The-Testament-of-Solomon-The-Origins-of-Solomonic-Magic-Occultism-Demonology-en-auto-generated
the israelite king solomon son of david has gone on to fame for his wisdom his world weariness in the book of ecclesiastes his lettery and apostasy and of course his power as a mage especially his control over demonic spirits from the dead sea scrolls to the contemporary occult practices of solomonic magic this israelite king has figured centrally in the history of magic alongside such luminary figures as zoro raster pythagoras and hermes tres mcgistis most famous for his magical seal ring solomon is legendarily said to have controlled and bound an entire host of demons in the construction of the jerusalem temple but what is our earliest astestation of this legend just how far back into hallowed antiquity can we find solomon the sorcerer in this episode i want to turn to our surviving ground zero for this legendary narrative the early common era text known simply as the testament of solomon here we find a fully developed tale where solomon comes to understand and bind the demonic hordes and the construction of the jerusalem temple but also a text likely more than a mere narrative description indeed the very foundation for the solomonic school of magic which continues to exist to this day the testament of solomon lies somewhere between narrative legend and practical grim war a text as much of a magical manual as a piece of legendary myth if you're interested in magic hermetic philosophy alchemy kabbalah or the history of the occult make sure to subscribe and check out my other content on topics and esotericism including numerous curated playlists also if you want to support this work of providing accessible scholarly and free content on topics and as a terrorism here on youtube for free i'd hope you consider supporting my work on patreon or with a one-time donation via paypal or perhaps with the super thanks option you can now find below the video again you can find those links below and i really do appreciate your consideration supporting this channel and making the work of esoterica widely accessible but now let's turn to the foundations of solomonic magic his power over the demonic hosts and the real star of this legend the dozens of demons that solomon communicates with binds and controls i'm dr justin sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the arcane in history philosophy and religion [Music] [Music] the notion of solomon's nearly supernatural wisdom is already to be found in the hebrew bible or the christian old testament and by the turn of the common era this wisdom had well extended into the domains of magic especially the control over demons and exorcism more generally we find this notion already fully developed in the first century jewish historian josephus who actually tells us that he witnessed an exorcism in front of a roman emperor no less in which a s ring was used bearing the seal of solomon also among the dead sea scrolls there is a fragmentary text bearing an exorcism incantation which invokes the very authority of solomon in the centuries that followed solomon's power over demonic forces will be found everywhere from the greek magical papyri produced over in egypt and as far east as the incantation bowls of mesopotamia meant to capture and bind spirits before they could enter a house and bother people this lore would extend and be shared by pagans jews christians mandiants and muslim communities all over the ancient world as centuries stretched on and thus cemented solomon as a mage par excellence that reputation of course would continue through development of solomonic magic more generally as the european middle ages flourished and would survive and flourish with the rise of freemasonry in the early modern period and the continued popularity of solomonic magic in contemporary occult practices but what text can we point to as the locus classicus for this whole genre of solomonic magic the answer seems to be a really wonderful text known to history as the testament of solomon the testament is largely a demonological catalogue kind of framed around solomon's construction of the jerusalem temple using said demons produced sometime in the first few centuries of the common era well that's the that's the simple answer and you know tim well we're not going to get out of this episode without complicating things good bit more than that so welcome to complication time to be honest virtually nothing can be known with certainty about the origins of the text it's anonymous because you're really going to put your name on a book mostly concerned with binding controlling demons it was originally composed in a coinage greek very similar to the new testament and very likely composed by an early christian deeply familiar with and employing pre-talmudic jewish germanology most likely in the interest of producing a text bearing on exorcistic and medical practices of the time as much as there was a difference between exorcism and medicine at that time it seems most likely the text was produced in roman palestine but the magical technology in the text is actually strikingly similar to greco-egyptian magic attested a bit later in the greek magical papyri the text in some form was probably produced before 400 of the common era because it's referenced in the dialogue of timothy and aquila produced around that time though a good deal of the demonology could also be cross-attested in the 3rd century christian theologian origin although that might just be sort of a general egyptian demonological ferment that both of them rely on it's apparent however the text has gone through a long and complicated tortured recession history these days we are pretty spoiled that when i say that i don't know i've read the fall of the house of usher i can probably take it for granted