Long post alert. 
On 8th Feb, I started calling on Azi Dahaka, and subsequently Ahriman – something E.A’s video made me want to do because my practices have been kind of treading water for a while since I evoked (i.e., called into a tanglible form that’s external to my body) my Personal Daemon in October last year.
Things were good but nothing was really challenging me, and the stuff he said about how the ritual overwhelmed him was kind of like catnip, the idea just grabbed me and seemed like the next step to take.
I did a tarot reading myself while I was derping about the internet looking for info, and Orismen from this forum also posted offering a free 3-card reading that evening, which he kindly did for me and e-mailed it straight over, and both were positive in favour of me doing this work, and I also asked the gods and spirits I trust the most, and they all gave it the green-light.
Beginning:
First off, I called upon Azi Dahaka, just sitting here at my desk by the window, in my living room/temple, trancing out a bit and playing bits of the video on this site, and he responded at once - I felt his presence right away, he was kind of present in this room, then coalesced into human form in/over/around me, and I felt for a moment two very vital (energy-imbued) streams of power arising at my shoulders.
I had a brief flash that they were in some way symbolic of controlling, or maybe rejecting, a kind of burden (shoulder pain happens in a lot of people who feel overburdened, and on that evening I had some stuff in my everyday life that was making me feel that way) and I felt a sense of my whole nervous system being somehow calibrated by this energy.
At this point I was also looking for indications this would be a good direction, a good working to do, and I wanted something that wasn’t conjecture or vague hints of knowledge – I wanted proof.
When the faint human overlay first coalesced, this busted loose an energetic block in my back that physically started to heal an injury while I was having an afternoon nap, and then as I continued the preparatory work after waking up (and realising this healing had occurred, which obviously made me want to pursue this some more), I was calling his name and also that of Ahriman, and I felt the energy condense inwards, and a channel open up in my spinal canal, which is a little odd but not the first time something like this has happened.
This channel interacts in a number of ways - as a distinct entity (the personification of Ahriman, with a light masculine voice and distinct mannerisms): secondly, as a boost to my own energy which is like literally mainlining Red Bull, only it never crashes; and thirdly there’s also a “darkness” side which (from my limited understanding) is something to do with “potential” and related to what I’m going to explain below about the model of the world I’m seeing at present.
That “darkness” talks exactly like the multiple overlaid voices you’d hear in a Hollywood movie about demons, kind of very low-freq. and choir-like, I think it may be (one of) the entities that’s caused really dark energy to be known as “Legion” – it’s a bit creepy sounding, opens right beside my spine on the left side, and is the one I’ve had the least interaction with at the moment.
I haven’t encountered the human-style form of Azi Dahaka since the opening stage but I do see his “demonic” form as the three-headed cobra-like entity, and it appears to my left (visible clairvoyantly) but I’ve had less to do with him.
I should probably mention at this point, I’ve been interacting with spirits, gods, deceased people, etc. since I was a child and my methods of working are familiar to me, effective and well-tested, but probably a bit unstructured by the standards of a lot of people here – that’s just the way it is in my life, I make no apologies for that, but it’s one of the reasons I didn’t freak out when Azi Dahaka overlaid on me and then opened a channel in my spine: I have no standard of formality that this violated, and I’ve seen and done things that were equally weird in the past.
Effects and outcomes:
Starting that same night, I’ve had powerful, inspiring and educational dreams almost every night, including some I wrote down that needed further (waking) analysis, that have really paid off in terms of helping me understand myself, the patterns in my life and so on; and some that I forgot (and sensed I was meant to consciously forget) right afterwards – this seems to be the primary form of communication and the most noticeable effect, until some new things happened in the past 48 hours.
The dreams have been addressing some of my own fears, including some I didn’t even recognise I had, and most especially the topic of power – I’ve had dreams that relived in a short (and amplified) way moments when I experienced what it was like to be under someone else’s power, one of the most striking was when I lost this job I’d absolutely loved because it happened to be marginally more cost-effective for someone I’d never met to let me go – I’m not seeing this in a moralistic way, but I think it’s helping me to understand the nature of power, by looking at it from both perspectives.
On top of that, I’ve had the healing in my back that began 8th Feb continue apace (blocked energy there leading to physical cries for attention) and I feel so fucking energised and literally on top of the world.
My interpretation of this is that my upbringing, which included a lot of “love and light” concepts, was limiting and damping down the “darker” half I needed to liberate in order to grow fully, and that a lot of the stuff with my spine was related to this.
And, I don’t think the time will come when I don’t feel this “Ahrimanic” current, so my original intention to post about this once it was “over” isn’t going to happen.
Other stuff:
Since then, I’ve been able to communicate far more clearly with demonic entities, Belial for example made himself known in a dream throwing kind of ick demons (nasty lower entities of disease and nastiness) at me, and I batted those off, then I’ve started a conversation with him in waking evocation beginning on Monday this week, and that’s proving interesting – I’ll post more on that when there’s something I can share.
This morning I was mulling over the astral work I did (mentioned in Asuly’s thread) and I kept hearing a name, Mepsitahl, repeating over and over, like when you get a song stuck in your mind.
This is how entities usually contact me when I’m awake, and so I called on her (she’s presenting as female) and she’s suggested being my kind of mentor/guide on something Belial and the godforms I work with have also proposed as the next stage - to be working on an ongoing basis with one demonic, and one angelic, “class” of entity at once.
She also told me some other stuff that I’ll post later if I can, and she’s going to be present for me during the times when I do occult work to point stuff out, advise and generally help me progress (thanks Ma’am!).
