Madness of Kenneth Grant, Evils of Choronzon and the Filthy Qliphoth

Just recently a reader posted a comment to an article that I wrote some time ago about the Qliphoth, Kenneth Grant and other similar topics. You can find that article and its associated comments here. This reader, who goes under the title of “Magic In Music,” seems to have a real aversion to things having to do with Goetic spirits, Kenneth Grant, the Qliphoth, and anything involving the left hand path. He claims to be a Thelemite, but most Thelemites I know are actually quite sympathetic to the left hand path, if not in fact practitioners of this tradition.

Here’s what Magic In Music had to say about my article.

“It's fine to use Grant as a reference for all this stuff until you realise [sic] and understand that he was mad as a hatter. Why was he mad as a hatter? because he had fallen in the abyss and become prey to ‘CHORONZON’.

Why anyone wants to mess with this filth is beyond me. The qliphoth need to be addressed, certainly, but not raised up as ideals and gods. They are the false parts of self that a Thelemite works to liberate themselves from, not to worship.

Insanity and death follow the adept who toys with the qliphoth unprepared. Be warned!”

Now I can understand this perspective, since it was one that I also believed in a while back. I had some concerns with the publication of a useable version of the Grimoirium Verum and also found it troublesome because it required a blood link with a demonic ambassador. However, over time I found that some of my own practices were very much steeped in the left hand path and that I also, as witch, had connections with Deities that would be considered at the very least chthonic, and at worst, diabolical. I could hardly criticize what one group of Goetic magicians were doing when I was heavily involved with the fallen angels of the Nephilim. I had behaved as an unwitting hypocrite, even though my intentions were good. It took a close personal friend, who also happened to be an initiate of Palo Mayombe, to really set me straight.

Spirits are, after all, just spirits, and each is unique. Some spirits are volatile (hot) while others are quite stable and consistent (cool), and this variation can be found whether the spirit in question is a supposed angel or demon. Also, in the world of the Spirit, which is an extension of the domain of the One, all spirits are beyond the polarity of good and evil since they must, by definition, be ultimately aligned to the One. This is an important rule to consider whenever thinking about supposed evil demons and good angels. That perspective might be appropriate to a Christian mythic belief system, but it fails completely when one actually seeks to deal with spirits in an objective manner. What this does is put to the question the whole foundation of the tradition of grimoire magic. If you aren’t a Christian who believes in the spiritual polarity of good and evil, then the descriptions and qualities associated with lists of demons found in grimoires are completely useless. 

Perhaps one of the most difficult things that confronts any occultist/magician is learning to de-Christianize the myths and beliefs that accompany the path of darkness and the underworld, and realize that it is just Christian based propaganda. It’s OK to believe in a polarized world of good and evil if you happen to be a Christian, but if you are a Pagan, Witch, or even a Thelemite, then such mythic world views present quite a problem to achieving anything like a balanced and objective view of the spiritual world. While this holds true for Goetic demons, it also holds true for the supposed Qliphoth. Once again it depends on your religious perspective. If you are a fundamentalist Christian who sees the world as battle ground between good and evil supernatural forces, then demons and the Qliphoth would be operationally defined as a source of evil in the world. This, of course, would also be true if the student were an orthodox Jew or a pious follower of Islam. Even so, it boggles my mind why any pious and orthodox adherent of a monotheistic faith would ever traffic with forces and sources of evil.

How something is evaluated depends on the perspective of the occultist or magician. Based on that assumption, here’s what I actually said in my blog about the Qliphoth. Notice that it is speculative, but also based on some practical experience.

“The Qliphoth could simply be the outer shell or husk of the corresponding Sephiroth, and in actuality, it would function more like a socket or the bottom foundation of a specific Sephirah. In other words, the Qliphoth are the backside or unconscious dimensions of the Sephirotic Tree of Life. I believe that Kenneth Grant was the first to propose this interpretation in print, even though Michael Bertiaux has insisted that he first proposed it as a part of the deep esoteric qabbalistic descriptions in his traditional lore (Monastery of the Seven Rays).”

So, it would seem that according to my perspective, the Qliphoth and the Sephiroth are indelibly fused together, with the Qliphoth functioning as the chthonic or backside of the Sephiroth. They can’t really be separated, but the Qliphoth can be experienced if the magician uses either the portal of Daath or the portal of Malkuth. These portals open the magician up to what could be called the psychic and spiritual underworld, a place where the mysteries are realized, all potentials are to be found and transformative trials to be undergone. It is the place where the dead reside as well as important ancestors (both genetic and spiritual) as well as the host of earth-based spirits, hidden treasures, daimons and many other amazing and mythological creatures. Witches and pagans should be comfortable with this domain since their magic circles open up into it, and all initiations supposedly take place within it. To regard this domain as a place of filth, evil, madness and danger should be seen as quite strange for any magician not affiliated with the most polarized spiritual viewpoint.

If Choronzon is a great devil, then like all devils, he (or she) resides in the underworld, dispensing trials of initiation as well as teaching us the greater lessons of life through pain and pleasure, just like all so-called infernal spirits. Also, if any magician endeavors to realize the highest levels of spiritual and magical achievement (which is the ascension to the realization of the God/dess Within), then he or she must pass through the Greater Abyss and its associated underworld. This is not a process that is instantaneous, instead it takes many years and forces the candidate to undergo the greater cyclic trials of light and darkness many times over. Some may succumb to delusion or despair, while others are empowered and attain full self-mastery. Still, the greater lesson is the integration of light and darkness into a wholeness, the One within each of us. To achieve self-mastery, we don’t either cut away parts of ourselves nor do we have to overcome those parts of us that are deemed bad. Instead, we embrace all aspects of ourselves to become whole and complete, and that is accomplished by the greater power of spiritual love, especially the love of and for our internal deities.

Now that we have discussed these not so simple occult based facts, can we really consider Kenneth Grant to be “mad as a hatter?” Is it true that anyone who traffics with Goetic demons, the underworld of the Greater Abyss or the Qliphoth will become insane or dead? A friend of mine once said that in order for occult or magical practices to make one mad, one would have to be either mad already or at least borderline crazy. Magic can produce illusions and delusions, but it takes a real physical change in one’s brain chemistry to suddenly go insane. It’s an easy thing to say, “Don’t mess around with evil spirits or you will go crazy,” but it hardly seems more than just a bit of Christian propaganda.

Was Kenneth Grant certifiably insane? I really and truly doubt it, and in fact I would consider this judgement to be completely erroneous. Perhaps even laughably silly. Whether you like Grant’s writings or hate them, he knew what he was doing and he wrote books to bring back a balance between the left hand and right hand occult paths. (For that fact alone we can forgive him of his excesses and exaggerations.) Both the left hand and the right hand paths are legitimate paths for self-realization, personal empowerment and ultimate union with the One. All magic is ultimately a sacred art form, regardless of whether the magician is working with powers and energy forms, simple formulas, angels, earth-based spirits, pagan deities, monotheistic godhead attributions, or Goetic demons. Even a negative magical intent doesn’t detract from the fact that all magic is sacred, regardless of its use. It is also true to say that all magic is inherently neutral, and that it is the actual intention and directive of the magician that lends it an ethical consideration. 

Of course, don’t take my word for this open minded perspective. You can find the same opinion in the writings of Eric Koetting, an actual representative of the left hand path. Here is a short article that he wrote to fight back against what he considers the overarching and absolutist opinions of the Christian society that we live in. You can find it here.

Finally, in looking over Magic In Music’s blog it would seem that he has an issue with anything tainted by the left hand path. He tends to focus on modern music (such as the group Tool, who I consider to be quite an excellent occult rock band) and also some elements in culture. Yet he often talks about these topics with an obvious bias. I feel that this is kind of sad because he is otherwise very shrewd and well informed, but it unfortunately represents the common exoteric urban occult perspective that is overly simplistic and quite naive. My hope is that Magic In Music will be able to open his mind over time and see that the left hand occult path is legitimate and even progressive, just like the right hand path. We who either fully follow the left hand path or who are immersed into it because of our traditions are neither mad, endangered or dangerous to others. No one ever stays the same and opinions do change over time, and I am a good representation of how one can change over time. Maybe Magic In Music will see the error of his ways and modify them.

Frater Barrabbas

What I Did On My Summer Holidays

(And other banalities..)

Despite the humorous depiction on the picture above, I didn’t spend my summer holidays in some satanic grotto worshiping the Devil. I thought that I would throw a bone to Ramsey Dukes for having read through his book “What I Did In My Holidays - Essays on black magic, Satanism, devil worship, and other niceties.” Unlike his book “Secrets of the Black Sex Magicians Exposed,” this one was a bit long winded and not as amusing, but it did have its humorous and brilliant moments.

It is now September and the leaves are already starting to change. The drought that devastated the rest of the country finally came to central Minnesota, and we have had to water the garden daily in order to keep it alive. The rest of nature has decided to shut down somewhat early because of the lack of water, so that is why some of the leaves are already dying and falling to the ground. It is still warm outside during the day, but cooler in the night, and the sunlight is starting to slant decidedly to the south, as it does during this time of year, being a few weeks before the Autumn Equinox.

During the pleasant but brief interlude of summer I was (and still am) engaged with a very complex and difficult rehosting project with my job. It is eating up a lot of my time, including weekends, so I didn’t get much opportunity to spend time outside doing fun things. Instead, I got to view the wonderful summer through my home office window while slaving away at my corporate laptop. I had hoped that this project would be over by now, but it is still at a most critical point, and has been for the last month. I suspect that a bit of chaos and irony are playing havoc with the well defined project plan, especially regarding the red tape in getting strategic individuals to sign important inter-corporate agreements before certain steps can be completed. If I didn’t have a good sense of humor, I would have chewed off my arm in frustration months ago.

Summers in the U.S. are determined by the boundaries of two holidays - Memorial Day (last Monday of May), and Labor Day (first Monday in September). Summer is defined, especially up here in the tundra, as consisting of 90 days, which is all too short a time. If you have a busy business schedule, then summer passes hardly with any notice, much to one’s later regret. My girl friend was focused on her classes in graduate school until the semester ended after the first week of August.And I was busy with my project at work during that interlude.

