Asmoday
Asmoday is the thirty-second of the 72 spirits catalogued in the Ars Goetia, the first section of the Lemegeton. He is described with the title of King according to the text, and corresponds to the figure more widely known as Asmodeus in demonological literature.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-20
Historical fact
Asmoday is the form used in the Ars Goetia for the name more widely known as Asmodeus in demonological literature at large. Asmodeus appears in the Book of Tobit, an apocryphal/deuterocanonical text — present in the Old Testament canon of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, but absent from the Jewish canon and most Protestant canons — where he is described as a spirit hostile to marriages. Unlike figures such as Bael or Astaroth, whose names derive from the repurposing of earlier pagan deities, Asmoday/Asmodeus represents a case of a figure with pre-existing scriptural/apocryphal documentation being incorporated into the Goetia's catalog. In Mathers' edition (1904), he is described with three heads — of a bull, a man, and a ram —, a serpent's tail, goose's feet, breathing fire from his mouth, riding an infernal dragon and carrying a lance with a banner.
Interpretation — Solomonic Tradition (Mathers/Crowley, 1904)
In Mathers' edition, Asmoday holds the catalog's thirty-second position and is described as a King, commanding 72 legions of spirits according to the text — the highest number of legions attributed to any single spirit in the catalog. He is listed among the spirits associated with teaching arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and all handicrafts, and is also described in the text as a guardian of treasures.
Interpretation — Dr. Rudd's Tradition (manuscript, c. 1650)
The manuscript attributed to Thomas Rudd, predating Mathers' edition by roughly two and a half centuries, pairs each of the 72 spirits in the catalog — including Asmoday — with a corresponding angel drawn from the Kabbalistic Shem HaMephorash system (72 divine names), as a structural restraining/governing counterpart, an element absent from Mathers' edition. The consulted sources offer no reliable confirmation of which specific angel name Rudd assigned to Asmoday; the general pairing practice, however, is well documented in Joseph Peterson's research on the Rudd manuscripts.
Interpretation — Luciferian Tradition (modern interpretation)
Modern Luciferian authors, chiefly Michael W. Ford (in works such as The Luciferian Goetia), reinterpret the Ars Goetia's 72 spirits not as external entities subordinate to a higher divine hierarchy, but as archetypal masks of aspects of the practitioner's own consciousness, to be integrated in service of self-deification. In this reading, Asmoday/Asmodeus's trajectory — from a figure already demonized in the Book of Tobit to a spirit catalogued in the Goetia — is treated much like Bael/Baal and Astaroth/Astarte: a case of a figure reclaimed by the Luciferian tradition as a symbol of power and knowledge wrongly distorted by Christian demonology. His mastery of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and handicrafts is read as the archetype of the initiate's autonomous intellect, and his role as guardian of treasures is reinterpreted as custodianship of one's own inner potential.
This section presents one tradition's interpretation, not a verifiable fact.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Asmoday the same as Asmodeus?
- Yes — Asmoday is the spelling used in the Ars Goetia for the figure more widely known as Asmodeus, who appears in the Book of Tobit, an apocryphal/deuterocanonical text present in the Catholic and Orthodox Old Testament.
- What title and how many legions are attributed to Asmoday?
- He is described with the title of King, commanding 72 legions of spirits according to Mathers' edition (1904) — the highest number attributed to any single spirit in the catalog.
- Is the Luciferian reading of Asmoday as old as the Mathers and Rudd traditions?
- No. It's a modern interpretation, developed mainly from the 2000s onward by Luciferian authors such as Michael W. Ford, who reframe the Ars Goetia's spirits as psychological archetypes for self-development — a contemporary symbolic reading, not a historical manuscript like Mathers' or Rudd's.
Sources
- S. L. MacGregor Mathers (trans.), Aleister Crowley (ed.). The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (1904).
- Joseph H. Peterson (ed.). The Lesser Key of Solomon (2001).
- Thomas Rudd (manuscript), ed. Adam McLean. Dr. Rudd's Treatise on Angel Magic (c. 1650 (2007 ed.)).
- Michael W. Ford. The Luciferian Goetia (2007).