How To Summon The Devil, And What To Do When He Shows Up

Maybe your like

How To Summon The Devil, And What To Do When He Shows Up

The complex historical tradition of spirit conjuring would make for even better art than its simplified on-screen counterpart

by Kay Halloran

Since the Renaissance, conjurors of spirits and their diabolical pacts have endured as some of the most spectacular images of the macabre in both literature and culture. Few curiosities of occult paraphernalia emanate as much wonder and dread as the sinister seals of the goetic grimoires of early modern Europe. Whether beheld by occult-minded scholars or by teenagers with a fascination for horror movies and black metal, to gaze upon the exotic, bizarre, and intimidating seals of the demons is to touch the truly infernal and, in some strange way, to feel the abyss staring back at you.

The sorcerer’s summoning ceremony first debuted on the early modern stage as the morbid set piece at the center of Christopher Marlowe’s Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus, and similar diablerie has stoked the imaginations of audiences ever since. Even in cinema’s infant steps, the motif of the spirit conjuror calling up ghostly and ghoulish apparitions was a recurrent fascination of early French director George Méliès, as well as the perfect conceit to demonstrate his most innovative and impressive special effects. And in 1922’s Swedish silent film masterpiece Häxan—which draws its imagery from director Benjamin Christensen’s reading of the infamous witch hunter’s manual, Malleus Maleficarum—witches and the satanic orgies that accompany the signing of their pacts with the devil are displayed in lurid, almost surrealistic detail.

The motif appears as an element in some of the most celebrated films of the modern horror canon. Hellraiser (1987) takes the image of demon conjuring and further eroticizes it, replacing the promise of supreme knowledge of the natural sciences with ultimate carnal experience, while simultaneously exchanging the legalistic nature of the pact with the slippery allure of a puzzle box. In A Dark Song (2016), as the protagonists near the end of the grueling months-long Abramelin rite to summon a holy guardian angel, demons bubble up from the abyss, manifesting to drag the characters down for their impure intentions. While Hereditary (2018) does not depict the scene of conjuration itself, the demonolatrous cult that orchestrates the falling dominoes of the film’s many tragedies does so in hopes that the goetic spirit, Paimon, will honor their pact and manifest in the flesh to bestow riches and favor.

The sorcerer’s summoning ceremony first appeared in The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus.

A spectacular recent exploration of the summoning is Czech animator and puppeteer Jan Svankmajer’s modern-day adaptation of Marlowe’s Faust (1994). Flitting away his dreary, quotidian existence on the grimy streets of Prague, Svankmajer’s Faust sleepwalks his way through a series of unsettling omens and supernatural encounters entirely unphased, until finally, taking up the role of magician in a theater production, he declares his intent to gain supreme knowledge and pleasure through his pursuit of black magic. This leads Faust to don the traditional robes and paraphernalia of the goetic sorcerer and step inside the conjuror’s circle with the spirit’s seal copied onto parchment, armed with a whip and magical spells to compel the demon Mephistopheles to appear. This act initiates a psychedelic ordeal, replete with a flurry of teleporting locales, fiendish assaults, and gruesome sights, while Faust remains anchored stoically to the safety of the circle, continuing to lash at the seal of Mephistopheles and cry out for the devil to appear, undeterred. When Mephistopheles does inevitably arrive, Faust asks whether it was the results of his efforts which brought the demon up from hell; to which Mephistopheles informs him that it was not his magical proficiency, but rather his readiness to abandon himself to sin, which draws the demons’ attention. True to the hierarchical nature of the spirits in real grimoires, Mephistopheles explains that he might only grant Faust the luxuries he requests on the authority of his king, Lucifer, who demands they must sign a contract—an imposition which Faust foolishly accedes, to his ultimate misfortune.

Travis Betz’ low-budget independent film Lo (2009) was conceived as a riff on the spectacular conjuration sequence of Svankmeyer’s film, using the drama of the sorcerer who must goad and interrogate the fiends from the safety of his magical circle as the premise for a stage play-like narrative. Following the abduction of his girlfriend by the forces of hell, Justin enters the circle and uses the grimoire she left behind to summon the demon Lo and command him to return his beloved. Of course—as the wretched Lo reminds him upon his appearance—though the demon may be bound to fulfill Justin’s demands, “I’m under no obligation to respect you.” The narrative is then unspooled solely through the ensuing contest of wills between conjuror and spirit, divulging the truth of both Justin’s relationship and the secret nature of the accosting devils. There is an admirable sense of inventiveness and fun to Betz’ film, which abounds with quirky set-pieces, puppetry, and musical sequences. Still, its comedic tone betrays any aspiration towards the otherworldly, and its quippy dialogue has aged poorly.

