The fifth spirit of the Ars Goetia and the first President in the catalogue. Marbas appears as a great lion, then takes human form at the conjurer's request. He reveals hidden secrets, causes and cures diseases, teaches mechanical arts and crafts, and can change men into other shapes. A spirit of paradoxical power — what he can afflict, he can also heal.
Marbas appears first as a great lion — not a small horse or an old man but one of the most powerful animal forms in Western symbolism. The great lion signals sovereign strength, solar authority and the raw power of the natural world at its apex. Like Samigina before him, Marbas transforms into human form at the conjurer's request — but the transformation is from an even more potent initial form.
The lion in Western esotericism is the animal of the Sun, of Leo, of the sovereign principle and of strength governed by wisdom. It appears throughout sacred art as the symbol of courage, of divine power made manifest and of the kingly principle. The fact that Marbas — a spirit who causes and cures disease — appears as a lion before becoming human suggests that his healing power is rooted in a solar, life-affirming force rather than in the chthonic or necromantic dimensions of some other spirits.
Presidents of the Goetia appear only during daylight hours — unlike Earls who appear at night or Marquises at twilight. Marbas's solar lion form is consistent with his daytime operation: he is a spirit of light, even when the knowledge he reveals is hidden and the diseases he governs are destructive.
The Fifth Spirit is Marbas. He is a Great President, and appeareth at first in the form of a Great Lion, but afterwards, at the request of the Master, he putteth on Human Shape. He answereth truly of things Hidden or Secret. He causeth Diseases and cureth them.
— Ars Goetia, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, 17th centuryThe most striking feature of Marbas's power description is the explicit statement that he both causes diseases and cures them. This double power — the ability to afflict and to heal — appears in several figures across mythology and magical tradition and always points to the same underlying principle: the one who truly understands a force well enough to wield it can direct it in both directions.
In Greek mythology, Apollo both sends plague and heals it. Asclepius, the god of medicine, was born from Apollo. The physician's snake-entwined staff — the caduceus — carries the same message: the serpent that poisons is also the serpent whose venom heals. In Babylonian tradition, the healing goddess and the disease goddess were sometimes understood as two faces of the same divine power. Marbas stands in this tradition: a being of such complete mastery over the forces of illness that he can direct them in either direction.
The ethics of dual power: the Goetia neither endorses nor prohibits the use of Marbas's disease-causing power. It describes the capacity neutrally, leaving its application to the conjurer's judgment. Most serious practitioners in the Goetia tradition distinguish between the healing application of Marbas's power — which they consider legitimate — and the affliction application, which they treat as a form of magical attack with corresponding ethical and karmic consequences. The dual power is documented as a fact of Marbas's nature; its ethical use is the conjurer's responsibility.
Marbas is invoked primarily for healing — particularly in cases where conventional treatment has not succeeded and where there may be a spiritual or energetic component to the illness. His capacity to reveal hidden secrets extends into the medical domain: he can identify the hidden causes of persistent illness, revealing what tests and examination have not found.
His mechanical arts teaching has modern application in engineering, surgery, precision crafts and any work that involves the manipulation of physical materials with skill and precision. The connection between healing and mechanical craft is ancient — the surgeon's art is a mechanical art, the body a mechanism to be repaired — and Marbas governs both.