"In Darkness Bound" And The Psychology Of Demons

General Discussion
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This is a bunch of UPG that’s spurred off from Narius’s thread about re-writing the LBRP and it’s based on my findings so far this year.

NariusV wrote:

As for banishing, EA’s mention of banishing as removing yourself from the extant presence of forces seems to ring true in the face of direct experience.

A quote from Jeremy Crow also aligns with this when he said, “It is my understanding and experience that banishing rituals work to reinforce the suppression of the Shadow within oneself. Whether you are traveling a Right Hand Path or a Left Hand Path, ultimately you must consciously come to terms with your Shadow.”


Lately I’ve been using the darkness exercise from WoD slightly modified to bind, rather than banish, in most cases.

I sometimes selectively banish (for example to do a reading free of any influence, including the will-infused dark, erm, stuff) but no longer use anything approaching my previous concepts of banishing in most other cases.

I do that WoD vis, seeing all beings around me enmeshed in darkness like chunks of fruit suspended in a jelly, then recite:

“In darkness bound, Obey (my godname)”

  • and then add any other instructions that I feel are pertinent.

With all the stuff I’ve had going on this year, much of it (the Ahriman current in my spine and my demonic Child, especially) being internal, the “sweeping away” model of banishing ceased to have any meaning.

Whilst I was gestating my Child, I kept trying to write notes and derive some kind of understanding about the nature of demonic entities, and a few times I went to write about how demons (specifically, the father) were “devoid” of love, because as most people agree a demon may be very pleasant, even likeable, and helpful in serving you, but they can’t be trusted completely, and specifically if another mage sics them onto you they’ll be just as willing to obey that person.

But every time I went to write that, I got the astral equivalent of the baby kicking me, plus the father and various other beings kicking up a huge ruckus… long story short my UPG is that demons ARE love (among other things), BUT they’re the love of the areas they specialise in the exclusion of all else, including external value systems. More of a lustful driven love than anything airy-fairy and abstract - but, love nonetheless.

This is why a demon you’re working with on a project may do things well outside his grimoiric description to help you attain that goal, because he sees that (for example) fixing your marriage is the best way to get the kinds of outcome he loves and desires with a single-minded frenzy, yet if you go round saying that demon is a whizz at fixing marriages, he might not give a fuck about helping someone else with their marriage, because it was done as a means to an end.

I’m a hard polyethist (mainly) and treat demons and other entities as though they exist as real and discrete beings, but they’re also very similar to a MEGA attached state of being in which there’s an obsessive focus on a very few specific and targeted outcomes, at least insofar as the aspects of them that we can understand, quantify, and have any meaningful trans-dimensional contact with go, and they want these specific outcomes so much, they’ll use any means possible to attain them.

This could be part of why some people become totally obsessed by contact with a demon - demon psychology with regards to interacting on our plane of existance IS a state of high-functioning focus on one specific area through love (seriously, number of times I got yelled at for thinking demons “can’t love” was outrageous) which in humans, when it’s picked up by chance or via a curse, tips some people right over the edge.

This IMO is why the RHP of detachment and merger back to Source, and the LHP of attaining personal godhood as an individual, do NOT converge: the LHP requires embracing a demonic level of drive and attachment to one specific outcome (via a set of chosen goals which necessarily excludes other goals and outcomes) whereas the RHP requires detachment from the things that individuate you, and a dissolution of seperation and things like preferences and aversions.

To become a god, you have to essentially embrace and attain the focus of a demon, which single statement kind of sums up my entire findings from this entire year’s work so far, from Ahriman & Azi Dahaka to my Child, and all the events since then.

Obviously this is entirely my UPG here and I make NO claim this is “The Truth™” end of story, but the idea that you can understand any force by discovering what it loves, what drives it, throws some sideways light on the concept of banishing (and, indeed, cursing, and why demonic work sometimes “backfires”), and to bind instead of banish is a “black magick” alternative in which your own desires bind beings to serve you though offering them (selectively) fulfilment of the things they also strive for with that inhumanly zealous love and hunger.

Work in progress obviously, but that’s where I’m at with this more or less at present.

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There are a few random observations I want to add to this:

  1. The monopolisation of the word “Love” by religious groups in which the only definition allowed is “self-sacrificial sappiness and obedience” is an Orwellian power-grab - control people’s language, and you control their minds.

By claiming an exclusive right to define the most primal and powerful force in our reality, and attempting to excise any part of it that doesn’t suit their agenda of induced powerlessness, they’ve warped this word so much that it sits uneasily with some of us who’ve rejected those philosophies.