that you've read basically the same version as me not so much in antiquity without the guard wells of antiquity itself or archaic language or just the text being verse well text can and dude get off the rails in the ancient world the testament of solomon is a complex accretion of solomonic biography various non-commiserate demonological catalogs medical and astrological information various kinds of magical technologies all combined over centuries in various degrees of modification and corruption what perhaps seems most likely is that the text combined legendary solomonic biography with demonological lore by either a christian with access to that jewish law or i think just as likely a jewish christian with a very specific interest it seems in exorcistic medicine sometime in the early centuries of the common era that text was further amplified with more demonological literature here primarily of an astrological character probably being extracted out of egypt in origin more on that egyptian aspect in just a bit in a yet later stage the testament was increasingly geared in the direction of magical practice it's being moved away from the world of description into being actionized in fact in the final era of the recession of the text explicitly magical practice is interpolated into the text and we often just find it bound with other straightforwardly magical manuals in the byzantine period that said the text survives in a little over a dozen greek manuscripts of which three major recessions can be tracked i'll say a bit more about recession c the most oriented toward practical demonological magic in just a bit because i suspect that that resention c is going to be the one that interests most folks watching this channel the text itself is difficult to summarize because as i've said it's basically a demonological catalog framed around solomon's construction of the jerusalem temple and it's it's hard to summarize catalogs because catalogs are kind of by their nature already some are polymerized but the text opens with one of solomon's favorite workers being plagued by a demon so far so good by plagued i mean the demon is stealing his wages his food provisions and sucking his soul out of his thumb while he's sleeping so yeah plagued also thumb here might be uh that's probably a sexual euphemism for reasons we'll get to in a minute for reasons that aren't clear solomon really takes a shine to this youth worker and pleads to god to intervene with this whole demon business then blow god sends the angel michael to provide solomon with a ring with a special seal able to bind and control demons now that seal ring we've already seen as far back as josephus in the first century but the earliest stratum of the testament doesn't seem to provide any further information or description on the seal itself despite the fact that that would be the most conspicuously interesting thing about the the whole book from at least a magical practice point of view but as i mentioned the text does end up on a very practical magical trajectory and various manuscripts provide various versions of this solomonic seal in fact there seem to be as many versions of the seal as there are manuscripts or at least manuscript traditions the most common motifs for the seal are magical terms or magical words sometimes in hebrew set into circles very often displaying a pentagram or a hexagram along with further magical symbols though by the early modern period and the development of the lesser key of solomon probably the most popular version of the solomonic magic at least these days the seal has undergone dramatic transformation none of that hardly can be found in the lesser key of solomon seal you can compare the one on the screen from harley ms-5596 a 15th century magical manual including various recessions of the testament along with a host of other magical literature it's actually a really amazing manuscript to the more popular lester key of solomon version to get a sense of just how much variation one can find in these manuscripts about what exactly was the seal of solomon which one is more accurate or has the most magical power i don't know it beats the hell out of me but i don't think you can get the testament version on etsy so if you want to be like a hipster mage and be like oh the lesser key seal i use the ms harley5596 it's kind of kind of underground maybe you want to listen to my cool black metal track i'm only releasing it on four minute edison wax cylinders like six of them well whatever seal you want to use [ __ ] melec as we call him gives the ring to the youth who when the demon comes to suck his thumb creepy he casts the ring pokemon style into his chest immediately binding the demon drag before solomon the demon like the veritable parade of demons to come is forced to reveal their name their astrological location in the cosmos their activities because demons are usually up to no good especially the specific harms they inflict upon mankind their genealogy which i think is a really fascinating aspect of the demonological lore here beelzebull for instance is the last og angel that fell to earth and the descent to earth by the original angels while other ones like asmodius actually have angelic fathers but human mothers kind of nephilim style along with their corresponding thwarting angel before being sentenced to various forms of hard labor in the construction of the temple it's kind of like a demonic gulag over there in fact this whole demonological system has a dnd monster manual feel to it to be honest all they need is like an armor class and hit die and we're ready to roll for initiative folks though really the testament would actually benefit strongly for someone creating like a spreadsheet with all the charts of all the demons and their activity and their stats and their activities and