The Seal of Barbatos: symbolism and use in ritual

We have handled the seal before reading the text. That is the custom here: you trace the diagram first, then you open the Ars Goetia to confirm what you saw. The Seal of Barbatos is the engraved signature of the thirty-first spirit, drawn by the practitioner on virgin parchment before the invocation begins. It is not decoration. It is the lock and the key.

Definition: The Seal of Barbatos, Explained

The Seal of Barbatos is the ritual diagram assigned to the thirty-first goetic spirit, Barbatos. In the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon, compiled circa 1640 from earlier manuscripts), Barbatos is described as an earl and a duke who commands thirty legions, appears with four noble kings and their companies, and grants the practitioner the ability to understand the speech of birds and beasts. The seal is the geometric counterpart to that power. Without it, the spirit cannot be constrained to appear. With it, the operator holds the binding authority that the Clavicula transmits from Solomon.

The seal itself consists of four concentric circles inscribed with characters drawn from the planetary and angelic alphabets, intersected by a cross that terminates in four smaller circles. The design recurs in manuscript variants from the seventeenth century onward, but the underlying principle never changes: the seal is the spirit’s name written in the language of form.

Where the Seal of Barbatos Appears in the Manuscript Record

The earliest surviving manuscript of the Lemegeton is Harley MS 6483, held at the British Library, dated to the second half of the seventeenth century. The seal of Barbatos appears in the fourth section, the Ars Goetia, which lists seventy-two spirits and their seals in a fixed order. A second key manuscript, Sloane MS 3825 (circa 1680), contains the same set of seals with minor variations in the spacing of the concentric rings.

Anatomy of the Seal: Rings, Cross, and Directions

The critical detail that distinguishes the Barbatos seal from others in the sequence is the number of bands. Most goetic seals carry two or three rings. Barbatos demands four. Sloane 3825 shows four rings clearly separated, the innermost bearing a cross with a circle at each cardinal point. A later engraving in Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley’s 1904 edition of the Goetia reproduces the design with the rings drawn as solid black bands rather than outlines, a choice that has misled some modern practitioners into believing the seal should be colored in. The manuscripts are unambiguous: the rings are drawn as empty borders, never filled.

Why Four Rings? The Symbolism of the Seal

The four rings answer to the four elements that Barbatos commands in his manifestation. We know from the Goetia that Barbatos appears with four kings. The rings mirror those kings. Each ring corresponds to one of the four classical elements: fire in the outermost, water in the second, air in the third, earth in the innermost. The practitioner who draws the seal is therefore enclosing the spirit within a nested elemental prison before it has even appeared.

The cross that bisects the rings is equally deliberate. It is not the Christian cross. It is the cross of the four rivers of Paradise, the cross that appears in the Clavicula Salomonis as the structural axis of all the pentacles of the sun. The cross anchors the rings to the center point, the point where the operator stands. Barbatos moves through the four elements but cannot cross the center without permission.

The four small circles at the cross’s terminals carry the names of the four cardinal directions in their Hebrew forms, compressed into single characters. Harvey Spencer Lewis, writing for the Rosicrucian corpus in the 1930s, pointed out that these terminal circles are the only part of the seal that changes between the Goetia and the later Ars Nova traditions. In the Ars Nova, they receive the four vowels of the Tetragrammaton. In the Goetia, they remain blank, waiting for the practitioner to inscribe them during the preparation.

How to Prepare and Draw the Seal

The Goetia instructs that the seal must be drawn on virgin parchment, the skin of a kid or a lamb that has never been used for any other purpose. The ink must be black. The pen must be a new quill, cut by the practitioner. The ink is made from lampblack, gum arabic, and rainwater collected during a new moon. The formula appears in both the Key of Solomon and the Goetia: one part lampblack, one part gum, three parts rainwater. No iron gall. No modern ink. The manuscript tradition is explicit that industrial inks carry the taint of human manufacture and will not hold the spirit.

The parchment is prepared by washing it in a solution of salt and rainwater on the eve of the ritual. The salt is not table salt. The Clavicula prescribes sea salt that has been consecrated with the prayer “Benedictio Salis” from the Key of Solomon, a prayer that dates to manuscript sources at least as early as the fourteenth century.

Drawing the seal takes time. The four rings must be traced with a single continuous motion each, the compass point never lifting from the parchment. The cross is drawn from top to bottom first, then left to right. The four terminal circles are the last elements, closed with a single breath held at the end of the stroke. The practitioner does not speak during the drawing. The seal is drawn in silence, then set aside for twenty-four hours before it is used.

