Fall Asleep to the Lesser Key of Solomon: The Seventy-Two Demons That Were Never His

More sleep stories from the old books:    / @scrollsatmidnight   Start at the beginning with The Book of Enoch: https://www.youtube.com/@scrollsatmid... A jar of brass comes up out of a lake outside Babylon, and the people who waded in for it break the seal because they think it is treasure. That is how the Lesser Key of Solomon explains itself, and almost nothing else in the book is true either. Tonight we go backwards through the hands this thing passed through. A physician at a German court prints a list of spirits in the fifteen hundreds, with names, ranks and legions, and he prints it in order to prove that none of it is real, while women are being burned on exactly this kind of evidence. An Englishman reprints his inventory in a book written to stop the burnings. Anonymous copyists turn the exhibit into a working manual, add four spirits that were never in the older list, top the number up to seventy-two so it matches an old piece of scriptural arithmetic, and hang a dead king's name on the front. A Victorian scholar translates it properly. His student publishes it without his name, with a curse against him hidden in Greek in the front matter. This is the whole story, read slowly, for sleep: the circle and the triangle, the ring held up against the smell, the seventy-two entries with their shapes and their offices, the escalating threats, and the moment the exorcist puts the fire out and offers his visitor a kind welcome. Nothing here asks anything of you. Chapters 0:00:00 The lake at Babylon, and a town that waded in for it 0:06:46 What the book says about itself, and what was missing 0:16:01 Four names for one book, and where the manuscripts are 0:25:57 Fifteen seventy-seven: a court physician prints a list 0:34:29 The doctor who printed the list to destroy it 0:43:00 An Englishman reprints the inventory in English 0:53:19 Bael, three heads: two texts, three hundred years apart 1:02:41 The four spirits that were added, and where the number came from 1:12:20 How an entry is built: name, rank, shape, office, legions, seal 1:21:37 Kings, dukes and presidents, and the arithmetic nobody did 1:30:07 What the seventy-two are actually asked for 1:39:03 The circle, the triangle, and the ring held up against the smell 1:48:03 The escalation: threats, the box in the fire, and a kind welcome 1:56:59 Nineteen oh four: who translated it, and who put his name on it 2:06:45 Seventy-two seals in the world: engravings, games, screens 2:15:38 Why people build lists against the night Sources, all public domain S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (1904) · Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), in Brinsley Nicholson's edition of 1886, which carries Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum in English · F. C. Conybeare's translation of the Testament of Solomon in the Jewish Quarterly Review (1898) · Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal with the engravings of Louis Le Breton · the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-06). Joseph Peterson's critical edition and all other modern editions and translations are reported on, never quoted. Images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain and Creative Commons, credits in the pinned comment) and original artwork made for this episode. Next: another scroll, opened at midnight. Subscribe and it will be waiting the next time you cannot sleep. #sleepstory #lesserkeyofsolomon #arsgoetia