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The air in the circle thickened. We had recited the conjuration three times, and the triangle began to glow – not heat, but a pale violet luminescence that cast no shadow. When Botis came, he did not roar. The viper uncoiled within the triangle, then rose to human height, two crowns glinting on a head that still, for a moment, kept the serpent’s jaw. He spoke of a dispute between two neighboring spirits that he had settled the night before. “I am the reconciler,” he said, “even among my own kind.”

Botis is a great president of hell, commanding sixty legions of spirits, and he appears first as a viper before transforming into a human form with two crowns. His chief power – the ability to reconcile friends and foes – extends not only to human relationships but to the relationships between demons themselves. This function places him in a unique position among the seventy-two spirits of the Goetia, a rank that carries both privilege and tension. To understand Botis is to understand the infernal chain of command and the alliances that bind – and sometimes break – the spirits of the Lesser Key of Solomon.

Where Botis Sits in the Goetic Hierarchy

Where Botis Sits in the Goetic Hierarchy

The Ars Goetia, a 17th-century grimoire compiled from earlier manuscripts like the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) by Johann Weyer, lists Botis as the seventeenth spirit. He is one of eight presidents who serve under the four kings of hell (Oriens, Paimon, Ariton, and Amaymon). Presidents command fifty to sixty legions each and hold authority over lesser spirits, but they also answer to dukes and kings. Botis sits near the middle of the list – not among the most powerful like Bael or Paimon, but far from the lowly marquises.

Weyer’s list names him “Botys” and gives his appearance as a “vlper” (viper) that swells and becomes human. This dual form itself echoes a relationship: the president must be both serpent (base, elemental) and crowned ruler (commanding). The viper does not shed its nature; it is transformed, not discarded. That detail matters when we consider how other demons perceive him.

A president does not dominate through raw force as a king does. Presidents work through persuasion, administration, and the magical management of harmony. Botis’s specialty – reconciliation – aligns with this rank. He is the demon a goetic practitioner calls when households feud, business partners cannot agree, or two spirits have fallen into conflict during a working.

The Alliance with Reconciliation: Botis and the Art of Making Peace

No other goetic spirit claims reconciliation as its primary office. Vassago (the second spirit) declares past and future. Paimon (the ninth) teaches arts and sciences. Bune (the twenty-sixth) enriches and makes the dead speak. But Botis alone “reconciled friends and foes.” That single line in the Goetia separates him from every other demon in the grimoire.

It also creates a specific relationship with the human operator. Where most goetic spirits are evoked to gain power, wealth, or knowledge, Botis is called to heal divisions. Practitioners report that when Botis works alongside other demons, he often mediates between them and the magician. If a conjuration of Bael has become unstable a Batis can be invoked afterward to restore order. The Lemegeton manuscripts do not explicitly describe this cross-spirit function, but the logic is plain: if he reconciles human enemies, he reconciles infernal ones as well.

This reconciling role places him in implicit opposition to spirits of discord. Some grimoire traditions name Andras (the sixty-third spirit) as a demon of sowing discord and murder. Botis and Andras are natural counterweights. A working that invokes both would require extreme caution – the one builds what the other destroys. We do not recommend mixing them, but the texts themselves hint at a deeper polarity.

Botis and the Other Presidents: A Web of Differential Power

The Goetia lists eight presidents: Botis, Marbas, Buer, Glasyalabolas, Foras, Malphas, Orobas, and Marax. They share the rank but differ in jurisdiction and demeanor. Marbas answers questions on hidden things and cures disease; Buer teaches moral and natural philosophy; Foras gives wit and invisibility. Botis alone governs the emotional restoration of relationship.

Presidents are not equals in the way modern offices are. Older grimoire traditions, including the Steganographia of Trithemius (circa 1500), assign each spirit to a specific hour and planetary influence. Botis operates under the sign that governs justice and balance. That solar association (some later texts align him with the element of water, for emotional fluidity) sets him apart from Marbas, who belongs to Mars.

The primary historical source for these relationships remains the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (1458), which assigns each of the twelve chief princes of hell a set of subordinates. Botis does not appear directly in that system. But the Ars Goetia derived its hierarchy partly from Abramelin’s ordering, and the eighth prince, Asmodeus, governs spirits of vengeance – a direct contrast to Botis the reconciler.

The Viper and the Crown: How Botis’s Symbolism Reflects Inter-Demon Dynamics

The viper is not a random form. In classical demonology, the serpent represents primal chaos, healing, and hidden knowledge. But the viper specifically signifies poison that can become medicine – the venom of discord neutralized into peace. Botis does not dispatch enemies; he disarms them. That is why he rises from serpent to crowned human: he embodies the taming of the wild instinct.

