History Main / SummoningRitual

* At least two demon summoners in ''Literature/TheBelgariad'', sequels and prequels were stupid enough to draw pentagrams on ''water''.

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* In Creator/DianaWynneJones ''Literature/DarkLordOfDerkholm'', 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 James Blisch's ''The Day After Judgment'', the summoning goes horribly wrong, even tho the initial intent was for the demons to cause some chaos. Two evil protagonists contract with the most powerful evil wizard around to set loose some nasty demons, just for kicks. Trouble is, [[spoiler:Theron Ware, the black wizard, does his job too well, and actually removes all the pre-existing restrictions on the demon's actions, literally setting loose all the hordes of hell on the mortal world, undoing the balance of heaven and hell, and directly causing the apocalypse. Which Heaven loses, as God never shows up.]] Oops.
* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' novel ''Literature/{{Eric}}'', the titular Eric -- the Discworld's first demonology hacker -- attempts to summon a demon. Instead he gets Rincewind. Much to Rincewind's annoyance, he's still trapped in the magic circle until he grants Eric's wishes; as the [[PollyWantsAMicrophone parrot]] puts it "If you come in through the door marked 'wossnames', you get treated as a wossname. Demon."
** Albert became Death's manservant due to one of these. Reasoning that the Rite of Askh Ente summons Death to the caster, performing the ritual in reverse will keep Death away forever! Instead Albert(o Malich) found himself whisked away to Death's domain, while the wizards put up a big statue of him in Unseen University.

* The [[Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt 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... [[{{Retcon}} somehow]].
** Pasting demons on the material plane sends them home, and prevents them from coming back on their own for 100 years -- unless summoned by the person who "killed" them in the first place.
* In the Creator/FredricBrown short-short story ''Naturally'', a student summons up a demon wanting to be better at mathematics, except he draws a hexagram instead of a pentagram on his protective circle...
* In Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' novel ''Oathbound'', a young and incompetent mage accidentally speaks the name of a major demon rather than the imp he was trying to summon. The demon seduces him into dropping what protections he does have, and then kills him slowly and painfully.

* ''Literature/NightWorld'': The Inner Circle (the ruling council of witches) use a special ritual to summon the spirits of witch ancestors on Samhain, with Thea and Blaise stating that as kids they snuck out to secretly watch the summoning. In ''Literature/{{Spellbinder|1996}}'' [[spoiler:Thea]] attempts the summoning ritual herself to call forth the spirit of Phoebe Garner, a benevolent witch she hopes will shield Eric from Blaise, but she accidentally ends up with [[VengefulGhost Suzanne Blanchet]] instead, who is [[NiceJobBreakingItHero not remotely inclined to protect humans]].

* In Creator/PoulAnderson's ''Literature/ThreeHeartsAndThreeLions'', Mother Gerd tells Holger she summoned up a sprite to question. Given that she warns him against praying or crossing himself, and recites the Lord's Prayer backwards, it's clearly a devil.

[[folder:Live Action Television]]

* In ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', the second episode Anya is in has Anya tricking Willow into trying to summon her power source from when she was a Vengeance Demon. Instead, they get the Vampire Willow from the alternate universe they were trying to get the necklace from. The BDSM loving, all leather wearing, overtly bisexual, insane Vampire Willow.
** Another episode had Giles and his group of friends screwing up summoning the demon Eghyon during Giles' teen years. The summoning was used to produce a drug-like high, but someone screwed up and Eghyon killed him, then spent the next few decades hunting down the rest of the group, jumping into various sleeping and dead human bodies.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Master's plan in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS8E5TheDaemons "The Daemons"]] is to do one of these and summon [[BigRedDevil the Devil]]. This turns out to be an [[StupidEvil absolutely terrible idea]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985'': In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger uses a spell provided by Bacchus to summon Megaera, one of the Furies, to his apartment in order to convince her to get back together with Cupid.

* ''Literature/TheBalancedSword'' trilogy:

* In the first novel of ''Literature/TheBartimaeusTrilogy'', the apprentice summons the title djinn correctly but makes the serious mistake of [[IKnowYourTrueName letting him find out his name]]. Luckily for him, like Aahz, Bartimaeus' bark is worse than his bite.

* In Creator/RobertEHoward's Literature/ConanTheBarbarian story "Literature/ThePhoenixOnTheSword", Thoth-amon's RingOfPower can do this, with blood and incantations.
* 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.

* Subverted in ''Literature/DayWatch''. A series of sinister events lead most of the characters to believe that Zavulon, the head of the Moscow Day Watch is willing to resurrect a powerful deceased dark mage/dragon Fafnir. It turns out, however, that he had a different plan and simply masked its stages as preparations for the summoning ritual.

* Aya Nishitani's ''Literature/DigitalDevilStory'', the origin of the famous ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' franchise, came to be when the protagonist and genius programmer Akemi Nakajima realized that a summoning ritual -- with all its standardized rules, incantations, and rigid procedures -- could be automated and written as executable code on a computer. He then proceeds to do exactly that, creating the very first Demon Summoning Program. After successfully summoning the demon Cerberus as a guardian beast, he tries to go for broke and summon a Demon King, Loki himself, who only plays by Nakajima's rules for as long as it's convenient to him.

