Asmodeus

ASMODEUS

He is a Great King, Strong and Powerful.

– The Lesser Key of Solomon, the thirty-second spirit

Who Asmodeus is to practitioners today

Asmodeus is the King of desire and the breaker of bonds: the thirty-second spirit of the Goetia, called Asmoday, and for the people who work with him today the spirit of lust, separation, hidden truth and raw personal power.

At Black Witch Coven we mainly work with him for break-ups. Splitting a couple, ending a marriage and drawing a partner away from a rival are his oldest work, and they are still what most people bring to him.

He is also called for the opposite fire: rekindling a partner’s desire, raising sexual magnetism, and owning appetites that someone else taught you to be ashamed of.

Practitioners describe him as hot, direct and proud. He is a King, and he expects to be met standing.

This page starts with how people work with him now, the prayers they use and the questions they ask, and ends with what the old books say.

Why people work with Asmodeus

People search for the right spirit for the right purpose. These are the reasons practitioners come to Asmodeus, from the oldest and best-known to what people ask him for today.

Classic reasons

• Breaking bonds: preventing a marriage, parting husband and wife, wrecking a new union
• Lust: stirring desire, driving a partner to want you
• True answers: “true and full answers” to every demand, in the Goetia’s words
• Knowledge and craft: arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and all handicrafts
• Treasure: showing where treasure lies, and guarding it
• Invisibility: moving unseen
• The Ring of Virtues: his gift in the Goetia

Modern reasons

• Break-up workings: separating a couple, or a partner from a third person
• Rekindling desire: bringing heat back into a long relationship
• Sexual confidence: magnetism, allure and the nerve to act on it
• Exposing cheating: bringing lies, affairs and secrets into the open
• Reading people: knowing what others think and want before they say it
• Owning appetite: pleasure, indulgence and desire without shame
• Domination and leadership: mastery over your own desire and other people’s
• Technical skill: maths, engineering, building and the hands-on trades
• Gambling and luck at the table: as overseer of hell’s gambling houses
• Hidden money: finding resources and opportunities others miss

Traditional, for reference

What the old texts and demonologies assign him. This is historical background, not modern practice.

• Book of Tobit: the jealous spirit who killed Sarah’s seven husbands on their wedding nights
• Talmud (Gittin 68): Ashmedai, king of the shedim, captured to help build the Temple, who later took Solomon’s throne
• Testament of Solomon: the spirit who plots against the newly wed and is thwarted by Raphael and the smoke of a fish
• Ars Goetia: thirty-second spirit, a great King under Amaymon, ruling seventy-two legions
• Peter Binsfeld (1589): the demon of lust among the seven princes of the sins
• Collin de Plancy: superintendent of the gambling houses of hell

Asmodeus at a glance

• Number: 32nd of the 72 spirits of Solomon
• Rank: King, “first and choicest” under the power of Amaymon; often called King of the Demons
• Legions: 72
• Appearance: three heads (bull, man and ram), a serpent’s tail, webbed feet like a goose, flames issuing from his mouth; he sits on an infernal dragon and carries a lance with a banner
• Other spellings: Asmoday, Asmodai, Ashmedai, Sidonay
• Name: most likely from the Avestan aeshma, “wrath”
• Consort: a Lilith, often the “lesser” or younger Lilith, in later Jewish folklore
• Enn: Ayer avage aloren Asmodeus aken (some use Ayer avage secore Asmoday aken; see our demonic enns page)

Correspondences

Used by many modern magicians (from later systems, not the Goetia itself):

• Element: Fire
• Planet: the Sun or Mars, depending on the system
• Direction: East
• Metal: Gold or iron
• Tarot: The Devil
• Day or night: usually treated as a day spirit
• Candle colors: red for desire, black for separation, gold for his kingship
• Incense: dragon’s blood and frankincense; bitter myrrh for separation work
• Offerings he receives well: red wine, cigar smoke, coins, rose petals, iron

Working with Asmodeus today

The Goetia gives Asmoday unusually exact terms, and they still shape how people meet him. What follows is how practitioners work with him now, and how we approach him in Black Witch Coven.

Stand, bareheaded

The grimoire says the operator should stand on his feet the whole time with his cap or headdress off. If it stays on, Amaymon will deceive him and all his actions will be betrayed.

Practitioners still follow this. They work standing, head bare, and say the contact feels cleaner for it.

Name him

The Goetia says to ask, “Art thou Asmoday?” He will not deny it, and he will bow down to the ground.

