In this guide

The conjuration circle is drawn, the triangle of art set at its eastern point. The magician holds the seal of Furfur, a complex glyph of intersecting curves and angular lines, pressed into virgin parchment with ink compounded from soot and gum arabic. The air thickens. Then the shape comes: a hart with a fiery tail, antlers crowned with flame, eyes that hold both the stillness of a forest pool and the charge of an approaching thunderstorm. Furfur is a Great Earl of Hell in the Ars Goetia, commanding twenty-six legions of spirits. He governs love between men and women, raises storms, and reveals hidden truths, but his word is unreliable unless the magician binds him by divine authority.

What the Ars Goetia Actually Says

The definition arrives in the seventeenth-century grimoire known as The Lesser Key of Solomon, specifically its first book, the Ars Goetia. Furfur is listed as the thirty-fourth spirit. His rank: Great Earl. His legions: twenty-six. His appearance: a hart with a fiery tail. His office: to cause love between men and women, to create storms of thunder and lightning, to answer questions about secret and divine matters — but he will not speak truth unless compelled into the triangle of art.

The text adds a detail that practitioners rarely forget: when Furfur speaks, his voice is hoarse. He does not whisper. He does not roar. He rasps, like wind through dry reeds.

That voice matters. It tells us something about the nature of this spirit. He is not a smooth seducer. He is not a gentle lover. He is the force that drives the storm and the heat that kindles desire, and neither is polite.

Where Furfur Comes From: Weyer, the Lemegeton, and the Dictionnaire Infernal

The earliest known appearance of Furfur in a European grimoire is in Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1583). Weyer, a Dutch physician and student of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, compiled a catalog of demons that later became the backbone of the Ars Goetia. In Weyer’s list, Furfur appears as Furtur — a variant spelling that persists in some manuscripts. Weyer describes him as a count who appears as a stag with a burning tail, and who, when commanded, takes human form.

The Lemegeton manuscripts, from which the printed Ars Goetia derives, date to the early to mid-seventeenth century. The British Library holds one of the earliest copies (Sloane MS 3825). In these manuscripts, the spelling stabilizes to Furfur, and the office expands to include the love and storm domains.

Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal (1818, revised 1863) includes an illustration of Furfur as a stag with a serpentine tail ending in flame, standing on a rocky outcrop beneath a lightning-scarred sky. The image is one of the most reproduced in demonological literature, and it fixed the visual identity of Furfur for the nineteenth-century occult revival.

The human consequence: every time a modern magician draws Furfur’s seal, they are reaching through a chain of transmission that passes through Weyer’s study, the scribes of the Lemegeton, and the engravers of de Plancy’s press. The spirit predates all of them, but the form we work with was shaped in those rooms.

Why a Stag? Why a Fiery Tail?

The symbolism of Furfur rests on two images: the hart and the flame.

The stag in European folklore is a creature of the deep woods, elusive and swift. It is associated with kingship (the white stag of Arthurian legend), with the hunt, and with the liminal space between civilization and wilderness. In the Goetic system, spirits often appear as animals that encode their nature. Marchosias comes as a wolf with griffin’s wings. Buer appears as a star-shaped lion. Furfur’s stag form speaks to his domain over hidden things: the hart moves through the forest unseen, and the magician must track it with patience and skill.

The fiery tail complicates the image. A stag does not burn. The addition of flame signals that this is not a natural animal but a spirit of fire element. Furfur’s storms are not gentle rain. They are thunder and lightning, the fire from the sky. His love is not tender affection. It is the heat that drives two bodies together, sometimes against reason.

The combination of stag and fire creates a tension: the cool, shadowed forest and the consuming flame. That tension is the essence of working with Furfur. He is a spirit of opposites, and the magician must hold both sides.

How Furfur Is Invoked: The Seal, the Triangle, the Constraint

In Goetic practice, every spirit has a seal that must be drawn on parchment or engraved on metal. Furfur’s seal is a geometric figure: a central circle with three curved lines radiating outward, flanked by angular hooks and a cross-like shape at the base. The seal is the spirit’s signature. It is not decoration. It is the address.

