Heracles: The Abrahamic Inversion

The lion-headed king Vine of the catalogues is read here as Heracles. The Gods and the divine heroes are never to be invoked by the names of slander; call on Heracles by the eternal name Heracles.

Boab

The oldest secure precursor of Vine is the spirit Boab in the MS Plut. 89 sup. 38 of the Florentine Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, a magical collection dated January 1494. Boab appears as a soldier with a lion-like head riding a great black horse. He speaks with a harsh voice, reveals hidden matters, and gives true answers concerning present, past and future things. The name may be related to the pillar Boaz, a pillar of strength from Solomon's temple.¹

Boab magnus preses apparet in similitudinem militis, caput eius assimmilatur Leoni: equitat super equum magnum, nigrum...

Boab as having red eyes and large teeth, he provides knowledge regarding the natural world including how dogs bark and is able to move gold and silver around at will, likely a reference to the sun. He answers all questions asked by those seeking information about secrets that are unknown. Furthermore, he commands forty legions. In addition to his depiction in the Florentine catalog, a comparative study of spirit catalogues of the Renaissance period conducted by Jean-Patrice Boudet indicates that Boab is placed in the list of forebears to the later Officium spirituum catalogs.²

Vine

In the fifth edition of De Praestigiis Daemonum (1577), which was published with an appendix titled the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, Johann Weyer wrote about "Vine". He called Vine a great king and count. Weyer depicted Vine as a lion riding on a black horse, and carrying a viper. He also gave Vine dominion over towers, stone buildings, swollen streams, hidden Matters, witches and knowledge of all things in the past, present and future.³

Vine magnus Rex & Comes: se ostentat ut leo in equo nigro insidens, portansque viperam in manu...

Weyer's Latin is distinctive to later accounts as two later English traits are not actually what his text says. Lapideas domus extruit means that Vine erects stone houses or structures rather than stating that he throws stone walls down. Likewise, rivos reddit turgidos means that he makes streams swollen. The later image of a spirit who demolishes walls and whips waters into storms belongs to the English transmission.³

Again, the reference to construction is in parallel to multiple Herculean fables, including the Troy sea monster episode and the stables of Augea. The streams are a reference to diverting the river Alpheus and Peneus to cleanse the stables of filth.

Royne

A closely related spirit called Royne survives in the English Office of Spirits tradition represented by Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b.26. The manuscript is catalogued to approximately 1577–1583 and contains internal dating associated with 1583, so it cannot presently be proved to precede Weyer's securely dated 1577 printing. Royne is therefore the closest surviving English source-form of Vine, rather than a securely earlier exact-name attestation.⁴

Royne, a great earl ... his face is like a lion, and he rideth upon a black horse...

Royne shows up as a soldier with a face like a lion instead of as a whole lion. He is an excellent earl that provokes venery between a husband and his wife, rides a black horse, and is connected to a snake. He gladly builds many large towers, homes, and military fortifications, he will destroy enemies and enemy homes, he consecrates books or other items, he reveals hidden treasures and secrets and he can command 26 legions. The shared lion, black horse, serpent, towers and secret information show the connection to Weyer’s Vine very closely, but the fact that Royne does love magic, consecrates things and explicitly destroys the homes of his enemies preserves much of the content missing in Weyer.⁵

The comparison also helps explain the older Boab material. Boab already has the soldier, lion head, black horse, hidden knowledge and past-present-future divination in 1494; Royne preserves the soldier, lion face and black horse while adding the serpent and architectural offices; Weyer compresses the figure into a lion-rider with viper and retains the architectural and divinatory powers. The multiple threads in developing this figure are indicated..^1,3,5

Scot and the English transformation

Reginald Scot translated Weyer's catalog into English in The Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584. Vine is still a great king and earl, a lion riding a black horse with a viper, but Scot renders the architectural and water clauses as saying that Vine “throweth downe stone walles” and “maketh waters rough.”⁶

The seventeenth-century Ars Goetia tradition preserves Vine as spirit forty-five and develops Scot's wording further: Vine discovers hidden things and witches, knows present, past and future matters, builds towers, throws down great stone walls, and makes waters rough “with stormes.” He is assigned thirty-five legions. The storm-making and wall-demolition image so familiar in modern summaries is therefore best understood as a later English development from Scot's translation.⁷

Dr. Rudd's angelology

In the Goetic angelology attributed to Dr. Thomas Rudd and derived from Agrippa's system of correspondences, Vine is paired with the forty-fifth Shem-ha-Mephorash angel, Sealiah, of the order of Virtues.⁸

Lazare Lenain gives Sealiah the title “Moteur de toutes choses,” the Mover of all things, very strongly linking into the solar discussions of Macrobius. He places the angel's ray from the 221st to the 225th degree of the sphere, associates the genius with the Sun much like Heracles, and gives the invocation period as 2:40 to 3:00 in the afternoon. Sealiah confounds the wicked and proud, much like how Heracles confronts Eurytheus and Diomedes, raises those who have been humiliated or cast down in apparently the same form as Heracles' penance, and governs vegetation and the principal forces by which nature is animated; essentially a gloss for he who wears the Nemean Lion.⁹

The psalmic indication is Psalm 94:18 in modern Hebrew and common English numbering: “When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.”^10,11