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The seal of Halphas, from the 1904 edition
S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley (1904 edition). Wikimedia Commons ↗ · Public domain.

the 38th spirit

Halphas

Also called Malthous and Malthas.

  • Titles Earl
  • Seal in Copper and Silver alike equal
  • Legions 26
  • Of seventy-two No. 38

Reading this entry

The number places Halphas in this edition's seventy-two-part catalogue. Its titles and the metal assigned to its seal come from the edition's classified appendix; the legion count is read from the entry itself. The passage below may describe an appearance, an office, a voice or an older order of beings. These are things the book says, not independent facts about a spirit. The original wording is left intact so a reader can check exactly where the description ends and our notes begin.

Edition: Mathers translation, Crowley edition, 1904. View the printed volume ↗

What the book says

From the 1904 edition, with its spelling and capitalisation preserved.

The Thirty-eighth Spirit is Halphas, or Malthous (or Malthas). He is a Great Earl, and appeareth in the Form of a Stock-Dove. He speaketh with a hoarse Voice. His Office is to build up Towers, and to furnish them with Ammunition and Weapons, and to send Men-of-War’ to places appointed. He ruleth over 26 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc.

The Goetia, trans. Mathers, ed. Crowley, 1904 — spirit 38.

Sources

Goetic office canonical

Earl, 26 legions

Rank and legion count as the 1904 edition gives them. The legions come from the phrase that closes almost every entry; the rank comes from the book's own appendix, which classifies all seventy-two and states the metal each rank's seal is to be made in — copper and silver alike equal for this one. The entries use rank words descriptively as well — Eligos appears 'in the form of a goodly Knight' and Barbatos comes 'with four noble Kings' — so a rank harvested from the prose would invent titles the book does not give. Only the appendix classifies.

Sources (1)
  1. Lemegeton , The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King — The Goetia, spirit 38
    “The Thirty-eighth Spirit is Halphas, or Malthous (or Malthas). He is a Great Earl, and appeareth in the Form of a Stock-Dove. He speaketh with a hoarse Voice. His Office is to build up Towers, and to furnish them with Ammunition and Weapons, and to send Men-of-War’ to places appointed. He ruleth over 26 Legions of Spirits, and his Seal is this, etc.”

    Verbatim, cut from the 1904 text by script/extract_goetia.rb. Mathers' spelling and capitalisation are left exactly as printed.

    Read at archive.org ↗

Goetic rank canonical

The APPENDIX classifies this spirit, not its entry. The entries use rank words descriptively as well — Eligos appears 'in the form of a goodly Knight' — so a rank taken from the prose would invent titles the book does not give.

Sources (1)
  1. Lemegeton , The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King — Classified List of the 72 Chief Spirits

    Read at archive.org ↗

Other earls

Correspondences 1 sourced correspondence
Relation To First attested
Goetic rank Earl 1600 CE

See it on the map As a table The goetic spirits table