Practice · Tools · Key of Solomon
Ritual lamp
The prepared lights of Book II: chiefly inscribed virgin-wax candles used for illumination within the circle.
What the source describes
Chapter XII speaks of lights rather than one standardized lamp. It distinguishes ordinary light for reading and fire for incense from the consecrated lights considered necessary in the circle. Some circle witnesses add a candle or a lantern placed in a prepared recess, which likely explains later singular 'ritual lamp' summaries.
Historical setting
The Key of Solomon survives as a family of manuscripts rather than one authorial master copy. Instrument names, drawings, preparation details and even which tools appear can differ between witnesses, so this page follows the cited edition and records its variants.
Common uses
The lights make the conjurations readable and illuminate the working place while also participating in the prepared ritual furniture. Their characters and prayers turn an ordinary practical need—seeing the text—into part of the ceremony's consecrated sequence.
Form, materials and reconstruction
The principal directions make half-pound candles of virgin wax in the day and hour of Mercury, with wicks made by a young girl and a waxing Moon. Characters are engraved with the iron stylus; Aub. 24 allows a knife or needle if no stylus is available. Manuscripts differ over the presence of candle, lantern, or other light in the circle chapter, so the illustration represents a light source rather than one fixed historical lamp body.
Element: No fixed element
This source does not assign this particular instrument a fixed element. Its materials or effects should not be turned into an elemental correspondence without a named source.
Sources and variations
The page retains its familiar 'Ritual lamp' title for navigation, but the primary chapter is about candles and fire. A flame's material heat does not by itself make the object a Golden Dawn Fire weapon.
Primary account used here
Key of Solomon, Book II, Book II, chapter XII ↗
Further references
- Key of Solomon: introduction and contents ↗Editorial history and an overview of the manuscript-based edition.
- Hebrew Key of Solomon ↗A different witness with its own section on magical instruments and requisites.