<da:widget type="twitter.share" value="{'url':'fav.me/d831jh1','counturl':'ht… you summon a demon if you could? (via deviantart)','related':'depthRADIUS'}" />
<da:widget type="facebook.share" value="{'type':'button_count','width':'180'}" />
<da:widget type="google.plusone" value="{'size':'medium','href':'techgnotic.deviantart.com/art/…}" />
Halloween entertainment… or invitation to evil?
We all know from the movies that a vampire can’t cross over the threshold into one’s home without being invited. And yet simply knowing that Dracula can be held at bay so easily makes issuing that invitation all the more irresistible. Could such things as supernatural beings actually be real? And could there be ways for we mere mortals to have the power to evoke them into existence or dismiss them as we might please? With Halloween drawing near, if only there were some Consumer’s Guide to Demonic Summoning… Oh, but there are many to choose from!
If You dare…
The best known Grimoires (books of magic spells and conjuring instructions) are those that hide in plain sight. The more they are considered no more than entertainments for children on rainy nights the safer they are from official sanctions and censorship. Just as Ouija boards are sold as harmless fun, despite all the urban legends of very real communications with the dead having been achieved through them, so too are grimoires dismissed as the overwrought fictions of peculiarly imaginative people with too much time on their hands.
Necronimicon is deemed to be no more than a narrative prop invented by H.P. Lovecraft to weight his horror tales with a supernatural authority. The Book of Shadows, the main text of the modern Wiccan movement, is the spellbook consulted by three young witches on Charmed. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is referred to in every Mummy movie. The Lemarchand Box is simply Clive Barker’s device for summoning Pinhead up from Hell. All just so much harmless fun, right?
But there are more ancient, more feared, more damnable texts…
In 1599 the Roman Catholic Church published its first Indexes of Prohibited Books, and woe to any soul found by the Inquisition to be hiding a copy of the Key of Solomon, a grimoire that, along with its companion Clavicle of Solomon, instructed in the safe summoning of spirits and demons. Demonology, a.k.a. “sorcery”, is still such a touchy subject to this day that the first J.K. Rowling book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone had to be retitled Philosopher’s Stone in England and other countries. The Magus, first published in 1801 but then “rediscovered” a century later, contributed greatly to a very real occultism revival in Europe and elsewhere.
But the grimoire most whispered about in hushed voices remains, since the 1700s, having possibly been first published in 1522, The Grand Grimoire. It is also sometimes known as The Red Dragon. Purportedly, it contains the necessary invocations for calling up Satan himself in order to make a deal or secret pact with him. Hardly a Halloween treat for light–hearted fun, eh?
So what is our apocryphal tradition in all this?
True diabolical evil, that manifests in all it’s attendant entities and forms upon arrival on our Earthly plane, must always begin with an simple invitation. From forbidden (screamed or whispered) incantations to Ouija boards to elaborate puzzle boxes that act as demonic permission slips for a horrific field out of Hell for legions of demons, there is no end to the variety of evil portals that connect our world to the next.
What intrigues me is that there must always be that moment of consideration: There are some lines in this universe that should not be crossed. Is this one of them? Yet… Why not? It’s all fake anyway. How bad could it truly be, right? Isn’t it just Clive Barker’s twisted version of a Rubik’s cube, after all? Sure, I’ll just play along. I’m not scared of “stories.”
But then you find yourself alone in the closing darkness, or even with a small band of friends hardly the match for any midsized demon… and you begin to think: If I believe in God, and His angels, and I believe in my own immortal soul—then why would there not exist their opposites? How can I not believe in the Devil, and his demons, and their hunger for my essence, my soul?
But then the pretty girl pulls the Ouija board out of the stack of Milton Bradley games in the closet…
What compels people to draw spiritual lines in the sand, only to cross over them on a moment’s dare?
Happy Halloween Month, Everybody!
Questions for the Reader
- Which of the following Grimoires do you believe to be fake and which do you think really exist? Necronimicon, The Book of Shadows, Key of Solomon, The Magus, The Grand Grimoire (Red Dragon), The Book of the Dead.
- Have you ever tried to cast a spell or summon the spirit of a dead person on a Ouija board, if only for fun as a child? Was it a fun or frightening experience?
- If you believe in Angels, do you have to logically believe in demons (fallen angels)?
- Do you believe there is some basis to most “supernatural” conjecture? Or is it all just Halloween fun for kids?
- If demons are real, would you ever want to witness the reality of one from a safe distance? Or is that a door you’re happy to leave tightly shut for a lifetime?
