Spirits have different specialties. If the magician wanted to know more about the making of herbal ointments and potions, for example, a spirit from that sphere of knowledge could be consulted. If a magician wanted to improve the sales performance of his/her shop, the appropriate spirit could be summoned to attract more prosperity and customers for the business.
The concept of evocation or summoning tends to sound diabolical because of all the horror stories we've been bombarded with about runaway demons and evil wizards (it's practically standard fare for Dungeons & Dragons adventures), but in its barest essence evocation is like consulting or hiring a specialist in the real world except that you're using magical means. But one aspect of evocation that many people would question is, why is there a need to summon demons or so-called negative spirits?
According to Franz Bardon, one of the foremost hermeticists of the 20th century, good and evil are concepts created through Man's limited understanding of the universe. From the perspective of the esoteric scholar, good and evil are expressions of the Law of Polarity or Duality, one of the natural laws that makes the universe possible.
One way to see how "negative" and "positive" are both necessary is to look at ants and mosquitoes. Ants can be negative in the sense that they can ruin our food, while mosquitoes bite us and can bring disease. But we know that both species are necessary for the health of the environment and wiping them out can imbalance the ecosystem to the point that it could threaten our survival. The concept of negative connotes destruction, while the concept of positive connotes construction. So another example of how both concepts work together is to look at digestion. If there was no negative (in the sense defined earlier), there would be no way for us to digest our food, because digestion involves breaking down the food (a "negative" process) to allow the body access to the nutrients to repair and sustain itself (a "positive" process).
Going by the examples above, we can expand our understanding of positive and negative to angels and demons. They are entities that have their specific roles in making the universe work as it should. Not everyone can understand what roles these entities may play, the same way not everyone understands how a mosquito is an important part of the ecosystem, but for the magician who has an understanding of these matters he/she can harness these forces in order to further his/her development and act as an agent of Divine Purpose.
That being said, there is a reason for all those horror stories about magical summonings gone awry. Just as no one works with high voltage electricity without proper training and preparation, one needs the same amount of care when evoking spirits. This shouldn't be surprising since one is directly accessing the hidden forces that run the universe.
Just consult any grimoire and you will see the same basic paraphernalia: the magic circle; the wand, sword and knife; the triangle; the magician's robe; the sigils, and so on. The aim of all these is to ensure that the magician doesn't lose control over the magical operation. If you want a more detailed explanation about evocation and the different processes, I suggest you read Franz Bardon's The Practice of Magical Evocation. Even if you don't have any plans of actually evoking spirits, Bardon's book is still good theoretical material and his explanations are clear and easy to understand, without the histrionics that commonly color the prose of classical grimoires.
In case you're still feeling apprehensive about this whole summoning business, it's interesting to note that we actually practice some sort of evocation everyday, most often unconsciously. How? Through the way we think.
The power of thought is a force. This is why we say that energy follows your thoughts. What is this energy? In pranic healing, this pervasive energy is called prana. If energy (prana) follows your thoughts and prana is life energy, the thoughts we put forth are enlivened by pranic energy. In a sense, thought forms are also lower forms of entities. A thought form can gain power when it's very clear and focused or through constant repetition, or both.
There is another esoteric law that states that like attracts like. So if you continuously send out angry thoughts, for example, you attract anger entities and elementals that will send signals to you to produce even more of the energy (in this case, anger) that they are so enjoying. This is true for every negative or positive thought that there is. Therefore, you "summon" the type of entity that is equal to the quality of your thought.
Repeated thoughts by a sufficient number of people can form an egregore, or a gigantic thought form not attached to any particular individual. These egregores have a power of their own and can be accessed through gestures, words of power or rituals. A negative example of this would be the Nazi egregore that engulfed the people of Germany prior to and during World War 2. The Nazi salute was the gesture that filled the person with the energy of the Nazi egregore and at the same time empowered the egregore as long as the person remained a devotee of that belief system.
It's interesting that the process that ensures a safe and successful evocation parallels the same process that helps one attain a happy, healthy and balanced life. During an evocation, the magic circle is not only a protective device. It symbolizes one's divinity or oneness with God. The summoned being is in essence "talking to God" and therefore has to obey the magician. In everyday life, we need to maintain this "magic circle" of our being so that we don't lose control over the thoughts and entities that we are bombarded with everyday. This "magic circle" also serves to remind us to consciously control our thoughts and direct the forces that impact our lives and those of others.
Consider for example the act of earning a living. When we are doing work, we attract entities of productivity so that we are even more energized and motivated to work. However, if we lose control over this impulse to work, these productivity entities can "possess" us and drive us to become workaholics. Same goes for eating. This basic survival instinct can all too easily lead to gluttony if we don't control our appetites. This is how bad habits and addictions are formed. That's why we sometimes end up asking ourselves, "What possessed me to do that?" Anything positive can quickly turn into a negative if we lose control over it.
The ancient Kabbalists say that there is no attribute that can be assigned to the Infinite Being because this Being is beyond all concept. However, if there was one concept that would come closest to describing the Infinite Being, it would be that of will. Will provides the volition or impetus that gives birth to creation. It is through the will that we gain control over the forces that would otherwise overwhelm us if left unchecked.
All of this is easier said than done, of course. But that's why life is a school that gives us all these opportunities to learn and practice. All the descriptions about magic and mysticism make it look like we are gaining the power to control and influence outside events, but in many deeper ways we are actually working to master ourselves.
The Hermetic concept of "As above, so below" is quite well known. So if we subscribe to the assertion that our body is a little universe, a microcosm of the macrocosm, then the concept of self-mastery as a path to God makes a little more sense. We effect change in the outside by first changing the inside. This is the essence that we can extract from all the rituals and practices of magic that exist in the world.
At the end of the day, we ask ourselves: Do we stand at the center of our own magic circle, fully in control of the forces within us so that we may better participate in the Divine Plan? Or do we become enslaved to the entities that we unwittingly call forth in the unguarded recesses of our own mind? That choice is always before us.
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