Our first summer venture was hosting my father’s annual visit. He usually stays for a week or a bit more and gets to mooch off of his son during that time. I guess its a form of retaliation for the years that I mooched off of him. Every year for last four years he has stayed a week first with my older brother, and then takes the bus from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, where I pick him and bring him to my home. My father is very ex-military and must have his three meals at the proper time every day. He spends most of his time reading, relaxing and taking short walks armed with his cane. At a spry 86 years old, he is mentally pretty sharp and is still fairly mobile with a cane. I made sure that he had plenty of reading material and also the use of our television. All in all, he had a pretty good time and was well fed and looked after.

I also managed to generate two more of my four-fold talismanic elementals, one for Venus and another for Jupiter. I had to perform the first rite during my father’s visit, which meant that I had to perform the ritual in the temple in an unobtrusive manner, preferably while he was in bed. The guest bedroom was situated exactly above the temple, therefore, I had to be quiet and discreet so as not to awaken him. My father is something of a strident atheist and he finds all things religious or of an occult nature to be ridiculous superstitions.

I can well imagine that if he had been awakened and had come downstairs, he would have seen me fully robed and performing weird gestures and intoning mumble jumble amidst the clouds of incense and oil lamp light. This was the same man who took all of my occult paraphernalia when I was a teenager and put it into the garbage, including my cherished tarot deck. Luckily, I rescued all of it without his knowledge. So I really wanted to avoid any such encounter, and it did make the performance more difficult. However, considering that my father has become quite deaf and can’t hear very well without his hearing aid, I probably had little to fear from being interrupted. Still, I took every precaution to ensure that I was undisturbed. It even made the ritual working kind of like doing something wicked, perverse or forbidden (instead of completely ridiculous). 

I completed the working without incident and set up the metallic talisman for a three day incubation without any indication that my father noticed what was going on. He passed through his week-long visit and then I took him to airport for his return flight to Phoenix. I was glad that he visited, but I was even more glad that he had finally left. My father has mellowed over time, but he is still pretty cranky and sometimes he is hard to deal with even after all these years.

The very next week, I performed the four-fold talismanic elemental for Jupiter without any problem or incident, but the energy that I unleashed was truly excellent. I set up the talisman for a three day incubation period the day just before leaving for our summer long-weekend holiday. That being completed, I will now have six four-fold elemental talismans for the planets Sun, Moon, Saturn, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. All I will need to do to complete this set of talismans is to generate a four-fold talismanic elemental for Mars, and that is scheduled for the evening of October 25. After the required incubation period, I then will have all seven four-fold elemental planetary talismans. I am planning on using them together in a variation of the Order ritual the Septagramic Vortex Gate.

My lady and I had decided that after my father’s obligatory summer visit during the third week of that month, we would plan a long weekend get-away to see friends and family in Milwaukee. Our sojourn lasted for a scant four nights, and then we had to return home after traveling by car for over six hours one way. It was all too short and too brief, since once Labor Day had passed, we were both hard at it again. Actually, I had to put in around five hours on Monday morning, so I didn’t even get to have much fun during what was supposed to be a national holiday. We did have a great time with our friends in Milwaukee, but all too soon we had to go back home.

I saw my niece’s newborn baby boy, and that was nice. I am now a great uncle, and the mother and child are doing well. I did his natal chart and I found that it indicates he will be quite an amazing artist, metaphysician and musician - he might even become something of an occult prodigy. It’s a pity that I won’t live to see much of his life and in that way determine how I well I have analyzed his chart. The natal chart that I did for my niece years ago had been spot on, and she pretty much turned out how I had imagined that she would. I also got another lesson in the lengthy preparations and stages required for cooking the perfect Ratatouille, which involved me skinning and de-seeding heirloom tomatoes for the crushed tomato base.I even got to crush the tomato pulp with my fingers.

On the last full day we went to the Bristol Renaissance festival and got soundly soaked from a vestige of Hurricane Isaac. Despite the rain, we had a pretty good time, but we were glad that we had decided to skip dressing up in costumes. On our way back to our friends’ home we saw something not often seen - a real urban staple. Since I live in the country, I don't get to see this sight much at all.

While we were waiting in the car for the light to turn green, a homeless man standing at the corner of the Masonic lodge on Prospect (and who had his back to us) was fiddling with the front of his pants. I wondered aloud if he was possibly urinating on the wall. At that very moment, he dropped his drawers, squatted down and exposed his bare butt to all the world behind him. He then proceeded to sit down on a raised brick dias where a manhole cover blocked access to the sewer tunnels below. I don’t what he thought he was doing, or maybe he was so drugged or drunk that he thought that he was in a bathroom or something and was just doing his bit of nature’s calling, but just then the light turned green and we sped off. I guess you could say that we saw the “blue” moon a bit early that evening. 

As for Ramsey Dukes’ book “What I Did In My Holidays,” I found his theories about demons and devil worship to be interesting. I suspect that Mr. Dukes doesn’t believe that there is an existential reality associated with demons. He sees them as existing within us individually, and also within our culture as negative elements given power and precedence through a process of individual or social ostracizing. If you fear something or some group and attach to it a great deal of negative emotional value, then that demonized thing gains a power and an ability to manipulate events even as the group or organization that targeted it has a powerful tool to manipulate others. Since I have performed a number of the of spirit summoning rites to contact these various entities, I can say that my experience has shown me that spirits do have an existential reality, but that they also resonate psychic qualities within us. I think that Ramsey Dukes is working with just half of the equation, in my opinion, and that there is another half that is equally important.

Ramsey begins his definition by stating that some natural quality or function is deliberately repressed, cast out or exiled. It becomes something that is valued as being “bad.” By being suppressed, it does indeed embody the value that it has been given, and being cut off from the parent culture, it reverts to its natural state, being therefore, rather feral. It isn’t bad in an absolute sense, but only bad in a cultural context, having lost its place within the cultural norm, or what we would value as "good."

That is how a cultural devil is created, and the religious and political devils are the worst of the lot. By being demonized and vilified, they can become dangerous, even dominating the very social institution that has targeted them. Anyway, I found this all to be quite logical, and even somewhat useful if not just a bit of common sense. Since Mr. Dukes only discusses one side of the demonic equation, and also that these spirits have a history and a matrix of tradition that has to be dealt with, I found that his often humorous tongue and cheek narratives might be more confusing to the beginner than the experienced magician. Even so, I would still recommend this book simply because it is thought provoking, amusing and examines a thrilling subject matter from a completely different angle.

So, that’s my summer holiday experience, and I can say that this year it was really disappointing. There was just too much work and not enough play. Hopefully, things will be different next year. I will now have to endure another six months of cold and dismal weather to get at the other side of the seasons and have another shot at living a more frivolous and happy summer’s life. I hope that I will be successful next time.

Frater Barrabbas 

Book Review: Geosophia and Demonic Musings

Although I read the two volume book “Geosophia” written by Jake Stratton-Kent almost a year ago, I hadn't been able to fully resolve all my thoughts about the topic enough to warrant a proper book review. Recently, the last pieces of the puzzle have come into place, and my overall opinion of Goetic Magick has undergone an evolution over the last couple of years. When the book “True Grimoire” first came out, I held the opinion that one had to balance any kind of spiritual relationship with demons with that of the corresponding angel, and I felt that the True Grimoire had too great an emphasis on the demonic, with hardly any kind of corresponding work with angels. I saw this imbalance as a potential problem for anyone who would attempt to work with this grimoire, and even said that is was like giving a loaded gun to a child. Additionally, my biggest problem with the True Grimoire is that it stipulated that the goetic magician must make a kind of blood pact with the infernal ambassador Scirlin, and I considered this requirement as a barrier to ever working with such a grimoire. Still, things do have a way of changing and evolving if one is open minded and capable of growing.

The answer that I was seeking to unlock my own puzzle over the nature of good and evil was discovered in two parts, with the first being found in the book “Crossed Keys,” where it seemed that the results of the author’s ritual workings were highly influenced by his belief system, his intention and internalized values. What I realized (and actually already knew in a different manner) was that there couldn’t be a preconceived overall value system that would tie all magicians and their experiences about spirits into a unified and simplified spiritual classification. In order to truly understand and realize the nature of any given spirit, the magician must invoke that spirit and develop a relationship with it. I found that we couldn’t trust the written texts and lore of the old grimoires because we, as a culture and a people, had lost that kind of simple faith. For the post modern ritual magician, there is no generalized good and evil, since what is actually experienced is a combination of the magician’s present day beliefs, sentiments and intentions in regards to the magick that he or she performs. Where this becomes very complex and highly contextual is when spirits become the focus of a magician’s work.    

What I discovered essentially caused me to realize that the lore and descriptions about spirits, particularly demons, was based on a very antique and conservative Christian definition of the spiritual hierarchy. Since these sentiments are actually quite alien to my own spiritual beliefs, then I must be careful in accepting them, or in fact, I might consider rejecting them outright. What this does is put the entire spiritual value system that stipulates that angels are good and demons are evil as being both irrelevant and inconsistent with my own modern pagan based spiritual beliefs. Thus, the question of good and evil, in regards to morality and the supposed characteristics of spirits, becomes nothing more than a question of relativity. I think that I stated this concept quite well in my article posted nearly a year ago, entitled “Does Culture Influence Occultism and Spirituality?” (you can find that article here), and I believe that the answer to that question was a resounding affirmative. A quote from that article pretty much presents what I discovered at that time, and it allowed me to completely loosen the frame of reference that I had been using previously.

“The question of good and evil therefore becomes a relative question instead of one that is steeped in universal principles. In order to intelligibly speak about demons, devils and spirits of the dead, we need to first define our own spiritual foundation, and based on that alone, establish our judgements on the nature of these spirits, their use in magick, and their overall spiritual characteristics.”

This first answer allowed me to completely re-evaluate the antique lore about demons and approach them not as a class of evil and malignant spirits, but as one of individual and independent spirits, each with its own personality and characteristics. It makes such a document as the “Pseudomonarchia Daemonum” written by Johann Weyer (1563) and other analogous or associated documents seem to be completely irrelevant for the modern practitioner. The problem with this whole methodology is that to make generalizations about classes of spirits is likely to be more erroneous than useful, especially if that classification system is as old and antique as many of the grimoires that dealt specifically with demons.

