Rank: King · Legions: 33 · Element: Water · Direction: North · Enn: Anay on ca Zagan
Zagan is the sixty-first spirit of the Ars Goetia, named in the old texts both a Great King and a President, who governs thirty-three legions of spirits. He appears at first in the form of a bull with the wings of a griffin, and after a while he puts on the shape of a man. His offices are all offices of transmutation: he makes men witty; he turns wine into water and water into wine, blood into wine and wine into blood, oil into water and water into oil; he transmutes metal into coin; and — the loveliest and most generous of his gifts — he makes fools wise. Zagan is a transmuter, and the second great alchemist of the Goetia beside Haagenti, whose very form of the winged bull he shares. But where Haagenti's transmutation is the philosopher's, the slow refining of the base self into the gold of deep wisdom, Zagan's is quicker, more immediate, and more democratic, and it culminates not in gold but in the mind. He makes the dull mind witty and the foolish mind wise. That last gift is the heart of him and the most hopeful thing in the whole book, for it says that folly is not a fixed condition but a base state that may be transmuted, and that no one is too foolish to be made wise. Zagan is the transmuter of the mind, the alchemist who turns the lead of folly into the gold of wisdom, and who leaves no one beyond the reach of that change.
He is Zagan in all the books, a stable name. 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 give him the doubled rank of King and President — sovereign power joined to the office of the counsellor and instructor, a fitting pairing for a transmuter who is also a teacher of wit and wisdom. The account is otherwise consistent: the winged bull that becomes a man, the making of men witty, the transmutation of the liquids and of metal into coin, and the making of fools wise — the great King of thirty-three legions.
Zagan comes, like Haagenti before him, in the form of a bull bearing the wings of a griffin, and the shared emblem marks the two as brother-alchemists. The winged bull is the sign of transmutation itself: the bull is base matter, heavy and earthbound, the densest and most rooted of forms; the griffin's wings are the power of ascent, the lifting of the heavy toward the height. Together they are matter given the power to rise, the base made able to become the exalted — the whole of the alchemist's art drawn in a single shape. That Zagan wears it, as Haagenti does, declares him a transmuter to the root. The two winged bulls of the Goetia are the two great masters of turning the base into the precious, and Zagan is the one who turns it, above all, in the mind.
Zagan turns the liquids one into another, and always both ways: wine into water and water into wine, blood into wine and wine into blood, oil into water and water into oil. The reversibility is the mark of a true master — he does not merely change a thing but commands the change in either direction, holding both states in his power. And the particular pairs carry meaning. Wine and water are the spirited and the plain, joy and the everyday, as in Haagenti's like gift. Blood and wine are the most charged of all — life and spirit, the vital and the sacred, the pair the oldest rites hold holy, life-force turned to spirit and spirit to life. Oil and water are the anointing and the plain, the consecrated and the common. In each, Zagan commands the turning of one state of a substance into its other, the base into the rich and the rich into the base, at will. It is the alchemist's mastery over the very nature of things, and the outward sign of the deeper transmutations he works upon the mind.
Zagan transmutes metal into coin, and the difference from Haagenti's gift is telling. Haagenti turns metal into gold — the philosopher's gold, the sign of the perfected self, a thing of the Great Work. Zagan turns metal into coin — current money, practical and usable value, the base metal made into the medium of exchange. His is the more worldly and immediate transmutation: not the gold of the sage but the coin of the market, the turning of the raw and useless into the practically valuable. Read inwardly, it is of a piece with his making of fools wise — the taking of what is base and unformed and making it into something of real and usable worth, the practical refinement of the raw into the valuable.
Among his gifts of the mind, Zagan makes men witty — quick, clever, sharp of tongue and ready of thought. This is the transmutation of the slow and dull mind into the quick and bright one, the kindling of that ready cleverness that catches a thing fast and answers well. It is the first and lighter of his two mental gifts, the sharpening of the wit; and it pairs with the deeper one, for the witty mind is quick where the wise mind is deep, and Zagan, generous, gives both — the quickness and, in his greatest gift, the depth.
