The sixth spirit of the Ars Goetia — a Duke who appears as a lion with a donkey's head, roaring. Valefor is one of the most morally specific spirits in the entire catalogue: he is explicitly a spirit of theft. He tempts men to steal, maintains fellowship and loyalty among thieves — and then, once they are caught, abandons them entirely. The Goetia's warning about him is unusually direct.
Valefor appears as a lion with the head of a donkey — a composite animal that combines two animals whose symbolic meanings are almost perfectly opposed. The lion is nobility, solar power, sovereignty, the king of animals. The donkey is humility, stubbornness, hidden wisdom and — in the Western tradition — foolishness or buffoonery. A lion with a donkey's head is a being of tremendous physical power directed by an absurd or inappropriate intelligence: raw strength guided by folly.
This composite form is, in itself, a portrait of theft. Theft is the application of real effort and real capability — the physical and psychological power of the lion — to a fundamentally foolish end: taking what belongs to another in a way that, if caught, destroys the thief. The lion's body can do it; the donkey's head thinks it is a good idea. Valefor's form is a warning encoded in his appearance.
He roars — he does not speak, or sing, or communicate with subtlety. He announces himself loudly and unmistakably. This too is significant: the temptation to steal is rarely subtle. It announces itself clearly. The question is whether the one being tempted recognises the roaring lion-donkey for what it is.
The Sixth Spirit is Valefor. He is a mighty Duke, and appeareth in the shape of a Lion with a Head of an Ass, braying. He is a good familiar, but tempteth them he is a familiar of to steal. He governeth 10 Legions of Spirits.
— Ars Goetia, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, 17th centuryValefor's domain is theft — specifically, the temptation toward theft and the maintenance of solidarity among thieves. The Goetia describes him as "a good familiar" — cooperative and useful as a spirit companion — but notes the crucial qualification: he "tempteth them he is familiar of to steal." He corrupts through familiarity. The longer one works with him, the stronger the temptation he generates.
His most striking characteristic is described in several versions of the Goetia tradition: he maintains good fellowship and loyalty among a group of thieves — solidarity, trust, mutual protection — right up to the moment they are caught. At that point he abandons them completely. The fellowship he sustained was not genuine solidarity but a temporary condition maintained by his presence. When he withdraws, it dissolves.
The Goetia's warning: Valefor is one of the few spirits in the catalogue about whom the text itself issues an implicit warning — not about the danger of invoking him incorrectly, but about the danger of his influence over time. He is described as "a good familiar" — the very thing a conjurer wants — but the qualification that follows is unambiguous. This is a spirit whose nature is to corrupt through intimacy, and whose assistance always ends in abandonment. The Goetia is unusually direct about this.
Beyond the literal domain of physical theft, Valefor can be read as a spirit governing any form of taking what is not one's own — the appropriation of credit, of intellectual property, of relationships, of recognition that belongs to another. His domain in the modern world includes plagiarism, fraud, the maintenance of false solidarity among conspirators and the specific dynamic of cooperation-until-exposure that characterises many forms of organised deception.
His 10 legions — the fewest of any Duke in the Goetia — is itself significant. Valefor does not command great forces. Theft, as a strategy, does not scale. It works in small groups, in secret, with limited reach. A Duke who commands only 10 legions when most others command 30 or more is telling you something about the limits of what he offers: real but constrained, effective but not expansive.
In the psychological reading of the Goetia — where each spirit represents an aspect of human psychology — Valefor is the aspect that takes shortcuts, appropriates rather than creates, borrows what it has no intention of returning and maintains the comfortable fiction of solidarity with others in the same compromised position until the consequences arrive. He is a spirit of the path of least resistance that leads to the hardest destination.
Valefor is rarely invoked directly in modern practice — his explicit association with theft and his pattern of abandonment make him one of the less sought-after spirits in the Goetia. Those who work with him typically do so for the psychological insight his nature offers rather than for practical assistance: understanding the specific dynamic of capability-misdirected-by-folly, or the pattern of false fellowship maintained until consequences arrive.
His symbolic usefulness is in identifying where this dynamic is operating — in oneself or in others. Where does lion's capability serve donkey's judgment? Where is fellowship maintained by shared transgression rather than genuine connection? Valefor, understood symbolically, is a diagnostic spirit: he reveals the places where the fundamental pattern of his domain — strength in service of folly, solidarity until caught — is active.