The thirteenth spirit and one of the most formidable Kings of the Goetia. Beleth arrives on a pale horse preceded by all manner of musicians, causing fear and trembling in the unprepared. His domain is love — the most powerful and ungovernable of human forces. He requires specific ceremonial protocols that no other spirit demands, and the consequences of getting them wrong are described in unusually stern terms.
Beleth arrives on a pale horse preceded by all manner of instruments — trumpets, cymbals and every kind of musical noise. The arrival itself is described as terrifying: he comes with great noise and in wrath. The Goetia specifies that the conjurer must be courageous, must show no fear, and must greet him respectfully but from a position of authority, using a hazel wand to draw a triangle outside the magic circle into which Beleth must enter.
His appearance — a man on a pale horse — carries resonances that any reader of the Bible would immediately recognise. The pale horse is Death's mount in the Book of Revelation. Beleth's pale horse does not mean he is Death — but it signals that he operates in a register of forces that have death-adjacent power: the absolute, ungovernable, potentially consuming nature of eros in its fullest sense. Love as Beleth governs it is not romantic sentiment. It is the fundamental force of attraction and desire that, unguided, can consume the one who invokes it as readily as it affects its target.
The musicians who precede him echo Paimon's arrival — both of these great Kings come with music. But where Paimon's music is glorious and welcoming, Beleth's comes with wrath and fear. The harmony he brings is won at cost, not given freely.
The Thirteenth Spirit is called Beleth. He is a mighty King and terrible. He rideth on a pale horse with trumpets and other kinds of musical instruments playing before him. He is very furious at his first appearance, that is, while the Exorcist layeth his courage.
— Ars Goetia, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, 17th centuryBeleth's power is singular and absolute in its domain. He causes love — between man and woman, in either direction, of any degree of intensity. This is not a minor or supplementary power: in the hierarchy of human experience, few forces are more transformative, more disruptive, more capable of overturning the entire order of a life than desire and love. A King who commands this force commands something as powerful as any of the more dramatic-sounding abilities of other Goetia spirits.
Beleth is unique among the Goetia's spirits in having a highly specific ceremonial protocol that is described in the text with unusual urgency. The Goetia does not merely list his powers and seal — it gives detailed instructions for how he must be received and treated, with the implication that deviation from these instructions has serious consequences.
The warning in the text: the Ars Goetia is unusually direct about the risks of working with Beleth incorrectly. The text notes that his fury at first appearance is severe and that "the Master of Art must lay his courage." The silver ring held to the face is protective against the force of his presence. This is one of the Goetia's clearest signals that a spirit's power is double-edged — the force that Beleth can direct toward others can, if the operator is not properly prepared, affect the operator instead.
Beleth appears in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum under a slightly different name (Bileth) and with substantially the same description. Johann Weyer's 1563 account is the earliest surviving written record of this spirit. The pale horse imagery and the musical procession suggest a spirit of considerable antiquity in the Western magical tradition, possibly drawing on earlier medieval sources now lost.
The number 13 carries its own weight in Western culture — associated with misfortune, with the thirteen at the Last Supper, with the lunar calendar's thirteen months. A spirit numbered 13 and governing the most powerful and potentially destructive of human emotions carries a resonant symbolic load that may be entirely intentional in the ordering of the Goetia's catalogue.
In the context of love magic more broadly, Beleth represents the Goetia's most direct engagement with what was historically the most common reason for magical consultation: the desire to attract, bind or win the love of another person. Love magic has a documented history as long as written history itself — from Egyptian love spells of the Middle Kingdom to Greek binding tablets to medieval charms. Beleth is the Goetia's answer to this universal human need, presented in the characteristically uncompromising terms of Solomonic ceremonial magic: here is the power you seek, and here is exactly what it costs to approach it safely.
On love magic ethics: the tradition of using magical means to cause love in another person raises ethical questions that the Goetia itself does not address — the text is descriptive, not prescriptive about what the conjurer should want. Modern practitioners vary considerably in their views, from those who see all love magic as a violation of another's will, to those who distinguish between magic that supports the development of a genuine connection and magic that imposes desire against a person's nature. These are questions each practitioner must work out for themselves — the tradition hands them the tool without adjudicating its use.