Surya: The Abrahamic Inversion

Agrippa's spirit of the Sun, Sorath, is read by the Temple as Surya. The grimoire name is a slander against the Original Gods, not an invocation: approach Surya through His legitimate and eternal name.

Sorath is often introduced in modern demonological lists as if he is discussed in Hebrew literature, but there is no secure attestation to him in the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud, classical Midrash, or the Zohar. The Hebrew spelling סורת is in the planetary magic of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, where he claims the letters were chosen because their numerical value is 666, though since this number is of the Sun, it works in any language.¹

Christopher Lehrich pointed out that Agrippa's angelic and demonic names as all components of his deliberately constructed occult and gematrical language rather than as a simple transcript of a single older Jewish demonology, though it is difficult to say where the sources for some of Agrippa's planetary spirits came from or whether these letters are representative of an older tradition that he learned.²

Storax

Medieval-ritual magic manuscripts have used for centuries an angel or spirit of the sun called "Storax." The Book of Angels, Rings, Characters and Images of the Planets (transmitted under the name of Osbern Bokenham) uses the names of spirits, rings, characters, and images to organize planetary rituals. According to Juris Lidaka’s edition of this work, the content is part of the late-medieval traditions out of which the planetary rituals of early-modern times were established.³

The same name occurs in the magical materials related to Oberion. Early-Tudor sources indicate that the practitioner would inscribe on a lamina both the name of the solar angel Storax and its sign along with the name and sign of the lunar angel Carmelion. In that tradition, Storax is specifically identified as the angelus solis ("angel of the Sun").⁴

Whether Storax was an influence on the Agrippan solar spirits Sorath or Nakhiel is strongly debatable, since the name στύραξ (Sturax) relates to a resin made from oriental sweetgum, often used in magical rituals dating back to the Greek Magical Papyri. In some gematria configurations, στύραξ has the same numeric value as Απωλλον (Apollon) alongside Ιασων (Jason) and Ἰωνᾶς (Jonah), with all summing up to 1061, so what is more likely is that both Storax and Sorath are geometric constructions based on solar powers that passed into medieval occult literature.^5,6

Agrippa

The first public publication of Sorath was in Book II (chapter XXII) of Agrippa's "De occulta philosophia libri tres", which was printed in Cologne as a complete work in 1533.¹

For the Sun (Tabula Solis), this is a Square of six (six rows x six columns = 36 squares); every single number in the table ranges from one to thirty-six. Each line, column and main diagonal produces an aggregate of 111 while the sum of all thirty-six numbers together produce an aggregate of 666. He assigned the benevolent intelligence, Nakhiel or Nachiel, to the total of 111 and the spirit of Sorath to the total of the whole Square (666).⁷

666, Sorath, The spirit of the Sun, סורת
Agrippa, De occulta philosophia II.22

However, this is also where things become more complex. Agrippa did not invent this Square nor its association with the Sun; it was already in medieval Square compilations brought into Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. The Kitāb tadbīrāt al-kawākib (The Book of the Shapes of Stars) from 964CE by Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 162d (= AF 1421), ff. 1r–11v,) already provides the planetary association with the Sun. The Sun Square that the Temple of Zeus uses is the same as this ancient rendering, although many subsequent manuscripts flipped the horizontal axis. It is likely the Square, as with others, is from India and relates directly to Surya, since our work has proven it works optimally with the Suryayae mantra and works most powerfully in the Tropical signs of Leo and Aries in any case.^8,9,10,11

The most direct predecessor of Agrippa was De viribus quantitatibus by Luca Pacioli. Karl Anton Nowotny demonstrated that Agrippa's planetary seals and characters are geometrically generated from the numbered planetary tables. Sorath's character is therefore not an independent medieval portrait-symbol later attached to the name: it belongs to the mathematical machinery of the solar square itself.¹²

Vittoria Perrone Compagni's critical edition of the Latin text confirms Sorath's place within Agrippa's mature system, while also making clear that the Occult Philosophy is a Renaissance synthesis assembled from numerous philosophical, magical, astrological, and Cabalistic strata rather than a single inherited grimoire.¹³

Why Sorath Is 666

The Hebrew spelling is סורת, read in Agrippa's Latin text as Sorath. In ordinary Hebrew gematria the four letters produce the required solar total exactly:

ס = 60   +   ו = 6   +   ר = 200   +   ת = 400   =   666

The arithmetic of the name is what makes it function as a name. Since Hebrew does not have vowels as written, Agrippa provides the vowels through his Latin. What matters within the writing of the name is the sum of the consonantal letters equals the number of the Solar Square.^2,12

