Marbas

MARBAS

Marbas, also called Barbas, is the fifth spirit of the Ars Goetia, a Great President who rules thirty-six legions. He comes first as a great lion and, at the magician’s command, puts on human shape. The grimoire gives him four offices: he answers truly of things hidden or secret, he causes diseases and cures them, he gives great wisdom and knowledge in the mechanical arts, and he changes men into other shapes. Every one of those offices crosses a boundary, between hidden and known, sick and well, raw talent and craft, one form and another, and that is the key to working with him.

Marbas at a glance

• Number: 5th of the 72 spirits of Solomon
• Rank: President
• Legions: 36
• Appearance: first a great lion, then a man
• Other spellings: Barbas
• Enn: Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Marbas (see our demonic enns page)
• Also: in the Grimorium Verum, one of the three spirits serving Lucifuge Rofocale, alongside Bael and Agares

Correspondences used by many modern magicians (these come from later zodiacal systems, not from the Goetia itself): 20 to 24 degrees of Aries, strongest April 9 to 14; a day spirit; East; Jupiter; tin; Fire; yellow or orange candle; chicory.

What the Goetia says he does

The entry in the Mathers edition is short: “He answereth truly of things Hidden or Secret. He causeth Diseases and cureth them.” It then adds the mechanical arts and the changing of shapes. Read closely, it gives four offices:

• Truthful revelation. He answers questions about concealed matters, closer to divination than to manifestation.
• Disease, in both directions. He causes illness and he removes it.
• The mechanical arts. In the sixteenth century this covered every skilled trade that needed long apprenticeship: metalwork, building, engineering, the crafts that look like magic to anyone outside them.
• Shape-changing. He can change men into other shapes, an office that mirrors his own passage from lion to man.

Many modern summaries keep only “cures disease” and quietly drop “causes disease,” turning Marbas into a gentle healer. The grimoire does no such thing. Its language works on the old logic of the pharmakon, the Greek word for both remedy and poison: whoever has mastery of a wound has mastery of its cure. That is why he is called on to heal, and why he is also called on to curse.

Where Marbas comes from

Marbas first appears in print in Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577), then in Reginald Scot’s English version of 1584, and from there in the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lemegeton, compiled in the seventeenth century. Unusually, his profile barely changes along the way: the lion that becomes a man, the thirty-six legions and the four offices are the same in all three. Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal repeats the same description for a French audience. When sources agree this closely over three centuries and two languages, you can treat the entry as his stable core. The Grimorium Verum adds a different detail, placing him under Lucifuge Rofocale, prime minister of the infernal court, with Bael and Agares.

Older versions of this page, like many websites, called him a fallen angel. The Goetia gives his rank, form, legions and offices, and no genealogy. The fallen angel label comes from Christian commentary laid over the catalogue.

Reading his offices

The lion and the man. The lion is raw sovereign power, untamed and wordless. The shift into human form at the magician’s request is that power taking on a shape that can speak and answer. Marbas has to become approachable enough to tell you what you asked.

Cause and cure. A spirit who knows how a sickness is made knows how it is unmade. In practice many magicians use Marbas first as a diagnostician, asking what is really behind an illness, a breakdown or a run of misfortune, before deciding what to do about it.

Hidden competence. The mechanical arts office makes him a patron for anyone learning a craft or a technical field: repairs, building, programming, surgery, any skill where the knowledge sits behind years of practice.

Change of form. Changing men into other shapes is read today as transformation of the body and the self, which is why people come to him about weight, appearance and the shape of their lives.

Benefits people seek from Marbas

• Healing of physical and emotional ailments, alongside, not instead of, medical care.
• Knowing the cause of a sickness, a curse or a situation before acting on it.
• Craft and technical skill, study and the completion of demanding qualifications.
• Transformation of the body, including weight loss and changes of appearance.
• Truthful answers about secret or concealed matters.
• Malediction. Called on to curse, he is said to bring sickness, setbacks and slow, grinding misfortune on an enemy, and he can equally be asked to break a curse laid on you.

Working with Marbas

The Goetia gives his seal and offices, not a modern ritual. The structure below is how we approach him.

