The Goetia: 72 Spirits

The Goetia is one of the most famous, most consulted, and most disputed texts in the grimoire tradition, a detailed catalogue of 72 spirits, their offices, their appearances, and the elaborate ceremonial procedures by which a magician could summon, bind, and work with them. Its full name is the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, Book I, though “Goetia” and “Lesser Key of Solomon” are both used in common practice. For several centuries it has stood as the primary reference for what Western occultism calls demonic or Goetic evocation, and it continues to be actively used, debated, and reinterpreted by practitioners today.

The word “Goetia” derives from the Greek “goeteia,” referring to a type of magic associated with the underworld and with spirits of the dead, distinguished in ancient classifications from “theurgy,” the higher magic of divine beings. By the time the text was compiled in its current form, this distinction had blurred considerably, but the name retained its older flavor of working with spirits outside the purely divine hierarchy.

History and origins

The Goetia as known today was compiled in seventeenth-century England from earlier sources, primarily the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, a catalogue of 69 spirits appended to Johann Weyer’s De Praestigiis Daemonum (1563), which in turn drew on earlier Latin and German manuscript traditions. Weyer, a physician and demonologist, compiled his catalogue as part of a skeptical argument against witch trials, providing the spirit list as evidence that those accused of witchcraft were deluded rather than genuinely dangerous. The Goetia expanded his list to 72 and added three spirits not present in the Pseudomonarchia.

The text was translated into English and circulated in manuscript form in the seventeenth century, and the earliest complete manuscripts date from this period. Aleister Crowley and Samuel Liddell Mathers produced the first published English edition in 1904, with Crowley’s famous “Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic” prefaced to it, arguing that the spirits are aspects of the magician’s own psychology. This psychological reading has been deeply influential in modern practice, though many practitioners reject it in favor of treating the spirits as genuinely external beings.

The 72 spirits of the Goetia hold ranks drawn from the structure of an early modern kingdom: kings, dukes, princes, earls, marquises, presidents, and knights. This courtly hierarchy reflects both the grimoire tradition’s tendency to model spiritual orders on human political structures and a specific historical moment when such structures were still the primary social reality for its compilers.

Structure and the spirits

Each entry in the Goetia follows a consistent format. The spirit is named and assigned a rank and a number in the sequence. Its appearance is described, sometimes in striking detail: King Bael appears as a cat, a toad, a man, or some combination; Marchosias appears as a she-wolf with griffin’s wings and a serpent’s tail, later taking a warrior’s form. The spirit’s offices are listed, specifying what it can accomplish for the summoner: Bael confers invisibility; Agares recovers fugitives and teaches languages; Leraje causes wounds from arrows to putrefy; Valac reveals the location of serpents and treasure.

The variety of offices is extraordinary. The 72 spirits collectively offer expertise in divination, language learning, the revelation of hidden things, the reconciliation of enemies, the mastery of arts and sciences, the destruction of reputations, the creation of love and desire, the healing of diseases, the location of treasure, and the teaching of everything from philosophy to siege tactics. The compilers of these texts were drawing on what was evidently a robust oral and manuscript tradition of practical spirit magic, organized into this catalog form.

Each spirit also has a seal, a unique geometric sigil that serves as its signature and the primary means of calling its attention in ritual. These seals remain in use today and are among the most recognizable visual elements of Western occultism.

In practice

The Goetia’s original ritual structure is elaborate and physically demanding by contemporary standards. It requires a Triangle of the Art and Magic Circle, both with specific divine names inscribed, brass vessels, specific incenses, wax seals, and lengthy conjurations invoking divine authority to compel the spirit. The magician stands within the protective circle while the spirit appears in the Triangle, and the operation is designed to give the magician coercive authority over the spirit rather than a mutually voluntary arrangement.

Contemporary practitioners approach this structure in highly varied ways. Some follow the classical text closely, recognizing the elaborate protocol as both practically functional and respectful in its specificity. Others work in a more devotional or relational mode, treating Goetic spirits as powerful independent beings who may be petitioned rather than compelled. The demonolatry tradition takes this approach furthest, explicitly rejecting the binding framework in favor of worship and relationship.

A growing body of contemporary practice uses the Goetia for psychological work, treating each spirit as a personification of a specific complex of energies that can be integrated through the evocation process. Whether this reading is reductive or genuinely descriptive remains a live question in the community.

The Goetia is not a beginner’s text in the sense of being simple, but it is accessible, and the basic structure of identifying a spirit whose domain matches your need, drawing or working with its seal, and composing a clear statement of intent is something practitioners of various experience levels engage with productively.

In myth and popular culture

The Goetia and its seventy-two spirits have generated an enormous body of cultural response over the centuries. Milton’s Paradise Lost, while not drawing directly from the Goetia’s specific list, creates an infernal hierarchy populated by named fallen angels who had previously been gods of the surrounding nations, a concept deeply parallel to the Goetia’s courtly demonology. Beelzebub, Belial, and Moloch appear in Paradise Lost as lords of Hell whose characters and domains resemble their Goetic counterparts.

Several Goetic spirits have achieved independent cultural recognition. King Paimon appears as a central figure in Ari Aster’s horror film Hereditary (2018), in which a family becomes entangled with a cult devoted to his invocation. The film’s use of Paimon’s royal rank and his association with servile spirits drew directly from the Goetic text, making it one of the most accurate deployments of specific Goetic material in mainstream horror cinema. The demon Amon, another Goetic king, has lent his name (in modified forms) to fictional characters across anime, comics, and gaming.

The Testament of Solomon, a Greek text that predates the Goetia and describes Solomon binding demons to build the Temple, represents the mythological source for the Goetia’s foundational narrative. In this text, each demon summoned by Solomon discloses its name, its afflictions, and the angel that thwarts it, a structure that influenced the Goetia’s systematic catalogue format. Solomon’s ability to command spirits through a signet ring appears in rabbinic literature, the Quran (where Solomon commands jinn), and in medieval Islamic accounts, giving the Goetia a reach across multiple religious traditions.

Contemporary musicians and visual artists have engaged extensively with Goetic imagery. The seals of the seventy-two spirits appear in metal album artwork, tattoo culture, and occult-adjacent design, often detached from their ritual context and appreciated as geometric art.

Myths and facts

The Goetia is one of the most misrepresented texts in popular accounts of demonology and occultism.

• It is frequently claimed that the Goetia is an ancient text, sometimes attributed to Solomon himself. The text in its current form was compiled in seventeenth-century England from earlier sources; its claim to Solomonic authorship is a literary convention, not a historical assertion.
• Many people assume that all seventy-two Goetic spirits are evil beings whose sole purpose is harm. The Goetia describes spirits whose domains include teaching languages, revealing philosophy, healing diseases, locating treasure, and reconciling enemies; the catalogue is practical and varied rather than uniformly malevolent.
• Popular culture often depicts Goetic evocation as summoning a demon that immediately threatens the practitioner’s life. The grimoire’s elaborate protective structure is designed precisely because the texts assume the spirits require management, but the expected outcome of a correctly performed working is service, not attack.
• The Goetia is sometimes described as a Satanic text. The text works within a framework of divine authority, using sacred names to compel spirits; its theological premise is that the practitioner operates under divine sanction, not in opposition to it.
• It is sometimes said that Aleister Crowley wrote the Goetia. Crowley edited and published the text in 1904, adding his own introduction, but the underlying text derives from seventeenth-century manuscripts that Crowley and Mathers worked from rather than authored.