Sacred Texts · Grimoire · Solomon · Magic · Pentacles · Medieval

The Key of Solomon

The most influential grimoire in Western magic — planetary pentacles, spirit conjurations and ritual procedures that shaped ceremonial magic for five centuries

The Clavicula Salomonis — Key of Solomon — is not one book but a family of manuscripts, copied and modified across centuries, claiming to transmit the magical wisdom of King Solomon as taught by an angel and passed to his son Rehoboam. The oldest surviving manuscripts date to the 15th century, though the tradition they represent is considerably older. More than any other single text, the Key of Solomon defined what Western ceremonial magic looks like: its circles, its pentacles, its planetary hours, its spirit names, and its elaborate ritual preparation.

The Contents

What the Key of Solomon Actually Contains

The text is divided into two books. The first covers the preparation of the magician — the ritual purity, fasting, prayer, and timing required before any operation — and the tools: the circle of protection, the triangle of art, the knife, the wand, the lamen, and the other implements that subsequent grimoire tradition would standardise. The second book contains 44 pentacles — magical talismans attributed to the seven classical planets — each illustrated with Hebrew divine names, angelic names, and specific sigils, and each assigned particular magical effects.

The Pentacles
The 44 pentacles are the Key's most enduring legacy — geometric figures inscribed with divine names, angelic names, and spirit sigils, attributed to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Each pentacle carries specific virtues: protection, love, wealth, invisibility, the opening of locks, the summoning of spirits. They appear in the Golden Dawn tradition, Thelema, modern Solomonic magic and countless contemporary grimoires.
Planetary Hours
The Key elaborates the system of planetary hours — dividing each day and night into twelve unequal hours each governed by one of the seven classical planets in a fixed sequence. Magical operations should be timed to the hour of the governing planet relevant to the work: Venus hours for love magic, Saturn hours for binding and limitation, Jupiter hours for wealth and expansion. This timing system remains central to traditional Western astrology and magic.
The Circle and Triangle
The ritual circle — inscribed with divine names, drawn at specific times with specific instruments — provides protection for the magician during spirit operations. The triangle of art, placed outside the circle, is where the evoked spirit manifests. This circle-and-triangle geometry, with its specific divine name inscriptions, became the template for ceremonial evocation across all subsequent Western magic, appearing in Agrippa, Dee, the Golden Dawn, and contemporary Goetic practice.
The Lesser Key — Lemegeton
Distinct from the Key of Solomon but related — the Lemegeton (Lesser Key of Solomon) is another manuscript tradition, its most famous section being the Goetia: a list of 72 demons with their seals, hierarchies, and the powers they can bestow on the magician who successfully constrains them. The Goetia was published by Crowley and Mathers in 1904 and remains the most widely used spirit-working text in contemporary magic.
The Tradition

From Solomon to the Golden Dawn

The attribution to Solomon is a pseudepigraphical convention — giving a text authority by placing it under the name of a legendarily wise figure. The actual contents draw on Jewish angel magic (the Hekhalot and Merkabah traditions), Arabic astrological magic (the Picatrix tradition), and the general Mediterranean magical heritage that circulated in the medieval period. The text is not Jewish, not Arabic, and not specifically Christian — it is the product of a cross-cultural magical tradition that moved through all three civilisations.

The Key of Solomon shaped the entire Western grimoire tradition: the Grimorium Verum, the Grand Grimoire, the Heptameron, the Arbatel — all draw on its framework. When the Golden Dawn codified ceremonial magic in the 1880s and 90s, the Key of Solomon was one of their primary sources. When Crowley published his magical works, the Solomonic tradition was their structural foundation. Modern Solomonic magic — currently experiencing a significant revival — works directly with the Key's pentacles and procedures.

Solomon was endued with divine wisdom by God and instructed by angels. He caused the spirits to serve him, bound the evil and made use of the good, and by this means brought to light all knowledge, all secrets, and all arts.

— Clavicula Salomonis, preface
Connected pages
The Hermetic Corpus The Rosicrucian Manifestos Ceremonial Magic Goetia Enochian Magic The Grimoire Tradition Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa John Dee
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