Contrary to its title, the Key of Solomon has nothing to do with David's son Solomon, from the Bible. It is a book of black magic, called a grimoire, written in Latin in the 1300 or 1400s.
This book of spells and designs, translated into several languages, says that King Solomon wrote it for his son Rehoboam, but then had him hide it in Solomon's tomb when he died. Later, legend holds that a Babylonian philosopher found and cast a spell on the book after receiving instructions from an angel.
The content of the Key of Solomon varies from spells and curses, to instructions on how to find love or become invisible. It sometimes invokes the name of Jesus Christ, who was not known by name to King Solomon, dispelling any doubt that the biblical king had anything to do with this book. The coupling of magic and Christianity was not unusual in Italy in the Middle Ages. The Key of Solomon is just one of the more well-known pieces of such literature from that time.
Author Dan Brown brought this book back into the cultural consciousness in his 2009 novel The Lost Symbol. Brown often uses extra-biblical sources to create interesting narratives that brush up against biblical stories and people in the Bible. His work is fiction.
The Bible consistently prohibits and warns against sorcery, spells, necromancy, fortune telling, divination, and other practices people use to contact the spiritual world without a relationship with Jesus Christ and a total reliance upon the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 18:10–14; 1 Samuel 15:23; 2 Kings 17:17; Jeremiah 14:14; Acts 16:16–19). The Key of Solomon holds no keys to the spirit world and was not written by Solomon. It touches on Judeo-Christian themes, but is decidedly unbiblical. It is nothing more than a historically interesting work.
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