In 2016’s The Alchemist Cookbook, directed by Joel Portykus, Sean, played by Ty Hickson, is a young disabled man with mental illness living alone off the grid in a run down trailer deep in the woods. Sean spends his days in solitude mixing noxious chemicals and doing weird rituals out of a book that he claims was written by an alchemist. At the beginning of the film, Sean has exhausted his anti-psychotic medication, and is unable to secure more through his volatile cousin, Cortez, played by Amari Cheatom, his sole source of connection to the outside world. Unmedicated and desperate, Sean decides to summon the demon, Belial, from the book and demand gold. From there, the film descends into a grueling downward spiral of isolation and paranoia, as Sean confronts both the demon haunting the trees at night and his own worst impulses, and the audience is left to wonder whether they are one in the same.

Involvement of the supernatural in the film’s narrative is left ambiguous, heavily suggesting that any otherworldly elements represent hallucinations from Sean’s perspective. The Alchemist Cookbook presents a compelling character study of a desperate man at his nadir, strung together with some grisly set pieces and improvisational scenes of ghoulish humor, although it struggles to keep tension through its latter half. The movie’s grungy woodland aesthetic, filmed in the forests of Michigan, is unmistakably inspired by 1981’s Evil Dead, and likewise Hickson’s performance especially carries the film with its blood-curdling viscerality. The conception of the diabolical sorcerer as a figure on the rural fringes of society, foraging their materials through trespass and skullduggery, and breaking social taboos in seclusion, does feel authentic. The film is also interesting as a rare grounded depiction of working class magicians and cunning men, reminiscent of the 1971 occult camp classic, Simon: King of the Witches.

There is, of course, a historical truth to this figure of the conjuror. Goetic magic found its restoration among the repertoire of the modern occultist after Aleister Crowley’s own edited 1904 edition of the grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, based on a manuscript he had stolen from his Golden Dawn mentor, McGregor Mathers. Among Crowley’s additions, he coined a pernicious misrepresentation of the demons of the Goetia as psychological personifications of the magician’s interior darkness that must be chained, bound, and chastised to enact the magician’s will. This invented view still holds currency among practicing magicians and, indeed, seems to predominate the depiction of the demons in most media representations, which lean heavily on their existence as personifications of characters’ sins or vices.

Since the start of the new millenium, however, a movement among occult scholars to re-examine these infamous tomes as the material culture of a once-living tradition—rather than merely as satanic instruction manuals—has made major headway in our understanding of the grimoires. Foundational to this movement was the publication of restored manuscripts of The Lesser Key of Solomon (2001) and other rare historical grimoires by Joseph H. Peterson. This was followed notably by an exhaustive comparative analysis of The Goetia of Dr. Rudd by Stephen Skinner in 2007, and a commentary edition of The Grimorium Verum published by Jake Stratton-Kent in 2009.

What drew Stratton-Kent to the The Grimorium Verum in particular is both the magic book’s exclusive detailed instructions for the creation of the ritual equipment for conjuring (lacking in most other sources) and its unique rural tone, which regards the demons, not as antagonistic fiends to be cajoled, but rather as venerable spirits worthy of trading favors and forging pacts.

“The spirits who are powerful and exalted serve only their confidantes and intimate friends… They will come according to the temperament of the one who invokes them. You can become familiar with them without much difficulty following my instructions…”
The Grimorium Verum, trans. by Jake Stratton-Kent (2009)

The goetic grimoires claim their magical legitimacy to compel the forces of hell on the basis of two legendary founder traditions, one attributed to the biblical King Solomon and his esoteric command over the demons to build the temple of Jerusalem, and the other deriving from the patronage of St. Cyprian of Antioch, the late antique necromancer turned Christian martyr. In his classic 1533 compendium of arcana, the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa characterized two categories of ceremonial magi: the theurgist, those practitioners holding a respectable yet still questionable approach to the supernatural powers through exhaustive purification, and who might take aid from Christian names and powers to yoke evil spirits to their godly will; and then a second, more sordid bunch of ‘goetic’ diablerists, to be utterly reviled, those who make offerings to the demons and worship them to court their favor. In “The True Grimoire” in particular, the conceit of the demons as bounded servants is subdued; instead, we witness a notion of rural spirits, often dangerous, but worthy of respect, similar to early modern folklore about litigious faeries, and the wandering Exu deities of the Brazillian tradition of Quimbanda, with which the goetia demons seem to share historical affinities.

