A crowned king on a dromedary arrives with trumpets, cymbals and a roar. His promised knowledge reaches from the earth’s support in the waters to the nature and whereabouts of mind. [1]
Teaching arts, sciences and secrets; answering questions about earth and mind; granting and confirming dignities; subjecting people to the magician; and giving familiars who teach the arts. [1]
Legion Count
200 legions. A separate attendant retinue of 25 is also described. [1]
Description of the Entity
A crowned man riding a dromedary, preceded by spirits resembling men with trumpets, cymbals and other instruments; he roars on arrival. [1]
Artistic interpretation Paimon and his heralds.Source reproduction Paimon’s character, figure 9 (1904).Source reproduction Paimon’s second character, figure 10 (1904).
The king and his company
The Goetia describes Paimon as very obedient to Lucifer and places him in the order of Dominations. The two hundred legions under his command include Angels and Potentates. [1]
The music belongs to the host that goes before him. Paimon himself arrives roaring, and his speech is difficult for the magician to understand unless he can compel him. [1]
Earth, mind and authority
Paimon teaches arts, sciences and secret things. His answers concern what the earth is, what holds it up in the waters, what mind is and where it resides. He is also said to answer whatever else the questioner wishes to know. [1]
His office also concerns authority among people. He grants dignity and confirms it, and can bind a person into subjection to the magician. His familiars are teachers in their own right, able to instruct in the arts. [1]
An offering and a western approach
The 1904 instructions direct the caller towards the west. A summons of Paimon alone calls for an offering, after which the passage describes two attending kings, Labal and Abalim, with other Potentates and twenty-five legions. The spirits subject to the attending kings are not always present unless compelled to appear. [1]
Two printed characters
The first seal plate gives Paimon two characters, figures 9 and 10. Each encloses four curled uprights and two horizontal bars within a circle bearing the letters of his name. Figure 9 has three small hanging rings between the bars; figure 10 makes these rings larger. The character is worn before the caller as a lamen: a seal carried on the person. [1][3]
Paimon in the earlier English account
Scot’s 1584 account, here read in Nicholson’s 1886 reprint, adds an effeminate countenance to the crowned rider. It places Paimon’s house in the northwest and directs the caller that way; the 1904 Goetia gives the west. Scot also reports alternative affiliations to Dominations or Cherubim, while the later notice names Dominations. [2][1]
The earlier questions concern the disposition of the world, the earth’s support in water, the abyss and the source and location of wind. The 1904 passage includes mind instead of that question about wind. Scot names the two attendant kings Beball and Abalam, beside the later Labal and Abalim. Both accounts distinguish the two hundred legions under Paimon from the attending host of twenty-five. [2][1]
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 9, Paimon; first-edition facsimile PDF p. 12, printed p. 15, including the Dominations footnote.
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Paimon; Nicholson’s 1886 reprint pp. 317–318.
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. First preliminary plate, figures 9 and 10, the two printed characters of Paimon; facsimile PDF p. 1.
