Invoking Agares in Magic: Powers, Correspondences & Dangers
Agares is the second spirit listed in the Ars Goetia, the foundational grimoire within the Lesser Key of Solomon that catalogs 72 demonic spirits bound and cataloged by King Solomon. He holds the rank of Duke — one of the high nobility of the Goetic hierarchy — and commands 31 legions of infernal spirits. If you are drawn to working with Goetic entities, Agares is one of the most practically oriented spirits in the entire catalog. His powers are sharp, directed, and deeply relevant to real-world concerns: language, authority, movement, and the reversal of power. Invoking Agares is not about spectacle. It is about bringing focused will to bear on outcomes that matter, using a spirit whose abilities are as precise as they are ancient.
Who Is Agares? Rank, Role, and Nature
Within the Goetic system, Agares — sometimes spelled Aguares or Agreas — is counted as the second of the 72 spirits, ranking just below Bael, the first King. His rank as Duke places him in the second tier of Goetic nobility. In ceremonial tradition, Dukes are associated with active, directive power. They are not passive observers. They move, they compel, and they command their legions with purpose. Agares's 31 legions reflect real spiritual authority within this hierarchy — he governs more spirits than many of his peers.
His appearance, as described in the Ars Goetia, is striking and layered with symbolism. He appears as an old but fair man riding a crocodile and carrying a goshawk on his fist. The crocodile connects him to primal, earthbound power — ancient, patient, and capable of sudden devastating force. The goshawk on his wrist signals speed, pursuit, and the ability to bring things back from a distance. The image of an old man suggests accumulated wisdom and long memory, not frailty. Together, the vision speaks to a spirit who is both rooted and reaching — present in the earth and hunting through the air simultaneously.
Agares is classified as a spirit who appears willingly — he comes before the conjurer without resistance if called correctly. Traditionally he falls under the dominion of the East, which connects him to beginnings, dawn, and the element of Air. Some accounts place him within the broader court of Lucifer, though his affiliations in practice center less on infernal politics and more on his specific capabilities. He does not carry the reputation of spirits who fight the conjurer or twist requests maliciously, but that does not make him without risk. His particular dangers are discussed in their own section below.
His core powers in the traditional texts are fourfold. First, he causes runaways and those who have fled to return — people, opportunities, and situations that have left your sphere. Second, he fetches back those who have run — a direct act of drawing back what has moved away from you. Third, he teaches all languages, tongues, and pronunciations, giving the practitioner fluency and communicative authority. Fourth, he has the power to cause earthquakes — metaphorically understood in modern practice as the ability to destabilize the foundations of an enemy or an obstacle. He can also destroy dignities, meaning he can strip status, credibility, and social standing from a target. These powers together make him a uniquely multifaceted spirit: equally useful for self-development work, reconciliation workings, and baneful magic.
Agares's Correspondences for Magical Work
Correspondences are the symbolic framework that lets you align your working environment with the energy of the spirit you are calling. Think of them as tuning forks. When you use the right colors, tools, incense, and timing, you are not performing empty ritual — you are building a focused channel between your intention and the force you are working with. Every correspondence below is chosen to amplify the specific qualities that define Agares's power.
Here are Agares's core correspondences as understood in traditional and modern practice:
- Element: Earth, with a secondary Air current — the crocodile roots him firmly in earthly, material concerns, while the goshawk and his command over language carry an undeniable Air quality of intellect and communication
- Direction: East — his traditional directional attribution, associated with beginnings, dawn energy, and the origin point of conjuration in Solomonic ritual
- Planet: Saturn — governing time, limitation, authority, and the stripping away of status; his power to destroy dignities and compel return both carry Saturn's cold, structural weight
- Number: 2 — his position as the second spirit; 31 — the number of legions he commands, appropriate to include in petitions or sigil work dedicated to him
- Colors: Deep green, earthy brown, and dark gold — grounding colors that reflect his earthbound nature and noble rank
- Metals: Lead — Saturn's metal, associated with weight, binding, and the slow inevitable force of time; iron is also appropriate for baneful or compelling workings
- Incense and Herbs: Storax, mastic, and frankincense for formal evocation; cypress and patchouli for workings focused on return and earth energy; mullein for communication workings
- Stones and Crystals: Black tourmaline for protection during the working; obsidian for baneful operations; jet for authority and grounding; green aventurine when working on language and communication
- Sigil: Agares's unique sigil from the Ars Goetia — used as the focal point of any invocation or petition working; draw it in the appropriate color on parchment or carve it into a candle to direct your intent toward him specifically
- Day: Saturday — Saturn's day, aligned with his planetary rulership and the themes of authority, restriction, and compelled return
- Time: Dawn — consistent with his eastern directional attribution and the traditional association of the first hours of light with new workings and commanding spirits to appear
When you are designing a working with Agares, you do not need every single correspondence on this list. Choose the ones most relevant to your goal. A language-focused working might emphasize green stones, Air energy, and morning timing. A baneful working aimed at destroying someone's reputation might lean into lead, black candles, Saturn timing, and obsidian. The correspondences are a toolkit, not a rigid checklist. Your will is the engine — these details are how you focus it.
