Amaymon

Amaymon (also spelled Amaimon, Amoymon or Maymon) is one of the four demon kings that European ritual magic sets at the cardinal points, a frame inherited from medieval angelology and astrology. He is not one of the 72 catalogued spirits: he stands above them. Johann Weyer takes him for granted in the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) when noting that Asmoday acts "under the power of Amaymon", and the Goetia of the Lemegeton (c. 1650) invokes him as king when a lesser spirit refuses to appear. The sources disagree on his quarter of the world: the tradition of Weyer and the Lemegeton links him to the East, while Agrippa (De occulta philosophia, 1533) and the Book of Abramelin crown him king of the South, alongside Oriens, Paimon and Ariton. It has been proposed that his name derives from the Arabic maymūn ("fortunate"), used in medieval magic as a spirit name. He must not be confused with Amon (Aamon), the marquis who holds the seventh place in the goetic list: they are distinct beings that late treatises mixed up more than once.

Unlike the 72 spirits, whose portraits the grimoires detail with care, Amaymon has no canonical form: the texts treat him as a power one suffers rather than a figure one sees. What they do record is his most feared weapon, the breath. The Goetia orders the exorcist to hold Solomon's silver ring before his face to guard against the king's poisonous fumes, and warns that he can only be bound from the third hour till noon and from the ninth hour till evening. That ring, together with the Secret Seal of Solomon with which the biblical king shut the spirits in the brass vessel, is the minimum equipment for anyone who would deal with him. Modern imagery, orphaned of any ancient description, paints him as a red-skinned king with a flaming lance and a scarlet banner: contemporary iconography, not that of the grimoires.

Amaymon's power is that of a sovereign: he commands the legions of spirits of his quarter of the world, and that authority is precisely what the magician exploits. When one of the catalogued spirits disobeys, the Lemegeton prescribes the "Invocation of the King": Amaymon is called upon to force his subject to appear, for no infernal hierarchy argues with its cardinal king. Weyer shows it in action: Asmoday, first and chiefest under the power of Amaymon, demands that the exorcist stand upright and bareheaded, and the whole protocol presupposes the king's shadow behind it. His poisoned breath, able to harm the careless invoker, works at once as weapon and as sieve: only the operator who honours the ritual (ring, hours, divine names) survives his presence. Outside his binding hours, no ordinary conjuration constrains him.