President is one of the ranks assigned to the spirits catalogued in the grimoire tradition, and above all in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the seventeenth-century Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton). It denotes a rank drawn from civil rather than feudal office, borne by several spirits and sometimes held jointly with a noble title.
The ranks of the spirits
The Goetia lists seventy-two spirits and gives most of them a rank, King, Prince, Duke, Marquis, Earl or Count, President, or Knight, borrowed from the feudal and civil offices of the human world, together with the number of legions each is said to command. The scheme draws on earlier sources, notably the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum printed by Johann Weyer in 1577.
The rank is described here as a feature of these documented magical texts, studied as historical literature; the spirits so ranked are not reified.
President stands apart from the catalogue's other titles by its origin in civil rather than feudal or military office: it derives from the Latin praesidere, "to preside," a term used for the head of a council, court or assembly rather than for a commander of troops or a landholding nobleman. That civil sense carries through into the Goetia itself, where several of the spirits ranked President are credited specifically with teaching sciences, philosophy or the mechanical arts rather than with commanding legions in the field, a pattern of stated function that tracks the rank's administrative background more closely than it tracks the martial vocabulary used for Kings, Dukes and Marquises.
Sources Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon)Anonymous (unidentified compiler) with Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors