De-Colonizing Spiritual Practice Through Friendly Demonic Conjuration
The Colonization Roots of Western Demonology
A number of years ago when I wrote for entertainment outlets mostly centered around comics, I met a fellow writer through one of the Slack-held groups. She turned out one of the first exposures I ever had to the metaphysical as an accepted part of reality. As a person originally born in the Philippines with psychic abilities, she told me stories of her experiences, such as when she had said abilities removed by a duende after watching him raise the spirit of a dead girl she knew. My friend was Christian and she told me she learned about demons and their very real natures through Christian college courses.
"Is there no way that demons could be good at all?" I had asked.
She was firm on this point: "No! Absolutely not, never."
It saddens me now to look back because not only is that viewpoint non-compatible with several other Eastern cultures' conceptions of demons or demon-adjacent spirits, it's directly from European Christian colonization. If the same attitude was applied to human beings in another conversation, I believe she would have seen the connection of how it needlessly inflicts harm.
As I grew into my own paganism years after our friendship, it offered me opportunities to expand relationally and to clarify as well as become more aligned with my own values. Such values contain this fact: no religion that calls redemption or restoration impossible is a religion that promotes good. As much as Christianity forcefully claims that "good" and "evil" is a binary of which it is ultimately the only "good"—and I want to allow the fact that there are many ways of practicing Christianity, not all of them as punitive or authoritarian as others—the blood and bodies it has piled behind it throughout history, including many of my fellow Jews, will always have me question that assertion.
But my past friend's warnings, as well as the dangerous reputation of goetia, had such an effect on me that I swore for the last 5 years that I would never approach demons. Why do it if they were so risky, I reasoned. Apparently, like djinn, they may be more adjacent to humans than other beings like angels and deities, so may as well go to the higher ups where the picture is larger and the motivations are less self-serving.
Well, there's a few issues with that reasoning that are as historically in question as whatever my friend learned in her courses. The first being that our Christian-influenced conceptions on what demons are is two-dimensional and belongs from the notion that anything that is not of G-d belongs to the Devil, who is assumed evil. Thus, any spirit who is in service like an angel might be to G-d, but is not an angel must be a demon and therefore of the Devil and therefore evil. We ultimately see this binary thinking applied to human beings as well, such as if you are not male (good), you must be female (evil). If you are not white (good), you must be black (evil, hence why culturally conscious modern magical practitioners do not use the term "black magic" to refer to baneful or aggressive magic).
Meanwhile in pre-Christian history, Mesopotamia, the site of first known human civilization and the birthplace of some of my ancestors, had its own now largely lost demonology system. Of what has survived, we find a bit more nuance, such as demons' ability to be helpful to humanity. There is, for instance, Pazuzu who has his harsher aspects, but also had his "babysitting" work (as my friend Esme calls it) against Lamashtu the baby-killing demon. At the same time, deities usually did wonderful things for humanity, but they could also do terrible things. In fact, they often did as part of their regular councils where they would decide the course of future events in the world. What differentiated deities and demons in the Mesopotamian point of view was that deities were more powerful than demons and for that reason, as well as basically playing heads of city-states, they needed temples and related ceremonial rites to appease them.
However, in goetic grimoires there are presuppositions of what a demon is instead of these cultural and larger religious distinctions. Usually, this is because grimoires are surviving books originally written by often devout Christians living in centuries past. These texts were meant for personal use or distribution to other people assumed to believe the same as them. So the names and descriptions of so-called demons contained within grimoires were sometimes, in fact, not originally considered demons.
For example, take Beezelbub, one of the three chiefs of the 18th century Grimoirium Verum (GV). According to Professor Justin Sledge among many others, he's not merely a demon who oversees legions and grants you invisibility upon asked. He's fucking Ba'al Hadad, who was so widely worshipped throughout the Near East and considered so incredibly powerful in ancient times that his contest with Yahweh is recorded in I Kings of the Hebrew Bible. When the earliest Jews needed to make statements distinguishing themselves from their community's previous Levantine polytheist worship, they had to go after Ba'al specifically to justify their own deity's superiority. The name Beezelbub, as Dr. Sledge states in the linked video, is like the name Ashtoreth* (later in the GV, Astaroth) a form of wordplay to denigrate the deities. Christianity's demonization of these pagan deities is a continuation of this denigration.