their binding angels and their thacos you'll have it all laid out just just an idea if someone actually makes a testament of salman's spreadsheet with all the information we have about these demons i'll link it in the description just saying make it a banker of one in this case though the demon captured is ornias his name literally means vexing who dwells in aquarius and as a pedophile demon who strangles male aquarians attracted to virgo women who can also appear variously as a winged being or a lion that thumb thing so getting even weirder ornaeus is said to have descended from a fallen arch angel and assorted by the archangel uriel as punishment for attacking this young boy or young man solomon sentences him to hard labor cutting stones for the production of the temple though ornios like many demons is terrified of iron this is something repeated in michael celsi's demonological manual which you can check out in the card above that's why you often see necromancers with swords or something terrifying about them and we'll talk about that in michael selles given this fear of iron ornias offers to give up his other fellow demons become snitch undeterred solomon has uriel summon sea monsters and cast the fate of ornios on the ground this section is as awesome as it is unclear but now solomon gets to have his cake and eat it too orneos is forced to labor unto the completion of the temple and he's forced to bring forth the prince of the demons beelzebu once the prince of the demons is bound same throwing the ring into his chest business the entire demonic retinue is brought before solomon each one of them is bound and forced to reveal again their name astrological information their demonic shenanigans before being sentenced to hard labor in the construction of the temple everything from cutting stones to spinning rope to carrying water though it's always struck me that these menial tasks seem like a waste of some demonic potential for them to do other stuff though this whole demons building the temple narrative should be contrasted by the way with another legendary cycle found in the babylonian talmud where solomon used various kinds of demons specifically asmodius to find a magical worm yep a magical worm called the shamir to help build the temple you can learn more about that specific version of the narrative around the building of the temple using demons in my episode on the lesser key of solomon in the card above no doubt the most popular is that the right word most popular grimoire or book of magic in the solomonic cycle especially in contemporary times i mean goethe demons are getting their own animes and movie deals and i'm still looking to get coffee with paimon's agent because i want to break into hollywood hey pam if you're watching this each demonic narrative is fascinating and serves to display the wide range of demonological lore accessible to the redactors of this text we have the usual cast of characters such as asmodeus and beelzebull the demon as lilith makes an appearance though she's actually known in this text as obizut which is interesting lesser known demons include a satira like character called onoskelis the wind demon with the more latin nate name licks tetrax pazuzu-like wind demon name ephippus a winged dragon and the dread seahorse demon seahorse demon kuno pegos along with the two-headed female lunar demoness called inepsigos along with a bunch of others further the text has a gnostic-ish astic-ish gnostic-like interlude where the seven planets seem to be denoted as demonic rulers of this realm known as deception strife fate distress error power and the last one's called the worst the worst this very interestingly parallels on the origin of the world in the nagamati library where death is produced by yao de baath you know the demiurge and set to control the sixth heaven their death being androgyne produces seven sons and seven daughters and through incest they go on to produce a host of many many other beings those original seven sons and daughters of death are very similar to the ones found in the testament now while the lists don't really overlap with the testament they only really share eris or strife the gnostic texts conclude by telling the reader that the demonic names and functions of all those various beings created through incest with the deaf kids can be found in a book of solomon now i'm skeptical it's the testament as we have it but i do strongly suspect that this is a case of survival bias where many other testament-like solomonic literature existed while not a strong match it's still strikingly conspicuous nonetheless speaking of nagamati in egypt the text also contains a detailed list of 36 demons which correspond to the deacons of the zodiac this astrological distinction seems very likely egyptian in origin not palestinian and the demonological catalog is especially important in the transition toward the text becoming a practical manual and virtually all of these demons seem especially connected to disease it seems like this zodiac part was included in part of the trajectory of making this text practical not just narrative and again it's worth pointing out just how demonically populated the cosmos is in the testament from the circle of the zodiac to the planets themselves the various stars and the wilder places of the earth the world seems simply full of demons it's a veritable pandemonium well following the astrological demons we learn that the demons know the future because they can fly up close to the throne of god before becoming exhausted and plunging back to the earth as falling stars meanwhile back at the construction site of the temple things have hit a snag neither men nor demons can set the enormous cornerstone of the temple into place at the same time solomon receives a distress letter from the king of arabia