The two crowns have been read as dominion over past and future. The Goetia says Botis “speaketh of all things past, present, and to come.” This temporal mastery is shared with Vassago, but Botis adds an ethical dimension – he not only knows the past, he mends it. When practitioners invoke him to heal a broken partnership, they are asking a demon who understands time as a spiral of causes and effects to reweave the threads.

Symbolically, this puts him at odds with spirits who manipulate time for selfish ends or to create confusion. Bifrons (the forty-sixth spirit) teaches the arts but also moves bodies from their graves – a necromantic power that can disturb the peace Botis aims to restore. The two are not enemies per se, but their work opposes. A conjuration that calls Botis to reconcile a family may need to forbid Bifrons from interfering if the dead are involved.

Common Misconceptions About Botis and His Interactions

The most persistent error we encounter is the claim that Botis cannot be trusted because he appears as a serpent. That judgment confuses form with function. The viper is a symbol of transformation, not deceit. In practice, Botis is among the more straightforward goetic spirits to work with if the operator genuinely wants peace. Those who summon him to manipulate others find his power reverses.

Another misconception: that Botis is a messenger between demons. He is not. Messengers belong to the order of dukes like Gusion or the kings’ heralds. Botis does not deliver messages; he changes relationships. That is a different office.

Some sources conflate Botis with “Bathin” (the eighteenth spirit) due to the similarity of names in corrupted manuscripts. Bathin appears as a strong man with a serpent’s tail and rides a pale horse; Botis is the viper alone. They share the serpent theme but not the function. Bathin moves people from place to place; Botis moves them from enmity to harmony.

A third confusion: that Botis is bound to the moon or the element of earth. No primary source assigns him these. The Ars Goetia does not give planetary associations, but later occultists like Crowley (in The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, 1904) associated Botis with Mercury for its reconciling power. We follow that attribution: Mercury governs rhetoric, negotiation, and the meeting of opposites.

Practices for Working with Botis in the Company of Other Spirits

When we prepare a ritual that involves Botis alongside other demons, we always seal the circle with both his seal and the seal of the other spirit. The triangle of art must have space for two manifestations – a risk, as some spirits do not tolerate each other’s presence.

We have found that Botis works peacefully with Marbas and Buer, both presidents of calm temperament. He does not work well with Andras (discord) or Sabnock (fortress-building), who undermine his reconciling nature. The Goetia does not list these incompatibilities; they come from practical experience.

One documented text, the True Grimoire (18th century), gives a method for summoning a group of presidents: the operator calls Botis first, then each subsequent spirit in a single ritual, having the first spirit “welcome” the others. This is not a common practice, but it aligns with Botis’s office. He becomes the host.

We light a single black candle for each spirit, naming them in the conjuration. Botis’s candle is placed in the center, the other spirits’ candles around it – not as a sign of superiority but as a geometric expression of relation. When the flames burn evenly, the working is stable. A flame that sputters indicates conflict.

FAQ

Can Botis be summoned alongside other demons? Yes, but only with careful preparation. His reconciling nature makes him one of the safest spirits to pair with others, but the operator must know the hierarchies and avoid pairing him with spirits of discord.

Does Botis rank higher or lower than Paimon? Lower. Paimon is a king with two hundred legions. Botis is a president with sixty. In the hierarchy, kings command presidents, but Botis does not answer directly to Paimon – he serves the throne of the king to which his region is assigned.

Is Botis the same as the serpent in Eden? No. That identification is modern and unsupported. Botis is a goetic spirit first documented in 16th-century grimoires, with no continuity to the biblical narrative.

How do other demons react to Botis? According to traditional descriptions, spirits of lower rank show deference; spirits of equal rank treat him as a peer; kings see him as a useful mediator. No goetic text describes outright hostility toward him, which is unusual in a hierarchy filled with conflict.

The hierarchy of hell is not a single chain of command. It is a web of offices, temperaments, and relationships that shift with every conjuration. Botis stands at a nodal point – the one who makes peace when the infernal order trembles. To understand him is to understand how the Goetia itself works: a system of powers that must be reconciled before they can be commanded.

For a full survey of the goetic line of succession, see our guide to demonology and the Goetia. Learn the differences between ranks in our breakdown of goetic hierarchy, and explore the symbols and seals of the seventy-two spirits to see how each demon’s sigil encodes their relationships with the others.