First, it is unlawful, superstitious, and savoring of heresy when knowledge is sought of things unknown to the demon himself. It is unlawful, superstitious, and plainly heretical when the worship of latria or dulia is shown to a demon, or images or books are baptized, or children are rebaptized, or the abuse of sacred things is added. It is merely unlawful and not superstitious when knowledge is sought which does not surpass the demon’s ability to know.
Second, one must know that an explicit pact is always mortal, whether the demon is invoked by voice or by deed; nor among the faithful does there seem to be any place for ignorance. Alchimus Avitus, to pass over others, brought this most true sentence against unlawful divination in book 2, poem 15:
No less does rash care of knowing strike those whom the foreknown end of life distresses, although they think they are calling forth shades led from the seats of hell, mixing conversation with them and bearing back notes. The spirit of error, which then raves in those people, prepares answers to questions by vain figures. And, lest we speak many single things in many words: deceived in the present, that person will be condemned in everlasting judgment, whoever attempts to know what is forbidden.
Let Saul, consulting the Pythoness of Endor, and the wife of Jeroboam, consulting Beelzebub, god of the Ekronites, serve as examples.
By its nature too, divination joined only to implicit or tacit invocation, or what is the same thing, to a pact, is mortal. Yet it becomes venial, first, because of ignorance, if that ignorance was such that it could only with difficulty have been overcome, that is, if it was neither affected nor too gross or supine. Second, although lightness of matter does not ordinarily excuse, because this is a usurpation of knowledge reserved to God, which is in itself very grave even if one abstracts from the matter; nevertheless, when it was clear from plain indications that the mind and intention wholly lacked superstition, for example because the person did not so much wish to obtain knowledge as to amuse himself in jest by such a little observance, the sin would become venial vanity. Sometimes it could happen that such a jest would be free from every fault and would be used decently and opportunely, so that it would seem to belong to the virtue of eutrapelia. Thus Father Gregory of Valencia, whom I have followed in this question.
[margin: Pena, commentary 67 on part 2 of the Directorium Inquisitorum; Alchimus Avitus, Poems, book 2, chapter 15, against unlawful divination; Saul and the Pythoness of Endor, 1 Samuel 28; Jeroboam’s wife and the god of Ekron, 4 Kings/2 Kings 1; Gregory of Valencia on the Secunda Secundae, disputation 6, question 12, point 4, on tacit invocation and veniality]