Getting Started with Demons

 

If you don’t do demonic magic but have seen or answered questions about it in forums, you should read the intro. If you have not, and you are just looking to learn demonic magic, you CAN read the intro of you can skip ahead to the break and read from there.

 

          I periodically see people asking how to summon a demon in various types of forums. Sometimes the question is more exciting, how do you sell your soul to a demon? Better worded ones might ask how to make a pact with a demon. It’s a popular enough question. If we’re going to be honest, it’s also probably a question driven by people’s impression of magic from movies, comics, stories, and warnings against magic. Still, amongst those asking, there may be people who are exploring magic who haven’t come across that information yet and wonder why they haven’t, where that information is, and ultimately, how do you do it?

          I was that kid once. I had read a handful of magical books. I had studied round the clock, quite literally, resources I found online. I was exploring and practicing the magic I had encountered. I was serious and was doing the work both practically and in terms of educating myself. Still, there was a glaring hole. Nothing had information on conjuring spirits of any kind. Most magic didn’t even talk about spirits or their existence. So, I understand going to a forum and asking. As far as the people who are asking because they got the idea from bad sources and haven’t explored magic yet…so what? Maybe in that forum asking that question is where they’re supposed to be. Maybe it’s how their exploration of magic begins. If they get good answers, it could lead them to good information.

          The problem is, people don’t give good answers. Most competent magicians don’t spend a ton of time in beginner forums. There are a few of us who hang out to answer questions. A lot will pop in periodically. The vast majority of questions get answered by people who, even if they’ve got some time under their belts, haven’t really progressed their knowledge or experience past the beginner phase. So you get a lot of people who think they’re being clever, or maybe insightful, or people who are just smug and think they know the inside truth about magic giving useless, meaningless and misguided answers.  A post I saw today had 144 comments and probably less than 10 were useful, and that’s a generous estimate.

          People see the word demon and they fall right into a Sunday school inspired mindset. People think real magicians don’t work with demons, or that demons aren’t real, or that you can’t summon a demon, or that that’s just how magic works in the movies but not in real life. Or they think the idea is so bad or dangerous no one should ever even give it a thought, rather than it’s dangerous so learn more about it to safely work with it or safely avoid it. Knives are dangerous, but we use them daily, fire is dangerous but we’d have a hard time surviving without it. 1.19 million people die in car accidents annually, I’m sure demonic conjurations aren’t killing over a million people a year, but we don’t tell teenagers not to ask about learning to drive.

          Magic involving demons has existed in Christianity and Islam as long as those religions have existed, and in Judaism for at least the last two millennia. For people who think it isn’t Pagan, we have plenty of surviving records of Pagan magic involving demons. Some of it involved conjuring demons to get them to leave people alone, some involved conjuring demons to accomplish things, some involved tormenting demons to get them to do something for you, some involved allying with demons to threaten other spiritual powers to do things for you, there were myriad ways in which Pagan magicians worked with demons. If you’re a NeoPagan and you think your religion has nothing to do with demons, the earliest forms of NeoPaganism drew significant portions of their ritual system from grimoires that included working with demons.

          You can do magic without working with demons. In most formal ritual magic I do, I would work with angels, gods or the dead more commonly than with demons, but would also work with demons where appropriate, and certainly do in less formal magic. So if you’re acting shocked someone would work with demons, advising that everyone should always stay away from such things, or implying it’s not a real, or not a valid, or not an acceptable form of magic, all you’re doing is showing that you have a very limited magical education. To be fair, not every one who does some magic needs to be extensively educated in all areas of magic. But, avoiding bigotry about magic that isn’t your approach, or realizing that you know what goes on in your corner of the pond but not in the whole pond would be appropriate.

 

 

 

Now…for the thing itself! If you want to get started working with demons, here are some resources!

 

 

Good books for this subject are limited. A lot of us got started by studying the traditional medieval and early modern books on the subject. There are some good modern books though…as well as a lot that aren’t advisable.

