The Seventy-Two Spirits · 01
Bael
Making a person invisible. [1]
Goetia 1904
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The Brass VesselMila'sExotic Plants & CuriositiesA living collection by Luminary OdditiesThe Seventy-Two Spirits · 01
Making a person invisible. [1]
Goetia 1904
Bael opens the Goetia’s numbered court as a king ruling in the East. He speaks in a hoarse voice and grants invisibility. The character printed at the end of his notice is worn as a lamen before him; the text associates its presence with the homage he renders. [1]
His appearances include a cat, a toad and a man, sometimes together. The description allows him several visible forms while assigning him the power to conceal a person from sight. This distinction between his appearance and his office also matters when reading the seal: the character identifies Bael, while the prose describes the bodies in which he appears. [1]
The closing narrative gathers Bael with the other seventy-one spirits and their legions into Solomon’s brass vessel. Pride is the stated reason for their confinement. The king who rules in the East at the catalogue’s opening thus becomes one member of the company bound by Solomon and later released in Babylon. [1][2]
Scot’s 1584 inventory begins with Baëll, the principal king of the East, and describes three heads together: a toad, a man and a cat. The 1904 Goetia instead presents a cat, a toad or a man, sometimes appearing together. Both accounts give him sixty-six legions, a hoarse voice and the power of invisibility. [3][1]
Scot’s three heads form one composite creature. The Goetia allows the cat, toad and man to appear separately or together. Eastern kingship, the hoarse voice, sixty-six legions and invisibility remain consistent, but the later wording gives the spirit a less fixed anatomy. [3][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 1, Bael; facsimile PDF page 10 (PDF index includes three preliminary plates)
Full passage · accessed 2026-10-10S. 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
Full passage · accessed 2026-10-10Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Baëll; 1886 reprint page 314
Full passage · accessed 2026-10-10