As a technological culture we rely on classifications to describe and categorize all material objects and phenomena. Science has taught us to rely on these classifications, since we continue to find them relevant and useful for ordering the natural world. However, when it comes to spiritual entities, we can no longer hold to rigid classifications, since what we are dealing with is wholly subjective and determinant on the personal perspective of the magician performing the invocation or evocation. Spiritual classifications are not based on any kind of objective reality, so they must be more malleable and mutable than scientific classifications if they are deemed to be useful at all. Ultimately, it is up the practicing magician to build up a hierarchy based on his or her personal observations when invoking spirits. In other words, a magician must build up the listing of characteristics of the spirits in his or her spiritual hierarchy based mostly on observation and personal experience. While it is useful to place a grid of symbolic correspondences over such a list, the ultimate determinant of any specific spirit’s character must be based on summoning and establishing a relationship with that spirit.

Despite this realization, I still found approaching the True Grimoire nearly impossible because I resisted the idea that anyone should make a blood pact with an infernal spirit, ambassador or not. I also found the whole concept of an infernal hierarchy influenced far too much by the antique and conservative Christianity underlying the spiritual faith associated with the old grimoires. I just didn’t buy into the gothic perspective of either demonolatry or engaging with supposed malefic spirits, so I felt that I couldn’t approach the True Grimoire on its own terms. That was where I had left things over a year ago when I had completed reading Jake’s two volume set. I saw the continuity that Jake had intended to create from the two volumes of Geosophia to the final product of those considerations, which is the True Grimoire. I agreed with all of Jake’s premises established in that work, but I couldn’t get beyond that barrier and find any kind of use for the demon based magical system of the True Grimoire. I had reached a kind of logger-head and couldn’t make any further progress.

One thing that I have researched over the months is that the whole concept of demons representing hostile, lowly and evil spirits is based on a more recent definition of the word daemons, particularly, the influence and perspectives of medieval Christianity. If we go back to the writings of Iamblichus, we will find no mention of cacodaemons or evil spirits. According to the writings of Iamblichus, daimons functioned as an intermediary between humans and the Gods. As intermediaries, they didn’t have any independent volition, but acted as agents for the will of the Gods. In fact, if we examine the general hierarchy of spirits that Iamblichus espoused, we will see that daimons were not, in fact, either infernal or lower than mankind. Here is what that hierarchy looked like. (See the book “Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus” by Gregory Shaw - Penn State Press - 1995)

1. Gods

2. Archangels

3. Angels

4. Daimons

5. Heroes (Demi-gods)

6. Archons (sub lunary)

7. Archons (material)

8. Human Souls

(See Shaw, p. 79)

It would seem that the daimons are actually functioning as intermediaries, just below the angelic hierarchical level, but far above the level of human souls. According to Iamblichus, daimons and heroes served as media connecting the extremes of human souls and Gods. The daimons, according to Iamblichus were analogous to the laws of nature, since they were instrumental in binding human souls to their bodies. The role of the heroes was what Shaw called “epistrophe,” aiding human souls (when they were ready) to be released from the bondage to their bodies and ascend to the Gods.

Additionally, it would seem that Iamblichus’ teacher, Porphyry espoused a de-sacralized cosmos, where the daimons were inferior to human souls, due to the simple fact that he believed that human souls were not bound to the human body. It would seem that the concept of daimons representing a lower level than humans, or even an infernal level (in Hell) was proposed by Porphyry and later adopted by early Christian theologians. Perhaps an earlier perspective of this philosophical definition of daimons can be found in the writings of Xenocrates, who became the leader of the Athenian Academe after its founder, Plato, passed away. I have gone over the historical progression of how daimons became synonymous with evil spirits in my article “Whence Cometh the Demons,” which you can find here. I would like to add that the body of lore about demonic spirits was taken up by many different hands, but that the whole basis of this hierarchy and its importance has its source in Greek philosophy and various sects and systems of antique occultism. 

Despite all of these various revelations, my opinion about working with demons hadn’t really changed. I believed that only a balanced working that involved both angels and demons would actually produce the safest results within a magical practice. This kept me from really apprizing the True Grimoire and being able to determine its value, since I was unwilling to undergo the first step of establishing a blood pact with the infernal ambassador, Scirlin. 

All that changed recently when the second part of the answer I was seeking came to me in the guise of a series of conversations between myself and my old friend, Lugh. My friend Lugh is a practitioner of the ATR systems of magick, and he is initiated into a number of cults and organizations, most notably for this article, Palo Mayombe. It was he who gave me the final answer that I had been pondering and searching for all these months. That answer was that all spirits, according to Palo teachings, are to be approached independently and that a kind of treaty is sought and achieved with that spirit. It requires a dialog and the establishment of a relationship, which can’t be accomplished in a single evocation.

What the practitioner does is to summon a spirit and communicate with it. He will then, perhaps over a period of time, find out the nature of that spirit, what it can do (and can’t do), and then when all of this is known, he will tell the spirit what he wants, and then ask that spirit what it wants in return. One doesn’t have to assume that the spirit will want the operator’s blood or some kind of irrevokable bond, instead the spirit might ask for something simple, perhaps some food and drink, or even a mere token. Each spirit is approached in this manner regardless of its classification or associated mythic lore, and so a respectful relationship is established with a kind of quid pro quo exchange.

This is what the Palo adherents call a treaty - it is not considered a pact as much as it is a sign of an important spiritual relationship. I found this answer to be both simple, direct and without any kind of bias or prejudice. Such an approach requires the magician to be respectful and seek a relationship with that spirit. He doesn’t command, coerce or bind the spirit to his will, nor does he perceive the spirit to be inferior or implicitly hostile. Some spirits will be harsh and angry, some will be benevolent and others will be neutral; but in any case, each spirit is perceived as a unique individual with its own specific characteristics. The revelation of those spiritual characteristics are completely subjective and relative to the spiritual perspective of the magician.

Therefore, if I seek to engage with the spirits of the True Grimoire, then I will have to approach them as unique individuals despite how they might be defined in any renaissance Christian based document. While it is assumed that the infernal ambassador called Scirlin requires a blood pact in order to engage with the rest of the demonic spirits, that requirement could be tested by simply establishing a relationship with Scirlin and finding out what it would want in return for access to the spiritual powers of the True Grimoire.

Perhaps the most important rule operating in this kind of work is to never make any assumptions, and that the magician should be strong enough to deal with any kind of challenge, including invoking spirits that might otherwise be either harsh or even hostile. In other words, I should take the directions associated with any grimoire with a grain of salt, and that what is written is going to be subjected to my beliefs and spiritual alignment. So this is the answer that would allow me to progress in my dealings with the True Grimoire, or any other grimoire that I might be interested in incorporating. The key to this work is that the magician must first access, engage and then establish a relationship with the target spirit, and then over time, determine the basis of a treaty. In forming a treaty, the magician need not do anything that he or she would feel uncomfortable with or would find out-of-bounds. This is a negotiation, and like all negotiations, some things can be required, while other things are kept out-of-bounds by both parties.

Now that I have crossed this threshold that was holding me back, I can understand how to properly approach Goetic magick and demonic spirits. I can also more adequately judge Jake Stratton-Kent’s work, from Geosophia to the True Grimoire. With that in mind, let me now present my review of the work Geosophia.

Review of Geosophia - Volumes 1 and 2

The two volumes have to be taken as two parts of one complete work. To attempt to review just one volume independently would be absurd. I have often found that some reviewers will take a multi-volume work and attempt to review just one of the parts, and this will produce a review that is both incomplete and erroneous. For this reason, I will treat these two books as one work, since they are integral and contiguous.

Geosophia is modeled on the mythic adventure of Jason and the Argonauts, but in the very beginning, the author defines this mythic adventure in a very different manner. This adventure is actually a shamanic underworld journey, and the boat called the Argo is the medium of making the passage into the underworld. While the journey has an interesting geographic element, the actual destination of Colchis is really in the dark underworld domain of spirits. The quest is for the Golden Fleece, which in reality is the Shaman’s healing and empowering aegis. It would seem that Jake has brilliantly taken a popular Greek myth and brought into the context of an ancient system of spirit shamanism. Yet that shamanism has its roots not in Greek culture, but in the older and more archaic cultures to the east, Thrace and Phrygia, where a form of eastern Mediterranean shamanism, goetic magic and necromantic mystery cults have their source and origin. This is also the source of the teachings of Pythagorus and mysteries of Orpheus. In some ways, the journey of the Argonauts (called by Jake, the Argonautica) not only seeks to enter into the domain of spirits, but it also recapitulates the journey that these systems of magic made from East to West in reverse, as if to seek the source both within the underworld as well as in the unknown eastern lands of Thrace.

I found this whole concept to be novel, fascinating and quite believable. While the combined two volumes make for a rather long reading regimen, the contents of the two books more than make up for the sheer volume of information presented. Amidst all of the details of this work, I found nothing either boring, redundant or irrelevant. Everything in this work is there for a very strategic purpose, and there is no digression whatsoever.

Some of the information covered by these two volumes brings together a seemingly diverse amount of classical material, whose relationship to goetic magic is only now revealed to be compelling and instructive. Jake covers the full spectrum of those mysterious Sibyls, and even presents a practical method for invoking one of them. He covers the geography of Hades and how it represents an underworld model accessible to ancient and modern mankind, accessible through the shamanic trance. Other topics covered are the various mystery cults in antiquity of the Necromanteia (divination via the heroic dead), the critical importance of Dionysus and Orpheus, Media as the personification of the Great Mother, and the hierosgamos and deification of Jason and Medea, where Media functions as a kind of magician’s scarlet woman. The homeward journey of the Argonauts is analogous to the Goetic magician bringing the powers of the spirit world into the mundane world, thereby revivifying it. To put greater context to all of these suppositions, the Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (PGM) is examined and key elements of that book are shown to contain the hidden and obscured practices of the goetic arts in antiquity. The later Picatrix and Sabean planetary and astrological magic demonstrates a continuity of these practices from late antiquity to the middle ages.

