Rank: Prince · Legions: 26 · Element: Air · Direction: North · Enn: Aloren kas tas Seere on ca
Seere, called also Sear and Seir, is the seventieth spirit of the Ars Goetia, a mighty and powerful Prince who governs twenty-six legions of spirits and stands, the grimoire says, under Amaymon, King of the East. He appears in the form of a beautiful man riding upon a winged horse. His office is to go and to come; to bring an abundance of things to pass on a sudden; to carry or to recarry anything whither you would have it go or whence you would have it brought; and he can pass over the whole earth in the twinkling of an eye. He gives a true relation of all sorts of theft, and of treasure hidden, and of many other things besides. And then the Ars Goetia adds about him the rarest sentence in the whole catalogue: that he is of an indifferent good nature, and is willing to do anything which the exorcist desires. The heart of Seere is the marriage of those two qualities — swiftness and willingness — and neither alone would amount to much. A spirit who could cross the world in an instant but resisted every request would be a marvel and no help; a spirit eager to help but slow to move would be a kindness and no wonder. Seere is both at once: the fastest and the most obliging spirit in the book. In a grimoire crowded with powers that must be bound, constrained, threatened, and compelled into obedience, he is the one who simply says yes, and is already gone before you have finished asking.
He is Seere, Sear, or Seir across the manuscripts, appearing in Johann Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577 and passing into the Ars Goetia as it was gathered into the Lemegeton in the seventeenth century, before Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley set him into modern English in their 1904 edition. The books agree closely on him: the beautiful man on the winged horse, the going and the coming, the sudden abundance, the carrying and recarrying, the crossing of the earth in an instant, the true relation of thefts and hidden treasure, the good nature and the willingness, the twenty-six legions. The grimoire places him under Amaymon, one of the four cardinal kings, who rules the East — a note of his place in the old hierarchy, though this Vault's table sets his quarter in the North with the airy spirits.
Seere comes in one of the loveliest forms in the Goetia: a beautiful man, riding a winged horse. There is nothing monstrous in him, nothing of the fire and the fang that fills so much of the book — only a radiant rider on a flying steed, an image that belongs less to demonology than to the older poetry of the classical world. The winged horse is the whole meaning of him made visible. It is the mount that does not travel but arrives, the creature of the air whose gait is flight, and every culture that imagined one imagined it as the abolition of distance. Seere sits upon it beautiful and unhurried, which is exactly right for a spirit to whom speed costs nothing. Those who work with him consistently describe this ease as the most striking thing about the encounter: not the rush of a hurrying power but the calm of one for whom the far side of the world is no further away than the near.
His central office is speed, and the grimoire states it in a phrase that has never been bettered: he can pass over the whole earth in the twinkling of an eye. Everything else in his catalogue is that same power in different dress. He goes and he comes — the plainest possible statement of unhindered movement. He brings an abundance of things to pass on a sudden, which is speed applied not to travel but to events, the slow business of the world made to happen at once. He carries or recarries anything whither you would have it go or whence you would have it brought, which is speed applied to objects, the fetching and the sending that collapses the space between here and there. Distance and delay are the two great frictions of the world, the reasons that what we want is elsewhere and what we intend is not yet. Seere is the spirit who dissolves them both. He is not merely fast; he is the abolition of the interval.
Then comes the sentence that sets him apart from every other spirit in the book. He is, says the Ars Goetia, of an indifferent good nature, and is willing to do anything which the exorcist desires. The word indifferent must be read in its old idiom, where it means tolerably, reasonably, fairly — so the sense is that he is of a decently good nature, not that he is aloof. And the second half is unqualified: he is willing. Consider how astonishing that is in this particular book. The Goetia is, in its bones, a literature of constraint. Its spirits are to be summoned into triangles, held by divine names, threatened with the wrath of God and the fire of the abyss, bound by conjurations of increasing severity until they consent to appear and to answer truly. Whole pages are given over to what to do when a spirit refuses, lies, delays, or comes in a terrifying shape to frighten the operator off. Seere does none of it. He is good-natured, he is willing, and he does what is asked. He is the one spirit of the seventy-two whom the text describes, in effect, as helpful by disposition. Set that beside his speed and you have his whole character: the readiest helper in the Goetia, quick to move and glad to be asked.
Read inwardly, as this Vault reads the offices of the spirits, Seere's gift is the breaking of delay — and this may be the most immediately useful thing any spirit in the book has to offer. Most of what goes wrong in a life is not refusal but postponement. The letter unsent, the call unmade, the work endlessly prepared for and never begun, the decision deferred until the deferral becomes the decision: these are the ordinary forms of failure, and none of them is a lack of ability. They are a lack of motion. Seere is the answer to exactly that. He is the spirit of the sudden — of the thing that has been stalled for a year and moves in an afternoon, of the interval finally collapsed, of the moment when the long-intended thing is simply done. Ask him for that and you are asking for something real: not the ability to act but the ending of the pause before acting. This Vault regards him as the patron of everyone who knows precisely what they ought to do and has not yet begun.
