Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Ars Goetia / Sallos
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Sallos
Saleos, Zaleos
- Rank
- Duke
- Planet
- ♀Venus
- Legions
- 30
Sallos, also Saleos or Zaleos, carries no identifiable historical antecedent: the name circulates in Renaissance demonological lists without any clear genealogy, and the text does not invent one for him. The manuscript ranks him a Great Duke, a grade associated with Venus, commanding thirty legions, a middling figure within the catalogue. His function is single and narrow: to procure love between men and women. The operator asked him for no treasures and no sciences, only for particular unions, which is why his entry is among the briefest in the book. The text insists on his peaceable character, a rarity where nearly every spirit demands coercion.
What he was asked for
He has a single office, to procure love between men and women, and it was a request the law pursued. The English Witchcraft Act of 1542 expressly forbids using invocations or conjurations of spirits to «provoke any person to unlawful love». That is not a decorative phrase: somebody drafted that offence because the commission existed.
And it existed at scale. In the records of the Venetian Inquisition between 1550 and 1650, love magic is the single most frequent charge, and the clientele is largely female. Behind it was what was behind it: arranged marriages, dowries, fear of abandonment, and an impotence believed to be caused by spellwork.
The demon of love rides deceit
He arrives as a gallant soldier with a ducal crown, and the manuscript insists he comes peaceably. But he comes riding a crocodile, and in 1600 the crocodile had a fixed meaning: it was the animal of false weeping. The bestiaries said it wept while devouring its prey — hence «crocodile tears» — and Edward Topsell's natural history of 1608 gives two readings, both bad: it weeps to draw a man within reach of its jaws, or it weeps a repentance it does not feel.
Nobody in the text remarks on the irony, but there it is: the spirit you ask to make someone love you shows up peaceably, on the back of the beast that pretends.
Where the sources disagree
The rank drops a step depending on the source: Weyer, in 1577, makes him an earl, and the Lemegeton a duke. The odd thing is that Weyer contradicts himself, since his earl is wearing a duke's crown.
Stronger still: in Weyer and in its English translation of 1584, the entry does not mention love at all. It ends at «peaceable, etc.», and stops there. The whole role of demon of love — the only one he has today — is added by the Lemegeton. Nor does it give a legion count; the thirty appear later.
And he moves: sixty-fourth on Weyer's list, nineteenth in the Lemegeton.
Sources
- Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis · Ars Goetia — ms. Sloane 2731 y edición Mathers, 1904
- Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, 1577 — «Saleos is a great earle»
- Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584
- Witchcraft Act, 1542 (33 Hen. VIII c. 8)
- Edward Topsell, The Historie of Serpents, 1608 — las lágrimas del cocodrilo
- Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550-1650, 1989
- Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions, 1993
Other dukes of the Goetia
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Sallos and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Sallos 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.