Rank: President · Legions: 30 · Element: Air · Direction: East · Enn: Lirach tasa Ose on ca
Ose, written also Oso and Voso, is the fifty-seventh spirit of the Ars Goetia, a Great President who governs thirty legions of spirits. He appears at first in the form of a leopard, but after a little while he puts on the shape of a man. His offices are three: he makes one cunning and skilful in the liberal sciences; he gives true answers of divine and secret things; and he can change a man into any shape the operator pleases — so wholly that the one who is so changed will think no other thing than that he is, in very truth, the creature or the thing he has been changed into. It is this third office that makes Ose one of the most philosophically remarkable spirits in the whole book, for his transformation is not of the body but of the belief. He does not turn a man into a leopard; he makes a man believe, utterly and without a shred of doubt, that he is a leopard — or a king, or the Pope, or whatever shape is named — so that the changed one thinks himself in verity that thing. And in this Ose lays bare a secret deeper than any physical magic: that identity is not a fixed and given thing but a belief, and that what a person wholly believes themselves to be, they in effect become. Ose is the master of the malleable self, the spirit of the truth that the self we take for solid is made, not found — and that it can be unmade and remade. Rightly understood, he is the keeper of the most dangerous and most liberating knowledge of the Left-Hand Path: that you are not fixed.
He is Ose in many modern books, and Oso or Voso in others. He appears in Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577, passed into the Ars Goetia as it was gathered into the Lemegeton in the seventeenth century, and was set into modern English by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley in their 1904 edition. The texts agree on his account, and preserve the striking detail of his transformation — that the one so changed believes himself in truth to be the thing he is changed into, thinking no other thing; some versions give the vivid example of the man made to believe he is a king, or the Pope, or that he wears a crown. He is the leopard and the man, the teacher of the sciences and the divine secrets, the changer of the self — the President of thirty legions.
Ose comes first as a leopard, and of all the beast-forms in the Goetia few are so perfectly chosen. The leopard is the cunning and solitary hunter, patterned and masked in its spots, a creature of stealth and of hidden movement — and it is the subject of the oldest proverb about the fixedness of nature: can the leopard change his spots? The proverb means that a thing cannot alter its essential nature. And Ose, the leopard who is also the master of transformation, is the living inversion of it — the leopard who can change his spots, the one who proves the proverb wrong. That he wears this form before any other is his own quiet declaration of what he is: the spirit for whom nature is not fixed, the shape-changer whose very emblem is the beast said to be unchangeable. The leopard is also, in the old world, the beast of Dionysus, god of ecstasy and of the dissolution of the fixed self — another fitting resonance for a spirit who unmakes and remakes what a person is.
The heart of Ose is his power to change a person into any shape — and the crucial thing, the thing that makes him profound rather than merely a worker of wonders, is that the change is of the mind and the belief, not the body. The one Ose changes does not grow fur or wings; he comes to believe, wholly and without doubt, that he is the thing he has been made to be, and thinks no other thing. This is a transformation of identity itself, of the self-concept, of the deep belief a person holds about what they are. And it teaches, by its very possibility, the secret at the centre of Ose: that identity is belief. The self you take for solid and given — your sense of what you are, what you can and cannot do, who you are — is, Ose shows, a thing held in belief, and belief can change. The man made to believe he is a king is not lying and is not pretending; he thinks it true, and so, in every way that governs his behaviour and his experience, he is a king to himself. Ose reveals that the same is true, more slowly and less totally, of every self: we are, in large part, what we believe ourselves to be.
This is a power with a bright edge and a dark one, and the Vault must be plain about both. Turned outward upon another, to make them believe a false thing about themselves — to delude them, to derange their sense of who they are, to inflict a madness of identity upon them — it is a harm, and this Vault disavows it entirely and without reservation. To take away another's true sense of themselves and replace it with a delusion is among the cruelest things one could do to a mind, and nothing here is an instruction toward it. But turned inward, and consciously, the very same power is one of the most liberating in the whole tradition. For if the self is belief, then one may, deliberately and with open eyes, change the belief — may shed a false and limiting self-concept and take on a truer or a stronger one. This is the great Left-Hand Path work of self-creation: the shedding of the inherited, the imposed, the small and frightened self one was told one was, and the deliberate becoming of the self one wills. Ose is its master. But it carries within it its own strict discipline, and it is this: the reshaping must be toward truth, not into a comforting delusion. The madman who believes he is a king is the warning image — the false self believed. To use Ose rightly is to become, not to pretend; to grow into a truer and greater self, not to hide in a flattering fantasy. And here his other office is the anchor.
