The 1863 preface authoritatively states that de Plancy had “reconfigured his labors, recognizing that superstitious, foolish beliefs, occult sects and practices. By that final edition, the book’s publishers could assure readers that the “errors” previously highlighted had now been eliminated, and that this latest catalogue of the demonic was fully in line with Catholic theology. The 1863 edition became an all too serious warning about the powers and principalities that surround us, and whose aim is the ruin of souls. As a result, by 1863, the purpose of that year’s particular edition of Dictionnaire Infernal was changed radically. By all accounts, he became a devotee of Our Lady. It appears de Plancy went from being someone previously demon-obsessed to one convinced by the reality of evil and the need to counter it. Then in 1830, some 12 years after the first publication of his work, de Plancy became a Catholic. By all accounts, as he progressed in his labors, he became increasingly drawn into the invisible world set out in the pages of his work.ĭe Plancy’s aim in compiling the dictionary was to catalogue what he described as the “aberrations and germs or causes of errors.” As noted, he may have started out as a convinced rationalist but, as he labored over this work and its subsequent editions, he found himself ever more lured by the demonology he chronicled. His secular dismissal of what he wrote about quickly rebounded, however. Whereas Butler and other chroniclers of lives of the holy are inspired and enriched by those of whom they write, this was not the case for de Plancy. 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.