Overview#

The Dictionnaire infernal is a French work by Jacques Collin de Plancy that gathers material about demons, supernatural beliefs, and related traditions in dictionary form. The sixth edition, published in 1863, is especially familiar through its illustrated spirit entries.[1][2]

It is a nineteenth-century compilation. Its appearance as a dictionary gives the entries an air of settled reference knowledge, but that format does not establish the historical or supernatural truth of the traditions it assembles.

What an entry contains#

An entry can combine a name, rank, appearance, attributed capacity, and anecdotal material. Astaroth and Asmodée show how a named figure is made vivid through a distinctive body and role. Azazel’s entry repeats a standard-bearer motif that differs from the much earlier biblical wilderness setting.[1][2][3]

The dictionary therefore belongs to reception history. It tells the reader how older names were presented in a particular nineteenth-century religious and publishing environment. It should not be used alone to establish what an ancient community believed.

Images and recognition#

The Buer entry is a useful example of the relation between description and image. Its unusual radial figure can be recognized at a glance, even by readers who have never read the French prose.[4]

That familiarity changes how the figure is received. A printed image can become the default representation and then appear to be timeless. Recording the edition and artist, where established, returns the image to the history of its production.

An illustration is also an interpretation. It selects a pose and resolves descriptive ambiguities into a visible arrangement. It is valuable evidence for visual culture even when it cannot settle a question about an earlier manuscript’s wording.

Reading and citation#

The most useful citation names the edition and entry. A quotation from “the Dictionnaire” without that information can conceal revisions between editions or confusion between the author’s text and a modern caption.

When an entry is compared with a grimoire or a biblical passage, the comparison should specify which detail is shared. A common name does not make all offices, physical traits, or theological claims interchangeable.

For a general encyclopedia, the work is important as a record of how demonological lore was organized and made visually memorable. It offers historical evidence about the compilation and presentation of belief, while individual claims still require appropriate attribution.

See also#

References

  1. Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 6th ed. (1863), Azazel · Primary source for the standard-bearer motif in this nineteenth-century dictionary. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  2. Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 6th ed. (1863), Astaroth · Nineteenth-century demonological treatment of Astaroth. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  3. Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 6th ed. (1863), Asmodée · Nineteenth-century compilation and iconography of Asmodeus. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
  4. Jacques Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire infernal, 6th ed. (1863), Buer · Nineteenth-century description and illustration of Buer. (accessed 2026-10-01) ↩
Dictionnaire infernaltexts

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