#8 Barbatos
If one could distill a single theme from The Faculty of Abrac regarding the Goetia spirits, it is that their identities and characteristics were deliberately constructed by the writers of the grimoires. They were not found in the wild or scried in a crystal ball and catalogued like Amazonian wildlife, but were constructed so as to represent certain themes that the author wanted to correlate to infernal powers. Magical literature did not invent the demons to fill out hierarchies of demons, the catalogues represent imported knowledge. Even those spirits who appear to reside only in the lore of demonology are relics of myths existing outside of magic literature. This fact cannot be directly understood from that literature, and will cause most self-proclaimed occult experts to froth at the mouth in denial because it is nowhere spelled out in bold print.
Today, we are going to be talking about the 8th spirit of the Goetia, called Barbatos. Anyone familiar with occult books mentioning this spirit will recognize how unique and utterly different this post is compared to those descriptions. The first reaction, for most readers, is to recoil in disgust and surprise at what follows here, bringing about either an instant dismissal or a request for "proofs" such as cannot ever appear. Is this speculative? No, it is not. I believe that what follows is accurate and represents a reality that could be proven if it were possible to do so. These ideas are not my "UPG" or my invention, they are the result of my investigations into the lore of demons. I believe them to be correct, and as well-founded as possible.
Let us begin with something rather mundane: the Head of Medusa. If you are over 40, there's a near certainty that you are at least vaguely aware of Medusa in Greek mythology, thanks to Ray Harryhausen. I do not intend to recount that myth, but it is easily found for your own reading. I would definitely not be the first person to suggest that the myth of the Gorgon's Head and the myth of the Head of Humbaba are actually the same myth. Who is Humbaba? I can hear some asking.
Since the Epic of Gilgamesh was never made into a Hollywood blockbuster, it's forgivable to not know the name of Humbaba. We can say that he appears in Sumerian mythology, from several thousand years prior to the classical age and the development of Greek myths. He is usually described as a monster, the last of the wild creatures killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu as they go around the world making it safe for humans, as commanded by their gods. The head is then placed into a bag and kept as a talisman with protective powers.
Those talismans show the face of Humbaba, and later Greek versions replace the grooves with snakes, making the same image into Medusa. Romans appreciated the design so much that they adopted it into their architecture as the head of Bacchus. As Rome declined, it transformed into the more recognizable form of the Green Man who is seen across Europe. The Green Man, as everyone should know, shows the face of a man formed from leaves and surrounded by them, blended into the wild landscape. It is certain that few today would correlate their Green Man garden tiles with Sumerian monster myths, or even old Bacchus, but we are a forgetful species. I contend that the writer of the Lemegeton was not so forgetful and that he knew very well that the Green Man, Bacchus, the Aegis, and this older myth whose name he probably did not know, were all tied together.
So who, then, was this Humbaba? You say that you do not recognize the name, but you do recognize him without knowing it, and you would recognize him instantly once his name and face were put together. In the modern world, his name is Homo neandertalensis. The Neanderthal is not well understood by the average person, and much of that owes to some basic misunderstandings about them that have been perpetuated through cinema. Briefly, here are some critical facts about these creatures to whom most humans are related.
Neanderthals were quite a bit larger than humans and they were built like tanks. They were highly intelligent, not at all the grunting savages of Hollywood films; but with a slightly different configuration in their brains, so they were less cerebral and maybe less strategic than the forebrain-dominated humans. They were skilled at every craft, and were making clothing and even jewelry long before humans. They collected herbs and flowers, they took care of their wounded, and they had enough medicine to keep people with major injuries alive for decades despite serious injuries. They had music, and understood some basic acoustic principles. There is debate about their temperament, whether they were cannibals, and whether they were matriarchal, but it is certain that they had some form of society and material culture.
For about a hundred thousand years, no creature on Earth was more dangerous to humans. Gilgamesh, like Heracles, begins his labors by hunting the man-eating lion. From there he kills off the other predatory creatures. Although the stories describe this as one man and his helper going on a series of adventures, it is easy to see these stories as representative of mass hunting of dangerous animals. So we are not reading about one man hunting one lion, but of civilization collectively deciding to eliminate man-eaters from our territory. The last and greatest of the monsters for Gilgamesh to defeat was Humbaba, whose dwelling was in the forest of Lebanon. The existence of Neanderthals was a major factor in preventing humans from moving into Europe, which did not begin at scale until after their decline. Conservative estimates place this at a time between 40,000 and 25,000 years ago, owing to evidence found in caves.
Humababa was seen as a brother to mankind. Enlil, the Sumerian deity ruling Earth, laments that he was meant to eat our food and share in our dignity as a species, chastising Gilgamesh for killing the guardian of the forest. Gilgamesh explains that he was just doing as commanded. Both versions of the tale have Humbaba cause Gilgamesh to fall into a deep sleep by his powers, an important element of the story that might relate to knowledge of poisons which are common among hunter-gatherer societies.
The lore of demons only extends so far backwards in time. After about a thousand years, it begins to exist only in scraps and fragments. Prior to that, it is mostly dust. But humans have lived on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet the most ancient of named deities are only a few thousand years old at most. What we are as a species, how we relate to the world and where we fit within it, were not developed recently. We have survived ages of ice, several hostile hominid species sharing our food supply, saber toothed cats, and innumerable plagues. It would be foolish to assume that the spiritual existence of our species began only when we started building temples, and wise to consider the possibility that our understanding of evil goes back into the prehistoric era.
And so at last we come to Barbatos, the "bearded one." The Neanderthal is remembered around the world in ancient tales of the Hairy Man of the Woods. Every forested place outside of Africa has legends of hairy wild men who live in the woods and are not quite human. If we would have bothered to write books back then and keep them until now, it would be fairly obvious that these Hairy Men are our extinct cousins, but they exist now only in stories. The Hairy Man of the Woods is more than just an inhabitant of the forest, he is its keeper, its custodian.
The author of the Lemegeton of course knew nothing of the Neanderthal, but he was certainly familiar with Bacchus whose head is almost accidentally applied to this legacy of apotropaic staring faces in architecture. For his sake, the grimoire mentions the attendance of kings and their companies, wild creatures, and other revelry of the Bacchanalia. The seal of Barbatos shows the Green Man: a human face peering out from the leaves. Below his lips are the flutes of a satyr.