The Dictionary of Demons, page 6
Other rarely seen grimoires include several works in Rankine and Skinner’s Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic series. This is the same series that brought us The Goetia of Dr. Rudd, which provided some fascinating variations in the traditional seals of the seventy-two Goetic demons. The first of these, The Grimoire of St. Cyprian: Clavis Inferni, was published in October of 2009, and while I had wanted to include it in the first edition of the Dictionary of Demons, circumstances conspired to keep it out of my hands until after the manuscript had been turned in. The Clavis Inferni is a slim volume and the source text is a scant twenty-one pages in length. Filled with elaborate figures and illustrations, it manages to pack quite a lot into those pages. The original text is stored at the Wellcome Library in London, where it has been tentatively dated to the late eighteenth century based on its style of writing. A date within the manuscript reads, “MCCCCCCLLXVII,” but, as Skinner and Rankine point out, “LL” is never used in Roman numerals.31 The authors suggest that a careful examination of the letters reveals that the fourth letter from the end has been overwritten. From this, they posit a date of 1757.
The Clavis Inferni, or Key of Hell, contains figures and sigils as well as brief prayers, conjurations, and bindings to summon and control demons. The only demons explicitly named in the text are the kings of the cardinal directions, but the text provides some interesting insight into elemental associations not typically seen in other grimoires. A vivid illustration of the four kings also suggests that there were animals associated with the demon-kings as well.
The second Skinner and Rankine text sourced in the new material is The Keys to the Gateway of Magic: Summoning the Solomonic Archangels and Demon Princes. Although the first print run of this book was produced in 2005, the text remained unavailable to me until it was reissued in 2011. This book is a composite of smaller Solomonic texts, and they are distinct enough that I have split the material relevant to this dictionary between two entries. The first text, entitled Janua Magica Reserata, is the document from which the book derives its name: it means Keys to the Gateway of Magic. Rankine and Skinner date this to the early to mid-seventeenth century.
The material comprising the Janua Magica Reserata is shared across several manuscripts, notably Sloane MS 3825 and Harley MS 6482. Most of this text is concerned with philosophical commentary on the nature of the soul, divinity, and angelic hierarchies. The section of interest to our purposes concerns a nine-tiered hierarchy of demons presented as the dark reflection of the traditional nine choirs of angels. A demonic prince is assigned to each, and several of these are ultimately echoed in a hierarchy presented by Francis Barrett in his nineteenth-century book The Magus. The line of descent, although oblique, given some of the distortions seen in Barrett’s work, is interesting to note.
The second portion of the Keys to the Gateway of Magic identified and sourced in the Dictionary of Demons is entitled, appropriately enough, Demon Princes. This is represented in part of Sloane MS 3824, Sloane MS 3821, and Rawlinson D. 1363. Demon Princes is mainly concerned with the Kings of the Four Directions and their ministers, although, as in the Abramelin material, it places above them three very familiar demonic monarchs: Lucifer, Satan, and Beelzebub. I’ve used this text mostly in comparison with grimoires containing identical material, such as the Book of Oberon, adding entries only when Demon Princes demonstrated a significant variation.
Along the lines of variants, another new-to-this-edition source was an English translation of C. C. McCown’s version of the Testament of Solomon. Most of the material widely published on the Testament of Solomon features the translation by F. C. Conybeare first released in the Jewish Quarterly Review, October 1898. After Conybeare, McCown produced a more complete translation in 1922, drawing upon a wider range of manuscripts. This was published as The Testament of Solomon, Edited from Manuscripts at Mount Athos, Bologna, Holkham Hall, Jerusalem, London, Milan, Paris and Vienna, and initially, the only version of this work I could track down was entirely in Greek. As McCown’s translation is widely perceived to be superior to Conybeare’s, I really wanted to compare them, especially given the number of lacunae in the source material Conybeare was working from. D. C. Duling has a translation of McCown’s version published in volume one of The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1983). I finally got my hands on this for comparison, and where the differences are significant, I have noted them, expanding upon the old entries. The scholarship around McCown’s work also pushes back the suggested date for the writing of the Testament of Solomon. Conybeare and his contemporaries had placed it at the first century CE. Current readings place it several centuries earlier.
Finally, in the course of cross-referencing some of the material in the Book of Oberon against known variations of the seventy-two Goetic demons, I discovered two gems, both of which were available to me only online. The first is a full transcription by Jean-Patrice Boudet of the French Livre des esperitz, or Book of Spirits. This sixteenth-century grimoire may at first appear to be a French translation of Wierus’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, but upon closer inspection, it yields enough differences to indicate that it is a separate and distinct piece, almost certainly working from similar source material. The second gem, hosted in full on the website of the National Library of Wales, is an even rarer find. Known as the Book of Incantations, it is a working cunning-man’s grimoire written by John Harries (1785–1839) and passed down to his sons so they could continue in the family trade. The first fifteen pages of the manuscript as it is currently bound contains a partial version of the Goetia, copied possibly from Scot or from the same text sourced by Scot in his Discoverie of Witchcraft.
