Bune - The Duke of Riches, Wisdom and the Dead

There are occasions when one of the spirits of the old grimoires seems to step forward again into the attention of the occult community, and at present Bune appears to be enjoying precisely such a moment.

This is hardly surprising. Of all the spirits contained within the Goetic catalogue, Bune possesses an unusually practical range of offices, touching upon wealth, eloquence, wisdom, truthful revelation and, rather more strangely, the movement and gathering of the dead.

Modern occultism has nevertheless developed a habit of reducing spirits to single functions, and Bune consequently tends to be presented simply as a “money demon.” Although riches most certainly belong to Bune’s traditional office, this reduction misses a considerable portion of what the older texts actually describe.

Bune, whose name also appears as Bime, Bimé and in related forms, belongs to a stream of spirit catalogues predating the familiar printed editions of the Lesser Key of Solomon. Johann Weyer includes Bune in the sixteenth-century Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, describing him as a great and strong Duke who appears as a dragon possessing three heads, the third resembling that of a man. Bune causes the dead to change their places, gathers spirits upon the sepulchres of the deceased, enriches a person, makes them eloquent and wise, and gives truthful answers to questions. Weyer assigns thirty legions to him.

The later Ars Goetia preserves essentially the same offices but makes the apparition considerably more specific: Bune appears as a dragon with three heads, one like a dog, another like a gryphon and the third like a man, speaking with a “high and comely voice.” Again Bune changes the places of the dead, gathers spirits upon sepulchres, bestows riches, grants wisdom and eloquence and answers demands truthfully.

An earlier strand associated with the Livre des Esperitz is also worth noting because it attributes thirty-five legions to Bune rather than the thirty appearing in Weyer and the Goetia. The discrepancy may simply represent the ordinary instability of numbers during manuscript transmission; legion counts frequently shift between demonological catalogues and should not automatically be assumed to encode secret doctrine. Nevertheless, because both numbers fit surprisingly well within the numerical and letter symbolism used by Renaissance occultists, they are worth examining as symbolic possibilities, provided that we do not pretend the original compilers intended these interpretations.

Before considering those numbers, however, the three heads deserve considerably more attention than they usually receive - especially since nothing is quite "accidental" in grimoires. The Goetia does not explain why Bune possesses the heads of a dog, gryphon and man. It simply presents the image. Yet within the kind of astrological and Hermetic worldview inherited by Renaissance magic, animal forms were rarely meaningless decorations. Agrippa explicitly teaches that natural things, animals, celestial bodies and magickal images participate in chains of correspondence, with lower forms receiving and expressing the virtues of higher celestial causes. The Picatrix operates according to much the same principle: its planetary and zodiacal images frequently combine human, animal and monstrous characteristics in order to embody particular celestial qualities. We therefore cannot prove that Bune’s three heads were consciously constructed according to these systems, but we can certainly examine them through the symbolic language that surrounded the grimoire tradition and shed far more light upon Bune itself. Please note that these are not all points that we can possibly discuss, and we are specifically taking grimoirial sources for this.

Let us start with the dog. Agrippa places dogs among the Mercurial animals because they are quick of sense, intelligent, adaptable and readily familiar with human beings. Elsewhere he assigns domestic dogs jointly to Mercury and the Moon. This is already remarkably appropriate to Bune. Mercury governs speech, intelligence, interpretation, cleverness, communication and the movement of information, while Bune makes the practitioner wise and eloquent and provides truthful answers. The dog-head can therefore be read as expressing the Mercurial portion of Bune’s nature: perception, communication, intelligence and the ability to move between one state or place and another. This becomes still more interesting in the pseudo-Agrippan Fourth Book, where one of the forms specifically given for spirits of Mercury is a dog.

The lunar attribution adds another layer. Agrippa describes the Moon as the great mediator between the celestial and terrestrial worlds, receiving the influences of the superior planets and transmitting them downward into material existence. It is the final celestial intermediary through which superior forces become operative below. The dog therefore becomes an unusually appropriate image for mediation between conditions and worlds, which is precisely what Bune appears to do in relation to the living and the dead.

The Duke does not simply speak with the deceased; the older descriptions say that Bune changes their places and gathers spirits to sepulchres. This is movement across boundaries, and lunar symbolism has always been concerned with change, passage, generation, dissolution and the transmission of influences between states.

