Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Agares
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Agares
Agreas
- Rank
- Duke
- Planet
- ♀Venus
- Legions
- 31
No historical antecedent or firm etymology is known, and the manuscript supplies none. It titles him a Duke, a rank the grimoire associates with Venus and with relatively approachable dealings, at the head of 31 legions. His iconography, however, is fixed: a mild-mannered old man riding a crocodile, a goshawk perched on his fist. What the operator asked of him was practical: to bring back those who had fled - servants, debtors, runaways - to teach foreign tongues, to cast down others' dignities and, in the text's most grandiloquent register, to cause earthquakes. That blend of domestic utility and geological catastrophe is typical of the catalogue, which does not rank the vast above the everyday.
What he was asked for
He has a single specialty and the manuscript states it in both directions: he makes those who stand still run, and he brings back the ones who fled. In 1600 that was not a metaphor. Masters chased escaped servants, captains chased deserters, lenders chased debtors, and none of them had a police force to call.
Two more requests come with it. Every language at once, useful to anyone who traded or travelled. And the fall of «dignities»: a dignity was an office carrying authority, and the text says he topples them in the Church and in the State alike.
What the picture means
Nothing he carries is decoration. In the Middle Ages the crocodile was said to weep while devouring its prey — that is where «crocodile tears» comes from — and Edward Topsell's natural history of 1607 went one step further: the weeping was not grief, it was bait. To ride it is to ride the trap.
The bird is a goshawk, a hunting bird. You release it, it chases the quarry down and returns to the hand by itself: the whole art is the coming back. The demon who brings back the ones who ran carries on his fist the animal that always returns.
And there is a matter of class. An English book of 1486, the Book of St Albans, assigns hunting birds by social rank: eagle for the emperor, gyrfalcon for the king, goshawk for the common man. They title him a Duke and put a commoner's bird in his hand.
Where the sources disagree
The crocodile and the goshawk are in the Lemegeton and in Weyer's catalogue of 1563. In the Book of the Office of Spirits he rides a cockatrice and carries no bird. The Grimoire of Pope Honorius drops both animals.
The count moves too: thirty-one legions in the standard version, thirty-six in the Livre des Esperitz. What does not change is the direction — he answers «under the power of the East» — nor the rank of Duke.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — manuscritos del siglo XVII (ed. Mathers y Crowley, 1904)
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1563 / 1577
- Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, 1607
- Book of St Albans, 1486 — reparto de aves de caza por rango social
- Book of the Office of Spirits · Liber Officiorum Spirituum, siglos XVI-XVII
- Livre des Esperitz, siglos XV-XVI
Other dukes of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Agares and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Agares on Instagram →
WarningHistorical and artistic content. We do not recommend performing any ritual, invocation or practice involving these entities. This is outreach about texts from the 15th to the 20th century, not an operative guide.