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Weyer · Scot · Mathers/Crowley · 1916 seals

Ars Goetia Witness Concordance

Weyer’s 1577 appendix, Scot’s 1584 inventory, and the later numbered Goetia move shared names through different orders and spellings.

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The familiar seventy-two names are an address system for a later Goetia catalogue. Earlier printed witnesses preserve many of the same names in a different order. This selective crosswalk makes ten changes visible without pretending that a name, number, spelling, and seal have one timeless form.

Numbering in these three listsWeyer numbers refer to the 1577 Pseudomonarchia order. Scot’s Book XV inventory does not print a comparable numbered spirit sequence here, so its column records name forms or absence. Goetia numbers follow the later seventy-two-spirit list. A blank catalogue entry means absent from that list, not absent from every occult text.

Selected name crosswalk

Ten diagnostic entries. Numbers belong to the named list, not to a universal spirit identity.
Weyer · 1577Scot · 1584 inventoryGoetia · later listWhat changes
1 · BaëlBaell1 · BaelOpening king in all three catalogues.
2 · AgaresAgares2 · AgaresThe second position remains stable.
3 · MarbasMarbas5 · MarbasThe later Goetia places him after Vassago and Samigina.
4 · PruflasNo entryNo entryThe visible omission; no Goetia seal is assigned to this Weyer entry.
No entryNo entry3 · VassagoPresent in the later Goetia, not in these two earlier printed lists.
22 · PaymonPaimon9 · PaimonA large move in sequence despite a recognizable name.
23 · BelialBeliall68 · BelialThe position shift shows why a number needs its edition label.
No entryNo entry70 · SeereOne of the three names closing the Goetia list.
No entryNo entry71 · DantalionOne of the three names closing the Goetia list.
No entryNo entry72 · AndromaliusFinal entry of the Goetia catalogue.

Scroll the table sideways to see all four columns.

Bael and Agares keep their first two positions. Marbas shifts from Weyer’s third to the Goetia’s fifth after Vassago and Samigina enter the later opening run. Paimon moves from Weyer’s twenty-second to the Goetia’s ninth; Belial moves from twenty-third to sixty-eighth. These are bibliographic facts about list positions. They cannot establish that one manuscript copied another directly, and they should not be used to infer a ritual sequence.

Pruflas is the opposite sort of diagnostic. Weyer lists him fourth, after Marbas, while Scot’s inventory moves directly onward without an entry and the later Goetia also lacks one. Vassago and the three spirits placed at the Goetia’s end are absent as entries from Weyer and Scot. The familiar count comparison; 69 in Weyer, 68 in Nicholson’s count of Scot’s inventory, and 72 in the later Goetia; follows from these list differences, but does not explain every wording or order change.

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Title page of Reginald Scot’s 1584 Discoverie of Witchcraft
Scot’s 1584 title pageWellcome Collection digitization of the first edition, marked Public Domain. The online searchable text discussed here is Nicholson’s separate 1886 annotated reprint. Work and rights record ↗

What the list differences show

Weyer’s 1577 appendix, Scot’s 1584 inventory, and the later Goetia are related lists, not three printings of an unchanged table. Weyer has 69 entries; Nicholson counted 68 names in Scot’s following inventory; the later Goetia has 72 numbered spirits. The gap reflects additions, omissions, and rearrangements, while wording and seals can vary within a name as well.

The crosswalk shows ten examples of those changes. It cannot establish a single direct copying path between every witness. The Goetia profiles elsewhere on the site follow the 1904 printed order, with seal images from a separate 1916 plate; the illustrated and textual forms represent different printings of the later catalogue.

Source records