The Picatrix provides an even darker correspondence. One of its images of Saturn is a black-skinned man wearing a green cloak who possesses a dog-like head and carries a sickle. This does not mean that Bune is a Saturnine spirit, nor should the image be used to manufacture a planetary attribution that the Goetia itself never gives. What it does demonstrate is that within planetary magick a dog-headed form could participate in distinctly Saturnine imagery. Saturn, in the wider magickal tradition, governs age, limitation, hidden things, melancholy, death, burial and things beneath the earth. Agrippa likewise places among Saturnine things the cypress and other plants associated with funerals, graves and Pluto, together with serpents, dragons and creatures connected with darkness and putrefaction. He elsewhere calls Saturn a keeper of secret things and associates him with both destruction and preservation, life and death. The dog-head of Bune can therefore be read simultaneously through Mercurial, Lunar and Saturnine lenses: intelligence and speech through Mercury, mediation and passage through the Moon, and the grave, mortality and hidden things through Saturn.

This combination is not actually as contradictory as it first appears. A spirit concerned with necromancy necessarily requires communication, mediation and death. Mercury speaks; the Moon transmits; Saturn buries. Bune’s traditional office contains all three movements. The dead are gathered, their places are changed, questions are answered, and information passes from what is hidden into what can be known. In that respect, the dog-head may tell us considerably more about Bune than the modern association of dogs merely with loyalty or guardianship ever could.

The gryphon is equally significant, although by a very different route. Traditionally the gryphon combines the lion and the eagle, bringing together the sovereign beast of the earth with the sovereign bird of the heavens. Long before the grimoires, Greek sources associated gryphons with treasure. Herodotus records the tradition that gryphons guarded gold in the far north from the one-eyed Arimaspians, and the association between gryphons and the guardianship of subterranean or remote gold continued throughout Classical literature. Thus, even without resorting to later occult correspondences, Bune’s gryphon-head sits extraordinarily well beside the Duke’s power to enrich. The creature appearing upon the spirit responsible for riches is, in ancient mythology, quite literally a guardian of gold.

The astrological symbolism makes the image more interesting still. Agrippa places the lion amongst the Solar animals, describing such creatures as magnanimous, courageous and concerned with victory and renown. The eagle is likewise Solar, but is also particularly sacred to Jupiter, where Agrippa calls it the emblem of emperors, justice and clemency. Consequently the gryphon naturally combines Solar and Jovial characteristics: sovereignty, elevation, authority, honour, expansion and material beneficence. Agrippa’s own magickal images of Jupiter make the resemblance even more striking. One Jovial image depicts a man riding upon an eagle or dragon, while another image associated with Jupiter possesses leonine and avian characteristics; the stated purposes of these Jovial images include increasing felicity, riches, honour, benevolence, prosperity and advancement of fortune.

The Picatrix employs much the same sort of composite symbolism. One of its images of Jupiter is a man with a lion-like face and the feet of a bird, while other Jovial images involve the eagle and dragon. Again, we should not jump from this and declare that “Bune is Jovial.” That would be considerably more certainty than the sources allow. What we can say is that the combination of leonine and avian forms already belonged to the visual grammar of planetary power, and particularly to imagery surrounding kingship, beneficence, honour and expansion. The gryphon-head therefore corresponds remarkably well with Bune’s enriching office.

There is also an alchemical analysis worth mentioning, although it belongs more properly to later emblematic interpretation than to the Goetia itself. The lion and eagle frequently function within alchemical symbolism as opposing tendencies: the terrestrial or fixed and the aerial or volatile. The entire alchemical operation repeatedly concerns making the fixed volatile and fixing the volatile, joining what rises with what remains below. Alchemical literature itself repeatedly describes the union of body and spirit in precisely these terms, and later symbolic interpretations have naturally treated the gryphon—being simultaneously leonine and eagle-like—as an emblem of such a conjunction. It would therefore be possible to see Bune’s gryphon as something which joins above and below, the tangible and intangible, spirit and matter. This interpretation becomes especially attractive in a spirit whose offices concern both material riches and immaterial intelligences of the dead. Nevertheless, alchemical symbols were never governed by a single universal dictionary, and this layer should remain an interpretation.

