Seals, circle and triangle: the ritual as text

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

The Goetia has two halves. The first is the famous catalog of 72 spirits. The second, which far fewer people read, is a ritual manual. It describes the tools the magician must make, the circle and the triangle, and a series of conjurations that grow more severe. This page reads that manual as a historical text. It explains what the text describes, what it assumes and why its whole design is built on protection. It does not teach the ritual.

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Later tradition Everything described here comes from the seventeenth-century text as printed by Mathers and Crowley in 1904.

How the seals were made

Each of the 72 entries ends with “his Seal is this,” followed by a drawing. The seal, also called the character or sigil, is a design of lines, circles, crosses and small hooks and loops, often with letters of the spirit’s name worked into it.

In the text, the seal has a precise job: it is a sign of the spirit’s obedience. The magician wears it “as a Lamen,” a badge on the breast, so that the spirit will recognize it and obey. Bael’s entry says the seal must be worn “or else he will not do thee homage.” Astaroth’s says that without it “he will not appear nor yet obey thee.” Zepar’s seal is one “which he obeyeth when he seeth it.”

The text’s Observations say the seals should be made in metals according to rank: gold for kings, silver for marquises, copper for dukes and so on (see ranks and offices). Few seventeenth-century readers could have engraved gold or silver. The manuscripts themselves are on paper, and many copyists drew the seals in ink.

Seals vary

The seals differ from one manuscript to the next. Copyists misread lines, turned figures and simplified details. Bune’s entry in the 1904 edition even prints two seals, saying “the last is the best.” Mathers redrew the seals for print from his chosen manuscripts, and the 1904 versions are the ones most often reproduced today. Joseph Peterson’s edition shows variant forms.

Where the designs come from

Historical Nobody knows. Some scholars connect them with the “characters” of medieval magic, the strange signs used in charms and amulets, and with older Arabic and Greek magical letters. Others see them as the creative work of copyists.

Modern Practitioners today sometimes call a seal the spirit’s “signature,” “address” or “phone number.” That is a modern metaphor, not the text’s idea. A Goetic seal is also not the same thing as a personal sigil in the style of Austin Osman Spare; see modern approaches.

The circle and the triangle

The circle

The Goetia’s circle is the most famous image in the book. The text calls it “the Magical Circle of King Solomon, the which he made that he might preserve himself therein from the malice of these Evil Spirits.” It is to be “9 feet across,” with divine names written around it, “beginning at EHYEH, and ending at LEVANAH, Luna.” In the 1904 drawing, a serpent coils between two rings with Hebrew names along its body. Inside is a square marked “Master,” and around the circle are hexagrams and pentagrams bearing the name Tetragrammaton and other divine names.

Mathers explained in a note that the names follow the Kabbalistic Tree of Life: for each of the first nine sephiroth, a divine name, an archangel, an angelic choir and a planetary sphere, from “Ehyeh Kether Metatron Chaioth Ha-Qadesh” down to “Shaddai El Chai, Iesod, Gabriel, Cherubim, Levanah, Sphere of the Moon.” He also says the coiled serpent “is only shown in one private codex.” In other words, the famous drawing is partly his choice.

The triangle

Outside the circle is the triangle, “the Magical Triangle, into the which Solomon did command the Evil Spirits.” It is “to be made at 2 feet distance from the Magical Circle and it is 3 feet across.” It is placed “toward that quarter whereunto the Spirit belongeth,” with its base nearest the circle and its point toward the spirit’s direction. Three divine names run around its sides, with the name Michael along the edge, and a dark green circle sits in the center.

The logic of two boundaries

The idea is plain. The magician stands inside a boundary made holy by the names of God. The spirit is commanded into a second, smaller boundary outside the first. The two never touch. Several entries add that a spirit will lie unless it is “brought up within a triangle”: Furfur, Shax and Haures. Beleth must be commanded into the triangle by force.

The other tools

The Goetia lists several more objects:

The instructions for the Secret Seal include animal blood. That is a reminder that the historical Goetia includes animal sacrifice. I do not, and nothing on this site ever asks for it. Other tools, such as a scepter, sword, miter, cap and robe, appear in some manuscripts and in a figure of 1904, and the text also calls for incense and fumigations.

