Goêteia in History - Conclusions
This is the final chapter of my introductory history of goêteia in the West. These Concluding Observations contain reflections for academic study of the subject, some specific thoughts on the Lemegeton (as explored in Chapter V) as well as for our own practical approach to chthonic sorcery.
Chapters One, Two, and Three are available online. For reasons, which I won’t expand on here, Chapters Four and Five are being reserved for later publication. The complete essay runs to more than 19,500 words, which is considerably longer than even patient online readers will make up with. For those interested, the full text will be available as an appendix to my next book, The Rooted Flame – A Goêtic Grimoire (Paralibrum Press, 2026).
This subject, obviously, lies very close to my heart. Should I ever begin to teach magic in person, much of what I discovered and distilled in this essay will inevitably color my approach to it. At the same time, especially researching Chapter Five on the Lemegeton yielded an extraordinary amount of new leads, which are beginning to take shape in an outline for a possible sequel to the Rooted Flame.
For all of this I am deeply grateful — as well as for your interest, time, and willingness to accompany me into the rough terrains of goêteia.
LVX,
Frater Acher
May the serpent bite its tail.
VI. Concluding Observations
Measured against the richness of each moment — each day, each year — only the smallest fragments of the past remain to us for reconstructing the actual experiences, applied techniques, and lived relationships of our ancestors. We do well to resist assuming literary — or even cultural — continuity wherever people wrote about similar experiences. The notion of asynchronous, independent discovery deserves far closer attention in the study of the history of magic.
I do not mean to diminish the scholarly progress that academic faculties have brought to the study of Western magic over the past thirty years. Yet what has only slowly and hesitantly begun to establish itself is the insight that magic must be grasped first through a phenomenological approach, before we sharpen our view through literary, historical, social, and other lenses. First, at least in outline, we must attempt to understand what practitioners actually experienced during rituals — in temples and caves, at night, in forests and clearings; while drinking psychoactive draughts, in ecstatic dance, and in deep contemplative stillness. If we refuse this attempt, we remain stuck in a situation akin to studying the history of orchestral music from sheet music alone, without ever attending a full performance — observing, with all the senses, in full lived presence. With participation, and with having our share.
The researcher must, in a literal sense, become the witness, the páredros, of those magicians — or of the literary remains — she seeks to understand. From an academic perspective, such “sitting-with” is a poisonous draught: heavy with subjectivity, emotion, fear, and hope — unapologetically unique and personal in its experience. And yet it is the necessary key, the cliff we must leap off from and climb back up to, if we wish to approach an art whose center is the lived, desired, feared, and historically often coerced relationship with non-human people.
At the very outset of this inquiry I pointed to three central motives that have generated the bulk of the literary legacy of goêtia over the last three millennia: the projection and demonization of the feared Other; social boundary-making and the legitimation of the communal Self; and the economic exploitation of “darque fluff” that seemed equally taboo as eternally enticing.
In Chapters II through IV we saw how these motives were set in motion, and how they colored and distorted the transmission of goêtic practices and practitioners. Even so, these reports could be used to extract a fixed center of gravity from the orbit of legend and allegation. That center — seen from a strictly Western Christian perspective, i.e., without incorporating an authentically Greek pagan or medieval Arabic viewpoint — was described with striking clarity by Agrippa von Nettesheim in his late work. For the 450 years since, Agrippa’s judgment and words on goêteia have functioned as the apparent foundation for countless other cornerstones, pillars, and walls erected upon it — by ecclesiastical authorities and by the often anonymous practitioners who dared to venture that far from the firelight of the polis.
Then, in a place where we might least have expected it — in seventeenth-century manuscripts that transmit to us the fragmentary and heavily manipulated compendium of the Lemegeton — we encountered a surprise. Contrary to the academic contempt directed at this work at least since the 1950s, it is precisely there that we find possible traces of actual goêtic encounters closer to our own time. Of course, as one would expect, these traces are deeply colored by the milieu from which they emerge: the rising sciences, colonialism, a still-fragile understanding of historical authenticity, and above all the hope of social ascent and self-empowerment within the upper bourgeoisie.
As we saw, we must not mistake the Ars Goetia as a pristine artifact of ancient pagan demonology. Rather, it’s an early modern working compendium — textually “dirty,” compiled and reshuffled, and oriented to user-demand. It priorities function not only over historic fidelity, but also over mythic coherence. These “goetic” demons appear no longer as natural forces but as specialized operators (information, access, influence, litigation, protection, mobility, trade, coercion) — an almost guild-like division of labor. This must be contrasted against the vast number of recipe-like folk magical compendiums we know where the focus remains astutely on the health of the cattle, the integrity of farm and field, and the renewed cycle of the seasons. The Ars Goetia knows nothing about being a tool for hard labor — but rather aims to present a secret staircase for social ascent. As such, the Ars Goetia presents ritual technology of self-empowerment for upward-striving citizens in a 17th century community: a means to secure influence without pedigree, access without lineage, and leverage without formal office — an alternative route to status, patronage, money, and safety.
And yet the Lemegeton largely escapes the three motives named at the beginning that stain most reports about chthonic sorcery. It was not written by opponents, but by secret lovers of that art; it was never meant for a broad public; and it was therefore never intended for commercial exploitation. Rather, it is an authentic goêtic handbook, an actual grimoire: historically dirty and disfigured, unconcerned with social standing or recognition, aimed solely at successful practice.
What it lacks, of course, is flesh. Wrapped and interwoven with the spirit of the seventeenth century, this grimoire has become all thought, all order, all imagined skeleton. The demons have lost all dwellings in the lived topography of the authors. They no longer sit in cellars or attics, at river springs or on crossroads, at mountain peaks, or deep down in caves. They now reside on paper, pinned down like dead beetles, ready for ritual resurrection at the choice of the practitioner. Their once radiant, flickering bodies have now shriveled, contracted, and been reduced to ink-smeared seals on old paper. The goêtic demons have been flattened to two-dimensional names and offices. The third dimension — their expansion in space and time — has been squeezed out of their sigils.
This, then, might be our own task — and perhaps also the moral of this story. The reconstruction of an almost-lost art requires more than a secret library, a sharp pen, and the courage to violate social boundaries. As important, is a pair of well-worn walking boots, a torch, a full moon, and stepping out into the unknown. Under the open sky we will be destined to make countless mistakes. We will look like fools under the gaze of non-humans. We will brandish rods and swords, speak languages they do not comprehend, and become a one-man circus, in these otherwise brilliant nights. For some time, each one of us must be willing to become a rather profane spectacle — one that will challenge ourselves, entertain some of the non-humans, and anger many others. Such is the path of growing towards the practice of the empty hand.
For, finally, one night, after years of forced attempts, we will sit quietly in the dark, all lights extinguished, all conjurations spent, both hands open, both eyes closed. And maybe then, one of the others will take a seat beside us. Touch us. And that is how the practice begins.
The End
