Methods of Evocation

Dagon, sometimes referred to as Dagan, was an ancient Canaanite and Philistine fertility deity whose name stems from the word Dag ("fish") and the Hebrew and Ugaritic term Dagan ("grain"). Therefore, through a culmination of etymological influences, he is often physically portrayed as being partially aquatic, yet possessing powers over fertility and grain in action. His symbol was widely worshiped in the Middle-East during the 12th-century, yet the earliest mentions of his influence stem as far back as 2500 BC, where he was depicted as a warrior deity.

However, his interpretations don't end at a fertility, aquatic, and warrior deity, but travel so far as to be the archetypal father of all deities according to certain sects of his religion, much like the deities Kumarbi and Enlil. Another leap in image depicts Dagon as a weather, specifically storm, deity, though this is based on the Kumarbi connection. The exact order of why and how his image evolved is unknown, though it's possible that the association with storms from the Kumarbi connection evolved into his aquatic image due to storms being a sudden introduction of water.

The worship of grain deities was extremely common in the Middle-East even into pre-history — as humanity progressed into the Neolithic, they essentially became slaves to grain and the stability of the harvest. As a result, grain became commonly incorporated into worship. For example, an Ain Ghazal figurine described as being a female with exposed breasts is one possible example of an ancient Middle-Eastern fertility or grain symbol, which was generally accepted to have been incorporated into some sort of religious ceremony and, according to one interpretation, an ancient member of a pantheon with the role of a grain goddess due to the figurine's stylistic similarities to other deities of the same type. In prehistoric Japan, a period that lasted longer than most prehistories, it was a common shamanistic practice to construct Dogu, or clay figurines of bug-eyed women, that were symbols of fertility. It was found they were broken purposefully, suggesting that harmful ailments were transferred into the statuettes in rituals before the statues were broken to eliminate the ailment fully.

In the Biblical account, specifically in 1 Samuel 5:1-12:20, Dagon is a "false god" worshiped by the Philistines who stole the Ark of the Covenant, at which point the Ark's power destroys the statue erected in Dagon's image.

One of the most well-known uses of his name in popular culture was contained in the 1917 short-story Dagon, written by H.P. Lovecraft, in which the morphine-addicted narrator unwittingly stumbles across the tomb of an eldritch sea deity named Dagon, his encounter with the creature drives the narrator to kill himself due to mounting mental instability once he returns to England. H.P. Lovecraft used the name again in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, where he is the leader of a tribe of aquatic humanoids who interbred with humans.