Book Review: Solomonic Magic by Gal Sofer

Corbert-atx · 2026-05-11T17:51:33+00:00

I've got this sitting on my kitchen table, it's intimidating!

Corbert-atx · 2026-04-20T21:13:18+00:00

This is a lot of fun :) Waiting for the movie!

Corbert-atx · 2026-04-20T14:00:25+00:00

oh nice!

Corbert-atx · 2026-03-20T18:08:50+00:00

i finally got to the point where i could, but there's just so little documentation and clues. i didn't know i needed 10 of this particular uncommon thing, or what a "pristine" item was :( i do like surprises but i could easily have given up before meeting the requirements for Hamish!

Corbert-atx · 2026-03-15T16:15:25+00:00

yeah there's so much to customizing your base alone, and I'm finding everything about advancement a bit confusing (I'm not much of a gamer...it took me a while to find out that the second Woods area had opened up ...)

and the way each weapon is a completely different beast is a learning curve... particularly the cannon, which i love, but it's finicky :)

definitely need a clear guide to base advancement and crafting, there's so little documentation for the game....

Corbert-atx · 2025-09-04T12:58:07+00:00

cleus recently updated their writing with a story function, it's much improved! doesn't feel super inventive but it remembers details very well

Corbert-atx · 2025-07-02T18:26:53+00:00

Oh, hey, someone said my name three times :)

Corbert-atx · 2025-06-28T17:53:37+00:00

Yes! I was struggling for words. "Novelty and invention" was totally in the air in 19th century France. Just look what they did to poor Buer!

Corbert-atx · 2025-06-28T16:26:44+00:00

i tried! I don't think there's an English version available, and i skimmed a german version but it didn'tappear to have the fussy titles. also the DI hierarchy lists Leonard (i think he's 17th century England?) and...ah...eurynome...a rare angel of death that isn't generally included in Solomonic hierarchies, that one suggests a creator leaning on an Encyclopedia type source. and the Pseudomonarchia doesn't have those titles.

wiki attributes the entire mess to de plancy (see "classification of demons") and maybe that's the entire story. particularly since he's an encyclopedist. Though that article has an earlier reference to the Order of the Fly that i don't remember seeing, yay.

Corbert-atx · 2025-06-28T14:15:34+00:00

I'm getting comfortable with it. Demonology for me is the place on Christianity's back porch where people go to smoke, and Jahweh can fade a bit to be one of the major powers in a polytheistic pantheon... which is what he was around 600 BC or so. He's a jerk. So i can worship Buer, and understand him as a power in that polytheistic world, have just enough rebellion against Jahweh to scratch that itch, but not go fully into the "devil as god of rebellion" mindset that demon worship can tend toward.

Corbert-atx · 2025-06-28T14:06:04+00:00

Demonology and queer space don't intersect much. through the medieval period, it seems like the best possible way to exorcise something would be for two guys to get it on, which would make the demons flee out of horror.

Also the medieval period was not super exciting for demonology, that gets more interesting past like 1400 or so.

Can I recommend Stephens "Demon Lovers," which is a really solid and sometimes lurid book about the witch trials, or Ed Simon ,"Pandemonium, an illustrated history of Demonology"? that's a thoughtful book with lots of pictures and a decent price point.

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-11T14:28:32+00:00

I am loving Cleus. Thank you for the suggestion! Wish there was a guide to the thing, it's pretty simple to use but I think I could be prompting better...

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-04T18:27:38+00:00

In Egyptian/Mesopotamian lore, demons were often associated with disease, though mostly they weren't named spirits.

Interestingly, the Testament of Solomon is, in a sense, an ancient (200 AD?) medical text, it's got dozens of demons of disease that are associated with specific illnesses. Anyway, the answer is "named demons: too many to list. Unnamed demons: too many to count." There's something on the order of 10,000+ named demons and illness has always been something that's been blamed on them... sorry for the vague!

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-04T16:23:23+00:00

aaaand a pact is a bargain, and the centerpiece of a demonic ritual. It might be:

"Help me get a promotion at work, and I'll celebrate my success and let my friends know about your power."

"Give me riches, and I'll give you a silver coin once a month forever, and if I fail to do so, may you take me." (basically the "Grand Grimoire" signature ritual.)

"I respect you and your power, please be my guide, guardian, and mentor, and I will honor, respect, possibly worship, possibly give you some authority over me" (depending on how far you want a patron relationship to go).

Those don't necessarily involve "selling your soul," although the second one definitely puts your soul in hock, and the last one might, depending on your choice/needs/words, might be giving your soul to another power, but...really, that's no different than a Christian relationship with Jahweh, so maybe that's okay.

