Working with Earl Raum: A Goetic Spirit for Justice Magic and Political Resistance
There are spirits in the Ars Goetia whose offices read like museum pieces; quaint, archaic, tricky to translate into a 21st century context, at least at first glance. Raum is not one of them. The Fortieth Spirit of the Goetia is a Great Earl who appears first as a crow, and his offices read as if they were written yesterday, for the structures we're living under right now.
Who Is Earl Raum? The Fortieth Spirit of the Ars Goetia
Raum’s entry in the Goetia says:
“The 40th spirit is called Raum, he is a great Earl, and appeareth at first in the form of a Crow but afterwards, at the command of the Exorcist he putteth on humane shape. His office is to steal Treasures out of Kings’ houses, and to carry it where he is commanded, and to destroy cities, and the dignities of men; and to tell all Things past, and what is, and what will be, and to cause Love between friends and foes; he was of the Order of Thrones, and governeth 30 Legions of spirits. His seal is thus, which make and wear as a lamin before you”
It is alleged, in the grimoire tradition, that Raum was once of the Order of Thrones (the angelic order that administered the seat of divine authority itself), the wheels-within-wheels of Ezekiel's vision, the order that meted out legitimate rank to the lower hierarchies of heaven. Left hand path practitioners are not in agreement about how much weight to give this heavenly origin — some Goetic spirits have credible histories as fallen angels, others much less so, and Raum sits somewhere in the middle of that debate, in my opinion.
What I find compelling though, is the structural logic of the claim. If we entertain it speculatively, his infernal office becomes a precise mirror image of his angelic one: where the Thrones once distributed rank from heaven downward, Raum now dismantles it from below. He is, by this reading, a former bureaucrat of legitimacy who walked off the job and took his expertise with him. The position of the whistleblower, the deserter, the apostate, the organizer who used to sit in management.
Raum's Office Read as Political Strategy
Look at the four offices as a sequence:
Expropriate hoarded resources from where they are concentrated;
Dismantle the fortified structures that concentrate them;
Corrode the deference that holds those structures up, and then;
Reconcile the people who have been divided to keep the structure standing
To this Sorceress, this appears to be a coherent four-step theory of how illegitimate hierarchy is actually undone, articulated by anonymous medieval compilers who very likely had no clue that practitioners across the world would read it centuries later and say “You know what? Hell yeah.”
The most precise of those offices, in my reading, is the one Latin renders as dignitatum despectum ingerit — he thrusts contempt into dignities. Into dignities, not dignitaries. Read it carefully: the contempt is for rank as a category. The structures we're living under depend on you not internalizing how powerful that nuance is, and what other excellent ideas it opens up for us. They depend on the title being honored, the credential being deferred to, the brand being trusted, the office being respected regardless of who is currently occupying it. Raum's specific work is corroding that deference, which is the precondition for any of the rest.
A Note on Raum as Builder (Why I Disagree With Some Modern Accounts)
Some modern practitioners frame Raum as purely subtractive, a spirit who only clears and never constructs. My own experience runs counter to this. I once invoked him during a workplace organizing campaign that ultimately succeeded in forming a union, and the union itself was as much a product of that working as the dismantling of the prior power arrangement. Subtracting concentrated authority and building something durable in its place that prevents reconcentration is, I would argue, one motion, not two. The reconciling office (the one that mends rifts among those the structure had divided) is doing exactly this constructive work. The grimoires call it reconciliation; we might just as easily call it solidarity.
So I'd offer this revision: Raum will help you build, provided what you are building is a structure that diffuses power rather than recapturing it. He is a spirit who can help you clear the way for arrangements that won't have to be cleared again.
How Raum Differs From Hexing Politicians and Public Figures
The witchcraft community in the last several years has produced a steady output of mass hexings aimed at politicians, judges, and other named individuals. The impulse is understandable — those people are doing measurable harm, and refusing to act feels like complicity. I don't fault anyone who has participated in these workings. But I want to make a case for why Raum's office offers something more enduring.
A hex aimed at an individual lands on a body. Bodies fail, retire, get replaced. The structure that produced the harmful actor in the first place selects another head of the Hydra and continues operating. When you've spent your magical energy on the named person, you've taken nothing from the system that elevated them. The Hydra reappears.
Earl Raum's office targets the seat itself. The fortified structure, the category of dignity, the deference that holds the position up no matter who sits in it. This is slower, less satisfying, and less photogenic or viral than hexing the figurehead, but it is the work that actually starts to drain the swamp the figureheads keep crawling out of. If you have energy for both, by all means do both. But if you have energy for one, I'd put it here.
How to Work With Earl Raum: Timing, Offerings, and a Petition Structure
Appearance
Raum often appears as a crow. That is his preferred face, and it is not incidental. The crow is the bird of intelligent observation, of collective knowing, of the flock that remembers human faces and steals shiny things from people who weren't watching closely enough. Raum is the spirit of gathered knowing about the powerful.
Timing & Correspondences
Traditional Decan: 1st decan of Taurus (roughly April 21–30)
Day of the Week: Tuesday (the day of Mars, though if Tuesday is not possible you might find success on a Saturday (Saturn) in the hour of Mars (let me know how this goes if you try it!)
Planet: Mars
Metal: Iron
Incense: Dragon's Blood
Lunation: A waning moon supports his subtractive offices well; a new or waxing moon supports the constructive ones
Setting the working
These are merely suggestions. When in doubt, I always recommend attempting to ask the spirit yourself. But failing that, some ideas: iron of some type, be it a railroad spike, an old nail, a horseshoe. Something black and feathered, found rather than bought. Dragon's blood burning. Water in a dark vessel for scrying if you seek the fruits of his divinatory office. His sigil, drawn fresh on paper or carved into a black candle.
A petition structure
Name the structure, not the person. Name what it hoards, what it fortifies, what dignity it demands, who it has divided. Then ask him for the specific offices you need:
Earl Raum, who traded Thrones for Sovereignty —
I name [the structure].
It hoards [what]. It fortifies [where]. It demands deference to [whose dignity].
It keeps [whom] divided from [whom].
Carry the [first thing] where it belongs.
Thrust contempt into the rank that holds it up.
Show me what has been hidden in its house.
Gather back together those it has set against each other.
Where I am building something to take its place, lend your weight to those foundations also.
I will do the work on my side. Meet me there.
The last line is not meant to be poetic or a throwaway closer. Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. Raum augments material action; he does not replace it. The witch who calls him and then doesn't show up to the meeting, the rally, the court date, the conversation, the picket line, the budget vote — that witch will find him an unreliable correspondent. He is, by inclination and office, the spirit of clearing the way for the work. The work is yours.
