Rank: President · Legions: 36 · Element: Fire · Direction: East · Enn: Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Marbas
Marbas, named also Barbas in the older books, is the fifth spirit of the Ars Goetia — a great President who commands six-and-thirty legions of spirits. He comes at first in the shape of a great lion, tawny and terrible, and only at the command of the one who calls him does he put off that form and rise up in the shape of a man. Beneath the lion and the man alike lies a single, unmistakable character: Marbas is the physician among the spirits, the one who both sends sickness and lifts it away, who answers truly of things hidden, who teaches the arts of the hand and the engine, and who can change a man into another shape. In him the seeker meets a spirit of rare practical generosity — a healer, a teacher of crafts, and a truthful revealer of what is concealed, whose leonine strength is bent, again and again, toward the mending of the body and the making of useful things.
He descends to the modern practitioner through the long chain of grimoires, his name written as Marbas, or in the older Latin as Barbas. He first appears under that older spelling in Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577, listed among the presidents of the infernal hierarchy, and was carried over as the fifth spirit when that material was gathered into the Ars Goetia, the first book of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon in the seventeenth century. Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley fixed the modern English text in their edition of the Goetia in 1904, and Jacques Collin de Plancy had already kept his memory among the spirits of his Dictionnaire Infernal. Across all of these the account is strikingly steady: the great lion who becomes a man, the President of thirty-six legions, the truthful answerer of hidden things, the giver and curer of diseases, the teacher of the mechanical arts, and the changer of shapes. Where so many spirits drift between contradictory descriptions, Marbas is named almost identically wherever he appears.
The grimoires are plain about how Marbas comes. He appears first in the form of a great lion — an image of strength, sovereignty, and the blazing vitality of the beast of the sun — and only when the one who calls him commands it does he take on human shape. The lion is not merely a frightening mask; it is the truth of his nature shown before it is tamed into a form that can teach and converse. Practitioners have long read this transformation as the heart of working with him: the raw, vital, almost feral power of life must be met and mastered before it will sit down and speak as a man speaks. When he does take human form, those who work with him most often describe a figure with the bearing of a physician or a craftsman — sober, capable, and exacting. The change from beast to man is itself the first lesson of Marbas, that the wild force of life can be made to serve understanding, healing, and skilled work.
Marbas holds the rank of President — in the Goetic hierarchy an office of presiding authority, held by spirits who govern, reveal, and teach rather than merely command armies in war. He rules over thirty-six legions of spirits, a considerable host, and his presidency is bound up with knowledge and mastery: the president is one who answers, instructs, and oversees. This rank fits his character exactly. He is not a spirit of conquest or terror for its own sake but a presiding teacher and healer, a keeper of practical wisdom who sits in authority over those beneath him and dispenses what he knows to those who approach him rightly. To call upon a President is to come before a kind of magistrate of hidden knowledge, and Marbas presides over the secrets of the body, the secrets of the craft, and the secrets that men would keep concealed.
Among his first-named gifts is truthful revelation. The grimoires say that Marbas answers truly concerning things hidden or secret — that he discloses what is concealed, whether it be a buried truth, a kept secret, or a piece of knowledge that has been lost or withheld. This is a gift of honesty as much as of knowledge: he does not flatter or deceive, but gives a true account. For this reason practitioners have long valued him for diagnosis in the widest sense — for getting at the real cause beneath an appearance, the true state of a matter behind what is shown. Whether the question is the hidden root of an illness, the true condition of a piece of work, or a secret that bears upon the seeker's life, Marbas is sought as a spirit who tells the truth plainly. That reputation for honesty is, in the tradition, inseparable from his healing: one cannot cure what one will not see truly, and Marbas is the spirit who makes the hidden thing visible so that it may be mended.
The power for which Marbas is best remembered is his dominion over sickness. The grimoires state, without softening it, that he both causes diseases and cures them — that the same hand which can lift an illness away can also lay one on. This twofold power places him among the great medical spirits of the Goetia, and it has always been the chief reason practitioners sought him. In the centuries when plague and fever emptied whole towns and the physician's art was thin, a spirit who could be petitioned to lift a sickness was a spirit of enormous importance, and Marbas was called upon for grave illness, for fevers and wasting diseases, and for ailments whose cause no one could name. The tradition does not pretend that his curing is gentle magic alone: it is the work of a spirit who understands sickness from the inside, who knows it because he can also send it, and who can therefore reach in and undo it. Modern practitioners who work with him for healing describe his approach as searching and whole — he does not merely quiet a symptom but goes after the root, addressing the body together with the spirit and the mind that inhabit it, as if an illness were a knot to be understood before it can be untied.
