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Please, Adventurer, help us! We were performing a ritual at our Infernal Gate, and Brother Starfish dropped the butterknife. All of the infernal creatures escaped our grasp, and have tainted our grove.
Do not call up that which you cannot put on hold.
-Principia Discordia
As all witches and warlocks know, summoning creatures from another plane of existence requires a bit of ceremony. Sacrifices and exotic materials may be required, but a simple geometric figure and a few candles will often be enough. Of course, there may be a whole other price to pay if the ritual succeeds. Keeping the trickster demons and other unworldly apparitions can take a great deal of concentration or chanting; if the protective pentagram should be disturbed...
A good rule of thumb is never to call up what you cannot put down, or summon anything larger than your head. Most people seem to make the grade with just a random mortal from another plane at any rate.
The classical name for a scene in which some chthonic being is summoned up is a nekyia ( νέκυια), which is to be distinguished from a catabasis { κατάβασις} or descent into the underworld.
Examples:
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Screwing up summoning
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In The Sandman volume 1, they were fishing for Death and caught Dream.
Literature
- At least two demon summoners in Belgariad, sequels and prequels were stupid enough to draw pentagrams on water.
- This is partly a means of showing off: "Yeah, I can draw letters of glowing energy on water!" It even works if the water in question is standing still. Drawing your pentagram on a river, on the other hand... that's getting into Idiot Ball territory.
- In Diana Wynne Jones's Dark Lord of Derkholm, the wizard Derk has to summon a demon to fulfill his titular role. Unfortunately he drops a syllable and accidentally calls up a much more powerful one than he can control.
- In one of the first stories ever set in the Dragonlance world, Tasslehoff Burrfoot is brought to a wizard's tower by a teleporting ring. There, he interrupts the wizard's summoning of Demogorgon, allowing the Demon Prince to break free of its bindings and carry the wizard off. Turns out Demogorgon had created the ring eons ago, specifically to free it if it ever became subject to a mortal's control. Given how strong Demogorgon is, this was one of the few documented times that a kender actually felt scared.
- The “Drizzt” novels have featured this a few times. One was an apprentice who screwed up the pentagram and let out a balor. Cadderly also summons up demons and kills them, which inconveniences them...somehow.
- Discworld used to have some fun with the Askh Ente rite, the ritual that can be used to summon Death. Originally it involved eight senior wizards, a large amount of drippy candles and thuribles, and a floor covered in runes (and various other equipment). Then it turned out that you could actually complete it with only a handful of people with three small sticks and 4 cc of mouse blood. Or two small sticks and an egg. The egg has to be fresh though. (Why? It will probably make the mouse feel better. Oh, you mean the egg? Who knows how an egg feels? Duh.)
Video Games
Webcomics
- The spiritual barrier for a demon summoning collapsed in the third strip
 of Hellbound when the old guy's new apprentice distracted him. That ensured the death of the old guy (who never even got a name) and set off the events of the rest of the comic.
- In this strip of Tales of Pylea, a witchkin had summoned a demon to answer a master vampire's question as relayed by some minions. One of the minions accidentally knocks over one of the candles, and Hilarity Ensues.
Web Original
- Whateley Universe example: when Bloodworm tries to sacrifice Sara Waite for a dark boon, he gets the wrong hell, calls up the wrong demon, and ends up getting knocked into that hell dimension for a literal fate worse than death.
Western Animation
Other examples
Anime and Manga
- This is done in Mahou Sensei Negima to bring forth the Sealed Evil In A Can using Konoka's power. Unlike most summoning rituals, which bring pain to the sacrifice/vessel, this ritual felt good, according to Konoka.
Literature
- In the first novel of the Bartimaeus Trilogy, the apprentice summons the title djinn correctly but makes the serious mistake of letting him find out his name. Luckily for him, like Aahz, Bartimaeus' bark is worse than his bite.
- Except it's not. Bartimaeus would kill Nathan in a heartbeat given the chance.
- Larry Niven's short story Convergent Series is based on the idea that people have forgotten how to properly summon demons over the years. Then a college student rediscovers how almost by accident, and scrambles to find a way to not be damned.
- In Thomas Gray's The Descent of Odin (imitated from the Völuspá, the "Song of the Wise-woman" in the Elder Edda), the eponymous god summons up the spirit of a giant-prophetess for information on the coming Ragnarök.
- In the "Discworld" novel Making Money The
necromancer Professor of Post-Living Communications performs rites with all the dribbly candles, pentagrams and such partly because of tradition and partly because people called from beyond the grave expect ceremony and want to see that you've put the effort in.
- Another "Discworld" parody of the Summoning Ritual is the Rite of AshkEnte, used to summon Death. Much is made about how the more traditional wizards want pentagrams and dribbly candles and mystical mumblings, when it could actually be done with three bits of wood and four cc of mouse blood, or two bits of wood and a fresh boiled egg. This is definitely done for the summoner's benefit, as Death is really quite a practical person and wouldn't be bothered by a lack of ceremony. What bothers him is that they're always summoning him when he's right in the middle of something.
