A stork’s hoarse voice, promising truth and dealing in deception.
The Spirit
Shax — also rendered Chax, Scox, or Shaz across the manuscript tradition — is the forty-fourth spirit of the Ars Goetia, a Great Marquis who appears in the shape of a stork or dove speaking with a harsh, hoarse voice. The grimoire warns that he is a spirit of doubtful loyalty: he will lie and deceive the operator unless he is compelled into a triangle of art and there bound by the exorcist’s authority. Once constrained, however, he becomes obedient and speaks with reasonable candour, no longer troubling those who summoned him.
His temperament captures a recurring anxiety in the Solomonic literature — that a spirit’s power and its treachery scale together. Shax is prized precisely for the things a deceiver can do, and the ritual apparatus exists to turn his cunning to the operator’s ends.
Office
The Goetia says Shax takes away the sight, hearing, and understanding of any person at the operator’s command, and that he steals money out of kings’ houses and returns it after a set span of time. He carries things from place to place, and when commanded he discovers hidden treasures that are not guarded by wicked spirits. He gives good familiars, and will occasionally reveal knowledge, though the text cautions that his revelations may themselves be false unless he has been securely bound.
Attributes
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Number | 44 |
| Rank | Great Marquis |
| Legions | 30 |
| Appearance | A stork or dove, speaking with a hoarse, subtle voice |