The Brass Vessel

After the 72 entries, the Goetia tells a story. “These be the 72 Mighty Kings and Princes which King Solomon Commanded into a Vessel of Brass, together with their Legions. Of whom Belial, Bileth, Asmoday, and Gaap, were Chief.” Solomon did this “because of their pride, for he never declared other reason why he thus bound them.” He sealed the vessel and, “by Divine Power,” cast it into “a deep Lake or Hole in Babylon.”

The people of Babylon, thinking it held treasure, broke it open. The spirits flew out and returned to their places, “except Belial, who entered into a certain Image, and thence gave answers unto those who did offer Sacrifices unto him, and did worship the Image as their God.”

Historical Weyer’s catalog of 1577 tells a similar story, with Bileth first among the chiefs. The image recalls much older legends of Solomon and of jinn sealed in brass jars. In the Goetia, the story does two jobs. It explains why the spirits are loose in the world, and it gives the magician a model: what Solomon did, the magician can do.

Conjurations and constraints

The last section is a set of texts to be spoken, rising in severity:

1. The First Conjuration. The spirit is called by name, “by the Name of the Most High,” by many names of God and by the power of Solomon, and told to appear “in a fair human shape, without any deformity or tortuosity.”
2. The Second Conjuration. A longer, stronger version with more divine names.
3. The Constraint. A further step if the spirit still does not come.
4. The Invocation of the King. A call to the king who rules the spirit’s quarter, Amaymon, Corson, Ziminiar or Goap, to send it.
5. The Chain Curse. If the spirit still refuses, the text has the magician curse it, put its seal in “a strong black box” with brimstone and other foul-smelling things and threaten to burn it. There is also a Greater Curse.
6. The Address and the Welcome. When the spirit comes, it is welcomed “through Him who has created Heaven, and Earth, and Hell,” and bound to remain “affably and visibly” until it has done the magician’s will.
7. The License to Depart. The spirit is sent “unto thy proper place; without causing harm or danger unto man or beast,” with the closing words “the peace of God be ever continued between thee and me! Amen!”

After the license, the text says, “thou art not to go out of the circle until he or they be gone.”

The theology behind it

These texts are not prayers to the spirits. They are commands addressed to the spirits in the name of God, the angels and Solomon. In the text’s logic, the magician’s power comes entirely from God. The spirits obey because they are “subjected by God to fulfil our desires and commands,” not because of friendship or a deal.

Historical This is the theology of the medieval exorcist. An exorcist commands a demon, by God’s authority, to leave a possessed person. The Goetic magician commands a demon, by the same authority, to appear and serve. Church authorities condemned the second, since it sought the demon’s company instead of its departure.

Many modern readers find this uncomfortable. It threatens and curses beings that many practitioners now regard with respect, it assumes a Christian cosmos many readers do not share, and it asks the speaker to command with an authority few beginners feel.

Why the historical ritual is built on protection

Read as a whole, the Goetia’s ritual is a system of layered protection:

1. Preparation: purity, prayer and a clean place.
2. The circle: a holy boundary the magician does not leave.
3. The triangle: a second boundary for the spirit, outside the first.
4. Personal protections: hexagram, pentagram, ring and the seal as a badge of obedience.
5. Graded words: conjurations that rise from polite command to threat, so no more force is used than needed.
6. The welcome and binding: the spirit is bound to stay in place and do no harm.
7. The license: a clear, formal ending.
8. Waiting: the magician stays in the circle until the spirit is gone and gives thanks.

Whatever you believe about spirits, the structure teaches something useful. A ritual that opens should close. A practitioner should know where the boundaries are, how long the work lasts and how it ends.

What the old ritual asked of the magician

The text also makes demands on the person. It pictures a magician who is learned, devout, chaste and calm: someone who knows the names of God and the planetary hours, who prays, fasts and confesses and who does not leave the circle in fear when a spirit appears “very furious.” Many grimoires tell of operators harmed because they lost their nerve or skipped their preparation.

Whether or not you share that theology, notice the seriousness. The old texts never imagined this as something done casually, on a dare, late at night, by someone frightened or unwell.

Reading the conjurations today

If you read the full conjurations in the 1904 edition, read them as history, and notice how they make you feel. Strong fear or fascination is worth writing down and, if it lasts, talking over with someone you trust. For how modern practitioners have changed almost everything about this ritual, see modern approaches to the Goetia.