Researching is Hard

Tonight, I broke out my copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon.  I forgot how complicated the book was.  Actually, I had forgotten how complicated demonology is in general.  And before I get a thousand comments about the dangers of dabbling in the dark arts, I’m not summoning demons.  I am starting to delve into my next book.  Writing requires research, even when writing fiction, and research can be very hard work.

Now, I remember why I used to own all those summary books on demonology, demon names, and the hierarchy of Hell.  My collection has dwindled to one book and it is currently on loan, I think I need it back.  The Key provides me with rituals and spells, a cursory piece of information for what I need.  As a matter of fact, those I pretty much remembered.

After realizing I was getting nowhere, I began a search of Amazon.  You can get everything on Amazon.  I wish I could get my amazing copy of demonology for Kindle, unfortunately, I can’t remember who wrote it.  A title search didn’t help, since it is titled Demonology.  And, it probably isn’t available on Kindle because I believe it’s about 50 years old.

So, I looked at other books.  And looked.  And looked.  And looked.  I found two… or rather, 1 1/2… One is written by someone I think is a crackpot.  This doesn’t mean they don’t know their demonology and demons, it just means that I’m leaning towards the other simply because I think the author’s elevator fails to go all the way to the penthouse.  In the author’s defense, I don’t know them personally.  They are a friend of a friend’s cousin or some such nonsense and I have never had a face-to-face, just heard stories.  They might be perfectly sane and lucid.  But, like everyone else on the planet, even I occasionally go “uh, yeah, sure… I’m going to go stand over there… out of reach… and please, ignore the Taser…”  Should this influence my purchasing of their book?  Probably not.  Does it?  Oh hell yeah.

In the end, I purchased neither book and shot a text message to my friend asking for my book to be returned.  The real question is, what to do in the interim…  Start the book and add the demon later?  The whole demon summoning thing is an intricate plot point.  It seems like a big piece of the puzzle is missing if I don’t know which demon is being summoned.

If anyone knows of any good books on demonology, I’m taking suggestions.  I’d prefer ebooks.  My house is already overflowing with reference books on weird things, hence my purging of my collection on demonology (true hauntings, a huge chunk of ancient history, and US history also went in that “cleaning”… I didn’t go crazy, I kept all my medieval history and paranormal phenomena books – including the super-awesome printing of Mysteries of the Unexplained put out by Reader’s Digest in the 1990’s).