The Key of Solomon, or Clavicula Salomonis, is among the most influential books in the history of Western ritual magic. Yet it is not a surviving ancient manual written by the biblical King Solomon. It is a diverse family of medieval and early-modern manuscripts, copied in Latin, Italian, French, English, Hebrew, and other forms, each presenting rituals under Solomon’s powerful name.

Its instructions include prayer, confession, purification, planetary timing, consecrated tools, ritual circles, divine names, pentacles, and operations intended to seek knowledge, recover lost property, gain favor, or constrain spiritual beings. The earliest presently identified direct fragment dates to approximately 1380 to 1410, and a substantial Italian manuscript survives from 1446. But Solomon’s reputation as a possessor of exorcistic wisdom is far older. Josephus, writing in the first century, attributed methods for expelling demons to Solomon, while the late-antique Testament of Solomon imagines the king commanding demons through a divinely given ring.

This episode follows the passage from ancient legend to medieval manuscript, and from manuscript variation to S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers’s influential 1889 English edition. It asks whether the Key preserves material from ancient Solomonic traditions, or whether medieval compilers used Solomon’s already ancient authority to organize a changing body of ritual knowledge. The evidence supports both a genuinely ancient legend and a much later surviving book. The unresolved question is whether there was ever one original Key at all.

This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication.

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YES OR NO: Was the Key of Solomon primarily a medieval creation using an ancient name???????