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The Brass VesselThe Seventy-Two Spirits · 05
Marbas appears as a great lion and becomes human at the caller’s request. His powers run through the body and the workshop: he causes and cures disease, changes people’s shapes, and teaches the arts of skilled making. [1]
Goetia 1904
The great president Marbas arrives as a lion, then assumes human shape at the master’s request. He answers truly about hidden or secret things. Disease lies within his office in both directions: he can bring it and cure it. He also changes people into other shapes, a further power over bodies distinct from his own transformation. [1]
His learning is practical as well as secret. The Goetia promises great wisdom and knowledge in the mechanical arts, and gives him command of thirty-six legions. [1][2]
Scot also calls him Barbas. Where the later notice names the mechanical arts, Scot describes knowledge of handicrafts, giving the learned lion a particular association with skilled making. [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 5; printed p. 14, PDF p. 11
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Marbas; 1886 reprint page 314
