Rank: Duke · Legions: 30 · Element: Water · Direction: West · Enn: Één tasa Focalor on ca
Focalor, written also Forcalor and Furcalor, is the forty-first spirit of the Ars Goetia — a great Duke who governs thirty legions of spirits, and the lord of the wind and the sea among the seventy-two. He appears in the form of a man with a griffin's wings. His power, the grimoire says, is over both winds and seas, and its darkest expression is that he slays men and drowns them in the waters and overthrows the ships of war. But two things stand beside that terrible office and change everything about how he is read. The first is a mercy written into the text itself: he will not hurt any man or any thing if he is commanded to the contrary — his destruction is not his will but a capacity he holds in check, and he stays his hand when asked. The second is a longing: like Marchosias and Phenex before him, Focalor hopes to return to the Seventh Throne, in his case after a thousand years. He is the lord of the drowning sea who will drown no one you forbid, and a fallen angel who still hopes for home.
He comes to the modern practitioner as Focalor, and in the older books as Forcalor or Furcalor. He appears in Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577 among the dukes, was carried into the Ars Goetia when that material was gathered into the Lemegeton in the seventeenth century, and was fixed in modern English by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley in their edition of 1904. The account holds steady wherever he is found: the winged man with power over wind and sea, the drowner of men and sinker of warships who yet harms nothing if forbidden, the Duke of thirty legions, and the fallen angel who hopes, after a thousand years, to return to the throne he fell from.
Focalor comes not as a beast but as a man, and a winged one -- a human figure bearing the wings of a griffin, the eagle-and-lion wings that are the old emblem of the noble guardian. There is no fierce first form here to be commanded away; he arrives already in a shape that can be spoken with. The wings are worth a moment, for they are the wings of a spirit whose dominion is the wind: he is a figure of the air over the water, the storm-wind that whips the sea, and the wings that lift him are the same power that raises the waves. To picture him is to picture a man who could ride the gale above a heaving ocean -- terrible in his element, and yet, the text is careful to say, restrained.
Focalor holds the rank of Duke -- a high, commanding office in the Goetic hierarchy, martial and noble -- and governs thirty legions. The dukedom suits a lord of the sea, for the sea is a dominion vaster than any land, and the power to raise or still it is a sovereign power. His is not the presiding, teaching authority of a president but the commanding authority of one who rules a great and dangerous element and the storms that move across it.
The heart of Focalor's power is his dominion over the two great forces of the ocean tempest: the winds and the seas together. It is worth setting him among the other spirits who touch storm and water, for the Goetia has several and they are easily confused. Furfur, the thirty-fourth, raises thunder and lightning and tempests -- but his are the storms of the sky, and his element is Air. Focalor's dominion is the sea itself and the winds that drive it -- his element is Water, the West, the quarter of the great ocean. And Vepar, who follows him at the forty-second place, also has power over the waters and the ships that sail them. Among these Focalor is the raw sovereign of the sea-storm: not the sky's thunder, not the mere guiding of ships, but command over the wind and the wave in their union, the power that lifts the ocean into fury or lays it flat to glass.
The dark expression of that power is plainly stated: Focalor slays men, drowns them in the waters, and overthrows the ships of war. This Vault names that honestly, as it names every destructive office, and then does with it what it does with all of them -- and here, more easily than with most, because the spirit himself points the way. There is no reading under which the literal drowning of a person or the sinking of a real vessel belongs to any working this Vault would touch; nothing in this entry is an instruction toward harm. But note what the grimoire says the office aims at: not merchant ships, not fishing boats, not the innocent at sea, but the ships of WAR. Even in its plainest form his destruction is turned against the engines of violence rather than against the defenceless -- and, as the next section shows, it is turned against nothing at all if he is asked to spare it.
