The Dictionnaire Infernal and the Ars Goetia share a number of spirit names, so modern galleries often place their material side by side. They are nevertheless different books from different settings. One is a nineteenth-century French encyclopedia of demonology and related lore; the other is the first book of the English Lemegeton manuscript tradition, organized around a catalogue of seventy-two spirits.
- Dictionnaire form
- Alphabetical encyclopedia
- Goetia form
- Seventy-two-spirit catalogue
- Key distinction
- Portraits are not seals
| Feature | Dictionnaire Infernal | Ars Goetia |
|---|---|---|
| Form | Alphabetical reference work | Numbered spirit catalogue |
| Setting | French print, especially 1863 sixth edition | English Lemegeton manuscripts and later editions |
| Visual marker | Figurative engravings | Linear spirit seals |
| Scope | Demonology, folklore, magic, divination, books, and people | Seventy-two spirit entries with ranks and offices |
Different structures and purposes
Collin de Plancy’s dictionary ranges far beyond one spirit list. Its alphabet includes folklore, divination, trials, books, apparitions, supposed marvels, and critical or devotional commentary. A reader enters through a topic or name and encounters a short reference article within a much larger encyclopedia.
The Ars Goetia presents a numbered sequence of seventy-two named spirits with ranks, offices, appearances, and seals in an operative manuscript setting. Its structure creates a stable order from Bael to Andromalius. The Dictionnaire Infernal does not reproduce that seventy-two-part architecture and should not be treated as an illustrated edition of the Goetia.
Why the same names appear
Names such as Astaroth, Buer, and Caim had circulated in demonological and magical sources before 1863. Collin de Plancy drew on an existing print culture, while the Goetia catalogue likewise belongs to a longer chain that includes Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum and Reginald Scot’s English reception. Overlap therefore reflects shared source history rather than direct identity between the two books.
Spellings and descriptions can diverge as names pass between languages, printers, editors, and manuscripts. Caym and Caim illustrate the problem at a glance. A modern alphabetical index may silently merge variants, whereas the historical page preserves the form chosen in that edition.
Portraits and seals answer different visual questions
The Dictionnaire Infernal engraving presents a figure: it gives the viewer a body, pose, attributes, and printed name. A Goetia seal is an abstract line design associated with a spirit inside a ritual manuscript and later print tradition. Their visual grammar and historical jobs are distinct.
Modern profile pages often show both because each helps identify a different strand of reception. The pairing can be useful when it remains labeled. Calling Le Breton’s Buer wheel a “sigil,” or presenting a Goetia seal as if it were drawn for Collin de Plancy’s dictionary, erases the very source difference the images can reveal.
The production methods reinforce the difference. An engraver translates a drawing into marks that can be printed with the surrounding type. A manuscript seal is copied as a diagram and may change as lines pass between hands and editions. Similar black ink does not make the two artifacts equivalent.
Astaroth, Buer, and Caim as a three-name comparison
Astaroth appears in both families, but Le Breton’s crowned rider belongs to the illustrated dictionary while the familiar linear seal belongs to Goetia witnesses. Buer’s five-legged circular creature is one of the dictionary’s most distinctive portraits; it does not replace the separate diagram attached to the tenth Goetia spirit. Caym’s sword-bearing bird likewise visualizes an entry rather than the fifty-third Goetia seal.
Reading the materials in parallel reveals how an inherited name accumulates layers: an earlier catalogue description, a numbered place in the Goetia, an abstract seal, an 1863 portrait, and many later adaptations. The layers may meet on one screen today, but their dates and formats show separate acts of composition and reception.