Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

The Spirit, Its Rank and Its Legions

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
The Spirit, Its Rank and Its Legions

Valefor is listed as spirit number 6 of the seventy-two in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon (Lemegeton). The grimoire gives it the rank of Duke and places 10 legions of spirits under its command. The ranks used throughout the catalogue, king, prince, duke, marquis, president, earl (count) and knight, are borrowed from the hierarchy of a European royal court and the medieval nobility rather than from any infernal order of precedence, and the legion-counts serve as a conventional literary measure of a spirit's standing.

The particular office ascribed to Valefor, the powers it is said to grant an operator who "calls" it, is recorded in the entry's description. The material is set out here as a documented feature of an early-modern magical text, with no suggestion that the spirit is real or that the operations described have any effect; the Lesser Key is treated as a subject of historical and literary study, and no invocation or ritual instruction is given.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.