Powers and Office in the Arbatel

In the Arbatel de magia veterum, Och is the Olympic spirit given governance over the sphere of the Sun, and the text credits him with the richest offices among the seven. He is said to grant six hundred years of health to those who bear his character, along with great wisdom, excellent attendant spirits and a perfect knowledge of medicine. The Arbatel also credits him with the power to turn base matter into gold and precious stones, and to fill a purse that continually replenishes itself with gold, offices that made Och one of the most frequently cited of the seven Olympic spirits in later popular retellings of the Arbatel.

The text goes further than it does for most of the other spirits, saying that those who bear Och's character are honored as though divine by the rulers of the world, an unusually strong claim even by the Arbatel's own generous standard for the other six. Like the rest of the Olympic spirits, Och commands a large nested court of subordinate ranks and holds his office for one of the seven 490 year ages the Arbatel assigns as a group, consistent with the Sun's traditional astrological association with honor, gold and vitality. The Arbatel does not specify how the promised six hundred years of health interacts with an ordinary human lifespan already underway, and later commentators on the text have generally left that ambiguity unresolved rather than proposing a single reading.