On The Unethicality of Demons

Spirits, Evocation & Possession
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Disclaimer: This post is to be read as an opinion, and how i see things. Everyone has a different experience, im sharing mine. Please try to be respectful to my experience as i will try to be to yours. Some of this will sound like its coming from a christian, but let it be known i am infact a dedicated black magician.

As ive traversed the online community of witchcraft, paganism, demonolatry and the sorts ive came across alot of places where theres a certain type of people that claim that ars goetic spirits “care” about humanity at large, and that they wont do “unethical” things or support “unethical” forms of magick.

This normally comes from a place of religious trauma. A certain person has a bad past with the christian god and so lumps angels and yahweh and the likes into one bad bag and demons become the good beings that teach you good things and help u to do good in your life. Its quite a backwards way of thinking, in my honest opinion.

Demons have been known across many cultures (even prechristian cultures) to be unethical at best and malevolent at worst. Take for example Glasya Labolas the Ars Goetic demon of manslaughter, he does not mind lumping in innocent people with the guilty to get the guilty killed (unless otherwise specified).

In alot of places in the online witchcraft community free will seems to be such a tender and sacred thing yet those same people work with Prince Sitri who doesnt mind manipulating peoples free will to get them to have sex with you, Duchess Gremory who doesnt mind manipulating peoples heart strings to get them to love you, Duchess Bune who doesnt mind manipulating events so that you benefit from business (maybe at the loss of someone elses business), and the list goes on.

Its an inexcapable fact, atleast in my experience, that demons (no matter how u dress them up and how many mental hoops you jump through) are willing to do unethical things, things that if a human were to do them we’d ostracize them for and throw them in jail for life or worse.

Angels on the other hand, although some of them have destructive or adversarial roles, do not manipulate a persons true will (their authentic will) to get you what you want at the expense of the target. For example, in matters of love, angels will be willing to grow what is there already but not influence them to love you where there was no love before.

Anyway, this being said, thanks for listening to my ted talk and as always - be your most dangerous, unethical, malevolent and vile authentic selves! Hail.

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Very nicely put, I totally agree. I think our tendency to anthropomorphise is part of it.

While communities like these and also the more love and light, new agey communities are filled with religious trauma. I think wanting to paint demons or spirits/ gods in general as the good guys is also in part a need to make us feel like the good guys as well? I mean.. it even sends shockwaves through scientific communities when we find out that perceived intelligent animals such as primates or sea mammals can do terrible stuff for abominable reasons.

Now, I don’t work with spirits considered angels quite as much so I don’t speak from a place of much experience. However, I would think they also won’t care that much about human morals and ethics as well. That is a very human concept. Crudely said it’s the code of conduct informed by both experience and our primal nature so we can live relatively peacefully in large, complex communities. Thinking these ageless beings that don’t even fully exist on the material plane care as much as we would about human morals or even a single human life is very short sighted in my opinion. Especially if you take reincarnation in account as well.

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Any spirit

is capable of doing what your saying

plenty of gods and godesses have been painted less then flatteringly in myth

and angels aswell can cause massive damage through baneful magick.

so while what you say is true, these spirits care about the goal in question not the ethics of it.

ethics is a human concept, it has no value or direct effect on spiritual beings(regardless of the pantheon in question)

in my experience while some spirits can definetly manipulate, I think they tend to work with the path of least resistance. So lets say if you get Prince Sitris help too get laid more likely then not the partners you get for this, will more likely then not be someone who already find you attractive or desirable in some kind of way.

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The question is though - did we develop our ethics and morality by ourselves or was it divinely inspired? The story of Moses getting the ten commandments from the Abrahamic God would fit in clearly with what I am saying here.

Of course there are people on here who believe that Humans created absolutely everything and needed no help on the way. Yet I see these exact same people working with the spirits for help and guidance so it makes me wonder….

If I am to be honest, I would rather say that on the role of Human development, there has been both positive and negative spiritual elements that have influenced our evolution. I think we most likely had help along the way although these days we are doing alot of things ourselves.

Thats just my take anyway.

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People dont like when I question the morals of demons and deities like Santa Muerte when she obviously doesn’t destroy criminals and cartel members who worship her. But it’s true. You really think corrupt politicians or leaders in the world don’t also work with these qliphothic spirits?

It makes me wonder if morality is a thing at at, as long as humans provide more loyalty to them.

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People, sadly, want to cling so closely to their own idea that higher beings must be better than us cuz they are more “evolved” when its just not entirely true. Evolution isnt a ladder, its an outward spiral and is definitely never linear. The spirits we interact with are as much capable of the same atrocities humans commit as we are, if not more so.

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Yes, i get that idea actually. I guess its a part of me thats been destroyed during my qliphothic initiations, the desire to be “good” or the need to be “good”. Wanting to be seen as good is basically masturbation for the ego.

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Maybe acknowledging a distinction between morality and ethics would be worthwhile here?

Ethics are totalising and abstract systems governing moral behaviour, but by neccessity are culturally mediated, also mediated through power. Most ethics that we know of in history of humanity were born out of the need for power to govern it’s subjects (or rather, make them more governable).

Morality is immanent and ephemeral. It is decided by individual beings in unique situations, with no good or bad answers, except for the one you give yourself - are you acting in accordance with your Higher Self, or at least with your inner conscience (some call it the Moral Self) as of that moment? Both of these exist a priori to experience.

This way we can reach a simple conclusion - ethics are mostly a way of outsourcing moral thinking externally, either by our own choice, or by being subjugated.

As best I understand astral beings don’t have ethics, each just has their own morality.

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There’s a lot of scientific material on things like ethics and moral.behavior among other primates. I doubt chimps and bonobos live by the commandments of their Great Alpha :smiley:

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I mean there are a couple of spirits in the Goetia that are said to teach ethics like President Buer and President Foras

So some spirits definitely do have a certain sense of connection with these topics. But even assuming that someone works with them they might not experience that aspect of them.

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I agree that a lot of this come from religious trauma. I think a lot of it also comes from the human fear of something bigger and more powerful than ourselves, something that could easily hurt us.

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This is true, however teaching ethics and keeping ethics are 2 very different things.

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The demons teach Ethics in the academic sense, which is the philosophical study of moral phenomena so it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the actual ethics or morality of the demons themselves. Back when the grimoires were written, Ethics was considered an essential part of a good education and a lot of the demons of the Goetia are said to teach subjects you would find in a college course these days like philosophy, statistics, and Socratic debate, along with mathematics, astronomy and chemistry and physics.

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Yeah I know that, point is that if someone wants to learn more about ethics then there are spirits who can do it.

I don’t really care much about ethics as philosophy isn’t a part of my practice atleast not in any direct sense, but of course each practitioner has different goals and ambitions.