If healing is the first of Marbas's gifts, the making of things is the second. The grimoires say that he teaches perfectly the mechanical arts — the practical knowledge of crafts and handiwork, of building and engineering, of the devices and instruments by which human skill shapes the world. In the older language the mechanical arts were the arts of the hand as set against the arts of pure thought: the work of the smith, the wright, the engineer, the maker of machines. Marbas is named as a teacher of all of these, a spirit who imparts not only that a thing can be made but how it is made, the true principle of the craft. This pairing of healing and making is one of the most distinctive things about him. The same spirit who knows the workings of the living body knows the workings of the built machine — the organic and the constructed, the grown thing and the made thing, set side by side within a single intelligence. Practitioners drawn to the trades, to engineering, to medicine and surgery, and to any work that joins understanding with skilled hands have long found in Marbas a fitting patron.
The last of his named powers is the strangest. The grimoires say that Marbas can change men into other shapes — that his power of transformation, the very power by which he himself turns from lion to man, can be turned upon others. Few of the Goetic spirits are credited with so direct a power over form. The older texts say little more than the bare statement, and practitioners have read it in several ways. Some take it as the literal lore of shapeshifting that runs through the old magic; others understand it as a power of profound change worked upon a person — a turning of one's condition, station, or very self into something other than it was. In the modern reading this transforming power is most often approached inwardly: as the spirit's capacity to assist a deep change in the self, to help a person become genuinely other than they were, to break a fixed and unwanted shape and take on a new one. Whether read outwardly or inwardly, it marks Marbas as a spirit of metamorphosis — fitting for one whose very coming is a transformation from beast to man.
Much of how Marbas is understood follows from his leonine form. The lion belongs to the sun — in the old symbolism the lion is the beast of the sun, of gold, of the blazing centre of life — and so Marbas's first shape ties him to solar power, to the vital force that the older physicians called the spirit of life itself. This is no idle association, for it knits his powers together: the sun is the giver of health and growth, the source of the vital heat by which the body lives, and a solar, leonine spirit of healing is exactly what the tradition makes of him. The gold of the sun is also, in the alchemists' reading, the perfected metal toward which all transformation strives — and so the same solar nature that makes Marbas a healer touches as well his power of changing shapes, the turning of base conditions toward something refined. To picture him rightly is to hold these together: the lion, the sun, the vital fire of life, the physician's restoring warmth, and the transmuting heat that turns one thing into another. These solar correspondences are read as symbolic rather than handed down as documented tradition, but they follow naturally from the form the grimoires give him.
What gathers all of Marbas's offices into one is the union of healing and making. He is the spirit who mends the body and the spirit who teaches the building of things, and in him these are not two unrelated gifts but two faces of a single mastery: the understanding of how things work. The physician and the engineer are, at root, the same kind of knower — both must grasp a system from within, see how its parts move together, find where the working has failed, and set it right. Marbas presides over both the living system and the made one, the organic and the mechanical, and he gives to those who seek him not merely cures and skills but the deeper thing beneath them: insight into how a thing is put together and how it may be repaired. It is this, more than any single marvel, that practitioners come to value in him — a turn of mind that sees the workings of things truly and bends that sight toward mending and making.
Within demonolatry and the modern left-hand path, Marbas is honoured as one of the great helping spirits of the Goetia — a healer and teacher approached with respect rather than dread. The reverent practitioner does not regard him as a slave to be coerced by threats, as the older exorcists' rites would have it, but as a powerful and knowledgeable being to be met with sincerity, courtesy, and a real need. He is widely held to be willing and reliable with those who come to him honestly, exacting with those who come idly or in bad faith, and especially close to those whose own work is healing, making, or the honest search for truth. To work with Marbas in this spirit is to enter a kind of apprenticeship to a master physician and craftsman — to be taught, over time, to see illness and structure clearly and to act wisely upon what one sees.
The journey from the medieval and renaissance grimoires to the modern altar has changed how Marbas is approached without much changing who he is said to be. The old rites framed every Goetic spirit as a danger to be bound within a triangle and compelled by divine names; the modern reverent practitioner, by contrast, comes to Marbas as one comes to a respected teacher and healer, with the seal, the Enn, an honest petition, and a readiness to listen. His curing power is now most often sought as spiritual and supportive work that stands alongside, and never in place of, the care of physicians — a way of tending the unseen and inward dimensions of illness while the doctors tend the body. His teaching of the crafts is sought by makers, engineers, and students of the practical arts. And his truthful answering is sought by all who need to see a hidden thing as it really is. The forms have softened; the spirit described is the same great lion-that-becomes-a-man who has answered seekers for four centuries and more.
