The Key of Solomon the King

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The Key of Solomon the King begins with an introduction that establishes a pseudohistory for the text. It is purported to be a book written by the biblical King Solomon. After Solomon’s death, his son Roboam (or Rehoboam) buried the manuscript with him. It was later discovered by the “Babylonian philosopher” Ioh‚ Grevis, who reburied it after making a translation that became the source of the present text. This document uses several techniques to legitimize the text, beginning with the biblical authority of the figure of Solomon. Moreover, Solomon himself is said to have received the text as a revelation from God through an angel, likening it to the revelation of the law to Moses at Mount Sinai (mediated by an angel, according to Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians 3:19). An angel also reveals the translation of the text to Ioh‚, who, as a Babylonian philosopher, may be compared to the Magi from the East who attended Jesus’s birth (Gospel of Matthew 2:1). Aware that they were using translations, the learned magicians of the Renaissance had to invest the act of translation itself with the same authority as an original. Within the humanistic context of The Key of Solomon’s composition, this story credits the text not only with biblical authority but also with the authority of an ancient text, superior because “all the writings and wisdom of this present age were vain and futile.” For Mathers, the modern editor of The Key of Solomon, the angelic revelation—especially the angelic translation that enables Ioh‚ to see a (presumably) Hebrew text in his own language—authorized his own practice of channeling and automatic writing by which he communicated with his “secret masters.”

While Roboam receives the manuscript of The Key of Solomon from his father, he does not actually gain knowledge of its secret teaching because, by his own admission, he lacks the learning to understand it. Once the text is translated, Ioh‚, in contrast, does have the required wisdom because he is a philosopher. He, in turn, swears to the angel to pass the text on only to other experts. Compare this to the dictate in Judaism that the esoteric secrets of theology can be discussed only with other rabbis who are already sages or the provision of the Hippocratic Oath that the teachings of medicine may be passed on only those who agree to keep them secret from nonphysicians.

The Key of Solomon is an important precedent to the interest of modern occultism in initiation. The ancient model of initiation is well represented by ordinary Christianity, in which the Christian participates in the central rituals of the cult (such as baptism and the Eucharist) and thereafter is considered to be an initiated member of the community. The Key of Solomon anticipates and may even have contributed to the Rosicrucian belief of the early seventeenth century that an occult philosophy was handed down from master to pupil in secret lodges. (While Rosicrucianism began as a hoax to the effect that such a lodge was about to reveal its existence, the idea itself loomed large in the scholarly imagination of that era.) Such a chain of initiation from modern users of the The Key of Solomon back to Ioh‚ is implied in the text. The purpose of the Golden Dawn was to formalize such initiation. Mathers accounted for his own initiation by fabricating a group of German Rosicrucian adepts who supposedly had initiated him as well as by his“’psychic” communication with secret masters and spirits that validated him as “no unworthy person.”

Book I

Chapter V

This part of The Key of Solomon gives instructions for summoning demons (“Apostates from God” or “rebellious Spirits”). More than any other single text, this is the source of the most stereotypical image of the magician in popular culture, standing in a magic circle and summoning a fallen angel. In this case, the magician does not make a pact with the demon (an element of the classic German Faust legend) but intends to use the magical power of the demons to activate the talismans and other forms of magic made later in the text. This kind of formal ritual to invoke the sensible presence of a supernatural entity is generally known as ceremonial magic. While the stylized, even decadent, form such magic is given in The Key of Solomon is quite late, the basic concepts probably date back to Egyptian and Babylonian rituals to summon a divine presence into a cult statue used in religious worship and to Assyrian rituals to take divination from the spirits of the dead through necromancy. This ritual is part of a series of conjurations the magician can use to summon demons, each one graded with the use of increasing threats and magical power to compel the demon. This kind of conjuration was the ultimate goal of the magic practiced within Mather’s Golden Dawn order, but no member except Mathers himself ever received a grade of initiation high enough to perform it.

The magician gains the power to conjure demons from two elements of the text: divine names and histriola, which retell traditional myths to use their sacred power in the magical operations of the magician. The demon is compelled by a large number of names of God in Hebrew and pseudo-Hebrew (EL, ELOHIM, EHEIEH, ELOAH VA-DAATH, and so on). Speaking these names gives the magician the divine power to command demons in the same way that God’s speech has the power to create in Genesis. “TETRAGRAMMATON” is Greek for “four-lettered” and refers to the letters YHWH (Yahweh), that form the personal name of the Judeo-Christian god, often considered by magicians as too powerful to utter and which may be referred to only in periphrasis—that is, longer phrasing in place of a shorter form of expression. The text’s “Holy Name of God EHEIEH, which is the root, trunk, source, and origin of all the other Divine Names,” probably originated as a textual corruption of “Yahweh.” Many other nonsensical names throughout the text, such as Iah and Ioh‚, are probably abbreviated or derived forms of “Yahweh.” The magician also uses histriola from the sacred texts of the Bible, for example, Joseph’s escape from his brothers, the story of Exodus, or the cherub’s expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Histriola serve to bring the sacred power attributed to the Bible by its believers into the magical operations of the magician.

Chapter X

The general instructions for conjuring demons are followed by rituals for achieving specific ends. In this case the magician wants the demon Almiras to make him invisible. Spells for invisibility go back to the magical handbooks that circulated in the Roman Empire. In general, they are supposed to protect the invisible person from detection by the authorities while committing crimes. They may have been sought after by professional criminals, the uncertainty of whose work made them seek out any psychological reassurance they could. Compare this with the escape of the apostle Peter from prison after an angel made him invisible to his guards (Acts 12:5–25). In The Key of Solomon, however, any context for the spell has been stripped away, leaving it an abstract exercise. Notice that as the purpose of the spell becomes more physically impossible, the text begins to supply reasons for why it will probably fail. Referring to the extensive astrological and ritual prescriptions the magician must follow to the letter, the author warns: “If thou lettest any of these things escape thee, or if thou despiseth them, never shalt thou be able to arrive at thy proposed end.” Invisibility may also relate to the magician’s desire to become godlike, insofar as invisibility is a divine attribute. This fed into Mather’s conception of magic as the magician’s tool of personal spiritual development.

