The Psychology of Demonology

Today, I want to discuss this subject in a little bit more detail and I want to help you understand why demons, what the frame is behind this, and how this was actually presented inside of the mystery schools for the initiate going through those stages and why it might not even be the right place for you to start. But also, how to find the secret power behind this simple idea that can start to transform a lot of the negativity in your life into pure, delicious gold. So, without further ado, sit back, relax, and remember to live deliciously.

I want to be honest with you. When I first started on this path, the entire idea of demons, of the dark side, is what I attributed to people that had mental health issues. You know, people that were so desperate for some kind of meaning or power in their lives that they were, quite frankly, lost. Or kind of like the whole Hollywood or TV thing projected, were bad people. They had bad intentions and things like that. In fact, when I was about 16, 17, a young teenager just blossoming into spiritualism, learning to develop my clairvoyant psychic abilities, I would even be the one that suggested in the meditation circle that, you know, I heard of a group of Satanists or I heard of a group of demonologists and we should all please send light to these poor lost souls.

Now, I’m not saying that those individuals were necessarily enlightened in any way. I’m just pointing out my frame as an individual at that time. This is not a judgment on the practitioners that I was pointing out at that point of their ability or their label. The fact is, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know their label. These were just street stories of the evil Satanist and the evilness and the evil that yet, the more I progressed in my path, I progressed up the normal side of the tree. After I went through all the different religions and practices because I went through everything in the search for God, you know, I didn’t find enough God in Christianity. I didn’t rebel against Christianity; I just didn’t find it there. You know, I looked through everything and there were more flaws and the more flaws I found, the more I searched to try to understand what was really behind that biblical text. Where did it come from? What was the frame? What were these people thinking? That led me into Kabbalah, that led me into a number of other ancient religions and studies. I practiced Buddhism. I practiced Islamic traditions. I practiced every single thing under the sun, and not at an entry level. I went and lived it. You know, I went and got myself so immersed inside of it, and for the bulk of it and the largest portion of my life, I could not still accept that idea. It was still a good versus evil mindset.

Yet, at one point in a meditation journey in a circle, somebody looked at me and they still said, “Wow, it’s like a roller coaster in there. You need balance, like there’s another part of you that wasn’t balanced.” At that point, I thought, you know, maybe this is my expression of spirituality and materialism, you know, the old “shouldn’t be too rich” kind of a thing. So, I resolved that conflict and realized it could be spiritual and I could be good in business. You know, I could progress in these other areas, but still, this thing haunted me, this peril haunted me. No matter how far I moved up the tree of life, the most consistent factor was pain. There would be these periods of toxic positivity, so to speak, where everything’s light and love and I’m only supposed to see God, but secretly denying and repressing the darkness, because that’s the thing that I need to shun, quite unquote. Maybe if I fill myself with more light and more light and more names of God and more high magic positive power, that would kind of go away. It didn’t. It got worse in many ways and in more tragic ways. So, it moved from intimate relationships and betrayals and all kinds of things. Even though in many levels I was greatly successful, I had so much progress in so many areas, I still didn’t free myself from that loop, from that massive duality dive where some days life was great and then for a series of weeks, life was terrible. Then, I’d come back out of it and I think a lot of us find ourselves in that.

There’s this common philosophy around demonologists and practitioners of the left-hand path that when you start invoking or evoking or working with the demons, that these forces will break havoc upon your life. Now, firstly, let’s address that. The force wreaking havoc on your life is simply you, in essence. What I mean by that is that you set an objective for yourself for a higher quality of life. The problem is the reason you don’t have that in your life right now is because of the hallucination of who you believe you are and how that’s constructed up your ego and your hallucination of self. That means that’s the thing that has to be dismantled. How is that thing set up in your brain? Through your association to people, places, times, things, and events. So, when you create a vibrational shift within yourself, those are the things that are going to die, those are the things that are going to sacrifice, those are the things that have to let go because you ultimately die, in a way, in an alchemical way. You initiate the old you, you release and you transmute. This is the process of maturing in and of itself.

