chapter 6

Daimonology

Once again, let’s look in on the kitchen of Philanike, where her student Euthymios is helping her bake bread.

Euthymios: You know, there are stores that will sell you this stuff for ready money.

Philanike: What fun is that? I like making bread.

Eu: And yet here I am, kneading dough.

Ph: There’s actually a lesson in this, you know.

Eu: When is there not a lesson in your kitchen?

Ph: See that notecard there?

Eu: The one stained with butter and flour? Yes.

Ph: What is it?

Eu: The recipe, I gather, for this bread. Although why you need a recipe I don’t know, since you haven’t looked at it once.

Ph: So tell me, Euthymios, what is a recipe? Is it an object? If I burn this card, do I lose the recipe?

Eu: I doubt it. You probably know it by heart. So it exists in your mind as well as on that card, and probably on countless other cards.

Ph: So the recipe exists in my mind, or in any mind that peruses the recipe card, or any mind I tell it to. So what does that make it?

Eu: An idea. The recipe is the idea of bread. This sticky dough is hyle, or matter, and I guess I’m the Nous.

Ph: Actually, I’m the Nous in this allegory.

Eu: What does that make me?

Ph: Blinkered if I know. Let’s try to figure it out. Reasoning by allegory isn’t rigorous, but it can be instructive and creative if you do it right. So the recipe is the Idea, I’m the Nous in which the Idea dwells, and the dough is Hyle which will by the ministration of the will of the recipe become bread.

Eu: So the recipe is a god?

Ph: Just so: the god of bread. Of course, there is a god of bread who is greater than any particular recipe, but let’s just take the allegory where it takes us. So if the recipe is like a god, and I am like the Nous in which the god dwells, does the recipe change?

Eu: It could, but then it’d be a different recipe, a different god.

Ph: Does the recipe make bread?

Eu: Hardly. You do.

Ph: Not right now I don’t. I’m mixing myself a mimosa and watching you pound dough. Make sure you get the air bubbles out.

Eu: Seems a pretty meager religion, worshiping recipes.

Ph: Who said theurgy was a religion? Didn’t you read the first chapter? Anyway, you’re right, it seems to me. Recipes aren’t very tasty, even if you have a pretty good culinary imagination.

Eu: So the recipe is the god, you are the Nous, the bread is the Hyle, and I am the agent of change in the world. I’m some sort of hand of the gods, then? Is that your point?

Ph: Exactly. You’re a daimon of the recipe of bread.

Eu: Whoa. A demon, eh? I hope this particular loaf of bread doesn’t come out of the oven speaking in Latin obscenities.

Ph: I didn’t develop a sudden British accent there: I said “daimon,” not “demon.” Dye, not dee. Some daimones are good, some “evil” to our eyes, but they’re all agents of the ideas in the world of the Nous.

Eu: Ahh, cosmology. Why don’t the gods make bread themselves, then? Why do they need me?

Ph: You said if the recipe changed, it’d become a different recipe. Growing hands would certainly be a change in the recipe, and we need those big strong man-thumbs to make proper bread.

Eu: You’ve got stronger hands than I do!

Ph: That’s ’cause I work for a living. Knead, knave. Don’t make me get out my thwacking stick.

Eu: So daimones exist as an intermediate between the unchanging Ideas and the world of matter. Are they spirits, then?

Ph: If you wish. But I wasn’t really being completely allegorical when I said that you were acting as the daimon of bread right now. You’re carrying the message from the recipe to the dough: the Greek word for that role, the role of messenger, is angelos.

Eu: From demon to angel in just a few minutes. I’m doing well tonight, eh?

Ph: Passably well. That’s enough, throw a towel over it and let it rise for a bit.

Eu: So how many daimones are there?

Ph: How many messages do you imagine must come from the Nous to the world of matter?

Eu: Probably quite a few. Let’s say pretty much infinite. And do messages go the other way?

Ph: From matter to the gods? What happens if you revise the recipe after having made bread? Perhaps you decide, “Holy cow, that’s too much yeast, let’s cut that back.” What then?

Eu: We already decided: it becomes a new recipe. So I make a new god?

