[Help] Putting demons and angels to the side

[lumineth Realm Lord]

How do most spirits react to being summoned? Both in, and out, the traditional solomonic way? And how do they feel about humans?

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

In my experience the majority are either impartial or dont like humans. Atleast the types of humans that summon them. Common complaints against humans are ignorance and wanting things without doing the work. Its easy to get on their good side though if you develop a proper relationship.

 

[JJB5]

In my experience the majority are either impartial or dont like humans. Atleast the types of humans that summon them. Common complaints against humans are ignorance and wanting things without doing the work. Its easy to get on their good side though if you develop a proper relationship.

I’d probably feel the same way truthfully

 

[diana_i_gusarova]

It seems that Franz Bardon wrote that spirits live in conditions very different from ours. Therefore, when a magician summons them into the triangle of manifestation, it causes them discomfort. It's the same as if a person is forced to dive into water without scuba gear to talk to a fish.

 

[nargile57]

People summon them forcibly, often for selfish reasons, how would you feel if the situation was reversed?

 

[Keldan]

All the spirits I’ve evoked and summoned are all neutral toward humans, and a big part of that is my approach. I don’t constrain them, I don’t use a circle or triangle, and I don’t use symbols, sigils, pentacles, and all of the standard tools other practitioners use.

A spirit’s reaction is shaped heavily by your method of summoning. I don’t evoke and summon forcefully. Another key difference is that I never do petition work. So my reason for evocation and summoning are fundamentally different from people who approach spirits mainly to get something, especially material results, status, or purely self-serving outcomes.

A lot of the same people who constrain spirits are the same ones who later complain that spirits “don’t manifest,” “don’t like them,” “don’t like humans,” or “won’t cooperate.” And there are always more reasons than one that they don’t like these folks. If you call beings aggressively, treat them like slaves, break etiquette, or approach from entitlement, you’re going to get friction, sometimes in ways people don’t want to admit.

 

[Morell]

All the spirits I’ve evoked and summoned are all neutral toward humans, and a big part of that is my approach. I don’t constrain them, I don’t use a circle or triangle, and I don’t use symbols, sigils, pentacles, and all of the standard tools other practitioners use.

A spirit’s reaction is shaped heavily by your method of summoning. I don’t evoke and summon forcefully. Another key difference is that I never do petition work. So my reason for evocation and summoning are fundamentally different from people who approach spirits mainly to get something, especially material results, status, or purely self-serving outcomes.

A lot of the same people who constrain spirits are the same ones who later complain that spirits “don’t manifest,” “don’t like them,” “don’t like humans,” or “won’t cooperate.” And there are always more reasons than one that they don’t like these folks. If you call beings aggressively, treat them like slaves, break etiquette, or approach from entitlement, you’re going to get friction, sometimes in ways people don’t want to admit.

Nice point.

Though I think that even though this is true, the majority of people will probably fall into spirits misusing category. That suggests to me, that spirits not liking people in general still makes sense.

 

[Keldan]

Nice point.

Though I think that even though this is true, the majority of people will probably fall into spirits misusing category. That suggests to me, that spirits not liking people in general still makes sense.

Look around the forum, how many people here actually evoke and summon spirits outside what they’ve read in books? Most people work within the same few lanes: Goetia, planetary, and sometimes Qliphothic work. And that’s basically it.

I don’t work with spirits in the books, which means I’m engaging with a much wider range of spirits that most practitioners don’t even know exist, let alone have direct experience with. So how can you generalize that “spirits don’t like people” based on a very narrow catalog of entities from a handful of texts, contacted through forceful, constrained methods?

Even in one thread on this forum where someone asked about the energy of djinn, it was basically just me and the OP answering from real experience. Most of the replies were people who haven’t even summoned one and were asking us how to do it. And djinns aren’t some obscure category, they’re a commonly known type of spirit in the spiritual world.

So no, you can’t take a very small pool of spirits from books, approached through coercive protocols, and use that to claim that spirits in general dislike humans. That’s like someone going through one bad breakup and concluding that “women don’t like me,” based on one single experience.

I still stand by what I said, based on my own experience working with spirits. Spirits are neutral toward humans. But your method of summoning has a lot to do with the reaction you get back.

 

[iseht]

They always seem mildly annoyed if I call upon them, although I've had some, a few who I've met before, appear of their own accord and they tend to be jubilant. Often accompanying some significant moment for me.

