What essentially prevents spirits and deities from just harming us?

[hallo1]

Hi everyone,
I frequently see a trend—especially among beginners in the occult—where people are terrified that they might have angered a spirit, deity, demon, or other entity through a minor mistake in ritual or an accidental slight.

Usually, experienced practitioners reassure them that 99.9% of the time, these entities do not get petty or angry, and they aren't going to smite or curse us over trivial things. I generally agree with this sentiment and practice with this mindset, but when I look for the actual "why" behind it, I realize the foundation isn't always clear. Why do we trust this so firmly?

- We have countless myths, folklore, and old grimoire texts where spirits and deities are depicted as highly capricious, easily offended, or demanding of strict appeasement. While I know we shouldn't take ancient mythology or religious dogma completely literally, these stories are deeply ingrained in our collective subconscious.
- These entities are vastly more powerful, ancient, and knowledgeable than we are. Technically speaking, there is nothing stopping them from acting out or doing whatever they want to a practitioner. There is no cosmic "police force" to bind them, other than perhaps the practitioner's own wards and banishings (which may or may not hold up against something truly massive).
- Unlike the mainstream Abrahamic view of God, most occultists do not view spirits as inherently "benevolent" or "all-loving." It’s widely accepted that non-physical entities do not operate on human morality. We know that humans sometimes act ethically just because of societal rules; but if spirits don't share our human ethics or societal bounds, we can't assume they operate on a human sense of "fairness."

So, if these entities aren't bound by human morality, aren't strictly benevolent by default, and possess the power to do as they please—what exactly stops them from lashing out?

I would love to hear your personal thoughts, magical paradigms, or philosophical takes on this. Thank you for your time!

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

Few different things happening here -

1. Spirits do have rules, they can't just do whatever they want. They are kept in check by binding spirits, intelligences, deities, etc etc which is why ceremonial magic and exorcism has specific hierarchical protocols, they are a result of millennia of exploration into these "rules" the spirits have to play by.

2. Personal authority. Humans are fulcrums on the spiritual hierarchy. What makes humans special is that on top of having an intelligence, soul, and spirit they also have corporeal bodies. This is something that incorporeal intelligences lack. Now you can conjure spirits all day and call down the powers of the enochian aethers but your physical body is going to have a more immediate effect on moving that rock out of your front lawn than any legion of demons. Now in the beginning of the occult we enter with a lot of preconceptions usually based off of pop culture about the powers that spirits and deities wield, however a massive part of the path and authentic initiation is the actualization and realization of personal agency and authority. This is beyond intellectualizing it and moves into an unshakeable knowing through direct experience and personal gnosis. This actualization of authority is what separates an initiate from a neophyte as once the initiate has it the spirits are much more responsive to the magus and willing to do the magus' bidding.

3. Spirits are not all-knowing. They are localized intelligences and are subject to the same limits as any intelligence. They can be deceived, misled, misguided, misunderstood, limited in scope (especially when it comes to the finer points of wielding the meat suit), and just flat-out wrong. This right here is why they don't have the same "morals" or "ethics" that humanity does. They follow a divine/cosmic order, but it more has to do with cosmic function than with the biological incentives humans have as pack animals to operate by ethics and morals.

4. Spirits do lash out and a lot of times people are unconscious of this. Adepts are especially sensitive to this but for the most part people are blissfully unaware that the repetitive behavioral cycles are something trying to keep them stuck, that the reason every time you get ahead some kind of chaos pushes you back into fight or flight is the result of something you've pissed off, that those days where you feel mildly depressed or anxious is because you've been slacking on your ritual or spiritual hygiene. This is often times how they subtly influence us, how they subtly lash out.

Now if you are asking about full on cases of Hollywood style demonic possessions and malignant hauntings these are incredibly special cases and it is understood by the exorcists of mesopotamia and the catholic church that there are one of two things happening here: 1. The person has given it permission or 2. It is for the glory of God, as highlighted in the Book of Job

 

[borbponderer]

If you think of the otherworlds as having their own ecology, yet interacting with our own wherever the veil is thin, which tends to be how I understand it, I think you could ask a similar question.

Why doesn't all life cause harm to all other life and perhaps ultimately consume itself?

 

[SkullTraill]

1. No free will (concerning humans)
2. If have free will, use protection
3. But generally, no free will

 

[Yazata]

There is no cosmic "police force" to bind them, other than perhaps the practitioner's own wards and banishings (which may or may not hold up against something truly massive).

This is why it was common to start with learning the LBRP in which you basically call down God into yourself. If you don't believe there is a being that rules everything and that there's an entire hierarchy of Angels then indeed you will have to accept that there is always something around the corner waiting take your lunch money.

 

[Philou]

It depends, every set of belief got reasons.
Karmic law preventing most acts, invisible angel cops, friendly ancestor ghost monitoring, evil spirits being weak larvas with no real mean to hurt us ...