Moving on, the human head completes the arrangement. In Hermetic and Renaissance thought, man is not merely another animal but the microcosm, the lesser world containing within himself an image of the greater. The Picatrix explicitly presents humanity as a microcosm possessing knowledge, reason, judgement and the capacity to understand what is beneficial and harmful. Agrippa develops this idea extensively, describing man as the image of the world who contains within himself the elemental, celestial and intellectual orders. Man therefore represents conscious intelligence: not merely instinct, but the faculty capable of understanding, distinguishing, naming, questioning and deliberately acting.

This makes the human head perhaps the clearest symbol of Bune’s wisdom, eloquence and oracular ability. The Goetia specifically tells us that Bune speaks beautifully, makes a person wise and eloquent, and answers questions truthfully. The human component is therefore not simply the familiar trope of a monster possessing one recognisable human face. Within a Hermetic interpretation, it can represent rational consciousness itself: the intelligence capable of taking the forces signified by the other heads and bringing them into comprehensible form. The dog perceives and transmits, the gryphon possesses and guards power and treasure, while the man understands and speaks.

Taken together, the three heads provide a remarkably elegant symbolic summary of Bune’s offices. The dog belongs naturally to communication, mediation and the threshold between worlds; the gryphon belongs to sovereignty, treasure, wealth and the union of elevated and terrestrial power; the man belongs to wisdom, reason, articulate speech and conscious understanding. Behind all three stands the body of the dragon, itself a creature that Agrippa could place within both Saturnine and Martial currents, giving the whole apparition something older, subterranean and formidable.

Whether the original compiler consciously intended all of these correspondences cannot be established, but as an occult image the form is strikingly coherent.

The numbers attached to Bune become equally interesting when examined through the numerical philosophy used by Renaissance practitioners. Weyer and the Goetia assign Bune thirty legions. In ordinary Hebrew numerical notation, thirty corresponds to the letter ל, Lamed. Agrippa himself reproduces this numerical system, explicitly giving Lamed the value thirty and placing it among the Hebrew letters representing the tens. More importantly, Agrippa does not regard thirty as an insignificant number. In his discussion of mystical arithmetic he calls thirty memorable for numerous mysteries and notes that it marks the age at which Christ began his public ministry and miracles, John began preaching, Ezekiel began prophesying, and Joseph emerged from imprisonment to receive authority over Egypt. Whatever one thinks of the theological examples, Agrippa’s underlying pattern is obvious: thirty repeatedly signifies the moment at which concealed capacity becomes active office. It is the number of entering authority, teaching, prophecy and governance.

That is an unusually appropriate number for a Duke. Thirty, in this sense, does not merely suggest quantity but commissioned authority. The individual ceases merely to possess potential and begins to exercise an office. Bune likewise appears as per the grimoires not as an undefined wandering spirit but as a Duke commanding subordinate spirits and possessing clearly delineated powers. There is something rather pleasing in the idea that thirty legions stand beneath a spirit whose very number, in Agrippa’s own numerical theology, repeatedly accompanies the assumption of function and authority.

The Hebrew letter Lamed adds another possible layer. In the Sefer Yetzirah, Lamed is associated with Libra. In the Gra recension it is also connected with the faculty of conjunction or coition. Nevertheless, Libra introduces themes of measure, exchange, relation, judgement and balance which fit rather comfortably beside Bune’s practical offices involving wealth, eloquence and negotiation. The letter-number thirty can therefore be contemplated as authority brought into ordered relation: something especially suitable to a spirit concerned not merely with possessing wealth but with the intelligence and speech through which wealth may be acquired and administered.

The older attribution of thirty-five legions is, in some respects, even more intriguing. Thirty-five is written numerically in Hebrew as ל״ה, Lamed-Heh: thirty plus five. In the same Sefer Yetzirah tradition, Heh is associated with Aries and, significantly, with speech, while Lamed is associated with Libra. Aries and Libra stand opposite one another upon the zodiac, creating an axis between assertion and relation, initiative and response, the individual and the other. The fact that Heh is specifically connected with speech makes the number particularly curious when applied to a spirit repeatedly described as possessing a beautiful voice and granting eloquence. Again, this should be treated as contemplative correspondence rather than historical proof, but it is a remarkably sympathetic one.

