The Chiefs of Hell

General Discussion
1

Someone asked me for this, so I decided to post it here for everyone.

From the Book of Oberon (AKA Book of Magic, Folger Library)

“Saint Cyprian, Friar Bacon, Friar Bungi, Friar Lumbard, and others say that Lucifer, Beelzebub, Sathanas, Minos, Asmodeus, Lamathan, Balberith, Balphegore, Baal, and Cerberus be chief rulers of hell, saving Tantavelarion, the emperor of hellish spirits.”

In List form –

Tantavelarion

Lucifer
Beelzebub
Sathanas
Minos
Asmodeus
Lamathan
Balberith
Balphegore
Baal
Cerberus

The only guy missing from this list is Astaroth, which brings your Chief count to 11. 11 Chiefs plus an Emperor puts you at 12, which makes since when you remember that the demons used to be considered to be associated with specific stars and constellations.

Sathanas is given as Sathanachi in the Key of Solomon and Satanachia in the True Grimoire.

Cerberus is Resbiroth in the KOS and Nebiros in TG. Similar variants occur with the others. (For example Minos is Minoson, etc)

My point is that before 1700 there were two interconnecting but distinct Hierarchies, one “Demonic” or “Infernal” and another of Air Spirits, with the Planetary Hierarchy above them all. These hierarchies are remarkably consistent until around the 18th and 19th centuries when lodge publications started changing them.

In my experience, the spirits omitted from more modern and heavily promoted grimoires like the Golden Dawn publications are the ones that freely give out mind-fuck big picture information you aren’t supposed to know, or give you more immediate access to certain kinds of power.

SO

The old-fashioned hierarchy went more or less like this—

Macrocosm
Source (The ALL, God, etc)
Planetary Spirits (Olympicks, Planetary angels and demons, etc)

Microcosm - Lesser Lights/Constellations–
Air Spirits (Intelligences, Angels, the 4 King hierarchy, fairies)
Hell Spirits (Fallen Angels, Unbalanced Intelligences, Elementals)

The last two are muddled and interconnected with kind of an “Everybody is everybody else” thing going on. There seem to be varying factions with different interests and agendas, but it’s not clear.

When I first met Satan he told me he permeated all spirits - he could grant access to all of them, but he had no control over anything human or living. The old books say he dwells in a “strange air” and has knowledge of all the spirits of the Air. When I spoke to Sustugriel (TG) he said that all of the spirits were aware that there was this higher awareness called Satan above and permeating them all, but that he SEEMED to be letting them live on their own, and did not appear to be controlling them, but even they weren’t sure. I got the feeling they were a little nervous about this, but it was more or less denied. And, of course, there has always been that old insistence that Satan was Emulating God - and aren’t we all aware of the Spirit of which we are an incarnation and of source above that, and aren’t we all equally uncertain whether or not we truly have free reign or are being subtly shaped and directed?

Anyway, it’s all very interesting but what’s MOST interesting is the way the same information occurs over and over in different spellings and phrasings.

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Interesting, I dont really work that system (a kind of hermetic demonology I guess) but I’m glad you do so I get to read the cliffs. What strikes me most about your post is that modern demonalatry is focused on demonic veneration and not satanic worship precisely because Satan is seen as a pervading force and not a singular unity.

I’d even try to connect one more dot and suggest that Satanism is really an umbrella term, evreyone having their own take and encounters with the spirit itself as opposed to say Jehovah or the god of abraham who usually manifests in a pretty standard way as can be seen by the personality similarties in the religions that venerate him under different prophets.

That makes it pretty much unanimous consensus in the various occult communities that Satan is primarily dysmorphus and mysterious.

Thats all theoretical of course and I’m not really attatched to its validity sentimentally speaking but a neat observation nonetheless.

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Satan is indeed an extremely mysterious entity. I think the only way to experience him is through a mask. That is, a specific aspect. I encounter him in his role as the Horned God, initiator of the witch cult.
I’ve also heard, from Them, that Satan is at the top of the hierarchy but doesn’t exercise any authority. Instead, Lucifer is the one who exercises a role as emperor of the infernal realms.

I have specific gnosis about what Satan ultimately is, which I can’t share, but I’d say our experiences are on the track.

4

[quote=“Euoi, post:3, topic:5612”]Satan is indeed an extremely mysterious entity. I think the only way to experience him is through a mask. That is, a specific aspect. I encounter him in his role as the Horned God, initiator of the witch cult.
I’ve also heard, from Them, that Satan is at the top of the hierarchy but doesn’t exercise any authority. Instead, Lucifer is the one who exercises a role as emperor of the infernal realms.

I have specific gnosis about what Satan ultimately is, which I can’t share, but I’d say our experiences are on the track.[/quote]

Well in my experience Satan is actually alot less powerful then many other demons, he’s a little guy. However, he does have a specific ability that could be used to command more powerful entities such as Lucifer. Does that make him the top of the infernal hierarchy? Personally he’s not the guy I would ask to do big stuff, he’s a little guy, but little guys also have their purposes and uses.

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I don’t know who’ve you been talking to, but that’s not Satan.

