The Magical Seals of Solomon

Dr. Gal Sofer

This four-part lecture series offers a comprehensive journey from the legendary origins of Solomon’s ring and seal to its manifold afterlives across medieval and early modern European history and within Christian, Muslim, and Jewish magical traditions. We begin by examining the scriptural and legendary foundations of Solomon’s dominion over spirits, proceed to the rise of magical Solomonic seals as central instruments of coercive magic in the Middle Ages, then survey their broader cultural and scientific deployments in Renaissance manuscript culture, and conclude with a focused study of a Hebrew talismanic corpus that reshaped these motifs for Jewish practitioners.

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