There is another way of approaching thirty-five which is even more Agrippan. Thirty-five is five multiplied by seven. Agrippa assigns the number five to Mercury and also associates it with the celestial world, while seven has strong associations with Saturn and the Moon. Mercury governs intelligence, speech and interpretation. Saturn governs hidden things, limitation, age, mortality and the grave. The Moon receives and transmits celestial influences and governs passage and change. Thus, if we allow ourselves a purely symbolic multiplication, thirty-five can be read as Mercury joined to the Saturnine-Lunar current. That is almost an arithmetic description of Bune: eloquence, wisdom and truthful communication combined with sepulchres, the movement of the dead and mediation between states. Even the dog-head participates in precisely the same network, since Agrippa gives dogs to Mercury and the Moon while the Picatrix places a dog-headed figure within an image of Saturn. The correspondence is so elegant that it is worth noticing, even though we must stop short of claiming that the author of the Livre des Esperitz deliberately encoded it.

Seen in this broader light, Bune becomes considerably more interesting than the modern title of “money demon” suggests. Riches are certainly central to the Duke’s office, but they are joined to wisdom, eloquence, revelation and necromancy. This means that Bune may be approached not simply for the crude acquisition of money, but for the circumstances through which material prosperity becomes possible. A merchant requires customers, but also judgement. A business owner requires income, but also the ability to communicate. A person seeking advancement requires opportunity, but also the intelligence to recognise it. Someone negotiating a contract requires persuasion, discernment and favourable reception. Wealth very often moves because someone understood the circumstances correctly and said the correct thing at the correct time.

For this reason, Bune’s office extends quite naturally into business, professional advancement, commerce, negotiation, writing, persuasion, sales, communication and the discovery of profitable opportunities. To ask Bune simply to “bring money” is certainly possible, but it makes use of only a fraction of the traditional current. One might just as reasonably seek the wisdom to discover why prosperity has become obstructed, the eloquence required to win a particular opportunity, truthful revelation regarding a financial decision, greater authority when conducting business, or the ability to recognise where money can actually be obtained. There is a practical intelligence running throughout Bune’s description which should not be ignored.

The necromantic side of the Duke is equally important. This is not a modern association invented by demonolators. It is one of the oldest and most consistent parts of Bune’s office. The spirit moves the dead and gathers spirits upon sepulchres. The grimoires do not explain precisely what is meant by changing the places of the dead, and there is little value in pretending that they do. Yet the language unquestionably places Bune within the sphere of graves, deceased spirits and their movement or assembly. For a practitioner of necromancy, Bune may therefore be considerably more valuable as an intermediary, gatherer or governor of the dead than as a spirit of prosperity.

Indeed, when the entire image is viewed together, Bune seems to stand at a very peculiar crossroads. Mercury provides intelligence and speech. The Moon provides mediation and movement. Saturn provides graves, secrecy and the dead. Solar and Jovial imagery supplies sovereignty, prosperity and elevation. The gryphon and dragon guards gold. The human head understands and speaks. The dog crosses the boundary. The dragon carries the whole monstrous conjunction beneath them.

This is why we find the historical Bune considerably more compelling than the softened figure frequently presented in modern occult spaces. Bune is not merely a spirit to whom one offers something sweet before asking for extra money. The old and original Duke is an intelligence of material increase, persuasive speech, truthful revelation, wisdom and necromantic authority. There is prosperity here, certainly, but it is prosperity accompanied by intelligence. There is communication, but communication extending beyond the ordinary boundaries of the living. There is treasure, but beside that treasure stands the grave.

Perhaps that combination explains why Bune continues to return so easily to the attention of practitioners. The offices attributed to this spirit concern matters that have never ceased to be relevant: resources, knowledge, persuasion, opportunity, reliable answers and the mystery of the dead. The surface fashions surrounding Bune may change, but the old grimoire description remains remarkably practical.

Those wishing to understand Bune would therefore do well to look beyond the fashionable image of a convenient prosperity spirit and return to the older texts. What emerges there is considerably stranger and considerably more powerful: a three-headed Duke whose symbolism appears to unite the Mercurial word, the Saturnine grave, the Lunar threshold, the Jovial treasure and the Hermetic intelligence of man.

Bune gives riches, certainly. But the old texts tell us something considerably more important than that.

Bune gives the intelligence to understand, the voice with which to speak, the power to gather what is hidden—and authority over things which ordinarily remain beneath the earth.

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