Powers and Office in the Arbatel

In the Arbatel de magia veterum, Ophiel is the Olympic spirit given governance over the sphere of Mercury, and the text credits him with granting familiar spirits more easily and readily than the other six Olympic spirits are said to. He is credited with teaching all manner of arts, consistent with Mercury's traditional astrological association with learning, communication and craft, and with the striking claim that he can convert quicksilver into the substance alchemical writers called the philosophers stone in a single moment for those who bear his character.

The Arbatel gives him a court of a hundred thousand legions, the largest single figure the text assigns to any of the seven spirits, though as with the other spirit entries the exact numbers vary somewhat between surviving copies and translations. Ophiel's combination of ease of access, broad teaching and rapid alchemical transformation made him, alongside Och, one of the more frequently cited of the seven spirits in later popular treatments of the Arbatel. His reign is counted as one of the seven successive 490 year ages the text assigns to the Olympic spirits as a group, following the same shared structure as the other six.