Pass. But it is probably based on Johann Weyer's
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) which is an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum et Incantationibus ac Venificiis (1563)
Weyer's list is based on a text entitled
Liber Officiorum Spirituum, sev Liber dictus Empto Salomonis, de principibus & Regibus daemoniorum. A work of a similar title is referred to by Trithemius in his
Antipalus Maleficiorum (1508) but I've found nothing earlier than that. Curiously, two of the other books that form the
Lemegeton, Theurgia Goetia and the Pauline Art, contain names derived from Trithemius'
Steganographia (1606, although it had circulated in manuscript during the 16th Century).
I'm not aware of any surviving medieval manuscripts that contain similar directories of spirits, although some might exist.
Certainly there are earlier extant texts that had a tradition of yielding the names, ranking and powers of demons and archangels.
A f'rinstance would be the Gnostic script
On the origin of the world. It's one of the Nag Hammadi scrolls, so let's both agree on early hundreds CE for its provenance.
An excerpt here: "Thus, when the prime parent of chaos saw his son Sabaoth and the glory that he was in, and perceived that he was greatest of all the authorities of chaos, he envied him. And having become wrathful, he engendered Death out of his death: and he (viz., Death) was established over the sixth heaven, <for> Sabaoth had been snatched up from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was achieved. Then Death, being androgynous, mingled with his (own) nature and begot seven androgynous offspring. These are the names of the male ones: Jealousy, Wrath, Tears, Sighing, Suffering, Lamentation, Bitter Weeping. And these are the names of the female ones: Wrath, Pain, Lust, Sighing, Curse, Bitterness, Quarrelsomeness.
They had intercourse with one another, and each one begot seven, so that they amount to forty-nine androgynous demons. Their names and their effects you will find in the Book of Solomon.
The Testament of Solomon, related in Solomonic lore to the above Gnostic text, could be studied for a doctorate. Just one more fragment of an enormous, mainly Hebraic, industry around the man. Stories around him were told as often as the 1001 Arabian Nights, and bear in mind, Solomon is just one source for the lemegeton.
The first pdf i linked earlier has a great section that describes the vibrant fusion of ideas that were happening in those far off centuries, gematraic techniques mingled with images of the christ, crucified, awe-inspiring i would have thought. anyway
These writings were added to, over time, as entropy generally awards. More material was combined.
recensions,,
redactions,all found their way in to the corpus.
The jewish diasporas, other exodi
movement of the people, amalgamated disparate strains of sociomagical-religious thinking.
Bacon introduced Arabian translations of Taoist Alchemical books.
Alchemy, in the East the search for life eternal. In the West, to somehow transmute lead into ingots auriferous.
The printing press. An emerging social class with enough money to buy exotic books and grimoires, and enough time on their hands to read them.
Point is, the existence of scientifically datable medieaval grimories only as far back as the 15th century seems perfectly reasonable. For all the reasons above, and many more, this was a time of critical mass in history for this material to be combined into different kinds of witches almanacs.
Other "how-to" books were around at the time of the LKOS. The Liber Iuratus, the
Grimorium Verum to name but two.
As with so many other things, it's a melange. Despite the best efforts of brilliant contemporary minds to unlock the secrets of the past, to capture the voice of the ancient scribes, as usual were stumbling around in the dark pretty much fucking things completely up.