Goetic demons are the seventy-two spirits catalogued in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the seventeenth-century grimoire known as the Lesser Key of Solomon. Each entry records a name, rank, seal, and office, framing the spirits as entities King Solomon was said to have bound and questioned.
Published: June 5, 2026. Last reviewed: June 5, 2026.
What Are Goetic Demons?
Goetic demons are seventy-two spirits described in the Ars Goetia, a magical catalogue compiled in the mid-seventeenth century as the opening book of the five-part Lemegeton, also titled the Lesser Key of Solomon [2]. The word goetia descends from the Greek goēs, a term for a sorcerer or wailing diviner, and it carried a faint sting of disrepute even in antiquity [4].
A folklorist reads the Ars Goetia the way an ethnographer reads any catalogue of belief: not as a census of real beings, but as a careful record of how people imagined, ranked, and addressed the unseen. Each of the seventy-two entries fixes a spirit in place with the same fields, a name, a rank, the number of legions it commands, a copper or brass seal, and an office, meaning the favor the spirit is asked to perform [2][4]. The result reads like a bureaucratic register for the invisible world, which is part of why it has held attention for centuries among readers of the wider field of paranormal and supernatural phenomena.
The Brass Vessel: Solomon’s Legend of Binding
The founding legend of the Goetia holds that King Solomon bound the seventy-two spirits inside a brass vessel sealed with divine names, then cast it into a deep lake near Babylon [2][3]. Treasure-seekers later cracked it open, expecting gold, and released the spirits back into the world, all but Belial, who stayed behind and presented himself to the Babylonians as a god.
King Solomon reigned over a united Israel in the tenth century BCE and is remembered in scripture for his wisdom and for building the first Temple in Jerusalem [1]. His reputation as a commander of spirits, though, belongs to later legend rather than the biblical record. On the documentary record, that legend takes its fullest early shape in the Testament of Solomon, a Greek pseudepigraphical text whose layers were composed between the first century CE and the medieval period [5].
In the Testament, the archangel Michael gives Solomon a ring engraved with a seal, and the ring lets the king interrogate each demon that troubles his workmen. The demon Ornias is subdued first; through him Solomon binds Beelzeboul, named as the prince of spirits, and Asmodeus, the demon of marriage and discord already known from the Book of Tobit [5]. Bound and questioned, the spirits raise pillars and haul stone for the Temple. The brass-vessel motif and the interrogation scene are the narrative seeds that the Ars Goetia would formalize a thousand years later.
From Manuscript to Grimoire: The Documentary Trail
The Lesser Key of Solomon was assembled in the mid-seventeenth century from older sources, drawing its demon catalogue largely from Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, printed in 1577 [2][4]. Weyer, a Dutch physician and former student of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, listed sixty-nine spirits with their offices and ranks, yet he attached the catalogue to an argument against witch trials, treating the conjurations as folly rather than instruction.
The English writer Reginald Scot reproduced Weyer’s list in The Discovery of Witchcraft (1584), another skeptic’s book that, against its author’s intent, carried the names to a wider readership [4][2]. Behind both lay still older material, including the fifteenth- or sixteenth-century French Livre des Esperitz, whose roster of spirits overlaps roughly thirty entries with the later Goetia. The conflation worth resolving here is a common one: the grimoire that looks like a single ancient book is really a layered manuscript tradition, each copyist adding, dropping, and renaming spirits.
The Sloane Manuscripts
No autograph original survives. The text comes down through seventeenth-century copies held in the British Library’s Sloane collection, the most cited being Sloane MS 2731, dated 1687, and Sloane MS 3648 [2]. These hand-copied books, with their inked seals and careful rubrics, are the physical artifacts a folklorist actually handles, objects that preserve not a working magic but the working habits of the people who believed in it.
| Source text | Date | Contribution to the Goetia |
|---|---|---|
| Testament of Solomon | 1st c. CE–medieval | Ring of Michael; brass-vessel and interrogation motifs |
| Livre des Esperitz | 15th–16th c. | Early French spirit roster; ~30 overlapping names |
| Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (Weyer) | 1577 | Catalogue of 69 spirits with ranks and offices |
| The Discovery of Witchcraft (Scot) | 1584 | English reproduction of Weyer’s list |
| Lemegeton / Lesser Key of Solomon | mid-17th c. | Fixes the 72 spirits as the Ars Goetia |
| Sloane MS 2731 | 1687 | Principal surviving manuscript witness |
Inside the Hierarchy: Kings, Dukes, and the Seventy-Two Spirits
The Ars Goetia ranks its seventy-two spirits like a feudal court: nine kings, twenty-three dukes, fifteen marquises, twelve presidents, seven princes, five earls, and a single knight [3][4]. Each spirit also commands a stated number of legions, a detail that turns the catalogue into something close to an order of battle.
