Part Two: Dining with a Demon (100th post!)

If you haven’t read it here’s part one.

It may have been more appropriate to call this drinking with a demon…we ate food, mostly after hanging out with the demon. But the demon was only interested in the booze. You know, you bring someone out for a nice evening and then you realize in the end they only want one thing…I guess that’s just how it goes.

Anyway. This ritual was an interesting experience, leading up to it, during, and after. The original ritual, the one in which we originally bound the demon, was cool too. But it had less of a lead up, probably because we didn’t have a relationship with the demon being called beforehand, whereas this time we had two years of work with the spirit who was literally taking center chair.

When we did the original ritual I had spent weeks prepping. Making the incenses, the paint, collecting and consecrating tools, preparing myself. Building the space for the experience and drawing together the forces to create it. Again, nothing too interesting happened as part of that process though, at least nothing that jumps to mind two years later.

During the ritual itself we had a couple pretty cool moments though. Particularly, visions the scryer had of the spirit responding to things I was doing of which she was unaware, and then multiple people having visions of the same spirit. Several other people came up and told me that they had interesting experiences communing with the spirit. Part of me has always kind of wondered about people individually communing with a spirit simultaneously. In most smaller group rituals I’ve run people take turns interacting with the spirit or interact through a central person. I never really heard what people got out of the ritual in this case. But again, since multiple people had the same vision of the spirit maybe the spirit can talk with more than one person at a time. It makes sense from certain angles.

This ritual was different from that though.

This time we were calling on a spirit with whom we have a very involved relationship. He is housed prominently in our lodge space with his own altar. His altar receives decorations and gifts during parties. He’s fed according to his contract every event and sometimes more often than that. He has a close relationship with his two primary caretakers. He has been involved with one of them previously in possession work during a spirit fete hosted by a guest organization. So the spirit is pretty closely tied to us, and in particularly closely tied with the woman who would be his vessel.

The things that happened before we called the demon were pretty minor. Coincidences, synchronicities. Maybe they were nothing. Maybe they were the demon poking at things.

With this ritual I did not do weeks of preparation. I barely had time to put the ritual together. I had hoped to. But it just wasn’t the time. Everything seemed to lead me away from preparation, so I ended up running around just before the ritual frantically grabbing things…but then also realizing…I needed a lot less for this.

One of the things I needed was perfume. While prepping the ritual the thought entered my head that this wasn’t a Holy Water ritual. It should be sensual. Perfumes and colognes should replace the Holy Water. Robes should be replaced, for most people, by freedom to dress or undress as they so desired. It should be an opportunity to, as certain goats say, live deliciously.

I did not want to bring the Old Spice I had at home. I wanted new cologne. So I went to the store and discovered all the perfumes and colognes were locked up…except…for the Old Spice. It was the day before Fathers’ Day and they did not even have colognes in the Fathers’ Day aisle. I only had a few minutes and there were no sales people. I was stuck with Old Spice. It was weird because the Old Spice was about $8 and some of the locked-up colognes went as low as $4. There was no logic.

When I got to the Lodge somehow the Old Spice ended up on the table in the meeting room, all my other supplies were still in the single box I carried into the temple. When I happened into the meeting room our Vessel was questioning why it was there and if someone was pranking her. When I explained what it was and how we ended up with it, she explained that her father generally smelled of Old Spice and Deet. She’d been outside at an event all day and was covered in Deet and now I’d be baptizing her in Old Spice. Due to past trauma she has no contact with her father or other members of her family. Based on some other conversation and interaction with the spirit this was taken potentially as a prank at his arranging and it was determined to stick with the plan rather than adjust.

Almost immediately after this, the Lodge’s Abramelin oil was found to be missing. So we had to switch the anointing oil to High John the Conquerer, which honestly seemed more appropriate for reconfirming the demon. High John has associations with blues and blues musicians are children of the devil – their own words not mine. The magic associated with High John has more connection to figures like the crossroads devil, than the temple and angelic associations of the Abramelin Oil.  

There was also some strange luck with the floor circles in which I was confused about which King I was calling. Each spirit we called had a circle drawn on the floor placed based upon its role or nature. After drawing the circles on the floor based on my mistake…it turned out the circle was accidentally in place for the correct King, before I realized I needed to correct which King. It also improved the position for the Ancestors. The fortuitousness ended there as I looked up the wrong seal, but it worked out.

At least a few days before these things happened, it seems that another spirit may have helped organize one of the gifts given to the lodge’s familiar. The lodge recently did a ritual to the Witches’ Devil which resulted in people being given familiars. There were some physical signs around the demon’s altar that this ritual happening excited him. One of the main caretakers for our demon explained how his familiar wanted to get a particular item as an offering, when it didn’t work out his familiar told him not to worry about it that he’d taken care of it otherwise. Someone else ended up attending, and this hard to find item was the gift he gave. Apparently it arrived the same day he had been drawn to a bunch of items which related to the caretaker’s familiar. This person was previously unaware of the other familiars.