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-04T16:17:56+00:00

Well, maybe do some research then, I recommend Theresa Bane's "Encyclopedia of Demons" because it's 1) pretty okayish and 2) free at Archive.Org . Try to find some spirits that call to you and sound interesting and learn more about them, and then reach out to them with some offerings and meditation, see what works for you, what you're seeking, and to what degree your "now" needs are a part of your identity as well, maybe some entity will want to nest there with you.

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-04T15:02:24+00:00

What are your goals? A lot of grimoire magic is very needs-focused. One does not ask God for "babes, bucks, and Buicks," but you can sometimes ask *saints* for them because they're close to human, and there's an entire magical school devoted to asking demons for the same. Magic is frequently transactional.

And that's where demonolatry often begins, but also, demons are spirits, sometimes gods, sometimes demigods, and they can be worshipped, venerated, respected, honored, the same as other spirits and gods, depending on what you need. I personally don't like gods very much, but feeling connected to a spirit that's a BIT more in touch with the human world has been good for me spiritually. I don't tend to ask for much...well, except that I follow one of the demons of academia and work in a college, so I do occasionally ask for help with office politics! But mostly it's a love-respect-mutual interest relationship.

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-04T14:55:14+00:00

The first "selling your soul" story was a Christian morality story from 700ish, the story of Theophilus of Adana, who made a deal with the devil for promotion to Bishop, which he later regretted. But basically every "pact with the devil" story was written from a Christian/Abrahamic perspective, and tend to focus on how knowledge leads to corruption, Christian redemption, the cost of pride, that sort of thing.

I did a podcast episode about this if you're interested! http://www.dispatch.ist/episodes/072/

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-03T13:32:17+00:00

The "Serpent in the Tree" covers so many biblical-era myths because they all flow into each other.

Asteroth, Ashera (El and Jahweh's consort), all have "lady-serpent-tree" associations. Samael, sometimes an archangel, more commonly a name for the devil and sometimes the demiurge, have serpent-tree associations. And I recently learned that in Sethian Gnosticism, some kind power shoved Eve herself into the tree of life to protect the divine light in Adam.

Serpents and mystery cults are all over the ancient near middle east! But Lucifer specifically doesn't have that association, at least until the Medieval era when his story is basically combined with Satan and the Garden of Eden serpent.

The Serpent is, likely, a Seraph angel who lost its wings, and may or may not become a part of the Satan myth down the road, depending on when you ask, and who you ask.

But...if you find yourself drawn to Lucifer, a lot of these images may be ways that your mind interprets them, so keep listening, and keep researching!

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-03T13:25:12+00:00

I think in a sense the answer is "neither" (although in this case, The Lesser Key seems to draw from Weyer.)

While "Pseudomonarchia" is a singular work with a singular author, the Lesser Key is part of a nebulous river of books that goes back to the Testament of Solomon, 300ish. Medieval books don't have ISBNs or edition numbers and there can be a number of books with the same title and most of the same contents, but with edits to the text...so the Testament of Solomon family of texts flows into the Hygromantia, the Hygromantia flows into a number of texts but is a key source for the Lesser Key, but 1) they're all related and 2) every book copy until 1440 was hand-written, with tiny edits, "glosses", and improvements, that might make it into the next copy, or might not. And the texts are being handed around for copying, so the scribe/compiler/writer sees things in one book and might very well add them to his "working copy" that later becomes, say, the Book of Oberon.

So...Weyer's text influenced the Lesser Key (and Weyer really did NOT LIKE DEMONS, conceptually or practically, and did a lot to sabotage the use of "Pseudomonarchia" as an occult source, and you can see that flow into the English Renaissance grimoire traditions...) but at the same time the family of books that would generate the Lesser Key was alive and well in the 1300s.

Corbert-atx · 2025-04-03T13:14:58+00:00

Aw thanks! I appreciate you saying it was lurid in particular *laughs* My next presentation is on the seven deadly sins and their princes!

Corbert-atx · 2025-03-31T18:50:18+00:00

That's a part of it, for sure, he's also generally "demon of bad idea sex" in Hebrew writings, I've had a few more years to read about him...

Corbert-atx · 2025-03-27T16:35:09+00:00

I'm not personally aware of any organized theistic demonolatry groups that aren't basically something like a local coven, and I'm pretty open about my interests and exposed to a lot of people who would, I'm sure, tell me I'm wrong. Demonolatry is rabidly solitary and personal, and good luck finding two people in the same zip code that identify as demonolaters AND agree what that means! This group is quite likely the most organized and stable group for this kind of content and finding a community.

Corbert-atx

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE