The Goetia the Lesser Key of Solomon the King: Lemegeton, Book 1 Clavicula Salomonis Regis
Since classical Greece, Goetia has meant "low" magic as distinct from the high magic of theurgy. It is "applied" rather than "pure" magic, addressing practical human concerns-from obtaining advancement and wealth to finding love and knowledge.
The manuscripts from which this edition was prepared circulated in the spiritual underground of Baroque England. They were written in the English vernacular rather than the Latin of the scholars, further evidence of the popular character of this grimoire. It is a manual of Solomonic astrological sorcery that gives detailed instructions for the ritual precautions. requisites and incantations necessary to evoke the aid of its 72 spirits, which are described in detail.
This book is the work of the two most influential magicians of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Aleister Crowley commissioned the work from Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (who also produced an English edition of the "greater" Key of Solomon, also published by Weiser). It was first published in 1904, and the highly competitive relationship of these two magicians forms a fascinating subtext to Crowley's editing of the original edition, which includes his seminal essay,
"The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic."
All of the features of the original edition are retained in this edition, which is augmented by the engravings of Louis Breton and several original drawings by Aleister Crowley. Crowley's annotations from his personal copies have also been included. An editorial foreword by Hymenaeus Beta, Frater Superior of O.T.O., explores Crowley's relationship with Mathers and the place of this grimoire in the Solomonic magical tradition. Also new to this edition are revised versions of the Preliminary Invocation and the Enochian evocations, and a table of its 72 spirits.
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, born Samuel Liddell Mathers and having allegedly added MacGregor as a claim to a Highland heritage for which there is little other evidence, was an English occultist best remembered as a founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
His translations of medieval grimoires and other obscure occult texts, while often criticized for their accuracy or incompleteness, served to make this otherwise inaccessible material more widely available to English-speaking audiences, and remain among the most popular of his works.