We don’t mature through how many books we read or how much age we’ve got behind us. We pretty much mature through how much pain we’ve overcome and become stronger as a result of it because if we don’t become stronger as a result of pain, the result is illness and ultimately death. When we give up in the face of adversity, that’s the end of our story. Viktor Frankl, in his work on logotherapy, was exploring the subject inside of the concentration camps, and he was noticing what was the difference between people that in that situation would just shrivel up almost and die, give up completely and start being taken over by disease and illness, versus some inside of such a horrific time for the Jewish people during the Holocaust who actually seemed to become stronger, more vibrant, more powerful, even though they were all in the same situation, same torture. The difference he found was the meaning. The meaning that these individuals attached to the situation. Where some people’s meaning was like, “Oh, it’s the end. It’s over. We might as well just give up.” That was their result, that was their reality. The difference for these others was, “I have to survive because I have to make sure this never happens again. I have to change this. This buck has to stop with me. I will survive because I mean the world needs to hear about this crime.” The difference was in the meaning.

Now, meaning is a fundamentally important idea because in occultism and in spirituality and in magic and in the mystery traditions, meaning is the concept that we attribute in the pentagram to spirit. So, we are always looking for the meaning behind things, and the reason we’re looking for the meaning behind things is if we can find the core meaning, the why something exists, we can come to recognize its logos, its vibration, its pattern, its essential energy. If I look at the various components of my life that seem to be in duress or distress or competing in this duality and this opposite, it’s good, and I can figure out what is their purpose, what purpose are they trying to serve. The fundamental frame of the occultist is the universe is me and I am the universe. That means we’re all trying to aim for the same thing at the end of the day. I don’t want to destroy myself because there’s no purpose. I would destroy my limitations, but ultimately, if I’m everything and everything is me, we’re all one with God, we’re all one God, we’re always looking for evolution, we’re always looking for the best. This is why we crave these things. So, even the parts of myself and my reality that seem destructive and seem negative inherently have some idea behind them or some empowering concept behind this. This gives us dawn to the concept of the daemon or the concept of the demon.

Now, firstly, I don’t advise if you’re new to the path that you simply begin with demonic work. In fact, I think that’s something you do when you’ve already become a bit of an addict. You’ve worked through your traumas, you’ve worked through your pains, you’ve worked through your struggles. This is also an idea echoed by the works of Kenneth Grant and Crowley. Many others also share the same philosophy, one in which the practitioner moves progressively in their psyche up the tree of life. In other words, you deal with your attachment issues, your attachment wounds, you deal with developing your four archetypes, your elemental dimensions. You then cultivate your planetary dimensions to a degree and recognize how this is all from you and not from the world, and you take ownership. You apply active imagination and dream interpretation to work with this god within, this giant collective unconscious or personal unconscious that then gives you access to the collective unconscious. As you grow in your capacity, then only do you reach Binah or the sphere of understanding, the progenitor of the Holy Spirit, the great Shekinah, the Holy Spirit, the mother of the matrix. Only there are you swallowed up by the dragon’s head into Da’at, the fallen sephiroth, into the fallen side of the tree so you can resurrect the Qliphothic realm, purify it.

Even if you explore Qliphothic texts, if you read, for example, the work of Thomas Karlsson in Kabbalah, Qliphoth, and Goetic Magic, he highlights that before the Qliphoth during the shattering, there was still the light. It was the light. It was this that shattered. The spheres couldn’t handle the light, so even in the Qliphoth, there’s that light. There is that quintessential light known as the neshamah that needs to be resurrected or purified in order to do this. See, this is where our secret paradigm comes in. Once an adept or a practitioner has moved through these things, they’ve got all these other areas in their lives sorted out, they’ve done their basic shadow work, now they’re ready to start dealing with the collective shadow as well as the deeper parts that were far more traumatizing from their past. But they’re already kind of stable, they’ve done it, they’ve got the tools, they’re strong in their inner strength, they’re ready for that. Then they begin being introduced to a new set of narratives.