Like I said, small stuff. Maybe nothing, maybe something. I’m being a little vague on the gift one, which is unfortunate because of the small things it’s the most interesting.

When we conjured the demon there were two elements to the final conjuration. One was me using names from the Hygromanteia to open the Vessel while she used a modified conjuration from the PGM. The two ended up fitting perfectly, the last word of each ending at the same moment. When the connection between the Demon and the Vessel solidified he announced his presence by shooting back a full goblet of whiskey. This kind of kicked off the rest of the process. Which was largely drinking…a lot.

The Vessel isn’t a fan of bourbon, and is allergic to wormwood. In the span of about 40 minutes or so she did “shots” but those shots were full goblets of whiskey and some absinthe. There were probably fifteen or so of these. During the ritual it wasn’t striking the insane amount of alcohol she consumed but later on it dawned on me. She remained lucid, coherent, stable, completely unaffected for about two hours until the possession ended. When it wrapped up there were two intense rounds of projectile vomiting of massive amounts of dark vomit. Significantly more than seemed reasonable. I’ve done heavy alcohol rituals with this woman before with no vomiting and I’ve seen her drunk on a lot less. Honestly, she probably shouldn’t have been standing by the end of the ritual let alone the time after the ritual. Once we wrapped up the spirit continued to speak to people privately through her. She requested an agreement with the spirit beforehand that he not indulge so much that she wouldn’t be able to function at an outdoor event the next day. The next day she was completely fine and able to function.

A few days later we spoke about the experience, and she explained she had no memory of anything after the point where we were doing the prayers together until the point where she was laying on a couch after vomiting. Not in a black out drunk kind of way. Her awareness ended before that started.

While the spirit was interacting with people, standing a few feet away from him was like standing in waves of sickening fire. But when the spirit was excited and focused on talking with someone the fire focused in and relented. His aura would then reextend with its waves of discomfort when he became less focused again. It was kind of an interesting experience. I was glad for the assistance of the Benedictine Rosary consecrated to Hekate, Mary, and the Dead which I was wearing.  

The spirit also went on a long speech about why he was sent to us, and the work we’d been doing. In doing so he began answering questions I debated asking but had elected not to and hadn’t discussed with anyone. He touched on themes that had come up in dreams and spirit experiences since I was a child, which I hadn’t discussed with the lodge members. He even used descriptions that matched how I understood certain spiritual powers and which related to some of my more private magical work. Some of the description even touched on key words that overlapped both an important dream from my 20s and an unpublished translation of a medieval text I did a couple years ago.

All in all the ritual seemed a success. I’d never worked with instigating a possession before. The ritual was definitely more demoniacal than was the norm for me, and to some degree as we prepared for it that stood out more than it did when just reading it. My understanding is that at least one participant had a pretty intense experience of one of the powers which were invoked to prepare the ritual. I would definitely try it again. It was a useful and workable way for interacting with the spirit. For the most part nothing material was asked for outside of the spirit’s normal work. If anyone tries a varied version of this with other spirits I’d love to hear how your results go, especially practical ones.

If you enjoyed this and want to see more of my thoughts on spirit magic please order my book, Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits. (A great way to celebrate our 100^th post!)

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Hangovers: An Ethical Model

Everyone is hung over. Work party was pretty intense yesterday. But despite headaches and stomach aches and dizziness and exhaustion everyone is here, ready to work. So that's good. While people jokingly asked me if they could call out, no one did, they all recognized that if you go out and party on a weeknight, as we'll be doing on Thursdays now, that you knuckle up and drag your hungover ass into work with the poise and fortitude to get the job done.

That's an issue in our society. We want rights, but people don't want responsibilities. We want freedom, but we don't always want to accept that wielding the two edged sword has consequences. Some times we run into the converse, where people recognize the responsibility of freedom  but don't want the responsibility so they surrender their freedom in various ways.

Liber Tzaddi verse 9 says "All that ye do is right if so be that ye enjoy it"

A pretty permissive morality there. If it feels good, do it. That, however, is not generally the idea of Thelema, or magic in general. On a basic level it is distinguishing the divine initiatory force from the divine law givers of other religions. Push a little deeper, take your thumb and stroke back the outer petals, and you'll note that the larger context is about enjoyment, or the idea of love and joy and pleasure as a means of elevation and transcendence.

So if this is not a statement of ethics, and it does not fit the moral complexion of Thelema or magic,what does, and what's it have to do with hangovers?

Well, the Book Of the Law says that your only right is to do your will. If you just do that no one has the right to say "Hey Dude, quit it" with any real force of authority. Your will is of course a vector, based on nature and the purposes implied by that nature in relation to its context. So it's not simply whatever whim feels good. The Book of The Law also dismisses the waffling equivocation of debating an action by saying "Success is thy proof" suggesting that we judge our actions by their results.

