Kings sit at the top of the Ars Goetia's borrowed nobility, and the small number of spirits carrying this title are typically described commanding legions far larger than those under a duke or a president. Some editions of the Lemegeton rank the same spirit as a king, others as a prince, a discrepancy the grimoire tradition has never settled.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe spirits the Ars Goetia ranks as kings, the highest title in its courtly scheme. Rank in the Goetia is a literary grade assigned by the grimoire; it governs how the text says a spirit is to be approached and roughly how many legions it commands, and it says nothing about any spirit's standing in any religion. 2 Origins
Whose Classification This IsThe rank ladder is the Ars Goetia's, compiled in England in the mid-seventeenth century from older material including Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577. Manuscripts differ, and some give a spirit more than one rank. 2Tradition: Ars Goetia (Lemegeton), mid-17th century Learn More
The Goetic Kings
This group gathers the spirits ranked as Kings among the seventy-two demons of the Ars Goetia, the first part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century grimoire that catalogues the spirits said to have been bound by King Solomon. The spirits are given noble and military ranks (king, duke, prince, marquis, earl, president, knight), modelled on an earthly court.
The browser will find the spirits of kingly rank. The atlas presents the Goetia as a historical textual tradition, describing each spirit's attributes and seal as the grimoire gives them, without endorsing the practice of conjuration.
All Kings
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Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2009ch. 3, on the Lemegeton and the Solomonic grimoiresView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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