Daimons and Ars Goetia: Summoning

Games Discussion Ars Magica
25

I completely disagree with the premise that Goetic Summoning can compel a Daimon to send an Aspect. True Names as they function for angels and demons are unique phenomena of the Infernal and Divine Realms whose closest Magic equivalents function differently, and the Magic Realm explicitly severs Arcane Connections between things within it and things in the mundane world. Theurgic Summoning is a unique Mystery Virtue that has specific language allowing you to violate the general rule that spells cast in the mortal world can't affect things in the Magic Realm, and Goetic Summoning grants no such exception.

Also, yeah, I'd say that even if an Aspect were summoned against the Daimon's will, it could simply discard the Aspect faster than you could do anything to it.

26

Beings of every Realm can have True Names. Daimons all explicitly do, it’s what makes them Daimons instead of Airy Spirits.

27

I'm like 90% sure the True Names of different Realm beings have different rules though? Serf's Parma tho

Edit: Because, like, knowing a Daimon's True Name doesn't broadly enable you to affect it with standard Hermetic Magic.

Edit 2: The insert on RoP:M page 102 says no permanent changes can be made to an Aspect, which I assume includes stripping them of Might.

28

Check out the Knowledge of True Names virtue in Cradle and Crascent, it provides xp to buy true names of entities of Faerie, Magic, or infernal if minor and adds Divine beings to that if major. True Names work exactly the same for Magic Beings that have them. The issue comes in in that for most summoning effects a magic spirit with a True Name always “lives” in the magic realm and due to the special nature of the magic realm most hermetic magic can’t utilize an AC into or out of the magic realm. Non-spirit magic beings may also have True Names though we are given no examples as far as I know but these are not daimons and may live on earth though probably in a high level aura or regio. Hermetic Theurgy spells may summon a daimon despite this whether using a True Name or, as we see in one example in Mysteries, a place that is an AC to the daimon. But one does not need Hermetic Theurgy to invent and cast a theurgic pact with daimon spell from a lab text, one does need it to invent one from just knowing about the spirit.

The “no permanent change to an aspect” thing is more along the lines of you can do anything to an aspect and when it’s out of might (temporary or score) it disappears. When it is summoned again it has full might and whatnot. Daimon aspects do not replenish their might pool. It’s using the same word “aspect” to denote a particular instance and the template for that instance and you can change the instance but not the template.

EDIT: also remember that many non-hermetic effects do not seem to have this issue with summoning daimons. Sihr is one, as is Goetic summoning.

29

RoP:TI p.114 Summoning has:

Summoning is the Art of drawing a spirit into the infernalist’s presence, transporting it to him so that he may bargain with it or further target it with his Powers.
The sorcerer may summon any incorporeal creature with Might using this Art,
and may also affect incorporeal beings who have temporarily taken a physical
form through some variation of possession, though he does not summon the
body when he does so. The exception to this is demons, which have corporeal
bodies made of pure spirit, and so can be summoned with this Art.

Theurgy does not summon a Daimon proper, but invokes an aspect of that Daimon. See TMRE p.137 Daimons:

Daimonic spirits are powerful and unique beings, and the storyguide should
craft them to allow for the telling of interesting stories. The following examples
may act as useful models for designing your own Daimonic entities. <...>
A Daimon also does not respond in person — it sends an Aspect of its spirit.
The Aspect behaves as an independent earthly spirit while it is active, but when
its reason for existence ends, it is absorbed back into the Daimon, residing among the stars, so the Daimon knows what all its Aspects have done. However, binding or destroying an Aspect has no effect on the Daimon itself. The ability of Daimons to create multiple Aspects in different places permits more than one magus to enter into a pact with a single Daimon. Other spirits in general lack the ability to create multiple Aspects.

RoP:TI Goetic Summoning would attempt to draw a Daimon proper into the infernalist's presence. A TMRE Daimon has not even stats for this - so a SG will have to house rule/handwave a lot about them. But I think that this is not even necessary.

Let's continue with TMRE p.80f Invoke the Pact of (Daimon):

.A maga cannot bind an Aspect — it will just fade away, discarded by the parent spirit; she can only bind the Daimon itself if she can find the core spirit in the realm where it resides.

Goetic Summoning would hence have to summon the core spirit of the Daimon from its realm.

Whether Synthemata Magia can help there is most dubious.

See for this first RoP:M p.110 box Arcane Connections, True Names, and Synthemata. Then look up TMRE p.87f Synthemata Magia — Major Supernatural Mystery Ability to verify, that a wizard needs to be in the presence of the spirit to Intuit Synthemata, or have been in its presence if Researching Synthemata: both won't happen with the core spirit of a Daimon - and Synthemata Magia has no other methods to find Synthemata. So it doesn't help in getting the core spirit's Synthemata.