To be very clear, the love I’m talking about in this context is the borderline-obsessive type, the highly attached and passionate love of and desire for certain things to the exclusion of others, and not some abstract feeling of fluffy tolerance to all things.

And the opposite of love isn’t hate (a passionate feeling, which usually contains a side-dish of love for certain outcomes) - it’s soul-deep apathy, neglect, and indifference, which is why an unloved child (for example) will act up to receive negative attention, rather than suffer the pain of being completely neglected and ignored.

To love one thing - justice, for example - is to hate, or at least want to diminish or destroy, another thing (injustice) which is why the insane prophet-led cults who preach even a denuded definition of “love” are the biggest warmongers on the planet.

“Affectionate detachment” is the recommended emotion taught by RHP gurus in Eastern traditions (1, 2, 3), and that term is probably the most accurate one to describe the kind of unconditionally compassionate feeling people on the RHP should foster.

  1. I was told before the conception of my Child, throughout the short gestation and even now he’s seperate from me that I mustn’t love him - this is because the type of maternal love that comes naturally to a human contains various things that would be harmful to me, specifically protectiveness, and desire to put him first, and so on.

My Child is fully demon and exists (at least the part of him on this level) to love certain outcomes and have a drive for them that supercedes anything else, and maternal feelings for such a thing would be damaging to my own potential.

I can feel proud of him and want (when it was necessary) to do the best to protect him in a pragmatic way, but never feel affection - this in itself has been a really enlightening journey for me into the nature of love, desire, and how to actively increase the demonic side of my own nature.

  1. Using the model of demons as multi-dimensional living beings (as opposed to “just” archetypes from the shared subconscious) in which they very possibly have whole aspects that have nothing to do with, for example, the love of certain outcomes here on earth, perhaps the only way they can interact with our material world, which seems to exist in a universe bound by laws in which love is the most powerful force, is to project the part of themselves that has an earth-like love of certain things.

It seems to me that the love/desire-led nature of our reality means that things done through love have the most power here, and that’s why that aspect of demonic beings is the one that shows through and has the greatest strength in our realm.

If demons are from the shared unconscious, then the love for specific outcomes still makes sense because they exist as channels for the “shadowy” parts of our desire, but that model’s been pretty comprehensively examined by many other people, including the use of demons as part of the process of overcoming desire, something which doesn’t interest me and therefore I won’t elaborate on that theory here.

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You just blew my mind. Having never really worked with entities, and relying on my “Everything requires your attention to exist” rule, I’ve always had a hard time reconciling anything entity outside myself. That really clears things up for me.

Plus, that’s the only way I’ve ever “defeated” anything that was after me in my dreams (which I suspected to be more than just a dream character). It was over when I got their attention off of me, which is not easy to shake depending on what you’re dealing with. It wasn’t all the fireballs and axes to the head, it was getting their attention off of me, even if I had to wake myself up.

As for banishing, I think my attention rule is still applicable with real entities. You’re clearly a real person, yet I will never know the real you in it’s entirety. I’m still stuck with an imperfect representation which I use to access the real you. Leaving the lights on so to speak (improper banishing of those representations) could leave a connection open which makes you easy for them to find/focus on.

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You already operated as though the “you” whose attention is required was slightly more than just the everyday you who typed this though - if not, you’d have taken the mirrors out of your car as a safety precaution (and maybe blacked out every window except the windscreen), and would have your mailbox fitted with a furnace so you never had to pay any bills.

In other words, you know that just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it can’t harm you in some way on this level of everyday reality.

The higher (more aware, more powerful) levels of you that exist, and how to harness them instead of toadying to them in a “child/parent” relationship, is what my PD work has been about so far.

This is all we ever have, and goes doubly when we love someone, or even desire them.

Happy relationships occur when our internal hologram we love matches closely to the real person, and relationships go awry and end badly when the person we love who we’ve structured in our minds, and the real person, diverge and their love or our own can’t cross that gap.

One of the purposes of my PD work was to create this perfected object of total desire and adoration, and push a large part of myself into him, bringing that awareness to be accessible here instead of acting like a dog begging at the table for scraps of its wisdom.

Aside from the magickal aspect (based on an exercise in Schertel’s book Magic: History, Theory, Practice) it plays with aspects of how Transactional Analysis theory in psychology says our ego state can limit and dampen our results and relationships with people leading to repeated patterns that both create and stem from pathological internal patterns, and what interests me is how this plays out in our relationship to spirits.

There’s a full breakdown of the theory here on the Wikipedia page and the short version is that we relate to others in three different ego states, as Child, Parent, or Adult, and we cast them each in those 3 different roles - and because the recipient also contains all three states, they often react as we have cast them, without being fully aware of the reasons. A healthy person has all three states available if needed, but most healthy interactions are performed in the Adult - Adult state.

