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Michael Gave Solomon a Ring to Bind Every Demon

A demon was draining life from a child on Solomon's building crew. Solomon prayed and Michael arrived with a ring that bound every demon on earth.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The King Asks a Boy What Is Wrong
  2. The Ring From the Archangel
  3. What a Demon Looks Like When It Has No Escape
  4. A Field Guide to the Unseen World

A demon was feeding on a child, and Solomon noticed.

Every evening, after the laborers building the Temple in Jerusalem finished work for the day, a spirit called Ornias descended on the boy who served the master craftsman. The demon stole half the child's wages. Half his food. Then it seized the boy's right hand and sucked his thumb. Night after night it drained the life out of him through the soft pad of a single finger. The child grew thin. He stopped laughing. He lost weight in plain view on the most sacred construction project in the history of Israel, and nobody knew why.

The King Asks a Boy What Is Wrong

Solomon loved this particular boy more than all the other artisans. He summoned him. I give you double wages. I give you double portions of food. Why do you waste away by the hour?

The boy fell to his knees and told him everything. The demon. The thumb. The wages. The food. Every night after sunset.

Solomon's response was not a soldier or a guard. He went up from the building site and prayed. The account is in the Testament of Solomon, a Jewish pseudepigraphical text probably composed in Greek between the first and third centuries CE, positioned in the late Second Temple world when Jewish demonology was being organized into something systematic. The text is one of the only surviving ancient Jewish works written in Solomon's own voice, and its governing premise is that Solomon's legendary wisdom and the legendary construction of the Temple were the same project. The Temple was built because the king found a way to command the workforce no ordinary general could command.

The Ring From the Archangel

The answer to his prayer came through Michael.

The archangel brought a small ring with a seal engraved on the stone. The seal bore the name of God in the form known to heaven, and the ring's property was absolute. Whoever wore it had authority over every demon on earth. Michael delivered it to Solomon with a single instruction: use the seal of the ring, and you can command all the demons, male and female, and with their help you will build Jerusalem.

Solomon put the ring on. Then he called the boy.

He handed the ring to the child and told him what to do. When Ornias comes tonight, throw this ring at his chest. Say to him: Solomon summons you. Come.

What a Demon Looks Like When It Has No Escape

The boy did it. He threw the ring. The demon appeared in the night, the same spirit that had been feeding on the boy for weeks, and now it was standing in front of a child holding a signet ring that had come down from the archangel Michael, and there was nowhere to go.

Ornias began to shriek. It wailed that it had been delivered up and bound and begged the boy to take the ring back to his master, to explain that it would give Solomon whatever he wanted, gold or silver, anything, only please stop the sealing. The boy was not moved. He dragged the demon back to the king.

Solomon interrogated it. Where do you live. What do you do. The demon answered under the pressure of the seal. It lived in the constellation Aquarius. It strangled men born under that sign. It caused disease through the kidneys and in the loins. The name that could banish it was the angel Ouriel. Solomon wrote all of this down. Then he put Ornias to work cutting the marble blocks for the Temple.

A Field Guide to the Unseen World

This is what the Testament of Solomon is: a compendium built from interrogations. Every demon that appears before Solomon's throne is made to confess its name, its home constellation, its method of attack, and the angelic name that can neutralize it. The Jewish demonological tradition had been developing this taxonomy for centuries. The shedim, half-human and half-angelic, the mazzikim who harm, the ruhot who haunt margins. The Talmud preserves one remarkable origin story for the shedim: God created them at twilight on the sixth day, but the Sabbath arrived before he could finish giving them bodies. They have souls but no physical form, which is why they need to borrow from the living.

Solomon's ring gave him access to that entire world, organized it, and put it to work on a building. The Temple was not just built from cedar and gold. It was built from forced confessions.

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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Testament of Solomon 1-7Testament of Solomon

A demon was feeding on a child. Every evening, after the workers building the Temple in Jerusalem finished their labor, a spirit called Ornias descended upon the boy who served the master craftsman. The demon stole half his wages. Half his food. And then it sucked the thumb of his right hand, draining his life force night after night until the child wasted away to skin and bone.

King Solomon loved this boy more than all the other artisans. He noticed the child growing thinner by the day and summoned him. "Do I not pay you double wages?" he asked. "Do I not give you double portions of food? Why do you grow weaker with each passing hour?"

The boy fell to his knees. "O king, after we are released from our work on the Temple of God, a demon comes to me at sunset. He takes half my pay and half my food. Then he seizes my right hand and sucks my thumb. My soul is crushed, and my body wastes away."

Solomon entered the Temple and prayed with all his soul, night and day, begging the Almighty for authority over the demon. And his prayer was answered.

