A seventeenth-century manuscript shows a figure with three faces: the front a bearded man, the left a cat, the right a toad. The drawing is small, cramped into the margin of what later became known as the Lemegeton or the Lesser Key of Solomon. Bael, the first king of Hell in the Ars Goetia, is the only spirit in the list whose image appears so consistently in the early sources. Painting him is not a decorative exercise. It is a ritual act grounded in a specific visual tradition that has survived across four centuries of grimoire transmission.
Where the Image of Bael Comes From
The earliest known depiction of Bael appears in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1583) by Johann Weyer, a German physician and student of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Weyer’s work catalogued seventy-two spirits and gave each a description. Bael is described as appearing with three heads: a man, a cat, and a toad. The same text says Bael speaks with a hoarse voice and teaches the art of invisibility.
When the Lemegeton was compiled in the mid-1600s (manuscript copies date from the 1640s), Bael’s image was solidified. The grimoire artists drew him seated on a throne, crowned, with the three heads arranged in a row or triangle. The cat head always faces left, the toad right, the man in the center. This is not a random arrangement. The medieval bestiary tradition assigned symbolic roles to each animal: the cat for independence and the crossing of boundaries, the toad for transformation and the hidden earth, the man for intellect and kingship.
A human consequence follows from this history. The painter who works on Bael today does so inside a lineage that connects Weyer’s Latin text to the English manuscript copies, to the printed edition by S.L. MacGregor Mathers (1904), and to the modern renderings by Aleister Crowley in The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King. Each generation added something. Crowley changed the toad to a serpent in some descriptions, but the manuscript tradition kept the toad. Most practitioners prefer the older three-animal triune.
What the Three Heads of Bael Symbolize
Symbolism is not an add-on in Goetic portraiture. It is the reason the image exists at all. Bael’s three heads represent three domains of awareness. The man’s head gazes forward: rational consciousness, verbal command, the visible world. The cat’s head turns away: nocturnal vision, stealth, the liminal space between domestic and wild. The toad’s head crouches low: chthonic knowledge, death and rebirth, the earth that holds both seeds and bones.
In Renaissance demonology, spirits were often depicted with multiple faces to signify omniscience or multiple aspects. Bael’s three-headed form specifically echoes the triadic structures found elsewhere in the occult tradition: the three principles of alchemy (sulfur, mercury, salt), the three worlds of the Kabbalah, the three phases of the moon. But Bael’s heads are not abstract symbols. Each one is a specific animal with its own folklore.
The cat head is often painted yellow-eyed, because period manuals described the cat as “watching in the dark.” The toad’s skin is greenish-black, associated with venom and medicine. The man’s face is pale or bearded, sometimes crowned with a diadem. The colors that recur across the historical sources are black for the background, red for the throne or robe, gold for the crown. These three colors alone set the temperature of the painting. Black absorbs, red asserts, gold governs.
A painter we know once said that the hardest part is the toad. “Everyone gets the man and the cat right. The toad is the one that tells you if you have understood the spirit.” That is because the toad is the least familiar. It is not a regal animal. It does not sit well on a throne. But the tradition insists. So the painter studies the toad as a real creature, not a symbol, and places its heavy body with the dignity it holds in the grimoires.
How to Paint Bael: Materials and Method
The Ars Goetia is a working system, not a museum collection. Bael’s image is painted for a purpose. In the grimoires, the spirit’s seal is the primary focus for evocation. But the portrait serves as a secondary anchor. It is painted on parchment or canvas, consecrated with the same prayers and invocations used for the seal, and placed within the triangle of art during ritual.
The materials matter. Vermilion (mercury sulfide) was historically used for the red, lampblack (soot) for the black, and gold leaf for the crown. Modern substitutes are permissible but chosen with correspondences. The painter uses a brush dedicated to ritual work, never used for mundane paintings. The work is done in a consecrated space at an hour that corresponds to the spirit’s planetary hour (Bael is typically associated with the sun, as a king, but his hour is calculated from the Planetary Hours system in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy).
A concrete detail from practice: the artist begins by drawing the three heads in outline with a silverpoint or graphite. Then they paint the black background first, working outward from the figure. The rationale is that Bael emerges from the void, and the blackness is not empty but full of potential. The red is applied next, not as a fill but as a boundary. The gold comes last, dot by dot for the crown. The sequence mirrors the stages of creation in the Hermetic tradition: darkness, division, light.
