Glimpses of the Left..

the witch, the
downfall which occurred in
the rise of his reputation as the grE�atlest
One of the legends about his power over demons told a story of how ht
nT''',,.,,,,, evil in a brazen vessel which he cast into a lake
Babylon. that the vessel contained a hidden treasure, thAt
Babylonians retrieved it and broke the seal by which the demons were ,
bound. When the seal was broken, all immediately flew out and 1
dispersed to their former dwellings, except Belial who entered into a statui
and became an oracle to his to the there .
were 72 chief demons in the and these were the same spirits which ·
were later included in the list that became the of the Goetia.
The Goetia and several similar grimoires appeared in the 14th-17th centuries
and been used by onwards. It however, .
highly unlikely that the real King Solomon actually write any of these
texts, though it seems justified that such a was chosen as
author of demonic It was common in the late Middle Ages or
the Renaissance times to write such books or grimoires anonymously or to
attribute them to King Solomon. It is worth to notice that these were very
uneasy times for magicians: the of witch burnings, the Inquisition and
severe to "heretics". It was natural for monks and
man of science to conceal their practice of demonic magic under the
disguise of other fields of interest. And so, even though the �olornoJnic
cycle of found its way to the hands of the
magicians, it was only by "underground" channels, and the authors chose
to remain anonymous to their reputation life.
The history and which now constitute the famous
may be traced the first century of our era, when
Josephus mentioned a book of incantations for conjuring demons
the name of Solomon. He described how a Jew called
to cure demonic This text has
never been found, but there were many other 'Solomonic' writings
mentioned in the medieval sources, such as Salomonis libn de gemmis et
daemonibus, Ie Livre de Salomon, Sigillum Salomonis, or Clavicula Salomanis,
listed among the "works of current at the time. Most of them
were an of Jewish magical texts, commonly available in the
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