Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Bune
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Bune
Bimé, Buné
- Rank
- Duke
- Planet
- ♀Venus
- Legions
- 30
No historical antecedent has been identified for Bune, also Bime or Bune, and the manuscript claims none for him either. He appears as a Strong, Great and Mighty Duke, a Venusian grade, with thirty legions. His competence is funerary and economic at the same time: he moves the dead from place to place, gathers spirits upon their graves and, in return, gives riches, wisdom and eloquence, besides answering truthfully. He was called for graveyard work and for prosperity, two uses that the magical practice of the period did not regard as separate. He speaks with a high and eloquent voice, a detail consistent with what he promises to teach.
His three powers are three crimes
Bune changes the place of the dead and gathers their spirits upon the sepulchres, makes men rich, and answers truly. All three are named offences in English law.
The Witchcraft Act of 1542 punishes conjuring spirits «to the intent to find money or treasure». The Act of 1604 goes further and punishes anyone who shall «take up any dead man, woman or child out of his, her or their grave… or the skin, bone or any other part of any dead person, to be employed or used in any manner of witchcraft», and equally anyone who tells «in what place any treasure of gold or silver should be found».
Moving the dead and pointing at treasure were not metaphors. They were the two behaviours Parliament troubled to name separately, and Bune does both.
Two of his three heads are an addition
He is described today as a three-headed dragon: dog, griffin and man. In Weyer's catalogue, of 1577, only the third is specified. The text says he appears as a dragon with three heads and that the third resembles a man. Dog and griffin do not appear: they are added by the later Lemegeton tradition.
And there is a larger difference. Weyer writes that he speaks with a muted voice — muffled, low. The Lemegeton says the opposite: a high and comely voice. Somewhere in the copying the mute dragon turned eloquent — precisely the spirit who promises to make eloquent whoever calls him.
The dragon, to a reader of the period, was the largest of the serpents according to Isidore, with its strength in the tail, and the animal Revelation identifies with the devil. The griffin, in Pliny, guards gold in its burrow.
Where the sources disagree
Thirty legions in the Lemegeton, in Weyer and in Scot. Thirty-five in the Livre des Esperitz, which is the oldest witness.
The rank of duke is steady. The spelling less so: in Thomas Rudd's manuscript he appears as Bime.
Of the name there is no attested etymology. The derivation from «Buto», a title of Isis, sometimes repeated, is a twentieth-century occultist's proposal with no source behind it.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — ms. Sloane 3825, ed. Peterson; Mathers, 1904
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1577 — «muta loquitur voce», solo la tercera cabeza
- Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584
- Witchcraft Act, 1542 (33 Hen. VIII c. 8) y 1604 (1 Jas. I c. 12)
- Isidoro de Sevilla, Etymologiae XII.4.4-5 y XII.2.17 — dragón y grifo
- Livre des Esperitz, siglos XV-XVI — 35 legiones
Other dukes of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Bune and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Bune 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.