The Key of Solomon the King

Audience

Mathers’s 1889 edition of The Key of Solomon introduced the work to an entirely new audience. He primarily intended his text to serve for his own use in the creation of new rituals and for the edification of his small circle of devotees in the Golden Dawn as well as his larger Masonic/esoteric circles. The Key of Solomon was already famous among such groups, and he aimed to capitalize on their existing interest. But Mathers’s book proved popular and took on a life of its own. It has been continuously in print in cheap and widely distributed copies and is now freely available on the Internet. It has become a common reference point for modern esotericism and a point of entry for anyone wishing to begin study within an esoteric tradition.