The ugly viper who becomes a man with great teeth and two horns — holder of all time's secrets and the most persistent peacemaker in the Goetia's catalogue.
Botis appears first as an ugly viper — the explicit ugliness is unusual in the Goetia, which more often describes spirits in neutral or striking terms rather than aesthetically negative ones. The ugly viper is the anti-type of the serpent's usual symbolic register: where serpents typically carry wisdom, cunning and hidden power, Botis's viper is emphatically ugly, stripped of the dangerous beauty that makes serpents compelling. He is not the beautiful dangerous snake but the repellent one — the snake you instinctively recoil from before you have identified the threat it represents.
When commanded to take human form, Botis presents with great teeth and two horns, carrying a sharp sword. The great teeth suggest something of the viper's venomous capacity translated into human form — a mouth built for biting, for the injection of something that changes what it enters. The two horns mark him as a being of dual nature: simultaneously President and Earl, day and night, the reconciler of opposites who is himself a composite. The sharp sword in his hand is the instrument of the decisive cut, the weapon that makes the final separation between what was in conflict and what has been resolved.
Presidents in the Goetia appear only during the day and only in human form. Earls appear at night and govern the dark domain of the dead and hidden knowledge. Botis, who occupies both ranks, must navigate both temporal registers — he is a daylight human and a nocturnal intelligence simultaneously, and his ugly viper form may be the shape he takes in the transitional moment before the day's clarity has established his Presidential nature.
The number seventeen is a prime — indivisible, standing alone. In the ancient world, seventeen was considered the most transgressive of numbers precisely because it falls between the perfect 16 (4×4) and the perfect 18 (2×9), disrupting both sequences. The spirit who reconciles friends and foes occupies the position of the number that disrupts sequences of perfection — the reconciler as the element that sits between opposed perfectnesses and holds the space between them.
Botis holds two powers that together map the complete territory of the mediator: knowledge of all times (the intelligence to understand the full context of any conflict), and the ability to reconcile friends and foes (the practical skill of using that intelligence to create peace). He is the Goetia's spirit of informed mediation — the being who knows everything about every situation and can therefore bring any conflict to resolution.
The sword that Botis carries in his human form is the third element of his character alongside the temporal knowledge and the reconciling power. A sword is a cutting instrument: it resolves ambiguity by dividing, settles questions by ending them. Botis carries the sword of Solomon — not the sword of violence but the sword of judgment, the instrument that separates what cannot coexist and thereby creates the conditions in which what remains can be at peace. His reconciliation is not the avoidance of the cut but the acceptance of it: the peace that comes after the decisive separation of what was entangled.
Botis shares his dual President-Earl status with Marax (21st), who is also an Earl and President. Together these two spirits form a small group within the Goetia whose authority spans both the diurnal Presidential domain and the nocturnal Earls' domain. The significance of this duality becomes clearer when we consider what each rank governs: Presidents appear in human form in the daylight and govern knowledge, science and philosophy; Earls appear at night and govern the hidden knowledge of the dead, buried treasures and natural secrets.
For Botis, the dual rank is existentially coherent with his powers. Temporal knowledge of past, present and future requires access to both the daylight world of current events and the nocturnal world of historical knowledge — the past belongs to the domain of the dead, the secrets buried in time as treasure is buried in earth. His Presidential consciousness gives him access to the rational daylight present; his Earls nature gives him access to the nocturnal depths of the past. Together they produce his complete temporal knowledge.
In the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Weyer presents Botis with consistent powers and adds that he governs sixty legions — one of the larger commands in the Goetia, reflecting the breadth of his temporal scope. Sixty is the Babylonian base number, the number that governs the circle and the unit of time (sixty seconds, sixty minutes): the number of complete cyclical knowledge, appropriate for a spirit who knows all of time's arc.
The name Botis (also rendered as Otis or Botis in different manuscript traditions) has uncertain etymology. Some researchers have connected it to Greek roots suggesting depth or pit — the chthonic space where the Earl's nocturnal knowledge resides. The manuscript stability is greater than for many Goetia names, suggesting a spirit with a relatively clear and well-transmitted identity across the various scribal hands that copied the Lemegeton.
Botis is invoked in traditions that require both deep contextual knowledge and active reconciliation — situations where a conflict cannot be resolved without understanding its complete history, its current dynamics and its possible futures simultaneously. His ugly viper form is a reminder that the approach of peace-making can be uncomfortable, that the process of reconciliation involves an encounter with something that initially appears threatening. Those who work with Botis accept that the ugly viper is the shape that complete temporal knowledge takes when it arrives at the door of a conflict that needs resolving.