The Key of Solomon · rebuilt
Solomon
Seventy-two demons bound in brass. Seventy-two angels of the Name. The seals that Solomon left behind, drawn in gold, and one of each was waiting on the day you were born.
The Legend
The seals always come back.
Three thousand years, a ring, a brass vessel and a book that would not stay buried.
Solomon takes the throne
The king of Israel asks for wisdom, and the tradition says he was given it over every living thing, and over the demons too.
Josephus records the incantations
The historian writes that Solomon composed incantations to drive out demons, and that in his own day a man named Eleazar still cast them out with a ring holding a root Solomon had prescribed.
The Testament of Solomon
In this Greek text the archangel Michael gives Solomon a ring engraved with a seal. With it he binds the demons, one by one, and sets them to build the Temple.
The Key of Solomon
Manuscripts of the Clavicula Salomonis spread through Europe: pentacles of the seven planets, the magic circle, the hours, the names of power.
The catalogue of demons
Johann Weyer prints the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, a list of demons with their ranks, legions and offices, as an appendix to his work on witchcraft.
The Lesser Key
The Lemegeton gathers it together. Its first book, the Ars Goetia, gives seventy-two demons, each with a seal to be cut in its own metal.
Mathers and Crowley
S. L. MacGregor Mathers translates the Greater Key. Fifteen years later Aleister Crowley publishes Mathers' Goetia, the seals you see on this page.
The Modern Esoteric Library
Five field grimoires by Travis Parsons that take the old texts and make them workable for a modern beginner, without throwing the tradition away.
Enter the Circle
Who was waiting on your birthday?
The zodiac divides into seventy-two slices of five degrees. Each holds an angel of the Shem HaMephorash, and each ten-degree decan is ruled by one Goetic demon by day and another by night. We find where the Sun stood when you were born.
The Sigil Maker
Draw your word on the planetary tables.
Agrippa gave each of the seven planets a magic square. Write a word, a name or an intention, and its letters become numbers and the numbers become a line across the table of the planet you choose.
The seals of the planets
Seven seals, with their Intelligences and Demons.
Each planet has its own seal, the first figure on its plate, redrawn here from Agrippa's 1533 woodcuts. Over each table he also set an Intelligence to good and a demon to evil, whose names add up to the numbers of the table; their characters are traced from the Hebrew name on the planet's square. Click any one to draw it large.
The Hall of Seals
Seventy-two seals, one for each demon.
From the 1904 Mathers and Crowley edition of the Goetia. Each seal was to be made in the metal of the demon's rank. Open any seal for its office, its appearance and its place in the zodiac.
Every demon has its own page: see all 72 →The Key of Solomon
The Pentacles of the seven planets.
Forty-four holy pentacles, seven for Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and the Sun, five for Venus and Mercury, six for the Moon. Each is shown as Mathers printed it in 1889, with its virtue and the way it is made.
The Books
Five field grimoires.
The Modern Esoteric Library by Travis Parsons. Clear, practical guides that keep the old texts intact and show you how to work with them.