Argus: The Abrahamic Inversion

This page follows how the many-eyed Argus was written into the grimoires as Agares. The Gods and Their Daemons are never to be invoked by such names, which were made to slander the Original Gods; Argus is approached as Argus, by the name that has always been the true one.

Babylonian Talmud

Argus in the form of Agrat appears in ancient Jewish demonology first in a discussion of the Babylonian Talmud, likely dating from the fifth century CE or considerably earlier. The name may be related to אגרת, meaning epistle or message, related to egertu in Akkadian meaning the same. She is described as a dangerous demoness who roams at night with 180,000 (eighteen myriads) of subordinate evil angels and demons. Alongside Lilith and Naamah, this is one of the earliest discussions to evolve into goetic material.^{1, 2 ,3}

אגרת, היא אגרת בת מחלת שם שידא
Agrat: she is Agrat daughter of Maḥalat, the name of a demon.
Pesachim 111a-b

The context of the discussion is in the event of witnessing two women facing each other at a crossroads, which the rabbis discussing take to be an ominous indication of witchcraft. A good man of Hebrew esteem is said to leave the vicinity if possible, or to hold hands with another man reciting the formula if crossing:

אגרת אזלת אסיא בלוסיא מתקטלא בחיק קבל
Agrat, Azlat, Asya, Belusya, killed by arrow-shot / bolts.
Pesachim 111a-

This is possibly a reference to the blinding and subjugation of Argus. In Pesachim 111B, it is said she encountered Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa. She threatens him, saying that if he and his Torah were not held in such high regard in heaven, she would have subjugated him. He responds that she must not pass through any settlement. As a result, she begs him for space, and he grants it on 'Sabbath nights' and 'the evenings of Wednesday'.

The Zohar and other Literature

Agrat is treated in Zoharic literature as a queen of the demons. She is slandered as the reigning power over all prostitutes, and becomes a mother of demons alongside Mahalat and Naamah after Samael bears children with Lilith. Lilith and Agrat also supposedly visited King Solomon in the form of harlots. Solomon used Agrat's powers to seal beings inside a lamp vessel put inside a cave on the cliffs near the Dead Sea.

The literature Yalquṭ Ḥadash among some rabbinical circles makes Agrat the demon of Tuesday and Friday nights who dances upon roofs, haunting the air with her chariot, again having 1.8 myriads of destructive demons in her throng. It is said Ashmedai is the son of Agrat.

The Tuv haAretz by Nathan Nata Spira of the seventeenth century claims that Mahalath was daughter to Ishmael and his wife. The wife of Ishmael was a daughter of Egyptian magician named Kasdiel. Mother and daughter were exiled to the desert, where the demon Igrathiel mated with Mahalat, producing Agrat.^{4, 5, 6, 7}

The Goetic Agarat

The demon reappears in the Renaissance-era manuscript Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.8.29, fols. 179–182v traditionally held to belong to the grimoire the Livre des esperitz, probably composed in the mid 1500s. It is in a form of Old French.⁸

Agarat eſt duc et appiert benignement en ſẽblãce de home vieulx
et enſeigne touz langaiges et dõne ſeigneuries et grandes dignites
en terre et ſoubz luy a xxxvi legions
Trinity College MS O.8.29, fols. 179–182v

The demon is said to approach benignly in the form of an old man. It is said he teaches all languages, gives lordships and great dignities, and has beneath him 36 legions. It is interesting that 36 is a double of the 18 given in the above account.

Agares Dux primus sub potestate Orientis,
apparet benevolus in senioris hominis forma,
equitans in crocodilo, et in manu accipitrem portans.
Cuncta linguarum genera docet optime:
fugitantes reverti facit, et permanentes fugere:
praelaturas et dignitates dimittit, et tripudiare facit spiritus terrae:
et est de ordine Virtutum,
sub sua potestate habens triginta et unam legiones.
Johann Weyer, Pseudomonarchia daemonum

Weyer's version makes Agares a power underneath Oriens, the cardinal demon lord of the East. He rides a crocodile while carrying a hawk in his hand while again appearing as a benign old man. However, accipiter in Latin does not just mean hawk (maybe an allusion to the peacock story, maybe a symbol of vigilance), but a rapacious, greedy man able to seize what he wants. He teaches all kinds of languages very well. Agares makes fugitives return and those who remain flee, while casting down prelacies and dignities, and makes the spirits of the earth dance. He is of the order of Virtues, having thirty-one legions under his power.^{9, 10}

The fugitive is a clear reference to the story of Argus Panoptes stalking Io and keeping her under endless guard, as is the symbol of the hawk. Hawkers in medieval thought represented both youth and travel. The direction of the East in the PGM material many millennia before gives it an 'airy diadem', amenable to controlling and harmonizing. The crocodile represents vigilance and all-seeing above and below water, a symbol of total astral sight. In medieval times the voracious and dangerous animal also represented deceit due to its misleading appearance in water.^{11, 12, 13, 14}

Earthquakes as a power of Agares are attributed to the Sloane manuscript (British Library, Sloane MS 3825) of the Lemegeton.¹⁵ This again shows the intense earth-shaking power of the giant but also the omniscience of the entity. In Dr. Rudd's demon-angel correspondence tradition, further elaborated on by Lenaire, Agares is claimed to be ruled by the angel Ieliel who creates total obedience among subjects, restores peace among spouses and aids those passionate in love, probably another reference to the Io episode.^{16, 17}