Demons are immortal; a “season” is but a few thousand years to them. We warn everyone: using the spiritually abusive methods of the old grimoires is not only foolish, but will inevitably result in personal disaster.

The Demons must always be approached with extreme honesty and respect. The days of using enemy “God” names, angels, nine-foot circles, threats and other destructive and abusive methods are over.

Don’t say you weren’t warned….

Working with Demons: A Respectful Approach

Most popular grimoire instructions are built on coercion. They use hostile divine names, threats, rigid containment, and an attitude of command. That is not the method used here. Demons are approached with honesty and respect. Relationship is the foundation.

When a person is new, many demons are willing to assist. That assistance is best directed toward self-empowerment: consistent meditation, strengthening the mind and soul, and learning to achieve results through one’s own developing ability. As skill grows, a person should become more capable of handling most work independently. Even so, there are times when the knowledge or force of a demon is needed. For guidance, demons remain available at every stage.

A close working relationship with a demon who is willing to guide you can be extremely valuable. Psychic sensitivity varies. Some people sense contact quickly; others need time and repeated practice. Consistent meditation helps. Early telepathic communication is often unreliable because it is easy to mix the spirit’s words with your own thoughts or with outside interference. Strong intuition, sudden useful ideas, timely urges to act, and unexpected helpful openings are frequently how guidance first shows itself. Demons do not specialise in purely negative prophecy.

What You Need

  • A quiet place where you will not be disturbed
  • Quality incense with a pleasant fragrance (test it beforehand so it does not smell cheap or offensive)
  • One or more black, blue, or red candles. Black is preferred. If you know the colour associated with the specific demon, that may be used
  • The demon’s sigil drawn or printed on clean paper

After the working, store the sigil with respect in a black book or dedicated journal. Do not burn it. It can be reused.

A large formal circle and a “license to depart” are not required in this approach. Those belong to a more coercive style. Respectful conduct keeps the exchange cleaner.

Always offer something in return. Agree on it clearly and only promise what you can actually deliver. Honesty and follow-through matter.

How to Summon

  1. Know the demon you are calling and why. Have a definite purpose.
  2. Prepare the space, light the incense and candle, and place the sigil in front of you.
  3. Centre yourself. Close your eyes and visualise the sigil as clearly as possible. Open your eyes to look at it again whenever the image fades. While holding the image, repeat the demon’s name, silently or aloud.
  4. When focused, speak a direct and respectful request for the demon to be present and to assist within its office.

One workable form of wording is:

“Lord Satan, by your grace, grant me the power to conceive in my mind and to execute that which I desire to do, the end which I would attain by your help. I ask that [Name of Demon] be inspired to manifest and give true answer so that I may accomplish my purpose, provided it is proper to their office. This I ask respectfully in your name.”

Some practitioners prefer to go through Satan first when calling a demon they do not yet know well. This is a matter of personal relationship and practice.

Forms of Contact

Contact takes different forms and is not always dramatic:

  • The demon speaks through thoughts (telepathy). At first it can be hard to separate this from your own mind.
  • You see or hear the demon more directly.
  • You feel a strong influx of the demon’s energy  often intense and electrifying.
  • The demon appears in a scrying mirror, in the smoke of the incense, or during deep meditation.
  • On rare occasions there are physical signs, such as objects moving. This is uncommon.

Many people need to repeat the summoning more than once before they clearly sense the response. Look for positive coincidences and things that fall outside ordinary expectation. Awareness is essential. If nothing seems to happen, close the working cleanly and try again later. Persistence with respect and clarity usually opens the way.

Once a solid relationship exists, formal ritual becomes less necessary. Contact can be made through focused attention and calling the name, day or night.

Formal Ceremonial Summoning of Demons (Goetia)

For many people who began this work years ago, the old grimoires were the only detailed material available. The Ars Goetia from the Lemegeton (Lesser Key of Solomon) was the main practical source. A large number of practitioners therefore started with ceremonial magic of this kind before later developing other approaches.

It is worth understanding what that formal method actually involves.

The Traditional Framework

In the classic Goetic system the operator does not simply call the spirit into open space. The working is structured around containment, hierarchy, and authority. The magician stands inside a protective circle. The spirit is expected to appear in a triangle placed outside the circle. Divine names, angelic forces, and Solomonic seals are used to establish control and compel obedience. The tone of the conjurations is commanding rather than relational.

Main Elements of the Operation

The Circle Usually about nine feet across. Divine names are written around it. The operator remains inside for the duration of the ritual and does not step out. The circle is the place of safety and authority.

The Triangle of Art Placed outside the circle, commonly two feet away, with the base toward the circle. The spirit is directed to appear inside this triangle. Divine or angelic names are often written at the points or along the sides.

The Seal The spirit’s seal is prepared in the metal traditionally associated with its rank (gold for kings, silver for marquises, copper for dukes, and so on), or drawn on parchment. It is used as a focus and as a tool of compulsion when the spirit appears.