So as a socially conscious and relationship-based spiritual practitioner, the main question becomes one of practicality: how do you establish relationships with demonized spirits in a way that is compassionate?
Beginning a "Restorative Demonology" Journey
From this point, I am going to refer to demonized spirits as "daimons," the neutral Greek word for "spirit," because it feels respectful while also continuing to highlight how neutral language, concepts, and beings are often twisted in English to mean somethings nefarious. Unlike most practitioners who have worked with daimons, I did not start with grimoires and conjurations. Instead, I explored my way into establishing devotional relationships with the three chiefs of the GV.
Broadly, during communications with the three chiefs, things can get very cosmological, which is great until your limited ability to comprehend as a human makes the experience more frustrating than fulfilling. So to anchor myself back to reasonable ground, I often use two questions Jason Miller advises that readers of his books ask about information conveyed by spirits: "Is it actionable?" and "Is it useful?"
To ensure I continue to conduct myself with compassion, I also regularly implement two additional questions from what I have learned in my graduate program for social services, "Is what I am experiencing right now relating to safety or comfort?" as well as "What assumptions am I making and where are they coming from?" The first question suggests that it is okay and even welcome to feel discomfort, that it is not the equivalent to being threatened, that you can process it usefully, and that you can choose to set a boundary or make a request about it. The second question acknowledges that if you are experiencing or intuiting something unsafe, that's valid. However, be mindful if you are responding to something like that or if you're reacting based off stories and ideas about daimons you previously may have picked up from sources based in unquestioned colonialism.
Again, I did not intentionally choose to start this process with devotion (although I have always been a devotional-based practitioner, so it's not surprising). What catalyzed it was reading Miller's newest book Consorting with Spirits sometime after it was originally released and getting to his invocation for the Devil. It occurred to me some point around that time that I had an ongoing pattern of fascination with the Devil throughout my life despite not being Christian, which I had been told growing up were the only people who believed in him.**
Apparently, simply having this invocation on hand and ruminating over whether I should use it for awhile was enough to get Lucifer's attention. One night while I was falling asleep, he poked himself into my hypnagogic state and asked why I hadn't called to him yet. That was extremely startling, but also flattering to a spiritual worker of several years who had never been picked quite like that before. Plus, one of my closest friends had a relationship with him when we met and she's still quite intact so between that example and not having years of religious baggage to unpack, I suppose I had something of a shortcut toward deciding to make my own opinions about him.
I called him using the invocation, he arrived promptly. The only thing that happened between us despite him clearly wanting more is that I asked for his protection and he granted it. In retrospect, this was a fundamental move on my part because Lucifer later prompted me to read Jake Stratton-Kent's True Grimoire, which is an academic translation, compilation, and research book of the several GV manuscripts. In it, Stratton-Kent states that that very protection from the chiefs allows you to move forward with other daimons with much more assured safety.
Not long after completing my read of True Grimoire and having my first comment to Lucifer be, "your friends seem nice!" it was deemed that I should meet said friends. Astaroth, which the GV notes is "kin" of Lucifer—I'm told twin, some other friends of mine who have also used the GV have been told "mother and son"—showed up suddenly outside of ritual to help me with something. In my journal that night, I noted that she balances Lucifer extremely well, representing the community care element of an issue whereas he will represent the individual self-interest.
