The Book of Solomon

The Ivory Casket and the Recovered Key

The Key is buried with Solomon in an ivory casket. Babylonian philosophers later recover the book, but an angel must reveal the meaning of its obscure words. [2]

Greater Key · Additional MS 10862 introduction

The Ivory Casket and the Recovered Key

Solomon instructs Roboam to make an ivory casket, place the Key inside it and bury it in his sepulchre after his death. He intends to keep the work from wicked hands. The introduction says that his son fulfilled the command, leaving the written secrets concealed beside their attributed author. [2]

Long afterwards, Babylonian philosophers come to renew Solomon’s sepulchre in his honour. During the repairs they discover the ivory casket and the Key of Secrets. Their delight gives way to perplexity: although the book is in their hands, its words, arrangement and hidden meaning remain obscure.

[2]

One philosopher, named Iohé Grevis in Mathers’s reading, proposes seeking divine interpretation. Alone, he prays with tears and gestures of humility. An angel explains that the obscurity protects the work from unworthy readers and asks him to promise disciplined secrecy. When Iohé agrees, the angel tells him to read and ascends in a flame of fire. The Key becomes clear, and the philosopher returns it to the casket. [2]

Mathers found the philosopher’s name difficult to decipher. He prints Iohé Grevis, but records Iroe Grecis as the reading in another copy. The two forms identify a specific manuscript variation in this episode; the English edition does not resolve the name with certainty. [2]

The ivory casket and the Goetia’s brass vessel belong to separate accounts. The casket contains a book whose discovery requires interpretation, and the philosopher returns it to its enclosure. The vessel contains spirits whose discovery ends their confinement. Both episodes take place through Babylonian discoverers, but their objects, contents and outcomes differ. [2][1]

Sources and editions

Goetia — binding and release of the seventy-two
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile. Paragraph immediately following entry 72; printed page 31, facsimile PDF page 28. Pride, four chiefs, Babylon, release and Belial’s image.
Full passage · accessed 2026-10-10
Greater Key — Introduction from Additional MS 10862
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Key of Solomon the King (1889), manuscript introductions attributed to British Library Additional MS 10862 and Lansdowne MS 1203. Printed pages 2–4; facsimile PDF pages 9–11. Revelation, address to Roboam, burial and rediscovery of the ivory casket.
Full passage · accessed 2026-10-10

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The Ivory Casket and the Recovered Key

Sources and editions