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I'd go one further and point you to western esotericism, where you would likely perform various meditations before summoning goetic entities.

Now, you're not supposed to let yourself get possessed by them, but any Christian should clutch their crucifix that anyone would even be trying to communicate with Solomon's demons (except maybe to tell them to go away).



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And ironically, the justification for a lot of European occultism and demonology comes from the New Testament where Jesus says he gives his disciples power to command demons. It was seen (not by the mainstream Church, obviously) as acceptable to bind the devil's minions to force them to do good. Of course there was an equivalent school of magic to do the same with angels. (angelology - see John Dee and the Enochian script[1])

There was even an old belief (that I think came from the Babylonian Talmud but I'm not sure) that King Solomon used a magic ring that bound demons to build the first temple. This genre of "Solomonic" magic is where the Ars Goetia and its famous roster of demons comes from[0], which pop up from time to time in pop culture.

What's particularly interesting is that, given that literacy of the time was primarily among the nobility and how much liturgical information there is in a lot of texts on ceremonial magic, there must have been an underground of occultists within the priest class of the Church at the time reading and writing all of this.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic


There are many more demons to choose from than the ones listed in the article[0].

The interesting thing about demonology is that it was mostly being practiced in secret by Christians, even clergy (a lot of these spells and rituals use Christian liturgical elements.) They didn't believe what they were doing was "selling their soul to the devil," rather that Christ had given them dominion over angels and demons, so they had every right to summon demons and use them as they saw fit. Legend at the time was that King Solomon built the First Temple using demon slaves.

Of course the Church proper would have strenuously agreed with this way of thinking.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet...


I was hoping this would be an article for beginners to understand daemons, as in the Ancient Greek daimon (??????: "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") :-)

Growing up on a (quasi fundamentalist) christian household, daemons were for a long while a very real threat, and my mom would not allow me to watch horror movies, "receive things from strangers", an other procedures to protect us from "inviting the daemons home".

My rational mind leaves no room for such creatures these days, but even so under the right circumstances, sometimes my lizard brain begins to think maybe the Bible (and my mom for that matter) was right :-). Hard to erase some emotive memories from childhood I guess.

A while ago I read this book [1] which is pretty cool, covers the mind mechanisms behind things like the placebo effect, "daemonic possession", alien abductions, mass hysteria, out of body experiences, etc...

1: https://www.suggestibleyou.com/


Oddly similar to summoning demons.

This remembers me the position the bible takes on demons: obviously they have power, and some might want to help even, except they are specialists in their stuff, a human in not, thus how you know what one to trust? You don't, thus dealing with them is forbidden outright.

So what, maybe they need to perform exorcism of daemons

Cause Ive tried this. Demons shudder at the name of Jesus

Gotcha. Wasn't quite understanding what you were asking.

It was a demon, one of. There's honestly too many different types of things out there, I'm never too sure if there even is a nomenclature that could be attributed. But this thing was definitely a demon. That's what the first half of the ritual does, from the Mathers' book.

What can they do to humans? All sorts of things. This is probably a better list than I can cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet...

Do note, some of them are rubbish... But not the ones you might think. Things like "become invisible" doesn't always mean that you turn transparent - it can be that nobody notices you.

This one, had a murderous vengeance towards the one whom imprisoned it. We just installed a vehicle lift in our hackerspace, and there was an open house that evening. It would have been catastrophic if 'somehow' that lift malfunctioned and crushed someone... And having an electrical malfunction or a hydraulic breach would be well within the power of that entity.


Shhh! Ixnay on the awyerslay! If you name them they might be empowered to arrive, like demons, or Kibo!

Demonic possession?

Some similarity there with the story of Mara tempting the Buddha. Taken symbolically it makes sense. Through that lens I probably experienced "demons". There will always be zealots that take things overly literally.

Make a deal with a demon and it will come around to bite you in the ass every single time. They've written instructional parables about this stuff for thousands of years.

Learn from the ancient wisdom. Say no to demons.


We don't but they always think that they can control the demons they conjure.

Demons exist and walk among us.

Unless you know the right magic spells to invoke in order to keep the demons away. I know one that goes, "I'm not consenting to any searches. Am I free to go? Am I under arrest?" If you keep chanting it in the right tone, there's a good chance you'll escape.

Like an exorcism?

Generally one stays inside a circle for protection and summons the demon into a triangle for containment. :P

If you accept the existence of angels and demons, you already do.

The same thing they'd do when faced with demonic possession.
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