Many open every working this way. It sets the tone: he is answering you.

Know which Asmodeus you are calling

The breaker of marriages, the lord of desire, the teacher of crafts and the revealer of treasure are all him. Practitioners who name one face, in specific and limited terms, describe sharper results than those who ask for everything.

Write the petition beforehand. Decide in advance what you will offer and what you will not.

Build contact through the sigil

• Light one red candle and set his sigil before you
• Gaze softly and repeat the enn
• Let the sigil glow, shimmer or move
• Visualise him: regal, three-faced, a presence of fire and heat
• Share your desire, listen, and record what comes
• Repeat for days or weeks before a formal call

The temple

• A black or red altar cloth
• Three red candles, one black and one gold
• Dragon’s blood or frankincense, burning generously
• His sigil drawn in black or gold ink
• A dark mirror, which our conjuration uses
• A triangle of ash or soot in front of the altar, the sigil inside, to give him a place to appear
• Your offering

Offerings

• Red wine: poured into the earth after the rite
• Smoke: cigar, dragon’s blood, frankincense
• Coins and gold: for the King and the revealer of treasure
• Iron: a nail for his lance, buried after the working
• Rose petals: for desire work
• Blood: a drop of your own blood on his sigil or in the wine

Offerings promised and not delivered are the most common reason people give for losing his attention.

The Black Witch Coven conjuration

Chant the enn until the atmosphere shifts, then speak the conjuration in a loud voice, three times:

“Come forth! Oh great demon, hear my plea. I call thee up by the power of Lucifer and by thine own most secret name. By thine own glyph inscribed with thy name I summon thee. Appear now that I may have council with thee. I conjure thee, ancient demon, without fear and trembling. I am not afraid as I stand within my temple of darkness. Come forth and manifest thyself in the dark glass which is prepared for thee. Show thyself! Oh ancient demon, I summon thee. Appear unto me now in a form that is not unpleasant so that I may gaze upon thee. Come thou, without delay, from wherever in thy world thou mayest be. Come and answer all questions truthfully in a voice which is clear and understandable.”

Seeing nothing is common. More often the spirit is there and the practitioner is not yet sensing him.

The request

Ask, as the Goetia does, “Art thou Asmoday?” Then, firmly:

“Great King Asmoday, I call upon you with respect and clarity. I seek your aid in [your purpose]. I offer you [your offering] in exchange for your aid.”

Wait, and stay open to visions, sensations or a voice in your mind.

Closing

“I release you, King Asmoday, with gratitude. Go in peace, and return when called.”

Snuff the candles. Pour the wine into the earth and bury what should be buried.

Timing

• Noon: the hour our coven chose for desire work, when the Sun is strongest
• Tuesday: the day of Mars, for separation and domination
• Sunday: the day of the Sun, for his kingship and treasure
• The waning Moon: for break-ups and ending bonds
• The waxing Moon: for drawing desire in

Signs of contact

• Heat: the room or your body warming suddenly
• Arousal: an unprompted wave of desire during or after the rite
• Three faces: bull, man and ram glimpsed in the mirror, the smoke or the triangle
• Secrets surfacing: messages, confessions or discoveries in the days after
• Jealousy and possessiveness: in the people the working touches
• Arguments and cold silences: between the couple a separation is aimed at

Keep a journal

Record dreams, ideas, changes in circumstances and anything that comes to light in the weeks afterwards. With Asmodeus the result often arrives as a revelation first.

Pacts

Asmodeus is a natural King for a bargain, and many practitioners make one with him for a lasting desire or separation goal. A typical modern agreement:

• Is written by the practitioner
• Names one clear goal and the people it concerns
• Sets a term
• States the exchange: regular offerings, public acknowledgment, a discipline kept
• Is signed in ink beside his sigil, and may be sealed with a single drop of your own blood
• Is read aloud standing, bareheaded, and kept on the altar until the term ends

If you would like a pact made with an experienced guide, see our Demonic Pact with Savannah.

Prayers and invocations to Asmodeus

Asmodeus is a King of fire, so most people pray to him standing, bareheaded, in a strong voice. The prayers below are Black Witch Coven’s. Speak them as they are, or use them as a shape for your own words.

How people pray to him

• Standing and bareheaded: as the Goetia commands
• Loud and certain: a confident voice rather than a whisper
• Facing East: his direction in many modern systems
• Before the dark mirror: with the sigil in the triangle
• Candle colors: red for desire, black for separation, gold for honour
• Repetition: a short prayer each night for the length of a working

Prayer and petition

A prayer keeps the relationship: honour given with nothing attached. A petition names a goal, the people it concerns, and the offering, and is placed under his sigil. Practitioners who honour him between workings say their petitions land harder.

