The Dictionary of Demons, page 2
Written some time in the centuries around the start of the Common Era, the Testament of Solomon likely started off as a Jewish text but it shows evidence of Christian redaction—changes and insertions that better reflect Christian beliefs. It is a pseudepigraphal text, which is to say that it was not written by King Solomon himself, although it bears his name. It is named after him because it tells his story, and it is told from his perspective to lend that story more weight. This was a common practice in the time period during which the Testament was written, although it was equally common in that time (and for centuries afterward) to assume that the pseudepigraphal author really was the author of the text.
The Testament of Solomon is, by far, not the only extra-biblical tale that depicts King Solomon as a controller of demons. The legends that grew up around this Old Testament monarch are many and varied, from his escapades with the demonic Queen of Sheba, to the mystery of King Solomon’s mines, to the years wherein the demon Asmodeus allegedly stole his throne. King Solomon’s prowess as a wise man and magician also influenced Muslim legends: the stories of genies trapped in bottles like those found in the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights all tie back to the Solomonic tradition.
In order to understand the tradition influenced by this work, it’s not necessary to believe that King Solomon somehow had demonic assistance in the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem, nor even that he had power over demons at all. The important thing to understand is that a great many people both in the ancient world and in Europe up through the Renaissance believed these things. And belief in Solomon’s power was at least partly responsible for a complicated system of magick that revolved around spirit evocation. Names were a fundamental part of that system.
THE GRIMOIRIC TRADITION
The grimoires of medieval and Renaissance Europe are the direct inheritors of the Solomonic tradition as it appears in the Testament of Solomon. They get their name from an Old French word, grammaire, which means “relating to letters.” Letters, names, and the very process of writing are all integral to the grimoiric tradition. Some of these magickal books were viewed as possessing so much power in their words alone that if a passage were mistakenly read by someone not properly initiated into the mysteries, a master who understood the proper use of the book had to read a passage of equal length to negate the unwanted effects.1
Although no written line of descent currently exists to show us how concepts about demonic evocation recorded in the first few centuries of the Christian era survived to reemerge in the 1100s and beyond, the connection is unmistakable. King Solomon’s name comes up again and again, and many of the grimoires are directly attributed to him. These are of course as pseudepigraphal as the Testament of Solomon itself, but that did not stop medieval writers and copyists from putting the old king’s name on these forbidden tomes. Perhaps the two most famous are the Clavicula Salomonis—known as the Key of Solomon—and the Lemegeton, also known as the Lesser Key of Solomon.
The grimoires do not deal exclusively with demons. Many of the spirits in the grimoires are described as angels, elemental spirits, and beings known as Olympian spirits—intelligences tied to the seven planets and thus the seven celestial spheres. Given all the good spirits, bad spirits, and in-between spirits that were believed to be invocated by the rituals recorded in the grimoires, it can sometimes be difficult to tell what exactly is intended to be a demon. Certainly, the line separating demons from angels can get fuzzy in these works, particularly because many demons are presented as fallen angels, and they retain the traditional nomenclature of angels, with names ending in -ael or -iel.
Detail from an early sixteenth-century edition of the Celestial Hierarchy showing the seven planetary spheres in the scheme of Creation. Courtesy of the Merticus Collection.
However, as hazy as the identification of some of these spirits may at times be, there are also clear cases where the beings enumerated in the grimoires are described specifically as demons. Even then, these beings are not necessarily presented as entities to be avoided. Instead, following in the tradition set down by the Testament of Solomon, the writers of these magickal texts seek to abjure, control, and otherwise coerce these demons into servitude by commanding them in the name of God and his angels.
This is probably one of the most striking things about the grimoiric tradition, and it often comes as a shock to both Christians and non-Christians who approach these books as forbidden bastions of black magick. The magickal system outlined in the grimoires is highly religious. Furthermore, this system is predicated on the existence of a supreme being, and that supreme being is very clearly the God of the Bible. There is no avoiding the influence of Yahweh or the Bible in these works. Even though many of the grimoires are devoted to the summoning and commanding of demons, the spells contained in these tomes frequently read like priestly orations uttered in a high Latin mass.
In part, this is because the magickal system in the grimoires was practiced mainly by members of the clergy. In the Middle Ages, priests and lay-brothers were some of the only individuals who had the literary expertise to write, read, and copy these tomes. Professor Richard Kieckhefer typifies the demonic magick of the grimoires as “the underside of the tapestry of late medieval culture.”2 This is, of course, interesting because at the same time that priests and lay-brothers were experimenting with demonic magick, most of Western Europe was swept up in a mania focused on witchcraft, sorcery, and pacts with the Devil. Folk beliefs about witchcraft and the very real tradition of the grimoires existed side by side and, in some instances, may have even fed into one another. However, even though it invoked demonic spirits, the magickal system of the grimoires was perceived as being distinctly different from the “Satanic” practices of witches—at least by its practitioners. This was primarily because of the ritual elements and invocations to God woven throughout the grimoires.