- Also inverted with the character of Albert, who performed the ritual in reverse hoping it would keep Death away from him. It didn't work; as might reasonably be expected, it sent him to Death.
- * In the Adventure Game Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?, the Death summoning ritual requires three small sticks (of equal length), 4 cc of mouse blood, dribbly candles, a vile stench, glitter, and a performance of Day-O (The Banana Boat Song). Death appears dressed in a cork hat, apparently having been on vacation.
- A parody of this was the ritual that the witches used to summon that poor demon in Wyrd Sisters. No pentagrams or candles, to Magrat's dismay, but Granny and Nanny generally thumb their noses at that stuff. They just used the sharp and terrible copper stick, the rather old washing soda and some extremely hard soap flakes, the balding scrubbing brush of Art, and the washboard of Protection to summon a demon in a boiler. Irked Granny a bit that they went through all that trouble instead of just flat out calling the demon since she felt they were pandering to it and making it feel important.
- And then the demon was disappointed when they didn't bother to properly banish it once they were done asking their questions, instead merely telling it to go away.
- Harry Dresden of The Dresden Files should really know better than to do this; he rather lucked out in his second book, Fool Moon, when the demon he summoned got a bit overeager about Harry's eternal damnation.
- The summoning up of the demon Mephistopheles is one of the traditional features of the Faust legend, in all its various literary and dramatic treatments.
- In “The Tale of Sir Lancelot” in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur a hermit conjures up a fiend to tell him if a certain knight has been saved or damned.
- A subversion: Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures series begins with the mentor wizard of the protagonist being killed in the middle of the standard demon-summoning ritual. His death messes up the diagram just as the demon arrives, meaning the demon is free. Fortunately for the protagonist (Skeeve), the demon (Aahz) is actually quite a decent fellow. His species just has a very bad rep, deliberately cultivated for the most part. They form an alliance to get back at the guy who killed Skeeve's mentor — and Aahz's friend. The whole ritual was completely unnecessary to bring Aahz from his home dimension, and had been set up just to impress the mentor's gullible new apprentice.
- In The Odyssey this is combined with a descent into the Underworld, as the eponymous hero must go to its entrance to summon up the spirit of the prophet Teiresias and learn from him how he can return home.
Live Action TV
- Special mention goes to Angel. A particularly unusual one would be the demon Sajhan using a ritual to release the completely human Holtz. And getting bored and looking at his watch because it wasn't happening fast enough.
- Similarly to Buffy The Vampire Slayer which had so many summoning rituals through its run that it would be insane to list them all.
- Subverted in Reaper: You can summon the Devil by calling him on his cell. (The area code is Phoenix.)
- Used memorably in one episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, in which the child survivors of a colony massacre pump their fists and chant to summon Melvin Belli in a muumuu...er, I mean, an evil entity, which is calling itself Gorgon the Friendly Angel in order to win the kids' help taking over the galaxy.
Music Videos
Tabletop Games
- In Dungeons And Dragons, while divine spellcasters can cast the risk-free planar ally summoning spells, arcane spellcasters must resort to the decidedly more dangerous planar binding spells, which, among other things, involve bargaining with the summoned creature and require several other spells to stop it from escaping.
- Arguably subverted by the literal Summon Monster line of spells which take only one combat round (six seconds) to cast and bring in a creature to fight for you with no applicable saving throw, spell resistance, or back-talk. (Granted, the short duration and often limited power of these spells makes them useful primarily for combat.)
- Fourth Edition took away general summoning spells for all caster classes, but has a few classes with the mojo, such as the invoker (a divine class that summons agents of their god), shaman (a spirit summoner), and a new build for the wizard that allows the summoning of animate spells.
- Mage The Awakening has several summoner builds, mainly involving an understanding of the Death (ghosts and zombies) and Spirit (elemental forces and primal concepts) Arcana. There's also a set of systems for summoning beings from the Supernal Realms; unlike standard summoning magic, however, this merely serves as the means for a pact that gives the summoner a number of slight benefits as long as it holds to the terms of a bargain.
- Summoning monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh is usually done just by playing them or tributing other monsters for them. However, there are some monsters called Ritual monsters that have to go through a specific ritual (i.e. playing a particular spell card) in order to get them out.
Video Games
- Then there's Grim Grimoire, where demon summoning is just a class taught to students in the Wizarding School. You basically call low-level demons up with a rune inscribed with a pentagram.
- Special mention goes to Lilet's final plan, which is Summoning the Big Bad Demon Lord before he escapes his prison, letting him kill the other villain trying to summon him, and then tricking him into a Fate Worse Than Death.
Webcomics
- Eight Bit Theater has a different take on the summoning ritual:
Garland: I should be upset, but I can't help taking this as a huge compliment. You can't summon something as powerful as hell lords without sacrificing what's most important to you in the world. This is probably the nicest thing Drizz'l has ever done for us.
Drizz'l's note: 1. Lead morons into basement. / 2. Kill them. / 3. Summon nothing because it was a lie.
- In the Sluggy Freelance story "Demon Summoning Week" Torg and Riff do one of these on a lark.
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