Calling both books “goetic” can hide their different architectures. The seventeenth-century Goetia combines a numbered spirit catalogue with shared ceremonial speeches. Fifteenth-century Clm 849 is a miscellany whose operations are organized mainly by desired result: knowledge, illusion, compulsion, transport, and divination. Their Christian command language overlaps, but their readers navigate in different ways.
- Goetia
- Seventy-two indexed spirits
- Clm 849
- Miscellany of experiments
- Worked case
- The demon teacher
The Goetia selects a spirit before adapting a common frame
A Goetia entry provides a record: number, name, rank, appearance, attributed offices, legion count, and seal. The ceremonial section then supplies slots into which the chosen name and, when necessary, ruling king are inserted. This arrangement favors recombination. The same first and second conjurations can address Bael, Paimon, Phoenix, or another listed figure, while each entry limits the expected appearance and answers. The catalogue is therefore an index attached to a reusable control sequence.
That structure also creates editorial seams. Much of the spirit prose descends through Weyer and Scot, while the conjurations draw on the Heptameron and related Solomonic material. The compiler joins sources that did not begin as one work. Repeated vocabulary makes the join feel systematic, but variant orders, added spirits, moved directions, and borrowed speeches reveal an assembled book rather than a single ancient script.
Clm 849 begins with an operation, then accumulates alternatives
The first two folios of Clm 849 are missing, so its opening surviving experiment starts in progress. Kieckhefer reconstructs a coherent aim from what remains: gaining instruction in the liberal arts through a demon teacher. Four conjurations address three kings and then the teacher, moving from initial presentation to return and continued lessons. The desired result, not a catalogue number, holds the sequence together. Named spirits appear because they perform roles in this experiment.
The rest of the manuscript reinforces the miscellany form. Groups of experiments promise changes in affection or status, illusory banquets and transport, mirrors and crystals for information, and other aims. Some operations reuse circles, child mediums, saints, divine names, or kings; others arrange these components differently. Clm 849 stores a repertoire of purpose-built textual machines. Its modern numbered inventory is a scholarly aid for navigating the manuscript, not evidence that the medieval compiler conceived a single ordered system of seventy-two offices.
Worked comparison: Clm 849’s first teacher and the Goetia’s reusable spirit slot
The truncated Clm 849 experiment names Apolin, Maraloth, and Berith as kings asked to send a teacher. A first conjuration requests presentation; later speeches seek the teacher’s return and the beginning or continuation of lessons; the final address turns directly to the teacher. The communication problem is duration. An instructor must appear, depart, return, and teach over time. Repetition is built around one educational aim, so the sequence differentiates the rulers who authorize access from the subordinate who supplies instruction.
The Goetia solves instructional requests through its catalogue. Paimon, Buer, Marax, and other entries are assigned arts or sciences; spirit N is then placed into the common conjuration, expected to appear within the shared spatial frame, and bound to remain until the request is completed. The spirit’s office selects the respondent, while the general speech supplies the interaction. Clm 849 instead embeds the respondent inside an experiment whose four addresses already define the educational relationship.
Both sources claim authority through Christian sacred names and hierarchical command, but their reuse works at different levels. In Clm 849 a scribe can copy or modify an entire experiment for a purpose. In the Goetia a reader can select a different catalogue row while retaining most of the ceremony. This difference is more precise than saying the later work is simply a fuller edition of the medieval manual. No direct line of copying is required to see two distinct solutions to the same compositional problem: how to join a named spirit, an attributed office, and a scripted exchange.
The weekday material shows another branch of the manuscript
Clm 849 section 37 coordinates days and hours with seals, angels, kings, assistants, fumigations, purposes, and seasonal or planetary terms. Peterson’s Heptameron comparison shows both continuity and changed names. Monday’s manuscript group gives Almodab with Sylol, Millalu, and Abuzaba; the printed Heptameron gives Arcan with Bilet, Missabu, and Abuzaha. Shared positions and similar names reveal transmission while the changed ruler and assistants prevent identity.
The Goetia can preserve directional kings and individual timing notes, but it does not reorganize all seventy-two entries into seven weekday chapters. This contrast warns against importing every correspondence from one ritual family into another. A clean modern chart may combine Goetia seals, Heptameron days, and Clm 849 names as if gaps had merely been filled. The manuscripts instead show modular traditions whose parts could travel, be mistranslated, or be reassigned to a new index.