I first meet Ba'al through conversation with Lucifer that led to prayer. Basically, I said, "I don't know how to call to him other than what I read in the Bible." and Lucifer said, "so do that." and I closed my eyes and chanted "O Ba'al hear me!" until he presented himself, which I experience as a hard sensation on the back of my skull. As Stratton-Kent writes of him as Beezelbub, Ba'al is less forgiving of mistakes during the course of conjuration. I also at first believed he disliked me. I have since presented him with offerings (he likes apples, earthy and smoky foods, and found lapsang souchong tea interesting) and have come to the conclusion that, well, he was originally a storm deity so his countenance is appropriately stormy. Lucifer with his defiance can be similarly intimidating at times. Having strong personalities doesn't mean they're cruel beings!
Making Formal Conjurations Friendly
Now that we know that the three chiefs can be easily called outside of formal conjurations, why do them? This is a fair question, especially when we also know that some goetic tactics of conjuration are contextually close to the types of violence feudal lords would use against serfs.
It was my idea to perform a formal conjuration of Astaroth because I wanted something to officiate my relationship with her, the same way that the Devil invocation and giving over of myself to Lucifer did with him. However, other practitioners who have had experiences with daimons have told me that the daimons asked them perform conjurations, to various degrees of comfort on the part of the humans. JSK also mentions at the end of True Grimoire that Astaroth once conjured him. This suggests that the conjuration rite creates an important exchange of links between yourself and the answering spirit that is often necessary for any magical collaborations between the two parties to move forward.
Fortunately, in Consorting with Spirits, Miller has an entire chapter on "friendly conjuration" and as it so happens the rite he provides is centered on calling Astaroth. I basically conjured her exactly as as he laid out with my oft-used athame in replacement for a wand because I was told by Lucifer it was more important that I did it rather than spend more time collecting all the very specific instruments listed in the GV. I also provided an offering of beer. I performed the conjuration, she arrived swiftly (I don't know how to describe how I feel her other than she's in front of me and lighter in weight than the other two chiefs), we said "hello again", and wrapped up with nary a hitch.
I maybe would have been satisfied with just that one time, or at least too nervous to try with another unfamiliar daimon. But Ba'al has commented that I have humorously large goals for my work with the three of them. Plus, it was important to both Lucifer and Astaroth (probably because it's important to me and my spiritual growth) that I conjure some of their... employees? ("Underlings" and "lessers" seem rude and I am still trying to figure out how to be more non-hierarchical at least in language while I am told the smaller GV spirits are indeed in service of the more powerful entities.) So now it was time to actually conjure someone whom I never before talked to.
The first step was to choose whom I wanted to call and I have since found out most of my friends who have done goetic work either go off of vibes or follow recommendations from peers. This makes sense because if you read all 72 descriptions of the spirits in the Lesser Key of Solomon, it sounds like all of them do the same five things when that certainly can't be the case. The GV has the benefit of its descriptions being more distinct from one another, at least. I'm trying to be more superstitiously vague as of late about my magical work lest things I want dissipate upon my speech, but suffice to say I was deciding between Guland for some medical needs and Musisin for coping with some exterior pressures caused by current events and ultimately timing led me to picking the latter.
Musisin to my knowledge is unique the GV as they do not appear in any of the books in the Lesser Key of Solomon. Like most other daimons listed in grimoires, the description of them from True Grimoire is fairly minimal: "Musisin, also called Resochin or Roschim, has power over great lords. He teaches all that happens in Republics and the affairs of allies. Also said: his powers are over the aristocracy and he reveals affairs of State. He can also remove the means to such knowledge."
Astaroth during one of our conversations leading up to the second conjuration gave me some general guidance. Basically it was, "Don't use what the books say, they're unkind to us." "The spirits are going to expect you to be mean, so don't be surprised by any reactions you receive." and "You can offer bread, but consider bringing something nicer like wine." If you're thinking what I'm thinking, which is that's really sad because pretty much every other type of spirit gets those things by default, then congrats reader, you're probably a half decent person.
Tailoring the Conjurations to Your Relationships
Stratton-Kent in True Grimoire lists all non-chief and non-deputy daimons as under Duke Syrach. To be honest with you, I was not clear who Duke Syrach is or how to call him after reading the portions of the book several times and the three chiefs kind of shrugged and said they'd all be willing to be present if I called them. So because I had asked Astaroth if I could conjure her for her supportive presence in the rite and because "Honorius says of [her] that [s]he giveth favour of kings and lords," which relates to Musisin's description, I ditched Duke Syrach entirely. Sorry, dude, maybe I'll catch you later.