Here is the line that sets Focalor apart from every other spirit of terrible power in the book, and it is a gift to everything this Vault believes. The grimoire says, of the drowner of men and the sinker of fleets: but he will not hurt any man or any thing if he be commanded to the contrary. Read that beside Aim, who sets cities alight, or Glasya-Labolas, the author of bloodshed, or Halphas, who arms the towers of war -- spirits whose harm this Vault has had to name and firmly disavow. Focalor needs no such disavowal, because the disavowal is already in his own text. He is a spirit of immense destructive capacity who holds it in check, whose harm is not his will but a power he stays the moment he is asked. The old grimoire framed that staying as compulsion -- the exorcist forbidding him, forcing the mercy. This Vault reads it as relationship, and as revelation: Focalor shows, more plainly than any spirit in the Goetia, that the destructive power and the will to harm are two different things, that the power can be held without being used, and that the choosing belongs entirely to the one who works with him. The lord of the drowning sea drowns no one he is asked to spare. And this Vault, which asks that nothing be harmed, finds in him not a danger to be guarded against but the clearest proof in the whole book that a demon of fearsome power can be a keeper of the peace -- because the peace was always his to keep.
Turned inward, where this Vault most firmly sends it, Focalor's dominion becomes one of the most useful of all the spirits'. Water is the element of feeling, and the sea is its vastest image -- the deep and moving ocean of emotion, with its calms and its storms and its power to drown. There are seasons in a life when the feeling rises like a sea and threatens to pull one under: grief that floods, rage that storms, an overwhelm that swamps everything and will not be bailed out. Focalor is the lord of exactly that water. He who can raise the drowning sea can also still it; he who commands the wind and the wave can bring a soul through the storm rather than let it founder. To work with him inwardly is to ask the master of the sea to help you weather your own -- to keep you from going under when the feeling floods, to teach the seamanship of a hard emotional passage, to still the waters enough to see. And his sinking of the ships of war becomes, inwardly, the sending-down of the armoured, war-making vessels of the self: the defended, aggressive craft one sails into every conflict, the hardened positions that make war on others and on one's own peace. Above all, his own great lesson -- that the destroying power can be held and stayed -- becomes the mastery of one's own destructive floods: the learning that the storm of feeling need not be loosed upon anyone, that its power can be held in check exactly as he holds his, and stayed the moment one chooses to stay it.
Like Marchosias and Phenex, Focalor is one of the spirits who told, in the old accounts, of a hope of return: after a thousand years, he hopes to come again to the Seventh Throne, the high heaven he fell from. His term is shorter than theirs -- a thousand years to their twelve hundred -- but the longing is the same, and it sits with a particular fitness in a spirit of the sea. For the sea is the element of return: the tide that draws out always comes back, the water that rises falls and rises again, and a spirit whose dominion is the ever-returning ocean carrying within him the hope of his own return is a coherent and a moving thing. This Vault honours that hope as it honoured Marchosias's -- not as a power to be used, but as a truth about who he is: a being who fell from a high place and still, after all his terrible centuries, turns homeward like the tide.
Focalor is placed in the element of Water and the quarter of the West -- the element of feeling and the deep, and the quarter of the setting sun and the great ocean, both exactly his. Practitioners who follow the planetary correspondences most often read him as lunar, under the Moon, and for a sea-spirit no reading could be plainer: the Moon is the mover of the tides and the ruler of all water, the mistress of the sea's rise and fall and of the emotional depths that the sea images. Where Gaap before him wore the Moon's face as the carrier and crosser of waters, Focalor wears it as the sovereign of the deep itself -- the tides, the storm-sea, the drowning and the stilling of the vast ocean of feeling. His hoped-for return, too, has the Moon's rhythm in it, the going-out and coming-back of the tide. These correspondences are read as symbolic rather than handed down as documented tradition; the grimoires give only his element, his form, and his offices, and the lunar reading follows from the sea at the centre of them.
The grimoires give Focalor a single form and no fierce first shape: a man bearing the wings of a griffin, the eagle-and-lion wings of the noble guardian. He arrives already in a shape that can be spoken with, needing no command to set a beast aside. The wings are the wings of a lord of the wind, and to picture him rightly is to see a figure who could ride the gale above a heaving sea -- terrible in his element and yet, as his own text insists, restrained, harming nothing he is asked to spare. Later depiction sometimes gives him a more ominous storm-wreathed or armoured aspect; the older texts give only the winged man. Those who work with him describe a vast, deep, oceanic presence -- powerful in a way that is felt as the sea is felt, and beneath the power an unexpected steadiness, the calm of a spirit who holds a drowning force in a still hand.