If we study psychology, we look specifically at Jungian psychology, we look at the work of Robert Moore, Robert Johnson, and many of these other great thinkers of our time inside of that Jungian tradition. We find that all of them say the same thing. The only way we’re working with the unconscious is if we’re using active imagination, we’re getting involved in it. A beautiful quote for me from Robert Johnson was, “If you do not go to the spirit, i.e., your unconscious, it will come to you in the form of neuroses, depression, and all these other issues.”

So, what are those? Look at that for a moment. Neuroses, depression, anger, hate, betrayal—all the negative emotions are the same attributed qualities that we would attribute to the demons of the Qliphothic tree. One demon is, you know, a god like Lilith is the goddess of lust, cruelty in certain ways. Samael is, or Adramelech is the lord of insanity and madness. Asmodeus is the lord of anger and wrath. These are all human emotions. They’re human states. They are the negative aspects of our nature as individuals. The difference, though, is that the adept, at this stage in their development or in their progress, they are building archetypes or they’re building relationships with archetypes that change the landscape.

A simple way to understand this is we look at a basic idea from motivational teacher and NLP coach Anthony Robbins. Anthony Robbins, when he talks about emotional mastery, and not just him, anyone that you go to that talks about emotional mastery, says the problem when we have negative emotions is that we repress them. The key is not to repress them or just express them wildly, but to essentially find a meaning that is empowering. Because the second you find a meaning that is empowering behind a negative energy, the second you see the neshamah, the second you see the light inside of the fallen, then and then only can you resurrect and reintegrate or mature that part of yourself in a way that now gives you power to go to the next level.

He does a very simple example. He says that your negative emotions are just action signals. So, all these negative feelings are just action signals, and then he gives examples, and many other authors give other examples. For example, loneliness or rejection is only something that you experience when you’re not meeting your own standard. So, he’s changing the rules, essentially, and that then becomes an action signal. That’s the key here: true understanding of the psychology. Now, obviously, there’s much more to this in the practice of magic and the occult arenas. There are many dimensions or many layers to this truth. There are many levels of manifestation, but we’re not in an initiatory structure. We can’t explore those together over a YouTube channel or something like that, but what we can do is share the psychological tools that will equip you on how to deal with that. That, my friends, is the purpose of those narratives. That’s the purpose of these mythologies and these stories that you hear of the dark side of the tree and the demons and the things that dwell there and their nature.

The essence is the same as the principle of Kali or the idea of Kali, where some see her as the goddess of chaos and of destruction. In other aspects, she’s also the goddess of time, the mastery of time. Because if you think about it, if I go out and I train in a martial art, at first it’s chaos, it’s Kali. I’m being beaten, I’m being slapped. But with all the punches that I’m taking, what gets better? My timing. Where at first I was in the chaos and I didn’t see a punch coming, the more I take that pain and the more I go, “Oh, this is good. I’m learning. I’m growing. This is going to give me mastery over timing, over my sequence, over my speed.” Now I’ve taken the negative energy and I found its neshamah. I found its empowering hidden secret.

So, I want you to reevaluate some of these demons and ask yourself, why do they exist in the first place? Many would even look at the other aspect of that and simply say, “Oh, it’s because of vengeance or anger or something like that. People want to curse.” I believe it goes a bit deeper. The ones that persist in that sense, I don’t say those things don’t exist, but as I mentioned earlier, that’s a subject that’s a more complicated discussion. We’re not going to be able to cover that in a single episode.

But if we look at, for example, take the translations just on the archangels and the archdemons in terms of the Kabbalah. If we look on the front side of the tree, we see the archangel Metatron. Metatron roughly translates as “he who is inside of the presence of God.” Presence here being a key word because think about it: when you’re truly inside of a situation and you’re in control, you’re here, you’re making your inflow states. Flow states are the state of being in presence. You’re in presence. Even the concept of God is known as the Ayn, as in the no-thing. In other words, an idea that hasn’t been limited or frozen into time and space.