Ph: Well, remember that the realm of the Nous, unlike my own personal mind, has no time. So “new” means nothing there. But if you change an idea, it’s a different idea.

Eu: So a daimon can carry messages back to the Nous, but doesn’t really change the Ideas there, just selects among them? Like if I flip open a cookbook and decide instead of bread to make cupcakes.

Ph: So it would seem. And if our neighbor stops by and says, “Hey, Euthymios, bake me a loaf, would you?” you could choose a recipe and begin work.

Eu: So I’d be carrying a message from your neighbor, to the cookbook, to the bread, then back to the neighbor when I deliver it. But I’d tell your neighbor to go find a baker.

Ph: Perhaps he’d pay you for the bread.

Eu: That’d be something, I suppose, although I don’t know how much he’d have to pay me. I really prefer eating to baking.

Ph: Then perhaps he would bat his eyes at you and win your love.

Eu: Not since that experimental couple of weeks in college, he wouldn’t. But I see your point: there’re ways to encourage me to carry certain messages. Just as there are with daimones.

Ph: Exactly.

In the Symposium, Plato wrote of a dinner party Socrates attended where the topic of conversation was love, or eros. Each of the guests had a story or theory of love, and, typical of Plato’s early (and, in my opinion, best) dialogues, no one came to a clear conclusion. But Socrates offered an account of Eros, Love, arguing—in the words of Diotima, a holy woman well-skilled in the arts of desire—that he was not a god but a daimon, an intermediate being. Diotima argued that Eros grew out of lack: that we want what we do not have. Since Eros is therefore lacking, it could not be a god, who lacks for nothing. Hence, it must be an intermediate spirit: a daimon. Socrates recounted his conversation with Diotima:

“What then is Love?” I asked; “Is he mortal?” “No.” “What
then?” “As in the former instance, he is neither mortal
nor immortal, but in a mean between the two.” “What
is he, Diotima?” “He is a great spirit (daimon), and like
all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the
mortal.” “And what,” I said, “is his power?” “He interprets,”
she replied, “between gods and men, conveying and taking
across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and
to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the
mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and
therefore in him all is bound together, and through him
the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and
mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation,
find their way. For God mingles not with man; but
through Love all the intercourse and converse of god
with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The
wisdom which understands this is spiritual; all other
wisdom, such as that of arts and handicrafts, is mean
and vulgar. Now these spirits or intermediate powers
are many and diverse, and one of them is Love.”111

These intermediate powers, or daimones, have the characteristic of leading the way to god. Eros is one daimon out of many, one intermediate spirit, albeit an important one. Others also exist.

The earliest mentions of the word daimon are in Homer and Hesiod. Homer uses the word more or less interchangeably with theos, or “god,” but Hesiod recounts how two earlier ages of humanity became daimones: The golden age of humans who lived in peace and plenty with the gods under the rulership of Kronos became good daimones; the silver age that followed became daimones of the earth.112 Both good and evil needed to be propitiated, the good for their blessings and the evil to avert their ire.

The Genius and the Paredros

It’s nearly a cultural universal that magicians, shamans, or witches have spiritual helpers and allies: invisible friends who work for the benefit of the magician. These invisible friends, their natures and names, vary from culture to culture. Sometimes these helpers perform a theurgic purpose and bring the practitioner closer to the divine. Other times the helpers serve a more thaumaturgical purpose, helping to achieve particular material goals. The beliefs of Late Antiquity Pagans describe both types of spiritual helpers.

This particular concept is a good example of how Paganism’s spiritual ideas filtered through the Middle Ages and arrive in our own time. Two concepts of these helper spirits survive, one popular and one more esoteric. For the popular opinion, one need only search the internet for the phrase “guardian angel” to buy cheap ceramic figures of winged humans standing guard over wide-eyed children. The esoteric doctrine is a bit more sophisticated and slightly less decorative. It’s distinguished by the addition of “Holy” to the phrase “Guardian Angel.” Often it comes in the phrase “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” It’s easy to trace this back to Aleister Crowley, who himself got it from a fifteenth-century grimoire called the Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.

