Dantalion

DANTALION

Dantalion is the seventy-first spirit of the Ars Goetia, a Great and Mighty Duke who rules thirty-six legions. He appears with the faces of many men and women, holding a book in his right hand. He teaches all arts and sciences, gives secret counsel, knows the thoughts of every man and woman and can change them at his will. He causes love, and he can show you the likeness of any person, wherever in the world they are. For a magician, he is the spirit of the mind: of knowing what others think, of changing what they feel, and of reaching someone across any distance.

Dantalion at a glance

• Number: 71st of the 72 spirits of Solomon
• Rank: Great and Mighty Duke
• Legions: 36
• Appearance: a robed figure with many faces of men and women, carrying a book in his right hand
• Other spellings: Dantalian
• Enn: Avage ayer Dantalion on ca (Ah-vah-jay ah-yer Dan-tah-lee-on on ka). See our demonic enns page.

Correspondences used by many modern magicians (these come from later zodiacal systems, not from the Goetia itself): 20–24 degrees of Pisces, strongest March 11–15; Ten of Cups; Mars and Pluto; purple candle; honeysuckle; iron; Water. He is counted among the night spirits.

What the Goetia says he does

• He teaches all arts and sciences, and gives secret counsel to anyone who asks.
• He knows the thoughts of all men and women, and can change them at his will.
• He causes love.
• He shows the likeness of any person in a vision, let them be in what part of the world they will.

Read together, these offices describe one power: reach into the mind. He sees what someone thinks, he can turn it, and distance is no obstacle to him. His many faces say the same thing in image. He wears every face because he knows what is behind every face. The book in his right hand is usually read as the record of that knowledge; some in the tradition read it as his own pact with humanity.

Where Dantalion comes from

Dantalion is one of the few Goetic spirits with no entry in Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577). He enters the record with the Ars Goetia, the first book of the seventeenth-century Lemegeton, alongside Vassago, Seere and Andromalius, the spirits that bring Weyer’s sixty-nine up to the familiar seventy-two. So there is no older layer to strip away: the Goetia entry is his core profile. Later works, including Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal, repeat the robed, many-faced figure with his book.

The Goetia presents all seventy-two as spirits Solomon compelled and bound in a brass vessel. Our experience is different: Dantalion responds to respect, clarity and a magician who stands in their own power far better than to threats.

Benefits people seek from Dantalion

• Love and attraction: turning a cold, distant or undecided person’s feelings.
• Knowing what someone really thinks: a partner, a rival, a business contact.
• Influence and persuasion in negotiations, reconciliations and decisions.
• Reaching someone far away, in vision or in influence.
• Learning: his office of the arts and sciences makes him a strong ally for study, writing and mastery of a craft.
• Altered states and visionary work, guided by a spirit who knows the mind from the inside.

Working with Dantalion

1. Be exact about the mind you are working on. Dantalion works on thought. Write down whose mind, what it thinks now, and what you want it to think or feel instead. A photograph, handwriting or personal effects of the person help him find them.

2. Build contact through the seal. Draw his seal by hand and spend a few minutes with it daily for a week or two before the formal call.

3. Prepare the space. Work undisturbed. A purple candle is his; love workings often add a red or pink candle for the target. Estoraque oil, incense and red wine are offerings we have used with him.

4. Call him. Chant his enn rhythmically while holding the image of the robed, many-faced figure with his book. Many in our tradition first ask Satan or Lucifer to move him to come:

“Lord Satan, by your grace, grant me the power to conceive in my mind and to carry out that which I desire. I ask you to move Dantalion to come before me, that he may give me a true and faithful answer and help me reach my desired end, provided it is proper to his office. This I ask in your name, Lord Satan.”

Then address him directly, for example: “O Dantalion, great duke, knower of every mind, I call upon you to reveal what is hidden in the heart of [name], and to turn their thoughts as I ask.”

5. Do the work. State the petition, give the offering, and hold the change in your mind’s eye: the person’s thoughts softening, turning, or opening to you. Anchor it with a candle burned over several days.

6. Close properly. Thank him, dismiss him with respect, and keep any promise you made.

7. Command the room. Many spirits gather when this kind of work is done. As Savannah puts it below, you either command or are commanded.