In contemporary demonolatry Marbas is approached through his seal and his Enn — the chanted phrase Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Marbas — by which practitioners open the way to him and hold his presence near. He is called upon for the healing of body and mind, for understanding the true cause of an illness or a trouble, for skill and insight in the crafts and technical arts, for honest answers about hidden matters, and for help in working a deep change in oneself. Those who keep company with him describe a presence that is steady, warm, and exacting — a sense of capable strength turned toward repair, of a searching attention that wants to know the truth of a thing before it acts. He rewards seriousness, honesty, and follow-through, and he is, by the long testimony of the tradition, generous to those who bring him a real need and a willingness to do their own part of the work.
What endures across every telling is the practical generosity of him. Marbas is power bent toward use: the lion's strength made into the physician's steady hand, the secret made plain, the craft taught truly, the broken thing understood and mended. He is honest where many spirits are sly, constructive where many are merely powerful, and close to the oldest and most human of magical hopes — to be made well, to be taught a skill, to be told the truth, and to be helped to change. He asks for respect, sincerity, and honest effort, and to those who bring them he is, by the steady witness of the grimoires and of those who work with him still, a great and willing President: the lion who becomes a man, and the man who heals, teaches, and tells the truth.
The grimoires give Marbas two forms and are precise about both. He comes first as a great lion — large, tawny, and full of the blazing vitality of the beast of the sun — and this leonine shape is the truth of his power shown before it is tamed. Only at the express command of the one who calls him does he put off the lion and rise in the shape of a man; the older texts make this human form conditional, a thing granted on demand rather than offered freely. When he takes that human shape, practitioners most often describe a sober, capable figure with the bearing of a physician or a craftsman — a presence of steady, exacting competence rather than spectacle. Those who work with him today report him much the same: felt first as a strong, almost feral surge of vital warmth, which settles, when he is asked to take a speaking form, into the calm and searching attention of a master of healing and of the practical arts.
Enn: Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Marbas
Working with Marbas is, at its heart, an apprenticeship to a master physician and craftsman. He is a great President of good and exacting nature, willing to teach and to heal those who come to him with respect and a real need, and his gifts are among the most immediately useful of the whole Goetia — the mending of the body, the understanding of hidden causes, the skill of the hand, and the power to work a true change. He comes first in strength, as a lion, and gives his gentler human counsel only to the one who can meet that strength and command it courteously. What follows is a guide to that relationship: how to approach the President, how to ask rightly for healing and for skill, and how to work with him honestly and to good purpose.
Come to Marbas as you would come to a respected physician and teacher — with courtesy, seriousness, and a clear sense of why you have come. He is not a spirit to be summoned idly or for amusement; his gifts touch the body, the truth, and the deep shape of the self, and he answers best to those who bring him a genuine need rather than mere curiosity. Approach him with respect for his strength and his knowledge, neither grovelling nor presuming, and be ready to listen as much as to ask. The relationship with him is built, like the trust between a patient and a healer, upon honesty and return; what is begun in sincerity he tends to meet in kind.
Prepare a clean and quiet place where you will not be disturbed, and prepare yourself with the same care you would give before any serious work of healing or making. Many practitioners cleanse themselves and the space beforehand and set out his seal as the single focus of the working. Where the work is for healing, some place clean water, a candle, and a token of the one to be healed near the seal; where it is for a craft or a study, the tools or emblems of that work are set close by. Settle your mind and your breathing before you begin, and bring with you a clear statement of what you seek — the illness to be addressed, the skill to be learned, the hidden thing to be made plain, or the change to be worked — so that you may speak it plainly when he comes.
Open the way to Marbas by setting your attention upon his seal and reciting his Enn — Renich tasa uberaca biasa icar Marbas — slowly and steadily, letting the chanted words carry your intent and call his presence near. Repeat the Enn until you feel the air of the working change: a gathering warmth, a sense of strong and vital presence, the feeling of a powerful attention turning toward you. Do not rush this. Marbas comes first in his strength, and the opening is the moment to let that strength gather and steady before you ask anything of him.
By the oldest instruction, Marbas comes first as a lion and takes a human, speaking form only when he is bidden to. In practice this is less a matter of literal vision than of meeting and steadying his first, vital presence and then courteously asking him to take the form in which he teaches and heals. Greet the strong presence that comes; do not flinch from it or try to banish it, for it is him. Then, with respect and without fear, ask him to put on the shape of a man — to come as the physician and the teacher — so that he may counsel you clearly. Practitioners describe this as the turning point of the working: the feral warmth settling into a calm, exacting attention with which one can truly converse.
