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Gordon is not advocating for the 20th-century psychological magic "model" - he's mocking it a little here for still toodling along its merry little clueless way, not aware that the late 1990's to 2016 Grimpore Revival happened, and we necomancers brought animism back from the dead. His dates are spot on. Post 2016 it all got commodified and WitchTokified.
But yeah it was considered "safe" at the time (I was there) because it kept you from looking insane. It helped you avoid the medical personnel in white lab coats, who would carry you off to a nice padded cell to be "safe" with steady injections of Thorazine.
So, when someone asks with a concerned look on their face if you "really believe in all those silly, old, and disproved primitive ideas, like God, angels, or demons?" - without having to unpack what "belief" even is - you can just go sideways-meta and frame all magic as psychodrama. It’s a way to ensure you aren't seen as one of those "stupid primitives" - like those people over there - or someone who has gone off the deep end.
Yeah. I kind of assumed he was mocking it given the context. I was more just criticizing how corperations can sometimes sanitize the occult in order to sell something because sometimes it does sound like that. Especially when they take away cultural context.
But that is a good point how people did have to pretend this was all just imaginary. I don't really get why though since people are allowed freedom of religion or to believe what you want to believe.
If someone wants to believe that deities or egregores or rune working and doesn't cause any harm. Who really cares? It's a shame the occult/magical practices became so stigmatized over time.
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Also thats technically false advertising on the part of some of the corperations selling psychological magick. I know back then it and even now sometimes it was to hide from stigma.
Some unintended consequnces though is that I mainly worked through a psychological framework previously for occult practices then something bad happened that completely blindsided me. I assumed no risk from this so couldn't watch out for the actual potential risks. Mainly just a little more honesty but understandable if cannot fully because of all the stigma accumulated for these practices.
Let me just say, I have no issue with anyone using any myths to understand the daimons (a word I use instead of 'demon' because I’m still 50% Neoplatonist) - be it Christian, pre-Christian, or even using horror fiction.
I just let them be whatever they want when they appear and try not to play mythic favorites too much. I did not plan this out intellectually, or ritualize it (like Anton La'Vey's and the Church of Satan's cringe Lovecraft rituals.)
But it turn out horror fiction is actually pretty useful because it lets you parse and interact with them - without taking their appearance overly literally- unlike modern pagans, Christians, and UFO cultists do. I think they show up this way because it is still 'free play space' before all the paranormal options get too clamped down by hard human expectations. That's my take.
(I hate it when they show up as a sprig of broccoli. That one time. Have you ever tried talking to a floating sprig of broccoli? It messes with your head. But point taken. They are not literally salad either. )
Left-hemisphere dominant people have a really hard time parsing any subject that Venns over two or more domains. So to them, the spirits are either totally demon ,or they are totally gods, (or totally UFOs, over in the Scifi-landia sub-universe) . This is not to say there are all the same class of beings. There are many of spirits who will answer to the same names.
To make it worse, the 'mental telepathy' contact crowd are mostly verbal, left-hemisphere dominant people, as far as I can tell, and that is the faculty most prone to delusions and talking to oneself.
Dr. Iain McGilchrist points out that the Left Hemisphere is the 'Talker.' It is the seat of the internal monologue. When it becomes disconnected from the Right Hemisphere's sense of the 'Whole,' it starts generating its own feedback loops. The 'other stuff' - the Daimonic - is the reality of the One Thing breaking through.
So I also feel like everybody keeps talking around the core issue. The Catholic side gets irritated that they are being 'pagan-splained' by people who have been here for not even five minutes. Meanwhile, the 'demons-are-literally-pagan-gods' camp rightly senses there is more to the story, but because they rely solely on Unverified Personal Gnosis they can’t back up what they’re saying - so all they can do is go on the attack. That will not convince anybody who is not already in agreement with the thesis.
We need better models. The 'mind vs. matter' debate is a dead end. The metal-evocation needs to understand magicians evoking spirits we are not "breaking reality" as Jason Miller has suggested. That is absurd. As is the whole idea we are punishing them using the names of God it taking it all a bit too literally again.