This particular concept of the spiritual guide is ill-defined. Crowley himself argues in one place that he chose the name “guardian angel” because it was “patently absurd” to imagine such an angel standing watch, and so it wouldn’t lead to complex doctrines because no thinking person could build such a doctrine on such an absurd and silly term.113 Of course, people did just that. Elsewhere, Crowley argues that the Holy Guardian Angel is of a class of beings similar to that of a god or a human:

Now, on the other hand, there is an entirely different type of
angel; and here we must be especially careful to remember
that we include gods and devils, for there are such beings
who are not by any means dependent on one particular
element for their existence. They are microcosms in exactly
the same sense as men and women are … I believe that the
Holy Guardian Angel is a Being of this order. He is something
more than a man, possibly a being who has already passed
through the stage of humanity, and his peculiarly intimate
relationship with his client is that of friendship, of community,
of brotherhood, or Fatherhood. He is not, let me say with
emphasis, a mere abstraction from yourself; and that is
why I have insisted rather heavily that the term “Higher
Self” implies a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion.114

In fact, Crowley is convinced that the magician’s main goal should be to achieve “knowledge and conversation” of this being: to know who and what it is and be able to talk to it and have it talk back. He gets this notion from Abramelin, who sets communion with this angel, “the chosen Angel of Adonai, a delightful, good Angel,” as the first task of the aspiring magician.115

The method of achieving Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA is actually one of the few esoteric concepts laid out clearly in a grimoire (in distinction to the typical recipes and incantations that most grimoires include). Abramelin recommends an eighteen-month period in which the mage engages in prayer and a regimen of purity and abstention. This period culminates finally in a vision of the angel and the reception of its name and seal, by which it can be contacted. Following this, in the Abramelin system, the mage must bind the demons to the will of his or her angel, and then employ those demons for the work of magic. Thus, the theurgic HGA works hand-in-hand with the magician to bind the thaumaturgical demons.

There is a continuous debate in occult circles on the issue of whether or not the HGA was invented by Crowley and how much credence we should give it. One side argues that the HGA was invented from just a few sources (chief among them Abramelin) and that one should not put much credence in the concept. The other side argues, as I do, that in fact this concept has a much longer pedigree. Abramelin wrote at a high point in the knowledge of theurgy. And the concept of a guardian angel who serves a theurgic purpose not only extends back to Antiquity, it was also a sine qua non of ancient Roman religion and present in earlier Greek religion as well.

Socrates described the experience of having “something divine,” a “daimonion,” watching over him and giving him signs when he was about to do something wrong. In the Apology, he said: “This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do.”116 Then, in the Phaedrus, when giving a sarcastically sophistic argument about love, he stopped and said his daimonion told him not to go on uttering such falsehoods.117 Clearly, Socrates believed that some divine force existed to warn him away from evil. The idea that daimones existed and that each human had a good spirit, an Agathos Daimon, appears to stretch back very far indeed in Greek religion.118 The role of the daimon is as an intermediary to the gods, and it is the root of our modern concept of the guardian angel.

While the Greeks listened quietly to their Agathos Daimon and the Abramelin operation plunged the magician into a regimen of intensive prayer, the Romans had made the concept of a guardian spirit part of their day-to-day religion. This spirit, called a genius, is the source of our word for a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative. Romans believed that everyone had a genius, given to them at the moment of birth. Romans sacrificed to their genii (no relation to the word genie, by the way), as well as to the emperor’s genius. Christians got themselves in trouble with the Roman empire by refusing to sacrifice incense to the genius of the emperor (or, perhaps more accurately, the empire engineered such a requirement to get Christians in trouble). A genius was occasionally called a person’s Iove or Iuno—a Iove for a man, Iuno for a woman—identifying it with the supreme pair of gods, Jupiter and Juno.