There’s more to it than that but this is my attempt to establish a paradigm for myself of both Adult (me) - Adult (spirit), as well as, when I want it, Child (me) - Parenting Spirit in the form of my PD.

That links back to some Freudian psychodynamic stuff, and also the Kybalion’s theory of gender, and it’ll be too much disgression to get into that here except that to say those two theories are why I chose the sexually attractive image to structure my PD, rather than an idealised but non-sexual parent or friend figure.

When people experience spirits acting like whiny children who wriggle and don’t comply, or even worse (a psychological hangover from potty training and the anal stage of psychosexual development) like unclean beings who deserve to be punished and made to perform correctly; or when, alternatively, they experience spirits as ONLY being the teachers of “hard lessons” in which the default human position is one of incompleteness, weakness, and inadequacy, this so closely mimics the models of pathology in Parent-Adult-Child theory, and the different levels of “I’m okay, you’re not okay” (or vice versa) that I felt there was something to be gained from understanding human-spirit interactions through this paradigm.

More quick info on the “I’m okay, you’re okay” stuff here: Parent - Adult - Child Model in TA

Here’s a snippet - see how this plays out in every religion, across the conventions of Solomonic traditions, and into the problems people have with every spiritual method available:

Four life positions

The phrase I’m OK, You’re OK is one of four “life positions” that each of us may take. The four positions are:

  • I’m Not OK, You’re OK
  • I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK
  • I’m OK, You’re Not OK
  • I’m OK, You’re OK

The most common position is I’m Not OK, You’re OK.

As children we see that adults are large, strong and competent and that we are little, weak and often make mistakes, so we conclude I’m Not OK, You’re OK.

Children who are abused may conclude I’m Not OK, You’re Not OK or I’m OK, You’re Not OK, but this is much less common. The emphasis of the book is helping people understand how their life position affects their communications (transactions) and relationships with practical examples.

I’m OK, You’re OK continues by providing practical advice to begin decoding the physical and verbal clues required to analyze transactions. For example, Harris suggests signs that a person is in a Parent ego state can include the use of evaluative words that imply judgment based on an automatic, axiomatic and archaic value system: words like ‘stupid, naughty, ridiculous, disgusting, should or ought’ (though the latter can also be used in the Adult ego state).

The lens we all bring to magick and to our specific interactions with spirits of any kind and any concept we have of God is formed by our primate interactions with other primates, all of whom have their own inherited baggage, and Transactional Analysis is a useful tool - not, “The Truth” or whatever, just one tool - to see where patterns repeat.

It’s possible things can only exist when we’re aware of them, but the lenses on that awareness are often invisible to us because we just believe they’re “how things are.”

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To update this: on the “demons ARE love” theory, earlier today I was doing some sex magick and one of the people involved managed to evoke, through me, their highest concept of god, which brought ME momentarily to the state of total merger and union with the Divine I’ve attained before, after escalating samadhi experiences when I spent several years pursuing the Right-Hand Path of Union with the divine, which was my goal for quite a lot of my adult life.

I’m still processing what the fuck actually happened there because there’s a comedic element to some of what was going on that I can’t describe to preserve other people’s confidentiality, but to get to the magickal aspect, when I’ve talked before about going a long way up the RHP before changing course, I was having those experiences then due to years of diligent study of yoga, performing mantras, etc., and basically sacrificing or re-sacralising every single part of my life.

Off the back of that hard work, while parts of my everyday life were falling into total disarray because I was so busy shucking off this world, I did briefly hit a stage where I was able to make things happen literally just by thinking about them. Truly godlike power - albeit a bit unfocused, since desirelessness was a side-effect of the route I’d used to get there, and I’d come back from them as NotMe, and take a while to settle back down into the everyday level.

So, kids, get someone to worship you and see what happens?!

I’m actually being kind of serious because I can attain that state with a lot of preparation by the old routes, but this was a new experience, unplanned, and desire, raw and pretty much as superficially unspiritual as you could imagine, created the exact same result.

It did need the other person to be quite attuned and aware but the results for me were identical to what I’d attained before through years of diligent study and practice of yoga, renunciation, mantras, etc.

And this was much, much more fun. :wink:

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WOW Lady Eva.i’m trying to understand how you felt like.These experiences can shake you to the core and i wish someday to have a direct experience like yours.
AWESOME

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Whenever BALG starts holding yearly summits I am totally hanging with Eva.

