Invoking Malphas in Magic: Powers, Correspondences & Dangers
Malphas is one of the most strategically gifted spirits in the entire Goetic catalog. As the 39th spirit of the Ars Goetia — the foundational grimoire of the Lesser Key of Solomon — he holds the rank of Great President and commands 40 legions of demons. If your work involves building something powerful, dismantling an enemy's defenses, or extracting hidden knowledge, Malphas is a name worth knowing. This article is your starting point: who he is, what he governs, how to align your practice with his energy, and exactly what to watch for when you work with him.
Who Is Malphas? The Great President and His Powers
In the Goetic tradition, the 72 spirits of Solomon are ranked by title — Kings, Dukes, Marquises, Counts, Princes, Presidents, and Knights. Each rank carries a distinct character and mode of operation. Presidents, as a class, are associated with knowledge, cunning, and intellectual power. They tend to deal in information, skill, and the mechanics of the mind rather than brute force. Malphas embodies this fully. He is described in the classical grimoires as a spirit of extraordinary intelligence — subtle, capable, and quietly formidable.
Malphas appears most commonly as a great black crow or raven. When he takes human form at the request of the summoner, he speaks with a hoarse, rough voice. This bird form is significant — ravens and crows appear across world mythology as messengers, tricksters, and bearers of hidden knowledge. That symbolism maps cleanly onto what Malphas actually does: he carries intelligence between worlds, reveals what is concealed, and operates in the liminal space between what is known and what is kept secret. His appearance is not incidental. It tells you something true about his nature.
His powers, as recorded in the Goetia and expanded upon in centuries of practical commentary, include the following: he builds towers, strongholds, and high places with remarkable speed; he throws down the buildings and towers of enemies; he destroys the desires and thoughts of enemies; he brings familiar spirits; and he can receive and accept sacrifices willingly — but he will deceive those who make them if not properly constrained. This last point is not buried for a reason. It is central to understanding how Malphas works and why his invocation requires careful preparation.
In terms of affiliations within the Goetic hierarchy, Malphas sits among the Presidents — a group that includes spirits like Foras, Glasya-Labolas, and Haagenti. Presidents as a class are often said to appear in human form when commanded and are associated with the solar hours and the planetary sphere of the Sun in some interpretations, though Malphas's specific planetary governance is discussed in the correspondences section below. He does not hold a position as a subordinate to any of the Goetic Kings in the way that some spirits are described, making him a relatively autonomous operator within the hierarchy — which adds to both his power and his unpredictability.
His name has appeared under variant spellings across different manuscript traditions: Malpas, Malphas, and occasionally Malthas. These variations reflect the fragmented transmission history of the grimoires — copied by hand across centuries, translated between Latin, Hebrew, and vernacular languages. The name Malphas is now the standard form used in modern practice, and it is the one you will encounter in virtually every contemporary edition of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Regardless of spelling, the spirit and his seal remain consistent across sources, which is what practitioners actually work with.
Malphas Correspondences: How to Align Your Practice
Working with a Goetic spirit effectively means building an environment and a ritual structure that resonates with that spirit's energy. Correspondences — the symbolic associations that link a spirit to colors, planets, materials, and timing — function as tuning mechanisms. They don't summon power on their own. What they do is sharpen your focus, reinforce your intention, and signal to your own mind that this work is real and purposeful. When you set a space that matches Malphas's energy, you are priming yourself for contact. Your will does the work. The correspondences just help you aim it.
Here are Malphas's core correspondences as understood in traditional and modern practice:
- Element: Air — Malphas operates through intelligence, communication, cunning, and the transmission of hidden information, all of which fall under the Air current
- Direction: East — the direction of Air, intellect, and the rising of new understanding
- Planet: Saturn — his association with the destruction of enemies, the erosion of structures, and binding adversarial forces places him firmly in Saturn's domain; some practitioners also associate him with Mercury due to his intelligence-gathering role, and layering both is valid depending on your working's focus
- Number: 39 (his seal number in the Goetia) and 40 (the number of legions he commands) — both carry weight in ritual numerology; 39 for identification and invocation, 40 for workings related to commanding or directing large-scale effort
- Colors: Black, dark gray, deep indigo — aligned with Saturn, secrecy, and his raven form
- Metals: Lead (Saturn's metal), iron — use in sigil carving, offerings, or altar tools
- Incense and Herbs: Sulfur, black copal, myrrh, cypress, asafoetida, patchouli — heavy, resinous, and dark-toned scents that match the Saturnian frequency and create the atmospheric density that Goetic work benefits from
- Stones and Crystals: Obsidian, black tourmaline, jet, onyx, apache tears — stones of protection, psychic shielding, and shadow work; obsidian in particular for scrying and revelation of hidden enemies
- Sigil: Malphas's unique sigil from the Ars Goetia — used as the focal point of any invocation or petition working
- Day: Saturday — Saturn's day, aligned with his destructive, binding, and fortifying functions
- Time: The planetary hours of Saturn on Saturday for maximum alignment; alternatively, midnight workings are traditional for Goetic Presidents
In practical terms, what this means is that Malphas's name and energy are most potently invoked when your intention falls into one of his core domains. Building something — a project, a business, a creative stronghold, a physical space — is one of his most direct applications. He accelerates construction, strengthens foundations, and brings organizational clarity. If you are laying groundwork for something significant, his energy adds structural force to your will. This is one of his most accessible entry points for modern practitioners who may not be working within classical ceremonial structures.
