The Dictionnaire Infernal is a nineteenth-century French reference work by Jacques Collin de Plancy. Its title and striking later images make it easy to mistake for a medieval demon manuscript. The dictionary is instead a changing printed project, made centuries after the early modern Goetia witnesses.
- Period
- First published 1818; expanded editions followed
- Form
- French printed reference work
- Anchor witness
- Collin de Plancy editions in Wellcome Collection
What alphabetical order does to older demon lists
The Dictionnaire turns inherited names into entries that can be found without following a ritual sequence. Buer sits between Budas and Bugnot on page 123 of the 1863 edition because spelling, not rank or planetary timing, controls the reader’s route. The same volume can place a named demon beside folklore, books, divination methods, impostures, and reports of marvels. “Infernal” is therefore a publishing category wide enough to collect unlike materials, not a claim that every entry belongs to one coherent ancient hierarchy.
That form changes the meaning of reuse. Weyer’s numbered office can be copied, compressed, translated into French, and filed under B while leaving Weyer’s prefatory argument and list order behind. A reader encounters Buer as a self-contained definition and can move sideways through alphabetical neighbors rather than forward through kings, dukes, and presidents. This is why the Dictionnaire became such an effective source for isolated modern profiles: its architecture already encourages names to circulate as detachable units.
The sixth edition makes appearance do more work
The 1863 Buer entry is only a few sentences long, yet it coordinates rank, appearance, motion, subjects taught, healing, servants, and legion count. Its French calls Buer a second-class demon and infernal president, then describes a star or five-branched wheel that advances by rolling on itself. The verbs matter. Earlier catalogue language identifies what is seen; the dictionary supplies movement, turning a compact sign into a creature that can be imagined crossing the page.
The adjacent Breton image resolves that verbal puzzle by giving the radial form a lion-like face at its center and five goat legs arranged like spokes. This is an interpretation of the entry, not a neutral photograph of a description shared by all witnesses. The portrait gives viewers a memorable body; the prose supplies the claimed offices. Reproductions often separate the image from page 123, then pair it with a Goetia seal. Doing so silently fuses a nineteenth-century narrative illustration with a different linear character from a seventeenth-century manuscript tradition.
Worked comparison: Buer as prose entry, 1863 portrait, and Goetia seal
Weyer makes Buer number seven. The stable core is already present: a great president, philosophy and logic, the virtues of herbs, healing, good familiars, and fifty legions. The difficult phrase concerns appearance. Peterson’s aligned edition shows the sign or star language that later witnesses handled differently. The Goetia moves Buer to number ten, reads the sign as Sagittarius when the sun is there, keeps the teaching and healing offices, and adds a “seal of obedience” to be worn during appearance. The prose identity remains recognizable while sequence, astral explanation, and ritual equipment change.
The 1863 Dictionnaire preserves president, philosophy, logic, medicinal herbs, healing, good servants, and fifty legions with striking closeness. It renders the visual crux as an étoile or five-branched wheel and says Buer rolls. Breton then converts that sentence into the famous radial animal portrait. The Goetia seal and the Breton portrait answer different needs: the seal is presented as something worn to compel homage, while the engraving lets a dictionary reader picture the entry. Neither image is evidence for how Weyer’s 1577 reader saw the figure.
The comparison also separates continuity from invention. Office and legion count travel with little change; list number moves from seven to ten; the Goetia adds a seal and explicit wearing instruction; the Dictionnaire expands a short visual phrase into motion and an illustrated body. Because knowledge remains one of Buer’s most persistent offices, the linked modern Buer working follows an exact subject-learning theme. It remains an independent Star & Sigil working and is not presented as a translated passage, historical seal use, or medicinal claim.
A changing reference work, not one timeless edition
The title began in 1818 and passed through substantially changed forms before the illustrated sixth edition. Wellcome holds the 1825–26 Dictionnaire and a related 1860–61 Dictionnaire des sciences occultes; its catalogue evidence helps distinguish a multi-volume earlier state from the later illustrated object. An entry found in 1863 should not be projected automatically into 1818. Additions, ideological framing, typography, and illustration all belong to particular editions.
For demon imagery, the practical consequence is precise. A portrait can document how a nineteenth-century illustrator visualized a line of inherited prose. It cannot date that body to the Renaissance catalogue, and it cannot convert the nearby name into the source of a Goetia seal. Reading page, prose, portrait, and seal as separate artifacts produces a richer history: a compact office passes through print, an ambiguous sign becomes a rolling wheel, and a later image becomes more famous online than the sentence it interprets.
Sources and editions
- Wellcome Collection, Collin de Plancy and the 1860–61 dictionary form ↗
- Wellcome Collection, 1825–26 Dictionnaire Infernal edition ↗
- Wellcome Collection sales catalogue describing the 1863 illustrated edition ↗
- BnF Gallica, 1863 Buer entry, printed page 123 ↗
- 1863 Dictionnaire Infernal, Buer entry and page image ↗
- Peterson, aligned Weyer Buer entry and textual note ↗
- Peterson, manuscript-based Goetia Buer entry and seal ↗
- 1904 Book of the Goetia, Buer entry and seal ↗