Specific Dangers of Working With Agares
Agares is not considered one of the more aggressive or deceptive Goetic spirits, but every Duke of Hell carries inherent risks that are particular to his domain. Understanding those specific risks is what separates an intelligent working from a reckless one. The dangers with Agares are not about dramatic spiritual attack. They are subtler and more directly connected to what he actually does.
His power over language is the first area to watch carefully. Agares can grant fluency, persuasion, and communicative authority — but that same force can turn inward if your working is sloppy or your intention is unclear. Practitioners who have worked with him report an unsettling loosening of their own words: saying things they did not mean, miscommunicating at critical moments, or finding that their words carry unintended weight in social situations. If you are invoking Agares for language work, be precise about what kind of communicative power you are asking for. Vague requests around this particular power are where things tend to slip.
His ability to destroy dignities is the second area that demands clarity. This power is genuinely effective — and genuinely indiscriminate if you are not specific. If you invoke Agares to strip the authority or reputation of a target, you need to define that target with absolute precision in your working. This is not a power that tolerates ambiguity. Some accounts also suggest that working his destructive aspects without adequate containment can create ripple effects in the practitioner's own sphere of influence — a erosion of their own standing in ways that are difficult to trace back to the working. Root your working firmly, name your target clearly, and keep your own identity separate from the energy you are directing outward.
The final risk is specific to his power of return. Agares brings things back. That sounds straightforwardly useful — and often it is. But be honest with yourself before you call him for this purpose. Not everything that left your life departed by accident. If you are asking him to return a person, a relationship, or a situation that moved away for reasons rooted in its own damage, Agares will not evaluate whether the return is good for you. He will simply execute what you asked. Do the work of knowing exactly what you want back and why before you put his name to it.
Historical Roots of Agares
The Ars Goetia is believed to have taken its final form in the mid-17th century, compiled as part of the Lesser Key of Solomon, though the spirit lists it draws on circulate through magical manuscripts reaching back to the medieval period and earlier. Agares appears in several of these older sources, which speak to his persistence as a named spiritual force across centuries of European ceremonial magic. His name shows up in the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic from the 15th century, in various versions of the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum compiled by Johann Weyer in 1577, and in the grimoire tradition more broadly. He is one of the more consistently described spirits — his crocodile, his hawk, his old man's form, and his specific powers appear with unusual stability across sources, suggesting a well-established tradition of working with him specifically.
The crocodile in his iconography carries deep historical resonance. In Egyptian tradition, the crocodile was associated with Sobek — a god of power, protection, and the dangerous fertility of the Nile. It was a creature that moved between worlds: land and water, visible and submerged. Whether or not there is a direct lineage from Egyptian magical traditions to Agares's description in Solomonic texts is contested, but the symbolic weight of the animal fits his character with remarkable precision. He is a spirit of dual nature — creative and destructive, earthbound and expansive, ancient and immediately applicable.
In modern magical practice, Agares has seen renewed interest particularly among practitioners working with Goetic spirits through petition magic, sigil work, and demonic evocation outside of strict ceremonial frameworks. His relevance to practical, real-world concerns — career, communication, adversarial magic, and the recovery of what was lost — keeps him active in contemporary workings. He is not a spirit invoked for mystical enlightenment. He is invoked because something needs to change, return, or fall.
Continue Exploring the Goetic Hierarchy
Every spirit in the Ars Goetia belongs to a rank — King, Duke, Marquis, Count, President, Prince, or Knight — and knowing where a spirit sits in that hierarchy is what turns a list of names into a real working knowledge of the tradition. If you're ready to see how Agares fits alongside the other 71 spirits and the Dukes he ranks among, read The 72 Demons of Solomon: A Complete Compendium by Rank. It organizes the full Goetic catalog by nobility and walks you through the powers and character of each spirit in turn.
Approach this work with respect, move at the pace your practice can hold, and trust that your understanding will deepen with every spirit you come to know.