Another conversation with a friend who knows who he is has inspired me to write about some of my unusual thoughts.
Demons. Incarnations of evil and depravity, right? I call bullshit. The practices of Ceremonialism (Ceremonial Magic) feature heavily the summoning of demons and forcing them to accomplish tasks. King Solomon it is said conjured and imprisoned 72 demon princes, forcing them among other things to build him a palace over night.
Ceremonialists spend a great deal of time and energy, not to mention a fair amount of money, on precise and complex rituals in order to force their will on these entities. Unintended consequences for the magician are common, as the result of demons seeking revenge for these abuses.
Now ask yourself, wouldn't you be pissed if a complete stranger broke into your house, kidnapped you, threatened you, and forced you to work for him?
Also ask yourself; is it really a good idea to do the aforementioned to a supernatural being capable of altering the course of human events?
The word demon comes from Judaic mysticism, referring to dark spirits not aligned with the Hebrew god. It is derived however from the Greek word Daemon, meaning "spirit". To greatly simplify; essentially the Greek paradigm divided conscious entities into mortal, god, and daemon. Demon does not imply anything about the ethics of an entity or its disposition toward humanity.
In a more modern context, demons may be said to be a group of entities sharing common association, and they are definitely of a dark nature, but no more or less so than I am myself. Many of the entities now known as demons are the dark gods of ancient cultures, some older even than the origins of modern pagan practices. In fact, the most well known of all, Lucifer, was a Roman god of light. His inclusion on Christian mythos is due to his association with enlightenment and the independent mind, contradictory to the patriarchal authority of the church.
It is true the summoning of demons can have powerful effects. The results can be startling even to experienced practitioners. It is also true that it is dangerous, if you follow ceremonial practices based on Judeo-Christian tradition. If, however, if you are polite and respectful as you would be with any deity, there is no more risk involved than with the likes of Cerridwen and Hecate.
Don't abuse them, and they have no reason to abuse you. Make sense?
As an addendum, I'd like to add on that if you are going to deliberately abuse someone, in order to tap into the negative energy they produce in response, you had best be really sure beforehand exactly how much negative energy they will produce in response. If what you are attempting to do is to, say, harness a small 5 foot wide stream for a couple of weeks, you are not going to like the results if it turns out that you have actually tapped into Niagara Falls for the next 10 years. If you don't know how much negative energy a person will produce in response to your abuse, you shouldn't be in that line of magic. If you find yourself in that situation, by definition you didn't know how much negative energy that person could produce, and thus shouldn't have been in that line of magic in the first place. Ergo - anyone who has ever been in that situation is an idiot. It is a self-defining condition to which there are NO exceptions.
ReplyDelete