchy under Satan or Lucifer. Others reject that arrangement, regard individual Goetic spirits as independent deities or intelligences, or avoid Goetia completely. There is no universal Satanist doctrine establishing the seventy-two as Satan’s official subordinates.

Seals and visual culture#

The circular sigils associated with the Goetic spirits have become some of the most recognizable images in modern occultism. They appear in jewelry, tattoos, books, album art, games, television, and online communities.

Historically, seals function within ritual technologies of identification and control. Their exact forms depend on manuscripts and editors. A seal printed on merchandise is therefore several steps removed from its original manuscript setting.

The popularity of these graphics has also encouraged misattribution. Internet charts sometimes mix Goetic seals with later occult symbols, invent new correspondences, or attach planetary and elemental systems absent from the source. Such systems can be valid as modern occult constructions, but they should be labeled accordingly.

Historical value#

The Ars Goetia is valuable to historians because it preserves the intersection of learned demonology, ritual magic, manuscript culture, biblical legend, and early modern classification. It demonstrates how magical texts borrow and recombine older sources. It also reveals how categories such as “demon,” “spirit,” and “magic” were embedded in Christian cosmology even when church authorities condemned the practice.

Owen Davies’ broader history of grimoires shows that magical books circulated among many social groups and changed through copying, printing, and translation.^[4] The Goetia’s later history follows the same pattern: manuscript magic became occult print culture, then internet culture, then a source for new religious practice.

Using the text responsibly#

A serious reading of the Goetia benefits from three distinctions. First, manuscript history asks what the early sources contain. Second, modern occult practice asks how later practitioners adapt the text. Third, religious interpretation asks what a community believes the spirits actually are.

These questions overlap, but none can substitute for the others. A practitioner’s successful experience does not establish a manuscript date; a manuscript variant does not decide whether spirits exist; and a historian’s account of textual development does not tell practitioners what they must believe.

For theistic Satanist study, the Goetia is best treated as an influential historical source rather than a universally binding scripture. Its seventy-two spirits have acquired new devotional meanings, but those meanings belong to the continuing reception of the text rather than to one uncontested ancient tradition.

This encyclopedia covers traditions beyond the High Satanic Church. Church doctrine is identified as such when it appears.