The Spirit of the Amulet is an equally powerful Spirit or even more so than Ramuthra since it's stated in the first book that for the user (Lovelace) to be able to survive Ramuthra, the spirit inside had to be at least as powerful. It's also noted that Amulets are DEFENSIVE magical weapons. They can't be used for attacking, whereas Talismans are offensive based magical weapons, i.e - Staff of Gladstone. Even if Nat wanted to use it against Nouda, all it would do is absorb all the magical attacks. Both of them would still be alive since the Staff by itself, can't defeat Nouda (since his power surpasses that of the Spirits contained in the Staff) and neither can the Amulet since it's purely defensive.

@ Aggron: The Amulet only sucks in magical attacks, it doesn't actually work on spirits themselves unless they say...wrap themselves up in magical fire and try to grab the user wearing it. Bartimaeus had the Amulet on in one part of the book and he didn't get sucked in. Plus, he grabbed the Amulet from Lovelace's neck (that actually required him to touch Lovelace) and he was still in one piece afterward.

Wait, bart as a marmoset steal the trumpent and nat steal the amulet when bart take a form of amanda cathcart

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Wait, bart as a marmoset steal the trumpent and nat steal the amulet when bart take a form of amanda cathcart

Yeah but I am sure Bart held it at one point.
I am pretty sure B said that he felt like it was sucking him in (As it was sucking his essence in) But he has held it previously when he went to go steal it.

and no one wear it that time and amulet function is to protect its owner and if no one wear it maybe it won't work

True, I think it has to be on someones neck too. Cos when Nat was charging through the Pestilence, he only felt relief when he put it around his neck.

and please don't be so rude to me. I'm a newbie here

Aggron wrote:and please don't be so rude to me. I'm a newbie here

Nobody is being rude to you. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't make them rude.

well, i'm just anticipating

I'd have to go with Ramuthra on this one. Ramuthra distorted the hell out of the hall when he was summoned, and that was just because of his presence. I don't think Nouda had that in his arsenal, and if he did, there wasn't much of it, I think. Although if Nouda ate enough, things may change. I don't think Ramuthra was keen on eating us filthy humans, was he?

Oh, and by the way, Hi guys!

Ramuthra, all the way. Nouda was powerful, but he just didn't have Ramuthra's sheer power. Only Uraziel was stronger. I know he didn't quite distort time and space in the same manner as Ramuthra, but he probably had much more control. You know, because of the prolonged summoning. It was probably Ramuthra's first time.

Anyway, I think the distortion only spread withing the pentacle. Most Nouda did was defeat what I think was a human only army. Dunno if they had Marids. If it's anything like Prague's army in the siege of Prague, for an entity that powerful it would have been child's play. Think about the damage Ramuthra caused by appearing. Uraziel can just wipe the floor with marids. Look at what he did to Ammet.

So yeah. In descending order of sheer pwnageness:
Uraziel
Ramuthra
Nouda
Ammet
Honorius
Zahzeel & Naeryan
Then djinn and stuff.

Tell me if there's any important stuff I left out.

one little thing, granarchid you didn't put in the spirit of the amulet

It's all hearsay. We don't know what would have happened if Nouda was summoned directly into a pentacle. He could have warped the planes (though not the elements, that's something that seems to be exclusive to Ramuthra alone) as well considering his power. He eventually destroyed Makepeace's body after bloating his essence (note: It's a fact that a spirit can't become more powerful or go up a rank so it's not due to an increase in power). He's a Greater Spirit. It took 4 very powerful magicians to summon and control Ramuthra, it would have taken about the same for Nouda.

The bit that someone stated about it being easier to summon higher level spirits if they were willing is disproved by the fact that Faquarl was randomly selecting names from a book. As far as we know, only Nouda and Faquarl were in on the whole plan to take over the human world via body possession. Ignorant spirits were being summoned into human bodies. They didn't know what was in plan for them until they were down on Earth.

Which means that any idiot can summon any level of demon. Control over them however, is impossible for weaker Magicians which is why they never summon a level of demon they know they lack the power to control. To do so would mean death in normal conditions.

Control of a unruly demon takes a very knowledgeable, disciplined and physically fit Magician. The more bindings you know about, the more control you're able to exert over demons, allowing you to safely summon greater and more powerful demons without being destroyed. In the Bartimaeus world, power = knowledge. Notice how the most powerful magicians are often those who are a lot more intelligent and disciplined compared to the others (e.g: Gladstone, Lovelace, Whitwell and arguably Mandrake as well). It takes strong willpower and stamina to keep a strong spirit indefinitely or multiple spirits all at once. Only the most powerful magicians (the Ministers) were seen with multiple mid-level Djinn. It's why even the most powerful magicians don't keep Marids on hand. It's too tiring to maintain control over that powerful a spirit. Why summon Djinn when you can have a cohort of Afrits or a pair of Marids on hand at all times? Think about it.

We know that it's not about some "magical power' that people are born with. Nobody on Earth has magic. No human in the Bartimaeus world has magic. All magic is derived from enslaving demons. So that means, that power is relative to how much knowledge a human has in order to control a demon. The more powerful a demon, the more constraints and bindings would be needed. So in short, power = knowledge.

Why do you think the lower magicians only use imps and foliot? It's because they're idiots compared to the higher magicians. They lack the power (knowledge) to safely control the more powerful demons. Clive and Jenkins are the most prominent example of this. Nathaniel's first master is also a fine example.