Nakhiel and Sorath: The Two Directions of Solar Power

Agrippa presents Sorath as the spirit belonging to the divine names of the Sun with a 'daemonio ad malum' (Sorath), paired with Nakhiel as its intelligence. The surrounding chapter distinguishes intelligences directed toward good from spirits directed toward evil.⁷

The descriptions of solar talismans made by Agrippa explain why the above described distinction is possible. An image of the sun which is appropriately formed will promote fame, success, power, and royal favour. On the other hand, if the formation of an image of the sun is improperly done, it may bring about tyrannical behaviour, pride, ambition, and death. Therefore Sorath may be seen in Agrippa's system as the excesses or negative side (i.e. the opposing) of solar power.⁷

These show how the Squares were taken out of context and confused deeeply, with the proper number 666 being associated with a daemon for evil. 111 when taken out of the full solar context is incomplete.

The Elizabethan Boxgrove Manual

The transmission of this practice could also be found in an English magical book from a late 16th-century called the "Boxgrove Manual." This manual was compiled by someone who drew heavily upon Agrippa, yet combined his work with other materials, notably the Heptameron (the Fourth Book), which is considered to have been written as a pseudo-Agrippan piece, as well as various rituals that were done using hand-written manuscripts.¹⁴

The name his Euill Angell is Sorath. סירת
Boxgrove Manual

The English compiler described Agrippa's daemon Sorath as the Sun's evil angel. The manuscript's Hebrew spelling, סירת, differs from Agrippa's סורת, apparently through scribal corruption or misunderstanding. Yet the structure is unmistakable: Nakhiel is the Sun's good intelligence and Sorath its evil counterpart.¹⁴

The same manuscript describes solar spirits in recognizably solar forms and colors, including royal figures, lions, gold and yellow, and sanguine or fiery appearances. Sorath himself is not given Agrippa's later-modern monstrous biography; he remains embedded within the planetary hierarchy.¹³

Transmission throughout the Centuries

In the seventeenth century, John Heydon relayed much of the previously discussed planetary demonology through his work titled "Theomagia, or the Temple of Wisdome." Although there was no doubt some variation in the form that these planetary rulers were described by each author, they all included the seven planetary rulers, including Sorath. These included Barzabel, Hismael, Kedemel, Taphthartharath, Hasmodai, and (A)Zazel.¹⁵

Francis Barrett's The Magus of 1801 republished and rearranged large quantities of Agrippan material for an English occult audience.¹⁶

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also used the Agrippan planetary system in the hierarchical table of correspondences (i.e., the Sun is governed by the Archangel Michael at higher levels of the hierarchy and by the Intelligence Nakhiel and the spirit Sorath at lower levels) and thus retained a version of the fundamental Renaissance distinction between benevolent Intelligences and malevolent Spirits, but within a wider pseudo-Kabbalistic grade system.¹⁷

Crowley: The Spirit of Sol

Aleister Crowley carried forward this idea. In his work "777," Crowley placed Sorath among the planetary spirits and associates it with the Sun and with the number 666. In "Sepher Sephiroth," written with Allan Bennett, Crowley lists 666 as the spirit of Sol.^18,19

Rudolf Steiner's Sorath: The Sun-Demon

Revelation 13:18 famously gives 666 as the number of the Beast and invites the reader to calculate it as the number of a man.²⁰

The decisive transformation came in Rudolf Steiner's 1908 lectures on the Apocalypse. Steiner took Agrippa's gematric Sorath and read him directly into Revelation 13. In his interpretation the four Hebrew letters, read numerically as 60 + 6 + 200 + 400, disclose the secret name concealed behind the number of the beast.²¹

Sorath is the name of the Sun-Demon, the adversary of the Lamb.
Rudolf Steiner, 29 June 1908

Steiner also equated the two horns of the beast with the two upper stroke horns of a Sigil he assigned to Sorath. Thus, the "daemonio ad malum" of Agrippa became much more than just that; it became an apocalyptic counter-force to Christ, one capable of keeping humans from returning to their spiritual sun, ironically the opposite of what Surya is.²²

Being something of an obsession of his, Steiner expanded upon this idea in 1924. He stated that Sorath is one of the strongest demonic entities in our solar system and suggested that his power periodically broke into history at intervals based on 666, those being approximately 666, 1332, and 1998.²²

His character circulated independently in modern sigil dictionaries and ceremonial-magical tables. The Sigil Dictionary of Fred Gettings lists and documents all the dubious magical signs which have been published under the name Sorath. These are all examples of the planetary tradition of mgic. The later use of this symbol as a sigil has caused it to be detached from the original Sun Square or to the sun god of India.²³