Some of the points that Jake makes in his two volume book are quite compelling and integral to an understanding of the continuity and relevancy of ancient goetic magic and the practices performed today by various individuals and traditions. These points are:

• All Greek deities have a chthonic foundation and source-godhead attribute. It is as if to say that the Olympians all started out as underworld gods and only later assumed the status of heavenly deities.
• Source for the Greek Mysteries is likely came from Thrace and Phrygia, and in fact, much of the religious, spiritual and mystical found in Greek culture has its source in that geographic locality. It is likely here that the foundation for goetic magic has its source, as part of the archaic system of eastern Mediterranean shamanism
• Goetic magic later became a part of the practices of necromancy in ancient Greece, and spread from there to around the Mediterranean world. It would appear that there is a continuity in practices in regards to goetic magic, from the ancient world through the middle ages and on to the renaissance and to modern times.

So, it would seem that the premise presented by Jake Stratton-Kent, that Goetic magic is a Greek phenomenon with Thracian roots, is quite compelling. No one else that I am aware of has traced the history of this practice so accurately and pulled together so many fascinating elements into a seamless whole, as if they were once indeed part of a spiritual and magical tradition. I had written a criticism of this premise put forward by Jake in a previous article, and you can find it here. However, after reading over this two volume work, I would have to fully agree with this premise. While it might be true that Jewish occultists had their own perspective on demonic magick, and they may have contributed to some of the demonic names that are used today for these entities, the Jewish and Christian belief that human souls are superior to the infernal demons has done little to add to the practice of Goetic magick. In fact, one could say that it has unfortunately muddied the water considerably.

My only criticism of this two volume work is that there are no citations indicating the supporting premises that Jake has made throughout this work. I am fortunate because I have actually read most of the books that appear in the bibliography listed at the end of volume 2, so I have a pretty good idea as to the source material that would support these claims. I found myself nodding my head, saying to myself, that I had found this statement or that in some of the works that I have read in the past. However, this won’t help either the goetic practitioner or the erstwhile student who would like to delve deeper into the source material that Jake used to determine his thesis. 

Jake’s reason for omitting all of the citations is that it would interfere with the flow of his narrative, and perhaps he is correct in that judgement. Often scholarly works have so many footnotes, comments and citations that it does make the bottom of the page quite busy. It could be said that such books have so many citations that they could alone easily be made into an independent book. Still, it is my opinion that the lack of these citations unfortunately lessens the importance and value of this work. Perhaps a future edition might incorporate all of these missing citations, and that work would represent perhaps one of the greatest contributions to both scholarly research and the necessary lore for a comprehensive understanding of the history and evolution of Goetic Magick.

One of my earlier opinions, though, still stands, and that is I wish that the two volume Geosophia had been written and published before the True Grimoire. Looking at the True Grimoire in the context of Geosophia gives it greater value and continuity. That was something that Jake had promised, and he did indeed deliver. However, I would not have made such a fool of myself in my earlier comments about the True Grimoire had I been able to read Geosophia before I read the True Grimoire. It would seem that with my most recent revelations and having read the Geosophia, I will now have to re-read the True Grimoire, and perhaps I will discover a more practical and down to earth manner of harnessing its wisdom and power.

Finally, taking into account all of these considerations written above, I must declare that I recommend all three volumes of the Geosophia I & II, and the True Grimoire. All of these works are brilliantly written, researched and represent a possible new wave in the theory and practice of Goetic Magick. However, I would recommend starting with the Geosophia, and then when the contents of that monumental work are fully digested, to move on to reading the True Grimoire.

Frater Barrabbas

Nature of Spirits That Are Invoked and Evoked

Now that I have defined invocation and evocation, I should also write an operational definition of spirits, since they are the target of an invocation or evocation. This section is extracted from an unpublished document in the archives of the Order of the Gnostic Star.


The techniques of invocation and evocation are centered around the phenomenon of the individual spiritual entity and its domain. The concept of a spirit has varied considerably over time and across cultures. However, the operational definition of a spirit is simply stated as “a being that exists in the field of consciousness without a physical body.” There is a symbolic or metaphorical quality to such a being, and therefore it can assume numerous shapes depending upon the expectations of the observer. Some occultists propose that a spirit actually has a body or field through which it acts as a collective being, and this body consists of an energy analogous to the most subtle of auric emanations, which are completely invisible to the human eye. This energy is definitely not part of the electromagnetic spectrum and therefore is not even an energy as defined by modern physics. For this reason, it’s probably better not to discuss spirits as having a physical basis in reality, but they can powerfully influence people and events in the physical world.

The guise that I typically see spirits most often assume when they manifest is an egg-shaped globe of extremely subtle light. This guise is made perceptible through the ritual process of invocation, which unites the spirit's bodiless entity with an aetheric elemental envelope (produced by the Octagon Power Elemental vortex). This means that a spirit appears to have some degree of substance to it, but that is likely an illusion. Spirits can pass through solid objects and seem not to be restricted by the limitations imposed by the physical laws operating within the four dimensions of space and time. Spirits can assume various shapes when they impact human awareness through the imagination, and they can enter an object or person and possess it.

Spirits do not exist in isolation but are part of an extensive hierarchy. Spirits also have their own place or domain that is part of what is called the Inner Planes, or the World of Spirit. The higher the evolutionary quality of consciousness that a spirit has achieved, the higher the hierarchical level in which it resides, and the more varied its symbolic domain. Magicians who are properly managing their spiritual discipline restrict their activities to spirits who are bornless and part of the Inner Plane hierarchy. This often (but not always) excludes spirits of the dead and other earth-bound entities that have not evolved to the level of the Qabbalistic World of Yetzirah, and are not part of the angelic or daemonic spiritual hierarchy. However, this does not exclude Elementals, Planetary Intelligences or ancestral spirits that are part of the magician’s spiritual family or religious system.

The highest level of the spiritual hierarchy is, of course, the God-head, which establishes the level of Atziluth within the Inner Planes.  But the highest level of an individual spirit is the level of Briah, and this is the domain of the spirits known as the Archangels. The consciousness of an Archangelic Spirit is vast and great when compared to the consciousness of an individual human. It’s like comparing an individual human being to a being consisting of a vast composite consciousness (egregore), which we could imagine in the form of the sentient population of an entire planet that has evolved beyond its individual physical embodiment and has become unified in all respects (our ultimate destiny). These spirits are boundless and cosmic, and this is why I refer to them as stellar intelligences, because their breadth of vision is astronomical. Of course, Archangelic entities were never born but existed as emanations from the God-head, so they are the direct mediators of the Absolute Spirit. Lesser spirits, such as those of the Yetziratic level (angelic rulers) represent smaller bases of sentience and authority, but are no less impressive when compared to even the most evolved individual human being (with exception to Avatars and other incarnations of the Godhead).

As I have stated in another document (Treatise on Angel Magick), there are also angelic beings who are tightly associated with the Godhead, and these are known as the super archangels, such as the Seraphim and the Cherubim. These spirits represent the fiery and inspirational intermediaries to the Godhead, and faithfully represent that supreme entity in its association with lesser beings. Since the Deity is completely unified, all of its components act as a unified whole. However, for the sake of simplicity, we may perceive and even use facets of the Godhead in our rituals and ceremonies, knowing that the Deity is a paradox in which the many manifestations represent both a plurality and singularity to that entity.

The primary difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of a spiritual entity is that the human egoic distinction between the self and not-self boundaries are sharply defined, based as they are on the physical body; whereas ego-less spirits do not have the same sense of distinctness and uniqueness. This is because a human being, like all living sentient physical beings, has a highly developed identity that is based upon its physical body. Human beings are only partially aware of their connection to other beings within the ocean of consciousness. The spiritual dimension of a human being resides within his or her higher self, wherein the experience of the unity of consciousness is primary. A spirit is aware of its union with all other conscious entities and uses its personal identity only as a means to focus itself so that it may temporarily function as an independent individual; otherwise it is only a participant in the undifferentiated mass of unified consciousness.

In the classical evaluation of spirits, there are three groups in which a spirit may be a member. These groups have functioned in the past as a definition of the alignment of a spirit to the Judeo-Christian God, as presented in various theological perspectives. Angels are positively aligned, while daemons are negatively aligned. Another class of spirits are nonaligned and therefore neutral (nature spirits), but usually they are classified as negative by the more zealous practitioners of the religions of monotheism.

However, a more practical method of classification defines and establishes two functional classifications; namely, the position within a spiritual hierarchy wherein the spirit resides, and the types of motivating energies that characterize it. The former method of classification identifies the familial connections and powers of authority that a spirit possesses. It is also a technique of identifying through the Qabbalah that spirit's qualities. The latter method (defining the motivating energies) develops the concept of an angel and daemon as it relates to the dualistic expression of a spirit's energies. An angel's energy pattern is linear and its mode of intelligence is expressed as pure symbolic logic. I use the term angle to more aptly describe its angular mode of cogitation.

A daemon's energy pattern is circular and its mode of intelligence is expressed as the emotionally charged symbolism of the collective unconscious mind, (i.e., issues, struggles, complexes). A daemon is not an evil entity, but it is strongly emotional, intellectually recursive and represents the nonlinear reality of what in Physics is called curved space. An angel represents the factors of the archetypal intelligences of the Absolute Spirit, while the daemons represent the factors of spiritual transformation. Thus angels symbolically represent the archetypal masculine and daemons symbolically represent the archetypal feminine aspect of the Unified Spirit. Upon closer examination, one will observe that many of the names of the daemons are distortions of the names of pagan Gods and Goddesses, (such as Ashtoreth, being actually a derivation of Astarte). In this manner, also, is the bias against the daemons for the angels, as particularly revealed in the chauvinistic patriarchal religions whose source is the Middle East (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) .