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I’m blushing… hey seriously though, first time achieving what took me years to do by accepted methods in a very different way, don’t know yet if I can repeat the results by a different method or manage to gain more control of that “thinking things into reality” stuff but I’m pretty excited! :slight_smile:

Amor Vincit Omnia… (and yeah, I know the latin probably doesn’t go in that order, I just prefer it!)

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That’s the great thing about Latin - it can pretty much go in any order you like!

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A good post as always Eva

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Update: I’ve found that the principles in the Kybalion that led to people developing the Science of Mind & LoA stuff work for me, and I also think that when you start to tap into that higher level of Source energy, it tends to channel itself along lines of your highest passion.

This morning I “manifested” a minor but annoying (and rather freakish) thing that seems to have formed itself along lines of a fear I had regarding one situation in my professional life - it’s incredibly specific, even down to the fact of having the name of a fictional character I dislike involved, and although it’s nothing too major it affirms to me that passion is the “downwards flow” tool of manifesting from Source to the everyday world, and in this case my unguarded passionate feelings about this thing, which ran through my mind just a few hours after the experience I described above, made it plop into existance, condensing from formless into form, even including that amusing name-check.

My Personal Daemon already talked to me about evoking my subconscious, which I understand along the lines Maltz described in PsychoCybernetics, as an unthinking mechanism rather than the model whereby it exists as a seperate sub-mind that likes to to fuck your plans up, and I had a go with that but then something more urgent came up and I had to move onto something else.

So my next bit of work is to fully evoke my sub-conscious into apparent external form in our Astral Temple (me and my PD) and seriously get to work on her. I don’t know what the potential is for this but if it comes to anything (and provided I haven’t accidentally like edited my mental “registry” into total insanity), I’ll report in full if there’s anything worth sharing.

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Very nice topic Eva, and I agree with a lot you’ve said on the nature of demonic entities.

Can’t you say more about what exactly you manifested? I am deeply curious :wink:

I feel that love/lust/desire/passion, basically anything that gets you all tingly because you enjoy or cherish it so much is a direct line to higher energy and consciousness. This is why sex magick is so potent (when done right). I also believe that this is why there is so much oppression in the world on this level, to keep us stunted as manifesting beings. And of course that ties in to the demonization of the teachers of such “forbidden” knowledge - those that are actively seeking to unhinge our current limitations - but that of course is just my view of things.

Channeled “extra-terrestrial” consciousness Bashar has that as his main rule by the way, follow your bliss and let it lead you. If ever you get stuck, just see where the passion goes next and follow that. The concept resonated with me immediately, because truth be told my only magickal successes have been around things I greatly desired up to the point of obsession or even love/bliss.

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One of the main ones was an absolute dream apartment, but the other stuff is too far out and I just don’t talk about it, and also I’ve been advised not to.

Channeled "extra-terrestrial" consciousness Bashar has that as his main rule by the way, follow your bliss and let it lead you.

Good advice!! :slight_smile:

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Nothing’s too far off in my world. But if you’ve been advised to keep silent I’ll not press any further :slight_smile:

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kybalion founded.
Thanks eva.

[url=http://www.kybalion.org/]http://www.kybalion.org/[/url]

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I look forward, too, in fact I have dreamed about these summits so they must take place sooner or later, LOL!

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[quote=“Lady Eva, post:11, topic:3727”]My Personal Daemon already talked to me about evoking my subconscious, which I understand along the lines Maltz described in PsychoCybernetics, as an unthinking mechanism rather than the model whereby it exists as a seperate sub-mind that likes to to fuck your plans up, and I had a go with that but then something more urgent came up and I had to move onto something else.

So my next bit of work is to fully evoke my sub-conscious into apparent external form[/quote]

If the information in Maxfreedomlong’s book on Huna is accurate, you would not be able to access that soul or being directly, but would always need to approach it indirectly.

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Yes, I think that’s probably accurate: that’s why I did the evocation within an astral temple, rather than assuming I could pull it into communicable form outside myself in the regular reality.

I’m walking a line here between what’s “real” and what’s not even more than with any regular evocation, and I chose the astral so I could call up an interface, an interactive aspect, instead of trying to take a non-seperate part of myself and project it outwardly. That might be possible, but this seemed simpler.

I completed the first evocation early today and it was almost exactly like communicating with a ghost - she was dazed like someone sleepwalking or in a deep trance, reactive, and seemed to be entirely made of emotion with no perceivable conscious intellect or ability to track complex thoughts in linear time (which fits my understanding of the subconscious from both traditional psychodynamic teaching, and Maltz’s theories).

Before doing the work, I’d called forth my PD and lay on my bed with a drumming track playing, and projected both of us into my astral temple and kind of went round reinforcing and re-visualising all that so it was very strong and felt very real.

