[Opinion] Myth or truth? A few "ancient Goetia" claims I keep going back and forth on

[kvzlx]

I've been reading the older sources lately (Weyer's Pseudomonarchia 1577, the Lemegeton manuscripts, the 1904 Goetia, Livre des Esperitz (s. XV)...), and I keep coming across things that "everyone knows" but that I'm honestly not so sure about. So instead of pretending I've figured it all out, I want to throw a few out as myth or truth. I'll say where I lean, and you tell me where I'm wrong, because I'm genuinely uncertain about some of these.

1. "Lucifer is Satan."

I lean myth. From what I can tell, they look like two separate figures that were fused later. "Lucifer" is simply the Latin term the Vulgate uses for the morning star in Isaiah 14, in a taunt directed at the King of Babylon. "Satan" (ha-satan), meanwhile, seems to function more like a title or role, "the accuser," than a personal name. But in practice a lot of people treat them as the same being, so maybe the historical distinction isn't the whole story. How do you see it?

1. "Beelzebub really means Lord of the Flies."

I'm leaning myth on this one too. It feels more like a later insult. The original divine title may have been Baal-Zebul ("prince" or "lord of the high place"), while Baal-Zebub ("lord of the flies") looks like a mocking alteration. But I've also seen people argue that the fly imagery has genuine symbolic meaning. Which interpretation makes more sense to you?

1. "The enns are ancient chants."

This is the one I'm most confident is a myth. I can't find them in any old grimoire, not in Weyer, not in the Lemegeton, and they seem to be a late 20th-century development. But here's the question I'm actually interested in: do they work for you anyway? They do for me, so "modern" clearly isn't a dealbreaker.

1. "The seals are super old."

I'm leaning myth, at least when people say they're "super old." Weyer's 1577 catalogue has no sigils at all, and the familiar seals seem to appear with the Lemegeton manuscripts in the 1600s. Am I missing an earlier source? I'm genuinely asking. If someone knows of one, I'd love to see it.

1. "King Solomon wrote the Lesser Key."

Pretty sure this is a myth too, but with an important caveat. The Lemegeton looks like a 17th-century compilation placed under Solomon's name, with an internal date of 1641, while the association between Solomon and magic is genuinely ancient, as seen in traditions like the Testament of Solomon. So where do you draw the line between an old tradition and an old book?

To be clear, I'm not claiming I'm right about all of this. Half of these I'm still thinking through, and "modern" doesn't mean "worthless" to me. Most of my own practice is modern anyway.

So which of these would you call myth, which truth, and which am I completely wrong about? And what other claims of "this is ancient" should be added to the list?

 

[akenu]

Well, if you want to research something truly ancient, a pentagram is probably the most prevalent symbol in Magick, known as the ARRA star in ancient Mesopotamia.

 

[r4zorenigma]

Great thread.

1) Lucifer and Satan are both fictional characters.. Research their origins.. Lucifer was merely a title, then transformed into the idea of God's favorite angel, Satan is a bastardization of an old Hebrew word meaning "adversary".. Satan was anything that went against you or that was bad for you.. which makes sense why they attributed it to a characterization of evil. It also got mixed with terms like diablo or diabolos from Greek which meant someone who slanders or accuses.. In ancient times just around when Judaism was comign about, they had a concept that there was a antagonist wh would accuse and point out peoples wrongdoings to God.. that was Ha-Satan.. or referred to as "The Accuser".. It wasn't till Christianity came about that they charcterized Satan as a real being, and the most evil person ever.-- however the Origins prove there is no real being named Satan. Lucifer is even less of a being.. IT was just a title originally for old kings and a common word used at the time. IT was just later Christian interpretations that caused him to be this angel who fell from grace.. or the light bringer..

You and others can now rest easy at night knowing that if you made a pact to "sell your soul" to "Satan" when you were 17, that your soul is still intact and that you need not worry.

2) Beelzebub is actually most likely a corrruption of the original name which was probably Baal Zebul.. which simply means "Exalted Lord or Prince Baal".. Baal Zebub Lord of The flies.. makes no sensse considering Baal is associated with LORD or Master..

3) Throughout history there's bene all types of different chants and hyms.. I dont really have any comment for this one.

4) "The seals are really old" doesn't matter if they are or not.. The ones that are real are most likely old.. The rest are fictional anyways.. Out of many grimoires, theres probably less than 10% of them that have beings that we can say are "real demons!" Grimoires are heavily based on fictional creative writing-- was a common theme for some nerds at the time.

5) Yeah alot of people liked to associate things with King Solomon.. alot of ancient fraternities, magick circles, etc.. I think again maybe less than 5-10% of the Lesser Key relates to King Solomon at all. It's only in the Islamic traditioin that King Solomon conjured djinn/demons.. Not in Christianity. Old fraternal organizations and secret societies worshipped Kign Solomon for his Islamic associations and JUdaic associations to being the wisest man of all. I would say its MYTH.. There is no authenticated evidence linking any of the stuff from Lesser Key to the actual King Solomon.. the only loose material that has been authenticated with mentionof Solomon is also 800-1000 years after King Solomons time.. so theres no validation in there.. and theres barely anything of real substance.. besides some loose things related to excorcism ofs pirits.

