Sigil of Marbas
At a glance
- Entry
- 5 of 72
- Rank
- President
- Legions
- 36 in the text
Description in the text
Marbas is said to answer questions about secrets and hidden matters. The text attributes to him both the causing and curing of illness, knowledge of mechanical arts, and the power to change human forms.
Read entry 5 on page 23 of the 1916 edition
Appearance
A large lion who can change into a human figure.
Topics attributed to this entry
- Hidden matters
- Healing
- Mechanical arts
Reading this entry
Marbas is a president who begins as a great lion and assumes human shape when asked. The entry joins several very different offices: answers about secrets, the causing and curing of disease, wisdom in mechanical arts, and changes to human form. It does not name particular illnesses or machines. The breadth matters because later summaries sometimes reduce Marbas to a healer and leave out the deliberately paired claim that he can also cause disease.
The account’s movement from lion to human is presented as a response to the operator, not as a permanent transformation. Its promise of truthful answers about hidden matters sits beside claims about bodies and craft knowledge. Reading these together shows how the catalogue groups knowledge and power without separating disciplines in the way a modern reference work might. Thirty-six legions and a prescribed seal complete the entry.
Read entry 5 on page 23 of the 1916 edition or compare the 1904 transcription.
A closer reading of entry 5
What the numbered text says
Marbas’s powers are organized as paired actions in the prose: he both causes and cures disease, and he both answers about what is concealed and alters visible human form. The source then adds mechanical arts, which prevents a purely medical reading. No disease, device, or transformation outcome is specified. This is a catalogue of attributed capacities, not a case history.
About the printed seal
The 1916 plate marks Marbas’s drawing as number 5. The passage refers back to the seal convention used in earlier entries rather than explaining the emblem’s geometry. Its lion and human forms come from the words of the entry, not from a decoded plate image.
Compare another entry
Compare entry 10: Buer. Buer is another president associated with healing, yet his entry frames it beside moral and natural philosophy, logic, and plants. Marbas adds the opposite claim of causing illness and knowledge of mechanical arts. Their common rank and healing office conceal a marked difference in emphasis.