His enn

Ayer avage aloren Asmodeus aken

Chant it until the room warms and the air thickens. Some alternate it with Ayer avage secore Asmoday aken.

Opening invocation for ritual

Asmoday, great King, strong and powerful,
first and choicest under Amaymon,
three-crowned, riding the dragon of hell,
I stand before you bareheaded and unafraid.
Come to this temple and this glass.
Art thou Asmoday?
Then hear me, King, and answer.

Prayer for desire

Asmodeus, fire of every bed,
lord of the want that cannot be hidden,
set your flame in me.
Let me be wanted, and let me want without shame.
I give you this wine and this smoke,
and my thanks when it is done.

Prayer for breaking a bond

Asmoday, breaker of bonds,
you who stood in Sarah’s bridal chamber,
break what holds me where I do not want to be.
Let the tie crack and fall.
Let me walk out of it whole.
This I ask of you, King, and this I pay.

Prayer for the truth

Asmoday, giver of true and full answers,
who laughed at the hidden things in Solomon’s court,
show me what is kept from me.
Bring the lie into the light,
and let me see it plainly.

In honour of Asmodeus

This prayer has been part of our page for years:

Almighty Lucifer, mighty Asmodeus, thy great teacher, thou doth honour thee! Asmodeus, thy pearls of wisdom shine as bright as the stars in the night sky. With this His chosen shall never die by ignorance, but with dignity, truth and knowledge. Asmodeus, King of Demons, shine your divine wisdom on those who wish to seek His infernal love and those deserving of it. May you both hear our pleas as we strive on our quest to raise our Golden Serpents and become as a God. May we be your guests at a summoning to hear this infernal, everlasting knowledge. O great Asmodeus, may your name be honoured for eternity. So be it.

Closing and release

King Asmoday, I thank you.
Your fire is sown and your offering given.
Go in peace to your place,
and return when called.

Questions people actually ask

These are the questions that come up again and again in Goetic, demonolatry and Left Hand Path communities, answered the way we would answer them.

Is Asmodeus dangerous?

He is not gentle, and he is not meant to be. The old books say he tries to deceive or overpower a magician who comes to him weak. Practitioners who meet him standing, clear and unafraid describe a powerful ally. Those who come hesitant describe confusion and a working that spreads wider than they intended.

Is he good for beginners?

He is not usually a first spirit. Most people who work with him well have some practice behind them and the confidence to give a King orders. Those who feel drawn to him early often begin with weeks of sigil meditation before a formal call.

Can he really break up a couple?

It is his oldest work. Tobit makes him the spirit who stood between Sarah and seven husbands, and medieval writers blamed him for every broken marriage bed. Break-up workings are the most common thing we bring to him, and they are among the results practitioners report most often.

Will the break-up last?

Practitioners who pair the separation with a working to draw the person to themselves, or who keep honouring him after the result, describe longer-lasting outcomes. Many treat the break-up as the first half of the work.

Why the bareheaded rule?

The Goetia says that if the operator keeps his cap on, Amaymon will deceive him and his actions will be betrayed. Some read it as a mark of respect to a King, some as a sign of the operator’s own sovereignty. Either way it is in the text, and people still keep it.

Is he the same as Ashmedai?

The Ashmedai of the Talmud, the Asmodeus of Tobit and the Asmoday of the Goetia are the same name moving through three traditions. Each layer adds something: the jealous killer of bridegrooms, the captive builder and usurping king, then the Goetic King with three heads.

Is Asmodeus only about lust?

Lust is the reputation. The Goetia gives him arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, handicrafts, true answers, invisibility and treasure. Many practitioners work with him for skill and revelation and never touch the desire work at all.

Is Asmodeus male or female?

Most texts and most practitioners know him as male. One strand of folklore gives Asmodeus a female form as the beautiful sister of Tubal-Cain, and a few people meet that face. The Goetic image is the working image for most.

What is his connection to Lilith?

Later Jewish folklore pairs him with a Lilith, usually the younger or “lesser” Lilith, as his queen, while the elder Lilith is paired with Samael. Practitioners often work the two together for desire and sex magick.

Do I need to give him blood?

No offering is required above all others. A drop of your own blood on his sigil or in the wine is one offering among many, and practitioners who give it describe the bond as more physical. Wine, smoke, coins and iron are just as much a part of his altar.

