Buné’s three-headed dragon moves the dead and gathers spirits at sepulchres. Alongside those burial-place offices come riches, wisdom, eloquence and true answers, spoken in the high, comely voice of the 1904 account. [1]
Buné appears as a dragon with three heads: dog, gryphon and man. He changes the place of the dead and brings the spirits under him together upon sepulchres. The same mighty duke gives riches, makes people wise and eloquent, and answers questions truly. Thirty legions are under his command. [1]
The notice prints two characters and identifies them through footnotes as figures 30 and 31. It calls the last the better of the two without explaining the preference. [1]
The divine, mute and comely readings
Scot specifies only the human one of the dragon’s three heads and calls the voice divine. Nicholson’s later note compares that adjective with ‘muta’ in the Latin he consulted, a word meaning mute. He proposes a reading error involving an older dictionary’s word ‘dumme’. The 1904 Goetia instead describes a high and comely voice. [1][2][3]
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 26, Buné or Bim, including figure-30/31 footnotes; printed p. 19, PDF p. 16
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Bune; 1886 reprint page 319
Brinsley Nicholson, editorial Notes in the 1886 reprint of The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Nicholson’s Notes, reprint p. 560, item (e): divine voice, Latin muta and the proposed dumme reading error.