Those who have only been exposed to looser cinematic depictions of summoning may be shocked to learn the depth, specificity, and deep reverence that goes into the process. Indeed, reading between the lines, The Grimorium Verum details a laborious circuit of craft production and ritual performance to conjure one of the demons:

First, the magician must forge a pact with the demon that does the “call-dialing” itself, a sort of psychopompic spirit called “Scirlin”, whose sigil must be inscribed alongside the operant’s initials at the outset of the process onto a ruby or correspondent precious stone. This amulet is to be worn inside the magician’s breast pocket or on a necklace at all times.

Essential to operating the Verum is a calendrical convention drawn from hermetic astrology that utilizes both the planetary hours and assigns a spirit to each particular day of the week. This dictates that the construction of most of the tools for the ritual are to be done at dawn over the course of a few weeks during a time when the moon is waxing. The actual ritual of summoning must be done at an appointed time depending on the properties of the demon.

To compel the stygian host, the magician must cut a branch at dawn from both a virgin elder tree on the day of Astaroth (Wednesday) and hazelwood on the day of Surgat (Sunday), inscribing upon them the seals of the demons Frimost and Klepot, to be fashioned into wands of evocation and divination, respectively.

Those who have only been exposed to cinematic depictions of summoning may be shocked at the depth, specificity, and deep reverence of the process.

Similarly the materials for the signing of the pact—the pen, inkhorn, and lancet for the drawing of blood—are purified and consecrated at dawn also on the day of Astaroth (Wednesday).

Though the later goetic grimoires dictate the use of metallic talismans inscribed with the demons’ seals, the Verum instead offers a more practical, if somewhat ghoulish procedure. True to goetia’s Greek etymological origins as “wailing”, the Verum includes instructions for the consecration of a ritual knife intended to sacrifice a goat, as well as its skinning, scraping, stretching, and curing into parchment upon which the demon’s sigil will be copied.

The writing of the contract on the parchment, including the copying of the sigil of Scirlin, the demons’ seals, and the drafting of all legal agreements, is to be done at dawn on the day of Belzebuth (Tuesday).

Special herbs and incense are then used to immerse the magician in a sensory tradition. A mixture of mace, frankincense, and aloe wood is burned in a censer upon the altar at the ceremony and used to fumigate all tools for the operation. For purity, the magician must anoint themselves and their tools in an aspergillum of holy water mixed with mint, marjoram, and rosemary and “bound by a thread spun by a maiden”.

The setting of the ceremony demands a magic circle roughly 9 feet in diameter which must be drawn with a knife, consecrated at dawn on the day of Silcharde (Thursday), and drenched in mole blood and juice of pimpernel. Within the circle’s center, the magician is to draw the triangle of evocation, upon which is set the ceremonial altar. While the triangle of evocation has a long history in Renaissance spirit conjuration, first appearing in the magical treatises of Johannes Trithemius, it is usually imagined as an outside object into which the spirit is conjured from the safety of the circle—not so in the Verum! Here, the triangle is reimagined from a hermetically sealed observation chamber into a parlour of communion.

The ritual itself prescribes a rite of sanctification, using the wands to mimic alternating flail lashes, and a recitation of personal exhortations. Then, after a series of prayers used to elevate the operant’s magical authority, the spirit is to be called forth. After chanting an incantation of barbarous names, the demons must be summoned in top-down hierarchical order, first petitioning one of the unholy trinity of Lucifer, Astaroth, and Belzebuth, then calling upon one of their seven dukes, and finally the demon further down the hierarchy which you wish to actually summon.