His intelligence-gathering capacity is equally powerful. Malphas can be invoked to uncover what an adversary is planning, to reveal hidden agendas, to expose deception, and to bring information forward that was previously inaccessible. Think of him as a specialized operative in that function. His raven nature makes him a natural spy — silent, observant, and capable of moving between spaces without detection. For practitioners working in protection magic, enemy work, or situations involving betrayal or deception, this is an area where his invocation can produce clear results when approached with focused intent.
The third major function — destroying the towers and strongholds of enemies — is the most straightforwardly baneful application of his power. This is not vague cursing energy. Malphas is precise. He targets structures: the systems, plans, resources, and support networks that give an adversary their stability. If you are working against someone who has power because of their organization, their alliances, or their established position, Malphas is particularly well-suited to the work. His action is architectural — he dismantles the framework, not just the person. Combined with a clear, specific intention and a well-crafted petition, this can be a devastatingly effective form of adversarial magic.
The Specific Dangers of Working with Malphas
Every Goetic spirit carries risk. That is not a reason to avoid them — it is a reason to understand them. The risks specific to Malphas are worth your serious attention because they are not generic. They are particular to how he operates and what he values. Going in informed is the most powerful thing you can do before this work begins.
The most explicit warning in the grimoire tradition is this: Malphas will deceive those who make offerings to him if they are not properly constrained. This is not a moral judgment. It is an operational characteristic. Malphas is a spirit of intelligence and cunning — he is, by nature, a deceiver of enemies. If you approach him without clarity, without structure, and without a firm command of your own intent, you become the one he outmaneuvers. The offering he accepts may be taken without the reciprocal service being rendered, or the service may be delivered in a way that technically fulfills your petition while producing an outcome you did not want. Precision in your petition language is not optional with Malphas. It is the core protection.
His raven nature also signals a secondary risk: Malphas has a talent for revealing what you did not ask to see. When you invoke a spirit of hidden knowledge, you open a door, and what comes through is not always only what you requested. Practitioners who work with Malphas for intelligence-gathering purposes sometimes report intrusive insights — information about themselves, their own vulnerabilities, their own deceptions and self-deceptions — alongside the intelligence they were seeking. This is not punishment. It is the natural function of a spirit who traffics in revelation. If you are not ready to receive uncomfortable truths about yourself, stabilize your shadow work before working with Malphas.
There is also the matter of his demonic familiar spirits. Malphas can bestow a familiar — a spirit entity that accompanies and serves the practitioner. This sounds appealing, and it can be a genuine benefit in an experienced practitioner's work. But familiars from a spirit who has already been described as deceptive carry their own complications. A familiar granted by Malphas without clear terms and binding will operate with the same cunning as its source. If you are not at a stage in your practice where you can manage a bound spirit relationship clearly, do not request the familiar. Focus on the petition and close the working when it is complete.
Finally, the architecture of your intention matters more with Malphas than with almost any other spirit in the Goetia. Because he is a builder and a destroyer of structures, working with vague intentions is genuinely dangerous. A working aimed at “taking down” someone without clear parameters for what that means can ripple outward and touch structures you did not intend to affect — your own alliances, your own stability, your own foundations. Specificity is your protection. Know exactly what you are asking for, write it down before you begin, and do not deviate from that intention during the working.
Historical Roots: Malphas Through the Centuries
The Ars Goetia is the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a 17th-century compilation of earlier magical texts. While the Lesser Key was assembled and widely circulated in the 1600s, its source material is significantly older. The catalog of 72 spirits draws on earlier works including the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, compiled by Johann Weyer and published in 1577, and ultimately on Jewish and Christian demonological traditions that stretch back into the medieval period and earlier. Malphas appears consistently across these sources with remarkably stable attributes, suggesting that whatever tradition he originates from, it predates the grimoire compilations that brought him to wide attention.
The raven as a symbol of intelligence, prophecy, and hidden knowledge appears across an extraordinary range of cultural traditions. In Norse mythology, Odin's ravens Huginn and Muninn — Thought and Memory — fly across the world and return to whisper what they have seen into the god's ear. In Celtic tradition, ravens are battle omens and messengers of the otherworld. In Greek mythology, Apollo's sacred bird was the raven, associated with prophecy and the transmission of divine knowledge. None of these traditions are the source of Malphas directly, but they reflect the deep symbolic current he draws from. The raven as a carrier of intelligence between seen and unseen worlds is not a coincidence of appearance — it is a cross-cultural truth about what this type of being does.
In the medieval Christian demonological framework, spirits like Malphas were often interpreted as fallen angels — beings with immense power and intelligence who had turned that power against humanity. This is not the framework most modern practitioners work within, but it shaped the tone and structure of the grimoires, including the emphasis on constraint and binding. The classical ceremonial approach to Goetic spirits involved elaborate protections, the Triangle of Art, divine names of compulsion, and formal license to depart — all designed to manage beings understood as adversarial by default. Modern practitioners approach this tradition from a wider range of philosophical positions, from the classical ceremonial model to the more relational frameworks of contemporary daemonolotry, in which spirits like Malphas are worked with as allies rather than compelled as enemies. Where you land philosophically will shape your approach. What the history tells you is that Malphas has been considered powerful enough to warrant serious structure for a very long time.
In contemporary practice, Malphas has gained particular attention among practitioners working in adversarial magic, strategic spellwork, and what some practitioners call “precision baneful work” — targeted, structured workings against specific threats rather than broad curses. His revival in modern occultism reflects a broader shift toward working with Goetic spirits as specialists, choosing them for specific tasks the way you might choose a tool for a specific job. That framing honors both his power and his nature. He is not a general-purpose force. He is a precise, intelligent, and deeply capable spirit with a specific range of operation — and within that range, he is formidable.
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 Malphas fits alongside the other 71 spirits and the Presidents 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.