The Book of Oberon’s Spirit List

The Book of Oberon is the modern name often given to Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.26. Its spirit list is a section within a much larger English and Latin compilation, not a standalone first edition of the Ars Goetia.

Locate an operative section inside a much larger book

The Folger catalogue calls the object a book of magic with instructions for invoking spirits and dates it about 1577–1583. Its two present volumes were separated before the library acquired them, the first fourteen pages remain unlocated, and later blue page numbers are now the most practical internal addresses. Within that irregular object, the Latin heading Officium de spirittibus begins on manuscript page 73 and continues through a sequence of rulers, messengers, ranked spirits, fairies, and further lists. The anthology around it also contains prayers, charts, remedies, theft-finding experiments, and other operations. This physical setting changes the reading: the Offices is not a self-contained first edition of the Ars Goetia, and its entries were copied for use beside other kinds of ritual material. The page order, headings, and changes in formula matter as much as the total number of names.

The list begins as a chain of command

Page 73 first distinguishes three chief devils from four directional kings: Orience in the east, Paymon in the west, Amaymon in the south, and Egine in the north. The text does not proceed immediately to a flat alphabetical catalogue. It gives each king a courtly appearance, direction, retinue, stated powers, and one or more messengers. A conjuration then addresses the subordinate who is supposed to make the king or another named spirit appear. After this opening government, shorter entries increasingly compress the same fields into rank, visible form, office, and number of legions. The structure moves from cosmic administration to reusable catalogue record. It also explains why two names on adjacent pages can do different jobs: a king governs a quarter, a messenger provides access, and a duke or earl is defined by a narrower office. Treating all of them as interchangeable members of a later seventy-two-spirit roster erases the manuscript’s own hierarchy.

Worked reading: Orience, Fennell, and one complete command sequence

Entry 4 on manuscript page 73 presents Orience as the eastern king. He arrives with a feminine countenance, crown, elephant, trumpets, and other music; the damaged wording gives both “100 or 200” near his entrance and 250 legions at the end. His offices include answering about past, present, and future, providing money or treasure, consecrating books, teaching sciences, and granting invisibility. The procedure then changes level. Before approaching the king, the operator must constrain Fennell, identified as messenger of the east; a nearby damaged note also gives a form such as Bellsarto or Bellserit. The following formula invokes the kingly God, Mary as mother of Christ, angelic thrones, apostles, and spirits of God, then demands Fennell’s immediate appearance, obedience, and performance of the command. The entry therefore has four linked parts: identify the regional ruler, define his courtly body and offices, name the intermediary, and compel that intermediary through a superior Christian hierarchy. The invocation is not ornamental prose appended to a list. It is the mechanism that turns the catalogue’s hierarchy into an operation. The contradictory legion totals and uncertain messenger spelling also show why a clean modern summary can look more systematic than the surviving page.

Paymon shows that the messenger pattern is adapted, not copied mechanically

The western king Paymon on page 74 repeats the broad court pattern but changes its practical problem. He rides a camel or dromedary, wears a bright crown, has a feminine countenance, and arrives with musicians. His voice is difficult enough that the manuscript tells the master to offer paper so he can communicate plainly. Belferth is named as his messenger, while a following formula calls Alphasis through Christ’s passion, the cross, and divine names including Agla and Tetragrammaton. The formula is longer and differently authorized than Fennell’s. The shared sequence; king, difficulty, messenger, coercive sacred names; provides the template; the details respond to each court. Paymon’s page therefore preserves ritual design rather than a simple demon biography. It also gives a firm historical reason to keep the Folger spelling and western office visible when comparing the figure with later Paimon spellings and modern uses of the name.

Oberyon and Mycob expose a change of category inside the sequence

Near pages 80–81 the list turns to Oberyon, described as a crowned king under the Sun and Moon and explicitly called king of the fairies. His offices combine medicine, knowledge of stones, herbs, trees and metals, invisibility, treasure, and answers about times. Mycob follows as queen of the fairies with related medical and natural knowledge, then seven named sisters are placed beneath her. The shift is not presented as a new modern genre boundary. Fairy royalty, demonological ranks, natural knowledge, treasure, and invisibility remain inside one compiler’s working collection. That arrangement explains the modern nickname Book of Oberon, but it does not make Oberyon the author or organizing subject of every preceding page. It also prevents the reverse error: the fairy figures cannot simply be absorbed into Weyer’s sixty-nine or the Goetia’s seventy-two because their local titles, subordinates, and sequence do different work.

Witness and edition differences change what looks like an entry

The manuscript image preserves cramped secretary hand, damage, uncertain letters, corrections, and shifts between Latin headings and English prose. The Peterson–Harms diplomatic transcription marks expansions and doubtful readings; the independent public-domain facsimile transcription linked below makes similar uncertainty visible rather than silently modernizing it. A modern reading may normalize Orience to Oriens, Paymon to Paimon, or compare Agaros and Acharos with Agares, but a familiar spelling does not prove that ranks, offices, messengers, and order stayed fixed. The source page can also contain two readings where a later chart selects one. Comparing the Folger page with Weyer or a later Goetia entry therefore requires field-by-field work: name, rank, direction, appearance, office, intermediary, conjuration, and position. The manuscript’s operative sequence is the controlling context; resemblance to a later standardized name is only the beginning of the comparison.

References

The catalogues identify the surviving objects, while modern transcriptions expose wording and editorial expansions that do not appear in every witness.