Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Berith
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Berith
Beale, Bofry, Bolfry
- Rank
- Duke
- Planet
- ♀Venus
- Legions
- 26
Berith preserves a solid antecedent: berit is the Hebrew term for pact or covenant, and Baal-Berith appears in the Book of Judges as a deity venerated at Shechem. The grimoire adds that the necromancers call him Bolfry. He is a Mighty, Great and Terrible Duke, a grade of Venus, with twenty-six legions. Three things were asked of him: divination of past, present and future; the conversion of any metal into gold; and dignities, which he also confirms. He is the alchemical specialist of this stretch of the catalogue. The manuscript warns that he lies readily and that he should not be trusted without the ring.
The warning the Lemegeton deleted
In Weyer, in 1577, and in Scot's translation of 1584, Berith's entry says two things joined in one sentence: that he is a liar, and that he turns all metals into gold. The warning and the promise travel together, in that order.
The Lemegeton, copied later, keeps the gold and drops the liar. In its version he answers truly and makes gold, with no asterisk.
It is the same movement visible in other entries of the catalogue: Weyer published the list to show the whole thing was nonsense, and the copyists of the following century steadily cleaned his own objections out of the text.
Asking him for gold was asking for a crime
Transmutation of metals was not a harmless fantasy in England. A statute of 1404, under Henry IV, forbade the «multiplication» of gold and silver, and it was not repealed until 1689. Nearly three hundred years of illegality.
Whoever asked a spirit for gold was asking for precisely what the law pursued, in a field where the swindler was the commonest figure. The cheating alchemist was a recognisable literary character: he appears in Chaucer and carries Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, of 1610. In that context Weyer's warning about Berith's lying is not superstition: it is trade common sense.
The other thing he gives is dignities: offices and titles, the other currency of favour.
Red, and three names
He arrives as a soldier clothed in red, on a red horse, with a crown of gold. The red horse with its armed rider is a quotation from Revelation, where the one who sits on it is given power to take peace from the earth.
Red is also alchemy. The rubedo is the fourth and final phase of the work, the sign that it came out right and that there is gold. A red duke who makes gold is dressed in the colour of the end of the process.
And he has three names, with a detail almost nobody reports. Scot says some call him Beall, the Jews Berithi and the necromancers Bolfry: in that version, Berith is the Jewish name. Mathers, in 1904, flips the frame and makes Berith the principal name, with Beal and Bolfry as «names given unto him by men of later times».
The Jewish name makes sense: berit, in Hebrew, is «covenant». Baal-Berith, the «Baal of the covenant», appears in the book of Judges as the god Israel takes up after Gideon's death, and out of whose temple come the seventy pieces of silver that finance Abimelech.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — ms. Sloane 2731, ed. Peterson; Mathers, 1904
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1577 · Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 — «He is also a lier»
- Jueces 8:33, 9:4 y 9:46 — Baal-Berith y El-Berith
- Apocalipsis 6:4 — el caballo rojo
- Estatuto 5 Hen. IV c. 4, 1404, derogado en 1689 — prohibición de la multiplicación de metales
- Turba Philosophorum, impresa en 1572 — la rubedo
- Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, 1610
Other dukes of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Berith and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Berith 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.