Key of Solomon the King
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
A magical treatise of mediæval origin, of which a number of manuscripts are extant. It is supposed to be the work of King Solomon (q.v.), but is manifestly of comparatively modern origin, and was probably written in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is permeated with late Jewish ideas, and its chief intention appears to be the finding of treasure, and the making of such experiments as have for their object the interference with the free will of others. The power of the Divine Name is much in evidence, and the entire work is an absurd combination of pomposity and nonsense. The Lemegeton, or Leeser Key of Solomon, is much more noteworthy. Its earliest examples date from the seventeenth century, and it invokes the hierarchies of the abyss by legions and millions. It is divided into four parts, which control the offices of all spirits at the will of the Kiss operator. The first part, Göetia, contains forms of conjuration for seventy-two demons with an account of their powers and offices. The second part, Theurgia Göetia, deals with the spirits of the cardinal points, who are of mixed nature. The third book is called the Pauline Artthe significance of which name is unaccountable. It deals with the angels of the hours of the day and night, and of the signs of the Zodiac. The fourth part is entitled Almadel, which enumerates four other choirs of spirits. The usual homilies regarding purity of life are insisted upon, as is the circumstance that none of the conjurations shall be applied to the injury of another.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Spence, writing in 1920, dismissed the Key as "an absurd combination of pomposity and nonsense" of fourteenth- or fifteenth-century date. Historians of magic now treat these texts as serious evidence: the Clavicula's core is traced back through the Byzantine Greek Hygromanteia (the "Magical Treatise of Solomon") to late-antique Solomonic lore, while the Goetia's seventy-two spirits are demonstrably drawn from the list Johann Weyer printed in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577. The name Spence found "unaccountable", the Pauline Art, is now generally explained by the medieval legend that the Apostle Paul brought the art back from his ascent to the third heaven, a claim Trithemius already reported around 1500. The books also had a future Spence could not have guessed: Mathers's 1889 English translation fed directly into Golden Dawn ritual and, through Gerald Gardner, into modern Wicca, and Joseph Peterson's and Skinner and Rankine's critical editions have since put the manuscripts in print.
Written for this edition, 2026.