Jeffrey Kripal’s take on Dual-Aspect Monism is a breath of fresh air here . (Dr. Kripal is a professor and historian of religions at Rice University. GO red his stuff! ) It offers a way to heal the divorce between science and spirituality without having to ditch your brain or your soul at the door.
Mind and Matter are not two different 'things.' Instead, they are two different manifestations of the same underlying reality: The One Thing, sometimes called "God", in the olden days.
So imagine having an experience of a daimon, a fae, or a UFO:
One side is the physical world (matter, neurons, physics).
The other side is the mental world (consciousness, meaning, subjective experience).
The daimon / fae / crytpid, or UFO itself is part of a 'neutral' "stuff" that is neither purely mental nor purely physical, but the source of both.
Personally, I think this "field" has timing and layers of Sheldrakian morphic fields of sympathy, values, precedent, symbolism, and synchronicity. These can even be mapped using, in part, by traditional magic timings and other things.
Call them using the CE5 protocol and odds you'll get a UFO and not Asmodai - in part becasue your expecting to - to the "One Thing" rewrites reality for you - and part becasue that is just the sub-universe you're in at that time. In that sense CE5 protocols have power there, but not where I am. That "spot" is taken up by the Grimorium Verum, and i don't feel like switching my brand of cigarettes to one that tastes wrong to me.
In the Ars Goetia some of the demons are bastardized pagan gods (ex. Ashtaroth = Astarte, IPOs = Anubis, Haures - Horus, etc) so would that make the goetic demons their own being or an aspect of the original pagan god?!
I always thought the ars goetia was derived from pseudomonarchia.
While the Pseudomonarchia was published in 1577, its content and the earlier Livre Des Esperitz are considered distinct versions of the same lineage
I've explored this with some of the spirits. Furfur is a great example..
While "Kings" like Bael have Ancient Middle Eastern origins, we can examine spirits like Furfur (the 34th spirit) who is much more grounded in the folklore of the enchanted wild hunt and the forests of European folklore.
In both Celtic and Germanic mythology, the white hart or stag was seen as a messenger from the Otherworld.
turning this sacred forest animal into a "Great Earl" of the infernal with a fiery tail, the grimoire authors were possibly "demonising" a well-known local nature spirit.
Consider weather magick? Or gods of the hunt? His primary powers of Furfur’s "office" is to create thunder, lightning, and tempests.
This is a classic trait of European "hedge" magic or folklore spirits or nature deities (like Thor, Wotan, Puck who is traced to Pan), who were often blamed for weather influence, or sudden storms.i recall a few celic deties hers too. I can't recall from my memory. I'll have to follow this up with research.
Barbartos is another one.
He is allegedly linked to another European forest spirit “understanding the singing of birds” and the “barking of dogs” which is reminiscent of the European green man.
Ronove is also interesting because researchers have theorised this might be somehow be linked to Oberon.
Again, it ties back to potential faery magick.
Both figures are associated with the ability to influence language, knowledge, and social standing (favour), which are common traits in both faery lore and ceremonial magic
The Book of Oberon is interesting as it ties faery (so nature spirits) into workable rituals.
Besides Oberon, the text includes instructions for working with a wide range of spirits and demons that were often censored in other contemporary magical texts.
That's just some I've worked with but I've had a feeling that the less “well known” spirits have some earth based cross over, probably transcending European tradition because of the slave trade happening in historical context.
But research on this topic is narrow and mandates deep work with each spirit individually for a long duration and a lot of etymology, supposition and in-depth decoding.
I did find fascinating cross overs with the Book of Oberon nevertheless.
Which brings up the potential of the infernal Goetic spirits and the faery realm being entangled historically possibly, I can't say anything undoubtedly.
But it's been an area I've entertained and researches in depth before, often for days with a dream and corresponding ritual that drives that before as preparation; or as an imminent consequence of work channelled when operating with the spirits.
So it's as a result of personal gnosis, subjectively gained, and purely speculative; not an absolute objective tangible fact and I think that's important to highlight.