As curious as it may sound, given the frequent references to Christ and the Holy Trinity that appear in some of the grimoires, a lot of the priestly and ritual aspects of these books of magick were inspired by Jewish esotericism. The Jewish tradition known as the Qabbalah is a mystical path, but it also has practical magickal applications. Much of Qabbalistic magick revolves around the Tree of Life. This is a kind of mystic ladder that is seen as a map of reality. The Tree of Life contains ten Sephiroth—the plural of the singular Sefira, which may share a root with the Hebrew word sefer, or “book.” 3 These Sephiroth are placed along pathways that move up the Tree of Life, from Malkuth, at the bottom, which represents the physical world, to Keter (also spelled Kether), at the top, which is the crown just beneath the Throne of God. In Qabbalistic magick, a trained individual seeks to ascend the ladder of the Tree of Life through rigorous practices that involve meditation, fasting, and ceremonial ritual. Encounters with demons and angels are a part of this mystic journey. The ultimate goal is a vision of the Throne of God, an experience believed to be powerfully transformational.
The grimoiric tradition borrows a lot from this Jewish mystical tradition. The ceremonial quality of Qabbalistic practice is adopted almost wholesale into the magick of the grimoires, as is the significance of Hebrew names—especially the secret names of God. There are several Jewish magickal texts—most notably, the Sepher Raziel, or Book of the Angel Raziel—that have a long-reaching influence in later Christian grimoires. Another example of uniquely Jewish magick appears in the Book of Abramelin, also known as the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. Despite being written by a fourteenth-century Jewish scholar, this book had a significant impact on Christian ceremonial magick. In the modern era it remains one of the most influential texts in this tradition. Most of the Christian grimoires contain abjurations of the spirits that include a litany of names, many of which are titles of God in garbled Hebrew. They are not always accurately spelled and their true meanings don’t always seem to be clearly understood by the Christian writers borrowing them, but their importance was recognized and retained within the system, albeit often by rote.
Tree of Life
It would be possible to write another book entirely on the crossover between Jewish and Christian magick in the grimoiric tradition. The important point to be made for the purpose of this work is that the influence of Jewish magick ensured that the spells contained in European grimoires very closely resembled religious ceremonies. Hebrew names, and specifically Hebrew names of God, play a significant role, and the predominantly Christian authors of the grimoires then added Christian elements, such as references to Christ, the Trinity, and even the Virgin Mary. The result evolved into its own system, but it is clearly a system that stems from medieval Jewish magick as well as the Solomonic tradition, with roots stretching as far back as the hermetic magick practiced in the ancient Hellenic world. Demons and angels both play significant roles in this system, and rather than being controlled through black arts, demons were thought to be controlled only by those individuals holy enough and pure enough to be able to convincingly command them with the many sacred names of God.
COMPILING THE NAMES
When I developed the concept for this book, the focus was on names. I knew it was possible to write an entire text on the practice of demonic magick as it appears in the grimoires, but that was not my goal. I simply wanted to create a resource of proper names attributed to demonic spirits, and the grimoiric tradition was the best place to start. As it turned out, I never had to stray far from the grimoires to produce an extensive list of names. Instead, I found that I had to set strict limitations for what would and would not be included in order to keep this book at a manageable length.
First, in order to be included in this book, the name had to be presented in the text as the proper name of a demon. It could not be a general name for a class of demon, like an incubus or a succubus. Aside from one lone exception, all of the names collected in this book were presented in their sources as the proper names of demons. The one exception is an entry on the Watcher Angels, a class of fallen angels. The belief in these beings had a significant if subtle influence on the demonology that underpins the grimoires, and I felt that this would best be covered in a separate entry that stands in addition to all of the individual entries on specific Watchers.
Second, the spirit being named had to be infernal. This meant that within its source text, the name was defined as one of the following: a demon, a fallen angel, or an evil angel. (A number of Jewish sources, such as the Sword of Moses, use the terms wicked angel or evil angel rather than fallen angel.) In some cases, the designation was hazy. I had originally sourced spirits named in the Secret Grimoire of Turiel, but in the end I cut them all, because they were more properly Olympian spirits—intelligences believed to be tied to the seven planetary spheres—rather than fallen angels. In a few instances, when the grimoire itself does not make a clear distinction, I had to judge a spirit’s status based on context. If the spirit is associated with malevolent magick or if its name appears in association with other known demonic spirits, and no effort is made to distinguish it from the demons, I have included that spirit’s name in this book. Several spirits from the Grimoire of Armadel fall into this class.
As a result of these criteria for selection, you will find that I have sourced mainly the grimoires that stem from the Christian tradition of Western Europe. Christian clergy were hardly the only people producing tomes of demonic and spiritual magick in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but they were certainly the ones who were most inclined to define certain spirits as demonic.
