Demonology
“Now, metempsychosis, which has been misinterpreted frequently, has a perfectly true side; for animal forms communicate their sympathetic impressions to the astral body of man, which reacts speedily on his lineaments according to the force of his habits. A man of intelligent and passive mildness assumes the inert physiognomy and ways of a sheep, but in somnambulism it is a sheep that is seen, and not a man with a sheepish countenance, as the ecstatic and learned Swedenborg experienced a thousand times. In the kabalistic book of Daniel the seer, this mystery is represented by the legend of Nebuchadnezzar changed into a beast, which, after the common fate of magical allegories, has been mistaken for an actual history. In this way, we can really transform men into animals and animals into men; we can metamorphose plants and alter their virtue; we can endow minerals with ideal properties: it is all a question of willing.”

-Eliphas Levi, Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic part II p. 77

I thought about this passage a lot when I read Malachi Martin’s introduction to Hostage to the Devil. Martin is in the difficult position of confronting a real problem with occult forces. If you talk about the way these things REALLY manifest, it is hard to get people excited about it. Occult forces manifest their intentions through unconscious spontaneous human action. There is no massive satanic conspiracy in the literal sense of the word. But the same eyes that might see a sheepish man as a sheep, when turned to our culture, might see just that…



Thelema, at its core, is about manifesting unconscious spontaneous human action in complete accordance with Will. The action is unconscious, not because consciousness of it has been repressed, but because its ways have been so thoroughly learned that one no longer needs to think about it. One is left to “Reap and Rejoice!”

This is the reason, I think, that many Thelemites get caught up in Jungian psychology. Academically it has the same goals, it just tries to realize them through the therapeutic model, which makes it weak and lame because it’s dependent on victim hood.

“The ultimate goal of Jungian psychotherapy is to make the symbolic process conscious. To become conscious of symbols we first need to know how a symbol behaves when it is unconscious all the inhuman practices of savage rites and rituals as well as neurotic symptoms and perversions can be understood if we understand how the symbol functions unconsciously. The basic proposition is this: the unconscious symbol is lived but not perceived.”

-Edward Edinger, Symbols: The Meaning of Life, Spring 1962

Are we living in a culture filled with clandestine satanic cells, preparing unrecorded newborns for ritual sacrifice? Fuck no. Not literally. But if you look at things in the astral light, that image might very well be the appearance of our civilization. In the culture of Hostel and Halo, in which torture and murder are, at least in simulation, forms of entertainment, we can see why. The symbol of a culturally pervasive clandestine Satanism is truly “lived but not perceived” in the western media.

Martin, like all Christians, doesn’t really know how to deal with the spirit world. If you fight, if you attack, if you mock them, of course there will be a clash. And of course it will get ugly. The cases he deals with are cases of deep possession, which is almost always reliant on some deep trauma. That’s the “in” a spirit has, to get settled enough to set up shop and take over a body. Some vital aspect of the life and the self is too horrible to be consciously acknowledged. The Will of the possessed consents to possession in exchange for the spirit’s complicity in keeping the secret buried. When the possessed comes into conflict with the possessor, that Scary Thing is brought to light, and invariably, they back down. The possessed then serves the spirit through any form of spontaneous unconscious action, sometimes self-destructive, sometimes seemingly benign.

I say “seemingly,” because when you exist outside of time, like these things do, you really can see how cause and effect works. Actions which may have no significant meaning to us may, in fact, have dramatic effects which we can’t see, because we aren’t aware of the causal chain in effect.

Which brings me to the more salient point. You know? The “more difficult to see but more important” point. Human beings act spontaneously and unconsciously from motives of love all the time! Those are truly angelic acts, and if they occur “under Will,” truly Thelemic acts as well. These are acts that serve to resolve the complexes that muddle existence. But human beings also act spontaneously and unconsciously from fear and hate all the time too. Spontaneous acts of love usually come about because our love is so close to who we are that we can’t see it. We are unconscious of it in the same way that the reaper in Liber LXV is unconscious of his muscles.

When those acts come about because of fear or hate, we are unconscious of those emotions because we are deliberately avoiding consciousness of them. That consciousness is threatening or disturbing to us. Sometimes those acts are as simple as glare, as casual word, a caustic rebuff, or something of that nature. But what is the “butterfly effect?” When we hide things from ourselves, we open ourselves up to occult forces. We create a disconnect between the “perceived self” and the “authentic self,” which is the “in” for a spirit that wants to accomplish something through us.