I’ve never worked with her before and had never directly communicated with Belial (mainly because I never saw any reason to) until he showed up in that dream, making REALLY certain that I caught his name, and Mepsitahl is also an entity I never worked with before, so I attribute this directly to Ahriman and the stuff I’m doing now having an effect on my energy and potential.
Mepsitahl appears to me clairvoyantly as a slim darkish female, she has a distinct voice and manner, and Belial is appearing as this huge guy, I see literal horns, and he’s kind of sand/brass coloured.
In light of this, it was weird logging in today and seeing the stuff the The Fool posted (here) about a load of other mages, all very different to me, being motivated to do almost exactly the same thing, working simultaneously with demonic and angelic forces… I’d have replied right on there but am honouring Orismen’s wish for that thread to wither, anyway, this is what I’m going to be doing for the next - well, however long.
I think this is going to boost my work with demonic entities, especially, through the roof, so I’m very juiced, very hyper, and very big thanks to Orismen whose tarot reading predicted exactly this! I feel whole in a way I haven’t ever felt before, didn’t even know I was missing, and like I finally have, somehow, acquired the rights, the “Keys” almost, to push my practice to the next level.
UPG & insights to date:
The “UPG” or whatever that I’ve had so far is that the force known as Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd etc., “the light” in the socially/morally-derived sense of that word, is like the clockwork laws that keep gravity working, that keeps things stable (like animals having young that are their own kind, plants growing towards the light etc.), i.e., it’s the “natural order” of things, and therefore very essential, but not necessarily superior, and ultimately capable of stagnation.
On the other hand, the force of Ahriman is “the serpent” - the enacting of conscious will-to-change upon those pre-existing clockwork things that tick nicely along, but which would ultimately grind down to nothingness, decay, the end of life as we know it.
THAT is why dead things - nail trimmings, corpses, decay and rot - are perfect hosts for Ahrimanic current - the Ohrmazd force in them has reached the end of its dominion there, it’s run its natural course and “burned out” leaving a physical vessel with no more obligations to perform, and the Ahrimanic force can inhabit them more fully.
I’m not making a case for this being “the truth” - it’s just what I’m seeing right now, and I’m not saying anyone else must think this or have this concept - it could be a “place-holder” idea while I work towards some other truth, I mean who knows? 
One thing that backs this up from my own work is that I like to use discarded envelopes, and other “cast off, purpose spent” bits of paper when I do written spells – and that’s precisely because they’ve used the purpose they were made for, and are now causally neutral – a phrase that possibly only make sense to me, but there’s a clear link between that and the insight regarding the use of dead material.
When I was reading some of the background lore on Ahriman, there are mentions that he was born when the original “Source” went to create Ohrmazd as the god of all things good, and Ohrmazd was created through love and (if I understood it correctly) healthy desire, but then at the last moment this highest-level being felt doubt, and that caused Ahriman to be conceived.
This is something I read after having the “clockwork versus serpent” UPG and it fits right alongside it, because if the Source doubted the ability to create something that was wholly good and perfect in its own right, then the necessity for acts of individuated will to act upon this creation, changing it, is more logical. But I’m no theologian or philosopher, so take that fwiw!
The “darkness” Legion-type multi-vocal entity, I asked it what its nature was, and it replied “Possibilities” – I don’t think I have a complete grasp on this yet, but it’s something to do with the clockwork force taking set routes, which precludes and limits other routes, other possibilities – and that this is neither wrong nor right, it’s just the way things are.
At risk of going a bit Star Trek, I sense that “reality” – which I conceptualise as “the spacetime perception” of which I’m a focal point – has multiple, probably infinite, focal points (individual aspects/personalities, etc.) which are all at the same time just aspects of the Source: however, contrary to some eastern RHP beliefs, I think there’s zero moral imperative to merge back with it (unless you want to, of course) and that this Source rejoices in the continuing complexity and growth of its “offshoots” and that, somehow, these “possibilities” in that darker current I’ve connected to, are just aspects that the clockwork mechanism prevents appearing.
(If you’re looking at this dualistically, that probably makes them really undesirable, but I believe the picture’s a lot more complex than that, and I also don’t think I have all the pieces of this part of the puzzle yet to draw a firm conclusion. And… there’s some other stuff on this I can’t really share, but I have good reason to think this channel isn’t actually a risk to me personally, or to reality as we know it.)
Last bit… for now
Finally, my research so far was initially online, then researching Zoroastrian concepts of demons from “The Bundahishn (“Creation”), or Knowledge from the Zand”, Ford’s Gates of Dozak (I don’t majorly love this book, but some of the concepts he mentions, like the hellish River of Tears, of the regrets of those who didn’t pursue power, chime so closely with the “darkness”/Legion current and my own beliefs regarding the LHP, that I’m not going to discount it yet), and most recently some of the academic books E.A. mentioned in the British Library, but so far I’ve not felt drawn to working with any of those entities, I just wanted to get some kind of grasp of the cultural context and so on.
Anyway great stuff - thanks so much E.A. for the new direction!
I got a hellgate in my back, demons popping by for a cuppa, and a new concept of reality (The Clockwork and The Serpent) that finally helps me tie in dualistic thinking with the stuff I’ve seen mooching round the astral planes and talking to pre-Abrahamic godforms, and encountering the Source in intense meditation – this is what I signed up hoping for!
Thanks Orismen for the reading as well, because that confirmed this specific stuff was my “next step” - I’d been kind of champing at the bit for a while there and you guys both opened the door to newness, and some really amazing experiences.
So… I’m really hyper right now, going to close this post here - any questions welcome, and I’ll post any stuff that comes up in future that I think might be of interest!