He gives besides a true relation of all sorts of theft, and of treasure hidden — the revealer of what has been taken and the finder of what has been buried. It is a natural office for a spirit who crosses the whole earth at will, since nothing is far from him and nothing out of sight. This Vault sets a plain ethical caution beside the first half of it, as it does beside every accusing gift in the book. Use his revealing to recover what is yours, to understand what became of it, and to protect yourself from further loss. Do not use it to name a culprit and act on the name. An impression received in a working is not evidence, it cannot be tested, and a person accused on the strength of one has no way to answer it. To wreck someone's reputation or livelihood on a vision is a serious wrong, and it remains a serious wrong if the vision happens to be right. Seek what was lost; do not appoint yourself a court.
The other caution belongs to his central gift, and it is the older warning about swiftness in every tradition that has one. Speed is not judgement, and a winged horse carries you to a bad place exactly as fast as to a good one. Seere collapses the interval between wanting and having — and the interval is not only friction. Sometimes it is the space in which we notice that we did not really want the thing. What arrives suddenly can leave as suddenly; what is done at once cannot be reconsidered halfway. So decide where before you ask for speed, and reserve his help for what you have already thought through. The right use of Seere is not to move faster through an unexamined life but to close, in an instant, the distance to something you are sure of.
Seere is placed in the element of Air and the quarter of the North — Air for the flight, the swiftness, and the winged mount that carry his whole meaning. For the planetary correspondence this Vault reads him under the Sun, and passes over an obvious candidate to do it. The obvious candidate is Mercury, and a practitioner who worked Seere under Mercury would stand on perfectly firm ground: the swiftness, the going and coming, the carrying of things from place to place, and even the knowledge of thefts are all Hermes to the life, the winged-sandalled messenger who is patron of travellers and of thieves alike. But the image the grimoire actually gives us is a solar one, and strikingly so. A beautiful, radiant man, borne upon a winged horse, who passes over the whole earth: that is the chariot of the sun. It is Helios and his flying team making the daily circuit of the world, the one power in the visible heavens that genuinely does cross the entire earth, beautiful and tireless and never late. His hidden treasure is gold, which is the Sun's own metal. And the deepest correspondence is the one that matches his rarest quality, for the sun is the great giver that shines on all alike, freely, asking nothing and needing no compulsion — which is precisely what Seere is among the spirits, the one who gives without being forced. Where the Vault's other solar spirits wear the Sun as sovereignty and radiant authority, Seere wears it as the daily circuit and the free giving: the crossing of the whole world, and the generosity that does not have to be compelled. Set his metal as gold, his day as Sunday, and his colours the gold of the dawn and the white of the flying horse. These correspondences are read as symbolic rather than handed down as documented tradition; the grimoires give only his element, his form, his king, and his offices.
In the old demonology Seere enjoys an unusually warm reputation. He is noted as one of the least dangerous and most cooperative spirits in the catalogue, valued for the speed of his service and for the willingness the text explicitly grants him, and remarked upon for the beauty of his manifestation in a book where beauty is scarce. Weyer and the Ars Goetia give the same account: the winged horse, the instantaneous crossing of the earth, the carrying and recarrying, the sudden abundance, the true relation of thefts and hidden treasure, the good nature, the twenty-six legions under Amaymon of the East. Commentators have long observed that he is the spirit most likely to be recommended to a beginner, precisely because he requires so little compelling.
Carried into the modern revival through the 1904 Mathers and Crowley edition, Seere is among the most frequently worked spirits of the entire Goetia. Modern practitioners come to him for speed above all — for stalled matters, delayed results, things that ought to have happened and have not — and for the recovery of what has been lost or taken. He is very widely described as easy to approach, quick to respond, and pleasant in contact, and is often the first spirit recommended to those beginning this work. Many read his instantaneous travel inwardly, as the collapse of the distance between intention and act. He remains the swift and willing Prince, the readiest helper in the book.
Seere is swift, beautiful, and willing — the radiant rider on the winged horse who crosses the whole earth in the twinkling of an eye and is glad to be asked. He goes and comes, carries and returns, and brings on a sudden what would otherwise have taken a year. He finds what was stolen and what lies hidden. And alone among the seventy-two he is described as good-natured and willing, needing no threat and no binding to do what is wanted of him. He is the abolition of distance and the breaking of delay, the answer to the stalled and the postponed. Met with a clear sense of where you actually want to go, he is the most obliging and the least fearsome of all the spirits of the Goetia, and the one most likely to have acted before you have finished speaking.
