Weyer's Pseudomonarchia daemonum and Scot's Discoverie

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

Two of the most important books in the history of the Goetia were written by men who wanted to weaken belief in witchcraft. Johann Weyer printed a catalog of demons in 1577, and Reginald Scot put it into English in 1584. They meant to expose it. Instead, they preserved it, and the Goetia’s list of 72 spirits grew from their pages. This page tells that story and shows how to compare their catalogs with the Goetia.

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Demon catalogs before Weyer

Historical The form of a catalog, a list of named spirits with rank, appearance, offices and legions, did not begin with Weyer. A fifteenth-century French manuscript in Trinity College, Cambridge, the Livre des Esperitz (Book of Spirits), lists 47 spirits, with kings of the four directions and many names that later appear in the Goetia in different forms, such as Beleth, Agares, Barbatos, Gaap and Bune. Another text, the Liber officiorum spirituum (Book of the Offices of Spirits), seems to have been Weyer’s source. Scholars such as Jean-Patrice Boudet, Joseph Peterson and Stephen Skinner have compared these catalogs. They show a family of lists, shared and varied, from which the Goetia’s grew.

Alongside them stood the Key of Solomon, a manual of preparation with prayers, rules of purity, tools, planetary hours and round talismans called pentacles. Mathers published an English edition in 1889. The Goetia later borrowed its idea of a carefully prepared operator inside a protected circle.

Johann Weyer and the false monarchy

Historical Johann Weyer (1515 to 1588), also spelled Wier or in Latin Wierus, was a Dutch physician who served the Duke of Cleves. He is remembered for De praestigiis daemonum, On the Illusions of Demons, first printed in 1563. In it he argued that many women accused of witchcraft were not in league with the Devil but were ill, deluded or melancholic, and should be treated by doctors, not burned. He did believe in demons, and he blamed them for deceiving the accused. It was a brave and partial argument for mercy at a time of trials.

To the 1577 edition he added an appendix, the Pseudomonarchia daemonum, the False Monarchy of Demons. It is a catalog of 69 demons with their ranks, appearances, offices and legions, copied, Weyer says, from a magician’s book called Liber officiorum spirituum. He printed it to expose what he saw as the folly and impiety of such books. He gave only a short conjuration and, as he tells the reader himself, left out other parts of the text so no one could use it.

You will often see the catalog dated to 1563. That is the date of the first edition of De praestigiis, not of the appendix. Most scholars date the Pseudomonarchia to 1577, and so do I.

Reginald Scot and the Discoverie of Witchcraft

Historical Reginald Scot (around 1538 to 1599) was an English country gentleman of Kent. In 1584 he published The Discoverie of Witchcraft, a long and bold attack on witch hunting. Scot went further than Weyer. He argued that most claims of witchcraft were fraud, delusion or the result of cruel interrogation, and that the Bible did not support the idea of witches with diabolical powers. King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England, attacked Scot’s views in his Daemonologie (1597).

In Book 15 of the Discoverie, Scot translated Weyer’s catalog into English as “an inventarie of the names, shapes, powers, governement, and effects of divels and spirits.” Like Weyer, he did it to show readers what conjurers claimed, so they could judge the claims absurd. He also printed English conjurations and other magical material gathered from manuscripts, which later magicians copied eagerly.

Scot ends his catalog with a note that “a legion is 6 6 6 6,” that is, 6,666 spirits. The note appears in Scot’s English and has not been found in Weyer’s Latin. Scot credits the catalog he translated to a manuscript made by one “T. R.” in 1570. Some modern writers use the number to calculate the “size” of a spirit’s host. It is a number from a catalog, not a count anyone could make.

How close is the Goetia to Scot?

Historical Very close, in places. Compare the entry for Agares.

