So we have run into a situation on a few threads lately where words like light, dark, Void, Source, All, fail to meet the needs of the magicians attempting to describe a thing.
We also often have people who are unhappy using the word demon to describe beings of godlike power who act as teachers, mentors, and more, since it has so much baggage, and fills a gap in the everyday language (inner demons, to demonise) that doesn’t reflect the way we tend to experience working with these spirits (spirits is a word I’ve tended to use, but it’s a bit too vague and woo-woo for my liking).
Proposal:
Chuck into this thread words you think could be better defined, possibly by the creation of new words, proposals for better words (existing or created) and any notes, ideas, and general thoughts on this matter.
Let’s get as many ideas as possible and then see if we can collectively come up with a stronger and more suitable lexicon for the various states, beings, locations etc., that we encounter in magick?
An ambitious proposal is to contact some demons and ask them what terms, if any, they’d prefer? I’m too busy to do this right now but putting it here fwiw .
I’ve just been calling them all Beings and Entities due to running into the same issue of finding it kind of religion-based to call them Angels and Demons etc.
I also agree with some posters from the other thread that Light has it’s purposes and isn’t the full-on new absolute big-unwanted. The false Light of indoctrinating religion, karmic threats, and virtue-signalling goody-goody hypocrites is “bad”, annoying even, but light itself might need to be separated from humanity’s “meaning” of it.
I, for one, am totally down to try to eff the ineffable with some lively linguistics!
A few scattered thoughts:
The words “spirit” and “soul” in the sense of the spiritual part of a human that survives death have always bothered me in that their definitions vary so much between people and are so vague regardless that they’ve effectively become meaningless. Are they synonymous with mind and personality? How about consciousness, psyche or ego? Nobody knows! (Or at least, nobody can agree.)
When it comes to spirits, “entity” is a good catch-all that I like better than spirit, ghost or demon as it doesn’t presuppose any kind of metaphysical status or moral inclination on the part of the being.
And as far as the Void, Source, the All, etc… the Tao te Ching says it best IMO:
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.
Trying to pin down something as fundamental as the Source of all reality into a mere mouth-noise is folly at best, and at worst is the sort of stuff that starts religious wars.
I suggest the words “Bro” or “Brah” to be the newly defined word that we think of as Goetic entities, demons or devils. Furthermore, when one even utters one of those words, perhaps instantanous short term full posession could occur. Imagine the new fun at a fraternity party anywhere and everywhere.