These both were exciting and, although they largely only affirmed material already written in the entries devoted to the seventy-two Goetic demons, there were small variations. Harries’s Book of Incantations, for example, shed light on the curious “Xenophilus” referenced obscurely by Scot, and the Livre des esperitz, which has no clearly identified author, named a couple of demons not seen in the Pseudomonarchia and derivative texts.
In researching these two texts, I became aware of another extant version of the infamous seventy-two, this time in mixed Latin and Italian. Called Fasciculus Rerum Geomanticarum and stored under the designation Plut 89 Sup 38, it is dated to the fifteenth century and at least part of it was copied in 1494. The reference to geomancy in the title is misleading, for the composite text actually includes excerpts from the Picatrix, orations connected to the seven planets and the Olympic spirits, a portion of the Armadel, and an additional Solomonic piece under the title Salomon: De quatuor annulis. The physical copy is stored in Florence at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. A full “holographic” version is available online, which involves high-resolution photographic images that you can freely explore. I was excited to compare the seventy-two demons in this fifteenth-century Italian text with those in the Pseudomonarchia and the Livre des esperitz, but the scribe’s style of writing, combined with the erratic mix of Latin and Italian, foiled me. A lovely friend (with a much stronger background in Italian than I currently possess) offered to help, but the script on the rich vellum pages proved too much. Although I remain curious, I have, for the moment, given up.
In all, these sources generated approximately 30,000 words of new material that has been added to this tenth anniversary edition of the Dictionary of Demons. That’s quite a lot, but it is important to note that there easily could be more. So many previously unpublished grimoires are being released now, such as Daniel Harms’s Of Angels, Demons & Spirits, published at the beginning of 2019 and based on a seventeenth-century text kept in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Although I try to keep up on all of the latest papers and other releases, I failed to acquire this book in time to integrate its contents into my list of demons, evil spirits, and fallen angels. And Harms’s book is one among many. The fact is, even working within the narrow boundaries set for the Dictionary of Demons, it is impossible to collect all of the names that are available. While this book is extensive and I have sourced each entry as accurately as I am able, there will always be limits.
The demons truly are legion.
Organization of the Text
As mentioned earlier, the entries in this dictionary are all self-referential, which means that they contain the source from which the name was derived as well as any useful background information on that source (or sources). In addition to all of the entries, you will find a series of breakaway articles scattered throughout the text. These are expansions of concepts covered within the text, and in many cases they elucidate a specific concept that is crucial to the understanding of several related entries. The text is also illustrated throughout with woodcuts, traditional demonic sigils, and modern interpretations of infernal beasts. The captions that accompany these illustrations will help give them context as you explore.
The dictionary itself should be self-explanatory: all of the demon names are presented in alphabetical order, from A to Z. There is a lot of ground covered between those two letters, and you’re a tremendously dedicated reader if you try to plow through it all in one sitting. Instead, what I recommend is that you take some time to simply flip through the text, look over the illustrations, and read through the entries that catch your eye. If you’re doing research of your own, then feel free to get straight to business. There are some appendices in the back that expand even further on the process of researching this book, the impact of scribal arts on the transmission of the grimoires, and the demonic traditions extant in the early Middle Eastern world.
There is also an extensive bibliography. Not all of the books are in print anymore, so I strongly suggest that if, like myself, you enjoy tracking down all of the books and articles referenced by a favorite author, you take a moment to look over books.google.com. Quite a number of the books sourced in this project are old enough to be copyright-free, and most of them are available for free download thanks to the Google Books project. Two other invaluable free sources are Esoteric
Archives.com and Sacred-Texts.com. The Wellcome Collection (wellcomecollection.org) is freely accessible and contains a wealth of material, and the Sloane Manuscripts collection at the British Library (www.bl.uk/collection-guides/sloane-manuscripts) can be virtually explored as well.
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1. To reiterate from the previous section, this choice was one of academic practicality: I can read many of the languages of these primary materials, so I felt most confident with sourcing those texts.
2. Ian Thompson, writing in the Irish Times, identifies Dante’s Inferno as “the most widely translated book after the Bible,” and “for many, the greatest single work of Western literature.” Irish Times, Sept. 8, 2018.
3. Leonardo Blair: “Rome Opens Up Exorcism Course to All Major Christian Faiths to Fight Rising Demonic Force.” Christian Post. May 9, 2019.
4. Oliphant Smeaton, The Medici and the Italian Renaissance, pp. 18–20.
5. B. Barry Levy, Planets, Potions, and Parchments: Scientifica Herbarica from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Eighteenth Century, p. 89.
6. Reginald Campbell Thompson. Semitic Magic: Its Origins and Development, pp. 65–66.
7. Thompson. 47–50.
8. Henry Frederick Lutz. Selected Sumerian and Babylonian Texts. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia, PA: 1919. pp. 35–40.
9. Lutz, pp. 57–59.
10. Lutz. pp. 51–53.
11. Mark 5:9.
12. Henry Frederick Lutz, Selected Sumerian and Babylonian Texts, pp. 43–46.
13. Sometimes an inanimate object, such as a clay vessel, was used instead. Once the demon was transferred, the vessel was smashed. See Lutz, p. 50.
