Giving the Ring of Virtues, teaching arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and handicrafts, answering questions, making people invincible, and finding and guarding treasure. [1]
Giving the Ring of Virtues, teaching arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and handicrafts, answering questions, making people invincible, and finding and guarding treasure. [1]
Three heads, bull, man and ram; a serpent's tail, fire from the mouth, goose-like webbed feet; riding an infernal dragon and bearing a lance with a banner. [1]
Asmoday is first and choicest under Amaymon, with seventy-two legions among that ruler’s company. His kingship includes this stated allegiance. He teaches arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and handicrafts, grants the Ring of Virtues and locates and guards treasure: learned subjects appear alongside a named object and command over hidden wealth. [1]
The bull, human and ram heads also appear in Balam’s description, where a bear mount and a goshawk accompany them. Asmoday instead rides a dragon and carries a lance with a banner. Fire issues from his mouth and his feet are webbed like a goose’s, distinguishing him through details beyond the three shared heads. [1][2]
A chief of the vessel
The vessel narrative names Asmoday with Belial, Bileth and Gaap as chiefs of the imprisoned spirits. Solomon confines them for their pride; the people of Babylon later break the vessel, releasing the chiefs and their legions. Asmoday’s allegiance to Amaymon in his individual notice becomes part of a larger account in which Solomon binds the whole company. [1][3]
The earlier English account
Scot names the spirit Sidonay or Asmoday. The bull, man and ram heads, serpent’s tail, goose-like feet, flames and dragon mount are already present, with a lance and flag. The earlier account gives seventy-two legions, the Ring of Virtues, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and handicrafts. [4][1]
Scot attributes invisibility to Asmoday, while the Goetia’s main wording gives invincibility. The earlier account also places him under Amaymon and gives him the locating and guarding of treasure. Those powers accompany his mathematical and practical teaching, but the two English texts differ over whether the gift is concealment from sight or resistance to defeat. [4][1]
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile supplied by Keep Silence. Shemhamphorash, numbered catalogue entry 32, Asmoday; facsimile PDF pages 17, 18 (PDF index includes three preliminary plates)
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile supplied by Keep Silence. Shemhamphorash, numbered catalogue entry 51, Balam; facsimile PDF pages 22, 23 (PDF index includes three preliminary plates)
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile supplied by Keep Silence. Paragraph immediately following entry 72; facsimile PDF page 28, printed page 31
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Sidonay; 1886 reprint page 321 and following
