The Lemegeton: Lesser Key of Solomon

The Lemegeton (also titled Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, or the Lesser Key of Solomon) is a seventeenth-century grimoire compiled from several earlier sources and organised into five distinct books of spirit conjuration. It is among the most widely read and worked grimoires in the Western tradition, with the first book, the Goetia, having achieved broad cultural recognition through Aleister Crowley’s 1904 edition and the continuing influence of its seventy-two spirits across several centuries of magical practice.

The text does not represent a single unified system but a compilation, brought together under Solomonic authority, of several independent magical systems addressing different classes of spirits: the chthonic demons of the Goetia, the aerial spirits of the Theurgia Goetia, the angelic forces of the hours and altitudes in the Ars Paulina and Ars Almadel, and the divine wisdom prayers of the Ars Notoria. A practitioner working the Lemegeton as a whole would engage with a remarkably varied range of spirit types and ritual approaches.

History and origins

The Lemegeton in its compiled form dates to the seventeenth century, with the earliest surviving manuscripts generally placed in that period. The individual books, however, draw on older material. The Goetia shares substantial content with the pseudepigraphical Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, a list of demons compiled by Johann Weyer and published in 1577 (itself drawing on a text Weyer called the Book of Offices, which has not been identified with certainty). Much of the procedural material in the Goetia also appears in Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).

The Ars Notoria is the oldest component and circulated independently as a medieval text, probably from the twelfth or thirteenth century. It claims an origin in divine revelation and was used for the acquisition of learning and memory.

The publication history of the Lemegeton is complicated by the history of manuscripts and their variants. Aleister Crowley and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers produced an edition of the Goetia in 1904, which was the primary available text for most of the twentieth century. Joseph Peterson’s critical edition of the complete Lemegeton (2001), based on comparison of multiple manuscripts, is now the standard scholarly reference and provides the most reliable text currently available.

In practice

The Goetia is the most-worked section of the Lemegeton and the section most familiar to contemporary practitioners. Its procedure is based on the Solomonic model: the operator prepares the ritual space, constructs a protective circle inscribed with divine names, places a brass triangle outside the circle in which the spirit is to appear, and then proceeds with a series of increasingly forceful conjurations until the spirit appears and is bound to the operator’s will.

Each of the seventy-two spirits has a specific seal, drawn on a disc of wax or engraved on metal, which is used in the conjuration and binding. The seal concentrates and identifies the spirit’s presence. Once the spirit has appeared and accepted the operator’s authority, it is given a charge and dismissed formally.

Modern practitioners approach the Goetia in several different ways. Some work the text in its traditional terms, treating the seventy-two as literal external spirits who can be summoned and directed. Others follow a psychological interpretation, treating each spirit as an aspect of the practitioner’s own psyche that can be identified, addressed, and directed. A third approach, associated with chaos magick, uses the spirits eclectically within other ritual frameworks without committing to any particular ontological position.

The remaining four books of the Lemegeton receive less attention in practice, though the Ars Notoria has attracted interest among practitioners interested in combining prayer and ritual for intellectual and spiritual development, and the Theurgia Goetia’s aerial spirits have been explored by those working systematic spirit contact beyond the Goetia alone.

In myth and popular culture

The Lemegeton’s most famous component, the Goetia, achieved its most significant popular cultural moment through Aleister Crowley’s 1904 edition, which introduced it to a generation of occultists outside the manuscript tradition. The seventy-two spirits and their seals subsequently became one of the most widely reproduced elements of Western occult iconography, appearing in grimoire tattoo culture, heavy metal imagery, and the visual aesthetics of occult-themed entertainment.

In popular fiction and film, the names and hierarchies of the Goetia appear frequently. Paimon, described in the Goetia as a great king commanding two hundred legions, achieved considerable popular recognition through the horror film “Hereditary” (2018), in which a cult pursues the summoning of this spirit; the film’s use of actual Goetic names and imagery was widely noted by occult commentators. King Belial and various other Goetic spirits have similarly appeared in horror fiction, comics, and gaming contexts across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Ars Notoria, the oldest component of the Lemegeton, has a distinct cultural history as a text used by scholars and clerics who sought divine aid in learning and memory. Its medieval circulation was significant enough that Albertus Magnus addressed it in his philosophical writings, and the text was associated with figures including Roger Bacon in later legend, though without documentary basis. The appeal of a divinely transmitted system for acquiring knowledge rapidly has given the Ars Notoria continuing relevance in discussions of magical traditions of learning.

Myths and facts

The Lemegeton is one of the most widely discussed and most widely misrepresented grimoires in the Western tradition.

• A common belief holds that the Lemegeton is an ancient text preserving magical practices from Solomon’s time. The compiled text dates to the seventeenth century, and while individual components draw on older material, the Lemegeton as a unified work is an early modern compilation rather than an ancient document; the attribution to Solomon is a literary convention shared by many grimoires of the period.
• The Goetia’s seventy-two spirits are sometimes described as universally demonic and dangerous. Within their own tradition the spirits have specific offices, abilities, and relationships with human operators that are complex rather than simply malevolent; the grimoire treats them as powerful entities requiring proper protocol, not as beings whose defining quality is harm.
• Some practitioners believe the Goetia requires the full apparatus of brass vessel, triangle, protective circle, and multiple conjurations to be effective. While the traditional method is the one the text prescribes, contemporary practitioners approach the material in a range of ways, from full traditional ceremony to psychological and imaginative engagement; the variety of effective approaches is widely attested in modern practitioner accounts.
• The Lemegeton is often conflated with the Key of Solomon, a different Solomonic grimoire. The two texts belong to the same tradition and share some material, but they are distinct works; the Greater Key of Solomon focuses on angelic and divine operations, while the Lemegeton’s Goetia focuses on the seventy-two specifically.
• Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum is sometimes described as a direct copy of the Goetia. The relationship is reversed: Weyer’s 1577 compilation drew on an earlier source that also informed the Goetia; Weyer’s work predates the assembled Lemegeton and was not derived from it.