asking him to remove the very powerful wind demon ephippus solomon sends his envoy and they trap the demon ephippus in a leather flask then the demon trap now agrees to work with the demon of the red sea the boo a bisset to place a corners the cornerstone of the temple the cornerstone then placed it appears that the demon of the red sea who has also raised a gigantic pillar out of the red sea is bound to hold it in the sky forever this is probably the origins of the milky way at least in the text fortesworth by the way abazette the boo is the demon who the egyptian magicians giannis and yambras employed when they magically dueled with moses and aaron who also hardened pharaoh's heart somehow getting god off the deal for that and they went on to chase the israelites with the egyptian army until they were swallowed up by the red sea when it collapsed and on top of them along with all those poor egyptians the testament of solomon ends with the downfall of solomon with the construction of the temple complete solomon can return to his true love the gathering of wisdom nah it's not its philandering in order to obtain some shumanite booty solomon sacrifices five locusts to the pagan gods rafan and molach and the spirit of god well it departs from him and he places idols into the temple that he spent all that time with all those demons building solomon tells us how he's composed the testament for his fellow israelites so that the demonological lord wouldn't be lost in fact later legends have the book being hidden by hezekiah and surviving down to this day of course the text itself why fundamentally a book of pre-talmudic jewish demonology is at this point thoroughly christian many of the adjurations and exorcistic language of the text emerged directly out of the new testament and many of the demons can only be fully bound by a future power interestingly depicted as a kind of angel who will be executed and rise from the dead yeah this text kind of depicts jesus as like a powerful angel and some of the magical binding indentations seem to be taken directly from the mouth of the dying jesus one version of this is a incantation called elohi which is probably jesus's last words thus the text is also a kind of christian prophetic wisdom such that while solomon combines some of the demons some of the time he eventually falls into a life of lust driven idolatry it would be jesus who would fully bind all the demons defeat death itself and remain divinely pure though as i pointed out the testament of solomon is a text somewhere between being a mere story of solomon's adventures with the demons tnt adventure a demonological catalog and a manual for demonological magic clearly the text fires the imagination in all those directions but is certain the mere tales of solomonic magic inspired more and more practically oriented magical texts to be produced even internal to the testament itself thus in recession c the language has become much more imperative and hypothetical it's much more of a straightforward manual of demonic magic in fact in the center of this recession there is a detailed demonological list very much aimed at something like the practice of poetic magic with over various skills it's sort of like a proto-goesha or a proto-lesser key of solomon in fact rescintion c is something like the bridge which connects the more descriptive legend-like testament to the more solomonic magical literature often bound with it especially the greek hygromantea or the magical treatise of solomon that text in turn will serve as the foundation as for all of solomonic magical practice as it develops in western europe down to this day of course i'll be coming back to the hygromantea or the magical treatise of solomon in a future episode so stay tuned for that one the testament of solomon is just required reading for anyone interested in ritual and solomonic magic the history of demonology or just anyone interested in the lore around solomon like our freemason brothers out there it's a fantastic piece of very ancient legend and magical practice especially seeing how those legends and practices developed over the centuries and the millennium this text is almost 2 000 years old and you might be surprised to learn that the standard critical edition of the text by mccowan was produced in this year so happy centennial testament of solomon critical edition that text is wonderful but of course it's rather dated at this point though if you want to see the various resentions in the original greek language it's still basically going to be your go-to for the standard introduction and diplomatic translation however you're going to want to check out dueling's edition in volume 1 of the old testament pseudopigrapha in fact you just want both volumes of that text if you're interested in esoteric stuff like this even without the greek it has tons of useful notes and bringing them discoveries like nagamati made decades after mcgowan produced this edition also for those interested in the more magically oriented recession see of the testament i everyone watching this channel you'll need to pick up a copy of brian johnson's edition of reception c you may recall brian from my episode on the necromancy manual from the medici library he's a great scholar and produces really cool texts his addition is especially important for those interested in the very specific magical development of the solomonic tradition of course you'll need the rest of the testament of solomon in the dueling edition to really make sense of how all the recessions fit together including ascension c but i'm sure you're going to want resentiency as well don't worry much more solomonic material coming so stay tuned until then i'm dr justin sledge and thank you for watching esoterica where we explore the arcane in history philosophy and religion you