The list opens with Bael, a king of sixty-six legions shown with three heads, toad, man, and cat, who teaches the art of invisibility. Agares, the second spirit, rides a crocodile and returns those who have fled. Paimon, the ninth, is described as more obedient to Lucifer than the other kings and commands two hundred legions. Asmodeus appears thirty-second, a three-headed king astride a dragon, and the roll closes with Andromalius, an earl who recovers stolen goods and exposes the thief [3]. The offices are strikingly worldly: find treasure, teach languages, reconcile enemies, reveal what is hidden.
| Spirit | Order | Rank | Legions | Reputed office |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bael | 1st | King | 66 | Confers invisibility |
| Agares | 2nd | Duke | 31 | Returns runaways; teaches languages |
| Paimon | 9th | King | 200 | Teaches arts and sciences |
| Asmodeus | 32nd | King | 72 | Grants cunning; guards treasure |
| Andromalius | 72nd | Earl | 36 | Recovers stolen goods; punishes thieves |
The Victorian Revival: Mathers, Crowley, and the Modern Goetia
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers translated the Goetia from a British Museum manuscript in 1888, and Aleister Crowley published the edition in 1904 as The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King [3][4]. The book reached print at the height of a wider occult revival, the same current that produced the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in which Mathers was a founding figure.
A generation earlier, the French occultist Eliphas Levi had folded Solomonic demonology into a broader synthesis of Kabbalah and ceremonial magic, and his readers carried the Goetia into modern practice. Crowley, for his part, reframed the seventy-two spirits as portions of the human brain, a psychological reading that let twentieth-century practitioners keep the ritual while setting aside the literal demon. The scholar Joseph H. Peterson later produced a critical edition in 2001 that collated the surviving manuscripts and is now treated as the standard reference [2].
When I have sat with contemporary ceremonial magicians who still work from these seals, the striking thing is rarely the spectacle. It is the care: the hand-drawn lamen, the named hour, the insistence on the exact rank. They are keeping a four-hundred-year-old documentary tradition alive in present tense, and the folklorist’s task is to record that fidelity without ruling on what, if anything, answers. You can read more about how I approach these accounts on my contributor page.
Why the Goetic Accounts Endure
The Goetia survives because it is less a working spellbook than a four-century record of how people organized their fears, desires, and sense of the unseen into an orderly system [4]. Strip away the spectacle, and the residue is a remarkably human document: a wish to name what frightens us, to give it a rank, and to believe it can be bargained with.
Whether the seventy-two spirits are real is not a question the documentary record can settle, and the folklorist does not pretend otherwise. What the record shows is continuity, from a Greek testament, through a skeptical physician’s catalogue, into a Victorian translator’s parlor, and onto the desk of a practitioner working tonight by candlelight. The names persist because the need that produced them persists. That, more than any single demon, is the account worth keeping.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the word “goetia” mean?
Goetia comes from the Greek goēs, meaning a sorcerer, diviner, or wailing magician. In antiquity the term carried a note of disrepute, marking low magic as opposed to respectable theurgy. The Ars Goetia, the “art of sorcery,” takes its name from this older Greek root.
How many demons are in the Ars Goetia?
The Ars Goetia catalogues exactly seventy-two spirits. They are ranked as nine kings, twenty-three dukes, fifteen marquises, twelve presidents, seven princes, five earls, and one knight, with each spirit commanding a stated number of legions and assigned a unique seal and office.
Who was King Solomon in the Goetic legend?
King Solomon was the tenth-century-BCE ruler of a united Israel, famed in scripture for wisdom and for building the first Temple in Jerusalem. Later legend, beyond the Bible, recast him as a master who summoned and bound demons, a reputation the Goetia inherited and systematized.
What is the brass vessel of Solomon?
In the Goetia’s preface, Solomon traps the seventy-two spirits in a brass vessel sealed with divine names and casts it into a lake near Babylon. Treasure-seekers later break it open, freeing the spirits, all except Belial, who remains and is worshipped by the Babylonians as a god.
Is the Ars Goetia part of the Bible?
No. The Ars Goetia is a magical grimoire, not scripture. It belongs to a tradition of Solomonic legend that grew across Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writing long after the biblical books were fixed. The canonical Bible contains no list of seventy-two demons or instructions to summon them.
Who compiled and translated the Lesser Key of Solomon?
The Lemegeton was compiled by an unknown hand in the mid-seventeenth century from older sources, including Johann Weyer’s 1577 catalogue. Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers translated the Goetia in 1888, and Aleister Crowley published it in 1904. Joseph H. Peterson issued a critical scholarly edition in 2001.
How is the Testament of Solomon related to the Goetia?
The Testament of Solomon is a Greek pseudepigraphical text, composed between the first century CE and the medieval period, in which Solomon uses a ring from the archangel Michael to bind demons such as Ornias and Asmodeus. Its motifs of the ring, the interrogation, and the bound builders prefigure the Ars Goetia.
Are Goetic demons considered real?
That depends on whom you ask, and the documentary record cannot settle it. Skeptics from Johann Weyer onward treated the spirits as superstition. Many modern practitioners read them as psychological forces rather than literal beings. A folklorist records the belief and the practice without arbitrating the underlying truth.