Here is the heart of Zagan, and the most generous and hopeful office in the whole Goetia: he makes fools wise. Consider what it means. In a world that has always been quick to write off the fool as beyond help — the dull, the slow, the foolish, fixed forever in their folly — Zagan declares the opposite. Folly is not a fixed and hopeless condition; it is a base state, like base metal, and it may be transmuted. The fool may be made wise. No one is beyond the reach of this change; no one is too foolish, too slow, too far gone in folly to be refined into wisdom. This is transmutation applied to the mind and the soul, and it is the kindest thing a spirit of this book gives. Read as this Vault reads it, turned upon oneself, it is a gift of pure hope: whatever folly is in you — the foolish habit, the unwise pattern, the slow and unformed part of your understanding — is not fixed, and may be transmuted into wisdom. Zagan is the spirit who says that the lead of your own folly can become the gold of wisdom, and that the becoming is possible for anyone who seeks it.
The two winged bulls of the Goetia are best understood together, for they divide the alchemist's art between them. Haagenti is the philosopher's alchemist: his transmutation is the slow, deep Great Work, the refining of the base self into the gold of wisdom, and he makes men wise in the deep and considered way, the gold of the refined soul. Zagan is the quicker and more democratic alchemist: he makes men witty and makes fools wise, turns metal to coin rather than gold, and works his transmutation more immediately and more widely. Where Haagenti refines the gold that is already in the promising, Zagan makes gold from the basest lead — lifts the very fool into wisdom. The one is the sage's alchemy of perfecting the good; the other is the redeemer's alchemy of transforming the base. Between them they say that wisdom may be deepened in the wise and kindled even in the fool, and that no state of mind is beyond transmutation.
Zagan is placed in the element of Water and the quarter of the North — Water above all, for his transmutations are of the liquids, the flowing and changeable substances, wine and water and blood and oil. For the planetary correspondence this Vault reads him under the Moon. His gift of wit, and his turning of metal to coin, might on their own be read as Mercurial — and Mercury, the quick mind and the money, is not a wrong resonance; but his deeper nature is lunar. The Moon is the planet of the fluids and the tides, of all that flows and changes, wholly at home in his watery transmutations; and the Moon is the planet of mutability itself, of the ever-changing face that is never twice the same — and mutability, the capacity of a thing to be turned into another, is the very essence of Zagan the transmuter. And the Moon governs the changeable mind — the mutable understanding that may be dull or bright, foolish or wise — which is exactly what Zagan transmutes when he makes the fool wise. Where Ose wore the Moon of glamour and the malleable self-image, Zagan wears the Moon of true transmutation — the turning of substance into substance and of folly into wisdom, the fluid change that is real and not illusory. Set his metal as silver, his day as Monday, and his colours the wine-dark of his liquid transmutations and the 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 form, and his offices, and the lunar reading follows from the fluids, the mutability, and the changed mind at the heart of them.
In the old demonology Zagan is a well-regarded and much-noticed spirit, marked especially by his generous gift of making fools wise and by the striking series of his liquid transmutations. Weyer and the Ars Goetia give the same account — the winged bull, the doubled rank, the wit, the turning of wine and water and blood and oil, the metal to coin, the fools made wise. Commentators have long paired him with Haagenti as the two transmuters, and singled out the making of fools wise as one of the kindest and most hopeful offices in the whole book. He is a King held in genuine regard, for the generosity of what he gives.
Carried into the modern revival through the 1904 Mathers and Crowley edition, Zagan is worked today chiefly as a spirit of transformation and of the mind — by those seeking to sharpen their wit, to grow in wisdom, to transmute their own folly, and to turn the base material of their lives into something of worth. Modern practitioners cherish his making of fools wise as a gift of pure hope, read his transmutations inwardly as the turning of the base into the valuable, and hold him beside Haagenti as the quicker and more redemptive of the two great alchemists. He remains a generous and well-loved King, sought for the transmutation of the mind.
Zagan is generous, transformative, and hopeful — the winged bull and the second alchemist of the Goetia, the transmuter whose art culminates in the mind. He turns liquid into liquid and metal into coin, sharpens the dull into the witty, and, most generously of all, lifts the fool into wisdom, declaring that folly is no fixed fate but a base state that may be transmuted like any other. He is the spirit of the hope that anyone may become wise, that the lead of one's own folly may be turned to gold. Met with a genuine wish to be transformed — to grow in wit and in wisdom, and to transmute what is base in oneself into what is worthy — he is among the kindest and most rewarding of all the spirits of the Goetia, the alchemist who leaves no mind beyond the reach of change.
