How Goetia became the art of the 72 spirits

Goetia is not an ancient grimoire of seventy-two demons transmitted intact from King Solomon. The word is ancient; the book we now call the Ars Goetia is not ancient in the same way. Between the two lie more than a thousand years of history, Christian demonology, ritual magic, spirit catalogues, and Solomonic manuscripts.

This distinction completely changes how the text should be read. The Ars Goetia is the first part of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, a compilation of ritual magic transmitted through manuscripts from the early modern period. Its famous catalogue of seventy-two spirits depends largely on a list printed in the 16th century by the physician Johann Weyer, later adapted into English by Reginald Scot. The seals, conjurations, and ritual apparatus of the Lemegeton supplement and transform this material.

What did goēteia mean in antiquity?

The Greek term goēteia is much older than the Lemegeton. It belongs to the Greek vocabulary of magic, enchantment, and practices attributed to the goēs, a figure whom the texts alternately portray as an enchanter, charlatan, specialist in the dead, or practitioner of rites regarded as suspect.

Yet there is no single ancient definition. Usage changes according to the authors and periods. In some texts, goēteia comes close to enchantment; elsewhere, the word takes on a pejorative coloring. The Byzantine Suda, compiled around the 10th century, thus distinguishes between mageia and goēteia and associates the latter with the invocation of evil spirits and with tombs.

Plotinus, for his part, uses the term in a much broader reflection on charms and cosmic sympathy. Historians of ancient magic therefore point out that it would be wrong to translate every occurrence of goēteia as “invocation of Solomon’s 72 demons.” The word has its own history before modern occultists made it almost synonymous with the Ars Goetia.

Ancient necromancy constitutes yet another category, even though the boundaries between enchantment, evocation of the dead, and hostile magic may overlap in the sources.

What is the Ars Goetia?

The Ars Goetia is the first section of the grimoire generally known as the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or Lesser Key of Solomon. It presents seventy-two spirits classified according to titles such as king, duke, prince, marquis, president, or count.

For each one, the text gives a name, appearance, rank, certain functions, the number of legions under its authority, and a seal. The powers attributed to them are extremely varied: teaching sciences or arts, revealing hidden things, searching for treasures, causing friendship or hostility, speaking of the past and future, recovering stolen goods, or transmitting certain knowledge.

The term “demon” is the one that comes to mind spontaneously today, but the manuscripts frequently use spirit. The theology of the text nevertheless remains explicitly Christian: the operator invokes divine authority and commands the spirits by sacred names. This is very far from a system in which the magician would simply worship the entities they summon.

This is precisely one of the paradoxes of Solomonic magic: it involves spirits considered dangerous or fallen while placing the operator under a higher divine authority. To understand this broader framework, see What Is High Magic Really?.

The Lemegeton is not limited to the Goetia

The Lemegeton is a composite work. Depending on the manuscripts, it comprises four or five parts. In its best-known form, it contains:

the Ars Goetia, devoted to the seventy-two spirits; the Ars Theurgia-Goetia, which deals with other spiritual hierarchies linked particularly to the directions; the Ars Paulina, which works with angels associated with the hours and the zodiac; the Ars Almadel, centered on a device called an Almadel; and, in some versions, a form of the Ars Notoria.

These sections do not all have the same origin. The Lemegeton is therefore better understood as a compilation than as the work of a single author. Joseph H. Peterson, in his comparative edition of the manuscripts, shows borrowings from several earlier texts, notably those of Johann Weyer, Reginald Scot, Trithemius, pseudo-Peter of Abano, and pseudo-Paracelsus.

The British Library preserves several important witnesses to the Solomonic tradition. Its catalog, for example, describes Sloane MS 3648 as containing a Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton), followed by excerpts from Agrippa and magical texts attributed to Paracelsus. This material proximity clearly illustrates how readers of the period assembled different occult authorities in a single volume.

For a more general presentation of the Solomonic tradition, also see Understanding the Key of Solomon.

Before the Ars Goetia, there is the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum

One of the most important sources for the Goetic catalog is Johann Weyer’s, or Wier’s, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. It appeared in editions of his De praestigiis daemonum from the 16th century onward.

Weyer did not write a manual intended to celebrate witchcraft. On the contrary, his major work forms part of the debate over witchcraft persecutions. He considered demons real, but argued that many accused women were victims of melancholy, illusion, and demonic deception rather than the powerful witches imagined by their judges. Recent studies of Weyer emphasize this distinction: he defended the accused while remaining within a Christian cosmology in which the Devil and demons exist.

The Pseudomonarchia provides an inventory of spirits with their names, ranks, appearances, and functions. The edition preserved and compared by Joseph H. Peterson contains sixty-nine entries, although the text itself refers to seventy-two.

The link with the Ars Goetia is extremely close: a large part of the names and descriptions appears in both texts. But the two documents are not identical. The Pseudomonarchia does not provide the seals that would become so famous in Goetic editions, and its ritual apparatus is much shorter.

Reginald Scot transmits the list in English

In 1584, Reginald Scot published The Discoverie of Witchcraft, a work known for its criticism of witchcraft accusations and of many stories deemed credulous or abusive.