Using Miller's conjuration again—specifically with the Satanic language he provides as an alternative to Abrahamic G-d language—I first conjured the four goetic kings because Astaroth told me to retain that portion of the rite. I then conjured her, walking around the circle three times, then her deputies Sagatana and Nebiros together, and then finally Musisin all with seals inked with sharpie on gold paper. In retrospect, I would have only walked around the circle once or as long as it took to complete the calls because both Astaroth and Musisin became present upon only one lap. I did not feel anything from the four kings, which didn't happen the first time I conjured Astaroth but Miller considers normal, nor Astaroth's deputies, which I did not expect. When I asked the next day, I was told the deputies should be called regardless. Acknowledging that I have (but not always had) unusually strong spirit communication skills, take that as a note that just because you don't feel anything strongly nor have full conversations while doing these conjurations doesn't mean that the spirits aren't present.
So Musisin has appeared. I have brought him a bottle of wine called "Bread & Butter" because I thought it was a cool callback to the writer of the GV saying to give some of the daimons pieces of bread. Alas, I thought the bottle was a screwcap and it was not and I did not bring a bottle opener. I apologize profusely and instead pour into the glass some green grape Japanese soju I had already taken one or two sips of. I do not recommend this as it is very embarrassing, unhygienic, and probably provided a stronger than desired link to me, but Musisin did seem pleased with it. As part of my introduction, including which I identified myself as "of Lucifer" and "of Astaroth," I gave them not one, but several names I use. This last part turns out to be an error as Lucifer later tells me it is what lead to Musisin looking deep into my soul and deadnaming me. So if you're an incredibly fluid person like I am, have a firm idea of which name you want the daimons to know you by because apparently they are using it. Although this does lead to the funny idea that next time I conjure Musisin and correct them on which name to use that I should ask them to teach the aristocracy about gender.
Anyway, I get verbal confirmation from Musisin that they can complete my specific ask, which is pretty cool and it's like the only full sentence I remember hearing from them other than when I admit a related but more petty idea and they laugh. Well, they can join Ba'al's Laughing at Feebz club, I guess. I also look into the black mirror I use and doing that during these rites always glitches out my mind-body connection from overstimulation, but for one micro second they kind of look like a horse. I close out the rite and give everyone the license to depart, putting emphasis on the point that they experience peace. I finish by setting Musisin's seal next to Astaroth's shrine, placing the soju by it, and then getting another glass to pour a libation of the originally intended wine. That last part probably wasn't necessary, but I did promise during my apologies that I would give it later and it doesn't hurt to be extra nice.
Next steps for me are to conjure someone from the Key of Lesser Solomon. I have heard more of a variation of anecdotes from fellow spirit workers involving those sets of daimons, which are fascinating. Apparently Asmoday/Asmodeus sometimes appears outside of conjurations to catfish unwitting Luciferians into thinking they're talking to Lucifer. Oh and apparently Dantalion will burn down (empty) million dollar housing complexes if you call him during an eclipse. Sabnock is apparently a nice one who will help you find the housing you want after you get catfished by Asmoday and have your million dollar house burned down by Dantalion. I certainly look forward to getting to know them on their own terms!
*Ashtoreth meaning something like "Astarte shame." It is a word found referring to polytheist worship in the Bible multiple times, including in the Book of Samuel, the Book of Kings, and Judges.
*x2: This, I discovered a few years ago when reading Joshua Trachtenburg's Jewish Magic and Superstition is also not true. Medieval Jews had a very strong belief and fear of the figure they believed was both Satan and the angel of death, Samael.
*x3: For brevity's sake, I didn't mention my experience, but this also refers to Ba'al. He's been worshipped for thousands of years, trust that he can hear you if you pray to him.