Why is that important? Because why do you suffer? We suffer because we get stuck in a certain thing in time and space. We lock ourselves inside of that and it’s due to that we’re unable to move. You suffer about your past as long as you’re holding on to your past, but the moment you let that go, you’re suddenly freed from it and you’re able to be present. So, based on that, our suffering really happens when we get too stuck on the past, too stuck on the future, too attached to people, places, times, things, and events. As Dr. Joe Dispenza likes to point out, these are the conditions by which we limit and attach ourselves in the neocortex versus the full expanse of the probability that we call the divine that is within ourselves.

Now, if we look at the translation of the name or the association of the name inside of the Kabbalistic text of Samael, we find a translation of “he who is outside of the presence.” If we even go and we look at the correspondences and we see Samael and where it’s attributed to, we find very often that Samael, even though there is the klippa Samael, which attributes to Mercury, which attributes to the intellect. In other words, the probability of me disconnecting between my heart and my head, going so caught up in my mind. But it also then isolates Samael in attribution usually to the sphere of Gamaliel in attribution with Lilith, as Samael and Lilith did this way. It also reflects the moon, the subconscious, also our sexuality at a very deep level, but more specifically our sexual identity, giving us a very clear roadmap of how we can come back into presence where we’re actually stuck. Hence, the concept of a daemon being a guide.

If we go and we study the history of these things, if we go and we study the correspondences Kabbalistically of these things and we start to understand the fundamental premise that we’re, as the first law of the magi, always seeking a meaning that empowers us, then we’re able to find the light inside of the darkness, the calm inside of the chaos, which again is the principle of Zen. Think even of the ideologies of the egregore. The egregore, inside of their practice, they devote themselves to become closer to death. The practitioners of Santa Muerte, they devote themselves in changing the meaning and the relationship that they have with what most people consider a negative, as such freeing themselves psychologically and emotionally from the slavery to that.

If I look at things happening in my life, if things don’t go well, if there’s poverty or there’s pain or there’s illness, I don’t go, “Oh, woe is me. I’m so bad.” I’m not saying that I don’t feel bad. I mean, obviously it’s going to happen. You’re going to get shot. You’re going to get knocked down. Life’s going to happen. The difference is the core psychology. I go, “A bad situation, and I have a set of archetypes attributed that represents the rulership of that.” I go, “Hmm, Belial’s giving me the strength to overcome my weaknesses. This is going to make me stronger and make me more powerful in the end.” My attitude and my meaning are different, and because my attitude and my meaning are attributed to the situation, my default narrative, I have all these narratives of that entity that overcomes pain, that is the ruler of pain. So, when I see myself burning and I’m suffering through some agony or some sorrow because of a betrayal or something like that, I don’t feel despair. I don’t let that emotion turn into despair. I immediately see an old demonic force that represents itself in flames and in fire, and I go, “This is the transmutation.” Because what is that entity as well? That entity is then the power over X, Y, Z. The grimoires are full of attributes and ideas. That means if I master this, by mastering this negative in my life, by transforming, by finding its beauty, by learning the lessons, I’m going to become these things. I’m going to attain that part of myself.

It’s not an overnight process. It’s not a simple thing. I want you to consider this philosophy a little bit because if it was the way so many people make it out to be that they just throw up a couple of candles, chant a bunch of words, and some entity comes and fixes their life for them—you already know my feelings about that. I don’t believe in giving your power away. I believe in finding your power within and using these metaphors, these stories, these parts of the history of narrative and asking, why have these things continued to rise from the depths of our collective unconscious and continue to survive and grow inside of our society if there isn’t a narrative value to them in our culture?

As Joseph Campbell said, “Every religion is true in that the symbolism is true.” If we look deeper, what is the meaning of these names? What is the shape and design of that sigil? What does it mean and what is the empowering meaning for my life, for myself? I get to perceive the darker mysteries from a completely different vantage point.