Enn: Één tasa Focalor on ca
Working with Focalor is working with the lord of the sea, and the relationship has two faces that are really one: the mastering of the great waters, and the holding-in-check of a terrible power. He is a great Duke of the wind and the wave, capable of drowning and of stilling in equal measure, and -- uniquely among the spirits of fearsome office -- a keeper of his own restraint, who harms nothing he is asked to spare. Approached rightly, and turned inward as this Vault turns him, he is a master of the emotional depths and a teacher of the restraint of one's own floods. What follows is a guide to that relationship: how to approach him, how to weather the inward sea, and how to learn from him the holding of a destroying power in a still hand.
Come to Focalor with respect for his rank and the vastness of his element. Cleanse yourself and the space, and set his seal at the centre as the working's single focus. Where correspondences are followed, the lunar and the oceanic suit him: storm-grey and deep sea-green, the metal silver, the hours of the Moon and of Monday, and, if you wish, a bowl of water or of sea-salt set upon the altar as the emblem of his dominion. Working near the sea, or where its sound can be heard or pictured, deepens the connection, for he is the spirit of the great water. Open the way by reciting his Enn -- Één tasa Focalor on ca -- steadily until a vast, deep, oceanic presence gathers, felt as the sea is felt. Greet the winged man without fear; behind the drowning power stands a spirit who stays his hand, and it is that stayed hand you have come to.
This is the deepest right work with Focalor. When the feeling rises in you like a flooding sea -- grief that swamps, rage that storms, an overwhelm that threatens to pull you under -- come to the lord of the water and ask him to bring you through. Name honestly the flood you are in, and ask not that the feeling be denied or dammed, but that you be given the seamanship to weather it: the stilling of the water enough to see, the steadiness to keep afloat, the passage through the storm rather than the foundering in it. He who can raise the drowning sea can also lay it calm, and his help in a hard emotional passage is among the most valued of any spirit's. Do not ask him to make you feel nothing; ask him to keep you from going under while you feel it, and to teach you the sailing of your own deep water.
Focalor's own great lesson is that a destroying power can be held and stayed, and it is a lesson worth seeking directly. If you carry within you a destructive storm -- an anger that would loose itself as harm, a flood of feeling that would drown those around you if it broke -- come to the spirit who holds exactly such a power in a still hand, and ask him to teach you the holding of it. This is not the denial of the storm but the mastery of it: the learning that its power can be held without being used, exactly as he holds his, and stayed the moment you choose to stay it. Ask him to show you how a drowning force is kept in check, and then practise the checking, for he teaches the seaman and not the passenger, and the stilling of one's own storm is real work done over time.
Two things remain, and both are matters of how you meet him rather than what you ask. First, if it moves you, honour his hope: he is a fallen angel of the sea who, after a thousand years, still turns homeward like the tide, and to meet him with that in mind is to meet him rightly. Second, and firmly: keep his peace as he keeps it. His office in its dark form is drowning and destruction, and this Vault turns it only ever inward and never against a living thing. Never ask him to loose his drowning power on any person -- his own text says he will not, if asked to spare, and the seeker who honours that spares in turn. The lord who drowns no one he is asked to spare is best served by one who asks him to drown no one at all.
Practitioners describe Focalor's presence as vast and oceanic -- a sense of great deep water, of a power felt the way the sea is felt from a small boat, and beneath it an unexpected stillness. His help characteristically arrives as a calming and a steadying: the flood that had been rising eases, the storm of feeling settles enough to see through, a sense of being kept afloat where one had feared to go under. In work over time there is often the growing seamanship of one's own depths, a new steadiness in hard emotional weather. Keep a written record of what comes, for his gifts show themselves in the stilling of waters and are best recognised in the storm one weathered that once would have drowned one.
Work with Focalor honestly, and keep his drowning power turned only ever inward and to the stilling of storms, never to the raising of them against another. Never ask him to harm any living thing -- and take heart that his own text makes this the natural way with him, for he will not hurt what he is asked to spare. Do not ask him to dam or deny your feeling, only to help you weather it; the sea is not to be abolished but sailed. Turn his sinking of warships upon your own armoured, war-making vessels and not upon anyone else's. And meet him with the respect owed a fallen angel of the sea who still hopes for home. He is a great Duke of terrible power and gentle restraint, the clearest proof in the whole book that fearsome capacity and the keeping of peace can live in one spirit -- and the seeker who learns from him the stilling of the flood will find, in the lord of the drowning sea, an unexpected guardian against ever going under.