1. Choose one office. Healing, diagnosis, craft, transformation or malediction. Write the request as one bounded sentence. “Help my health” gives him little; “show me what is causing the pain in my lower back and help it heal” gives him a task.

2. Make and consecrate the seal. Draw his seal by hand, dedicate it to that one purpose, and reuse the same copy for follow-up sessions rather than redrawing it each time. Continuity in the physical object builds the relationship. Some magicians trace the seal onto the candle itself.

3. Prepare the space. Work undisturbed with the seal at the centre of the altar, strong incense such as dragon’s blood or frankincense, and a black mirror if you scry. D. Barzai’s evocation of Marbas uses one red and one black candle, the chant Zazas Zazas Nasatanada Zazas until the energies of the Other Side are felt, and a few drops of the magician’s blood on the seal as an offering, with the call made “in the name of the Dragon.”

4. Call him. Speak his enn until the atmosphere changes. Many in our tradition first approach him through Satan or Lucifer, with a petition such as:

“Lord Satan, by your grace, grant me the power to conceive in my mind and to carry out that which I desire, the end I would reach by your help. I ask you to move Marbas, Great President, 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.”

5. State the request and the terms. Name the office you are calling on, ask your question or make your request plainly, and say what you will give in return. If he gives something, he wants something in exchange, and that is to be agreed during the working. Wine or dark liquor, incense, blood, and objects tied to a craft (a small tool, a coin) are common offerings.

6. Close properly. Thank him, give the offering you promised, and dismiss him with respect.

7. Record and review. Write down the request, the date and any impressions or dreams in the following days. If the first session brings partial insight, a short follow-up that sharpens the question usually does better than repeating the same request.

A word of warning from those who use him for malediction: be certain you want the result before you begin. Marbas’s curses are described as thorough, and the effects can be unexpected and hard to reverse.

What magicians and clients report

D. Barzai describes him arriving without delay, with a guttural voice, a human body, a lion’s head, fiery eyes and serpents rising from his back, and making his presence known by noises and creaks around the altar. Reports gathered by Black Witch Coven over the years include:

• August 2019, four weeks after a pact with Marbas: a client reported that her anxiety had dropped enough for her to ride the Tube again, something that had previously overwhelmed her, and that her periods had become regular for the first time in her life.
• 2020, praise candle: a client asked for Marbas’s favour for men’s weight loss, citing his office of changing the shapes of men.
• December 2021, medical student: “Grand President Marbas gave me strength and I finished all my assessments and completed the Master of Public Health.”

Black Witch Coven’s view

We read Marbas as a spirit of thresholds. Hidden and revealed, sick and well, unskilled and skilled, one shape and another: his whole entry is about crossing over. That makes him an excellent first step in a larger working. Ask him what is really going on, then act, with him or with another spirit, on what he shows you. And do not forget the half of his office that modern writers skip. A spirit who can cure can also cause, and he deserves the respect that goes with that.

If you would rather have the working done for you, see our VIP spell casting for health, our healing spells, and the rest of our daemonic spell casting. As with all magick, results are never guaranteed.

Similar spirits

• Buer: heals all distempers and teaches the virtues of herbs
• Bathin: knows the virtues of herbs and precious stones
• Morax: astronomy and the virtues of herbs and stones
• Lucifuge Rofocale: the infernal prime minister Marbas serves in the Grimorium Verum
• Agares and Baal: the other two spirits under Lucifuge

Sources

The Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia), ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1904)	“The fifth Spirit is Marbas. He is a Great President, and appeareth at first in the form of a Great Lion, but afterwards, at the request of the Master, he putteth on Human Shape…”
Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon, Mathers and Crowley, ed. Hymenaeus Beta	“He causeth Diseases and cureth them. Again, he giveth great Wisdom and Knowledge in Mechanical Arts; and can change men into other shapes. He governeth 36 Legions of Spirits.”
D. Barzai, on evoking Marbas	Black mirror evocation with red and black candles, dragon’s blood incense, a blood offering on the seal and the call “in the name of the Dragon.”

• Weyer, Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Esoteric Archives
• Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernal (scan)
• Grimorium Verum: A Handbook of Black Magic
• Marbas, Occult World
• Marbas: Goetia Demon No. 5, Crazy Alchemist