The FALLEN POWERS: the choir that chained daemons... fell

The jailers who fell

And perhaps the bitterest irony of the series. The Powers... were, according to Gregory the Great, the choir charged with repressing the adverse spirits. The choir that chained the daemons.

Pseudo-Dionysius describes them as an order of power, a non-tyrannical regulation that leads the inferiors toward the Source of Power.

Four spirits of the Goetia declare having belonged to this choir: Beleth, Gaap, Vual and Procel. The jailers... turned into prisoners.

Beleth, the terrible king

The thirteenth spirit is Beleth... a great and terrible king. The Goetia says that he is of the order of the Powers. This is his seal. He arrives on a pale horse, with all kinds of music before him, and shows himself furious in order to deceive. The exorcist must receive him with courage, holding a hazel rod toward the south and the east. The power that repressed daemons... now demands to be repressed with firmness.

Gaap, the prince of the wind

The thirty-third spirit is Gaap... a great president and prince. Weyer says that he is of the order of the Powers. This is his seal. He appears when the Sun is in the signs of the south, leading other great spirits. He teaches philosophy and sciences, provokes love and hatred, and transports men from one kingdom to another with speed. The power of leading the inferiors... preserved as the power to move and drag.

Vual and Procel

Two more are counted among them. Vual, the forty-seventh spirit, of the order of the Powers, appears as a dromedary that then takes human form and speaks in Egyptian; he gives the love of women, and the friendship of friends and enemies. And Procel, the forty-ninth, also of the Powers, a great and strong duke who speaks of hidden things, teaches geometry, and makes the waters roar. These are their seals. Four powers preserved... but without their former owner.

The prisoners and their chains

Here the irony becomes almost unbearable. Gregory the Great said that the Powers are the angels under whose charge the adverse powers are subject... those who restrain the daemons.

And four of them fell, and became exactly that which their office was to chain. The jailers of the abyss... prisoners in it.

But they preserve the structure of their power: Beleth commands with fury, Gaap transports and leads, Vual and Procel dominate affections and waters. The function of regulating the inferiors remains... but no longer in the service of the light.

The power without an owner

Beleth, Gaap, Vual and Procel: the four spirits that declare having been Powers. But one must add, so as not to close the list falsely, a fifth partial case: in Weyer's version, Amy has legions partly of the Powers and partly of the Angels, although the Goetia does not preserve it clearly. It is one of those discrepancies that we do not silence. The choir that chained daemons, fallen among them.

Documentary reconstruction from real sources, for study purposes. We do not claim that the seventy-two come from the nine choirs.

In the next chapter, the extremes of the hierarchy: the Thrones, seat of the judgment of God... and the Angels, the messengers.