Sigil of Glasya-Labolas
At a glance
- Entry
- 25 of 72
- Rank
- President and Earl
- Legions
- 36 in the text
Description in the text
Glasya-Labolas is said to teach arts and sciences quickly and to reveal past and future matters. The same entry links him to bloodshed, invisibility, and the ability to win the affection of friends or enemies.
Read entry 25 on page 29 of the 1916 edition
Appearance
A dog with wings like those of a griffin.
Topics attributed to this entry
- Arts and sciences
- Divination
- Invisibility
Reading this entry
Glasya-Labolas is both president and earl, shown as a dog with griffin wings. His entry moves abruptly from teaching arts and sciences to bloodshed and killing. It also credits him with knowledge of past and future, making people invisible, and producing love between friends and foes. Those are not interchangeable themes. A description that calls him only a teacher or only a violent spirit would conceal the source’s strikingly mixed list.
The text says the instruction happens immediately, but it does not describe a curriculum or identify specific learned arts. The winged canine form is similarly brief; no later human shape is provided. His 36 legions and seal follow the offices. This entry shows how the grimoire can combine desirable knowledge, interpersonal influence, and harm without resolving their moral contradiction for the reader.
Read entry 25 on page 29 of the 1916 edition or compare the 1904 transcription.
A closer reading of entry 25
What the numbered text says
The griffin-winged dog receives one of the catalogue’s most jarring combinations. A promise to teach arts and sciences instantly sits beside authorship of killing, knowledge of past and future, social affection, and invisibility. Present time is not named in the temporal formula. The passage supplies no rationale that makes these claims one benevolent educational office, so a profile should keep the bloodshed claim visible and avoid romanticizing it.
About the printed seal
Number 25 begins the 1916 fourth frontispiece group. Its association with a winged dog is established by the entry number, not by a line-by-line interpretation of the image. The seal cannot soften or explain the text’s violent claim.
Compare another entry
Compare entry 21: Marax. Marax is also an earl and president associated with teaching, but his curriculum is astronomy and liberal sciences and his added gifts are knowledgeable familiars. Glasya-Labolas adds bloodshed, invisibility, and friend-or-foe affection, a much less coherent cluster of attributed offices.