I think if we begin to take these ideas together we come close to a general guideline for the magician. When I was young I watched an interview with a Zen monk. He explained that in his tradition Karma is explained as the eternal energy that exists as a result of our actions. Everything we do continues into eternity through the impacts our actions have on what follows them. With that in mind we can consider his further explanation that right action is based on whether or not the results are good and successful. Actions which are right have amenable results, actions which are wrong either fail or have negative results.

So let's circle back to the various pieces we've touched on. We have enjoyment, will, success, and consequence. These can all tie together fairly well.

In most mystical systems those actions suited to our will are also those actions and lifestyle choices with which we will have the most success. If we are succeeding the consequences should be amenable, and we will therefore enjoy ourselves, right? Maybe, hopefully, simplicity is nice. Tis a gift to be simple.

Let's go back to enjoy as one of our root concepts. Enjoy, while almost always having a connotation of pleasure can to some degree be used to mean something experienced or endured. It can also refer to really dwelling in a sensation to try and explore its best parts. When taken this way enjoy plays pretty deeply into will. Not only does enjoyment imply transcendence through ekstasis but also the exploration of will. If we enjoy our actions and their enduring consequences in that we commit to experiencing them and drawing from them the fullness of sensation (experience) we deepen the exploration of our nature, direction, and context. Consequence becomes important not simply as an expression of how are actions are enduring expressions of ourselves but in that we must experience our interrelation with our environment and therefore know ourselves and our context.

Consequence and success take a clearer relation to the question of moral implication. The relationship to enjoyment is largely one of our own personal development, but we do reside in a context which is at least in part social. Our actions impact others and theirs impact us. Thus that symbiosis of self and context becomes more dynamic due to the ever shifting juxtapositions of our actions with those of others.

Morality typically creates rules which force us to behave amenably and in a socially constructed fashion, but these rules are sometimes arbitrary and even in cases where they make sense, they are not always universally applicable. All in all they are meant to govern the lowest common denominator.

Sometimes we have metaphysical sticks and carrots like Heaven and Hell or the NeoWiccan Threefold law. Other times we get more high minded and talk about virtue. We don't often talk about success and consequence as models of right and wrong in the west, except in an ends/means kind of way, which is a little different though similar.

If successful actions with amenable consequences are right, how do we fit that both to our model of experience and our social model? Amenable consequences are more likely to please those around you and create a more enjoyable world for yourself, both by the direct result being pleasing and by the indirect result, or the actions of others, having a higher probability for being socially adaptive or pleasing. This is the same basic impetus behind our socially driven moral legalism, but we can still engage in actions which are right because they are successful and result in a positive consequence even if they do not fit a proscribed moral code. At times an action may be right in that it is successful and it may be positive in that it has a positive individual consequence but a negative social context or a negative individual context but positive social context initially, but the indirect consequences may be positive and therefore worth the initial discomfort.

Our Hangover example, going out and enjoying life with friends has positive personal and social impacts both immediately and over time. Having a hangover is a negative consequence. Continuing into work has positive consequences, and if the hangover can be overcome through personal fortitude or other reasonable means the negative consequence is mitigated, and perhaps even is experienced such as to express something to make the individual more adaptive in the future.

Conventional wisdom would say going out and getting drunk on a weeknight is bad, but there is no absolute moral bench mark, nor an absolute social imperative, nor shared cultural norm to support this and our success/consequence/enjoyment model proves it a right action.

So let's look back at enjoyment. Mystical fervor is similar to the experience of elation. Therefore the application of visceral joy and pleasure can be useful in mysticism. If life is always in the crapper it's harder to focus on the mystical and it's harder to experience elation let alone commit to experiencing it in its fullest (enjoying it). When we engage in prudent actions, or those which bring greater enjoyment to life and improve social position and socially adaptive behavior it becomes easier to enjoy life. Therefore our criteria of actions based in will, and actions which are enjoyed become easier.

Now this is not to say you should pander to social whims or change yourself to fit in. But it does highlight that a true magician owns his experience. He lives within his decisions and experiences the on set of their eternity. You must not only avoid pandering but you must practice judgment. It is left to you to make your decisions and to deal with the consequences. You need to know yourself and know therefore what consequences will be OK with you and which ones will develop you better, and you must know your world to anticipate how it will respond to your actions.

A large part of the apparently prophetic wisdom of many of our archetypal wizard characters from story and myth is really just the application of this kind of thinking. Understanding yourself, your world, your actions, your fellow man's actions all of these factors go into a magician's analysis. 

So yeah, my team was pretty banged up at work today, but not one issue arose. Let's make our magic just as able to roll with the punches.