Scot includes an English translation of Weyer’s catalog. This stage is crucial to the history of the Lemegeton. Philological comparison of the texts shows that the author of the Ars Goetia used this English version or a text dependent on it: certain spellings and particular errors found in Scot also appear in Goetic manuscripts.

Peterson’s edition of the Ars Goetia emphasizes this lineage precisely. The catalog of 72 spirits did not therefore appear out of nowhere as a Solomonic revelation: part of its transmission can be traced from Weyer to Scot, and then to the Lemegeton.

Why does the Ars Goetia contain 72 spirits?

The number 72 has become one of Goetia’s best-known features. The text states that Solomon supposedly imprisoned these seventy-two spirits in a bronze vessel or container, along with their legions.

The difficulty is that Weyer’s catalogue, one of the text’s main sources, contains only sixty-nine spirits in its surviving form, while itself referring to the number 72. The Lemegeton therefore completes the series.

This arrangement helps give the book its coherence. The spirits are distributed among ranks comparable to those of a court or aristocracy: kings, dukes, princes, marquises, presidents, counts, and knights. The vocabulary translates a thoroughly earthly organization into the spiritual world.

Modern occultists subsequently sought to connect the 72 spirits with the 72 angelic names of the Shem ha-Mephorash. These correspondences became popular, but they should not be automatically projected onto all ancient manuscripts of the Ars Goetia.

Our article The Demons of the Ars Goetia presents separately the catalogue and the characteristics attributed to each spirit.

Why does King Solomon appear everywhere in grimoires?

The attribution to Solomon belongs to a tradition much broader than the Lemegeton alone. In Jewish, Christian, and Muslim literature, the biblical king became a figure of wisdom capable of commanding spirits.

Late texts such as the Testament of Solomon already recount how the king gains authority over demons and compels them to work. Medieval and early modern magic would develop this image extensively. Many books then bore Solomon’s name without obviously having been written by the historical ruler of ancient Israel.

The attribution serves an authoritative function. A text presented as the “Key of Solomon,” “Testament of Solomon,” or “Art of Solomon” places itself within a prestigious lineage. This does not constitute proof of authorship in the modern sense.

That is why the legendary history of the grimoire must be distinguished from the history of its manuscripts. Solomon is the claimed authority; the actual compilers of the Lemegeton remain anonymous.

What does the ritual setup of the Ars Goetia look like?

The text fully belongs to the Christian ceremonial magic of the early modern period. Its structure rests on several elements: preparation of the operator, circle, divine names, seals, conjurations, and a space intended for the spirit’s apparition.

The circle bears sacred names and marks the operator’s position. The triangle, placed outside it, corresponds in the known editions to the place assigned for the apparition. The text also uses a ring, a general seal, protective figures, and the individual seals of the spirits.

The idea that “each pentacle is specifically adapted to a demon” does not accurately describe the text. What primarily individualizes each spirit is its seal. Pentacles, divine names, and the figures in the ritual arrangement serve other functions.

Nor is it accurate to reduce conjurations to formulas in Latin. English manuscripts and modern editions contain lengthy conjurations in English, filled with biblical, Hebraizing, Greek, or traditionally transmitted divine names.

This vocabulary of sacred names deserves to be studied in its own right. Our article on words of power in grimoires shows why these names are not merely decorative words added around a circle.

Invocation and evocation are not two perfectly fixed terms

Modern manuals frequently contrast invocation, which would bring an entity or force “within oneself,” with evocation, which would make the spirit appear “outside.” This distinction may be useful in some modern occult currents, but it is not a universal terminological rule in historical texts.

The older vocabulary of conjuration, calling, invocation, and apparition is more flexible. Reading a 17th-century grimoire using the rigid definitions of a 20th-century manual can therefore lead to misunderstandings.

To understand the term in magical literature, see What Is a Conjuration?.

Why have seals become the very image of Goetia?

Each spirit in the Ars Goetia is associated with a graphic character or seal. These figures make it possible to identify the spirits visually and form part of the text’s structure.

The seals have acquired a much broader cultural life than the grimoire itself. Today they appear in jewelry, tattoos, album covers, video games, graphic works, and modern sigil practices. Their dissemination has sometimes completely detached the figure from the text it originates from.

Yet one major historical detail should be noted: the seals of the Ars Goetia do not appear in Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. They therefore belong to a different stage of transmission.

Modern sigil magic should not automatically be confused with the use of these characters either. A Goetic seal received through handwritten transmission and a sigil constructed from an intention according to a modern method do not have the same history.

Mathers and Crowley shaped the Goetia we know today

In 1904, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King was published, an edition associated with S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley. This publication contributed enormously to establishing the modern appearance of Goetia.

Mathers had worked from manuscripts held by the British Museum. Crowley published and revised the work as a whole, notably adding a “Preliminary Invocation” and an interpretive essay. The Sacred Texts Archive points out that this is not a diplomatic transcription of a manuscript, but a modernized edition intended for an occultist readership.

