Solomon and the grimoires

Your goal in this lesson: to follow the legend that gave the Goetia its authority, and to meet the medieval books that came before it.

Solomon the wise

Historical In the Hebrew Bible, Solomon is the son of David and the third king of Israel, famous for wisdom. 1 Kings 4:33 says he “spake of trees” and of beasts, birds and fishes. Later writers read more into that wisdom. The Wisdom of Solomon, a Greek book probably from the first century BCE, says God taught him “the violence of winds”, a phrase whose Greek can also mean spirits.

Solomon the exorcist

Historical By the first century CE, the historian Josephus wrote that Solomon composed exorcisms still in use. He describes a Jewish exorcist, Eleazar, drawing a demon out of a man with a ring and a root in front of the future emperor Vespasian (Jewish Antiquities 8.2.5). The Babylonian Talmud tells how Solomon captured Ashmedai, king of demons, with a chain and an engraved ring.

The Testament of Solomon, a Greek text dated anywhere from the first to the fifth century CE, is the closest ancient ancestor of the Goetia’s picture. The archangel Michael brings Solomon a ring engraved with a seal. With it he binds one demon after another, makes each give its name, its powers and the angel that defeats it, and sets them to work building the Temple. None of its demons is identical to a Goetic spirit, but the pattern is there: name, power, seal, command.

In Islam, Solomon is the prophet Sulayman, and the Quran says jinn worked for him by God’s permission. That tradition is separate from the Goetia, but it shows how widely the image traveled. Solomon is a sacred figure in three religions, and I treat these legends as shared history.

The medieval grimoires

Historical A grimoire is a handbook of ritual magic. The historian Owen Davies stresses that grimoires were copied and changed by every copyist, borrowed famous names for authority and were practical, aimed at lost goods, treasure, love, lawsuits and sickness. Many carried Solomon’s name, and church writers condemned them.

Richard Kieckhefer showed who used many of these books: a “clerical underworld” of priests, monks and students who could read Latin. A fifteenth-century manuscript in Munich, which he edited as Forbidden Rites (1997), contains dozens of experiments for summoning demons by the names of God, using circles drawn on the ground.

The best-known Solomonic grimoire, the Key of Solomon, survives in versions from the fifteenth century on. It is mainly a manual of preparation: purity, fasting, tools, planetary hours and talismans called pentacles. The Goetia’s title, the Lesser Key, places it beside this older book. A fifteenth-century French manuscript, the Livre des Esperitz, already lists 47 spirits with ranks, many with names that later appear in the Goetia.

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Try this

Today’s exercise: draw a simple chain of five links: 1 Kings, Josephus, the Testament of Solomon, the medieval grimoires and the Goetia. On each link, write one word for what it added to the Solomon legend.

Quick recap

• Solomon’s biblical wisdom grew into a legend of power over spirits.
• The Testament of Solomon gives the pattern of ring, name, power and command.
• Medieval grimoires were copied and used by a clerical underworld.
• The Key of Solomon and the Livre des Esperitz come before the Goetia.

Keep going

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Weyer, Scot and the 1904 Goetia. For the full legend, see King Solomon and the ring.

Need a refresher? Go back to Demons in the ancient world or see the whole course.

Sources

• F. C. Conybeare (trans.), “The Testament of Solomon”, Jewish Quarterly Review 11 (1898).
• Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.2.5.
• Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites: A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Stroud: Sutton, 1997).
• Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Go deeper: the Goetia pages on this site

Mark as done