The fifty-first spirit — a terrible and mighty King. Balam appears with three heads (bull, man and ram), a serpent's tail and eyes that flame with fire, riding a great bear with a goshawk on his fist. He answers perfectly of things past, present and to come. He makes men invisible and cunning. He speaks with a hoarse voice and his answers come in riddles that reward careful interpretation.
Balam's appearance immediately signals a spirit of unusual intensity. Three heads — bull, man and ram — echo Asmodai's configuration, but Balam adds two elements absent from Asmodai: eyes of flaming fire and a goshawk on his fist. These additions transform the symbolic portrait significantly. The flaming eyes are the eyes of a being who perceives with burning clarity — who sees through all surfaces to the truth beneath, whose gaze itself is an act of revelation. The hawk on his fist is the trained bird of prey, an instrument of precise, focused hunting — the intelligence that can be directed to find a specific target at a specific moment.
He rides a great bear — as Purson does — connecting him to the earth-rooting, digging, hidden-finding energy that the bear represents in shamanic and occult traditions. But where Purson rides the bear as the primary symbol of his power, Balam's bear is one element among many in a dense symbolic portrait. The bear carries him; the hawk hunts for him; the three heads perceive simultaneously across three registers; the flaming eyes see what ordinary sight cannot.
He speaks with a hoarse, somewhat distorted voice — the same quality attributed to Bael — and his answers come in a form that requires careful interpretation. He speaks truth, but not always in the most direct possible form. The riddle-quality of his speech is itself a teaching: perfect answers of things past, present and future are not always delivered in plain prose.
The Fifty-first Spirit is Balam. He is a Terrible, Great, and Powerful King. He appeareth with three Heads, the first like that of a Bull, the second like that of a Man, the third like that of a Ram. He hath the Tail of a Serpent, and Flaming Eyes. He rideth upon a furious Bear, and carrieth a Goshawk upon his Fist. He speaketh with a Hoarse Voice.
— Ars Goetia, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, 17th centuryBoth Balam and Asmodai appear with the same three heads — bull, man and ram. This is not an error or repetition in the Goetia. It reflects a genuine symbolic parallel: both spirits operate across the same three registers of power (physical, rational, aggressive/initiatory). But what they do with those powers is completely different.
The crucial difference is where the fire is: Asmodai breathes fire — his fire is in his speech, in his teaching, in the burning transmission of knowledge outward. Balam's fire is in his eyes — his fire is in his perception, in the burning clarity with which he sees. One is a teacher; the other is a seer. One transmits; the other perceives. Together they describe the two directions of the same three-headed power: outward (teaching, transmitting) and inward (perceiving, knowing).
The name Balam almost certainly derives from Balaam — the prophet who appears in Numbers 22–24 of the Hebrew Bible. The biblical Balaam is a non-Israelite seer hired by the Moabite king Balak to curse the Israelites. He is a figure of considerable complexity: a genuine prophet who receives divine communication, whose donkey speaks to warn him of an angel blocking his path, and who ultimately blesses rather than curses the Israelites because he can only say what God puts in his mouth.
The biblical Balaam is a prophet of perfect answers — he delivers exactly what he perceives, regardless of what his patron wants to hear. This is precisely the quality attributed to the Goetia's Balam: perfect answers of things past, present and future, delivered in a hoarse voice in a form that requires interpretation. The biblical Balaam's answers were also not always delivered in the most convenient form — they came as oracles, as poetic utterances, as visions that required priestly interpretation.
The transformation of a biblical prophet into a spirit of the Goetia follows the same pattern as the demonisation of other Near Eastern divine figures: the gods and prophets of competing religious traditions became the demons of the tradition that superseded them. Balaam, as a non-Israelite prophet who nonetheless received genuine divine communication, was a theologically awkward figure — and awkward figures tend to end up in the catalogues of spirits rather than in the canon of saints.
The speaking donkey: the most memorable element of the biblical Balaam story — his donkey seeing and speaking to an angel that Balaam himself cannot yet perceive — is relevant to Balam's goetic character. Balam sees what others cannot (flaming eyes). He delivers what he perceives with precision even when others would prefer a different message. And his mode of communication — hoarse voice, riddle-like — recalls the oblique mode of biblical prophetic speech, which was also not always delivered in convenient plain prose.
Working with Balam in modern practice is particularly suited to those seeking clarity of perception and precision of communication — the writer who needs to find exactly the right word, the strategist who needs to see exactly what is happening, the diviner who wants answers of genuine precision rather than comfortable vagueness. He rewards conjurers who bring their own interpretive intelligence and do not expect to be handed everything pre-digested.
The hawk on his fist is a useful image for approaching him: a trained hawk is not a pet. It is a skilled hunting animal with its own nature, capable of hunting with extraordinary precision when properly handled and properly released. Balam operates similarly. He is not domesticated or convenient. He is precise and powerful and requires that the conjurer be precise in what they ask and attentive in how they receive the answer.