The Problem of the Criterion

[Xenophon]

Shaman has occasioned controversy of late with accounts of succubi, friendly demons, etc. He has attracted disparagers and a few defenders. This raises a good question: how to assess reports of occult experiences?
Myself, I tend to doubt stories of affable demons for the same reason I look really closely at videos of guys petting tigers in the wild. Sure, maybe Jungaloo Jim there has bonded with a big cat. Or maybe the whole thing will head south in the next video. Or maybe it's the latest AI-generated imagery. By most reports down the ages, demons range from flat-out dangerous to at least rather prideful. So anecdotes about our buddy Beelzebub get flagged. Maybe reports have been wrong. Maybe the cosmos is changing. Maybe. The onus is on the teller of the new tale. (Hey---Jesus had the same task: market YHWH as Daddy Divine.)

So, the question is, have we other criteria here than merely reiterating what's been bandied about before?

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

I could say the same .. although feeling a prick in my back after conjuring and Archangel (Raphael), or a Shem Angel (Hahaiah) .. we think it would be cool until we attract a negative response.
My pissing off Ipos was a bad idea. I could hear squeaks and rants in my head. But that's what we get when we attract a demon and choose to regret it.
My conjuring a Shem might've been a bad idea...they're possibly quite dangerous to conjure without proper decorum involved.

 

[Yazata]

raises a good question: how to assess reports of occult experiences?

I really don't care much for other people's experiences with the occult. What has always interested me are techniques and the ideas that Magick are built on.
When you look at the old grimoires, they are maybe 30 pages with seals and conjurations and that's that.
Now everything has to have the "personal anecdote" to go with it. (Also because publishers require a minimum page count before they print it.. so you'll see an autobiography of the translator / editor that has almost as many pages as the real book) Since the occult is "fashionable" now everybody is going to model themselves after the poster boys of the dark and add more and more hype to validate their Magick.

 

[HoldAll]

This is an internet forum. I can't even prove to you what I had last night for dinner (come to think of it, I wouldn't be able to even if we met in person). The established esoteric lore is that demons are dangerous or at least formidable and fearsome, so when someone comes up and describes their experiences with them in terms of love and light, he or she gets ridiculed because the story does not conform to the commonly accepted narratives, so shame on us for being such opinionated assholes who only believe what they want to believe. Meh.

There are no valid criteria to establish the occult truth. We only have stories people tell, some we like, some we don't, some bore us and some are captivating. @Shaman's tale is an outlier (or a big fat whopper, according to some), an outrageous UPG, an egregious exception to the rule. Maybe @Yazata is right and such stories are not all that important and really not worth all the sensationalist drama they engender. Shouldn't we rather walk the dog, go grocery shopping, do the dishes or meditate (talking to myself, as always)?

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Precisely. per Yazata's take, Shaman should be describing exactly how the Kundalini And clairaudience came to be, how the succubus was attracted in the first place, names of the succubus and incubus. Etc. How did it all come to be, not what who or why. Even Koetting could describe how he tackled the Necronomicion at 15 and had success. UPG, but still...

Post automatically merged: Mar 23, 2024

I think the problem stems from no or bad teachers. And too much information.
Reason being, most older mages I knew worked through Modern Magick or the like, while younger ones rushed right into Enochian and Evocation and Astral Travel.

 

[Shaman]

Solely to show proof of my experience, not trying to advertise!

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[Xenophon]

I really don't care much for other people's experiences with the occult. What has always interested me are techniques and the ideas that Magick are built on.
When you look at the old grimoires, they are maybe 30 pages with seals and conjurations and that's that.
Now everything has to have the "personal anecdote" to go with it. (Also because publishers require a minimum page count before they print it.. so you'll see an autobiography of the translator / editor that has almost as many pages as the real book) Since the occult is "fashionable" now everybody is going to model themselves after the poster boys of the dark and add more and more hype to validate their Magick.

I don't care about the experience per se. If they do something effective, I'm interested. The concern is separating wheat from chaff.

Post automatically merged: Mar 23, 2024

This is an internet forum. I can't even prove to you what I had last night for dinner (come to think of it, I wouldn't be able to even if we met in person). The established esoteric lore is that demons are dangerous or at least formidable and fearsome, so when someone comes up and describes their experiences with them in terms of love and light, he or she gets ridiculed because the story does not conform to the commonly accepted narratives, so shame on us for being such opinionated assholes who only believe what they want to believe. Meh.

