Malphas Demon: The Crow President Who Builds Towers in the Goetia

Quick answer: Malphas is the 39th spirit of the Ars Goetia, ranked as a mighty president and said to command 40 legions. The Lemegeton describes Malphas appearing first as a crow and then, at the operator's request, in human form, speaking with a hoarse voice. His offices are to build houses and high towers, to bring together artificers, to reveal and overturn the plans of enemies, and to give good familiars. The entry adds a warning that he deceives anyone who offers him a sacrifice.

Related guides: the complete 72 demons list, Ars Goetia names, offices and seals, what a Goetia president is, Raum, the other crow spirit, Halphas, builder of towers, Amon with the raven's head.

Who is Malphas in the Ars Goetia?

The Malphas demon is the thirty-ninth entry in the Ars Goetia, the first of the five books of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon. In the 1904 Mathers and Crowley edition the text calls him a mighty president who first appears in the form of a crow and then, when the operator requests it, takes a human shape and speaks with a hoarse voice. He is said to govern 40 legions of spirits, placing him in the middle of the catalog by that measure.

Four offices are assigned to him. He can build houses and high towers. He can bring artificers, meaning skilled craftsmen, together from any place. He can make known to the operator the thoughts, desires and works of enemies, and bring those works to nothing. And he gives good familiars, lesser spirits attached to a person. The Lemegeton closes the entry with a caution: if any sacrifice is made to him he will receive it kindly and willingly, but he will deceive the one who offers it.

That last line is distinctive. Most Goetia entries read like job descriptions for a spirit court; a direct warning about the spirit’s treachery is rare, and it gives Malphas a slightly sinister reputation among readers of the complete 72 demons list.

Malphas in Weyer, the Lemegeton and the Dictionnaire Infernal

The earliest printed source is Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of 1577, which Reginald Scot rendered into English in his Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584). Weyer’s Malphas is a great president who appears as a crow and then, at the exorcist’s request, as a man with a hoarse voice. He builds houses and high towers, brings together artificers, overthrows the buildings of enemies, reveals their thoughts and desires, and gives good familiars. Weyer also includes the sacrifice warning and the figure of 40 legions. The Lemegeton entry is essentially the same text with a seal added.

Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal (1818) summarizes Weyer in French, and the 1863 edition carries Louis Le Breton’s engraving: a large crow standing in profile, feathers slightly ruffled, with nothing else in the frame. Because the illustration is so plain, Malphas is less visually famous than spirits with fantastic hybrid bodies, but the crow image is now standard in modern reference works and games.

None of the three sources explains the name. “Malphas” has no secure etymology; proposals connecting it to Hebrew or Latin roots are modern guesses. Like most of the Goetia’s lesser-known names, it probably arose within the late medieval grimoire tradition itself. The spirit is absent from the Bible, the Testament of Solomon and classical demonology.

What the Malphas sigil looks like

The Malphas sigil printed in the Mathers edition is an angular, upright figure with a vertical central axis, short horizontal cross-strokes, and small circles closing several of its line ends. It resembles a stylized standard or staff more than a bird, and it carries no obvious pictorial meaning. Manuscript copies of the Lemegeton show minor variations in the number of cross-strokes and terminal circles, so the printed version should be treated as one rendering among several rather than a fixed emblem.

In the Goetia the seal is called the spirit’s character and is described as something the operator wears or displays. Djinn Guide does not reproduce ritual instructions and does not explain how seals were used; the description here is purely for identifying the symbol in historical sources. For a broader look at how these marks developed, see Ars Goetia names, offices and seals.

Reading the symbolism: crow, builder, deceiver

Each element of the Malphas entry has roots in older European ideas, and taking them one at a time makes the profile easier to understand.

The crow

Crows and ravens were birds of omen across Europe, associated with battlefields, prophecy and the dead. Several Goetia spirits take corvid forms, which suggests the compilers drew on a shared stock of ominous imagery rather than inventing each description fresh.