• Scot, 1584: “he commeth up mildlie in the likenes of a faire old man, riding upon a crocodile, and carrieng a hawke on his fist.”
• Goetia, 1904 text: “cometh up in the form of an old fair Man, riding upon a Crocodile, carrying a Goshawk upon his fist, and yet mild in appearance.”

The resemblance is close enough that scholars believe the Goetia’s compiler used Scot’s translation, or a manuscript drawn from it, alongside other sources.

Weyer and the Goetia compared

Historical The overlap is large but not complete.

Scot left Pruflas out of his English version. Three of the four spirits missing from Weyer appear in Sloane MS 3824, an early manuscript related to the Lemegeton. Names and details also shift: Weyer’s Gamigin is the Goetia’s Samigina, and his Barbas is the Goetia’s Marbas. Numbers of legions sometimes differ too.

When my spirit pages note that a line in Weyer differs from the Goetia, that does not mean Weyer is “more original.” Each version was shaped by its copyist’s purposes, and Weyer was a hostile editor who admits he cut the text.

The four kings of the quarters

Historical Both Weyer’s catalog and the Goetia mention four kings who rule the quarters of the world. The Goetia names them Amaymon, Corson, Ziminiar and Goap. A note by Mathers gives other names used for them, Oriens, Paymon, Ariton and Amaymon, or the Hebrew names Samael, Azazel, Azael and Mahazael. These kings are not among the 72. The Goetia says they are not to be called “except it be upon Great Occasions,” but are to be invoked to send the spirits under them.

The idea of four kings of the directions is old in European demonology and appears in the Livre des Esperitz and other catalogs, with widely varying names. Other grimoires, such as the Grand Grimoire and the Grimorium Verum, describe hierarchies of their own.

Why skeptics preserved the catalogs

Later tradition Weyer called the list a “false monarchy” and introduced it with a warning against anyone who would use it. Scot’s Book 15 is followed by chapters arguing that conjurers are cheats and that spirits cannot be commanded by words. Yet readers took what they wanted. Scot’s English catalog and conjurations were copied into later manuscripts as working material, and a 1665 edition of the Discoverie added new magical chapters by another hand. The skeptics’ books became sources for the very practice they opposed. Historians see this pattern often: a catalog printed to condemn becomes a manual.

Why this matters today

Modern For a modern reader, Weyer and Scot are a useful caution. The Goetia’s list reached us partly through editors who were hostile to it and who may have cut, mocked or rearranged it. They are also a reminder of what was at stake: both men wrote while people, mostly women, were being tried and executed as witches. Their catalog is a strange by-product of an argument for mercy.

If you want to compare the texts yourself, Scot’s Discoverie and the 1904 Goetia are both in the public domain, and Joseph Peterson’s 2001 edition of the Lemegeton prints Weyer’s catalog alongside the Goetia. Reading two versions of the same entry side by side is one of the best ways to see how the tradition was copied and changed.

Comparing an entry yourself

If you would like to try this kind of reading, a simple method works well. Pick one spirit and set its entries side by side.

1. Find the spirit in Scot. Book 15, chapter 2 of the Discoverie gives the catalog in Weyer’s order. Expect older spellings, such as “divels” and “commeth.”
2. Find the same spirit in the 1904 Goetia. Note its number, which may differ from its place in Scot.
3. Compare four things. Rank, appearance, offices and legions. Mark anything that is added, dropped or changed.
4. Notice what neither text says. Colors, incenses, planets and personalities are usually missing from both. Those come from later books.
5. Write down your sources. A two-column note, one column per text, keeps you honest about which version says what.

This is slow, quiet work, and it is entirely safe. Reading and copying old texts is study, not ritual.

Keep reading

The history of grimoires is still being written. New manuscripts are found, and dates and relationships are revised. Details such as the exact source of Weyer’s catalog remain under discussion. For the longer story, read the history of the Goetia. For what happened next, see the 1904 Goetia, and for the full list of names, the spirit directory. The wider story of the witch trials Weyer and Scot opposed is on the history of witchcraft.