The working went further than I asked. Why?

He breaks bonds, and he does not always stop at the one named. Practitioners report jealousy, secrets and quarrels spreading to people around the target. Precise, limited wording is the most common way people describe keeping the work aimed.

What works, what doesn’t

These patterns come from practitioner accounts and our own coven. None of it is a rule, and accounts sometimes contradict each other.

What practitioners report works

• Standing bareheaded. Following the Goetia’s own terms.
• Naming him. “Art thou Asmoday?” before anything else.
• One face, one goal. Separation, or desire, or knowledge, but not all three at once.
• Precise wording. Naming exactly who and what the working concerns.
• Weeks of sigil contact before a formal call.
• Paying what was promised, when it was promised.

What practitioners report working less well

• Hesitation. A doubtful voice tends to bring a confused result.
• Vague petitions. “Make them break up” without naming the bond or the outcome.
• Treating him as a servant. He is a King under Amaymon, not a familiar.
• Forgetting the offering. His attention drops fast.
• Ignoring the side effects. Jealousy and possessiveness in the target are commonly reported and worth planning for.

What people report from their first months

• Calling him for a break-up with no prior contact
• Working seated, or with the head covered
• Asking for desire and separation in the same rite
• Mistaking heat and arousal during the rite for something gone wrong
• Reading early silence as refusal

What changed when they kept going

People who stay with Asmodeus describe becoming harder to lie to. They notice what others want, they stop apologising for what they want, and they act on it. Many say his fire stopped feeling dangerous and started feeling like their own.

The darker work: separation and binding desire

Asmodeus’s oldest offices are the breaking of marriages and the stirring of lust in a particular person. That is the darker side of his work, and it is most of what people bring him.

Separation

Break-up workings with Asmodeus name the couple, the bond to be broken, and often the person meant to be left standing. Practitioners describe cold beds, sharp words, a third party exposed, and a split that seems to come from nowhere.

Binding desire

The other half is drawing one named person to burn for you, and for no one else. Our case below is one of these.

From our files: rekindling a partner’s lust

Isabella M. came to us in late 2024. Her partner of three years, Javier, had grown distant after a promotion pulled him into a new social circle, and she suspected another woman.

“I want him to burn for me again,” she wrote, “like he can’t breathe without me.” We chose Asmodeus for his fire and his power over hidden truths.

The ritual was performed at noon. Within days Javier came home “like a man starved”.

He later confessed a coworker had been flirting with him and that after the ritual “she felt like nothing”. In December he proposed.

One side effect: his jealousy spiked. Isabella welcomed it. “It’s like he’s possessed, but I love it.”

What the old texts say

The modern practice above is the living part of Asmodeus’s work. The old books are its background.

The name

The name most likely descends from the Avestan aeshma, “wrath”, the Zoroastrian demon Aeshma-daeva; Jewish communities lived under Persian rule for generations.

Some also link it to the Hebrew root shamad, “to destroy”. A shared name is not a shared job: Aeshma is a demon of fury, and the Jewish Asmodeus grew into a demon of lust and marital ruin.

The Book of Tobit

Tobit (around the second century BCE) is his first appearance. Sarah, daughter of Raguel, has been married seven times, and each husband died in the bridal chamber before the marriage was consummated, killed by the jealous spirit.

Guided by the archangel Raphael, Tobias burns the heart and liver of a fish on the wedding night. The smoke drives Asmodeus out, and Raphael binds him in the far reaches of Egypt.

Tobit never calls him a spirit of lust. He is jealous of the marriage bed and lethal to husbands, and later readers filled in the rest.

The Talmud

Gittin 68 makes him Ashmedai, king of the shedim. Solomon needs the shamir, which cuts stone without iron, to build the Temple, and his servant Benaiah captures Ashmedai by getting him drunk and chaining him.

In captivity he weeps at a wedding, laughs at a man ordering shoes to last seven years, and exposes hidden truths about those around him.

Later he tricks Solomon out of his ring, flings him far from Jerusalem and rules in his place while the king wanders as a beggar. He builds and he dethrones: power more than simple malice.

The Testament of Solomon

Here he is summoned by the ring Michael gave Solomon. He confesses what thwarts him, Raphael and the smoke of the fish, is set to work on the Temple, and prophesies that Solomon’s kingdom will be divided.

Its format of name, function and what constrains the spirit is the template every later grimoire follows.