Not every painting of Bael is meant for ritual. Some are done as study pieces to understand the spirit’s iconography. The grimoires themselves were not consistent. One manuscript shows Bael with a dog’s head instead of a cat’s. Another gives him a third eye. The painter has room to interpret as long as the core remains: the threefold face, the kingship, the chthonic presence.
Bael’s Role Among the Four Kings of the Goetia
Bael is the first of four kings in the Ars Goetia, followed by Paimon, Asmodeus, and Amaymon. The visual tradition treats the kings differently. Paimion rides a dromedary and wears a crown of gold, and his head is that of a man with a woman’s hands. Asmodeus has three heads as well (a bull, a ram, and a man), but his posture is more aggressive, seated on a dragon. Amaymon is described only as a serpent in some texts, but his iconography is sparse.
Bael’s unique feature is that all three heads are his own. He is not a composite of human and animal; he is a single entity with three equal expressions. That makes him the most symmetrical of the kings. In painting, symmetry demands balance. The cat and toad must be equally weighted, or the composition pulls to one side. The painter who can balance the three heads has already learned something about the nature of the spirit: that dominion is held evenly across different spheres.
Crowley’s version in the 1904 Goetia changed the toad to a serpent, aligning Bael more closely with the Ophitic current. That version has its own visual logic. But the manuscript tradition is more widely referenced by practitioners who work with the Lemegeton directly. We lean toward the older iconography. The toad has a longer history in European folk magic, where it was used in spells for invisibility (a power Bael grants). The serpent is a later theological overlay.
Common Misconceptions About Bael
The most frequent confusion is conflating Bael with the Canaanite god Baal. They are separate entities. Baal was a fertility and storm god worshipped in the Levant. Bael is a spirit of the Goetic system, first named in medieval and Renaissance grimoires. No direct historical link exists. The name similarity caused early demonologists like Weyer to include Bael as a “king of Hell” by association, but the visual tradition is entirely European.
Another misconception: that painting Bael automatically attracts his presence. In the grimoire tradition, the image is a focus, not a summoning. The painter who works with reverence and without invocation may produce a powerful piece, but the spirit does not manifest unless the formal evocation is performed. The portrait is a door, not a summons. You can draw the door without stepping through.
A third error: assuming the colors must match the Seven Plantery colors (Bael’s supposed solar attribution). While the sun corresponds to gold and yellow, the earliest images use black, red, and gold exclusively. Yellow for Bael appears in some modern interpretations but has no manuscript basis. The three-color palette is older and more grounded.
FAQ
Can I paint Bael if I am not a practicing occultist? Yes. The image has aesthetic value as a piece of grimoire art. Many artists study the Goetic iconography for its historical interest. Just as with any sacred image, respect the tradition, but the painting itself does not require initiation.
What colors are traditionally used for Bael’s portrait? Black for the background, red for the clothing or throne, and gold for the crown. The three heads are typically painted in naturalistic tones: pale skin for the man, gray-orange for the cat, and greenish-black for the toad. Silver was sometimes used for the cat’s eyes.
Which grimoire has the original image of Bael? The Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1583) provides the first textual description. The earliest known drawing appears in a manuscript of the Lemegeton from the 1640s held at the British Library (Sloane MS 2731). That manuscript shows Bael with three profile heads stacked vertically.
Is it dangerous to paint a Goetic spirit? No more than drawing any other historical figure if you do not perform the associated rituals. The painting is a representation, not a vessel. However, if you work with the image in a ritual context, standard Goetic precautions apply: purification, protection, and proper banishing.
The True Nature of Bael’s Portrait
The image of Bael is not a portrait of a demon in the sense of a photographic likeness. It is an ideogram, a diagram of power arranged in three faces. The painter who takes up this subject enters a conversation that began in a Basel study in 1583 and continues in quiet rooms where the black, red, and gold are applied in sequence. That history is what the paint carries.
For deeper study, visit our demonology and Goetia hub, explore the glossary entry on the Ars Goetia, or read our guide to the sigils of the Goetia. The seals are not just drawings either. They are maps.