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Practice · Tools · Ars Goetia

Secret Seal of Solomon

The seal that the Goetia says Solomon used to close the vessel containing the spirits and their legions.

Simple orientation drawing representing Secret Seal of Solomon
Modern orientation drawing—not a reconstruction of a manuscript design.

What the source describes

The Secret Seal stands apart from the seventy-two individual spirit seals. In the narrative it binds the whole company into the vessel, and a later caption says a brass version formed the vessel's lid. Peterson reports no known precursor for this exact seal and compares later Sloane, Hockley, and Lea versions, so the design should be dated to the Goetic manuscript tradition rather than assigned to historical Solomon.

Historical setting

The Ars Goetia is the first part of the seventeenth-century Lemegeton compilation. Its diagrams and implements belong to that textual setting; attribution to Solomon is part of the work's traditional frame, not a historical authorship claim.

Common uses

Its principal role is closure: it seals the legendary vessel. The manuscript also attributes victory, protection, and attraction to it. Those are claims of the text, while the documented historical fact is the seal's place in these early modern manuscript copies.

Form, materials and reconstruction

The written preparation calls for virgin parchment, a Tuesday or Saturday midnight, a waxing Moon in Virgo, blood ink, fasting, prayer, and a fumigation of alum, raisins, dates, cedar, and lignum aloes. A separate caption makes the vessel-cover version in brass. These animal-use and astrological details are recorded as history, not offered as a construction guide.

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 Secret Seal is not a spirit's individual seal. Versions differ in later manuscripts, and the transmission from glass vessel to brass vessel is itself disputed in the source history.

Primary account used here

Lemegeton, Ars Goetia, 'The Secret Seal of Solomon' and 'The Brass Vessel' ↗

Further references