 

[Morell]

Look around the forum, how many people here actually evoke and summon spirits outside what they’ve read in books? Most people work within the same few lanes: Goetia, planetary, and sometimes Qliphothic work. And that’s basically it.

I don’t work with spirits in the books, which means I’m engaging with a much wider range of spirits that most practitioners don’t even know exist, let alone have direct experience with. So how can you generalize that “spirits don’t like people” based on a very narrow catalog of entities from a handful of texts, contacted through forceful, constrained methods?

Even in one thread on this forum where someone asked about the energy of djinn, it was basically just me and the OP answering from real experience. Most of the replies were people who haven’t even summoned one and were asking us how to do it. And djinns aren’t some obscure category, they’re a commonly known type of spirit in the spiritual world.

So no, you can’t take a very small pool of spirits from books, approached through coercive protocols, and use that to claim that spirits in general dislike humans. That’s like someone going through one bad breakup and concluding that “women don’t like me,” based on one single experience.

I still stand by what I said, based on my own experience working with spirits. Spirits are neutral toward humans. But your method of summoning has a lot to do with the reaction you get back.

I don't work with many spirits myself, have to confess heavily blunt senses to what is around me when it comes to spirits. Though the books never felt much genuine to me. About Jinn, here only Jinn people know (including me) is spirit coming out of Aladdin's lamp, so to my mind that is some nonsense name for spirits, so I stay silent about the Jinn topic, I know nothing more than what I just said. Only spirits I do work with are the ones who contacted me. And they are not from the books, they take shape of characters I know...

The part about summoning is logically true. No reason to disagree.

How big portion of spirits that is... I cannot tell. I assume that it is small portion, it's just that you can make assumptions only basing on what you know...

 

[Mannimarco]

How do most spirits react to being summoned? Both in, and out, the traditional solomonic way? And how do they feel about humans?

All three of these questions are hopelessly broad, and have no answer. Spirits reactions to being summoned, and their general feelings towards humans, vary wildly. This depends on many, many factors, probably far more than I am aware of. The same spirit being summoned by the same person, can have the polar opposite reaction, if it's just several years later, and the person has changed.

As with most things, you have to do divination to get any idea of how a given operation is likely to go.

 

[MorganBlack]

The same spirit being summoned by the same person, can have the polar opposite reaction, if it's just several years later, and the person has changed.

This! Exactly!

Much of this is finding "right relation," as people say these days. The interaction, the ritual, what tools you use, which materia you use, the specific grimoire, or lack of grimoire (or internet ideas as a grimoire), the name, the timing and location - in a pragmatic sense - "is" the spirit. Or the part that interacts with us. See classic Neoplatonism here.

I see this mostly through my Vodou lens, that there are many spirits using the same name. In my own view, they are no more "fixed" than you are when hopped up on ritual or alcohol. So, I see a daimon's name as a general office that manifests to us as a spirit. A spirit that is helpful and healing for me may be poison for you, and vice versa. Because I am me and you are you. They manifest according to my expectation and what we used to call "soul."

I'm mean and hot-blooded (or was, when I had a chip on my shoulder), so my spirits are mean (or were). It took a while for me to learn to be cool-headed, calm, and compassionate. My Houngan "worked with" (ugh, language. ) - meaning had as part of his spiritual court - the 'hot' lwa such as Bawo' Criminel (who is a headhunter), Marinette, and Met Kalfu. All the cool-headed Vodou people are like, "WTF is up with this guy?"

I will say the spirits of the grimoires, in my experience, want to interact with humans and assist us. I suspect it's because they want access to more solid space-time to flex themselves i. They use - our bodies, our minds, the "stuff" we consecrate (which are our body in extension) - as channels and corridors through the quantum flux into our reality.

The grimoires are useful because they also establish a known precedent with a certain class of spirits, and work in a "current" - or, how I think of it, as a "mythstream." The Four Demon Kings may have originally started out as the mythological Four Winds way back in pagan times, when only great heroes could call them, but now they are something vastly different and have been modulated by magicians over a very long time. The manifest something that is a part of reality, directions, and orientation in the Underworld, in my view, and are not longer the Winds, or even were eve them.

Now, they have alwasys been the Four Demon Kings, becasue that is the new reality, because we magicians have made it so, and so they are.

 

[Keldan]

I don't work with many spirits myself, have to confess heavily blunt senses to what is around me when it comes to spirits.