Levi and Crowley both insist that the devil isn’t real, and that evil is simply another way of saying “error.” That doesn’t mean that demons don’t exist to perpetuate that error, or that governing intelligence that is the personification of lies, qua lies, doesn’t exist or isn’t real. The key distinction between these and the usual perception of the demonic is that the real demons aren’t trying to bring about the apocalypse, but to prevent it. This is “error,” because Revelations represents the intended end of creation. If existence is a muddle that we have to resolve, demons live to create additional complexes, additional barriers to unity of spirit, additional “making of differences between one thing and another.”

This form of “possession” is temporary. One spirit might do its meddling through numerous different people, leaping from body to body as long as the new host has the same repressed fear or repressed desire as the previous. Cases of a spirit or spirits trying to hold down a single host are rare, simply because people capable of sustaining that kind of deep possession are rare. But in a culture in which spirituality is more or less a joke, a style, or a fad, and the demonic, certainly, is treated less seriously than a cartoon, things get a lot easier for these spirits. Even seemingly obvious manifestations of temporary or long-term possession are totally ignored, simply because the concept is considered “insane.”

Qui bono?

“On the other side of the coin – Lucifer’s side – the belief that he does not exist at all is an enormous advantage that he has never enjoyed to such a great degree. It is the ultimate camouflage. Not to believe in evil is not to be armed against it.”

-Malachi Martin, Hostage to the Devil

Crowley tells us, in his note on Liber V, “the idea of evil existing independent of conditions is fatal to philosophy,” and I think he’s right about that. But that’s not the same as saying that evil doesn’t exist… because conditions exist, don’t they? Evil might be conditional, but so is Love. Without the illusion of separateness, acts of uniting star to its possibilities through Love under Will would be impossible. This condition of error in the self, which is the gateway to demonic position, is essentially “self at war with self.” The individual is afraid to be him or herself, and will give up self-control because social conditioning has made them hostile to their true desires.

So… let’s review: a disconnect between the actual self and the idea of the self produces a gap into which an alien force can enter, and that force generates spontaneous unconscious action that perpetuates separateness, “for thereby cometh hurt.” There exists an ideology, which has for all practical purposes conquered the world, first through Christianity and later through liberal-democratic humanitarianism, which posits the human being as necessarily flawed. This is the doctrine of original sin in Christianity, and it is also the moral basis of democracy. If people weren’t inherently flawed, we could trust a king. No need to go over that again.

So what am I saying here? Why is Martin’s view of the satanic western culture figuratively, if not literally, accurate?

This idea, that we are “inherently bad and wrong” and can only remedy this by “giving ourselves up” to an external force is the PRECONDITION for demonic possession. It is also the fundamental premise of the dominant global ideology. It is taught by nihilistically violent movies, video games, and television, it is taught by Priests and Pastors, it is taught by teachers and professors, it is taught by all forms of advertising, (it’s the BASIS of advertising) it is also, let me say it again, the fundamental premise of the dominant global ideology. To once more repeat myself, it is also the precondition for demonic possession. That’s what makes Martin’s picture accurate.

The idea that what IS is beautiful, good, and right, just by virtue of the fact that it is what it is, just doesn’t seem to make a showing very often.

These things aren’t going away. You can cast them back into their dwelling places, but as long as human insecurity and self-loathing exists, they’ll keep coming back. Cure the human insecurity and self-loathing, and you stop the problem at the source. Martin’s church, and others, is more closely aimed at perpetuating this insecurity. All a demon needs to do is throw on a Jesus-mask and they can tell witless Christians, who would never think to try and verify a spiritual communication, to do whatever it wants them to.

As secularism becomes more deeply entrenched, ironically, people become more susceptible to occult forces.

But Thelema is aimed at teaching us to master those forces…

…so is this good fairy or a bad fairy?



Postscript: Dealing with the Demon

Sending it away isn’t always possible, depending on how deeply rooted in the psyche this self-obfuscation is. Some trauma can’t just be dismissed. It has to be given some kind of place within the conception of the self for the individual to be able to function as a self-aware person. It will hang around and find something to do, whether it is in service of the Will or not, so it’s better to track it down and give it a name, a face, and a job rather than just leave it to its own devices. Casting demons out, or any spirit for that matter, is always complicated. If it comes from trauma, it will create more trauma. That’s clear from every case of exorcism I’ve looked at. It will find a place to go, and it will create terribleness in that place. If it has a job, something to DO, it’s not so destructive. That’s a big responsibility for the possessed person.

I’ve dealt with a number of these cases in my career. For obvious reasons it would be imprudent to discuss the details, but I will say that I’ve never sold the idea. People always just want to make it go away. They want a “normal” life where they don’t have to acknowledge the existence of inorganic life forms. However potentially useful the spirit turns out to be, they want no part of learning how to navigate that world.

What they never realize is that it’s the world they’re living in. Then again, I might just be a rotten salesman.