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The Brass VesselThe Seventy-Two Spirits · 12
A leopard-headed, gryphon-winged prince becomes a human of exceptional beauty. Sitri inflames desire between men and women and, when required, causes them to show themselves naked. [1]
Goetia 1904
Sitri first appears with a leopard’s head and the wings of a gryphon. At the master’s command he assumes a very beautiful human shape. His office is to inflame men with women’s love and women with men’s love, and to cause naked exposure if that is desired. He is a great prince commanding sixty legions. [1]
Scot names Bitru as an alternative and gives the same animal features, beauty and sixty legions. His final clause says Sitri ‘deteineth’ women’s secrets before referring to their nakedness. Nicholson calls this a mistranslation: the Latin he cites means revealing secrets, and he also disputes the English word ‘mocking’ in the following phrase. [2][3]
The 1904 account makes the action explicit as causing people to show themselves naked. [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 12; printed p. 16, PDF p. 13
Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584); Brinsley Nicholson’s reprint of the first edition (1886), Project Gutenberg transcription. Book XV, chapter II, Sitri; 1886 reprint page 317
Brinsley Nicholson, editorial Notes in the 1886 reprint of The Discoverie of Witchcraft. Nicholson’s Notes, reprint p. 560, item (g): deteineth/detegit and the rendering of ludificansque.