However, the concepts of good and evil are irrelevant to the super-conscious minds of spirits and also to those humans who have attained to the Qabbalistic World level of Yetzirah. From the perspective of the higher three Qabbalistic worlds there is no division perceived between individuals; for all is as one within the Absolute Spirit. Yet these concepts of good and evil are important to those who still exist at the level of Assiah, and this includes most of present humanity. Cultural ethics are necessary for those people who still exist in a state divorced from the absolute source of consciousness, and who reside in the isolated state of over developed personal identities. Thus laws and their enforcement keep the various factions of humanity from annihilating each other (or at least they try to). For the magician, culturally determined morals are useless; thus the requirement for strict individual spiritual ethics and their enforcement through a spiritual discipline.

Understanding the qualities of a spirit’s character and its function will assist the magician in classifying it. However, the principle question that arises is: "What is the particular guiding factor that a magician uses to choose a specific spirit for invocation?" The guiding factor is, of course, determined by his or her spiritual need. Adepts have established their spiritual directives through the manifestation of the Higher Self, and these directives determine what is needed to augment their spiritual process of evolution. This directive is seldom completely known because it resides in the spiritual consciousness of one's Higher Self and is usually discovered in parts and in stages in the spiritual development of the adept.

However, a more simple method of determining whom to invoke is to discover the pure Qabbalistic derivation of one's personal God-form, as established by the Initiation for the Third Degree in the Order of the E.S.S.G. By assigning this God-form to its associated symbolic essence, you can make a comparison with the various Sephiroth of the Tree of Life and find one that most closely approximates it. You may consult with various Qabbalistic correspondences (such as those found in the book 777) to assist in this process. The resultant selected Sephirah is then examined to reveal the Spiritual Hierarchy associated with it. This hierarchy represents all the spirits which are pertinent to your spiritual requirements for growth and spiritual evolution.

Adepts, through their spiritual alignment, will invoke the Qabbalistic God-form and the associated archangel. They may also identify the Elemental Godhead and proceed to invoke the associated super archangels. Yet the process of invocation and evocation principally concerns itself with the Qabbalistic World of Yetzirah and the astral Zodiac, wherein reside the Angelic Ruling Spirits of the thirty-six decanates who possess specific qualities and who control various servitors that are the expressions of their power and authority. It is to these spirits that the process of invocation is most efficacious, and from this population adepts may choose one or more for their magickal workings. The spirit that is invoked becomes part of their personal spiritual process and therefore great care must be exercised in the selecting of a spirit for invocation and evocation.

One other method of selecting the angel of the decan is the Tarot - since the thirty-six decans are analogous to the thirty-six naib or pip cards of the Lesser Arcana (2 - 10 of each of the four suits). A re-occurring card of this class that constantly appears in a Tarot reading may be an indication that an invocation of that associated angel of the decan would be appropriate. You can also pick one of the these Tarot cards as indicative of the issues that you face and start from that point. For instance, if the affairs of love was an over-riding issue in your life, then the angel of the decan associated with the Two of Cups would be an excellent choice to assist you in resolving those issues. There are thirty-six different cards in the section of the Tarot, and each represents issues or challenges that affect the life of a human being, and these are a perfect way of categorizing life experiences and determining a supernatural remedy for them.


I hope this little section has given you some insights as to the nature of a spirit, it’s functionality and its domain or residence. Having a good definition of spirits greatly aids the ritual or ceremonial magician who seeks to either invoke or evoke them.

Frater Barrabbas

Missing Daemon & the Secret of the 73rd Quinarian

I have been puzzling over a minor conundrum lately about the Goetic daemon named Pruslas, and how he had just dropped out of the list of Goetic daemons that appeared in the Goetia, only to reappear later in the Grand Grimoire. This mere fact would appear to give ammunition to those who insist that the Goetia, which is the first book of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, is a very late grimoire whose origin is no earlier than the mid 17th century. However, I think that I have discovered a solution to this puzzle and found a way to re-insert the lost daemon into the Goetia under a special category. Let me seek to explore these ideas with you in greater detail. You may recall that I wrote a previous article that looked at the history of the list of daemons as it was used in Goetic evocation. You can find it here.

With the exception of the first book, called the Goetia, the other four books that make up the Lemegeton have been mentioned in other works and can be dated to at least the early 16th century, and a couple are quite earlier than that. It seems obvious that the Lemegeton was a late compilation and collection of much earlier works. The one book whose date is highly questioned is the first book. We can examine the very scanty evidence available and conjecture that the list of daemonic spirits was built up from the 14th century to the 16th century, where the list appears to accumulate new names over time. At the advent of the 16th century, there was a prized book, a copy of which was in the hands of the monk-magician Trithemius, that listed the demons and their associated magickal seals. That book was called “Liber Malorum Spirituum,” and is now lost. No one knows the exact count or order of the daemons that were listed in that work, but speculation on one side of the argument states that there were 72 spirits in that book. Another argument would state that there were only 69 spirits. Still another argument would speculate that there were 79 spirits in all.

Later on in the 16th century, a physician scholar named Johann Weyer, who was a student of Agrippa, wrote and published a book entitled “Praestigiis Daemonum” (1563), which argued against the persecution of witches as put forth in the notorious Maleus Malleficarum. In the appendix of this work was another document entitled “Pseudomonarchia Daemonum,” which contained a list and description of 69 daemons. Weyer said that he had purposely changed the work from its original source so as to make it unusable, should anyone be foolish enough to attempt to evoke a daemon. What exactly was meant by this statement is a mystery, since he did include some simple rituals to do just that - the only thing apparently missing were the seals. This document was later translated into English at some unknown date, and it was ironically used in Reginald Scot’s book refuting witchcraft, magick and occultism entitled “Discovery of Witchcraft,” which was published in 1584. Somewhere in that translation process, one of the spirits was dropped from the list, which then had only 68 daemons, and that spirit was, of course, Pruslas. Like the Weyer document, the Scot version omitted the seals, although Scot implied that the total number of evil spirits was 79.

“..and with authoritie they call up by name, and have at their commandment seventie and nine principall and princelie divels, who have under them, as their ministers, a great multitude of legions of pettie divels; as for example.” R. Scot, book XV, chapter 1.

Joseph Peterson has probably pretty much summed up one side of the opinion by stating that the Goetia appears to have used a poor Latin translation of Weyer’s document to build up the list of daemons for that work, even though the Weyer document omitted the seals and had three less spirits than the Goetia. As if to prove that point even further, both the Scot version and the Goetia are missing the daemon spirit named Pruslas. Perhaps I might find this a closed case if it were not for the fact that four additional daemon spirits have been added to the list to bring it up to 72 spirits total. A cursory glance at the seals for the 72 daemons appears to show a continuity between the original 68 seals and the additional four - I don’t see an obvious deviation in form. That might mean that the seals were developed at the same time, however, the original source document had the seals in it as well, so one could argue that there were more spirits listed in the original.

One inexplicable item is that the order of the daemons is completely different between the Weyer document and the Scott version, as if the list of spirits were a deck of cards and were thrown into the air and randomly reassembled, or that’s how Peterson has stated it. The spirits in the Goetia have the same sequential order and rank as compared to the Scot version, so it would seem at least that they were compiled from the same source document, although the verbiage used to describe the daemons is quite different between the two. Keep in mind that Weyer made certain that he violated the contents of the original document to make his version unusable, so it could even be argued that the order of the spirits was changed from the original. He may have omitted some spirits as well, but it’s obvious that the omission of Pruslas shows that the source for the Goetia was at least different than the source that Weyer used for his document. Another difference is that the Goetia and Scot’s version include the daemonic hierarchy, but Weyer’s document excludes that information.

David Rankine, who with Stephen Skinner, edited and published the book “Goetia of Dr. Rudd, ” defends the age of all five books of the Lemegeton, saying that all five were known to Trithemius, and in fact, he was the author of two of them. Here is a quote from his website that talks about the age of the Lesser Key. You can find it here.

“There are five parts to the Lemegeton, which are the Goetia, the Theurgia-Goetia, the Art Pauline, the Art Almadel and the Notary Art. The German scholar magician Abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) acknowledged de Abano’s influence when he referred in his Antipalus Maleficorum (1508) to the Lemegeton as the ‘key made by Abano’.  As the word key is a translation of Clavicule, and the name given to the Lemegeton was the Clavicula Salomonis, this clearly indicates a supposition of authorship.  We know that all five parts of that book existed in 1500 (though not as a collection together) and all five were known to Trithemius, and indeed he probably wrote two of them.”

However, David Rankine does admit that the Goetia was actually a much later version of the Liber Malorum Spirituum, and that the contents of the earlier source document were redacted into the Goetia. So David’s arguments, although interesting, admit to a problem with the age of the Goetia and the date of the compilation of the Lemegeton. While the books Ars Almadel and Ars Notaria were known as early as the 14th century, the second and third books were written by Trithemius himself. While it would appear that de Abano probably didn’t write the grimoire Heptameron, and that the Heptameron was used exclusively for angelic type invocations, it seems strange to attribute the Lesser Key to him. I believe that Trithemius may have been referring to the Heptameron as being a useful “key” to performing advanced forms of evocation. One could see that as being the more likely meaning of that sentence.

David’s lionization of Dr. Rudd, an obscure English occult practitioner, as one of the great magicians of his time is probably overly generous. Dr. Rudd, like many others in his time, experimented with many forms of theurgy and evocation, and not everything he did turned out either brilliantly or even successfully. Still, he was a pioneer, and there wasn’t much to guide such an avocation in those days. If Dr. Rudd has left us with work that is either dubious or ridiculous, we must consider the distance of time as one of the factors.

Since we are missing the source documents, beginning with the Liber Malorum Spirituum and including the English translation that was used by Scot for his work, as well as the version used for the Goetia, we will probably never know for certain which version is identical to the original source, which was irreparably changed or distorted, and which came first. I believe that we can be certain that the Liber Malorum Spirituum was the original source document, and that it existed at the turn of the 16th century. The Goetia had appropriated and adapted some of the ceremonies and rituals used for Goetic evocation from the Heptameron, which was the very first fully developed Christian ceremonial magickal grimoire. Thus there seems to be little that would keep one from supposing that the Goetia was probably written sometime in the late 16th century or 17th century, whether earlier or later is anyone’s conjecture. Still, the final piece of evidence seems to really settle the matter.