 

Jason Miller’s Consorting withSpirits

           This is a good practical beginner book for working with spirits in general, but its approaches apply particularly well for  demons, angels, and other spirits you might conjure. The book says it’s not a beginner book because it doesn’t include protection spells or rituals and it assumes you have studied some magic. Still, it’s written in a way that someone who has never explored magic could pick it up, read it, understand it and probably get started. Here is my review

 

Rufus Opus’s Modern Goetic Grimoire

           I’m not sure if this is still in print. It is a simplified approach to grimoire style conjuration of demons based on the Arte of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, which is one of the simplest grimoire approaches around.

 

BJ Swain’s Living Spirits

         All of my books could be used to learn more about work with demons, but none are really focused on demons. Living Spirits is a general guidebook to spirits and spirit work and includes portions on working with demons and looks at how that fits an overall magical practice. If your main goal is demons then you might focus on the other two, if you want a thorough exploration of work with spirits, including demons, and practical sorcery, this is a good option. It grew out of a project on conjuration for beginners, but many people have pointed to the density of information and the focus on the topic might make it more appropriate to intermediate occultist. Here is a review by former ADF ArchDruid Ian Corrigan

 

Beyond modern books, there are great resources in older books. Some of these you can find in print now. You can get many of them for free online. I highly recommend Esoteric Archives. This website has many free versions of grimoires available along with annotations and comments by the esteemed Joseph H. Peterson. I would recommend exploring the various things that are available there, but for getting started here are ones to focus on. (Unfortunately, I can not link to esoteric archives, but it is found at www . esotericarchives . com the links for these texts are to the physical editions which I would recommend for these texts.)

 

The Ars Goetia of Solomon (part of the Lemegeton)

This has been the standard grimoire for demonology for the last hundred years. It is not a particularly influential grimoire, as it was relatively late and only existed in the English language, but because it was available in English it has been readily available to English speakers throughout the 20^th century.

 

The Heptameron of Pietro D’Abano

 This is not concerned with infernal demons so much as the aerial spirits and the angels who rule over them. The conjurations could be used for demons and the text likely influenced the Ars Goetia. This text can be found within the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy and developed from a text called the Lucidarium. Information on the Lucidarium texts is available on Esoteric Archives and Peterson released an edition of the older text, the full Heptameron is available there as well.

 

The Testament of Solomon

This is an early list of demons and their powers contextualized in the story of Solomon building the temple. The text does not give real ritual instructions but it provides a different list of demons than the popular one in the Ars Goetia.

 

The Key of Solomon

Again, not specifically a text for conjuring demons, but an influential grimoire. The version on Esoteric Archives is the version compiled by Mathers of the Golden Dawn in the late 19^th/early 20^th century. The pentacles in the text can be useful when working with spirits. The text also gives thorough descriptions of how to create various tools of ritual magic. The conjurations in the text are intended for the aerial spirits like those in the Heptameron.

 

The Grimorium Verum

 Esoteric Archives provides information on this text but I do not believe it provides a free version of it. Joseph Peterson has published an edition of the text as well as of its predecessor The Ars Rabidmadar which is available as The Secrets of Solomon. The Verum has become one of the more popular grimoires for demonology in the last ten to fifteen years. Many say they prefer its approach and its use of demonic hierarchies to the approach used in the more Solomonic texts.

 

There are also some opportunities available to learn with people.

 

Alexander Moore of Practical Occult offers consulting and coaching services as well as a series of courses through Practical Occult. I have spoken with Alexander many times over the years, have spent time with him in person and also with people who have spent much more time with him and who have encountered other magical associates of his. I highly trust his capabilities and his knowledge.

 

I also offer a self-paced course on grimoire magic “How to Do Grimoire Magic for Free (or at least Inexpensively)” Most courses on grimoire magic are rather costly but this one is $7.77. In addition to several hours of audio instruction there is a syllabus to walk you through how to explore the practices and recommend supplemental readings, which are mostly available for free, and it comes with a free book in PDF format. While the course is in grimoire magic overall, it does include the conjuration of demons.

 

So if you’re really itching to get started with demonic magic, you might want to do an uncrossing and take a bath to deal with the itching… 😉 and then pick up one of the aforementioned books, hop over to esoteric archives and start reading a grimoire and avail yourself of one or both of the opportunities for instruction listed above.

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