14. A better and more inclusive term for Judeo-Christian is Abrahamic faith, particularly because the biblical tradition does not inform merely Christianity and Judaism but Islam as well. I have kept Judeo-Christian in this one instance as an accurate reflection of the original text cut in 2010. Henceforth in the text, it will be corrected to Abrahamic.
15. Karel Van Der Toorn et al., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, pp. 50–51.
16. The tradition of King Solomon as a magician has ancient roots, and its early influence was extensive. Consider the bronze disc excavated at Ostia in 1918: “In 1918 Roman archaeologists excavated at Ostia a bronze disc, on one side of which was depicted Solomon as a magician, stirring with a long ladle some mess in a large cauldron. On the other side of the disc was a figure of the triple Hecate, who, like Solomon, was surrounded by mystic signs and magic characters.” The disc remains on display at the museum at Ostia. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, Vol. II, p. 279.
17. A serious comparison between the Ars Theurgia and the first book of Trithemius’s Steganographia should be undertaken, as all of the names laid out upon the Theurgic compass appear in Trithemius’s text. The descriptions of most of the spirits, including the numbers of their dukes and sub-dukes, are similar if not identical in these two texts.
18. Trithemius’s Antipalus Maleficiorum was compiled in 1508, and as such, it establishes a date for the existence of a number of Solomonic manuscripts, including the Claviculae Salomonis, or Little Keys of Solomon.
19. Trithemius, Antipalus Maleficiorum, EsotericArchives.com.
20. Sometimes a fourth book is attributed to Agrippa and appended to his work. Given the title Agrippa’s Fourth Book, this text was in fact not written by Agrippa. Instead, it was written some thirty-five years after his death and given his name in an effort to lend validation to its contents. The Fourth Book expands upon Agrippa’s information on the summoning of spirits, providing a list of spirits likely derived from Liber Iuratus (the Sworn Book of Honorius). Because this book was decried as spurious by Wierus, I have not included it as a source.
21. Primarily Christian and Western Europe, due to the nature of available published work.
22. Crowley published S. L. MacGregor Mathers’s translation of the Goetia under the misleading title The Lesser Key of Solomon. Although the Goetia is a part of the Lesser Key, it is by no means the complete Lesser Key.
23. After the publication of the first edition of the Dictionary of Demons, Peterson released a print copy of the Liber Juratus through Ibis Press in 2016. I highly recommend it.
24. Joseph Jacobs et al., Folk-Lore: A Quarterly Review, p. 389.
25. Stephen Murtaugh, Authentication of “The Secret Grimoire of Turiel” in Comparison with Frederick Hockley’s “A Complete Book of Magic Science.”
26. I have seen some misinformed websites represent this instead as the Notorious Art of Solomon, playing up an undeserved reputation as a manual of vile, forbidden magick.
27. See Peterson, Ars Notoria: The Notory Art of Solomon, http://www.esotericarchives.com/notoria/notoria.htm.
28. Notably, many of the spirits in subsequent grimoires function as the mediums through which this instant knowledge is obtained.
29. Benedict XIV, Heroic Virtue: A Portion of the Treatise of Benedict XIV on the Beatification and Canonization of the Servants of God, Vol. III, p. 122.
30. These errors can be attributed to the Elizabethan authors of the book, to be clear. Harms, Peterson, and Clark have done an exemplary job of transcription, presentation, and providing context throughout.
31. Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, The Grimoire of St. Cyprian: Clavis Inferni, p. 25.
Aariel: A demon granted the title of duke. Aariel serves in the court of the infernal king Asyriel. According to the Ars Theurgia, Aariel manifests only during the hours of the day. He is connected with the direction of the south and has twenty ministering spirits to serve him. See also ARS THEURGIA, ASYRIEL.
An angel with the keys to Hell binds the Devil. From a twelfth-century miniature, courtesy of Dover Publications.
Abaddon: In the Book of Job and in Proverbs, Abaddon is mentioned as a place of destruction, possibly equivalent in concept with the modern notion of Hell. However, in Revelation 9:11, Abaddon is no longer the Abyss itself but is instead personified as the angel in charge of that Abyss. The name is translated in Greek to Apollyon, meaning “The Destroyer.” Both Abaddon and Apollyon were integrated into demonology as powerful princes of Hell. In Francis Barrett’s The Magus, Abaddon is associated with the seventh mansion of the furies, and he is said to govern destruction and wasting. Gustav Davidson, in his classic Dictionary of Angels, describes Abaddon as the “angel of the Abyss.” In Crowley’s edition of the Goetia, Abaddon is again mentioned, not as a being, but as a place in a binding. He appears in a hierarchy of evil spirits laid out in the Janua Magica Reserata where he is identified as prince of the Seventh Order. This order is otherwise known as the Furies, suggesting that Barrett had access to either this text or something related. See also APOLLYON, GOETIA, JANUA MAGICA RESERATA.