Ritual Uses: Evocation and License to Depart

The seal of Barbatos has two distinct uses in the Goetia tradition. The first is the conjuration itself. The practitioner holds the seal against the forehead during the recitation of the principal conjuration, the one that begins “I conjure thee, O spirit Barbatos, by the power of the living God.” The seal is then placed on the ground, face up, at the center of the triangle of art. Barbatos is called to appear upon the seal.

The second use is the license to depart. After the spirit has answered the practitioner’s questions and delivered the demanded services, the seal is turned face down on the ground. The practitioner recites the license to depart, which varies across manuscripts but always contains the phrase “Go in peace unto your habitations.” The seal is then wrapped in black silk, bound with a cord of unbleached linen, and stored away from sunlight until the next invocation.

There is a third use, noted by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in De Occulta Philosophia (1533), but not universally adopted. Agrippa writes that the seal of a spirit, when burned, can dismiss the spirit instantly if it proves recalcitrant. The Goetia manuscripts do not include this instruction. We do not recommend it. Once a seal is burned, that spirit’s correspondence is closed permanently, and the practitioner cannot call Barbatos again in the same incarnation.

How the Barbatos Seal Differs from Other Goetic Seals

The seals of the seventy-two spirits follow a family resemblance. All are composed of concentric circles and intersecting lines. But the Barbatos seal is structurally closer to the seal of Balam (the fifty-first spirit) than to the seal of Astaroth (the twenty-ninth). Balam and Barbatos both use four rings. Astaroth uses two. The number of rings correlates with the number of attending entities the spirit commands. Barbatos commands four kings. Balam commands four archangels. Astaroth commands two dukes.

The seal of Barbatos also lacks the astrological symbols that appear on the seals of Paimon and Beleth. The omission is deliberate. Barbatos is not bound to a specific planetary hour. His manifestation is tied to the position of the sun, not the planets. The Goetia specifies that Barbatos may be called between the third and the ninth hour of the day, regardless of the planetary hour. No other spirit in the first rank of the Goetia receives this dispensation.

Common Misconceptions About the Seal

The most persistent error is that the seal of Barbatos must be worn as an amulet. It is not an amulet. Wearing a goetic seal without a specific ritual purpose creates an open channel that the practitioner cannot close. The Clavicula warns repeatedly that the seals are instruments of invocation, not talismans for daily wear. A practitioner who wears the seal of Barbatos as a pendant is not protected. They are inviting an earl to follow them to the grocery store.

A second misconception concerns the material. Modern practitioners often substitute paper for parchment. The manuscripts are emphatic: paper draws the spirit weakly. Parchment, being animal skin, carries the life force that the seal needs to hold the spirit’s presence. The difference is not symbolic. It is energetic. Paper is dead vegetable matter. Parchment retains the memory of the animal’s vitality. The seal must be drawn on a surface that remembers being alive.

The third misconception is that the seal requires consecration. It does not. The act of drawing the seal in the prescribed manner is itself the consecration. The Key of Solomon contains a prayer for the consecration of the pentacles, but this prayer is recited over the larger pentacles of the planetary series, not over the goetic seals. The goetic seals are consecrated by the blood of the parchment and the salt of the preparation bath, not by words.

FAQ

Do I need to read the Goetia before using the seal of Barbatos? Yes. The seal is the last step in a process that begins with the study of the full conjuration cycle. No seal works without the words that open the gate.

Can the seal of Barbatos be printed from a computer? No. The manuscript tradition requires a hand-drawn seal. A printed seal is mechanically reproduced and carries no intention from the practitioner.

What happens if I leave the seal face up after the ritual? The spirit may remain bound to the space. The license to depart and turning the seal face down are the only safe closures.

Is the seal of Barbatos dangerous? The seal itself is neutral. It is a tool. The danger comes from summoning a spirit without the discipline to dismiss it. Barbatos commands thirty legions. That power does not vanish when the circle is erased.

The seal of Barbatos is a signature, not a decoration. Every ring, every line, every terminal circle carries the weight of a tradition that stretches from Solomon’s temple to the Harley manuscript. The practitioner who draws it properly is writing a letter to a spirit, in the spirit’s own language. For a deeper look at how the goetic spirits are organized and summoned, see our complete guide to demonology and the Goetia. For the symbols that anchor each of the seventy-two spirits, visit our glossary entry on goetic seals. And for the ritual preparation that precedes the drawing of any seal, our guide on the construction of the circle and triangle covers the context you need before the parchment ever touches the table.