The Roman genius was not limited to people: every locale had its own genius, and particularly sacred or interesting places had especially powerful ones. In this, they are like nature spirits or kami in Shinto. Since the names of such genii are not recorded in any myths, the Romans developed a formula for prayer to a particular genius of unknown name: si deus si dea, “whether god or goddess.” A prayer recorded by Cato for divine permission to clear a grove illustrates how such unknown deities were approached:

The following is the Roman formula to be observed in thinning
a grove: A pig is to be sacrificed, and the following prayer
uttered: “Whether thou be god or goddess to whom this
grove is dedicated, as it is thy right to receive a sacrifice
of a pig for the thinning of this sacred grove, and to this
intent, whether I or one at my bidding do it, may it be
rightly done. To this end, in offering this pig to thee I
humbly beg that thou wilt be gracious and merciful to
me, to my house and household, and to my children.
Wilt thou deign to receive this pig which I offer
thee to this end.”119

Obviously, it is essential to recognize the spiritual reality of the location before doing violence to its physical reality.

What is the role of this angel, daimon, or genius in the practice of theurgy? As a personal god, it is a patron for our spiritual development. Each person gets his or her own, and each one is intimately concerned with that person. As a guardian of place, it is a way of grounding spirituality to location. It acts as a conduit between the lower and upper world, between the nous and the world of matter. In sum, the genius acts as a translator between worlds, a personal daimon.

The worship of the genius of the emperor is a good example of this translation: the ordinary citizen could participate in the religion of the state through making offering to the emperor’s own genius, which became at the same time associated with the genius of Rome. The government had a spiritual double with the genius of Rome presiding with the genius of the emperor. The genius stood as an intermediary between the people and their emperor. Pouring libations and offering incense to these genii allowed the citizens to participate in this spiritual government, even as it paved the way for the late imperial tradition of apotheosis of the emperor.

But most of the worship of the genius was a personal religion conducted in the home and not in the street. Because everyone learned this worship at home from word of mouth, we have relatively few inscriptions or written accounts regarding this tradition. But we do have mentions in Late Antiquity of the genius or daimon’s role in the life of the philosopher or theurgist. Plotinus participates in a ritual to achieve knowledge and conversation of his genius or daimon, led by an Egyptian priest who it is hinted may be a charlatan. The results, however, are startlingly real to all involved. Instead of a lesser daimon, a god shows up and claims to be Plotinus’s genius. Startled by this revelation (or perhaps envious), one of the magician’s assistants prematurely ends the ritual by killing a sacrificial bird.120 The race of daimones, as lesser beings between the gods and humans, usually provide the genius, but for Plotinus, at least according to his biographer Porphyry, he had a being of much greater quality: a god.

Another Neoplatonic theurgist, Proclus, mentions the role of the daimon in Socrates’s original sense as a being who warns away from danger. Proclus’s biography recounts his fleeing from Athens when “critically harassed by certain giant birds of prey … ”:

For it was in order to prevent his being uninitiated into the
more ancient rites still practiced there that his personal
daemon contrived this pretext for his departure. For he
himself acquired clear knowledge of their customs, and
for their part, if through length of time they had
neglected any of the practices, they learned from
the philosopher’s directions to serve the gods
more perfectly.121

This particular account illustrates that the daimon or genius is often seen as performing a negative action: preventing error rather than leading one into correct action. Here, the error would have been staying in one location and thus not having a particular mystery initiation.

Similarly, in the Apology, Socrates makes this same point that his daimon never tells him what to do but only warns him when he is about to make an error. The genius or daimon therefore preserves the free will of the person it guides by allowing him or her to choose goals and how to pursue them without interference, but warning when those goals are not spiritually healthy. This trait of the daimon has led some to suggest that the daimon is merely a personification of the personal conscience.

As a being worthy of worship, the image of the genius appears in various murals and statues in the homes of ordinary Romans. The genius of a place is often depicted as a serpent, while the genius of a person is usually a human figure without wings, and not hovering over a ruddy-cheeked child as we tend to think of it. Instead, the figure is usually holding a cornucopia and offering one hand as if to make a gift or offer a sacrifice. Often, genii are depicted pouring libations, an action that underlines their intermediate nature, who are offering worship to the gods on behalf of the person they patronize. One also sees images of gods themselves making such libations, a symbol I believe indicates that the figure depicted isn’t a god but a daimon.