There is one damning piece of evidence that pulls the dating of the Goetia well into the 17th century, stated as a matter of fact by Jake Stratton-Kent, in his book “True Grimoire,” and that is the only versions of the Goetia are written in English. There are no Latin versions of the Goetia extant in any library or referenced in any book list, and the source documents would therefore likely have also been in English, making the source document that Scot used for his version of the list of daemons and the English translation of the Heptameron as the actual source documents for the Goetia, all of which were available, but only by the mid 17th century.

What this means is that the Goetia is very likely not the actual work that was an original part of the supposed Lemegeton, instead the Liber Malourm Spirituum probably functioned as the first book for that kind of magickal work. It would have likely included the infernal hierarchy of seven devils, and the 72 Goetic spirits, including the four that were missing from Weyer’s work, and the one that was dropped from the Scott and Goetia versions. The primitive ceremonies that Weyer included in his work would likely have also been copied from that original work. The daemon Astaroth (29) would have been part of the infernal hierarchy and not a member of the 72 daemons. This is the structure proposed by Jake, and I feel that it has some merit. Still, if we don’t pull Astaroth from the list, and we don’t use the infernal hierarchy, then there are 73 daimons that have to be fully accounted.

What has been bequeathed to us from the Goetia, whether one believes it to be an original work or a poor derivation, is a list of 72 daemons, with one daemon accidentally omitted. The strength of this system is not found in the verification of the source documents or by arguing over precedence, but how well it works and functions as a magickal system today. As I have stated previously, the number 72 is quite auspicious and is already part of the spiritual hierarchy of the angelic spirits (such as the angels of the Ha-Shemhemphorash).

Since the number 72 is also analogous to the zodiacal system of the 36 decan faces and the 72 quinarians, we can see that having a list of 72 daemons will allow us to fit them right into that spiritual hierarchy and become defined through an astrological matrix. So the number of spirits does make a difference in the underlying structure that can be used to determine their correspondences. This all seems quite elegant and useful, except that one daemon that was omitted. Counting that daemon makes for 73 total spirits, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole works. Or, is there some other way of explaining this anomaly without having to nullify the use of the quinarians or sweeping the omitted daemon under the rug and pretending that it doesn’t exist? 

As you might recall, I have written a previous article about how the ancient Egyptians used the zodiacal decans as both a time keeping device and a calendar. The decans were used to visually plot the stellar (and magickal) hours of the night. They also used the nightly sighting to determine the date of the year. The ancient Egyptians, like many ancient people, had calculated a calendar consisting of 360 days plus five intercalated days. The 360 days would be represented by a ten day period for each of the 36 decans. The five extra days would represent an extra quinarian. I will quote the exact paragraph here for consideration, you can find it here.

“Another interesting thing about the decans is that every 10 days a new decan would appear at the horizon at the first observable hour of the night. It’s from this array of 36 decans, each lasting 10 days, that the Egyptians determined their solar based calendar, where the last decan coincided with the annual inundation of the Nile river. They had a yearly calendar of 36 decans with five days added to the end to make 365 days in all. The five additional days would represent a 73rd quinarian in the Egyptian astrological system, but that is another interesting item to discuss in another article.”

If we follow the Egyptian example above, then from the standpoint of the calendar, there is one extra quinarian, symbolizing a kind of mysterious synthesis of the ideal and the actual. That would mean that the additional quinarian would also have associated with it, one angel of the Ha-Shem and one daemon. This extra quinarian would not be represented by a ten degree segment of the zodiac, instead it would characterize a kind of interstice or lintel between worlds. For the Egyptians, this intercalated period represented the advent of the rising of the Star Sothis (Sirius), which presaged the inundation of the river Nile. We have a 73rd daemon, but what about an associated angelic name, representing a 73rd angel of the Ha-Shem?

Since the angel names of the Ha-Shemhemphorash are derived from the three contiguous 72 Hebrew letters verses found in the biblical book of Exodus, chapter 14, verses 19 through 21, the three letters for the 73rd angelic name would be extracted from the first, last and first letters of the three additional verses, from verse 22 through 24. The pattern for extracting the angelic names for the 72 angelic names is to place the letters left to right, then right to left, and left to right, to get the root, then to add either AL or YH to the ending. Because there are 40 angels with the AL ending, and 32 with the YH ending, I felt that the 73rd angel would use the ending YH, thus making 33 with that ending.

Using the above logical structures, I was able to deduce that the 73rd angel of the Ha-Shem would have the name VMVYH, and would be pronounced Vamuyah. This angel would be paired with Pruslas and would symbolize the 73rd quinarian, whose quality is that of a gateway of mystery, material abundance and the currents of ascending and descending Spirit.

One question that you might be asking yourself at this point is why do I always seem to be balancing daemons with angels? Why not go all one way or the other, instead of seemingly hedging everything between opposites? My reason for doing this, and I might add, consistently, is not that I am afraid of the Goetic daemons, but that I seek to maintain a balance between forces and intelligences and their affects. As a witch, I work with both the powers of light and darkness equally, so I would seek to engage both angelic and daemonic intelligences. Also, I don’t subscribe to the myth that daemons are somehow always malefic and evil, and angels always good, since that would be too simplistic, and it would mean that I have bought into the values of an exoteric Christian morality. The World of Spirits is neither simplistic nor easily determined by morality. Because as a witch I do subscribe to the concept of the unnamed One, then both the angels and the daemons serve that One as functioning intermediaries, just as the light and the darkness fuse together to formulate the Unity of Being. Therefore, the angels and daemons would function as “daimones” in the Greek definition of the word, but to realize and fully understand any of them, one must invoke or evoke them.  

Now that all of the issues have been covered and every spirit has its niche and a place through which it is defined using the 73 decans, I believe that the matter is elegantly resolved - for the moment.

Frater Barrabbas

Controversy Over Demons

Well now that the blogs are all in a tizzy over Goetic evocation and demons in particular, I have decided to state a few of my own opinions on the matter. Over the past few months I have learned a lesson from adherents of the Left Hand Path, that it’s all too easy to judge a group of spirits by their class, even though like human personalities, they are actually unique individuals, and really need to be judged as such. To say that all Goetic demons are of a certain nature is to make a generality that is at best, inaccurate, at worst, a kind of prejudice. I admit that I have fallen into this trap, because magicians tend to categorize classes of spirits in order to place them into a greater context. However, all models and systems of categorization are heuristic devices that help one to understand what actually is a diverse and very loosely organized body of spiritual entities. Knowing a spirit’s alignment and determining its place within a spiritual hierarchy and class is an important tool for understanding and identifying that spirit, but its true identification can only occur when one has actually either invoked or evoked that spirit through some kind of magickal operation. This means that the old grimoires can’t be completely trusted in regards to how they describe and qualify specific demonic entities.

I am not going to name any names from the individual authors of these blogs, of course, since everyone who is commenting on this thread are experienced magicians in their own right. Magick can easily get out of control, but most of the time when this happens the magick just fails to really produce any verifiable effect. It’s also easy to blame magickal operations for being the cause of catastrophes, such as a house catching on fire, having an auto accident, causing the breakup of friendships or love relationships or any manifestation of bad health. Those of us who are committed and consistent workers of ritual or ceremonial magick can tend to paint our realities with too much literal and metaphorical magickal phenomena, since that is what we are particularly focused on.

Each situation requires a thorough examination, but I have found more often than not that mundane causes and chaotic accidents are usually to blame for the supposed “bad luck” that does occur from time to time to magicians. To blame one’s magick for disasters is probably all too dramatic and pretty difficult to refute or prove erroneous. When a magician makes such a statement they are no longer able to really objectively examine the facts. If my magick produced disasters that I had to suffer through (and I could objectively prove that it had indeed been the cause), then I would probably cease all magickal work for a while until I had discovered and corrected the flaw in my practice and operations.

I have often found that when accidents occur, it was a lack of magick that allowed them to happen without any warning or indication that something bad was going to happen. Also, magicians tend to believe their own tales of power, maintaining a kind of mythic perspective on the reality of their lives because it's more “magickal” to do so. But all human beings succumb to accidents, sickness, disasters and other unplanned events as well as unmitigated stupidity, and magicians are not immune to these occurrences either.

Getting back to the topic of demons, as a class they represent the unconscious forces and intelligences that exist both within and without human beings. However, some of them will impact and react with the unconscious mind of the operator in what could be judged as a harmful experience or an unleashing of an unconscious issue or complex. Whether or not a demon can have this effect depends on the quality of the unconscious mind of the operator and the exact personality of the demon that is evoked. Individuals who have a strong self definition and who have worked out many of their unconscious issues will probably not have the potential for encountering a demon that will produce in them a harmful experience. The older and more experienced the magician, the more likely that life itself has worked out a lot of that individual’s internal issues and complexes. However, everyone has an Achilles’ heel, so if one were to serially invoke all of the demonic spirits, eventually one would be found that produced a bad experience. The supposed bad experience could also be turned to one’s advantage, especially if it were used to work out that issue or complex it triggered, allowing it to be completely resolved.

Possession and obsession can be hazards that anyone who traffics with spirits could potentially experience. These are the risks that one takes to perform invocation and evocation. Either state can occur even with supposedly friendly spirits, depending on the psyche of the operator or one who engages in such experiences. Possession trance is not actually the same thing as being possessed by a spirit that one is invoking or evoking - being ridden by a godhead is quite different, even if the experience was not sought and produced unpleasant side effects.

In my unpublished treatise on Invocation and Evocation, I define these two terms in the following manner. I know that my definitions may be quite different than what others might believe or even how these terms are classically defined. Some may argue that spirits have as much a physical body as a human being. However, in my experience, spirits have a very different physical makeup and structure than a human being. The fact that they can assume multiple forms or even be completely invisible should give magicians a clue as to their actual physical quality.

“The primary difference between human consciousness and the consciousness of a spiritual entity is that the human egoic distinction between the self and not-self boundaries are sharply defined, based as they are on the physical body; whereas ego-less spirits do not have the same sense of distinctness and uniqueness. This is because a human being, like all living sentient physical beings, has a highly developed identity that is based upon that physical body. Human beings are only partially aware of their connection to other beings within the ocean of consciousness. The spiritual dimension of a human being resides within his or her higher self, wherein the experience of the unity of consciousness is primary. A spirit is aware of its union with all other conscious entities and uses its personal identity only as a means to focus itself so that it may temporarily function as an independent individual; otherwise it is only a participant in the undifferentiated mass of unified consciousness.”