Now again, I’ve already illustrated that there is obviously more to that as there is more to our development as individuals. Once we enter our own unconscious and we begin to reorganize things there, work with it there, and get in touch with those archetypes, we find out how real they can be and how that moves past our personal space into the transpersonal space. That’s a completely different discussion, but I want you to understand that the philosophy was not that you’d start off with these demons. You work your way up the tree of life, then you progress through the dark side of the tree. With the advancements that we have in therapy and neuroscience and NLP and all these other technologies, it makes sense that people will now take the other days. We got more information, more knowledge to work on these deeper sides. But understand that just picking up a grimoire, grabbing a sigil, doing a practice like that could be harmful because if you haven’t built a relationship with the basic archetypes in your psyche, to suddenly now try to work with one that is far more complex could cause more chaos than good. Especially if you don’t know how to integrate that or if you have narratives inside of you that contradict this part of you, you’re going to create a tear inside of your psyche and that despair you will go, “Oh, this is the evil demon.”

Well, it’s because we’ve attributed the demon to the concept of despair. But if we then study the neural map Kabbalistically of where that’s attributed to, what path, to what tree, to what correspondence, now we’re getting the ideas and the clues the same way as a tarot reading would to reveal to you a different meaning, a different perception. So, don’t rush your process. Do the work systemically and progressively. It’s not about competing with others. It’s not about being up to date with the latest trend or the latest grimoire. This is an ancient practice. It’s a personal practice. If it takes you lifetimes, that’s fine. What is important is not how many people agree with you. What is important is how you are agreeing with your progress. Can you measure that progress? Are you seeing results? Because if you’re not, maybe you’re caught up in an intellectual fantasy. Are you practicing things from grimoires or certain statements or from books of certain statements? If you’re not seeing those results, maybe it’s time to reevaluate the idea because there is a science behind faith, a science behind magic, a science behind religion, and you should be able to measure the progress. I’m not an advocate of some kind of supernatural grandiosity that claims some power is going to save your life. You are going to save your life. You are going to transform your world and become the king, queen, or ruler that your world and the people in our world deserve. But you’re only going to get there through making peace with the demons inside of you.

If you’re not even there with the specific collective unconscious aspects of the shadow, begin with the shadow within yourself today. Begin with your hatred, your anger, your disappointment. Why do you cut people off? Why do you just do this? And I’m guilty of this myself. There’s no immunity to this. You’re just going to progress and improve as you go. It’s like getting an illness or the flu. At first, you get it because you have weak immunity, but then your immunity gets stronger and then it’s less effective on you. But then you could still take a vacation break and binge on food too much and still get hit by the thing. Awareness is not immunity. Awareness itself is not accurate. Knowledge alone is not the solution. Knowledge applied practically.

I want to invite you, as I close this conversation off today, to do a very quick exercise for me at home or tonight. I want you to put the grimoire down, put the book down, put the references to anything else out there done and the how you’re supposed to do ritual, how you’re supposed to do any of that. I want you simply to get engaged in an active imagination exercise with your own higher self or whisper it, and I just want you to flow that through to the point where you can lose touch with yourself, your persona, your attachment to people, places, times, things, and events. Then, when you’re done, write all of that stuff down and then simply look at it symbolically and ask yourself, “What does all this mean? What is this telling me?” That’s the beginning of the most important conversation you can have, the conversation with the god within you.

I’m Adam Nox and I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Remember to live deliciously.

I’ve always felt a little different, a little uneasy between regular, a bit of a dreamer, a lost cause, a little non-ordinary, some would say. I think I’ve always just been this way. My mother said I was special. My father thought I should be feared. But I knew that witchcraft coursed through my veins the first time I tasted the lips of the goddess inside the rite. Yes, I’m a witch, it’s true. And sure, we are the ones who believe in the beauty of nature, who believe in the things science absent of art cannot explain, who instead of religion would have romance. And sure, you may think we have lost our way when in the world of predictable things we have such unfamiliar things that we would like to say. But maybe in a world so cold and alone, a little unfamiliar is exactly what is needed to show us the way home.