Spirit Ranks
Prince
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Origin 1577
Prince is one of the seven ranks used to classify the seventy two spirits of the Ars Goetia, the first section of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth century grimoire drawing on the earlier Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of Johann Weyer (1563), and the rank system borrows its titles directly from European feudal nobility. Seven of the seventy two spirits hold the rank, the grimoire's Jupiter linked rank, and at least one spirit, Gaap, is listed in different manuscripts as holding both Prince and President, showing the ranks were not always applied consistently across copies. The hierarchy of King, Prince, Duke, Marquis, Earl, President and Knight gives the seventy two spirits a courtly structure modelled on a royal household rather than any independent theological ranking. As with the rest of the Goetia, this structure is a literary and ritual convention specific to the grimoire tradition.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1577 1Tradition: Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account1641 to 1712 2Tradition: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountTraces two layers: Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, printed in 1577, and the seventeenth century Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, the Lesser Key of Solomon, whose surviving English manuscripts date from 1641 to 1712 and which organizes the same catalogue of spirits under this rank system. 2 Place of OriginSurviving Lemegeton manuscripts, carrying these ranks, are English 3 Place of OriginWeyer's catalogue was printed on the Continent, in Latin 3 Origin of the NameSourced to the subject's own accountNot from any infernal order of precedence spirits themselves observe 2 Origin of the NameSourced to the subject's own accountPrince is a high commanding rank, below King 2 Origin of the NameSourced to the subject's own accountRanks are borrowed from the feudal and civil offices of the human world 2 Origin of the NameSourced to the subject's own accountSet over its own troops of subordinate spirits 2 LanguageSourced to the subject's own account Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseHeld the accused were deluded or ill, rather than guilty 4 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseNow read and reprinted as a demonology manual, inverting its purpose 4 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseWeyer compiled this catalogue's ancestor against the witch prosecutions 4 Learn More
The Spirit Rank of Prince
Prince, like Duke, borrows its title from a Latin root with its own long political history: princeps, meaning first, was the term Augustus and his successors preferred for their own novel position as head of the Roman state, first citizen rather than king, a studied avoidance of a title Romans still associated with the overthrown monarchy. Medieval and early modern Europe narrowed the word considerably, using prince mainly for a ruler's son or for a sovereign ruling a smaller territory than a full kingdom, and it is this narrower, more junior sense, a commander of real standing but still beneath a king, that the grimoire catalogue adopts for its own ranked spirits.
Vassago, third in the standard Goetia sequence, is among the better known spirits carrying the Prince title, and like most Princes in the list he is credited with his own subordinate troops of lesser spirits, distinguishing the rank from a Duke's more variably sized command mainly by degree of seniority rather than by any difference in the kind of authority each title is said to carry within the catalogue's own internal, entirely human-derived logic of precedence. Other Princes in the list, such as Orobas and Seere, are credited with particular specialities, honesty in answers and swift travel respectively, showing that within the rank real differences of stated function persisted even where the catalogue's formal hierarchy treated them as equals in seniority.
Sources Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon)Anonymous (unidentified compiler) with Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
The Least Stable Title in the Catalogue
Seven of the seventy-two are ranked Prince in this collection, commanding 260 legions between them: Vassago, Sitri, Ipos, Gaap, Stolas, Orobas and Seere.
Prince is the title the manuscripts handle least consistently. Several of the seven carry a second rank in the Ars Goetia text itself. Gaap is given as a President and a Prince together, and Ipos as an Earl and a Prince, so where they are filed depends on which of the two titles a compiler decided to lead with. The Latin and English witnesses of the tradition also vary between Prince and Prelate for some entries, a substitution that quietly moves a spirit from the court to the church, and the two words are near enough in an abbreviated manuscript hand for the variation to be an accident as easily as a decision.
What the seven have in common is not military. Vassago is asked about things past and to come and about things hidden. Stolas teaches astronomy and the properties of herbs and stones. Orobas is credited with giving true answers about past, present and future, and, unusually for the book, with not deceiving the operator or permitting others to. Ipos is said to make men witty and bold, Gaap to teach philosophy and the liberal sciences.
That is a cluster of offices concerned with knowledge and disclosure rather than with force, and it fits the legion counts, which run from 20 to 66 and never approach the numbers given to the kings.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Johann Weyer, Officina Oporiniana, 1577Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577): the earlier catalogue of spirits and offices on which the Goetia's rank scheme draws (here Prince).View the Source 2. Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon)
Anonymous (unidentified compiler)The Ars Goetia (Lemegeton): the rank of Prince, a high commanding rank below King, among the ranks and legions of the 72 spirits.View the Source 3. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2009Davies, Grimoires: the Solomonic grimoires (Lemegeton/Goetia and Weyer) and the feudal and civil ranks of the listed spirits (here Prince).View the Source 4. De Praestigiis Daemonum
Johann Weyer, Johannes Oporinus, 1563the argument of De Praestigiis Daemonum against the reasoning of the prosecutionsView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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