“As stated above, a human being relies upon a highly evolved identity in order to function in the material world. A spirit uses an identity only for the purpose of functional differentiation, otherwise, it has no material identity. The danger to a human being from a spirit is the potential for a loss of identity or a loss of will. How this is accomplished is that the spirit may assume the mundane identity of the human magickal operator, or the spirit may enchant the operator, causing delusions and impassioned fantasies. When a spirit is said to have assumed a human's identity, what is meant by this is that it has entered that person's sphere of personal awareness and taken control of the normal egoic functions, thus taking possession of the individual's whole conscious being. Human beings may also experience delusions when a spirit is able to seduce their will and thus become far too influential, causing an obsession to occur.    

A spirit has an amoebic ability to attach itself to or completely engulf the consciousness of a human being. Because a spirit exists in an undifferentiated state of consciousness and has no restrictive physical component or material body, it does not understand the primitive necessity with which human beings require the maintenance of a distinct and unique awareness of self. Therefore, a spirit may possess or obsess a human being without harm to itself, but with dire consequences to those unprepared for an exposure to a spiritual being. However, a human being who has developed to the point of having an awareness of self that resides in the world of Atziluth would be immune to possession or obsession, but he would seem to have no personally distinct identity either. But this immunity would only include spiritual avatars and would not even include those who are even considered spiritual adepts. So therefore, you should take great care in dealing with spirits and assume the paramount responsibility to guard yourself from obsession or a loss of soul.

When a person has been possessed, he no longer functions as an individual, but is clouded and obscured by the consciousness of the spirit. Yet his own state of consciousness is twisted and distorted by a lack of normally occurring cohesive structures that are used to express his individuality in a coordinated manner. What remains is a fragmented self which cannot focus and is guided by whatever momentary impulse captures the imagination. The only remedy is an exorcism, which consists of withdrawing the interfering spiritual influence through an intercession with the ruling God-form, and causing the healing of the individual through purification, the restoration of the self-image through trance techniques, and an enforced period of spiritual fortification and retirement from all occult practices.

Obsession is easier to understand, but actually more difficult to rectify than possession. When a person becomes obsessed, she must be removed entirely from the source of her obsession and given other tasks to occupy her. All occult activity must be halted for a period of time until the danger of a relapse is past. Then the individual must undergo self analysis until the source of the obsession is discovered and its relevant issue resolved.

Both possession and obsession occur when a person's psychological issues are over stimulated. This causes the self to become vulnerable and then, subsequently, overwhelmed by the shadows of the unconscious mind that seek to extinguish its frail identity. Therefore, the disciplined adept continually deals with his personal issues and never attempts a magickal operation when depressed or emotionally distraught. Also, great care must be used when selecting others of lesser spiritual achievement to assist in an invocation. The adept is solely responsible for the welfare of his assistants, and he should discriminate against those who are psychologically unstable or unsuitable for withstanding exposure to supernatural phenomena. The performance of the magickal procedure for assuming a God-form ,which acts as a magickal identity for the magician, is the best means of safeguarding the self from possession or obsession. When you assume a God-form, you have taken upon yourself the protective grace and authoritative control to both direct and deflect the influences and powers of a spiritual entity. This is because the God-form is the primary archetype that governs the spiritual world and is, therefore, used in exorcism to extract unwanted spiritual influences. So long as you can maintain the connection to his God-form, a spirit cannot cause either possession or obsession.”

Since I have actually witnessed a few individuals who were possessed and even performed exorcisms, as well as counseled individuals who suffered from some kind of spiritual based obsession, I think that I can tell when someone is suffering from these maladies or not. I would judge that nothing that I have read so far in anyone’s blog would indicate to me that someone has succumbed to either obsession or possession. These are very serious maladies, and they usually require a fair amount of time for not only healing and recuperation, but also to avoid such an occurrence in the future. Once inflicted by one of these maladies, it can make it more likely for the victim to be inflicted again.

So, being balanced, emotionally and psychically clear as well as having powerful allies and intimately associated godheads are important if one is to ensure that neither possession or obsession can occur. I also tend avoid individuals who have a natural capacity for obsessive compulsive disorder, since they are prime candidates for obsession.

I think that these opinions and ideas will hopefully not only explain my perspective on the manner of demonic evocation, but also that possession or obsession can occur with any spiritual entity or process, regardless of whether it is supposedly positive or malefic.

Frater Barrabbas

Whence Cometh the Demons?

I am doing some intensive research lately on a topic that I have, off and on, continued to study and puzzle over for many years. I have known the answer in my head, perhaps intuitively, to the question “whence cometh the demons”, which is a fancy way of asking the question about the origins of what we in the occult refer to as demonic spirits.

The history of demonic spirits is quite fascinating, particularly since there doesn’t seem to be one actual source. Modern western definitions of these spirits are derived from Christian demonology, a specialized branch of theology. Demons are defined as malevolent spirits and represent a united faction opposed to God and his angels. However, this was not always the case, since the dualistic nature of demons vs. angels appears to have its roots in Zoroastrianism. Since Christianity is a synthesis of the Hellenistic and Semitic cultures of the Greco-Roman and Jewish religions, then our search should naturally begin there. Whatever theological perspectives the medieval church promoted about demons won’t shed much light on their origins and antecedents. Also, the earliest Christian magical grimoires, such as Liber Juratus and the Ars Notoria, not to mention the Heptameron, appear to omit any mention of demons. We have to examine Jewish contemporaneous occult and magical sources in order to find the earliest magical use of demons. So one might think that Christian occultism borrowed the concept of a hierarchy of demons, one which the magician could use to conjure, constrain and make use of their associated powers.

Some have speculated that the lists and characteristics of goetic demons and infernal spirits would have their origin with the Greeks. Prior to Plato, Greeks referred to spirits that were intermediaries to the gods and mankind as “daimones.” These spirits were generally considered to be positive, being minor deities or the ghosts of heros or founders, the collective guardians and protectors of humanity. Some scholars believe that prior to Homer, deities and daimones were interchangeable, others disagree. Walter Burkert, in his book “Greek Religion” is one of the scholars who disagrees, proposing that the word daimon represents an occult or unknown force that drives humanity when no known source for that ambition or inspiration is apparent.

For the ancient Greeks, a belief in demons may have preceded the belief and worship of the gods, much like the Roman belief in individual genius or the numen of unknown spiritual presences. Socrates was reputed to have a daemon that acted as his guide, and in one of his symposiums (Plato’s Symposium), love was revealed by one of the attendees, the priestess Diotima, to be a great daimon instead of a god. In addition, one particular daimon had a place of importance in the rites of Dionysus, and that was“Agathos Daimon” or the Good Daimon, who was depicted in art as a chthonic serpent. Members of the cult would give an offering or libation to this daimon before commencing with ceremonial wine drinking.  All of these points would seem to indicate that early Greeks did not ascribe the moral values of good or evil to daimons. (See “Greek Religion” by Walter Burkert, pp. 179 - 181)

Followers of Pythagorus declared that they could see daimons, who would normally be invisible to everyone else, they also claimed to be able to communicate with them. It would not be too fantastic to consider that they might also be able to conjure and direct daimons, along with their other repertoire of various shamanic and magical practices. Since dead heros and founders were accorded the status of being daimons, then it would also make sense that necromancers and sorcerers would possibly illicitly traffic with them. Perhaps that is why the necromantic summoning of spirits, known as “goetic magic” eventually became associated with the magical evocation of demons.

It wasn’t until the philosopher Plato and his student, Xenocrates, that daimons began to be perceived as having a malefic character. By the third century BCE, the Greeks believed in beneficent spirits that they called “Eudaimons” and malefic spirits that were called “Kakodaimons.”  These beneficent daimons were even considered to be a kind of guardian angel, assigned by lots at birth for every man and woman, to act as their guide and guardian. The term eudaimonia, which meant possessing a eudaimon, became synonymous with feelings of bliss and happiness, the state that one would associate with being warded and aided by a spiritual companion. However, in the myth of Pandora, the evils that were unleashed upon mankind were never considered daimons or even kakodaimons, they were called illness (nousoi) and death-bringing spirits (keres). The tragedian Aeschylus poetically refers to the daimon as a fiend that quenches its thirst for murder and destruction, but only at the behest of the gods and never independently. The spirits of departed great men were still thought of as the manifestation of their daimon, such as that associated with Alexander the Great, but incrementally, the daimon was progressively associated with the manifestations of human misfortune, thus obtaining a decidedly negative characteristic.

By the time of the Neoplatonists during Roman imperial times, daimons had become earth bound spirits tormented by their lusts and passions, unlike the remote and pristine gods. Neoplatonic philosophy began with an elevated ideal of the daimon, but this changed over time. It was completely reinterpreted by the early church theologians, who perceived all pagan gods and spirits as being of the category of malefic demons. Philosophers had been distinguishing between noble daimons and trouble making ones, but Christianity lumped them together into one category, as malefic spirits. The only exception was the eudaimon, which was incorporated and redefined as an angelic guardian spirit. However, lists of the names of daemons from Greek sources were not built up or established in early Christian times, as this would have a different and later source.

The Hebrew Torah was translated into the Greek Septuagint in Alexandria during antiquity, and that translation had an impact on later Christian theologians, since the terms “Malakh Adonai” or messenger of the lord, became translated as “angelos” and the idols, nature spirits and alien gods of other people as “daimones.” However, the Torah specifically mentions only the names of two specific demons, just as it only mentioned the names of three specific angels and referred obliquely to the messenger of the lord as some kind of angel.

