Ask anyone with a passing interest in Western ceremonial magic to name the most famous grimoire in history, and the answer will almost certainly be the <em>Ars Goetia — the first book of the <em>Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, the Lesser Key of Solomon. Its seventy-two demons, each with a rank, a sigil, and a catalogue of abilities, have become the default vocabulary of modern occultism. They appear in encyclopedias, in horror films, in video games. Names like Paimon, Beleth, Asmodeus, and Bael have crossed from the grimoire tradition into popular culture with a reach that no other magical text has achieved. And yet almost no one who uses these names realizes that the system they belong to is not the original. It is not even close.
The Ars Goetia as we know it dates to the seventeenth century, compiled from earlier European manuscripts that were themselves translations and adaptations of still older material. But the Solomonic magical tradition — the vast body of operative literature attributed to the prophet-king Sulayman ibn Dawud — is not European in origin. It is Arabic. And in the Arabic Solomonic manuscripts, the hierarchy that governs the spirit world is not a catalogue of seventy-two rebellious demons. It is a precise, astronomically ordered system of seven jinn kings, each ruling one day of the week, one classical planet, one angelic counterpart, and a specific domain of human affairs. Their names, their attributes, and the methods for working with them bear almost no resemblance to anything in the Goetia.
This article presents those names. Not as speculation, not as syncretic reconstruction, but as they appear in the primary Arabic manuscripts themselves.
The System the West Never Received
The Arabic Solomonic tradition rests on a cosmological framework that is fundamentally different from the one assumed by the European grimoires. In the Western model — formalized by texts like the <em>Key of Solomon (<em>Clavicula Salomonis) and systematized by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his <em>Three Books of Occult Philosophy — spirits are essentially adversarial. They are demons, fallen angels, or infernal beings who must be compelled through threats, bound into brass vessels, and constrained by divine names invoked against them. The operator’s posture is that of a commander forcing compliance from hostile entities.
The Arabic system operates on entirely different premises. The jinn kings are not “demons” in the Christian theological sense. They are jinn — a separate order of creation, made from smokeless fire as humans were made from clay. And the seven kings who rule the jinn are described in the manuscripts as mu’minin: believing jinn. Pious. Obedient to divine law. They do not serve the practitioner because they are forced to. They serve because the practitioner has met the conditions of spiritual legitimacy — purity of intention, ritual correctness, and divine authorization — that entitle him to their cooperation.
This distinction is not cosmetic. It changes everything about how the operative system works. In the Goetia, timing is loose: perform the conjuration at the right general time of day, and the spirit should appear. In the Arabic system, timing is astronomical and non-negotiable. Each king rules a specific day. Each must be contacted during the planetary hour that corresponds to his planet. The practitioner must know not merely the day but the exact hour — calculated from sunrise, varying with latitude and season — in which the king’s authority is at its peak. Miss the window, and the operation is void.
This planetary-hour system is documented in Ahmad al-Buni’s Shams al-Ma’arif, in the <em>Ghayat al-Hakim (known to Latin Europe as the <em>Picatrix), in the <em>Kitab al-Ajnas attributed to Asif ibn Barkhiya — Sulayman’s own vizier — and in the anonymous operational manual al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a (The Radiant Jewels). The <em>Ighathat al-Lahfan, another key manuscript in this tradition, provides additional correspondences and variant methods. All of them agree on the same fundamental hierarchy.
The Seven Kings: Names, Planets, and Domains
Here they are — the seven jinn kings as recorded in the Arabic Solomonic manuscripts. Each king is listed with his day, his planet, his governing angel, the color associated with his operations, and his primary domains of authority.
| Day | Planet | Jinn King | Angel | Color | Domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | Sun | Al-Madhhab “The Golden One” |
Ruqiya’il | Gold | Approaching rulers, gaining awe and respect, opening doors of success |
| Monday | Moon | Murrah Abu al-Harith |
Jibra’il | Silver | Affection, extracting hidden treasures, neutralizing hostile magic |
| Tuesday | Mars | Abu Mihriz al-Ahmar “The Red One” |
Samsama’il | Red | Destruction, enmity, sickness, warfare and martial operations |
| Wednesday | Mercury | Barqan Abu al-‘Aja’ib |
Mika’il | Mixed | Solving talismans, gaining affection of scholars, uncovering mysteries |
| Thursday | Jupiter | Shamhurish |
Sarfiya’il | Yellow | Judge of the jinn, peace, wealth, acquiring hidden knowledge |
| Friday | Venus | Zawba’ah |
‘Anya’il | White / Green | Love, marriage, joy, reconciliation between hearts |
| Saturday | Saturn | Maymun Aba Nukh |
Kasfiya’il | Black | Separation, causing illness, unearthing hidden talismans |
These are not obscure names pulled from a single manuscript. They appear consistently across the major Arabic Solomonic texts spanning at least five centuries. Al-Buni records them. The Kitab al-Ajnas records them. The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a provides their full conjuration protocols. The <em>Shams al-Anwar of Ibn al-Hajj al-Tilmsani cross-references them with Quranic verses and fumigation recipes specific to each king. This is not one author’s idiosyncratic system. It is the standard hierarchy of the entire tradition.
What the Goetia Actually Is — and Where It Came From
The <em>Lemegeton as a compiled text appears in European manuscripts no earlier than the seventeenth century, though individual sections draw on older material. The Ars Goetia itself — the famous list of seventy-two spirits — derives in part from Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577), which itself borrowed from earlier demonological catalogues. These catalogues, in turn, show unmistakable traces of Arabic originals: names transliterated through Latin, hierarchies garbled in transmission, planetary correspondences stripped out or reassigned.
