It is the inverse of Alban Butler’s magnum opus Lives of the Saints published 60 years prior to de Plancy’s 1818 work. To open the pages of Dictionnaire Infernal is to travel through to a twilight world of those - real or imagined - who are bent upon our eternal damnation. He is depicted in the book’s illustrations as having a human torso, a mule's head, a peacock’s tail, and the limbs of a mule.Īnd so on, entry after entry, demon after demon, their origins and powers all listed meticulously, incredibly. His name translates as “magnificent king.” Yet, according to the Dictionnaire Infernal, Adrammelech is the President of the Senate of the Demons, Chancellor of Hell and Supervisor of Satan’s wardrobe.
Briefly mentioned in the Book of Kings, his origins are in Ancient Babylon where he is identified with the twin cities of Sippar Yahrurum and Sippar Amnanum on the banks of the Euphrates. The first so catalogued is the demon Adrammelech. There are 65 demons named in the book, their origins and places in the demonic hierarchy detailed. The catalogued entries are curious to say the least. This was a book that was to display the superstitions of the past: it noted and cataloged them, only so as to forget them as relics of a former superstitious age before “reason” had prevailed. De Plancy was a confirmed atheist, a rationalist influenced by the skepticism of Voltaire who considered all belief in the supernatural absurd. In that volume there is depicted 69 illustrations by Louis Le Breton of the appearances of the demons there listed.Īs it turns out, to begin with at least, the original 1818 edition was not the work of a Satanist.
The English translation is from perhaps the most famous edition, dating from 1863. There have been several editions of the book. First published in Paris in 1818, it was compiled by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy. It describes individual demons and the hierarchies in which they are organized. The Dictionnaire Infernal is a book about demonology. Imagine my surprise upon discovering just such a “code”. Such is the lure of esoteric matters It has always been my contention that joining the words “code” and “devil” in a headline would draw an audience.
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