Other Tools Common requirements include a sword or black-handled knife, a wand or rod, a ring, appropriate incense, candles, and sometimes a brass vessel. The operator typically wears a white robe or clean ritual clothing and may carry the Hexagram or Pentagram of Solomon.

The Sequence of the Ritual

A full traditional operation generally follows this pattern:

  1. Purification and preparation (bathing, abstinence, prayer, consecration of tools).
  2. Construction of the circle and triangle.
  3. Preliminary invocations establishing divine authority.
  4. The first conjuration of the spirit by name, rank, and office, using long strings of divine and hierarchical names.
  5. If the spirit does not appear, stronger constraints and curses are recited, sometimes involving the spirit’s seal being placed in a box with foul-smelling substances and held over fire.
  6. When the spirit appears, it is welcomed (still within the framework of command), questioned or given its charge, and required to give truthful answers or perform the requested task.
  7. A formal License to Depart is given so the spirit leaves without harm.
  8. The operator closes the working and leaves the circle only after everything is complete.

The conjurations themselves are lengthy and repetitive. They begin with appeals to higher authority and escalate into threats of punishment if the spirit refuses to comply.

The entire structure assumes that the spirit is reluctant and must be forced.

What This Style Represents

This is formal ceremonial evocation built on a model of hierarchy and constraint. It treats the demon as a power to be bound and directed rather than as a being with whom one builds relationship. F

or a long time these were the only detailed written methods most people could find, which is why so many serious practitioners first learned summoning through this system.

Later approaches (including the respectful, relational methods used by many theistic and freestyle practitioners) deliberately moved away from the threats, the hostile divine names, and the heavy containment.

Understanding the older ceremonial form remains useful. It shows where the modern work came from, and it makes clear what is being changed when someone chooses a different way of working with the same spirits.

Historical Context of the Grimoires

The major European grimoires did not appear in a vacuum. They grew out of older traditions of spirit work that stretch back through Byzantine, Greek, Jewish, and earlier Near Eastern material, and they took the shape we recognise today under the pressure of Christian Europe.

Roots and Transmission

The idea of binding or commanding spirits under the authority of Solomon has deep roots. Greek texts such as the Hygromanteia (or Magical Treatise of Solomon) already contained methods for working with planetary spirits, angels, and demons, along with the use of names, seals, and ritual timing. These Greek materials later influenced the Latin tradition. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Latin writers were already referring to books attributed to Solomon that used characters, names, and exorcisms.

The Key of Solomon and related texts developed from this stream. The Lemegeton (Lesser Key of Solomon), which contains the Ars Goetia, was compiled in the mid-seventeenth century from earlier sources, including material related to Johann Weyer’s Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) and other spirit catalogues. The Grand Grimoire and similar “black magic” books appeared later still, mostly in the eighteenth century, often claiming much older dates than they actually possessed.

The World in Which They Were Written

These books were copied and used in a society where consorting with demons was not a private spiritual choice. It was frequently treated as heresy, sorcery, or a capital crime. Accusations of making pacts with the Devil, attending night gatherings, or using spirits for harm could lead to interrogation, torture, and execution. The peak periods of witch trials in Europe made the risk concrete.

Because of that climate, the grimoires are full of protective structures. Circles, divine names drawn from the dominant religion, threats of punishment, and formal hierarchies of authority appear again and again. The operator is instructed to work under the cover of higher names and to keep the spirit tightly constrained. Whether every historical operator personally hated the spirits is impossible to know. What is clear is that the written methods were shaped by a need for secrecy, self-protection, and the religious language of the time.

Manuscript Culture and Later Print

For a long period these texts circulated in manuscript. Copyists introduced variations in names, seals, and wording. Only later did printed editions begin to standardise certain versions. Popular French chapbook grimoires in the eighteenth century spread simplified and sometimes sensational forms of the material to a wider audience. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, occultists such as Éliphas Lévi, Mathers, and Crowley edited and republished key texts, further fixing the versions most modern practitioners encounter.

Why This Context Matters

The coercive tone of many grimoires is not simply a matter of personal attitude. It is also a product of the historical conditions under which the texts were written, copied, and hidden. Understanding that background makes it easier to read the old methods accurately: as practical technology developed inside a dangerous religious and legal environment, rather than as pure expressions of timeless hostility toward the spirits themselves.

I do not believe that most of the old operators simply set out to disrespect the demons. Many of them were working under conditions we can barely imagine now. In those times, to be known as a sorcerer who dealt with demons or the Devil could mean imprisonment, torture, or death. The grimoires were written and copied in a world where discovery was genuinely dangerous.

Because of that pressure, the methods they recorded are full of containment, divine names of the dominant religion, threats, and formal command. It is possible that some of this structure was used not only from a desire to dominate the spirit, but from a need to frame the work in a way that felt protected, or that mirrored the only religious language they were allowed to use. When the cost of being caught was so high, the ritual forms became heavy, hierarchical, and defensive.

That historical reality does not make the coercive methods better or more authentic. It does help explain why they look the way they do. Understanding the danger those operators lived under makes it easier to see their work as a product of its time rather than as pure hostility toward the spirits themselves.