The difference is crucial. When a contemporary edition reproduces Crowley’s “Goetia,” it does not simply provide access to the medieval or Renaissance text in its original form: it also conveys the editorial work and occultist choices of the early 20th century.

Crowley would also reinterpret ceremonial magic within his own system. To understand this context, see Who Is Aleister Crowley?.

The Key of Solomon is not the Ars Goetia

Several texts bear Solomonic titles and are regularly confused with one another.

The Clavicula Salomonis, or Key of Solomon, constitutes a large family of medieval and modern grimoires devoted to ritual operations, pentacles, consecrations, and the preparation of the operator. It has its own manuscript history.

The Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon, is another compilation. Its first book is the Ars Goetia.

The Grand Grimoire, or Dragon rouge, belongs to yet another tradition, later and primarily French-speaking. Placing it among the “foundational texts of Goetia” on the same level as the direct sources of the Lemegeton obscures the lines of transmission.

Finally, the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum is not simply “another Goetic grimoire.” It appears in a polemical treatise by Weyer and constitutes an essential source for the catalogue that would later be reused and transformed.

Once these families are separated, the history becomes much clearer: grimoires do not form a uniform library in which every book describes the same system.

Goetia and the witch trials are two different histories

Directly linking Goetia to the great witch hunts creates historical confusion. There is, of course, a shared context of fear of demons and condemnation of certain magical practices, but one must avoid conflating the populations prosecuted with readers of learned grimoires.

The majority of people accused of witchcraft were not ceremonial magicians working from the Lemegeton. The accusations concerned maleficia, supposed pacts with the Devil, familiars, illnesses, deaths, neighborhood conflicts, or sabbaths imagined by demonologists.

The ritual magic of the manuscripts often represents a different milieu, more literate, male, and clerical than one might imagine. Richard Kieckhefer notably demonstrated the importance of this forbidden learned magic in medieval manuscripts.

This distinction is necessary to avoid turning the “village witch” into a clandestine reader of Solomonic grimoires. The two histories may intersect, but they do not overlap.

Should the 72 spirits be called “demons”?

In contemporary language, the expression “72 demons of the Ars Goetia” has become almost standard. It is not without basis: Weyer’s tradition does indeed speak of a false monarchy of demons, and the Christian framework of the text places these beings among infernal spirits.

It remains useful to know that the Lemegeton regularly calls them spirits. The vocabulary of king, duke, prince, or president describes a hierarchy of spirits rather than a developed theological demonology in the sense of a scholastic treatise.

This nuance also helps explain why the powers described are not all openly destructive. Some spirits teach the liberal arts, astronomy, logic, or languages; others reveal treasures, reconcile people, or answer questions.

This observation does not turn the Ars Goetia into a benevolent manual. It simply shows that the media category of “evil demons” flattens a much stranger and more composite body of literature.

What popular culture has preserved from Goetia

Popular culture has chiefly retained the names and seals. Paimon, Bael, Astaroth, Buer, Stolas, and Andras now circulate far beyond the readers of grimoires.

Some borrowings are direct. The film Hereditary, for example, uses the name Paimon and several elements drawn from his demonological image. Games, manga, and fantasy settings freely reuse names from the catalog, transforming their appearances, powers, and relationships.

This legacy is so powerful that it sometimes ends up obscuring the historical text. A creature described today with a specific appearance in a video game may have almost nothing in common with the grimoire’s description.

Returning to the sources therefore makes it possible to distinguish three things: the ancient word goēteia, the modern grimoire Ars Goetia, and the contemporary popular mythology of the 72 demons.

A manuscript tradition rather than a book fallen from the sky

This is probably the most important point. The Ars Goetia is not the direct testimony of an ancient secret school of demonology. It is the product of textual transmission.

Lists circulate, are translated, and reorganized. Compilers borrow from Weyer and Scot. Figures are added. Rituals are developed. Previously distinct texts are brought together under the name Lemegeton. Occultists in the 19th and 20th centuries finally edit these manuscripts and give them worldwide printed circulation.

This history does not diminish the text’s occult interest; it makes it more intelligible. Reading the Goetia as a historical grimoire means precisely following the traces of its transformations rather than erasing three centuries of transmission in favor of a legendary attribution to Solomon.

To continue exploring this subject, the collection Demonology Books brings together several studies and texts devoted to demonological traditions and grimoires.

Sources and further reading

For a comparative transcription of the Lemegeton and the Ars Goetia based on the manuscripts: Joseph H. Peterson, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis and Ars Goetia, Esoteric Archives.

For a witness preserved at the British Library: Sloane MS 3648, which contains a Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton) along with other occult texts.

For Johann Weyer and his position on witches and demons: Michaela Valente, Inside the labyrinth of spells, in Johann Wier: Debating the Devil and Witches in Early Modern Europe, Amsterdam University Press, 2022.

For the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and its relationship with Reginald Scot: Joseph H. Peterson’s comparative edition.

For the modern edition that profoundly shaped the text’s reception: S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King, 1904.

Cover image: the 72 seals reproduced from the 1904 Mathers-Crowley edition, graphic compilation available on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 license.