Ose is not merely a spirit of illusion, and this is what keeps his transformation honest: alongside his changing of the self, he gives true answers of divine and secret things. He is a truth-teller as well as a shape-changer, and the two together are the whole of his teaching. For the deepest of the secret things he can reveal is the very secret of the self — that it is made and not fixed — and the reshaping he offers is meant to be done in the light of truth, not in flight from it. The Left-Hand Path's work of self-deification, of becoming the god of one's own being, is exactly this: the conscious, truthful remaking of the self toward its greatest and truest form. Ose gives the power to do it, and the true answers to do it rightly. Believe yourself capable, and you become capable; believe yourself free of the old imposed limit, and the limit loosens; but ground the new belief in what is true and possible, and let his true answers keep you from the madman's crown. The self is clay, Ose teaches — but it is to be shaped toward the true form, not molded into a pleasing lie.
His office of true answers deserves its own word, for it ranges wide: Ose gives true answers of divine things — of God and the divine order — and of secret things, the hidden and the occult. He is a revealer of deep truth, and in a spirit whose other power is the changing of belief, this truthfulness is precious: it means he can be trusted with the real, even as he teaches the malleability of the self. Bring him the deep questions — of the divine, of the hidden, of the mysteries — and he answers them truly, and among the truths he holds is the greatest secret of all, which is what you yourself really are and might become.
Ose also makes one cunning and skilful in the liberal sciences — the trained arts of the mind, the disciplines of learning. It is the grounding office beneath the others, for the remaking of the self and the grasping of divine and secret truths both ask a mind that is trained, sharp, and capable. From him one gains not only the deep transformation but the honed intellect to understand and direct it. The malleable self is best reshaped by a clear and cunning mind.
Ose is placed in the element of Air and the quarter of the East — Air for the mind and the belief that are the true field of his working, the airy realm of thought and self-conception that he reshapes. For the planetary correspondence this Vault reads him under the Moon, but the Moon in a face distinct from her others in this book: the Moon of glamour and of the malleable image, of belief and illusion and the ever-changing self. The Moon is the ancient planet of glamour — the casting of an appearance, the making of one thing seem another — and of lunacy, the derangement of the mind's sense of what is real; both are Ose's shadow. And the Moon has no fixed face of her own, borrowing her light and changing her shape night by night through every phase — the perfect emblem of the self that Ose reveals, the self that is not fixed but reflected and remade. Where Gaap, Focalor, and Vepar wore the Moon of the sea, Bifrons her chthonic face of the graves, and Crocell her contemplative deep, Ose wears the Moon of glamour and the changing self — the shifting image, the malleable identity, the light that is never twice the same. Set his metal as silver, his day as Monday, and his colours the leopard-gold of his spotted form and the shifting silver of his changing moon. These correspondences are read as symbolic rather than handed down as documented tradition; the grimoires give only his element, his forms, and his offices, and the lunar reading follows from the glamour, the changing shape, and the malleable self at the heart of them.
In the old demonology Ose is a notable spirit, marked especially by his extraordinary power of changing a man's very sense of what he is, which drew comment and some unease from the beginning. Weyer and the Ars Goetia give the same account — the leopard and the man, the liberal sciences, the true answers of divine and secret things, and the transformation that makes the changed one believe himself in truth the thing he is made to be. Commentators have long noted the strangeness and the depth of this office, so unlike the physical shape-shifting of other spirits, and its bearing on the nature of the self. He is a President regarded with respect and a measure of wariness, for the profundity of what he touches.
Carried into the modern revival through the 1904 Mathers and Crowley edition, Ose is worked today chiefly for self-transformation and for the deep questions — by practitioners of self-creation and self-deification who understand his changing of the self as the conscious remaking of one's own identity, and by seekers of divine and secret truth. Modern practice reads his transformation almost entirely inwardly, as the reshaping of the self-concept toward a truer and greater form, and holds firmly to the ethic that it is never to be turned to deluding another. His leopard and his changing of belief are cherished as among the most philosophically rich images in the book. He remains a profound and somewhat awe-inspiring President, sought by those ready to learn that they are not fixed.
Ose is subtle, profound, and transformative — the leopard who changes his spots, the master of the malleable self, the spirit of the secret that identity is made and not given. He can change what a person believes themselves to be, so wholly that they take it for truth; and in that power lies the whole of his teaching, dark and bright. Turned upon another it is delusion and cruelty, and this Vault refuses it. Turned upon oneself, in the light of the true answers he also gives, it is the great work of self-creation — the shedding of the false self and the deliberate becoming of the true one. Met with the seriousness and the truthfulness his power demands — ready to remake oneself toward what is true and greater, never into a flattering lie, and never to derange another — he is among the most profound of all the spirits of the Goetia, the keeper of the most liberating secret there is: that you are not fixed, and may become.