There are no valid criteria to establish the occult truth. We only have stories people tell, some we like, some we don't, some bore us and some are captivating. @Shaman's tale is an outlier (or a big fat whopper, according to some), an outrageous UPG, an egregious exception to the rule. Maybe @Yazata is right and such stories are not all that important and really not worth all the sensationalist drama they engender. Shouldn't we rather walk the dog, go grocery shopping, do the dishes or meditate (talking to myself, as always)?

If any information about anything contradicts common experience, the burden of proof is on the uncommon experience. There is nothing wrong in that. I can't prove that when you had a flat tyre in Skokie, Illinois yesterday, a gorilla rushed out of the park and changed the tyre. I am understandably sceptical. Asking for more evidence scarcely makes me an "asshole" here or in the case of macickal war stories.

 

[WonderFire]

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
This is how I generally approach magic. You can't ever truly know 100% it works, but that's the problem with inductive approach in general, isn't it?
About demons- every culture I personally know of has an idea of "dangerous spirit", which is generally what we label demon as. Are demons really an actual category of beings? I'm not really sure. My (tepid) take is that a spirit is not a demon if it is nice to you.
If people have historically reported that certain beings are extremely dangerous and belligerent, I'd personally be very suspicious if such a being started acting nicey nice towards me. A bit paranoid, sure, but I don't think it's unwarranted.
Suppose that a grimoire was more like a phone book of real people. There's an entry for a guy called "Jake". It says "Jake is a thug, he likes beating old ladies with baseball bat and robbing liquor stores. Anyway here's his phone number." Would you trust this guy even if he acted nicely when you meet up?

 

[Xenophon]

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
This is how I generally approach magic. You can't ever truly know 100% it works, but that's the problem with inductive approach in general, isn't it?
About demons- every culture I personally know of has an idea of "dangerous spirit", which is generally what we label demon as. Are demons really an actual category of beings? I'm not really sure. My (tepid) take is that a spirit is not a demon if it is nice to you.
If people have historically reported that certain beings are extremely dangerous and belligerent, I'd personally be very suspicious if such a being started acting nicey nice towards me. A bit paranoid, sure, but I don't think it's unwarranted.
Suppose that a grimoire was more like a phone book of real people. There's an entry for a guy called "Jake". It says "Jake is a thug, he likes beating old ladies with baseball bat and robbing liquor stores. Anyway here's his phone number." Would you trust this guy even if he acted nicely when you meet up?

Good points.

Though, yeah, if Jake tended to whup on people who have been shites to me, I might give him a chance. I mean I have seen some Satanists say the reason demons have gotten a bad rep is that traditionally the users of grimoires have used a heavy-handed approach to making contact, what with threats and all.

Still and all, I tend to go with the O9A thinking that when you deal with trans-worldly forces, danger is unavoidable, so live with it. Or perish, too, if you get in the way of the wrong 18-wheeler demon express.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

That is a very good point, almost all people outside of the LHP view the entire LHP workers as Satanists, Luciferians or both. I would treat Jake as I treat other demons, with healthy respect but discernment and suspiscion things could go wrong at the drop of a dime.

 

[Xenophon]

That is a very good point, almost all people outside of the LHP view the entire LHP workers as Satanists, Luciferians or both. I would treat Jake as I treat other demons, with healthy respect but discernment and suspiscion things could go wrong at the drop of a dime.

Back in Alaska, I had a few American Indian drinking buddies. I knew it was time to leave when we hit the point in the bourbon bottle where they started playing with knives. Culture, race call it what you want. (Friends in Vienna would hide grampa's cavalry saber when we partied. They said the plum brandy made me "too Prussian.") Bottom line: friends like drinking buddies are not necessarily "safe."

 

[Elementriloquist]

how to assess reports of occult experiences?

Don't assess, there's no point because nothing can be verified.

 

[Xenophon]

Don't assess, there's no point because nothing can be verified.

Really? No evidence to weigh at all? Including your last generalization there?

If a Merle Mage tells me the daemon Mammon has gifted him the ability to transmute lead to gold, I'd say one test is whether Merle wallows in poverty or not. Conclusive test? No, but a test withal. "Assess" need mean nothing more than that tired old saw of the Pragmaticists "warranted assertability," which is to say somewhere in the vast land a reasonable surmise and a good guess.