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

I think "fiction" is a strong to use.... But it's the better i have to indeed talk about how goetia (and many others systems like Wicca) have a lot of plot holes.

The biggest example is about the demon Moloch. Goetia use medieval folk beliefs about it when recent research found out he never was a Canaanite god.

We could say the same about Astaroth that got his own lore while the original terms was a reference to "many pagan goddesses".

From a pure historical/theological perspective, it's a huge mess.... But it's a magick system that has now a life of its own and that's what matter when you want to perform magick

 

[kvzlx]

Well, if you want to research something truly ancient, a pentagram is probably the most prevalent symbol in Magick, known as the ARRA star in ancient Mesopotamia.

good call, and it's a useful line to draw: the individual symbols (pentagram, hexagram) go back far further than any grimoire the ARRA star in Mesopotamia is genuinely ancient. It's the system and the attributions that are late, not the raw symbols. Two different things.

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 3:04 PM

Great thread.

1) Lucifer and Satan are both fictional characters.. Research their origins.. Lucifer was merely a title, then transformed into the idea of God's favorite angel, Satan is a bastardization of an old Hebrew word meaning "adversary".. Satan was anything that went against you or that was bad for you.. which makes sense why they attributed it to a characterization of evil. It also got mixed with terms like diablo or diabolos from Greek which meant someone who slanders or accuses.. In ancient times just around when Judaism was comign about, they had a concept that there was a antagonist wh would accuse and point out peoples wrongdoings to God.. that was Ha-Satan.. or referred to as "The Accuser".. It wasn't till Christianity came about that they charcterized Satan as a real being, and the most evil person ever.-- however the Origins prove there is no real being named Satan. Lucifer is even less of a being.. IT was just a title originally for old kings and a common word used at the time. IT was just later Christian interpretations that caused him to be this angel who fell from grace.. or the light bringer..

You and others can now rest easy at night knowing that if you made a pact to "sell your soul" to "Satan" when you were 17, that your soul is still intact and that you need not worry.

2) Beelzebub is actually most likely a corrruption of the original name which was probably Baal Zebul.. which simply means "Exalted Lord or Prince Baal".. Baal Zebub Lord of The flies.. makes no sensse considering Baal is associated with LORD or Master..

3) Throughout history there's bene all types of different chants and hyms.. I dont really have any comment for this one.

4) "The seals are really old" doesn't matter if they are or not.. The ones that are real are most likely old.. The rest are fictional anyways.. Out of many grimoires, theres probably less than 10% of them that have beings that we can say are "real demons!" Grimoires are heavily based on fictional creative writing-- was a common theme for some nerds at the time.

5) Yeah alot of people liked to associate things with King Solomon.. alot of ancient fraternities, magick circles, etc.. I think again maybe less than 5-10% of the Lesser Key relates to King Solomon at all. It's only in the Islamic traditioin that King Solomon conjured djinn/demons.. Not in Christianity. Old fraternal organizations and secret societies worshipped Kign Solomon for his Islamic associations and JUdaic associations to being the wisest man of all. I would say its MYTH.. There is no authenticated evidence linking any of the stuff from Lesser Key to the actual King Solomon.. the only loose material that has been authenticated with mentionof Solomon is also 800-1000 years after King Solomons time.. so theres no validation in there.. and theres barely anything of real substance.. besides some loose things related to excorcism ofs pirits.

mostly with you, especially on ha-satan as "the accuser" role and Baal-Zebul → Baal-Zebub. The one word I'd soften is "fictional," because a lot of these names sit on top of real ancient deities that got re-purposed — which is basically Oberon's point below.

Post automatically merged: Saturday at 3:05 PM

I think "fiction" is a strong to use.... But it's the better i have to indeed talk about how goetia (and many others systems like Wicca) have a lot of plot holes.

The biggest example is about the demon Moloch. Goetia use medieval folk beliefs about it when recent research found out he never was a Canaanite god.

We could say the same about Astaroth that got his own lore while the original terms was a reference to "many pagan goddesses".

From a pure historical/theological perspective, it's a huge mess.... But it's a magick system that has now a life of its own and that's what matter when you want to perform magick

this is the good stuff, and both your examples belong on the list: Astaroth is the cleanest case I know: he's a demonized, masculinized descendant of Astarte / Ashtoreth (Ishtar)a goddess. The Hebrew even looks deliberately mis-voweled with the vowels of bosheth, "shame." So a Near-Eastern goddess ends up a male Goetic duke. Same mechanism as Bael ← Baal. Moloch is arguably even better, because it might be a ghost: there's a strong scholarly case (Eissfeldt onward) that mlk / molk was the type of offering, not a god's name at all so "Moloch the deity" may rest on a mistranslation. Contested, but a great example of a demon born from a scribal misreading.

