Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Glasya-Labolas
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Glasya-Labolas
Caacrinolaas, Caassimolar
- Rank
- President
- Planet
- ☿Mercury
- Legions
- 36
Caacrinolaas and Caassimolar are his forms in the sixteenth-century lists; Glasya-Labolas is the spelling the Goetia fixes, with no known etymology. He holds a presidency and an earldom at once, Mercury and Mars, over thirty-six legions. The text credits him with a notable contradiction: he teaches all arts and sciences in an instant, stirs love between friends and enemies alike and makes men invisible, yet it also names him the author of bloodshed. That double edge, instant master and cause of violence, is what distinguishes him within the catalogue, and the winged dog with the blotched muzzle condenses it.
It is not a service: it is what he is
The line everyone quotes — that he is an author of bloodshed and manslaughter — is not in the list of things he is asked for. It is in the description of what he is. Weyer says it more plainly still in 1577: he is the captain of all manslayers.
No text says he kills on request. What is asked of him is something else, and notably domestic: that he teach all the arts in an instant, tell past and future, win the affection of friends and of foes, and make the one who calls him invisible.
That mismatch between what the spirit is and what he is commissioned for recurs across the catalogue, and is one of the things that make it strange: the captain of the manslayers worked, in practice, as a private tutor.
A dog with griffin wings, in 1577
Both halves of the animal meant the same thing, and it was not nobility. The griffin, in the bestiaries of the period, is the one that tears apart: the Rochester Bestiary says it is lion in every part of its body and eagle in wings and face, that it hates horses, and that it tears men to pieces on sight. Griffin wings denote dismemberment, not royalty.
And the black dog was, in exactly those years, a recognised shape of the devil. In 1577 — the same year as the edition of Weyer that carries this entry — a pamphlet was printed in England about what happened in the church at Bungay: a black dog, or the devil in that likeness, which according to the account wrung the necks of two parishioners at one instant and left them dead.
A reader of that decade needed no explanation of the figure. Black dog plus the wings of the thing that tears you apart.
The earl Mathers added
The rank moved. The manuscripts and Weyer call him president, mighty or great depending on the copy. Mathers' 1904 edition writes «President and Earl», and that second title is not in the manuscripts. Almost everything published today repeats it.
Another difference: Weyer and Scot say he gives knowledge of the arts, and no more. The «in an instant» appears in the English manuscripts. And where Weyer says he gains the affection of friends and foes unconditionally, Mathers makes it conditional: «if desired».
The thirty-six legions nobody disputes. The name they do: it circulates as Caacrinolaas and Caassimolar in Weyer, Classyalabolas in Scot and Gloolas in the Folger manuscript. There is no documented etymology for any of those forms.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — ms. Sloane, ed. Peterson; Mathers, 1904
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1577 — «Glasya labolas, aliàs Caacrinolaas vel Caassimolar»
- Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584 — «the captaine of all mansleiers»
- Bestiario de Rochester, c. 1230 — el grifo
- Abraham Fleming, A Straunge and Terrible Wunder, 1577 — el perro negro de Bungay
Other presidents of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Glasya-Labolas and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Glasya-Labolas 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.