Stolas

Interpretation — Solomonic Tradition (Mathers/Crowley, 1904)

In Mathers' edition, Stolas holds the catalog's thirty-sixth position and is described as a Great Prince, commanding 26 legions of spirits according to the text. He is grouped, alongside spirits such as Foras, among those whose described domain of knowledge in the text involves herbs, precious stones, and — in Stolas' specific case — astronomy.

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 Stolas — 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 Stolas; 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 commanded through a higher divine authority, but as archetypal masks of aspects of the practitioner's own consciousness, integrated in service of self-deification. In this reading, Stolas' initial form as a crow — a bird traditionally associated with distant observation and a vantage that rises above the ground — is read as the archetype of the expanded state of consciousness that precedes the assumption of human form, that is, of intellect integrated into one's own being. His mastery of astronomy, herbs, and precious stones is, in turn, interpreted as the natural and cosmic knowledge the practitioner seeks to recognize and assimilate as an inner faculty, rather than knowledge granted by an external entity.