Contemplative Demons: A Collection of Tales of Elevation and Perdition

A collection of tales in which the demons of the Ars Goetia are summoned by men and women driven by different desires, needs, and ambitions: knowledge, power, revenge, love, wealth, salvation, or simple curiosity. Each summoning establishes a confrontation between the mortal and the entity called forth from the Otherworld. But the demons are not simply dispensers of favors or instruments of evil: they observe, question, and judge the reason for which they have been summoned, and it is precisely the summoner's intention that largely determines the nature and outcome of the encounter. Thus, what appears to be a pact with the supernatural often becomes a dialogue with the darkest-or the brightest-part of the one who entered into it. The tales form a gallery of summonings, encounters, conversations, and consequences, in which the boundary between elevation and perdition depends more upon human will than upon the nature of the demon summoned.