 

[ewiz]

1. "Lucifer is Satan."

Perhaps yes and no. Yes because this is how the characters have been syncretized later, and into the present day. But I think they also take on many other meanings; Satan as the angelic title of the accuser, Samael; Lucifer as the promethean liberator figure. In religious practice, I feel like these names are made to represent the same thing because they wanted a single scapegoat to point to and call evil. For us, I feel it's worth treating them as two separate entities and giving each a thorough study, because we're barely scratching the surface here.

"Beelzebub really means Lord of the Flies."

Again, I think yes and no. It's clearly a mocking alteration of Baal-Zebul, but at the same time the new title as lord of the flies carries genuine symbolic meaning that changes it's character. In practice, I feel it's always best to treat these spirits which appear to be later developments of earlier gods (Astarte/Asherah->Astaroth) as their own unique character. If you would come to see them as the same, let your individal practice inform that belief. Summoning one, but expecting the other because you traced it's origin back there, can be a recipe for a very bad time.

"The enns are ancient chants."

There is zero evidence for these "enns" beyond S. Connolly. They were entirely a product of her imagination, as was their fancy backstory. I don't think calling her ancient would be very nice lol.

"The seals are super old."

The history of drawing pictographs predates and written language, cave drawings and such. But for the specific seals of the grimoires, I think they were mosy likely all devised alongside the grimoires themselves.

"King Solomon wrote the Lesser Key."

This is the same thing as S. Connolly creating a story about the enns coming from some long family tradition. It serves to convince the reader of the work's credibility, linking it with Solomon from the Testament of Solomon, and further reinforcing him as this mythic archetypal wizard. This is a pretty universal trait of the grimoires, lying about older sources for credibility.

 

[kvzlx]

Perhaps yes and no. Yes because this is how the characters have been syncretized later, and into the present day. But I think they also take on many other meanings; Satan as the angelic title of the accuser, Samael; Lucifer as the promethean liberator figure. In religious practice, I feel like these names are made to represent the same thing because they wanted a single scapegoat to point to and call evil. For us, I feel it's worth treating them as two separate entities and giving each a thorough study, because we're barely scratching the surface here.

Again, I think yes and no. It's clearly a mocking alteration of Baal-Zebul, but at the same time the new title as lord of the flies carries genuine symbolic meaning that changes it's character. In practice, I feel it's always best to treat these spirits which appear to be later developments of earlier gods (Astarte/Asherah->Astaroth) as their own unique character. If you would come to see them as the same, let your individal practice inform that belief. Summoning one, but expecting the other because you traced it's origin back there, can be a recipe for a very bad time.

There is zero evidence for these "enns" beyond S. Connolly. They were entirely a product of her imagination, as was their fancy backstory. I don't think calling her ancient would be very nice lol.

The history of drawing pictographs predates and written language, cave drawings and such. But for the specific seals of the grimoires, I think they were mosy likely all devised alongside the grimoires themselves.

This is the same thing as S. Connolly creating a story about the enns coming from some long family tradition. It serves to convince the reader of the work's credibility, linking it with Solomon from the Testament of Solomon, and further reinforcing him as this mythic archetypal wizard. This is a pretty universal trait of the grimoires, lying about older sources for credibility.

Great breakdown, and you closed a loop for me.

The enns point was exactly what I was missing. You named the origin I couldn't pin down: S. Connolly. Calling them "modern" was doing a lot of work when the more honest answer is that they come from one late-20th-century author with an invented historical backstory. The "not very nice to call her ancient lol" line made me laugh, but it's also just true.

On Lucifer/Satan and Beelzebub, I think "yes and no" is probably the right frame. Historically, traditions fuse them, but in practice it can still make sense to treat them as distinct figures and study each on its own terms. Your split between the accuser figure on one side and the Promethean liberator on the other is a useful practical distinction. The warning about calling one while expecting the other is also exactly the kind of problem the purely historical angle doesn't really address.

The Astarte/Asherah to Astaroth point is interesting too. That exact case came up in another thread. A goddess being masculinized and later demonized is one of the clearest examples of an older name being repurposed inside a completely different religious framework.

And your last point is basically my whole thesis. Pseudepigraphy isn't an accident in this material, it's part of how the material gains authority. Connolly giving the enns an ancient lineage and the Lemegeton borrowing Solomon's name are structurally the same move, just centuries apart: attach an old and authoritative name to newer material so it carries more weight.

Once you start looking for that pattern, you see it all over the grimoire tradition.

I'm definitely adding S. Connolly and the enns, plus the Astarte/Astaroth question, to the list. This thread has turned out better than I expected.