As we have seen already, these books had their genesis in Jewish mysticism, and there was a rich grimoiric tradition among Muslim writers as well. Some of these texts, like the Arabic Picatrix attributed to Al-Madjiriti, were excluded at the outset because they did not meet the most basic criterion for this work. The Picatrix has more to do with alchemy and astral magick—magick tied to the movement of the stars and planets—than with infernal spirits. Likewise, even certain tomes associated with the Christian grimoiric tradition were excluded because they did not contain named spirits specifically described as demons or evil angels.
An excellent example of this exclusion is the Heptameron, traditionally credited to Peter de Abano. This text, first published in Venice in 1496 but believed to have been written as many as two hundred years earlier, includes a section of seven groups of spirits with kings, ministers, and ruling intelligences. A number of these names are extremely similar to names that also appear in the Sworn Book of Honorius, a grimoire that is included in the bibliography of this book. In both texts, the spirits are associated with the seven planetary spheres. Their ranks and organization are nearly identical—but in the Heptameron, the spirits are specifically identified as angels. As a result, even though it is obvious that the Sworn Book was influenced by the Heptameron, I only included the versions of these names that appeared defined as demons in editions of the Sworn Book.
The demon Belial at the gates of Hell. From the 1473 work Das Buch Belial by Jacobus de Teramo.
Although my primary aim was to source only proper names of spirits defined intratextually as infernal, I had another reason for sticking with the grimoires primarily associated with the Christian tradition of Western Europe: convenience. Works like the Clavicula Salomonis and the Lemegeton are some of the most widely available in the English language. Others, like the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (a collection of names that actually appears as an appendix to a larger work by sixteenth-century scholar Johannes Wierus), are in Latin. I have a tolerable enough command of both Latin and French to understand the grimoires and contemporary works written in these languages. As a result, I can source these primary materials or compare them with modern English translations in order to achieve a more accurate reading of the demon names and functions. Although I have a decent grasp on Romance languages, I have little familiarity with Hebrew and even less with Arabic. This inability on my part to compare current translations against their source texts automatically ruled out a number of the more traditional Jewish and Muslim works of magick. In the case of several Hebrew names of Lilith, I reached out to Clifford Hartleigh Low of Necronomi.com. His command of the Hebrew language allowed me to transliterate these names for this book.
Multi-text referencing was necessary for a number of the names contained within this book. This was largely due to the very nature of the grimoires themselves. Many of these books were written prior to the invention of the printing press. This meant that they were handwritten manuscripts, copied from person to person, often furtively and in poor lighting. This method of transmission did not lend itself to accuracy—and in many of the grimoires, names are significantly different from one edition to the next. Even once the printing press came into the picture in the 1400s, only some of these magickal books made it into formal print. Others continued in manuscript form, hand-copied and hidden away for fear that their very presence in a scholar’s library might lead the Inquisitors to come knocking at the door.
Modern translators have not helped to maintain consistency with these texts either. In some cases, a book by two different translators is hardly recognizable as the same text. In most cases, when names vary from edition to edition, I have simply compiled them into one entry, with notes on the variations and their sources. However, in the case of the Sworn Book of Honorius as translated by Joseph H. Peterson in 1998, and the edition of the Sworn Book produced by Daniel Driscoll in 1977, the differences in the names, functions, and descriptions of the spirits are so vast that I have chosen to give them all separate entries.
One of my secondary goals with this work was to present names that are new to people, or at least names that are rarely included in more standard reference works. Since the focus is on the proper names of demons connected with a largely Judeo-Christian system, however, I had to retread some familiar territory beyond the grimoires themselves. You will find all the old familiar names of demons from the Bible, primarily because these names are foundational to the demonology of medieval Christian Europe. As such, these names, or variations on them, appear in the grimoires over and over again.
I also felt it wise to branch out to several extra-biblical texts that contributed significantly to the medieval concepts of infernal beings. Jewish legends of demons like Lilith, Samael, and Azazel played their own roles in shaping medieval Christian demonology, and apocryphal texts cut from the early canon of the Bible, such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Tobit, were also too influential to leave out. The focus remains on the grimoiric tradition, but names and themes from these related traditions are woven like threads throughout many of the European magickal books.
To summarize the criteria for the names included in this book:
• The names in this book are proper names of demons
• Names are clearly identified as belonging to demons, fallen angels, or evil angels in their source texts
• The names are drawn primarily from the Christian grimoiric tradition of Western Europe
• Some influential Jewish, biblical, and extra-biblical works are also sourced
The grimoires sourced in this book were written mainly during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. There are several works included that were written after this time, but they are either direct descendants of the grimoires or they became entangled with that tradition during the occult revival of the nineteenth century. The two main texts that might seem a little out of place based on the criteria outlined above are Charles Berbiguier’s Les Farfadets and Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal. These nineteenth-century French works are largely included because of an edition of the Grand Grimoire translated by A. E. Waite in his Book of Black Magic and Pacts and later reprinted by Darcy Kuntz. Waite gets material from both Berbiguier and de Plancy mixed up with the writing of Johannes Wierus. It was necessary to cite both French writers in order to put that information in context and to clarify its true origins.
