On the Problem of Evil, Part One
About those demons...
About 30 years ago my mother asked me to attend an overnight weekend gathering in Fergus Falls, MN. The focus of the event would be about addiction. My mother was convinced I was addicted to cannabis (despite that I wasn’t smoking a tenth of what some others I thought were addicted were smoking.) The gathering would be held at a former mental hospital. I hesitated, but I figured if I didn’t go my mother would become more deeply convinced I had a drug problem. She really wanted me to go, and I wanted to make her happy too.
As soon as we got there I could feel the place was haunted.
Fergus Falls State Hospital
National Register of Historic Places
OPEN TO PUBLIC:
No
The Fergus Falls State Hospital (1890) is historically significant under National Register Criterion A in the area of Health and Medicine for its association with the state’s enduring commitment to provide humane treatment for its mentally ill citizens. Officially known as the Third State Hospital for the Insane…It became the first state mental hospital to serve the growing population in northern Minnesota and by 1970 over 40,000 patients had received treatment….
The buildings feature a variety of architectural styles that range from Romanesque, Tudor Revival, and Craftsman, to modernism of the postwar era. The nominated property also includes the eight acre hospital cemetery.
The gathering was being hosted by a church, and the pastor was only about 10 years older than I was. We spent much of the first day walking the building and grounds, talking about religion. I had been raised evangelical but was becoming something of a pagan. We challenged each other and I think we both benefited, enjoying each other’s company.
Most of the time talking with him and during the proceedings, I was beset by imagery of torture. I was not and never have been inclined to think about such, but no matter the discussion, my mind kept turning to the awful things that had been done to people in that building; I won’t trouble you with what I saw, suffice to say it wasn’t pleasant.
That night I had a dream I was standing in the midst of a demon orgy, surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of demons, demons as far as I could see, in groups of ten or more fucking and savaging each other. None of them noticed me. I watched for awhile, then I raised my fist in the air above me, extended my middle finger and smiled - and every single one of that legion of demons stopped what they were doing, turned their head and looked at me. There was a pause, and then all at once every single one of them converged on me like I was a vacuum. Just before the first of them reached me I woke up, nearly falling off the cot. I was sleeping in a common area, many others around me still sleeping. Disturbed, but otherwise not sensing any danger, I eventually fell asleep with no more troubling dreams.
When I woke up the following morning, after everyone else was up and about, I was tending to my things by the cot where I had slept when I had an audible hallucination, some disembodied voice as a whisper over my shoulder, saying my name. I whirled around as if someone were behind me but no one was nearby. I felt a chill, but did not hear the voice again, I attended the days proceedings and then was very happy to leave that place later in the afternoon.
So, what was that? I did not really understand it at the time, but now I know those demons and that voice were real, just as real as this waking life. I can still see them even now, doing their demon thing. I don’t spend much of any time thinking about those demons or any demons, I’m only thinking about it now because the Tonic 7 at Deimos Station have been obsessed of late with the problem of evil. I’ve written about them before, about their podcasts on WWIII and Laughing at the Faustian Bargain, so their last two broadcasts, really the last three or four, have me thinking about that mental hospital again.
In the occult, which is the science of the unseen, humans are thought to have four bodies in one: Physical, etheric, astral and mind. We are familiar with the physical, it is the only body acknowledged by The Science. The etheric is like pure energy filtered through every cell, like the particle field as opposed to the particle, extending a few inches out from the physical. Mind I am not so clear about, as it is said we humans are not yet fully evolved in the body of mind. The astral body exists in the astral realm, which is the creative energy flowing from the creative source, all possibilities becoming all things. The astral is the place of imagination and dreams, which is considered to be as real as the physical. The astral is the primary dwelling place of demons.
What is a demon? Think of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth - demons are like energetic amalgamations of these. To be influenced by a demon or demons is merely to dwell energetically in any one or a few or all of these energies. To be possessed is to have had any and all boundaries collapsed between the astral and physical, and to be obsessed in some form with the sins above. Schizophrenia is like seeing without boundaries between the astral and the physical, with an inclination to see demons. It is a good reminder, all possibilities exist in the astral realm, all possible bad, all possible good and everything in between and above and below. Mysticism, trance, creative visualization, lucid dreaming, are all intentional ways to access the astral realm, while maintaining basic healthy boundaries between the astral and the physical realms.
But demons are not quite what we imagine they are. According to Eliphas Levi:
Wicked demons, are called nothing more than husks, or cortices [qlippoth, in Hebrew cabalistic writing]1….we can thus really and truly see demons, souls etc., by means of the imagination; but the imagination of the adept is diaphonous, while the imagination of the vulgar is opaque; the light of truth crosses one as though through a splendid window and refracts in the other as though through a glazed mass full of dross and foreign objects…2.
