Spell of Summoning

The Spell of Summoning is the most perilous and forbidden incantation in the wizardry of Earthsea, a ritual that calls spirits of the dead from the Dry Land. Its misuse by the young wizard Ged, driven by pride and rivalry, tears open the fabric of the world and releases a nameless shadow-beast that hunts him across the Archipelago, setting the central conflict of A Wizard of Earthsea in motion. The spell's nature and consequences reveal the fundamental law of magic: that true power must serve knowledge and need, and that every act of summoning risks disturbing the Equilibrium between life and death, light and dark.

Nature and Operation of the Spell

The Spell of Summoning is a high art of the Summoner's craft, one of the deepest and most somber branches of wizardry. It is not an illusion or a mere trick of seeming; it deals with true magic, the calling of real things and living people, and the raising up of spirits of the dead. The Master Summoner on Roke, a stern and aged man hardened by the deep wizardry he taught, scarcely spoke of such spells to his pupils. When Ged once tried to lead him to talk of these mysteries, the Master was silent, looking at him long and grimly until Ged grew uneasy and said no more. The spell works by speaking the true name of the dead in the Old Speech, the language Segoy spoke when he raised the islands of the world from the sea. The words of the enchantment must be woven with the sound of the voice and the motion of body and hand, and the runes of the spell are written in the ancient Lore-Books, overwritten and interlined by many hands now dust. The spell is not a game; it is a great mastery, not lightly used, for to summon a thing that is not there at all, to call it by speaking its true name, is to draw upon powers beyond the wizard's own.

Ged's First Encounter with the Spell

Ged first encountered the Spell of Summoning as a boy of fifteen, in Ogion's house in Re Albi. Driven by the mockery of the girl Serret, who had asked him if he could call the spirits of the dead, he opened the Lore-Books while Ogion was out and searched for a spell of self-transformation. Unable to find what he sought, he stopped on a page that bore a spell of summoning up the spirits of the dead. As he read it, puzzling out the runes and symbols one by one, a horror came over him. His eyes were fixed, and he could not lift them till he had finished reading all the spell. Then, raising his head, he saw it was dark in the house; he had been reading without any light, in the darkness. The horror grew in him, seeming to hold him bound in his chair. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that something was crouching beside the closed door, a shapeless clot of shadow darker than the darkness. It seemed to reach out towards him, and to whisper, and to call to him in a whisper, but he could not understand the words. Ogion, returning, flung the door wide, a great bright figure with a white light flaming about him, and the darkness and the whispering ceased. The mage told Ged that he would never work that spell but in peril of his power and his life, and warned him that the girl's mother was an enchantress who served powers not Ogion's own.

The Loosing of the Shadow on Roke Knoll

Two years later, on the night of the Long Dance festival on Roke, Ged challenged Jasper to a duel of sorcery. Jasper, goading him, said, "Summon up a spirit from the dead, for all I care!" and Ged, in a fury of pride and rage, replied, "By my name, I will do it!" On the slopes of Roke Knoll, under the stars of summer night, Ged performed the Spell of Summoning. He had read the runes of this spell in Ogion's book two years ago and never since had seen them, but now in the darkness it was as if he read them again on a page open before him in the night. He understood what he read, speaking it aloud word after word, and saw the markings of how the spell must be woven. His voice was soft but changed, with a deep singing in it, and the words he spoke were not known to the other boys. The wind rose roaring in the grass. Ged dropped to his knees and called out aloud, then fell forward as if to embrace earth with his outstretched arms, and when he rose he held something dark in his straining hands and arms, something so heavy that he shook with effort. He cried the name "Elfarran" three times, and a pale oval of light gleamed between his opened arms, in which for a moment a human form moved: a tall woman looking back over her shoulder, beautiful and sorrowful and full of fear. But then the sallow oval grew bright, widened and spread, a rent in the darkness of the earth and night, a ripping open of the fabric of the world. Through that bright misshapen breach clambered something like a clot of black shadow, quick and hideous, and it leaped straight out at Ged's face. The shadow-beast, a thing of unlife with no name, tore at Ged's flesh and clung to him, and the Archmage Nemmerle had to spend all his power to drive it off, dying in the act.

Consequences and the Nature of the Shadow

The shadow that Ged loosed was not a ghost of human man nor a creature of the Old Powers of Earth, but something from the realm of unlife, from the wrong side of the world. The Archmage Gensher told Ged that it had no name, that it was the shadow of his arrogance, the shadow of his ignorance, the shadow he cast. The power Ged had to call it gave it power over him; they were connected. The Master Summoner said that only a great power could have summoned up such a thing, and perhaps only one voice: Ged's voice. He told Ged that he must find out what it meant, or die, and worse than die. The shadow could not be fought with ordinary wizardry; it was not flesh, not alive, not spirit, unnamed, having no being but what Ged himself had given it. It could take visible shape only in dream and darkness, and it sought to draw Ged's power out of him, to possess him and become a gebbeth, a puppet doing its will. The spell had created a bond that could not be broken, and Ged's task became not to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun: to hunt the hunter, to turn and face the shadow, and to learn its name.

The Final Confrontation and the True Name

At the end of his long hunt, Ged pursued the shadow to the edge of the world, to a place beyond the Open Sea where the sea turned to sand and the stars were those that never set. There, in the Dry Land, the shadow came towards him, taking on the forms of those he had known: his father the smith, Jasper, Pechvarry, Skiorh. But Ged did not stop. He lifted his staff high, and the radiance of it burned with so white and great a light that it compelled even that ancient darkness. The shadow shed all form of man and became a blind, unformed thing, crawling on four short taloned legs. As they came right together, it heaved itself upright. In silence, man and shadow met face to face and stopped. Aloud and clearly, breaking that old silence, Ged spoke the shadow's name, and in the same moment the shadow spoke without lips or tongue, saying the same word: "Ged." And the two voices were one voice. Ged reached out his hands and took hold of his shadow, of the black self that reached out to him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one. By naming the shadow of his death with his own name, Ged had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself. The Spell of Summoning, which had loosed the shadow, was finally undone not by a counterspell but by the ultimate act of naming—the recognition that the shadow was part of Ged himself.