 

[Diluculo_DelFuego]

Same as Ive praised Tzadkiel before or Bime before when I got a menial job or by luck was gifted some money. Yet, Im without income and my last job attempt met with a couple seizures which kinda killed the job opportunities. Ordeals? That's one word. Success? an expansive question.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

By its very nature, magic is personal. However, it's usually easy to spot actual magical results because the central 'coincidence' that created the successful outcome will usually be surrounded by other coincidences, like ripples on a lake when you throw a stone in. In a post a while back, I mentioned a successful working to recover some property that was confirmed as successful at the same time Osama bin Laden was caught and killed. A friend of mine got very angry because he thought I was claiming to have killed Osama bin Laden

It's my opinion that one of the purposes of banishing rituals before magic is to try and minimise these 'aftershock' coincidences.

 

[Elementriloquist]

If a Merle Mage tells me the daemon Mammon has gifted him the ability to transmute lead to gold, I'd say one test is whether Merle wallows in poverty or not.

I get what you're saying, my favorite quote when it comes to the occult is:
"A Poor Magician Is A Poor Magician"

The first "poor" relates to their wealth (being poor financially), the second "poor" relates to their abilities as a magician (like giving a "poor performance").

Simply put, if your magic ability cannot grant you better results in life than the average person, who does not have to put in the effort you did to study and practice the occult, you probably don't even have decent abilities to begin with (or any at all).

My one line response you quoted was actually left after I erased a larger response that I typed out, part of which mentioned what you just said - Asking users about their financial success based on their extreme claims.

But I just erased everything before I posted the comment because they could just as easily lie about their wealth, just like they are lying about their abilities. They can say "I'm a millionaire" just as easily as they said "I can transmute lead into gold".

Unless were gonna start banning people for continuously boasting about exceptional abilities without providing evidence of financial freedom, it's pointless to even bother trying to assess anything.

If someone on this forum says that they are a millionaire with a succubus wife and demon blood in their veins, the only way to disprove that is to demand proof of them being a millionaire, and the only way to demand proof is for the punishment to be a ban if they keep talking about their extreme claims without providing proof - This part here is something else I had in my post before I erased it. But I already knew that it was pointless because it's too extreme and the forum would never implement a rule like that.

 

[Xenophon]

I get what you're saying, my favorite quote when it comes to the occult is:
"A Poor Magician Is A Poor Magician"

The first "poor" relates to their wealth (being poor financially), the second "poor" relates to their abilities as a magician (like giving a "poor performance").

Simply put, if your magic ability cannot grant you better results in life than the average person, who does not have to put in the effort you did to study and practice the occult, you probably don't even have decent abilities to begin with (or any at all).

My one line response you quoted was actually left after I erased a larger response that I typed out, part of which mentioned what you just said - Asking users about their financial success based on their extreme claims.

But I just erased everything before I posted the comment because they could just as easily lie about their wealth, just like they are lying about their abilities. They can say "I'm a millionaire" just as easily as they said "I can transmute lead into gold".

Unless were gonna start banning people for continuously boasting about exceptional abilities without providing evidence of financial freedom, it's pointless to even bother trying to assess anything.

If someone on this forum says that they are a millionaire with a succubus wife and demon blood in their veins, the only way to disprove that is to demand proof of them being a millionaire, and the only way to demand proof is for the punishment to be a ban if they keep talking about their extreme claims without providing proof - This part here is something else I had in my post before I erased it. But I already knew that it was pointless because it's too extreme and the forum would never implement a rule like that.

The wealth example was misleading maybe. I just meant the mage should be able to point to results. Some folks do not give a s*** about money. Others think wealth a danger to a person, a Volk, a civilization, the planet. I only wanted to highlight that "workings" without actual "works" are empty.(Yeah, I know. I'm nigh plagiarizing St. James there.)

 

[Yazata]

Unless were gonna start banning people for continuously boasting about exceptional abilities

You are not gonna start banning anyone.
But who is continuously boasting about exceptional abilities?

 

[Xenophon]

You are not gonna start banning anyone.
But who is continuously boasting about exceptional abilities?

No one. He's got them cowed. Like them old Westerns, "Garsh, Zeb, that stranger on the white horse sure cleaned up Drudge City, didn't he?"

You're right, though. For a magick forum, we're sorely deficient in resident megalomaniacs.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

You're right, though. For a magick forum, we're sorely deficient in resident megalomaniacs.

As I understand it, becoming a meglomaniac is usually a sign that you have failed to negotiate Chapel Perilous.