The grimoires give Zagan the form of a bull bearing the wings of a griffin -- the same winged bull that Haagenti wears, the alchemical emblem of base matter given the power to rise -- and after a while he puts on the shape of a man. The winged bull marks him as a transmuter to the root: the heavy earthbound bull of the base, lifted by the eagle-wings of ascent. Those who work with him describe a strong, warm, generous presence, weighty like the bull but quick and bright in the mind, with a notable quality of hope and transformation about it -- the felt sense of a spirit who sees nothing as fixed and everything as capable of being turned into something better. It is one of the more benevolent and encouraging manifestations in the book, the bearing of a King who believes no mind beyond improving and no fool beyond being made wise.
Enn: Anay on ca Zagan
Working with Zagan is working with the transmuter of the mind -- the winged bull and second alchemist of the Goetia, whose art turns the base into the valuable and, most generously, the fool into the wise. His is the gift of transformation applied to the mind and the self: the sharpening of wit, the growing of wisdom, the transmutation of one's own folly into understanding, the turning of what is base in one's life into worth. This Vault comes to him for that transformation, in the hope he embodies -- that no mind is fixed and no folly beyond change. What follows is a guide built around that hope.
Come to Zagan with a genuine wish to be transformed and an honest acknowledgement of what in you needs transmuting, for he is a generous spirit and answers the seeker who truly wishes to change. Cleanse yourself and the space, and set his seal at the centre of the working. Where the correspondences are followed, the lunar suits him: wine-dark and silver, the metal silver, the hours of the Moon and of Monday. A cup of wine or water at the working suits him, the emblem of his transmutations. Then open the way by reciting his Enn -- Anay on ca Zagan -- steadily, and let a strong, warm, generous presence gather, weighty and yet bright, the winged bull of transformation.
For his greatest gift, come to Zagan to have your own folly transmuted into wisdom. This asks a rare honesty: name the folly in yourself -- the foolish habit, the unwise pattern, the slow or unformed part of your understanding, the thing you keep doing that you know is not wise -- and bring it to him not with shame but with the hope he embodies, that it is not fixed and may be changed. Ask him to transmute it: to turn the lead of that folly into the gold of wisdom, to lift the foolish part of you into the wise. This is his kindest office, and its ground is hope -- the knowledge that no one is too far gone in folly to be made wise, and that you are not the exception. Work it as a real transmutation, over time, and let him change what you had thought was fixed.
For his lighter gift, ask Zagan to make you witty -- to sharpen the quick, clever, ready cleverness of the mind, the quickness that catches a thing fast and answers well. Ask this alongside the deeper gift of wisdom, for the two complete each other: the quick mind and the deep one, the wit and the wisdom. Let him kindle both.
For his transmutations of substance -- the liquids, the metal into coin -- work them, as this Vault works such gifts, inwardly and by their meaning. Ask Zagan to help you turn what is base in your life into something of worth: the raw and useless material of a situation into practical value, the unformed into the usable, the lead into the coin. His is the art of taking what seems worthless and transmuting it into something real and good; bring him the base thing and ask him to show you how it may be turned.
Practitioners describe Zagan's presence as strong, warm, and generous, weighty and yet bright, with a marked quality of hope and possibility about it. When he has heard, his help tends to arrive as a transformation of the mind -- a foolish pattern seen through and beginning to change, a quickening and sharpening of wit, a growth in genuine wisdom, a base thing in one's life turning unexpectedly into something of worth. Look for the sense that what you had thought fixed is in fact changing. Keep a written record of the transmutations, for his gifts unfold as real change over time.
Work with Zagan in the spirit of his own hope and honesty. Come genuinely willing to be transformed, and honest about the folly you would have transmuted, for the transmutation asks that you first see and name what is base. Take his gift as a real change worked over time, not a wisdom handed over whole -- the fool is made wise by transmutation, which is a process, not by a stroke. Do not despair of your own folly, for despair is the one thing that closes the door he opens; his whole gift is the assurance that folly is not fixed. And let the wit he sharpens serve wisdom, not mere cleverness for its own sake. He is the transmuter of the mind and the maker of fools wise, among the kindest and most hopeful of all the spirits of the Goetia, and to the seeker who comes willing to be changed, he gives the greatest hope there is -- that the lead of what one is may be turned to the gold of what one may become.