** In ''Literature/MakingMoney'' The [[strike: necromancer]] Professor of Post-Mortem 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 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 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 (in fact, he generally finds the ceremony annoying), but there's no ''point'' being a wizard if you do it without the dribbly candles. What bothers him is that they're always summoning him when he's right in the middle of something.
*** During ''Eric'', the wizards try the ritual, only for Death to show up before they've even started. He only begrudgingly agrees to step into the circle just to move things along.

* The summoning up of the demon Mephistopheles is one of the traditional features of the Myth/{{Faust}} legend, in all its various literary and dramatic treatments.

* In the Creator/JohnBellairs novel ''[[Literature/TheHouseWithAClockInItsWalls The Letter, The Witch and the Ring]]'', the villain successfully masters the powers of the eponymous artifact and summons the demon Asmodai, but then (probably) falls victim to a LiteralGenie -- she wishes to be young and beautiful and live a thousand years, and later the heroes see a young willow tree growing in an atypical place...
* In "The Tale of Sir Lancelot" in Sir Thomas Malory's ''Literature/LeMorteDArthur'' a hermit conjures up a fiend to tell him if a certain knight has been saved or damned.
* In the final ''Narnia'' book, ''Literature/TheLastBattle'', some Calormenes decide to "summon" their god Tash as part of a big religious sham they've got going on. Notably, none of the people doing the summoning even believe Tash exists. Tash shows up anyway, to everyone's horror, and turns out to be a demon. The narration notes: "People should not call for demons unless they truly mean what they say."
* In the Creator/RobertAHeinlein novella [[Literature/MagicInc "Magic, Inc."]] the witch named [[CoolOldLady "Granny" Jennings]] summons up several [[ElementalEmbodiment Elemental Emobdiments]], including a [[FierySalamander salamander]], an undine (water elemental), and a [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnome]], a process that comes complete with candles, protective circles, cabalistic signs drawn in the dirt, and muttered incantations in [[LanguageOfMagic unknown languages]] that the narrator can't quite hear. The salamander (a ball of flame, not anything like a newt) is quite friendly, albeit displaying a [[BlueAndOrangeMorality totally inhuman sense of morality]], but Mrs. Jennings has to basically torture the sylph to get it to cooperate (burning it with the candle flame), and as for the gnome, she literally [[NeverMessWithGranny puts him across her knee and SPANKS him]].

* A [[SubvertedTrope subversion]]: Robert Asprin's ''Literature/MythAdventures'' 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 ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' 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.

* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' book ''Darkness Within'', the Sisters perform a ritual to summon the spirits of the Clans' recently-lost cats. The ritual itself works, but there's something else going on with the spirits: they look twisted and agonized and angry -- and the terrified cats quickly banish them again.

* At least two demon summoners in ''Literature/{{Belgariad}}'', sequels and prequels were stupid enough to draw pentagrams on ''water''.

* ''VideoGame/DawnOfWar'': In the ''Dark Crusade'' Eldar stronghold, GameplayAndStorySegregation sets in to allow the Eldar to summon the Avatar of Khaine by sacrificing an Exarch. Not that while this is how it happens in the fluff, in-game he's built like any other unit.
** From that expansion onwards, Chaos Lords can be turned into Daemon Princes and Bloodthirsters summoned from an Aspiring Champion or Sorcerer after the appropriate (and expensive) research. If they die, they need to be researched again.
** The Dark Apostle Eliphas is brought to the planet via one of these.
** In ''Winter Assault'', one of the Chaos Levels has you mind control enough Guardsmen as sacrifices to summon a Bloodthirster to take out the Avatar of Khaine summoned by the Eldar.

* Used memorably in the episode "And The Children Shall lead" of ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'', in which the child survivors of a colony massacre pump their fists and chant to summon an evil entity ([[WTHCastingAgency played by lawyer Melvin Belli]]) which calls itself Gorgan the Friendly Angel in order to win the kids' help taking over the galaxy.

* Poor, poor Wilfred Fizzlebang in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', all he intended to do was summon a mere doomguard to challenge the adventurers at the Trial of the Crusader. Instead, [[BigHam HE FACED JARAXXUS, EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION!!!]]

-->-- '''Simon Orne''', ''Literature/TheCaseOfCharlesDexterWard'' by Creator/HPLovecraft

* An odd, possibly unintentional example in ''VideoGame/BaldursGate II: Shadows of Amn'': A drow elf wizard near the very end of the game uses that game's version of the ''Gate'' spell to summon a Pit Fiend to fight for him. The fiends summoned by the spell will attack anyone who does not have the spell effect "protection from evil" cast on them. The wizard of course casts this on himself before doing the summoning, and a good way to beat him is to dispel it to set the devil on him. The odd thing is that sometimes, only sometimes, the Pit Fiend itself will use one of its spell-like abilities to dispel the effect. You'd think that if they were allowed to do that, they'd always do it and never get summoned.

* The plot of ''VideoGame/EternalDarkness'' consists of a massive Summoning Ritual to bring an EldritchAbomination to Earth. The main characters also gain the ability to summon their own demons.