The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (page 1/8)

The Goetia, or Lemegeton Clavicula (The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, Clavicula Salomonis Regis), is part of a pseudepigraphical work, i.e. claiming to be by someone (Solomon) but almost certainly nothing to do with Solomon. It probably dates from the 17th century, although it is based on texts at least as old as the 14th century. S. L. Mathers transcribed it into a more modern English, and copied (I think) the illstrations. There are 72 different demons described, each with one or sometimes two seals. I have scanned the seals at 1200dpi, because I could not find any acceptable scans on the Web. The designs of the seals are long out of copyright.

For the extracts I have used a combination of two versions that you can easily find online, and I have compared them to the 1995 edition edited by Hymenaeus Beta and published by Samuel Weiser; the text was published in the US in 1916, and is out of copyright, although that edition was probably not authorised by Crowley or Mathers. Since Crowley attributed the text to Mathers, however, who died in 1918, it is all out of copyright.

The sizes given for the seals are approximate: they do vary very slightly, since they were hand-made.

Resurge has made some free Photoshop Brushes (here is the second pack) from the 700-pixel versions of the seals of the 72 fallen angels.

There are seventy-two demons, daimons, or fallen angels described; this is likely one for each nation (the Judeans thought there were either 70 nations or 72 nations in the world, hence mention in the Gospels of Jesus sending out barefoot apostles to the 70 or 72 nations). The Zohar mentions there was an angel placed by God as guardian for each nation. Note that the 70 does not include Israel: I am not sure how to account for the 72nd nation, though. This idea of angles over nations is present in the Book of Watchers (part of the Book of Enoch, as well as in Deuteronomy 32:8 (often badly mistranslated), “When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of Sons of God”—that is, the number of angels of God. This is also mentioned in the book of Daniel.