Test the demons

 

Anonymous Australian occultist on the YouTube channel "Lifting the Lamp" responds to some bad reactions to another video upload of his, in which he discussed demons. You would think the critical viewers considered Mr Lamp to be too positive towards demons. You would be wrong.

They actually accused him of being too negative?! Which just confirms what other Neo-Pagans and occultists have said on other fora: demonolatry seem to be in fashion these days. That being said, Mr Lamp isn´t entirely dismissive of his demon-friendly critics. There is *some* truth even in demonolatry, the demons of “his” magical system not always being 100% evil evilly beings á la Satan. However, even the “best” demons – which can help you with material gain – are negative in the end, since they keep you chained to the material world with all its desires, desires which ultimately cannot be fulfilled (Mr Lamp admits that some people might find his argument “Buddhist” or “Gnostic” here). Many other demons are simply deceitful or indeed evil, and if you don´t trust people, why would you trust a demon?

Some of Lamp´s critics regard demons as simply the old pagan gods, who have been literally demonized by the Christian Church. Some also accuse him of being brainwashed by Christianity (Lamp is a former Catholic). His answer to the former is that many pagan gods weren´t particularly nice or ethical, so why have dealings with them? Humanity should outgrow them. As for being programmed by Christianity, Lamp points out that he was a member of the Crowleyan OTO for over a decade. Judging by his other videos, he then took up “Enochian Magic” and Golden Dawn ditto, which indeed have Christian undertones, but he doesn´t seem to regard this as negative. Christ is a real being coming through when you do white magic.

Yet other critics charged Lamp with being too “dualist”. In a sense, he admits that he is indeed such. There are negative forces and beings who wish you harm in the cosmos, while others want to elevate you to higher states. If that´s dualist, so be it. Mr Lamp doesn´t rule out that angels or “devas” might develop material attachments and fall, nor that demons might sometimes ascend (he mentions a mage who could release such beings of their suffering). However, this doesn´t really disprove dualism, since the entities involved chose between Light and Darkness.

The content-creator also reveals that he carried out a demonic ritual himself in order to face down the demons, called “the four princes of evil”, and says that he “may or may not” do a video about it. Who knows, maybe that will make his critics go away…