But nonetheless share given its applicability here
In Mexico, the state of Veracruz, where my material line is from, has a very long involvement with the Grimorium Verum. There Beelzebuth is El Charro Negro, The Black Horseman. You add a gun and spurs to his shrine to get his "Lord of the Flies" manifestation. The sound of his spurs is often the first thing you hear.
There it's understood he does not originate in Veruzcruz , and they don't try to "own" Belzebuth and claim him as only theirs. There are other beings that are not in the GV that fit the role of Fae. The Duende are ancient, very earthly, and often quite temperamental. They represent the owners of the land, and are small, humanoid spirits that live behind walls, under floorboards, or in the corners of old buildings.
I think the Duende have been rolled into the GV protocols in some books of the Saint Cyprian, but don't quote me on that. Folk magic focuses on what is practical and effective, and is less concered about squaring up at right angles with history (as best as we can figure out) . Your end of things is half the show, after all, and that is usually all you need for most magic.
Establishing a mythic lineage is more for us - for what we need to our side of finding relation to the entities - entities, that are far , far older than any Christian or pagan cultures.
Gordon White in his 'Ani.Mystic' said something about the legit ancient origin of angels that I like to keep in mind every time I try to claim ownership of these beings, be they angels or "demons."
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G.W. on the origins of angels:
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The best guess as to how angels arrived in Judaism in the first place is that they
were imported into it during Babylonian captivity. But that is barely half the story.
Where did the Babylonians get them from? During Avenging Angels, Peter Grey
observed that the Christian tetramorph – the bull, lion, eagle, man/angel motif – is a
direct Assyrian continuity.
Wherever they came from, what the angels arrived into – pre-Rabbinic Judaism –
is itself an enigmatic and haunted palimpsest. It is explored in greater detail in Star.Ships, but much of Genesis appears to be many thousands of years older than
textual archaeology suggests and either predates the end of the last ice age or retains
memories of it. Using the mytheme dating framework of Michael Witzel in his The
Origins of the World’s Mythologies, some parts of it may have survived for tens of
millennia. According to Witzel, what characterises ‘Laurasian’ mythologies is that
they form something of a novel beginning with the creation of the universe and
ending with its destruction, and that this ‘beginning middle and end’ structure
emerged forty thousand years ago from what he calls ‘Gondwana’ mythologies, which
are more like ‘forests of stories’ in a context of an eternal universe, with few or no
accounts for how existence came into being because it has always been here. What is
more common is a rearranging of the existing cosmos by a culture hero or God. This
is, in fact, what Yahweh does in Genesis. It is not an ex nihilo creation but a
rearranging of pre-existing chaos into a new order. Moving upon waters, mixing of
salt and fresh waters, these were ancient terms for chaos.21 So the various descriptions
of ‘hosts’ and ‘powers’ and – most famously – the ‘us’ God speaks to when declaring
that Man has come to know Good and Evil are enfolded in mythemes that may be up
to a hundred thousand years old. So even if the angels were not part of very early
expressions of Judaism and did arrive via Babylonian captivity it is almost moot, as
they may well have derived from the vastly ancient, original framework that evolved
into Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Judaic cosmologies anyway. One way or
another, angels have been around for a very, very long time.
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When considering how ancient they are, calling angels 'pagan' makes little sense. Honestly, calling them anything is really just for us to ritualize to get their attention. Saying 'Hey you, dude [in a computer voice]' makes far less impact than mythic poetry: 'Oh Thou, intercessor of the Ancient One of Days, Thou who stridest the dawn like a cool wind, and bringeth the gentle rain and the tempest' This language makes much more sense than textbook definitions.
See Owen Barfield here for more on how we, in our hyper left-brain technoligcal cultures, usually mistake what was always understood in more whole-brain cultures as 'poetry,' rather than rather science textbook botanical entries, or a theological D&D Creature Manual.
Establishing a mythic lineage is more for us - for what we need to our side of finding relation to the entities - entities, that are far , far older than any Christian or pagan cultures.
