It is the present author’s contention that the unanimity of the seventy-two demons, on the single question of whether A. belongs to their number, is a piece of evidence which the field has so far failed to interpret correctly. The seventy-two demons disagree with one another on every other question on which they may be consulted: on the colour of their robes, on the form of their dismissal, on the language preferred for the rituals of obligation, on the day of the week most propitious for summoning, on whether they may be approached by women, on whether they may be approached at all. There is, in the entire Goetic literature, no other proposition to which all seventy-two assent. That they assent to this one is, in itself, the question.
The catalogue is, on its surface, a list. It is also, on closer inspection, a hierarchy: kings, princes, presidents, dukes, marquises, earls, knights. The hierarchy descends. It does not descend infinitely; it terminates at the lowest of the knights (Andromalius, № 72). The present author submits that this termination is artificial. There exists, beneath the lowest knight, at least one further station — the station at which the catalogue meets the floor. The author proposes to call this station the podkról: the prince who is not above his subjects but underneath them, who reigns by being trodden upon.
The Suzerain Underneath does not appear as the other demons appear. Of those, Weyer reports forms (cat, toad, man; three heads; the rider of a pale horse; the youth in green; the bird of seven colours). The Suzerain has no form. He appears, when he appears at all, as a low brown light at the edge of vision — a light which the eye cannot fix and which the mind cannot, on subsequent reflection, recall the precise location of. He governeth eight legions of nameless principalities, which are not other demons but the absent positions in the catalogue: the demons who would be there if the catalogue had included them.
He cannot be summoned by ritual. He cannot be bound by sigil. He has, in the most defensible reading, already been summoned by every reader who has read this far; the act of careful reading is itself, in the present author’s view, his only attested ritual. His dismissal is not in the literature. The present author has not attempted it.
The Goetic catalogue is incomplete. It is incomplete by one entry. The entry has been omitted, on the present author’s view, because the entry’s inclusion would render the catalogue useless — not in the sense that the catalogue would be wrong, but in the sense that the catalogue, once including its seventy-third member, would no longer be readable. The seventy-third demon is the demon under whose attention all reading takes place.