Solomon and the grimoires

In this lesson: how King Solomon became master of spirits, the Testament of Solomon, medieval clerical necromancy and the Key of Solomon.

Why is a seventeenth-century English book of spirits called the “Lesser Key of Solomon”? Because by then King Solomon had been, for more than a thousand years, the legendary master of demons, and any magic book that wanted authority borrowed his name. This lesson follows how a biblical king famous for wisdom became an exorcist and demon-binder, and then introduces the medieval grimoires, the handwritten magic books that came before the Goetia. Knowing this chain lets you see the Goetia as one late link in a long story rather than an ancient revelation.

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.

How the legend grew

Historical The Bible itself only says that Solomon was wise. In 1 Kings 4:32 to 33 he speaks three thousand proverbs and a thousand and five songs, and he knows about trees, animals, birds and fish. Later readers took that wisdom further. By the first century CE, Jewish writers said that God had also given him power over demons.

The Wisdom of Solomon 7:20, part of the Greek scriptures, lists among his knowledge a Greek phrase that the King James Version translates “the violence of winds” and the Revised Standard Version “the powers of spirits”, and from there it was a short step to Solomon the master of 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.

Josephus and Eleazar, quoted

Historical The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the 90s CE, gives a vivid scene in Jewish Antiquities 8.2.5. A man named Eleazar, in front of the future emperor Vespasian and his soldiers, drew a demon out of a possessed man by holding a ring under his nose. Under the ring’s seal was a root that Solomon had prescribed, and Eleazar spoke Solomon’s name and his incantations.

To prove the demon had left, he set a cup or basin of water nearby and commanded the demon to overturn it as it went. In the William Whiston translation (1737), Josephus says that God enabled Solomon “to learn that skill which expels demons”. It is one of the earliest written links between Solomon, a ring and the expulsion of spirits.

The Testament of Solomon

Historical The Testament of Solomon is a Greek text whose date is debated, with estimates running from the first to the fifth century CE. In it, the archangel Michael gives Solomon a ring engraved with a seal, and Solomon uses it to question demon after demon and set them to work building the Temple in Jerusalem.

Each demon gives its name, says what harm it does and names the angel who can defeat it. That pattern, a named spirit with an office and a way of controlling it, is the ancestor of the spirit entries you will read in lesson 5.

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.

Kinds of medieval grimoire

Historical Medieval and early modern magic books varied a lot. The Picatrix, an Arabic work translated into Spanish and then Latin in the thirteenth century, is mainly about astrological images and planetary spirits. The Sworn Book of Honorius (Liber iuratus), from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, aims at a vision of God.

The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis) survives in Latin and Italian manuscripts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and later, with many versions. The fifteenth century “Munich Manual”, edited by Richard Kieckhefer, is a working book of demonic magic. Kieckhefer argued that many such books came from a “clerical underworld” of educated men in minor church orders who had the Latin to use them.

How to check a grimoire’s date

Many grimoires claim to be ancient, written by Solomon or another famous figure. Historians check those claims in three simple ways, and you can use them too. First, look at the oldest surviving manuscripts. The Lemegeton, for example, survives in seventeenth-century English copies, so whatever its older ingredients, the collection as we have it cannot be shown to be older than that.

Second, look at the language and ideas. A text that uses Renaissance astrology or late medieval Latin terms was probably put together in that era. Third, look for borrowing. If a “Solomonic” book copies passages from a known printed book, such as Agrippa’s of 1533, it must be younger than its source.

Putting a grimoire in its real time does not make it less interesting. It tells you who used it, what they hoped for and what they feared, which is often more fascinating than the legend.

Questions beginners ask

Did King Solomon write any of these books? No. They were attributed to him to give them authority, a common practice called pseudepigraphy.

Are grimoires secret? Many were copied privately, and some were banned, but many are now published and available in libraries and online editions.

Does “grimoire” mean an evil book? No. The word is related to French grammaire, “grammar”, meaning a book of learned instructions.

Myths to drop: There is no single original “Key of Solomon”. Medieval magic was not only practiced by village witches; much of it was learned and written in Latin. And owning a grimoire does not put anyone at risk.

A worked example

Imagine a young cleric in a fifteenth-century university town. He has taken minor orders, reads Latin well and is short of money. A friend lends him a battered notebook full of prayers, circles and names, with “Salomon” written on the first page. He copies the parts he wants, skips others and adds a charm he learned from his uncle. Years later someone else copies his copy. This is how grimoires lived: not as fixed scriptures but as working notebooks, each one a little different, each claiming the authority of a wise king who never wrote them.

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Try this

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.

A beginner’s worry, answered. “If the grimoires were not really written by Solomon, are they fakes?” They are pseudepigrapha, books written under a famous name, a very common practice in the ancient and medieval world. They are genuine historical documents of the people who wrote and used them, even though their claimed author is a legend.

Recap

The biblical Solomon was famous for wisdom; by the first century CE, Josephus called him the author of exorcisms, and the Testament of Solomon showed him binding demons with a sealed ring and making them give their names and powers. Medieval grimoires were practical, constantly recopied handbooks, often used by a “clerical underworld” of literate clergy, and many borrowed Solomon’s name. The Key of Solomon and the Livre des Esperitz prepare the way for the Goetia’s catalog of spirits.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Weyer, Scot and the 1904 Goetia. For more, read about King Solomon and the Lemegeton, and for the wider story of Renaissance magic, see Occult History for Beginners.

Further reading: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, translated by William Whiston (1737), book 8, chapter 2. Joseph H. Peterson’s Esoteric Archives (esotericarchives.com) has careful transcriptions of many grimoires.

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

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