The Lesser Key of Solomon

The Lesser Key of Solomon is a book transcribed by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, and first published in 1904. At heart it is a practical grimoire of Solomonic magic — a compact compendium of rituals, sigils and spirit lists assembled from older manuscript material — written in the tradition of ceremonial magic and demonology. The work is commonly encountered under the Latin title Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis and is best known for the Ars Goetia, the section naming and describing the seventy-two spirits traditionally associated with Solomon; readers looking for terms like “Goetia,” “sigils,” “Solomonic grimoire,” or “ritual magic” will recognise the book’s terrain immediately. The Lesser Key occupies a curious place between antiquarian manuscript and modern occult manual: its texts were compiled from earlier sources (some dating several centuries before Mathers) and then cleaned up and presented for turn-of-the-20th-century occult readers. Because of this dual heritage it has proved influential both to scholars of esoterica and to modern ceremonial practitioners — shaping later popular accounts of demonology, inspiring ritual experiments, and forming part of the background to movements and societies interested in Hermetic ceremonial work.