Hi Faria, I an somewhere in the middle of this, and am sympathetic to both impulses.
I tend to agree most people should first try the grimoires out as written before making too much personal customization - perhaps simplifying where necessary. While I hate making hard and fast rules, It is hard for ex-Protestants to grasp Western Magic, as it as come to us, is 99% Christian, if very Hermetic, with the goetic grimoires being mostly Catholic necromancy reframing ancient funeral rites. People throw the baby out with the bathwater in their rush to wipe all that away and be super sophisticated moderns.
As Verum says the demons will come "according to the character and temperament of the one who wishes to invoke." If everyone wants to make them into vicious demons from Hell, they will be that for you.
I do not want to make this about theology and religion, we are magicians after all, not priests - something the neopagans have forgotten in their rush to make a religion to be a new shabby priest class of really-real things - but it helps to take a less adversarial or hostile stance toward the daimons Which can be done in a Catholic worldview, I will add:
Glitch Bottle - Not Just Magicians: Catholic Exorcists Called On Demons|
I feel any ritual framework is mostly for the magician. They rituals are protocols, partially, a whole brain (left and right hemispheric) language for communication. For some reason this communication requires from us a mythic liturgy interface for them to interact with us... and the more complete that liturgy the better.
The big mythic framework, IMHO, is a Solar pantheistic one, that can be expressed in both pagan and Christian forms. Part of that journey is a Solar Underworld one , that starts with the setting sun, and can take a number of mythological forms. I just happen to resonate with Christ and the Harrowing of Hell, and his blessed mother. But these are very personal things I do not like talking about too much. But I would not go so far to say that one should only use Catholic liturgy, even if the grimoires are mostly Catholic, aside from John Dee’s more Protestant magic Enochian system.
I will also add Jake's pagan framework works. The daimons respond. I have used it and can recommend it. But Jake’s’ is a modulation of a very sophisticated and synthesizing Thelemic hermetic pagan framework using Egyptian and Greek gods. His “pagan” system is as far removed from the Marvel-Disney Instagram gab-bag we see online today.
The daimons do respond to name Hecate, and those in the PGM, probably because the know her and them. I doubt they'd even recognize the names of later pagan gods like Thor, Odin or The Morrigan, etc. and will just sit there confused , wondering what why we silly monkey started using these names, like, 5 minutes ago. But who knows? People should can try. Maybe they might cook up something good?
I will add modern neopagan reconstructionists, who take their worldview from 19th and early 20th century Victorian pastoral fan fiction, and turn the universe into a Disney film, should beware. Even if the daimons are not Hellspawned demons per se, they are also not totally safe. Take this as UPG, but I had one pagan friend , on learning that Astaroth is mythically connected to Inanna / Astarte, that means she "is" Astarte , so decided to just call her up. He got smacked hard by her and told very directly, "I am not Astarte. I. Am. ASTAROTH!"
I think they want us to believe in them, but not too much. Too much 'hard belief' locks down their range of moment though human-space. Even if I work in a mostly Folk Catholic mythic framework, I do tend to think them as Neoplantonic Wrathful Buddhas that burn astral shit off your soul, but that is just me. I am a far far better person for dealing with them. Hardly the image of an evil, pseudo-Satanic black magician.
