- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Many of the Goetic demons are given abilities and powers that sound really cool, and give awesome powers to people who "worship" them. For example, Balam can give perfect answers to all questions, Barbatos can allow people to talk to animals and guide them to hidden treasure, and Bathin allows people to teleport around the world. The reader is meant to take it for granted that they're evil, simply because they're demons.
- Nightmare Retardant: The descriptions (and for some, images) of the Goetic demons sound much less scarier than what we'd normally expect for demons. Ipos
◊ for example is a mishmash of... a goose, lion, and hare? Likewise, Stolas
◊ looks more like a cute creature design due to just being a crowned owl with long legs. - Values Dissonance:
- Five of the demons — Beleth,* Marchosias, Focalor, Amy/Avnas, and Phenex — hope to be redeemed, yet can't be for unspecified reasonsnote , even being "deceived in that hope". While several of the others definitely could use the permanent timeout, quite a few are expressly harmless and even "good" (though see below), which usually comes across as unfair to most modern readers, including Christians with a more redemptive form of Christianity, especially in regard to those four, as they are specifically said to hope for a chance to return to Heaven. This is, nonetheless, consistent with the belief that man is not redeemed by works alone.
- The various conjuration litanies in the Ars Goetia basically deem a spirit "good" or "evil" not on what they specifically do, but merely whether or not they're obedient ("good" if they obey the summons with all due haste, "wicked" if not and there's reason to believe it's not because they're busy helping other conjurors). This extends to the aerial spirits from the Ars Theurgia Goetia, as well. If they're typically "loving and obedient", they're Good. If they're typically disobedient and/or deceitful, they're Evil.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/ArsGoetia
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