I know you don’t work with many spirits, that’s why I commented to you. You can’t reasonably say that “spirits not liking people in general” when the pool of spirits you work with is very small. Not to mention that the spirits who have come to you have been good to you as well. So the assumption you made earlier doesn’t really hold up, and frankly it makes you look like you’re projecting a conclusion that your own experience doesn’t even support.

And even the pool many practitioners work with, typically Goetia, planetary, and Qliphothic spirits is also very small. That represents not even a fraction of what exists in the spiritual world.

What doesn’t make sense to me is the claim that spirits in general dislike humans. When one says “in general,” they’re talking about every other spirit. Yet humans are the ones approaching spirits, usually for material things, and those things are all fulfilled. If spirits weren’t at least neutral toward humans, do you really think they’d fulfill anyone’s requests at all?

And regarding the idea that the same spirit can have polar opposite reactions when being summoned years apart. My experience doesn’t support that either. I’ve evoked many spirits at one point, then had no contact with them for seven years. And when I summoned them again after seven years, the reactions were the same, neutral. There was no change, even after a long gap between interactions.

 

[MorganBlack]

My take:

Both the "do they like us" or "not like us" perspectives are still looking at this the same way.

Both still assume spirits are fixed entities and the name is always that entity (and if not then they are a trickster), when I feel it’s a bit more complex.

I forget which magical author it was who summoned - was it Belial? - and had a very difficult time of it, and then later, after personal growth, had no issues when they summoned Belial again.

I have my own allies, and they "are" daimons from the Grimoirium Verum. They manifest in surprisingly consistent ways so I know it's them. Certain patterns overlay my vision, colors, etc. when they manifest. Or they just show up in my room.

Although in I'm a digital concept artist, I will never paint a picture of them and release in on the internet of what they look like, because it only reinforces the WitchTok idea that if what you call in ritual does not come forward looking like this specific manifestation , you are doing something wrong. (Also these are sacred things for me , and not for everyone's profane eyes. )

I don't feel it's healthy for one's own practice to be constantly looking over your shoulder at other people manifestations, trying to crib notes. They are them, and you are you. Your Scirlin, or your Surgat is woven into who you are at that time, and what you are doing overall in you life and ritual (and not doing) . As long as they do Scirlin or Surgat things, and you approve, that is all you need.

In Vodou (and I can only speak for the teaching of my Hougan and our house, and those I have met and talked to) it is understood that a Lwa may only "walk with you" for some of your life. They help you through times when you need them. Sure, they may become lifelong allies, but it is not necessary. The roster of Lwa is just wide enough - there are many many lwa - and with an experienced, working, and accountable priest and folk magician class tied into the Haitian cultural experience, it is easy for them to recognize the patterns when new spirit relationships form and why.

When we talk about So-and-So spirit being "angry" with us, or "not liking humans," again, that is flattening the rich dynamic of Human-to-Mystery-via-Daimon interaction. I feel the WitchTok Pagan hot takes is making it worse by acting like t a locked-down, permanent state (so they can present themselves as experts of really-real locked down "things") rather than a rich, ever-evolving dynamic of spirit-human interaction.

Speaking only personally, I dislike the Lesser Key Brain which has taken over the entire internet, treating the daimons as a roster of D&D or ShadowRun characters you can just roll up if you believe hard enough.

The whole idea that we can't yell at them because it hurts their feelings is also Lesser Key Brain. There is no Chain Curse in Verum. It is not necessarily "spirit-friendly," whole idea all magicians automatically point where you have to torture them (through their localized body - and yes, you can. Not badly though. ) in iron boxes of asafoetida is not a thing in Verum.

Again, they reflect us and will meet harsh with harsh if your soul is harsh. If you are a calm and cool-headed person, they will most likely be calm.

And then there is also a tendency to leave out us humans in this dynamic in this low-information WitchTok Pagan Calvinism. Where we we just have to shut up and listen to our betters in Diabolist Witch Slop City where the super special human intermediaries are playing Witch Queens and Super Magus (with their talking parrot, Alphex Beakatron).

Fuck that noise . Don't listen to that garbage. Or me. Just relax and do the work.

In my view. We are making this happen. All of us. We are the fulcrum of reality (well, our part of it). The spirits are real, but not in the same way a potato, ham sandwich, or a Jeep is real. We give them their names and form. We teach them what free will looks like - something we get to have by being in (and collectively creating) space-time.

They want to be involved with US becasue we humans bring the Space-Time Party with our Creative Reason and imagination. Hell, look at the cool demonic names and costumes we dreamed up for them to wear and hang out in We're just cool like that.