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Spirit Ranks
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Origin mid-17th century
The spirits of the Ars Goetia are given ranks borrowed from a royal court (king, prince, duke, marquis, earl, president and knight), and those ranks carry into how each spirit is described and worked with. The scheme appears in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century compilation drawing on earlier material including Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577. Some spirits are given more than one rank.
Facts
Origins
Origin Periodmid-17th century 1Tradition: Ars Goetia, first book of the Lemegeton Place of OriginEngland: the Lemegeton survives in seventeenth-century English manuscripts. 1 Whose Classification This IsThe courtly ladder - king, prince, duke, marquis, earl, president, knight - is the Ars Goetia's own way of ordering its seventy-two spirits. It is a seventeenth-century literary scheme mirroring earthly hierarchy, not a folk category and not the doctrine of any church. 1Tradition: Ars Goetia (Lemegeton), mid-17th century Overview
Size of the Traditional SetSeven ranks: king, prince, duke, marquis, earl, president and knight 1Tradition: Ars Goetia (Lemegeton) Learn More
The Ranks of the Goetic Court
The spirits of the Ars Goetia are given ranks borrowed from a royal court (king, prince, duke, marquis, earl, president and knight), and the rank carries into how each spirit is described, approached and worked with, as well as into the times and conditions traditionally held favourable for summoning it. A king commands differently from a knight, and the grimoire assigns the ranks with care.
The scheme reflects the wider medieval and early-modern habit of imagining the spirit world as a mirror of earthly hierarchy, with the demons ordered into a feudal court under their kings.
Reading the Hierarchy
The rank of a goetic spirit shapes its office and its legions, the higher ranks command greater numbers and grant weightier things, and some magical traditions tie the ranks to planetary or temporal conditions for the working. The scheme is a way of ordering the seventy-two spirits into a coherent hierarchy.
The atlas gives each rank its place in the court, the spirits that hold it, and its associations. The goetic spirits themselves are treated in the goetia category, within Angels, Spirits & the Shadow.
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