For the work of healing, name plainly the one who is sick — yourself or another — and the trouble that afflicts them, and ask Marbas for his aid in mending it. Ask not only that the symptom be quieted but that the true root of the illness be reached and addressed, for his healing is searching and whole. Hold the one to be healed clearly in mind, or work over their token, and let your petition be sincere and specific. And hold fast to this above all: the healing work of Marbas is understood by serious practitioners as spiritual and supportive work that stands alongside, and never in place of, the care of doctors and medicines. Petition him for the unseen and inward dimensions of an illness, but do not set aside a physician's treatment, and never let a working become a reason to refuse real medical care. To honour him as a healer is to use every good gift — his and the physician's alike — toward the mending of the body.
Marbas is sought not only to cure but to reveal, for he answers truly of hidden things, and there is no hidden thing more useful to a healer than the true cause of a trouble. Where an illness or an affliction has no plain name, where its root is buried or its real nature unclear, ask him to make the hidden cause visible — to show you what truly lies beneath the appearance. This diagnostic work is among the most valued of his gifts, for one cannot mend what one cannot see. Ask your question honestly and without a wished-for answer already in mind, and attend carefully to what comes — an image, a word, a sudden understanding, a turn of attention toward something overlooked. Then act upon what is shown with the same honesty, taking it to those who can help you address it.
To seek Marbas as a teacher of the crafts, name the art or skill you wish to master — the trade, the engineering, the making or mending of some thing — and ask not merely for success but for true understanding of how the work is done. He teaches the principle beneath the practice, the reason a thing is built as it is, and so his teaching is best received by one who is already doing the work and willing to keep doing it. Bring the tools or the problem of your craft into the working; ask him for insight into a difficulty, for skill in the hand, for the grasp of a structure or a mechanism that has eluded you. And then return to the bench, the desk, or the workshop and put what you are given to use, for he sharpens the diligent and not the idle, and his teaching takes root only in hands that practise it.
Beyond illness and craft, Marbas answers truly of hidden and secret things in general — the buried truth, the lost knowledge, the real state of a matter behind what is shown. To seek this, frame a clear and honest question and ask him for a true account, remembering that his gift is honesty and that he gives a true answer rather than a flattering one. Be prepared to receive what is so even if it is not what you hoped, and treat what he reveals with discretion and respect. As with all his work, ask only what you have real cause to ask, and use what you learn rightly; a spirit valued for truth is ill-served by a seeker who would misuse it.
The grimoires credit Marbas with the power to change men into other shapes, and modern practitioners most often approach this inwardly, as a power of profound personal change. To seek his aid in transformation is to ask him to help you break a fixed and unwanted shape of life — a habit, a condition, a way of being that has hardened around you — and to take on a new one. This is deep and serious work, not to be undertaken lightly nor turned upon another person against their will; it is rightly worked upon oneself, with clear intent and an honest readiness for the change one asks. Name the old shape you would leave and the new one you would grow into, ask his help in the turning, and then do the difficult work of change yourself, for he assists a transformation that the seeker is genuinely willing to live out.
Practitioners describe the signs of Marbas's presence and favour in steady, bodily terms fitting to a spirit of vitality and healing. There may be a gathering warmth, a sense of strong and capable presence in the room, a feeling of searching attention turned upon the matter at hand. In healing work some report a warmth or easing where the trouble lies, or a shift in the days that follow — a turn toward mending, a clarity about what to do, a cause suddenly made plain. In work for a craft, there may be the sudden ordering of a confused problem, an insight that arrives at the bench, a new sureness in the hand. Keep a written record of what comes during and after the working — sensations, images, words, and the turn of events in the following days — for his answers often unfold over time rather than all at once.
Work with Marbas honestly, soberly, and with due respect for the gravity of his gifts. Above all, in matters of health, let his work stand beside and never instead of proper medical care: see your physicians, take your medicines, and treat any serious illness with the seriousness it demands, asking Marbas for the spiritual and supportive dimension of healing rather than as a substitute for treatment. Use his diagnostic truth-telling to inform real action, not to replace it. Turn his power of transformation upon yourself and your own willing change, never upon another against their will. Ask his teaching of the crafts as one ready to do the work, not as a shortcut around it. And come to him always in good faith, honest in what you ask and sober in what you do with what you are given — for he is a great and capable President who answers sincerity with generosity, and idleness or ill use with silence.