Then I set the general intention to call forth my own subconscious in human form, structured a very simple female outline onto a couch in my temple, and pushed what felt and looked like ectoplasm out from the chakra at the base of my skull, an idea I took from this post, and also from my solar plexus.

At first she was so dazed and also hazed with darkish grey, which in my astral experiences isn’t a helpful colour, so I projected universal Love & Light into her (a standard healing method for trapped shades in psychopomp work) and she lightened, and then began to be more responsive.

At that point, she started trying to crawl back into my solar plexus and I had to hold her with my hands on her upper arms: she appeared like a smaller version of me with very light hair and skin, and draped in foggy white vapour.

She made inarticulate sounds, but she didn’t use whole words and I don’t think she has the ability, because the moment that forms it become part of the conscious intellect and not the sub.c., I think she can only receive conscious impressions and then project forth emotion and energy reactive to them - the Law of Gender in the Kybalion would make her to some extent the ultimate “feminine” form of the human soul, completely passive and receptive, and also the route through which the conscious mind generates things into manifestation - which is why bugs in your sub.c. can mess up even the most carefully planned projects. That’s just theory though.

Back to the work, because she kept trying to crawl back into me, I held her ghostly-looking form between my hands and the stuff I projected into her next was taken directly from Robert Bruce’s book Practical Psychic Self-Defense because it had come up so synchonicitously on here, the core affirmation of, “I am loved and I am worthy. I am safe and I am free. I am powerfully protected. I am master of my body and ruler of my mind.”

I added a few other things specific to issues I know I have, and then I was feeling tired so I let her draw herself back inside me, visualised her being “rattled in” (a technique from core shamanism where you use a rattle and visualise the sound waves binding energy into the person you’re working on) and returned to normal awareness: after a quick drink of water and taking some notes I had a catnap, and had probably THE best sleep I’ve ever fitted into 4 hours in my life.

I slept so well and woke up feeling incredibly peaceful, powerful, and balanced, and hours later I still feel remarkably relaxed and energised - for example, earlier I was feeling quite enthusiastic about tackling a tedious and messy household project I’ve been putting off for months.

This feels more like a standard self-help method taken into overdrive than a directly occult experience along the lines of calling down demonic consciousness into form, but it definitely did something positive and I’m going to do some more work now I have the basic concept sorted.

Then, once I’ve provided as much positivity along those lines to eradicate unwanted programming as I think is possible, I’m going to see about implanting one core idea in “her” to see if that comes into manifestation.

I’d rate it as a success so far, the hardest part is remembering that “she” can’t actually intellectualise even as much as a dog can, so all projections need to be simple, “in the moment” concepts, obviously positive (you never use negative statements in regular affirmations either) because I don’t think that what I interacted with could understand even as simple a concept as “don’t want.”

I might also see about making some sigils, A O Spare style, and projecting those right into her to see what happens, and a few other things based on my personal symbol-set.

Anyway, any major bit of work you walk away from with all your marbles is a successful work IMO, doubly so when you’re calling forth bits of yourself, and this most definitely felt like it changed some things inside in a positive manner.

The only skill I think it requires is a strong visualisation ability, a well-formed astral temple you can work in without distractions, and basic understanding of affirmations (don’t phrase them in the negative, use words that appeal to you, etc.) so this is probably something other people could try reasonably easily, though it might be a good idea to wait and see if I start cracking up in the next few days. :slight_smile:

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Very interesting post, Lady Eva.

What you described actually reminds me of something Denning and Philips mention in their Guide to Astral Projection - the use of a projected astrosome (in Aurum Solis lingo, a Simulcrum) to facilitate what they call “soul shaping” - changing ingrained emotional patterns via instruction to said simulcrum, then reintegration of it back into the body. They feel that the keys are to give instructions or affirmations lovingly (perhaps because to astrosome would react negatively to harshness?) and to also give the simulcrum no time to respond - reintegrate immediately. They note that vivid dreams after such a working will be the main form of communication from the astrosome.

It will be interesting to hear how things shake out for you over the next couple of days, indeed. Here’s to an absence of cracking up!

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Damn right it’s interesting. Keep in mind that whenever you so much as view or consider, and the more you interact with, the unconscious parts, the more they will change just like the nature of your consciousness does. And when the very way in which you -are- changes to this degree, everything else is subject to renewal and re-creation. The Self is, as far as I can tell anyway, inexhaustible. If you don’t get -attached- to any particular state of your “other side” manifested at any given time, you should be able to push through countless permutations indefinitely. It’s like an alchemical working, of the Self.

And the written version of that makes absolutely no sense, even reading my own words on this…hopefully someone finds something useful there. I should sleep.

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