The grimoires give Ose two forms. He comes first as a leopard -- the cunning, solitary, patterned hunter, the beast of the old proverb about the fixedness of nature that Ose exists to disprove, and the leopard of Dionysus who dissolves the fixed self -- and then, after a little while, puts on the shape of a man. Those who work with him describe a subtle, shifting, and unusually profound presence, sometimes felt as difficult to fix or hold steady in the perception, as though the self of the spirit were itself in motion -- fitting for the master of the malleable self. It is not a fierce or overwhelming manifestation but a deep and quietly unsettling one, carrying the sense of a spirit who sees the self as clay and knows exactly how it may be reshaped; and, to the seeker ready for it, a strangely liberating one, the felt presence of the truth that nothing about what one is is truly fixed.
Enn: Lirach tasa Ose on ca
Working with Ose is working with the most profound spirit of self-transformation in the whole Goetia -- the leopard who changes his spots, the master of the malleable self, who teaches that identity is made and not fixed and gives the power to remake it. His central office is the changing of what a person believes themselves to be, and it is a power with a dark edge and a bright one. This Vault comes to him only for the bright: the conscious remaking of one's OWN self, toward truth and toward a greater becoming, never to delude another and never to hide in a flattering lie. What follows is a guide built around that discipline.
Come to Ose with seriousness and truthfulness, for the power he touches is deep and its misuse is grave. Cleanse yourself and the space, and set his seal at the centre of the working. Where the correspondences are followed, the lunar suits him: leopard-gold and shifting silver, the metal silver, the hours of the Moon and of Monday, worked fittingly by night. Then open the way by reciting his Enn -- Lirach tasa Ose on ca -- steadily, and let a subtle, shifting, profound presence gather, first perhaps as the leopard before it takes the shape of a man. Come knowing what you seek to become, and come honest with yourself about the difference between a truer self and a mere flattering fantasy.
For his central gift, come to Ose to remake yourself. Name honestly the self you wish to shed -- the false, inherited, or limiting self-concept, the story about what you are and cannot do that was imposed on you or that you took on in fear -- and name the truer or greater self you would become in its place. Ask him to teach you the changing of the self: to loosen the old belief and to build the new. Understand the mechanism he reveals -- that what you wholly believe yourself to be, you in effect become -- and use it deliberately: to believe yourself capable, and so become capable; to believe yourself free of the old limit, and so loosen it. This is slow and serious work, the great labour of self-creation, and it is done with open eyes.
The one strict discipline of Ose is this: the remaking must be toward truth, not into a comforting delusion. The warning image is the madman who believes he is a king -- the false self believed, the flattering lie taken for fact. To use Ose rightly is to become, not to pretend; to grow into a self that is genuinely truer and greater, not to hide in a fantasy that soothes but is false. Lean here on his other office: ask him for true answers, hold your new self-conception against what is true and possible, and let his truthfulness keep you honest. The self is to be shaped toward its true form, not molded into a pleasing lie -- and knowing the difference is the whole art.
Hold this without exception: Ose's power of changing the self is never, in this Vault, to be turned upon another person -- never to delude them, to derange their sense of who they are, or to inflict a false identity or a madness upon them. To take away another's true sense of themselves is among the cruelest of harms, and it is refused here absolutely. Work the changing of the self only ever upon yourself, and only ever with your own full and willing consent.
For his true answers, bring Ose the deep questions -- of the divine, of the hidden and secret things, of the mysteries -- and receive what he gives as honest truth, for he is a truth-teller as well as a shape-changer. And for his teaching of the liberal sciences, ask him to sharpen and train your mind, for a clear and cunning intellect is the best instrument for the remaking of the self and the grasping of deep truth alike. Take his teaching as the honing of the mind that will do the deeper work.
Practitioners describe Ose's presence as subtle, shifting, and profound, sometimes hard to hold steady in perception, and often accompanied by a sense of the fixed becoming fluid -- the felt loosening of things one had taken as settled. When he has heard, his help tends to arrive as a shift in self-perception: an old limiting belief about oneself suddenly seen as merely a belief and not a fact, a new sense of what one might be beginning to feel true and possible, a fixed self quietly coming unfixed. His true answers arrive as deep and honest knowing. Keep a written record of the shifts in your self-conception, for his work unfolds over time and rewards being watched.
Work with Ose with the utmost seriousness and honesty. Turn his changing of the self only ever inward, upon yourself and with your own consent, never upon another. Remake yourself toward truth and genuine becoming, never into a flattering delusion -- and use his true answers to know the difference. Do not mistake the loosening of the self for a licence to abandon all that is true in you; the goal is a truer self, not no self. And treat the power with the gravity it deserves, for it touches the deepest thing there is, the sense of what one is. He is the master of the malleable self, the keeper of the most liberating secret in the book -- that you are not fixed -- and to the seeker who comes ready to remake themselves toward truth and greatness, he gives what no other spirit gives so fully: the power to become.