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Defectron, no disrespect but I have to agree that small isnt really a word I’d use to describe the Adversary. Maybe you where in contact with one of his subordinates, or perhaps he isnt in your court so to speak and thus minimizes his presence in your experience but in my UPG he is pretty significant so I’m a little bias.

To be completely transparent I veiw him as an ancient, cthonic, and mysterious force. I dont know what or who he is. He can be very silent. But he’s pulled through for me in major ways in the past and in my most recent evocation of him, I actually kind of bailed because a flash of light blinded me during the conjuration and the intense and forceful presence that filled the room was the definition of suffocating. I was invoking/evoking one of his baneful aspects at that point. At other times during the period in which I was a dedicated thiestic satanist he was capable of out purings of love that rivaled opiate highs, our UPG is in oppositon on this one and there is nothing wrong with that, but I gotta speak up for my patron when I can.

7

In my personal gnosis, Satan is non-God, the most immediate antithesis of God if you will, and the interaction btw him and God is the basis of thw manifested world.

If we consider God to be everything known, manifested and unmanifested, He is the good and evil, love and hate, above and below and so on, and even Satan. Satan would be non-God, which actually violates logic for God is both Satan and non-God for He is everything. Thus one is the other and vice-versa, and both are different aspects of the same thing.

The interaction btw them would be the basis of all manifestation, both conceptual and astro-material. From the unity of that esquisite being would come the duality God-Satan and their mid-point would the manifested triad, which would be the whole reality manifested in the conceptual level. By the interaction of the triad with the non-triad would come the 4, the materializing principle, formative and stabilizing. This all is just a game of push-and-pull of the First Principle, the Unity.

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I wouldn’t be so sure about that, under the cercumstances that I made contact with him it wouldve been difficult to fool me. I don’t always agree with EA, but one thing that I do agree with him on is that there’s a lot more powerful demons out there then Satan at least in the version of reality that I am observing, he seems like he’s about mid range compared to other demons in terms of raw power.

Of course given that I got a look at how the multiverse works , literally everything people imagine is real somewhere both on a physical and spiritual level, so its not inconceivable that if you expected Satan to be lord of the underworld you may have contacted a version of him from somewhere which met those expectations. I’ve had plenty of skepticism of the christian mythos, so that may be why I met the version of Satan I have. But that’s fine, if you know how to use a little guy the right way he can take down giants.

Defectron, no disrespect but I have to agree that small isnt really a word I'd use to describe the Adversary.

You don’t need to be big to be a worthy adversary, I met Yaweh, that guys a fucking monster, but to put things in perspective, if you look at the biblical story of david and Goliath who won that fight? Right? It was the little guy.

In any case “the adversary” isn’t what people think it is, it’s a title given to the intelligence that forces evolution through trial and error, you don’t need to be a big guy to sabotage someone. Little satan has been an extremely useful entity, I personally would not trade him for the giant dark lord that most people think he is.

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Spirits can manifest in many ways. It’s even more true for Satan. “Little” Satan is just a mask he wears for you.
He is, nonetheless, half the crown of the infernal emperor.

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Fair enough. It may interest you to know that in early Judeac thought there really was a “little satan” it was a noun meaning adersary. I’ve heard it put there was a class of angels called ha-satans “The satans” which served Jehovah. That could also be me taking a little artistic license with Mark Twain who put forward the same idea in “A mysterious stranger” which is well worth the read.

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[quote=“Cogitation, post:10, topic:5612”]

Defectron, no disrespect but I have to agree that small isnt really a word I’d use to describe the Adversary.

[qoute]You don’t need to be big to be a worthy adversary, I met Yaweh, that guys a fucking monster, but to put things in perspective, if you look at the biblical story of david and Goliath who won that fight? Right? It was the little guy.

In any case “the adversary” isn’t what people think it is, it’s a title given to the intelligence that forces evolution through trial and error, you don’t need to be a big guy to sabotage someone. Little satan has been an extremely useful entity, I personally would not trade him for the giant dark lord that most people think he is.[/quote]

Fair enough. It may interest you to know that in early Judeac thought there realy was a “little satan” it was a noun meaning adersary. I’ve heard it put there was a class of angels called ha-satans “The satans” which served Jehovah. That could also be me taking a little artistic license with Mark Twain who put forward the same idea in “A mysterious stranger” which is well worth the read.
[/quote]

Also the adversarial god of the philipine pantheon is Sitan, Sitan felt pretty different then Satan but serves a similar function.

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That reminds me so much of this experience I had when working with Azi Dahaka & Ahriman - I was travelling in very vivid (not lucid) dreams through many planes:

Also, this post by S.V.E.:

I don’t know if we’re talking about the same thing but I wanted to bring those up. Any thoughts?

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Eva, I could only offer that Satan and Ahriman are deffinetly connected if not spirtually, at least historically by Zorosastrian dualism of Ahriman/Ahura Mazda being directly inherited in Mainstream Christianity’s God/Satan dichtonomy. In that sense the bibical Satan is a recasted Ahriman. In the Bible Satan is of course described as the prince of the powers of the air, and associated with serpentine imagery, along with death and decay (being the usher of sin, or contrariness to the “clockwork” order of the creator in the universe.) So the potential associations are many and it wouldnt be far fetched to draw a link between the two.

They could almost certainly be said to belong to a similar current in some respects.

14

This must be some New grimoire?