The forty-fifth spirit and one of the rare dual-ranked beings of the Goetia — both a King and an Earl simultaneously. Vine appears as a lion holding a serpent, riding upon a black horse. He discovers hidden things, reveals witches and wizards, builds towers, demolishes walls and troubles the waters of the sea. His dual rank gives him authority across two distinct registers of the infernal hierarchy.
Vine is one of only a handful of spirits in the Goetia who hold two ranks simultaneously. Most spirits occupy a single position in the infernal hierarchy. Vine is both a King and an Earl — two distinct orders with different modes of operation, different domains and different times of appearance. This dual status is not a contradiction but an expansion of his authority across two registers of the hierarchical system.
The Forty-fifth Spirit is Vine, or Vinea. He is a Great King and an Earl; and appeareth in the form of a Lion, riding upon a Black Horse, and bearing a Viper in his hand. His Office is to discover Things Hidden, Witches, Wizards, and Things Present, Past, and to come. He, at the Command of the Exorcist, will build Towers, overthrow great Stone Walls, and make the Waters rough and stormy.
— Ars Goetia, Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis, 17th centuryVine appears as a lion — the animal of sovereignty, strength and solar authority — but unlike Purson, whose lion face is one element among many, Vine's lion form is his primary mode. He holds a viper in his hand and rides a black horse. The black horse carries the symbolism of night, of the hidden, of the forces that move when ordinary visibility fails — appropriate for a spirit whose primary power is discovering what is concealed.
The viper in his hand mirrors Purson's viper but in a different context. Where Purson's viper represents ancient wisdom held in hand as an instrument, Vine's viper is the wisdom of the serpent applied to the discovery of hidden practitioners — witches and wizards who themselves work with serpentine, chthonic powers. The serpent knows the serpent. Vine can recognise and reveal those who work with the hidden forces precisely because he embodies those forces himself.
The combination of lion and black horse suggests a spirit who operates with sovereign authority in the nocturnal register — the king of the night, whose domain is precisely what daylight conceals. This makes him an extraordinarily useful spirit for any work concerned with revealing what is hidden, exposing deception, or understanding the darker currents at work in a situation.
Vine's powers span three distinct domains — revelation, construction and elemental disruption. This unusual combination makes him one of the more versatile spirits in the Goetia, capable of operating in the realm of hidden knowledge, in the physical world of structures and architecture, and in the elemental realm of water and weather.
Vine's name — Latin vinea, the vine or vineyard — is unusual for a King of the Goetia. Most spirits have names derived from Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek or invented magical nomenclature. A spirit named for the vine plant sits oddly in this catalogue until one considers the vine's symbolic weight in Western tradition.
The vine is the plant of Dionysus — the Greek god of wine, ecstasy, transformation and the dissolution of boundaries between the human and divine. Wine was the primary sacramental substance of ancient Mediterranean religion. The vine that produces wine produces the substance that reveals hidden things — that removes inhibition, lowers defences and makes visible what sobriety conceals. A spirit named Vine who reveals what is hidden is, in this reading, the spirit of the vine's essential quality: the capacity to bring what is beneath the surface to light.
The vine also grows — it extends, it climbs, it finds its way through and around obstacles, it gradually covers and reveals the structure of whatever it grows upon. Vine the spirit operates similarly: he finds his way into hidden spaces, reveals structures that were concealed, and makes visible the hidden framework beneath the surface of events.
Vine in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum: Johann Weyer's 1563 compilation lists Vine (as "Vinea") with essentially the same description as the Goetia — lion on black horse, viper in hand, reveals hidden things, builds towers, troubles the sea. The consistency across sources suggests a stable tradition for this spirit preceding both texts. He is one of the more reliably described spirits in the Goetia family of texts, with relatively few variations between sources.
In modern practice, Vine is sought primarily for his revelatory powers — discovering what is hidden, exposing deception and identifying magical interference. Those who suspect they are subject to hostile magical working may call upon Vine to reveal the source and nature of that interference. His capacity to reveal "witches and wizards" is understood in this modern context as the ability to perceive magical operations and their operators, regardless of whether those operators are aware of being observed.
His construction and demolition powers — building towers and overthrowing walls — are worked with by those seeking to establish positions of advantage or remove obstacles. In the symbolic language of modern magic, the tower becomes any structure of perspective and authority, and the wall becomes any barrier to movement or understanding. Vine raises the first and brings down the second.