Demonic · Goetic Spirit · c. 1577 CE
Valefor
Also called Valefar, Malaphar
Offered as a good familiar with an unusual condition attached: he keeps company with the operator until he has tempted him into theft, and then until the theft is discovered. The Ars Goetia gives this duke the form of a lion with a braying ass's head.
Single lineage
Form. A lion with the head of a braying ass.
Offices. A good familiar, but tempts those he serves to steal until they are taken.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
None. The Ars Goetia is a conjuring manual and not a liturgy: its spirits are constrained, put to work and dismissed, never housed or offered to. Not one of the seventy-two has a temple, a shrine, a festival or a place-name anywhere.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- Pseudomonarchia Daemonum · 1577
- Named there as
- Valefar
- Rank
- Duke
- Order
- Goetic Spirit
- Base of operations
- None. The Ars Goetia is a conjuring manual and not a liturgy: its spirits are constrained, put to work and dismissed, never housed or offered to. Not one of the seventy-two has a temple, a shrine, a festival or a place-name anywhere.
- Era
- c. 1577 CE
- Traditions
- Solomonic, Folk & Demonological
- Placed in
- Ranks of the Seventy-Two
Traits
- Traditional form
- A lion with the head of a braying ass.
- Goetic rank
- Duke
Stats
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Valefor, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- material1
- martial1
- malefic1
One plate
Does it have a seal?
This is the engraved shape from the 1904 Mathers and Crowley printing of the Ars Goetia, which is long out of copyright. It is not a manuscript drawing: the Lemegeton witnesses — Sloane 2731, Sloane 3648, Harley 6483 — carry hand-drawn seals that differ in line and sometimes in detail, and none of those are held here. The seals also arrive some seventy years after the list of spirits itself, so a seal is evidence about the printed tradition rather than about the figure.
It is reproduced as an object of study. What the text says such a seal was for is described in the sources below; this site does not carry the procedure for using one.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers & Aleister Crowley (1904 edition) · Public domain · 06-valefor-sigilo-ars-goetia.svg
1 mark
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Valefor, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 327 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Valefar, Valefor
- Rank: given as Duke; The Duke
- Position in list: 14, 6 depending on the text
Weyer lists this spirit 14th of his sixty-nine, with substantially the same offices. His order is not the Goetia's — the two texts arrange the same spirits quite differently.
A good familiar, but tempts those he serves to steal until they are taken.
“The Sixth Spirit is Valefor. He is a mighty Duke, and appeareth in the shape of a Lion with an Ass's Head, bellowing.”
Connections
What is it connected to?
Nothing, and that is what the source says. The Ars Goetia gives Valefor a rank, a number of legions, a list of offices and a seal, and no relationship to any other spirit in the book — no lineage, no faction, no quarrel. Sixty-seven of the seventy-two are in the same position. A catalogue of self-contained entries is what that text is, and the emptiness here is the shape of it rather than work outstanding.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Valefor?
What rank is Valefor?
How else is Valefor spelled?
What is Valefor said to do?
How old is Valefor?
Nearest in the corpus
If Valefor is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Astaroth
Duke · Goetic Spirit
The Canaanite goddess Astarte, three thousand years on, made a male duke of hell with her name intact. The Goetia has him discourse willingly on the fall of the spirits, and warns the operator to hold a ring to his face against the stench of his breath.
Agares
Duke · Goetic Spirit
An old man riding a crocodile with a goshawk on his fist, credited with teaching every language and with hauling back anyone who has fled. The same entry has him causing earthquakes and stripping men of office, temporal and spiritual alike.
Aim
Duke · Goetic Spirit
The book's arsonist: cities, castles and great houses set alight, by a three-headed spirit carrying a firebrand and riding a viper. The same entry has him making men clever and answering truly on private matters.
Allocer
Duke · Goetic Spirit
Speaks loudly and hoarsely from a great horse, red-faced and flaming-eyed like a lion — an alarming delivery for a spirit whose subjects are astronomy and the liberal sciences.
Amdusias
Duke · Goetic Spirit
Preceded by trumpets and every kind of instrument playing with nobody visible to play them — one of the more theatrical entrances in the Ars Goetia. He makes music heard where he goes, bends trees to the operator's will, and gives excellent familiars.
Barbatos
Duke · Goetic Spirit
Comes only while the Sun stands in Sagittarius, and comes with four kings and their companies behind him. What he gives is comprehension: the song of birds, the voices of other creatures, and treasure hidden by enchantment rather than by hand.
The books behind Valefor
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Johann Weyer · 1577 · Latin
Read Pseudomonarchia Daemonum in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Pieter Holsteyn II · Wikimedia file page
The Lesser Key of Solomon, Book I: Ars Goetia
Anonymous; ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers & A. E. Waite · 17th c.; ed. 1904 · English (from Latin)
Read The Lesser Key of Solomon, Book I: Ars Goetia in full ↗Cover: Public domain · anonymous design, redrawn by User:Fuzzypeg · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.