Chapter XV

In this ritual the magician creates an amulet (copying the text at the end of the section) on a piece of paper to carry on his person at all times. The spell imbues the amulet with power. This amulet is technically known as a victory charm. The purpose of such a charm is to grant the bearer of it success and advantage in any dealings he has with other people. If he is in a lawsuit, he will win it. If he makes a business transaction, he will profit from it. If he wants to seduce a woman, he will succeed. This is a very ancient form of magic, attested in magical texts from Mesopotamia as far back as the second millennium BCE. Most likely it is as old as cities. The kinds of interactions it governs are those had with strangers who can only be met with in cities, not in a village or tribal setting where one would interact only with the small of group of people known throughout one’s life. The kinds of social interactions that the spell supposedly aids are those favored by boldness and self-confidence. A person using such a spell would be more likely to succeed in his endeavors because he is confident that he has magic working for him: It would give him a psychological boost. The manuscripts of The Key of Solomon contain a number of other victory spells that are more specifically aimed at seducing women, but Mathers excised these from the text because, for all his pretensions as a magician, he had an essentially prudish Victorian moral sensibility.

The form of the spell is highly simplified. One merely writes out the amulet (observing all of the complicated astrological and other technical injunctions enforced by the ritual) and carries it in a pocket. Victory spells can be far more elaborate. Sometimes they require the manufacture of a “voodoo doll” (which were used in European, not Afro-Caribbean, magic and for victory charms, not to attempt murder through magic) that might have to be buried under the victim’s (a desired woman, a customer, or a judge, for instance) doorstep or somewhere else where he or she would walk over it. Procedures of that kind probably gave the magician the sense that he was accomplishing something effective, a function analogous to following the astrological and other ritual requirements in The Key of Solomon.

The talisman itself consists of a long list of magical names from a wide range of sources. The first set (SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, ROTAS) is a very common and very old (it has been discovered as graffiti in Pompeii) magical formula. Notice that the text has the uncanny property of reading the same backward and forward and if the words are placed one above the other, the columns of letters will read the same as the rows. Moreover, the text is an anagram of the phrase “Pater noster” (the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin) plus A O (alpha and omega, the symbolic designation of Jesus in the book of Revelation). This, too, binds the biblical text into the magical spell. These words are followed by more variants on the tetragrammaton and by the names of the sephiroth, the ten mystical stages of creation within God in the Jewish mystical system of the Kabbalah. It ends with the names of biblical heroes, the three great patriarchs, and the three young Jews cast into the fiery furnace by the king of Babylon in the book of Daniel.

Book II

Prefatory Note

While the first part of the book gave the detailed rituals of the magicians for conjuration and specific spells, the second deals with general preparations and conditions that pertain to all his rituals. The magician is again reminded to share his knowledge only with other experts and admonished that he must understand and be able to provide the astrological and other contexts for every spell. A prayer to the same effect is offered, in this case giving the names of the Hebrew letters of the tetragrammaton—YOD, HE, VAU, HE—but refraining from using it as a simple name, reemphasizing its power and mystery as the root of the magician’s magic.

Chapter II

This section describes the personal preparations of the magician. The later part prescribes his ritual purity and provides a prayer with the greatest variety of pseudo-Hebrew divine names yet seen. But the first three paragraphs are more interesting. The first requires the magician essentially to have an independent living so that he can devote himself entirely to his rituals. The second calls for him to use The Key of Solomon as a handbook, so that he must compose the entirety of any particular ritual he wants, using conjurations, prayers, astrological calculations, and so forth drawn from his understanding of the appropriate parts of the text and how they relate to each other. Finally, the third demands that he set aside a particular place dedicated to his magical operations. This is clearly Mathers’s model for the Golden Dawn. He sought out and obtained patronage from wealthy students who maintained him so that he could devote himself full time to magic. His principal magical work was in devising specific manuals of instructions and graded rites of initiation for his students. He also constructed a special initiatory chamber in the London headquarters of the Golden Dawn, where he conducted his initiation rituals—something like a small theater where rituals were performed like plays with costumes and stage effects (figures appearing from trapdoors and the like). In this way Mathers at least gained the power of drama to elicit the emotions of his initiates, giving them cathartic and educative experiences.

Chapter XXII

This final section of The Key of Solomon makes an interesting contrast to the remainder of the book. The text generally presents its rituals as akin to cabalistic theurgy, in which the magician commands the spirits by assuming the relative role of God through the use of divine names. But this last chapter entirely repudiates that conception, as well as the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, and reverts to the pagan practice of animal sacrifice to spirits—in the Christian view, the worst kind of idolatry and blasphemy. Nothing is done to resolve these contradictions, but perhaps the attraction of The Key of Solomon to modern occultism lies in that lack of resolution. Although animal sacrifice is rare in modern occultist practice (and certainly was not performed by the Golden Dawn), the popular image of occultism is just this: animal and even human sacrifice in the black mass that inverts Christianity. The inclusion of these last rituals makes magic simultaneously Christian and anti-Christian, scholarly and popular: a reconciliation of opposites. This inversion of tradition makes occultism a fitting symbol of the counterculture.