Ars Goetia

The Ars Goetia (The Art of the Goetia), sometimes erroneously called Goetia, is the first part of The Lesser Key of Solomon. It contains a detailed description of the seventy-two demons that supposedly King Solomon invoked, confined into a bronze vessel sealed by magic symbols, and when he needed obliged to work for him.

The Ars Goetia assigns a number in rank, a title of nobility in the infernal hierarchy (those titles are the same that human monarchies used and still use, but unknown in King Solomon's times), and sometimes the title of President to the mentioned demons. It also establishes that each demon has his own signature in the form of a seal and provides the drawings of those seals of the demons.

This chapter of the book instructs is on how to construct the bronze vessel to keep the demons inside and the manufacture of the magic seal, how to invoke the demons, protect oneself against them, curse them in case of rebellion [sic], the welcome that must be given to the spirit at his arrival, the license given to him to depart after achieved what was desired, the construction of the ritual vessel to confine them into, the magic drawings that must be done to be protected against the demons, the colours that must be used for every topic, and the invocation to Amaymon, a demon that is not listed among the seventy-two, but is considered their king. The seventy-two demons are said to be under the power of Amaymon, Corson, Gaap and Ziminiar, although some of them only under the power of Amaymon or Lucifer (not listed).

The names of these demons seem to be a compilation of the names of Semitic demons, deities of several pre-Christian religions and, many times, a mere invention. Some of them are Hebrew, Latin, and Greek in origin. Remarkably, no allusion is made to a succubus or any female demon.

Here follows the list of the demons in order of rank as given by the book. It has to be considered that due to the lack of a unified orthography at the time the first editions appeared, their names are sometimes differently spelled (sometimes in the same edition). Other spellings of the names are given in the articles concerning them, and maybe some are lacking due to the number of different editions of this book and others referring to the same demons.