Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Buer
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Buer
—
- Rank
- President
- Planet
- ☿Mercury
- Legions
- 50
A President with 50 legions, a mercurial rank that in the grimoire's logic amounts to teacher and healer. The text gives him no etymology and no detailed form: it says only that he appears when the Sun is in Sagittarius and that his figure corresponds to that sign. The five-legged wheel with a lion's head that identifies him today comes from nineteenth-century printed iconography, not from the manuscript. He taught the operator moral and natural philosophy, logic and the virtues of herbs; he cured diseases and delivered good familiars. Along with Marbas, he is the physician spirit of the catalogue's opening.
The wheel with goat legs is not in the manuscript
Buer is famous for one image: a wheel or star made of a lion's head and five goat legs radiating in every direction. It is one of the most reproduced figures in the catalogue, and it does not appear in the Lemegeton.
The Lemegeton says one thing about his form: that he appears in Sagittarius, and that this is his shape when the Sun is there. No legs, no wheel.
The image comes from Louis Le Breton's engraving for the sixth edition of the Dictionnaire Infernal, Paris, 1863. And behind it there is a chain you can follow: Weyer's Latin, in 1577, says he is seen «in the sign ☆» — a star. The English translator understood something else, and out of that starred sign came, three centuries later, the radiating wheel. Buer's best-known shape is a printing misunderstanding running two hundred and eighty years late.
A seasonal appointment
The Sagittarius detail is not decoration: it is a window of time. The Sun is in Sagittarius from late November to late December. Outside those weeks, according to the text, that is not his shape.
And it fits what he teaches. Buer delivers «the virtues of all herbs and plants», and virtue there is a technical term: the power a plant holds by its planetary ruler. It is the exact vocabulary of the herbals, the same Nicholas Culpeper would use in 1653 when assigning a planet to every herb.
In the medicine of the period each sign governs a part of the body, and the working rule — attributed to Ptolemy — was never to cut with iron the limb whose sign the Moon occupies. Sagittarius rules the thighs. A spirit who heals and appears only under one particular sign is speaking the language of medical astrology, not of generic magic.
Where the sources disagree
The fifty legions and the rank of president agree in Weyer, in Scot and in the Lemegeton. What changes is the size of the promise.
Weyer says he teaches the virtue of herbs; the Lemegeton widens it to all herbs and all plants. Weyer says he heals all diseases, «especially of men»; the Lemegeton drops the qualifier. Weyer hands over «the best» familiars; the Lemegeton settles for «good» ones.
Of the name there is nothing. No etymology, no variants: Buer is spelled the same in all three sources. The Livre des Esperitz has a «Bugan» ranked king, but identifying him with Buer is a modern editorial proposal, and the rank does not even match.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — ms. Sloane 3825 y 2731, ed. Peterson
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1577 — «conspicitur in signo ☆»
- Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584
- Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal, 6ª edición, París, 1863 — grabado de Louis Le Breton
- Nicholas Culpeper, The English Physitian, 1653
- Marco Manilio, Astronomica II y IV, siglo I — melotesia zodiacal
Other presidents of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Buer and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Buer 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.