Seere appears as a beautiful man riding upon a winged horse -- one of the loveliest and least fearsome manifestations in the entire Goetia, with nothing monstrous about it at all. He is radiant and unhurried, and the winged horse beneath him is his whole meaning made visible: the mount that does not travel but arrives, whose gait is flight and whose presence is the abolition of distance. Those who work with him describe an easy, pleasant, and notably unthreatening presence, bright and quick and entirely without the menace that attends so many spirits of the book -- and above all a sense of calm rather than rush, the composure of a power for whom the far side of the world lies no further off than the near. Contact is very widely reported as immediate and effortless, often arriving faster than expected, which is precisely in character.
Enn: Aloren kas tas Seere on ca
Working with Seere is working with the swiftest and the most willing spirit in the Goetia -- the beautiful rider on the winged horse who crosses the whole earth in an instant, brings matters suddenly to pass, carries and fetches at will, reveals thefts and hidden treasure, and is described by the grimoire itself as good-natured and glad to help. His gift is the collapse of distance and delay. This Vault comes to him for what has stalled, and asks with a clear head about where it actually wants to go. What follows is a guide built around that.
Come to Seere plainly and pleasantly, for he is the one spirit of the seventy-two whom the text calls willing, and he needs no threatening and no elaborate binding. Cleanse yourself and the space, and set his seal at the centre of the working. Where the correspondences are followed, the solar suits him: the gold of the dawn and the white of the flying horse, the metal gold, the hours of the Sun and of Sunday, and, if you like, an open window or a high place to suit a spirit of the air. Then open the way by reciting his Enn -- Aloren kas tas Seere on ca -- until a bright, easy, curiously calm presence gathers, which with him is often very quick indeed. Greet him as the swift and willing Prince, and state your business simply; he does not require to be wrestled with.
For his central gift, bring Seere something that has stalled. Name the matter plainly: the thing delayed, the answer that has not come, the process that has bogged down, the work that ought to have moved months ago and has not. Ask him to bring it suddenly to pass, to close the distance between where it stands and where it should be. Be specific about the outcome and let him find the route, for the route is his province. And ask him also for the inward form of the same gift, which is often the more valuable: the ending of your own pause, the breaking of the delay between knowing what to do and beginning it.
Hold the caution that belongs to every swift power. Speed is not judgement, and a winged horse carries you to a bad place exactly as fast as to a good one. Before you ask Seere to collapse an interval, be sure you want what lies on the other side of it -- because the interval is not only friction, and sometimes it is the space in which you would have noticed that you did not really want the thing. What arrives suddenly can depart as suddenly, and what is done at once cannot be reconsidered halfway. Reserve his help for what you have already thought through. Decide where, then ask for speed.
For his revealing office, ask Seere for a true relation of a theft or a loss: what became of the thing, where it has gone, whether it may be recovered. Ask him likewise for what lies hidden and unclaimed. And hold the ethical line firmly here. Use what he shows you to recover your property, to understand what happened, and to guard yourself against further loss. Do not use it to name a person and act on the name. What arrives in a working is not evidence, it cannot be tested, and someone accused on the strength of it has no way to defend themselves -- and to damage a person's reputation or livelihood on a vision is a serious wrong even if the vision is right. Seek what was lost; do not appoint yourself a court.
Practitioners describe Seere's presence as bright, pleasant, easy, and above all fast -- contact frequently arrives sooner than expected, sometimes before the working is properly finished, which suits him exactly. When he has heard, his help characteristically shows up as suddenness: a matter that had not moved for months resolving within days, an answer arriving at once, a door opening without the expected negotiation, a lost thing surfacing. Many report a marked drop in their own procrastination in the days following, the long-deferred task simply getting done. Look for the interval closing. Keep a written record with dates, for his results are often quick enough to be checked honestly.
Work with Seere in the good-natured spirit he is granted by the text. Ask plainly and politely; he is willing, and there is no call to threaten a spirit who was going to help anyway. Do not mistake his easiness for triviality -- he is a mighty Prince of twenty-six legions under a cardinal king, and courtesy costs nothing. Think before you ask for speed, and be certain of the destination. Use his revealing to recover, never to accuse. Do not lean on him as a substitute for doing your own part; he collapses the distance to a thing, he does not do the thing for you. And thank him properly, for a willing helper deserves better manners than a compelled one. He is the swift and willing Prince, the abolition of distance and the breaking of delay, and to the seeker who knows where they are going he is the readiest and most obliging of all the spirits of the Goetia.