On his blog Balthazar commented:
The idea that all Goetic spirits are inherently corrosive and non-human seems a bit heavy handed coming from a Vodou practitioner. The same allegations have been made about the Lwa, many of whom are quite dangerous and unpredictable in their own right - and have been demonized for that very reason - either by protestant or evangelical observers citing that as evidence of their inhuman, corrosive nature. Calling them demons. Are the Lwa in fact demons, or would it be more correct to say that some people are more skilled at handling them than others?I find this comment interesting because I specifically avoided using the words "demon" and "evil" to describe the Goetic entities. I agree with Balthazar that these terms obfuscate rather than clarify: they are generally used as shorthand for "other people's gods" and "things I don't agree with," respectively. If that wasn't clear enough in my first post, hopefully this will remove any confusion.
What's more is that the spirits of the Goetia are quite frequently forms of older pagan spirits who remained useful but because they didn't fit into the oppressive theological hegemony of the time were made into demons - because presumedly all pagan spirits must necessarily be demons. Sound familiar?
However, I will note that for centuries the Goetia has been considered the "Book of Evil Spirits." The person who first compiled this book considered them to be evil: the people who worked with this book considered them to be evil. I think it is worthwhile to question why they considered these spirits to be demonic while referring to other spirits as angelic. There are certainly many grimoires which teach you how to summon archangels, angels, planetary spirits and other entities which are not classified as "demons." Why did these magicians, who presumably had experience working with angelic magic, decide that the Goetic entities were "evil spirits" and "demonic?" Writing that off as mere superstition and bigotry on their parts is an easy gloss over a difficult question.
There is a long tradition of the lwa being served as benevolent protectors. There is an equally long tradition that some lwa are not so benevolent and should be approached with caution. I don't "demonize" Marinette Bwa Cheche or Linglessou Bassin-Sang (Linglessou Bucket-of-Blood) when I advise that they should only be petitioned by or with the aid of experienced practitioners, and only for a damned good reason. They serve a vital role within the Vodou tradition, but they are still dangerous. Spiders and bacteria are an important part of the ecosystem, but I'm not going to snort anthrax spores or drop Black Widows down my shorts to prove my oneness with nature.
Balthazar makes another, very interesting observation:
Demonic obsession gets mentioned a lot in this discussion. Well, I know a lot of people who are obsessed by the Holy Spirit - to the extent that the other day I had to deal with a DNS poisoning issue with this blog, which kept redirecting the URL to some evangelical ministries website, assumedly devised by some righteous holy hacker. I also had to deal with a spiritual attack from the self same bunch waged most likely with imprecatory prayer. Talk about obsession. Lord only knows why my little blog would provoke such an effort - I wasn't going to give them any air time, for fear of encouraging their bigoted shenanigans but it seems appropriate to mention. I am not going to even go into the religious nut-jobs who kill, beat and maim for Jesus. Is the Holy Spirit a corrosive, inhuman demon?This is a very important point. If we are going to talk about Goetia (or possession work), we need to discuss the nature of obsession and oppression. I will be discussing this in further detail in my next post: in the meantime I thank Balthazar for his input. I am impressed by how this discussion has produced a lot of intelligent and informative material. While there are obviously disagreements among various practitioners, they have been presented politely and rationally: we may not all come to complete agreement but I think we can all learn something from each other.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the considered response Kenaz - and right you are, you did not use the term "demon", but it seemed that by describing these spirits as corrosive and non-human (or capable of emotion) you were inferring a demoniac disposition nonetheless.
Your point is taken re the "Book of Evil Spirits" and the compilers conceptions of them as evil. Although this isn't consistently or clearly defined as such across the genre as a whole, in my opinion. Yet, one has to wonder how those compilers might have classed the Lwa had they come across them? It seems to me they were speaking from a specific world view framed by theological prejudices of the time and that view informed their classifications. Things in the sky were good, and those chthonic things beneath were almost always evil - despite the spiritual realities behind them.
One of the many interesting things about Goetia is that it gives one the opportunity to examine these binary oppositions, spiritually, and possibly collapse them. That collapse can lead to illumination.
Nonetheless, this is a very interesting discussion and I am rather enjoying it!
I suspect that if the creators of the Solomonic system actually encountered the lwa as practitioners rather than as outside observers, they would have classed some as angelic (Damballah, Freda, Agwe), some as demonic (Kalfou, the Ghede) and some of mixed nature (Ogou, Legba). While those classifications would have been misleading (the Ghede are more naughty than evil, for instance), they would not have been entirely inaccurate.
I agree that the original Solomonic compilers had strong Christian prejudices. But they still recognized that some spirits were "angelic" and some were "demonic." Presumably they came up with these classifications based on their direct experience. Yes, this experience was likely filtered through a J/C religious view but it was still experience. And I don't think we should reject that experience out of hand.
My classification of them as "corrosive" was based on my experience with four of the spirits (Furcas, Cimmeries, Sitri and Gamory), and on anecdotes from people who had worked with other Goetic spirits. It could well be that some of the Goetic entities are more benevolently inclined than the ones I encountered: Bune, Vassago and Orobas are all noted to be fairly mild-mannered, IIRC. I would have to work the other 68 to determine which were or were not corrosive for me -- and of course that might or might not be of use to other magicians.
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