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The Brass VesselThe Seventy-Two Spirits · 01
The Goetia opens with a king of the East who grants invisibility. Bael himself has several visible forms: cat, toad and man, sometimes appearing together, all accompanied by a hoarse voice. [1]
Goetia 1904
Bael stands at the head of the 1904 catalogue as the first principal spirit, a king ruling in the East with sixty-six legions beneath him. His single stated office is to make a person invisible. He may resemble a cat, a toad or a man, or show all those forms at once. [1]
His voice is hoarse, and his encounter has a condition attached to the printed character. The caller wears it before him as a lamen—a seal carried on the person—or Bael will not render homage. [1]
Scot’s earlier Baëll is already the principal king of the East, with the same voice, sixty-six legions and power of invisibility. His body is described more firmly as a three-headed creature: toad, man and cat. The Goetia retains those three forms but allows them to appear separately as well as together. [1][3]
At the catalogue’s end, Bael joins the other seventy-one spirits and their legions in the collective story of Solomon’s brass vessel. Their pride brings imprisonment; the Babylonians later break the vessel in the hope of finding treasure and release its occupants. [1][2]
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile supplied by Keep Silence. Shemhamphorash, entry 1; printed p. 12, facsimile PDF p. 10
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, translated; Aleister Crowley, edited, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904), first-edition facsimile supplied by Keep Silence. Paragraph immediately following entry 72; facsimile PDF page 28, printed page 31
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Baëll; 1886 reprint page 314