Islamic commentary tells a parallel story of a jinn, often called Sakhr, who steals Solomon’s ring and sits on his throne. It is a related tale, not simply Asmodeus renamed.

The Ars Goetia and Weyer

The Ars Goetia gives Asmoday one of its longest entries, and it is unusual because it includes instructions: work abroad, stand the whole time, take the headdress off, and ask, “Art thou Asmoday?”

His offices are the Ring of Virtues; arithmetic, astronomy, geometry and all handicrafts; true and full answers; invisibility; and the place where treasure lies, which he also guards.

Weyer, who lists him as “Sidonay, alias Asmoday”, gives the same picture and the same instruction about the headdress. Tradition adds that if he is not properly constrained he will try to deceive or overpower the magician.

Later folklore and demonology

Later Jewish folklore places him among the Seraphim before his fall, calls him the son of Naamah and Shamdon, and pairs him with a Lilith as his queen.

Christian demonology fixed the lust. Peter Binsfeld’s scheme of 1589 made him the demon of that sin, and medieval writers blamed him for unfaithful husbands, plots against the newly wed and the wasting of virgins.

He was named among the demons in the Louviers possessions of the 1640s, and Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal calls him superintendent of the gambling houses of hell.

The eighteenth-century traveller Paul Lucas reported that Egyptians still revered a serpent called Asmodeus in the desert, which cut itself to pieces and was immediately whole again.

Literature took him further, from the “fishy fume” in Milton’s Paradise Lost to Le Sage’s limping devil, and modern fantasy games now make him a lawful, contract-driven lord of hell.

The figure of Asmodeus holding up the holy water stoup at Rennes-le-Chateau.

How his image varies

The Goetia gives bull, man and ram heads with a goose’s webbed feet.

Other descriptions give the heads of an ogre, a ram and a bull, all licentious creatures, with the feet of a cock, wings and a serpent’s tail. Some show him as an ugly man with great wings.

In one strand of folklore Asmodeus has a female form, the beautiful sister of Tubal-Cain. Most practitioners take the Goetic description as the working image and the others as later layers.

Black Witch Coven’s view

Asmodeus has been a killer of bridegrooms, a captive builder, a usurping king, a demon of lust and a lord of contracts, and every one of those faces is still him. Choose which you are calling, and know why. For us he is above all the breaker of bonds and the kindler of desire, and he answers best to someone who stands before him bareheaded, unafraid and precise. He is not gentle, and he is not meant to be.

Work with Asmodeus through Black Witch Coven

• Asmoday Oil: for your own altar and sigil work
• Goetia Kings Oleums: oils for the Goetic Kings
• Black Magick Break Up Ritual: if you would rather have the separation working done for you
• Break Up Oil: separation oil for your own work
• Daemonic Magick for Love and Marriage: for desire and bonding work
• Candle for Demonic Request: a petition to Asmodeus burned on our altar for you
• Monthly Demonic Praise Subscription: ongoing devotion on your behalf
• Demonic Pact with Savannah or a Demonic Pact with a Junior Coven Member: for a pact
• Daemonic spell casting: the rest of our demon workings

As with all magick, results are never guaranteed.

Further reading: Demonolatry; Preparations for spell working.

Related spirits

• Lilith: his queen in later Jewish folklore, and his partner in desire work
• Astaroth: a fellow sub-prince of Abramelin, and a teacher of the sciences
• Belial: a powerful King, often worked with alongside Asmodeus
• Paimon: another Goetic King, and a fellow sub-prince of Abramelin
• Sitri: inflames love and lust, reveals secrets
• Beleth: a King who causes love
• Balam: a three-headed King who makes men invisible and gives true answers

Sources

Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Johann Weyer (1577)	“Sidonay, alias Asmoday, a great king, strong and mightie…”
The Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia), ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1904)	“The Thirty-second Spirit is Asmoday, or Asmodai. He is a Great King, Strong and Powerful…”
Book of Tobit, chapters 3 and 6 to 8	Asmodeus kills Sarah’s seven husbands and is driven off by the smoke of the fish’s heart and liver.
Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 68a–b	Ashmedai, the shamir, and Solomon’s lost throne
The Testament of Solomon	Asmodeus confesses that Raphael and the smoke of the fish thwart him
Peter Binsfeld, Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum (1589)	Asmodeus as the demon of lust
Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal	Superintendent of the gambling houses of hell

• The Lesser Key of Solomon, Project Gutenberg
• Asmodeus, Wikipedia
• Asmodai, New World Encyclopedia
• Asmodeus: overview, legend and symbol, Study.com