Medieval Demonology - a precursor to Role Playing Games?

The other day I was surfing wikipedia and I stumbled upon one of those articles that has way more detail than necessary.  Actually, to be more precise, it is a series of articles.  A series of articles on demons.  Apparently, some guys in Medieval Europe wrote a bunch of books on the subject, and at least one of these has pretty much been transcribed onto wiki, the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, printed in 1577.  I don't think this kind of stuff was religious study as it appears; I think it's the equivalent of playing Dungeons and Dragons back in the day.  I mean just look at this stuff:

The bear looks embarrassed.

That there is Pruflas, the great prince and duke of hell.  Supposedly, he can  "causes men to commit quarrels, discord, and falsehood, and should be never admitted into any place, but if conjured, he gives truthful, generous answers to the conjuror's questions."  Sounds pretty bad-ass, but why does he appear as a naked dude with a lion's head, blowing a horn?

Check this guy out:

That there is Stolas, yet another prince of hell.  Apparently, he "teaches astronomy and the knowledge of poisonous plants, herbs and precious stones"  He also commands 26 legions of demons, so even though he looks like a poofy owl, he's really tough.

Who can take it seriously?  I think even the people making this up must know in the back of their minds that it's all bogus.  I can just imaging bored Medieval scribes coming up with this stuff and then people writing about it some hundreds of years later.

In a way it's not all that different from playing Dungeons and Dragons.  A group of geeky guys, getting together in some basement and making up monsters and dreaming up powers.  The kind of stuff found here is so geeky that it can only belong to role players.  For example, some guy actually figured out how to match demons with each month.  There's another guy that organizes demons by responsibility, and another guy that categorizes them by office.  This is the kind of obsessive organization of minutiae that is common to D&D - different types of dragons, giants, etc.

However, I guess when it comes to Live Action RPG, the medieval dudes took it to the next level.  They didn't just dress up and act it out, they went way too far with the witch burning and the torture and the killing, etc.  We in America know of the Salem witch trials, but apparently the number of people killed is completely dwarfed by the numbers in Europe, which around the tens of thousands based upon the best estimates.  It was a case of LARP'ing gone bad.

Of course, this is only true if demons are not real.  If you believe that demons are, in fact, real, then you may be living in your own little Live Action Role Playing game.  The line between make-believe and reality must be very blurry for you if you believe in demons.

Before I go, I just want to mention that some people in modern times in first world nations still believe in demons and all that.  The latest trend I'm hearing about is "summoning a succubus", which I imagine is a way to summon a demon for sexual purposes.  Funny how things never change.

I can just imagine a virgin trying to summon one of these