Dantalion is the seventy-first spirit in the Ars Goetia, a duke with thirty-six legions. He appears as a man with many faces, including the faces of women and men, and holds a book in his right hand. His office centers on knowledge of people and learned subjects.[1][2]
Thoughts and images#
The catalogue credits Dantalion with knowing private counsels and thoughts and changing them. He teaches arts and sciences, causes love, and shows a person's likeness in a vision wherever that person may be. The visual office is described separately from the disclosure of thoughts.[2]
The many faces and book give these offices an unusually close visual expression. A fixed illustration cannot display every face imagined by the wording, but it can interpret the combination of multiplicity and knowledge.
A late entry in the list#
Dantalion is absent from Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. His inclusion belongs to the Goetia's expansion of the earlier catalogue, as Peterson's notes explain.[1]
The entry's claims about another person's thoughts should be reported as the grimoire's claims. They are not evidence that a practitioner can know or control a real person's mind. The historical account is already distinctive without adding a universal set of modern personality traits, relationships, or ritual preferences that its short text does not supply.
See also#
References
- Lemegeton, Goetia: Dantalion, Sloane 3825 transcription · Joseph H. Peterson edition of the historical grimoire, with manuscript readings. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
- S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, The Goetia (1904), spirit 71 · Public-domain edition. Offices and appearances are statements in this catalogue. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