Iamblichus argues that there can be multiple genii for each person: a genius at birth may in some cases turn over the guardianship of the theurgist to a god or higher daimon. Thus, Iamblichus reconciles the legend that Plotinus had a god for his genius. This idea of a multiple genius shows up again much later in the Renaissance, when the Neoplatonic practice of theurgy enjoyed a sudden rebirth. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, whose work is responsible for nearly all contemporary occultism, writes that the genius has three parts. First is a holy angel, responsible for the spiritual growth and development, given directly by the gods and not controlled by the stars (and hence, not subject to fate). Then there’s the daimon of the nativity or the genius, which is determined astrologically. Finally, Agrippa speculates that each person has a daimon of profession, determined by one’s work which changes when one changes occupations.

Others, among them Agrippa himself, argue that in addition to a good genius there is an evil genius. This opinion was evidently ancient, as the playwright Menander argues against it, writing that “Every god must be good. But those who are bad themselves, who have bad characters and make a muddle out of their lives, managing everything badly through their foolishness … they make a divine being responsible and call it ‘bad,’ while they are actually bad themselves.”122 I am inclined to agree with this opinion, as is Iamblichus, but the impetus to create an equal and opposite evil being is probably the result of the influence of Manichean dualism (possibly through early versions of Christianity) on late Neoplatonism.

Identifying the Genius

The Greek and Roman concept of the genius has its reflection in late Neoplatonic practice as well, where the genius is identified as a being determined by the influence of the seven planetary gods on one’s birth: in other words, the genius is a personification of the horoscope itself. It was a common astrological practice to identify the planet of one’s genius, and several methods for doing so existed, from the complex to the very simple. For example, one could simply find the planet ruled by the sign of the ascendent and declare that to be the planet of the genius if it is well-dignified. Of course, if it isn’t well-dignified, that may present problems. One could also do the same with the ruler of the eleventh house, as the house of friends and allies. More complex methods determine the relative strength of each of the planets, or the relative power of each of particular points in the chart, and determine the planets from that.

Iamblichus argues against this urge to identify a ruling planet for the genius: “He is not distributed to us from one part of the heavens nor from any of the visible planets but from the entire cosmos—its multi-faced life and its multi-form body—through which the soul descends into generation.”123 For Iamblichus, the genius was not the influence of a particular planet, no matter how strong, but the influence of the entire cosmos on the person in question. We can think, then, of the genius as a personification of the horoscope or spirit inhabiting the moment of birth. This concept isn’t simple astrology: rather than saying that some planets are well-dignified and others debilitated, this interpretation implies that all of the planets work in order to guide and warn the person whose nativity is represented.

This interpretation of the nature and role of the genius led to a system for determining the name of that genius through astrology. Agrippa, clearly influenced by this Neoplatonic doctrine, explains the procedure for determining the name, which is to assign a letter (Hebrew, naturally) to each of the degrees of the zodiac starting with alef at the first degree of Aries, starting over again and again until each degree is given a letter. Then, identify the location of each of the Hylegian points, which are the locations of the sun, moon, ascendent, part of fortune, and syzygy (the location of the nearest full or new moon). The letters associated with those five points are the name of the genius, or so he says.124

Agrippa’s astrological formula only determines the name of the genius of the nativity, not the holy genius or the genius of profession, but perhaps he intended that one could find out those names simply by asking the genius. I, personally, am not yet convinced of this three-fold system of genii, nor do
I find the astrological method particularly appealing.

Fortunately, we have another set of instructions, relying not on the mathematical operations and manipulations of the astrological chart but on ritual and clairvoyance. Iamblichus explains the procedure thus:

[T]he invocation of daemons is made in the name of the
single god who is their ruler, who from the beginning has
apportioned a personal daemon to each individual, and who
in the theurgic rites reveals, according to his good pleasure,
their personal daemon to each … [W]hen the personal
daemon comes to be with each person, then he reveals the
mode of worship proper to him and his name, and imparts
the particular manner in which he should be summoned.125

From this we can construct a ritual devised to invoke the daimon, and in fact we needn’t do much in the way of construction, because such rituals are not difficult to find. Aleister Crowley used a ritual he called the Bornless Ritual, which he devised from a ritual in the Greek Magical Papyri, officially designated PGM V. 96–172. There, in the original text, it is designated “Stele of Jeu the hieroglyphist in his letter.”126 He could have chosen any number of other, more appropriate rituals, as the Stele of Jeu is actually pretty clearly an exorcism, not an invocation. Nevertheless, I know many people who have used this ritual or variations of it to good effect.

