Demons with nothing to do...

I love it when other people and I are on the same page. My blog-brother Frater R.O. just wrote a piece on having to put the 9 Goetic Kings to work because through engraving their sigils, he evoked them somewhat, and since they had noting to do, they indulged their lower natures and did what demons do - muck shit up.

A couple days earlier, in his post on Artificial Elementals, Von Faustus quoted Stephen Mace saying: "to call up 10,000 devils and set them onto your boss is to create a universe where 10,000 devils live, and they all have your address" Thats a great quote and I was going to write a blog post about that exact thing. Frater R.O. writing about essentially the same thing on the same morning is just a bonus.

Lower, more materially connected spirits are quicker to get material things done than higher angelic spirits. They are also more apt to give you exactly what you WANT rather than what they in their angelic wisdom think you "need" in that sort of karmic type of way. Thus, demonic or sub-lunar spirits are favorites for magicians to call upon to get stuff done that they want done.

There are downsides however. One is that they are not really apt to grant what you want, but exactly what you ask for. Everyone knows the stories of wishes gone wrong and fables of spirits delivering requests to the letter of the word rather the intent. Midas comes to mind. I ran into this problem myself once in a love conjuration. I summoned a demon and presented it with a very specific list of qualities that I desired in a mate; everything from hair length to particular kinks was delivered right into my hands. The problem was that those kinks ran way deeper than I would ever want to play, and came with a whole lot of baggage that I wasn't ready to deal with.

Many years later, I summoned Ezili Freda, who I would count as a sort of "higher sub-lunar power", meaning she is wise and loving of humanity, connected to the divine, but still works mainly in the earth realm. I simply asked her to just find me a good mate for me. We have been together for 12 years now, and have a ironwork veve of Ezili from Haiti hanging over the bed in honor of her.

The other problem with working with lower spirits is that they can hang around afterwards with nothing to do. The more wrathful the spirit, the bigger the problem. Speaking of Vodou, this remains a huge problem in Haiti. In order for Haiti to pull off the only successful Slave revolt in the western hemisphere, they created a new Nation of Loa called Petro. The Petro sort of evolved out of the Kongo nation of Loa, which were already fairly fierce spirits. They were joined by the spirits of slave revolt leaders such as Marinette Bwa Chech, or Marinette of the Dry Arms. She is belived to be the Mambo who sacrificed the black pig at the culmination of the start of the first Haitian Revolution. I have heard of rites to her that involve the sacfice of black hens that have been plucked while alive, and black pigs thrown onto a fire with gunpowder.

Loa like this were able to defeat the French, but when the revolution ended they still linger and need to be handled. Over the years other nations of loa, that are even more violent connected with secret societies have arisen to deal with crimes.

Problems like this are not limited to Haiti or ATR magick. Dudjom Rinpoche wrote an article called "On the bad luck of the Nyingmapa" which basically tells a similar tale. When Padmasambhava constrained the Yul-lha and Men-mo (mountain gods and lake goddesses) into being Dharmapalas so that Buddhism could come to Tibet, he bound many spirits that could be difficult to control into the national fabric. When I was taught to work with Dharmapalas I was taught to always generate myself as a wrathful Yidam first because even "enlightened" beings like Ekajati have dren-pa (unrult spiirts) in their retinue that can cause problems.

In the Gelugpa school has an even more high-profile problem with Dorje Shugden, the spirit of a very sectarian lama that was killed by the attendants of the 5th Dalai Lama, and whose mother prayed would be reborn as a Gyalpo or wrathful king to get revenge. The 5th bound him up in a vessel, but he was later released and made a Dharmapala of the Gelug school that was popular until very recently for the advice that he gave and the quickness that he could achieve material tasks. He is the spirit that advised the current Dalai Lama on how to escape Tibet. The problem is that the spirit is still a sectarian and attacks those that take initiation into multiple schools, especially the Nyingma and Kagyu. The current Dalai Lama asks people not to propitiate Shugden, which has caused much fighting and splinter groups. Several people have even been murdered over the issue.

Heading west again, there is no shortage of Faustian tales of sorcerers getting more than they bargained for. Do not call up that which you cannot put down as the saying goes. Magicians that dont understand why people would mess with folk magick spells, energy manipulation, or even artificial spirits to get things done when they could just summon up a demon to do the deed need only think about the above to find good reason. Thats not to say that summoning demons isn't useful or worth it. It is. I do it a lot. I just did it this week. But you have to take precautions and you have to know the issues that can pop up because of it.

Oh yeah, and you should probably get some Hyssop soap.


(The picture above is of a Kimbanda altar to Exu. I didn't mention Exu above but the same hold true.)