The builder

Spirits who raise buildings are a direct echo of the Solomon legend, in which the king compels demons or jinn to construct the Temple in Jerusalem. The Testament of Solomon and Islamic sources both describe this labor. Malphas and his neighbor Halphas carry that motif into the grimoire, so that the “architect spirit” is a small reminder of where the whole tradition claims to come from.

Artificers and enemies

Gathering craftsmen and exposing enemies’ plans reflect what a Renaissance prince or merchant might want: skilled labor and intelligence. The catalog often reads as a wish list of the period’s practical concerns.

The sacrifice warning

The caution against sacrifice likely reflects a theological point insisted on by sources like Weyer, who was writing to discredit magic: any spirit that accepts offerings is a deceiver by nature. It is the grimoire quietly agreeing with its own critics.

Malphas compared with Raum, Halphas and Amon

The Goetia places Malphas between two spirits that share his features. Halphas, number 38, is an earl who appears as a stork with a hoarse voice and builds towers stocked with weapons. Raum, number 40, is an earl who appears as a crow and then as a man, and who steals treasure and destroys cities. Read together, 38 through 40 look like a small cluster of bird-formed spirits concerned with construction and destruction, which may reflect the order of an older source list.

Amon, number 7, offers another comparison: he appears as a wolf with a serpent’s tail and then as a man with a raven’s head, and he deals in reconciliation and prophecy. The raven head makes him the third corvid in the catalog. The table above lines up all four. For what the ranks of president, earl and marquis were thought to imply, see our guide to Goetia ranks and hierarchy.

In legion counts Malphas, at 40, matches Amon and exceeds both Raum and Halphas. The Lemegeton does not explain how these numbers were assigned, and they vary slightly between manuscripts. They are best read as part of the catalog’s imitation of a royal muster roll rather than as meaningful quantities.

Common misunderstandings about the Malphas demon

The first misunderstanding is that Malphas and Raum are the same spirit under two names. They are separate entries with different ranks, legion counts and offices; only the crow form and the sequence in the list connect them. Older manuscripts keep them distinct as well.

The second is that Malphas has an ancient origin, perhaps as a Near Eastern deity. Unlike Astaroth or Bael, there is no evidence for this. The name first appears in the sixteenth-century printed lists and their manuscript ancestors.

The third is that the sacrifice warning means Malphas is uniquely evil. Weyer and the Lemegeton treat all 72 spirits as fallen and untrustworthy; the warning is simply made explicit in his case. Modern fiction has amplified the line into a defining trait.

The fourth is that Le Breton’s 1863 crow is a traditional image. It was drawn from the text for a Paris publisher and has no older pedigree. It is a nineteenth-century illustration of a sixteenth-century description.

Malphas in modern pop culture

Most searches for the Malphas demon today come from games and comics. The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona franchises include Malphas as a demon, usually in crow or crow-headed form. The video game Devil May Cry 5 features a boss named Malphas, reimagined as a bird-like demon with a female humanoid body. The name also appears in tabletop role-playing supplements, metal band lyrics and webcomics that mine the Goetia for characters.

These uses keep the crow and the name and discard the Lemegeton’s offices. They are not sources about the historical entry, and they should not be read as evidence of what the grimoire tradition believed. The interest of the historical Malphas lies in what he shows about Renaissance ideas of spirits, buildings and betrayal, not in any modern design.

How to read the Malphas entry as a historical source

Begin with Weyer and Scot, then compare the Lemegeton manuscripts and the Mathers printing. The substance barely changes across three centuries, which tells you how conservative the copying tradition was. The Dictionnaire Infernal adds nothing but the picture. Modern commentaries that add elaborate personalities, planetary attributions or colors are drawing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century occult systems, not on the early texts.

Then read the entry for what it reveals about its audience: people who wanted buildings raised, workers found, rivals exposed and helpers supplied. The Goetia is a catalog of early modern wishes dressed in the language of a spirit court. Djinn Guide presents it as cultural history and provides no instructions for invoking, binding or working with any spirit.

Disclaimer

This article discusses a figure from early modern grimoires for historical and educational purposes. Spirit descriptions, offices and seals are reported from the sources rather than endorsed, and Djinn Guide provides no ritual instructions and makes no claims that any spirit or symbol produces results.