Following an exhausting hours-long rite, the desired demon is expected to appear, either as a presence or as a vision in a scrying mirror. From here the magician might sign a pact with the particular demon. The section of The Grimoirium Verum detailing bizarre magical spells one might derive from their influence, including invisibility, drawing pleasant music out of thin air, and the power to strike sudden death, is testament to the efficacy of cooperation.

Though the nature of the demons within the tradition is a matter of conjecture, and their number and names differ from grimoire to grimoire, a comparative analysis in Stratton-Kent’s Pandemonium (2016) emphasizes both their presentation within a feudal hierarchy (kings, princes, dukes, barons, etc.) and their loose association with astrological attributions. While many of the major demons derive from ancient pagan deities appearing in scripture (Astaroth, Beelzebuth, Mammon), most others have names that seem totally made up, although they are often described with surreal imagery reminiscent of the symbolic faces of the decans and the Arabic lunar mansions of medieval astrology.

All this lends some interesting creative potential to the fictional motif of the demon and conjuror duo. We can imagine here the follies of dabblers and cults through the ages courting favor from the demons, and sometimes disastrously falling into disfavor, or as prey to the prying eyes of the church. We can imagine the demons not as psychological personifications of sin or pathology, but as independent spirits at work in nature and human affairs with long histories, individual personalities, and ambiguous relationships in the infernal court.

From this perspective the horror of calling up hell is that of the will of the other, rather than the dredging of personal recriminations made conscious. Beyond their status as obvious theological taboo, It seems no accident that the diabolic conjuring tomes came into vogue during the Renaissance, a time in which the exhumation of classical pagan culture was being deployed to explosive social and political ends, and in which shadowy hierarchies and orders in nature were being revealed by the sciences. In the same way that the early modern figure of the fairy represents an ‘other’ out in nature, which was beyond the authority of the conventional social order, the early modern figure of the demon represents the ‘other’ of an undead pagan authority of the past somehow persisting beneath the social order, an underworld college of vanquished kings, princes, and bizarre deities, who once challenged the true god and subjugated his followers, and would surely have so again.

The catalogues of demons and centuries of subversive magical tradition offer untapped riches for writers and filmmakers, if they so dare to brave their brush with an old and sneering evil waiting in the dark corners of history.

Bibliography:

Peterson, Joseph H. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis. Samuel Weiser, 2001.

Marathakis, Ioannis, and Stephen Skinner. The Magical Treatise of Solomon, Or Hygromanteia. Golden Hoard Press, 2011.

Ody, Julio Cesar. Magister Officiorum: The Ceremony of Solomonic Magic. Scarlet Imprint, 2018.

Skinner, Stephen, et al. The Goetia of Dr Rudd the Angels & Demons of Liber Malorum Spirituum Seu Goetia Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis ; with a Study of the Techniques of Evocation in the Context of the Angel Magic Tradition of the Seventeenth Century. Golden Hoard, 2010.

Stratton-Kent, Jake. The Trve Grimoire. Scarlet Imprint/Bibliothèque Rouge, 2010.

Stratton-Kent, Jake. Pandemonium: A Discordant Concordance of Diverse Spirit Catalogues. Hadean Press Limited, 2016.

Kay Halloran

Kay Halloran is an author of horror, fantasy, and historical fiction. He can be found performing his horror audio-fiction on the Grimoire Nights podcast and hosting The Podhand.

Liked it? Take a second to support Blood Knife on Patreon!

by Kay Halloran April 5, 2022 in Editorial, Horror 16

Hollow Throne: Satanic Panic & the Post-Modern Lucifer

From Milton to Marx

REVIEW: Foe (2023)

December 4, 2023 by Kevin Fox, Jr.

We’re Similar. We’re Compatible. We’re Perfect.

November 20, 2023 by Becca Young

They’re Not Going to Make You an Immortal Internet God

November 20, 2023 by Norbert Daniels Jr. Search for:

Blood Knife

A digital magazine about sci-fi, horror, and capitalism.

Knifepoint

Get the latest articles, cyberculture, weird media, and more.

Support Blood Knife on Patreon

Support us on Patreon

Blood Knife is funded by readers like you – by backing us, you can help us publish more original work from more original authors, plus get bonus content and swag. 100% of your pledge goes to supporting writers and artists.

Tag » How To Summon A Demon

How To Summon The Devil, And What To Do When He Shows Up