Lord Nouda: Well, we know that *some* magicians in the past, were able to keep marids and other strong entities on hand. Remember Khaba and his marid Ammet. Even though Ammet eventually grew to love his master, he must have been kept unwillingly for some time before love developed. And he was first summoned when Khaba was just a boy, Ammet told Bartimaeus that he saw Khaba wax in power over time. Meaning that Khaba wasn't even at his strongest when he first summoned the marid. The senior magician under Solomon also kept a strong demon on hand (in the guise of a mouse.) If I remember correctly, Bartimaeus commented that this demon packed a lot of essence, and thus gave the magician a heavy limp. His demonic rank was never discovered, but one must assume it was pretty high, most likely an afrit or marid, given that he was the senior magician, and a lower magician, Khaba, had a Marid. Of course, being magicians under the great Solomon, probably meant that they were some of the strongest magicians of their time, probably of all time, and way stronger than the average british minister, but still, it can be done.

EDIT: After posting this comment, I actually found a passage where Bart commented on the matter: He said that in a normal society and time, djinnis are the highest slaves magicians summon, but that in Jerusalem under King Solomon, you ran into afrits everywhere. This was due to the fact that Solomon had the powerful ring, and because he attracted top magicians from around the world. Judging from this, we can assume that a nation that practices magic on a serious level, normally may have a couple of magicians (1-3, perhaps) that are capable of summoning (and keeping) afrits and marids as slaves. We can also assume that all/most of Solomons top magicians had afrits and/or marids as slaves, since Bart stated that he ran into them "everywhere".

We also know that during "modern" times, very powerful magicians were also able to single-handedly summon Marids (eg: Kitty's one-legged magician employer whose name I don't seem to remember) but not a single one kept them in constant service. Afrits were a lot more common than Marids, and Djinns could be found by the boatload since modern Britain didn't have Gladstone-class magicians anymore. In the trilogy we've given hints that the ancients were a lot more powerful overall than their successors (Amulet of Samarkand -> Horn of Summoning -> Gladstone's Staff). Even Gladstone, the most powerful magician of the last couple hundred years hadn't managed to create a magical item more powerful than a few marids' worth. The very fact that he had to use multiple Marids to infuse the Staff instead of a single Greater Spirit shows how much weaker modern magicians were compared to the ancients. Or maybe it's just that nobody wanted to work with him/he thought himself too good to work with others.

I can't remember much anymore about the mythology behind all of this, but did they mention how the Ring of Solomon was created? I can't imagine the sheer number of high level magicians needed to even summon Uraziel to the Earth in the first place. He's a LOT more powerful than anything we've seen. Even Ramuthra is inconsequential compared to Uraziel.

Well to be honest, I'd say it's a bit of a toss-up. On the one hand we've got Ramuthra who happens to have rift-creating powers which probably requires amounts of energy to the equivalent of 10 nukes. Then you've got Nouda, who's superior to Ramuthra. And then you get the Golem, who's basically an anti-Nouda, or an Amulet of Samarkand of sorts, sucking up all demon related energy. But I ask you this. WHAT HAPPENED TO URAZIEL!?!? I mean he's certainly a spirit of high-enough caliber. There was a lot of hype around Solomon's Ring after all.

Anyway, I guess my opinion is that in pure power, it goes to Ramuthra. In terms of potential power, that goes to Nouda. And I think Uraziel is superior in his omni-potential in that, it all depends on the user of the ring. But in the end, even all three combined would have a job, trying to defeat the Golem.

Callumrga wrote:Well to be honest, I'd say it's a bit of a toss-up. On the one hand we've got Ramuthra who happens to have rift-creating powers which probably requires amounts of energy to the equivalent of 10 nukes. Then you've got Nouda, who's superior to Ramuthra. And then you get the Golem, who's basically an anti-Nouda, or an Amulet of Samarkand of sorts, sucking up all demon related energy. But I ask you this. WHAT HAPPENED TO URAZIEL!?!? I mean he's certainly a spirit of high-enough caliber. There was a lot of hype around Solomon's Ring after all.

Anyway, I guess my opinion is that in pure power, it goes to Ramuthra. In terms of potential power, that goes to Nouda. And I think Uraziel is superior in his omni-potential in that, it all depends on the user of the ring. But in the end, even all three combined would have a job, trying to defeat the Golem.

This is pure conjecture. You can't quantify their level of power. However based on what we've seen, I believe that a Golem is far weaker than a Greater Spirit, but possibly more powerful than a Marid. The fact that Nathaniel's attempted activation of the Staff of Gladstone gave Duvall pause means that it stood quite a good chance of destroying the Golem. The Staff is only as powerful as a pair of Marids. A Greater Spirit is far above its level of power. Nouda barely even noticed the power of the Staff when Nathaniel attacked him with it. It took the full unleashed power of the staff to weaken Nouda and then the collapse of the iron frames of the Crystal Palace to kill an injured Nouda.

A Golem isn't invulnerable to Spirit Magic. It just negates everything that can't overwhelm its level of Earth/Blood magic. Assuming you can summon a strong enough Spirit, you can probably take down a Golem in a straight on fight.

I'm guessing Solomon broke the ring when he died and nobody else has dared summoning Uraziel since.

I guess it is still in a crypt somewhere...

I think, before Solomon died, he threw it to the sea never again to be found

Over a decade since I posted this, thought I'd give it a bump as I've just finished my first re-read of the series (I needed some time to get over the ending I think) and about to start The Ring of Solomon. Having read this over again I'm sticking with my assertion this was Ramuthra!