Consider the name Paimon — one of the most prominent kings in the Goetia. The name has no Latin or Greek etymology. Scholars of Arabic magical literature have noted its probable derivation from an Arabic root, possibly a corruption of a title or epithet that was transliterated, mispronounced, and eventually codified as a “demon name” in European manuscripts. The same pattern repeats across the Goetia: names that make no sense in any European language but become recognizable when traced back to Arabic originals.
What happened is not complicated. The Arabic Solomonic material entered Europe through two primary channels: the Latin translation of the Ghayat al-Hakim (the Picatrix) in the thirteenth century, and the various Solomonic manuscripts that circulated in the Mediterranean world where Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin cultures overlapped. At each stage of transmission, the system was simplified. The seven-king planetary hierarchy — which requires astronomical calculation, ritual purity, and theological legitimacy to operate — was replaced with a flat catalogue of spirits that could be conjured by force. The Quranic scaffolding was stripped out. The planetary-hour requirements were reduced to vague time-of-day suggestions. The result was the Goetia: a text that preserves the spectacle of the Arabic originals while discarding the operative infrastructure that made them functional.
Why the Differences Matter
This is not merely a question of historical curiosity. The differences between the Arabic and European systems are operative — they determine whether the procedures described in these texts can actually be performed as their authors intended.
The Arabic system requires piety. The practitioner must be in a state of ritual purity (taharah), must have completed a period of fasting and spiritual retreat (riyadah), and must approach the jinn kings not as a sorcerer commanding hostile spirits but as a servant of God requesting lawful assistance from beings who are themselves obedient to divine authority. The entire framework is covenantal: the practitioner fulfills specific conditions, and in return, the king provides specific services within his domain.
The Goetia requires force. The operator draws a circle, inscribes constraining names, threatens the spirit with divine punishment if it disobeys, and binds it to a brass vessel or a triangle of art. The relationship is adversarial from the first word to the last. There is no concept of spiritual qualification. There is no fasting. There is no retreat. The operator’s authority derives not from his spiritual state but from the names he wields — names which, in many cases, are garbled transliterations of Arabic divine names whose pronunciation and meaning have been lost.
The Arabic manuscripts are explicit about what happens when an unqualified practitioner attempts to contact the jinn kings. The al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a describes the consequences in clinical detail: the operation fails silently, or worse, the practitioner attracts the attention of lower-order jinn — not kings, not believing jinn, but predatory entities drawn to the disruption caused by an incompetent operator working with power he has not earned the right to invoke.
“He who approaches the kings without purity is like a beggar who storms the palace gate — he will not find the sultan, but he will find the guards.”
That passage does not appear in any European grimoire. It should.
The Angels Behind the Kings
One detail that has no parallel whatsoever in the Goetia is the role of the governing angels. Each jinn king operates under the authority of a specific angel — Ruqiya’il, Jibra’il, Samsama’il, Mika’il, Sarfiya’il, ‘Anya’il, and Kasfiya’il — and the conjuration protocols in the Arabic manuscripts typically require the practitioner to invoke the angel first, before addressing the king.
This is the hierarchical logic of the system. God commands the angels. The angels command the jinn kings. The jinn kings command their subordinates. The practitioner’s legitimacy flows downward through this chain: he petitions God, invokes the angel by name, and the angel authorizes the king to respond. Without this chain of authority, the king has no reason and no obligation to appear. The Goetia preserves none of this. Its spirits operate in a theological vacuum — constrained by divine names, yes, but disconnected from any coherent cosmological hierarchy that would explain why those names have power.
The Shams al-Ma’arif provides the angelic invocations in full, with the specific divine names and Quranic verses that accompany each. The Kitab al-Ajnas provides variant formulas attributed to Sulayman’s own court. The Shams al-Anwar provides the planetary-hour calculations required to determine when each angel is at the zenith of his authority. None of this material has ever appeared in any edition of the Goetia or any Western Solomonic text.
What Has Been Published — and What Is Now Available
The seven jinn kings have been referenced in passing by a handful of Western scholars — notably in academic studies of Arabic magic that were never intended for practitioners and that deliberately omitted the operative details. The names have appeared. The system behind the names has not.
The most complete presentation of the seven-king hierarchy in English, with full conjuration protocols, planetary-hour tables, angelic invocations, fumigation recipes, talisman designs, and day-by-day operational procedures, is The Complete Magic of the Jinn Kings (Volume VII of the John Friend Publishing series). This volume translates the relevant sections from multiple Arabic manuscripts — cross-referencing the Shams al-Ma’arif, the Kitab al-Ajnas, the al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a, and the Ighathat al-Lahfan — to reconstruct the complete operative system as it was practiced in the Arabic world.
For the conjuration material specific to each king and the Solomonic protocols that form their foundation, see also al-Jawahir al-Lamma’a: The Radiant Jewels for Summoning the Kings of Jinn (Volume V). For the planetary magic and talismanic framework that undergirds the entire system, see Shams al-Anwar wa Kunuz al-Asrar al-Kubra (Volume III).
The Goetia is not wrong in the way that a forged document is wrong. It is wrong in the way that a photocopy of a photocopy of a painting is wrong — the outlines are visible, the colors are gone, and the details that made the original powerful have been lost in transmission. The Arabic tradition preserves the original. These texts make it available, in English, for the first time.