SB BARNES - LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON RAMBLE

Oh my god LOOK at these cute little farts. I've been very excited to talk about these guys for a while. This collection specifically comes from the illustrated 1863 edition of the Dictionnaire Infernal, but it seems that many of these depictions also get used in the 1904 edition of The Lesser Key of Solomon. Both of these texts were very, very likely inspired by the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of the 16th century (according to wikipedia) (of course) (there's probably way more nuance than that) (lets ignore it for now).

A lot of these particular visuals get used in tons of pop culture referencing the Goetic demons -- I think of Paimon as seen in the film Hereditary, Beelzebub on some covers of the book Lord of the Flies, Buer in the videogame Pony Island (shoutout to des), etc. Its super neat to see their faces pop up every so often!

I also found myself a nice free copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon online (click this helpful link if you want to check it out yourself!) I'm a little obsessed with it. Its reads as a demon summoning guide, but every entry is essentially "this is [demon] and he is a great and terrible prince of hell and he commands 200 legions of spirits... if you are nice he will teach you philosophy and astrology." It is so so charming to me. Also, very reminiscent of what we discussed with the Book of the Watchers and how the Sons of God (as early 'fallen angel' adjacent figures) introduced sins to man by teaching people forbidden magics and truths... Like astrology! That class actually helped contextualize why so many demons in this book are concerned with teaching.. like.. liberal arts and sciences. I hope one day I too can summon demons to teach me philosophy and rhetoric.

This edition of the text is also edited by Aleister Crowley who is his own character and maybe I'll have to post in here about him some other time.

Infodump over! Peace✌

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