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Dantalion Love Spell

By Savannah

During my 2021 Visit back to Haiti, we were able to do a rite that involved “zombie” like effects on the target.  While we were working this ritual in a cemetery and to Baron Samedi, the modified version you can try is with Dantalion and a wax doll of the target.

In the preparation work you create a doll of the target that looks exactly like the target and make some of the personal effects of that target. In your mind you’re creating their exact image, and you also need to see this person in a zombie like state where you, as a person with the power ,is going to reanimate their body for your own purposes.

(As I do not give the exact details of the ritual on an open Internet page where people can misinterpret or judge or have us judged on this content, I will tell you some information for your consideration. Baron Samedi is a dark spirit and is considered a voodoo God of the dead. But many of the gods across the cultures are exactly the same individual, but each culture gives that God it’s own identity. Still when I’m working in Haiti we use the exact terminology that’s appropriate for the culture where I am performing the ritual.)

What you need to do first is call forward the dark spirit. For us, it could be Satan. Then you would call forward Dantalion. Then you see yourself walking into their tomb. You offer your blood to Bring their zombie like body back into existence. You then cast the spell onto the doll before throwing the doll into the hot pot.

As you watch the wax doll burn you could say something like: “in the name of let Satan/Lucifer, And the four Demons of the paths (name your gatekeepers), I humbly request the Demon Dantalion hear my call and request. 

Looking at the doll you then say

“I do order you (persons name), arise and obey me. Obey me!”

Then you program the person to what you need them to be.

Just to be frank if you don’t believe and this isn’t going to work for you. You need to be powerful and stand in your own power in order to conduct such a ritual.

I’m giving you an alternative here but you have to be able to imagine what it is like to actually be in a tomb where you  are commanding something that is dead to come alive. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted but this is what true magic is in my opinion.

Taking this step further, there are many other Demons present while you’re performing the spells. The spirits are waiting for action, and that’s not because you are powerful that’s just because they want to feed off the energy that you’re providing them. This is why you have to command the room where you’re performing the magic. You can either command or be commanded. That is the law.

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How it looks in practice

These are illustrations drawn from common situations, not client cases.

• The distant friend. Sarah has loved a close friend for years, and he treats her like a sister. On a full moon she burns a red candle and a black candle dressed with Estoraque oil over his photograph and a petition that he sees her with love and desire, calls Dantalion with his enn, offers red wine and lets the red candle burn over five days.
• The hesitant partner. Liam wants his partner of three years to say yes to marriage, but she is held back by old fears. On a waxing moon he works with a pink candle and Dantalion’s seal, asks the duke to ease her fears and turn her thoughts toward their future, offers frankincense and a silver coin, and buries the petition to ground it.

A client’s story

Black Witch Coven’s view

Dantalion is the spirit of the mind, and the mind is where every outcome begins. He does not need a body in front of him or a person in the same country; he goes where thought goes. That is why he is so effective in love and influence work, and why he asks so much of the magician. You must know exactly what you want changed, you must be able to hold it in your imagination, and you must stand in your own power while you do it.

If you would rather have the working done for you, see our Daemonic Magick for Love & Marriage and the rest of our daemonic spell casting. As with all magick, results are never guaranteed.

Similar spirits

• Vassago: finds hidden and lost things, and tells of past and future
• Gaap: causes love or hatred
• Paimon: teaches all arts and sciences and secret things
• Sitri: inflames men and women with love for each other
• Zepar: causes women to love men
• Eligor: procures the favour of lords and great persons
• Beleth: causes all the love that may be, between men and women
• Amon: reconciles friends and foes and procures love
• Asmodeus: lust, and the breaking or making of unions

Sources

The Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia), ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1904)	“The Seventy-first Spirit is Dantalion. He is a Duke Great and Mighty, appearing in the Form of a Man with many Countenances, all Men’s and Women’s Faces; and he hath a Book in his right hand…”
Dictionnaire Infernal, Collin de Plancy (1863)	Dantalion depicted as a robed, hooded figure with many faces.
Lon Milo DuQuette, The Key to Solomon’s Key (2010)	The 71st of the 72 spirits, a great and mighty duke ruling 36 legions.

• The Lesser Key of Solomon, Project Gutenberg
• Goetic enn pronunciation guide