1 Like
30

I definitely do not see it that way, that the various form of summoning bring or try to bring the daimon itself rather than an aspect. From RoP:M p102:

A Daimon is a permanent resident of the Magic Realm and cannot en-ter the material world; instead, it creates an Aspect as its agent on Earth.

31

That is an excellent quote. So it is not even possible to summon a Daimon proper. All one can ever get is an Aspect!

And RoP:TI p.114 Goetic Summoning cannot invoke Aspects, but only summon spirits proper.

1 Like
32

I definitely do not believe that is the intended interpretation of

Summoning a daimon has them sending an aspect.

33

No. Read the full quote I gave above, or better still RoP:TI p.114f Summoning completely. There is no way to read that summoning procedure as invoking a Daimon to send an Aspect.

EDIT: Once an Aspect of a Daimon has been sent, and the Goetic Summoner has somehow procured an AC to that, he can try to summon it to himself. But the Daimon will in that case most likely just override the Summoner and discard or recall the Aspect.

34

I have re-read your quote above. I still do not see what's wrong with @dc444's interpretation above.
Would you perhaps care to elaborate?

35

We know, that a Daimon proper cannot be summoned to Earth.
But RoP:TI p.114f Summoning is defined as:

the Art of drawing a spirit into the infernalist’s presence , transporting it to him so that he may bargain with it or further target it with his Powers.

Hence what can't be transported - like a Daimon proper - cannot be summoned by the Goetist. Invoking the Daimon to send an Aspect is something quite different from transporting a Daimon.

36

From the Mysteries rev. inset on p75:

Summoning Daimons is typical-ly difficult, and based on remnants of non-Hermetic magic.

From RoP:M p110 Spirits and Non-Hermetic Magic:

The Goetic Arts form the basis of non-Hermetic magic used to summon and control spirits from any of the three earthly Realms.

There is no statement anywhere I have seen that limits the spirits one can summon with goetic summoning. There are statements talking about Hermetic magic being worse than other forms of summoning at summoning daimons.

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37

You provided that statement yourself above:

38

Surely the history of Tytalus the Founder and the Titanoi society as a whole implies that one could use Ars Goetia on Daimons?

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39

Quite: see HoH:S p.94 box Titans and p.94f Titanoi.

But Ars Goetia is one of the foundations of TMRE p.75ff Hermetic Theurgy as well (see p.75f there), and thus transcends RoP:TI p.114f Summoning.

IoW: RoP:TI p.114ff Ars Goetia is less encompassing than what HoH:S p.94f describes as the base of the magic of the Titanoi.

1 Like
40

That last isn't really correct. An Aspect is a spirit. Summoning a spirit is certainly possible.
Read for example TM:RE p80-81 which repeatedly talks about summoning a Daimon and summoning an Aspect of a Daimon interchangably, although it is always only an Aspect that appears.

Summoning a Daimon, and summoning an Aspect of that Daimon is pretty much synonymous in practice, since the latter is always the result of doing the former.

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41

... which for a proper Daimon would be an Avatar, a fragment of the whole spirit.
Daimons are not humans, or human adjacent beings. Do not think of them as such.

I don't see how that follows. At least, it does not from my understanding of Daimons.

42

Yep. But you need to have the AC to that specific Aspect (see above). And it will not help much, because then the core spirit can discard the Aspect.

Following RoP:M p102, we know that summoning a Daimon to Earth with an AC is not even possible. Invoking Pacts with Daimons (which cause the Daimons to dispatch Aspects) and summoning spirits (which exist at the time of summoning) are different things. RoP:TI p.114ff only treats summoning spirits.

"Pretty much synonymous in practice" is just a way to say "different in effect".

43

Let me rephrase it then.
Summoning a daimon means summoning an aspect of that daimon.
If you have an Arcane Connection to a daimon (True Name, Synthemata, or something else) it can be used for summoning that daimon - i.e. summoning an aspect of the daimon.

Granted, once you have summoned an aspect of a daimon, the daimon can always discard that aspect at any time, so you can't force it to do anything that way, but that is a separate problem.

44

An Aspect of a Daimon is not a fragment of it. Read RoP:M p.102 box Daimons:

An Aspect may be created or destroyed with a moment’s thought, and costs no Might points to create. Each Aspect is like an independent spirit, with some or all of the characteristics and powers of the original spirit, but its own Might score (usually a mere fraction of the parent Daimon), and its own pool of Might points. An Aspect cannot recover spent Might points, rather it is dispelled when exhausted and replaced (if necessary) with another Aspect. Defeating or destroying the Aspect has no impact on the originating Daimon, except perhaps on its disposition towards the perpetrators of these acts.
No permanent changes can be made to any Aspect, as they never last. Only the Aspect is ever trapped or bound by magic, and the Daimon can escape by discarding the Aspect.