The magician places the seal inside the triangle of art, a three-sided figure drawn on the floor or on a wooden board, inscribed with divine names and sigils. The triangle is the containment zone. Outside it, the magician stands in the protective circle. Furfur is summoned into the triangle, and while he remains there, he is bound to speak truth and obey commands.

The constraint is critical. The Ars Goetia is explicit: Furfur will not speak truth unless compelled. This is not malice. It is his nature, like the stag’s instinct to flee. The magician’s authority, the names of God, the seals of Solomon, the ritual structure, forces him to stillness.

Practitioners we know draw the seal on a Tuesday (the day of Mars, for confrontation) during the hour of Jupiter (for authority). They burn frankincense and sandalwood. They read the conjuration from the Ars Goetia, not improvising, not embellishing. The voice must be firm. The intent must be clear.

What Furfur Is Asked For: Love, Storms, and Secrets

The three traditional requests map to his three offices.

Love. Furfur causes love between men and women. This is not a gentle matchmaking. It is a forceful attraction, a sudden heat. Some modern practitioners use it to break a blockage in a relationship or to draw a specific person toward them. The ethical questions are obvious, and we do not recommend compelling another person’s will. But the tradition records it, and we record the tradition.

Storms. Furfur raises thunder and lightning. This is weather magic of the most direct kind. The magician who calls Furfur for this purpose does so outdoors, often at the edge of a storm front, with the seal held against the wind. The results are not always predictable. We have heard accounts of sudden downpours and of skies that remained stubbornly clear. The storm is Furfur’s to give or withhold.

Secrets. Furfur reveals hidden things: lost objects, concealed knowledge, the truth of a situation. This is the office that experienced practitioners most often use. But because he lies unless constrained, the magician must be precise in the questioning. Yes-or-no questions work better than open-ended ones. The triangle holds him, but his answers can still twist.

Furfur and the Question of Lying

The lying is the most misunderstood aspect of Furfur. Many assume he is a deceiver by nature, a trickster spirit. But the Ars Goetia does not say he always lies. It says he will not speak truth unless compelled into the triangle. The distinction matters.

Outside the triangle, Furfur is free. Inside it, he is bound. The constraint is not a punishment. It is the condition of honest speech. The magician who fails to compel him properly gets lies. The magician who does the work gets truth.

This is a pattern across several Goetic spirits. Paimon must be honored. Buer must be approached with humility. For Furfur, authority is the binding factor. Each spirit has its condition, and the condition for Furfur is unyielding command.

Common Misconceptions

Furfur is a demon of pure evil. The Goetic spirits are not Christian devils in the sense of fallen angels rebelling against God. They are spirits of the created world, assigned by Solomon to serve the magician. They can be dangerous if mishandled, but they are not malevolent by nature.

Furfur only deals with love. Love is one of three offices, and many practitioners find the revelation and storm domains more useful. Reducing him to a love spirit misses his depth.

Furfur always lies. As above, he lies only when not properly constrained. The fault is the magician’s, not the spirit’s.

Furfur is a minor spirit. Twenty-six legions is not minor. In the Goetic hierarchy, a Great Earl ranks above a President but below a Duke. He is a significant power.

FAQ

Is Furfur dangerous? He can be, if summoned without proper preparation or respect. The triangle and circle are not optional. The constraint is not negotiable.

How do you compel Furfur to tell the truth? By placing his seal in the triangle of art, reciting the conjuration from the Ars Goetia with the divine names, and commanding him by the authority of Solomon.

What does Furfur’s seal look like? It is a geometric figure with a central circle, three curved radiating lines, angular hooks, and a cross-shaped base. It is reproduced in most editions of the Goetia. For a full visual reference, see our glossary entry for Goetic seals.

The Stag in the Triangle

Furfur stands at the intersection of desire and storm, truth and concealment. The stag does not come willingly. The fire does not cool. The magician who calls him must be ready to hold the triangle steady, to speak the words without hesitation, and to accept what the spirit offers, whether it is a secret, a storm, or a heat that changes everything.

The seal is drawn. The smoke rises. The voice rasps from the triangle.

For a deeper look at the spirits of the Ars Goetia, see our complete guide to demonology and Goetia. You may also want to explore the glossary entry for the Ars Goetia and our guide to Goetic seals and their uses.