A monster who becomes a man, keeper of the dead and the stars.
The Spirit
Bifrons — his name suggesting the Latin for “two-faced,” echoing the double-faced god Janus — is the forty-sixth spirit of the Ars Goetia, an Earl who first manifests as a monstrous or unshapely figure. When commanded by the operator, he puts on the form of a man, at which point he becomes a teachable and even generous instructor. His association with thresholds, with what faces two ways at once, aligns him with the grimoire’s many liminal spirits who mediate between the visible and the buried.
He is one of the more distinctly bookish Goetic spirits, a teacher of arts and sciences rather than a bringer of ruin, though his dominion over the dead lends him a sombre cast.
Office
The Goetia records that Bifrons teaches astrology, geometry, and the other mathematical arts, along with the knowledge of herbs, precious stones, and woods — a curriculum drawn from the natural philosophy of the period. Beyond these studies, he governs the dead: he changes the places of corpses, moving bodies from one grave to another, and lights candles that seem to burn upon the tombs of the departed. In this he unites the scholar and the necromancer within a single office.
Attributes
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Number | 46 |
| Rank | Earl |
| Legions | 6 (some manuscripts, 60) |
| Appearance | A monster at first, then commanded into the shape of a man |