The archangel Michael descended from heaven bearing a gift from the Lord of Hosts. A small ring. On it was engraved a seal, a pentagram, the sign of God's dominion over all spirits. Michael spoke: "Take this, O Solomon, son of David. The Lord God, the Most High, has sent you this gift. With it you shall bind every demon on earth, male and female. And with their forced labor, you shall build Jerusalem."

Solomon took the ring and gave it to the boy the next morning. "When the demon comes tonight," he said, "throw this ring at his chest and say: In the name of God, King Solomon calls you. Then run to me. Do not be afraid of anything you hear."

That evening, at the customary hour, Ornias came like a burning fire to steal from the child. But this time the boy hurled the ring at the demon's chest and shouted the words. The seal struck Ornias and bound him. The demon shrieked: "Child, what have you done to me? Take this ring off and I will give you all the gold of the earth! Only do not lead me to Solomon!"

But the boy ran. He ran straight to the king, rejoicing. And behind him, bound by the seal of the living God, the demon Ornias followed, howling, begging, dragging himself toward the throne of the wisest king who ever lived (1 Kings 6:1).

This was the beginning. The first demon had been caught. And through that single ring, Solomon would enslave every dark spirit under heaven and force them to build the house of God.

Full source
Antiquities VIII.5Antiquities of the Jews (Josephus)

Solomon spent seven years building God's house. He spent thirteen building his own. Josephus does not hide the contrast, the Temple had God's help, he writes, which is why it went faster. The palace had only human effort behind it, and it showed.

The royal complex was enormous. The main hall, called the House of the Forest of Lebanon, stretched a hundred cubits long, fifty wide, and thirty high, supported by rows of cedar pillars with Corinthian capitals. This was the public building where Solomon heard legal cases and received the masses. Adjacent to it stood a separate throne room for rendering judgment, and beyond that, a private palace built for his Egyptian queen.

The stonework throughout was extraordinary. Josephus describes walls built from stones ten cubits long, with decorative carvings so delicate that sculpted trees and leaves appeared to move in the breeze. The upper walls were plastered and painted in vivid colors. Solomon's throne was made of ivory and gold, flanked by lions on every one of its six steps, fourteen lions in all, with a half-bull supporting the king's back.

After twenty years of building, Solomon rewarded King Hiram of Tyre, who had supplied gold, silver, and timber for both structures, with twenty cities in the Galilee. Hiram visited, hated them, and told Solomon so. The rejected territory became known as the land of Cabul, a Phoenician word meaning "that which does not please."

But the relationship between the two kings was more than transactional. They traded riddles. Hiram sent Solomon puzzles and enigmas; Solomon solved every one. When Hiram could not solve Solomon's riddles in return, he paid large fines, until a young Tyrian named Abdemon cracked them for him. Then Hiram sent new riddles that stumped even Solomon, who had to pay Hiram back in kind.

Full source
Jewish Magic and Superstition, Ch. 3Jewish Magic and Superstition (Trachtenberg, 1939)

Jewish demonology recognizes three main classes of evil spirits, though as Joshua Trachtenberg noted, medieval Jews had long stopped distinguishing between them. The shedim (שדים) are the most common, hobgoblins descended from the Babylonian shedu, half-human and half-angelic beings who eat, drink, reproduce, and die, but can also fly and see the future. The mazzikim (מזיקין), or "harmers," are defined by what they do rather than what they are. And the ruhot (רוחות), "spirits," are restless supernatural forces that haunt the margins of human life.

Where did demons come from? The Talmud offers one stunning origin story: God created the shedim at twilight on the sixth day of creation, but the Sabbath arrived before He could finish giving them bodies (Tractate Avot 5:6). They have souls but no physical form, which is why they can be everywhere and nowhere. Rashi linked them to the enigmatic verse in (Genesis 6:19), connecting demons to the mysterious beings who preceded the Flood.

The Zohar added a darker genealogy. When Adam separated from Eve for 130 years after Cain's murder of Abel, female demons, the lilin, followers of Lilith, visited him and bore demonic offspring from his involuntary emissions. Eleazar of Worms, drawing on Sefer Raziel and the Sefer Yezirah, catalogued elaborate hierarchies of demonic princes, each ruling over specific domains of harm.

How many demons exist? According to the Talmud (Berakhot 6a), every person is surrounded by thousands of them. Reichhelm, a 13th-century abbot who claimed the gift of demon-sight, described them as thick as dust motes in a sunbeam. Jewish sources agreed: the air itself teems with invisible spirits. They cluster in ruins, in privies, in places where water is poured out. They are most dangerous at night, especially on Wednesday and Saturday nights. The only protection is awareness. And the right words.

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