Which Famous Authors Cited The Key Of Solomon In Fiction?

I’ve chased down references to grimoires for years, and the 'Key of Solomon' (Clavicula Salomonis) pops up more often than you’d expect — but usually as a cultural touchstone rather than a neat citation. In classic weird fiction, names like Arthur Machen and M.R. James dance around Solomonic material: they rarely quote the text verbatim, but their atmosphere and plot devices come straight from that tradition of ritual manuals and sealed circles. If you read their stories you’ll feel the same dusty-magic vibe that the 'Key' embodies.

On the modern side, Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s 'The Club Dumas' (which inspired the film 'The Ninth Gate') explicitly traffics in rare occult books and Solomonic lore; while the protagonist chases different manuscripts, the novel’s world is saturated with the same kind of Solomonic manuscripts. Comics and graphic novels lean on the 'Key' a lot too — Mike Mignola’s 'Hellboy' mythology borrows names, seals, and rituals straight from Solomonic and Goetic traditions (the 'Lesser Key'/'Goetia' cousins of the 'Key of Solomon').

Then there are the occultists-turned-writers whose editions and fictionalized accounts bleed into fiction: S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ and Aleister Crowley’s translations and editions of Solomonic texts didn’t just feed occult practice, they fed the imaginations of later writers. So when you’re trying to pin down a single famous novelist who “cited” the 'Key of Solomon', it’s more accurate to look for a web of references: weird fiction authors, modern thriller writers like Pérez-Reverte, comic creators like Mignola, and occult translators who made the material widely readable. If you want, I can dig up exact passages and page references next — I’ve got a messy stack of annotated editions at home that make this hunt fun.

Short and honest: the 'Key of Solomon' shows up in fiction more as inspiration than as neat citations. You’ll see its fingerprints in the weird fiction of M.R. James and Arthur Machen (atmosphere and ritual), in Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s 'The Club Dumas'/'The Ninth Gate' (rare-book obsession and occult manuscripts), and in comic-book worlds like Mike Mignola’s 'Hellboy' (actual sigils and Goetic names). Beyond those, urban fantasy authors and modern thrillers often borrow Solomonic motifs, and the translations/editions by S.L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley helped seed the idea into popular imagination. If you need exact page-by-page citations, I can pull quotes from specific editions — I’ve got notes from hunting these references between coffee breaks.