History of the Goetia and modern accounts of Goetic experience

[Lux_Tenebris]

Here’s what I got from King Paimon directly (I work with Him a lot):

@Lux_Tenebris

Equating spirits/ deities:

You may find it convenient to draw parallels between a spirit and a deity from another pantheon, for instance. Do not make the mistake of thinking they are the exact same entity. They are not. You can find relations and correspondences that will help you understand aspects of your work, the spirits and yourself. But you are not correct in assuming that one spirit is the exact same as another. Different names alone have different energetic signatures, let alone the different cultural currents. We may come from the same source, like a ray of light that is fragmented into many different colors by a prism. But each ray is seperate, with its own attributes, its own identity. [He has told me this before and wanted me to repeat it in this thread] Deities have changed, have become syncretized or demonized over time and in various forms, but each new facet that has been established over a certain period of time is in and of itself an individual spirit and needs to be respected as such, even if they do originate as another. There is a vast intelligence behind that which you call spirit world, of which your mind is not the originator, but receptor and active participator.

I think it’s pretty interesting, and at the time I asked Him I didn’t really have any opinion one way or another, just a faint inkling that the truth, as always, lies in the middle between “they’re not older gods” and “they’re all pagan gods mislabeled as demons”. The demon label, meaning “evil spirit”, is most definitely falsely attributed. They’re not all necessarily super friendly to humans, either. I think some (imo most of them, but I’m not here for a debate) have been derived from pagan origins, but may have been built upon so to speak (just as deities have been conflated into one that used to be seperate, creating a new deity that is, and yet is not, what it was before). I can completely accept the notion that these spirits are powerful enough as they are and needn’t be forced into the God category when that’s not what they are. But, imo anyway, just because we can’t find the links to pagan origins doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Just like saying spirit X is pagan god X doesn’t make it so either, and I do believe that any serious practicioner should always multiple-check their own bias and not get carried away with notions based on superficial parallels. Having said that, we’re talking about archetypes here that have been anthropomorphized to a degree, given various differing attributes depending on the culture. Each culture has their version of a sun god/dess, moon deities etc, which doesn’t mean that the Sumerian sun deity is the same as the Egyptian, for instance, but that they are different versions of the same archetype, each version being their own entity.

Another thing that’s important afaic is the fact that the Christian version of Lucifer, for example, that the Goetia talks about, is not the same as the pagan version of Lucifer (meaning the pagan god Phosphorus), who - correct me if I’m wrong - has nothing to do with Hell as it is described within the Abrahamic view. Then we’d be talking about two versions of the same spirit in this case. What happens - this is strictly theoretical speculation here - if, say, the “demonized” version of the pagan Lucifer began to take on the attributes of the “Lord of Hell” label put on Him by the Christians simply because so many people refer to Him as such and are no longer worshipping the pagan god? Does that mean that another Lucifer emerges from this “mix”? I’m not voicing an opinion here, it’s just a thought. It’s very interesting how the Goetia seems to come up with these spirits out of nowhere save from a few that can be identified with certainty. This does give rise to suspicions about their origin, which is why I can see where someone is coming from when they deny prior origins.

Edit to add: After writing this, I stumbled upon this image, which I think is so fitting to this theme:

Layers within layers within layers… On a side note, sometimes I get the feeling that the spirits get a kick out of gradually giving us glimpses of themselves, but never the whole picture.