In modern terms, what we imagine of demons is entirely the influence of media depictions, which are the creative work of artists who imagine demons through the filter of human existence. Demons as we imagine them are the human “cortice” twisted in grotesque proportion.
Aside from demons, which are legion, there are said to be elementals, which are neither good nor evil, which are believed to be able to bridge the gap between spirit and the terrestrial more easily, but then become like a mirror of what humans feel and imagine. Elementals aren’t demons but they are often mistaken for such. But elementals are beyond the scope of this essay.
That said, you are what you eat, so to speak. Or rather, you are what you think about, dream about, envision. Once you start dreaming about sex with your neighbor’s spouse, that is like opening up to demonic energy, which gets easier the more you do it and expands into other deadly sins. The longer you dwell in this the more the body and especially the brain forms accordingly, making it that much harder to change for the good. Once lost in “sin”, such as deep addiction to drugs, money or sex, it takes something very like divine intervention, and practice, diligence and time to recover.
One might also, as example, creatively visualize the partner you want to have children with, and then structure your life in such a way that would attract such a person, and then your chances of finding him or her go up considerably. That goes for anything positive you want in your life. Imagine it, intend it, will it into being.
But this essay is about the problem of evil. Theologians far more learned than me have struggled with this question. To my understanding, no one has sufficiently answered the question, or we wouldn’t still be trying to figure it out.
Conservatives of late have been obsessed with the question, trying to make sense of the way everything seems to have been turned upside down the last several years (liberals by comparison are convinced they have the answer, it goes by the name of White Supremacist TrumpPutinHitler.) The endless lies of the covid cartel turning the medical industry into a killing machine, the reproductive mutilation of children in the name of gender therapy, the weaponization of the intelligence community, media and the law, men in women’s sports and the cancellation of the idea of Woman, censorship by big tech and media generally, the trans-ification of the military and corporations, the wide open southern border, open air drug and sex markets in major cities, the making of ideological illiterate in public schools and universities, conservatives call it woke but the “woke” call it science and progress. One aspect of evil is, those who embrace it see themselves as “good,” while projecting their evil onto some other.
But then for most of my life conservatives have acted like greed and selfishness is good, while calling it capitalism.
Look to thy plank in thy own eye. Greed did not stop being a deadly sin because capitalism.
Raised evangelical, I grew tired, hearing about how I was going to hell for eternity, unless I did as I was told by evangelicals, most of whom spent a lot more time talking about sin and Satan, than they did about the good and Jesus. One of the problems of evil is how easy and attractive it seems, to embrace it or rail against it. Energetically there is not a lot of difference between visualizing the seven deadly sins as a means of earthly pleasure, and visualizing demons as a means to demonize them, pardon the pun. If your eye is ever on the devil for whatever reason, it is not on God.
Personally, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about demons, the devil, or any ugly thing. Sometimes I get a bit carried away, obsessing about how authoritarianism is ascendant in America, but I always come back to the garden, spiritual alchemy, the living earth, good spirits and gods, the guitar, God and the Great Work. I don’t fight evil by obsessing about evil, I fight evil by practicing the good. There are also seven virtues: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience and humility. They aren’t sexy, but there is great power in them, far more than evil.
When I listen to the Tonic 7 talking about evil I am most focused on what my friend Mark Bisone has to say. Of the crew, Mark has the most visceral understanding of evil. I worry about him sometimes, he is so very focused on evil. He has decided his quest, his purpose, is to fight monsters. Mark is a (nominal) Christian, a little skeptical about me because I talk about magic, but I merely think of magic as the science of fighting evil/embracing the good.
Some of what I am saying about how evil settles in the body and transforms it I have lifted more or less from Mark and Harrison Koehli. Harrison is a curious bird, insofar as I don’t know anyone who thinks more about evil, while he maintains a very gentle nature.
The moral of this story is, don’t spend too much time thinking about evil, or demons or darkness or the devil, unless you are being most intentional about it. It is very easy to get lost in evil, without intending to (hardly anyone intends to do evil.) It is far better to think about the good that you might do and be good, though it is more work, it takes greater effort, because everything that is truly good requires work - it isn’t called the Great Work for nothing.
Part two of this series will be about the devil.
The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, Eliphas Levi, Greer and Mikituk translation 2017, pg 53
ibid, pg 68
This brought tears of joy to my eyes: "I don’t fight evil by obsessing about evil, I fight evil by practicing the good."
Great essay. The Soul After Death by Seraphim Rose is the most profound introduction to a traditional Christian understanding of the demonic I've ever read and I suspect you would find it compelling as well.