There were two classes of demons mentioned in the Torah, known as the “se’irim” and “shedim”, “hairy” nature spirits and storm spirits, respectively, both of which may have been given offerings and oblations by the ancient Hebrews to aid in their appeasement. Azazel, who is mentioned in Leviticus (ch. 16, v. 10), is probably of the class of ser’irim and may be their chief, and Lilith, obliquely mentioned in Isaiah (ch. 34, v. 14) is an example of a female demon. Most notably were the “Beni Elohim”, the Sons of God, in chapter 6 of Genesis, who came to earth to mate with human women, and who produced off-spring who were called “men of renown” (literally, men of names). The passages are a bit confusing, but these same angels or their off-spring could have been called the Nephilim, which means either fallen ones or giants.

Jewish folklore, on the other hand, was replete with the names and characteristics of many demons, some of these were discussed and written down during Talmudic times. However, most scholars seem to agree that the complex demonology that Jewish folklore seemed to possess in such abundance supposedly began to appear in Jewish culture during the Babylonian captivity, perhaps influenced by contact with both the Chaldeans and later, the Persians. Prior to the Babylonian captivity, Jewish belief about demons was simple and not developed, certainly not to the point that it later became. The Zoroastrians of Persia introduced the concept of dualism to Jewish thought, but it was not until much later that some Jews began to believe in a unified power of evil (as Satan), which stood against the power and authority of their God. This change was probably due more to Christian influences and was considered uncanonical by Jewish rabbinical authorities.

There seems to be a host of demons referenced in various Jewish writings, and they had specific habitats and characteristics. These spirits could be found in obscure places, such as inhabiting wastelands, ruins, cemeteries, privies, middens or even desolate places unfrequented by humanity. Demons usually shunned daylight and wandered around the fringes of communities at night. They were believed to be the sources of pestilence, disease and natural disasters, yet all these calamities were allowed or directly caused by the wrath and anger of the Hebrew God. Demons would seize their victims and enter into them, possessing their bodies, either by force or cunning. Exorcism was the only cure, performed through incantations, exhortations and the use of herbs and alternative animal victims. Solomon was reputed to have received from God the wisdom, authority and power to control and exorcize demons, and many attributed their knowledge of such practices ultimately to him.  

The Chaldeans and Persians had intricately developed systems of either chthonic deities (Anunnaki) or demonic allies of Ahriman. Like the Chaldeans, the Jews had three classes of demons, having expropriated them from that source as well as other sources. It would seem that the idea of a world of light and darkness, populated by a battling hierarchy of angels and demons was drawn from Persian beliefs, since like Judaism, they would not have given credence to any kind of chthonic deity as the Chaldeans apparently did. Demons were allowed to perform the will of God, but did not engage in any strife against that Deity, since all supernatural powers had an exclusive source in their one god. I quote a source from the online Jewish Encyclopedia:

“It was the primitive demonology of Babylonia which peopled the world of the Jews with beings of a semi-celestial and semi-infernal nature. Only afterward did the division of the world between Ahriman and Ormuzd in the Mazdean system give rise to the Jewish division of life between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of evil. Rabbinical demonology has, like the Chaldean, three classes of, demons, though they are scarcely separable one from another. There were the "shedim," the "mazzi im" (harmers), and the "ru in" or "ru otra'ot" (evil spirits). Besides these there were "lilin" (night spirits), " elane" (shade, or evening, spirits), " iharire" (midday spirits), and " afrire" (morning spirits), as well as the "demons that bring famine" and "such as cause storm and earthquake"

However, these specific names and qualities of demons do not seem to be related to the later medieval lists that we find in the early Jewish grimoires. Yet it is likely that by late antiquity Judaism began to propose a kind of hierarchy by electing a king and queen of demons, thereby laying its foundation. Candidates for these positions varied somewhat, with Asmodai or Samael being more frequently sited. The name Satan was used to describe demons, but did not at first become a generalized name for the king of demons. The queen of demons was, of course, Lilith, but another name used was Na’amah, sister of Tubal Cain, who was reputed to be the wife of Samael and mother of Asmodai. Other names were likely a distortion of Caanite gods, such as Beelzebub (Lord of the Flies) whose name was actually Baal Zebul (Lord of Heaven), and Ashtoreth being analogous to the Goddesses Asherah, Anath or Ishtar/Innana. The fact that monotheism was probably imposed on the Hebrew nation in the 7th century BCE, which was much later than what the Bible instructed, allowed for a lot of obvious polytheistic remnants to be either redefined (such as Elohim, for “gods”) or denigrated as demonic. Still, the Jewish tradition carried many examples of what must have been a very loosely defined pagan polytheism despite the vigorous efforts of the revisionists and reformers.

The effects of the loss of the Temple, the diaspora, and the establishment of the Qabbalah upon Jewish thought and belief were quite profound. The Talmudic period forced a high degree of ordering and structuring of religious thought and practice, since the new center of worship was now the local synagogue and the yeshiva instead of the Temple of Jerusalem. This intensive structuring gave birth to a new formalism that lent itself to the derivation of the Qabbalah and methodologies of ceremonial magick. The first glimmerings of this new formulation was to be found in the book Sepher Yetzirah, and in the proto-grimoire Testament of Solomon (4th century CE). It is probably at this time that the demonic hierarchy began to be assembled, most notably for the purpose of performing exorcisms and medical cures, and only later to actually command demons into performing wonders. Josephus mentions actual witnessed occurrences of these wonder working sorcerers and wrote about them in his books.

Several hundred years later and another Jewish proto-grimoire surfaces, this time called the Sword of Moses (10th century CE). One can see that demonic and angel names are being developed for the purpose of working ceremonial magick. We have passed beyond the hypothetical world of the Testament of Solomon, with the story of the demons being coerced into building the Temple of Jerusalem and the establishment of a kind of medical anti-demonic magic, to one that is more an operational book on ceremonial magic. The trail of books disappears for few centuries and then the Sepher ha-Ratziel and the Book of Abramelin appear on the scene, supposedly only a hundred years apart. It is apparent looking at one of these books that demonic magic is still part of the tradition of Jewish ceremonial magic, and in fact it has been developed further, so that it’s starting to look like what was later incorporated into the classical grimoires of the Goetia, Goetia-Theurgia of the Lemegeton and the Grimoirum Verum.

The book Sepher ha-Ratziel (14th century) is a grimoire consisting of angel magic (malachim), Qabbalistic diagrams and words of power, and an extensive list of angels - there is no list of demons. In the Book of Abramelin (15th century), there is a list of demons crafted into the hierarchy of four kings, eight dukes and their associated servitors. Other than the top two tiers, the rest of the demonic spirit names are unique - they are not at all the same as the demons of the later Goetia. Yet one of the four King names and four of the eight Dukes are found in the list of goetic demons. So it would seem that the Jewish grimoire tradition was developing a demonic hierarchy.

Interestingly enough, there is a French manuscript also from the 15th century, called “Le Livre des Espiritz” that has a list of 47 demonic spirit names, 31 of which are possible matches with the later list of 72 goetic demons. (This is according to the book “Goetia of Dr. Rudd”, pp. 32 - 38, and I think that it is very significant.) By the beginning of the 16th century, we have, in the works of Trithemius (i.e., the “Liber Malorum Spiritum” and the “Steganographia”) a fully developed list of goetic demons and their seals, whose possible source material may have inspired the later Grimoirum Verum and the Lemegeton. Both Agrippa, and his student, Johann Weyer, were steeped in this material, and Weyer used it to produce his work, “Pseudomonarchia Daemonum.”

There is some dispute as to the exact sequence of events, whether the Goetia of the Lemegeton is earlier than the Grimoirum Verum. My opinion is that they are probably contemporaneous to each other, since neither can claim an exact date of production nor even identify the original authors. Suffice it to say that the list of goetic demons appears to have evolved over the 15th century to its final form. Also of note, the infernal hierarchy associated with the Grimoirum Verum is different than that established in the Book of Abramelin, representing an apparent divergence of traditional material indicating possible different sources. All of these various lists and methodologies represent differences in a legitimate occult perspective, although how these materials were actually used and by whom is still something of a mystery.

When examining the various names of the so-called infernal spirits of the hierarchy of demons, their servitors, or the goetic demons, one can see a mixture of Hebrew, Greek and Latin, but any other languages, such as Arabic, Akkadian or Parsi seem to be completely lacking. This should at least inform us that the source of these names comes from the European Jewish diaspora, with complex linkages and appropriations occurring in Christian occult and intellectual circles. The source of magical demonology and its hierarchy is therefore Jewish and Christian in origin, even though some of the concepts and terminology used comes from the Greco Roman period.

My final consideration is how should one approach these spiritual entities in order to incorporate them into magical workings? It is my opinion that there are three possible methods of approach, and only two that I find agreeable with my own particular philosophy.

The first approach is basically the same one that the sorcerers of the Renaissance would have used, which is Christian Diabolism. The magician could approach the use of demons either using the angels and the authority of God to coerce and dominate them, or he could instead act as a diabolic agency, worshiping the Christian version of Satan. This approach has been recently made quite popular by a book written by Lisiewski.

There are two other approaches, and both use a form of neopaganism as their base. One could act in a neutral manner and invoke both demons and angels, seeing them as an integral but opposite type of spiritual intelligence - yet both tied to the same unified aspect of the Godhead. That Godhead would be given Qabbalistic qualities, but not specifically defined or given a name, thus avoiding spiritual dualism. Neopagan gods and goddesses would exist, as would the spirits of the ancestors, angels and demons.

One could also redefine and develop a magickal religion whose principal deities are chthonic and based in the underworld. In such a redefinition, the demons would become part of a religious spiritual hierarchy that would represent the mysteries and darkness inherent in all transformational processes. The demons would be completely redefined so that they would function as they did in early antiquity, as intermediaries between the gods and humanity, neither good nor evil.

The first approach accepts the old grimoires and uses them as they presently exist, the second expropriates what is needed and useful in the old grimoires and uses it in an existing magical system, and the third completely reclaims and rewrites the old grimoires, to fashion a completely new system of magic.

I have decided to follow the second path, and since I am not a Christian I find the first path to be unacceptable. However, the most compelling approach is the third path, which involves what is called and practiced by neopagans espousing a chthonic spirituality, demonolatry. Perhaps someday those who follow the third path will produce a total reclamation of the old grimoires. I look forward to that event and reading over their material.

Frater Barrabbas