The procedure of Abramelin is, of course, very much along the lines of Iamblichus. It gains its power not from any particular magical names—in fact, Abramelin suggests that one pray extemporaneously—but from the repetition of the prayers over time. As magical rituals go, it’s rather simple: it requires almost no equipment and very little in the way of magical knowledge. It’s designed to work as an initiation for those new to magic. This makes sense: for Abramelin, connecting with the genius was the first step of all magic. I obviously don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t think the ancients did either. Instead, the relationship with the genius, like one’s relationships with the gods, was an ongoing, lifelong endeavor.

I am of the opinion that the cultivation of the genius should be as simple as possible (not to imply that it is, necessarily, also easy), leaving more complex and arduous rituals to more elaborate tasks. One of the things that makes contacting your genius easy is that your genius wants to be in contact with you. You’re not pulling the whole load here: there’s an intelligence meeting you halfway. What makes it harder than contacting a known god or daimon is that you have no name, no form, and no symbols with which to make a connection. Instead of a statue filled with a deity’s synthemata, you have only the vague and nebulous notion that your genius is out there waiting for you. You need the synthemata to contact the daimon; you need to contact the daimon to find the synthemata! It’s almost a catch-22, although not quite: while you don’t have your genius’s synthemata, he or she has yours.

This paradox is why I described animating statutes first: in many ways, it’s good practice for the invocation of the genius, because you have the synthemata as a tool. Here, you do not: at first you have only your own intuition to guide you. Your previous work in developing relationships with deities, animating statues, making offerings, divination, and so on can all be used to help you in connecting to the genius. Once you do so, the genius itself will give you simple techniques for maintaining communication including synthemata, names, and so on.

Another advantage of beginning with connecting to patron gods is laid out in the Iamblichus quotation earlier: namely, that there is a deity ruling over your genius, whose synthemata you may indeed know. This deity may be one you have had a particular relationship with or connection to. For me, this is Apollo: by praying and making offerings to Apollo, I can begin to make a connection to the genius he sends me. Knowing which deity or deities can help connect you to your genius requires some experience in prayer and offering and meditation, but you can also rest assured that any god or goddess to whom you feel a connection can help you achieve a relationship with your genius even if that deity did not, in so many words, “send” the genius to you. To put it metaphorically, Olympus is like a small town: everyone knows everyone.

It is best to begin simply, with offerings to make initial contact. In its simplicity, the supplication of the genius can be a daily act, or in times of spiritual retreat or special occasions, done several times throughout the day. Once you do this for a while, you will begin to get some intimations of your genius’s nature and symbols. You can slowly incorporate those as you see fit. For example, my genius has given me a sigil and a sequence of musical notes I can use to call on him as well as a ritual meditation, a particular scent, and a form that he takes. Some of these I received in ritual contemplation, some in dreams. I add these to the following exercise when I call on my genius. Yours may offer other suggestions, like particular incense, offerings, and so on.

Exercise 6.1: Cultivation of the Genius

You will need incense, cone or stick is fine, and a burner. You may wish to have chernips or natron water, a lamp, and various other items, but in a pinch you could perform this ritual empty-handed.

Step 1: Purify yourself by washing, either a full-fledged shower or, at the minimum, washing your hands. You may prefer to wash your hands in chernips or natron water, but I’ve used tap water and still had good results.

Step 2: Invoke the One by aspiring worldlessly to beauty. Imagine something beautiful in the world and, as you have done before, try to abstract its beauty away from its material manifestation. Try to hold whatever apprehension you have of the Idea of Beauty in your mind as you continue the rest of the ritual.

Step 3: Construct a phantasm of the genius. Depending on your conception of the being, you may construct a number of images. If you think of it as a traditional Judeo-Christian angel, it may be a winged anthropomorphic being. If you imagine it as a more ancient type of angel, it may be a winged creature of another kind, or even a winged sun-disk or orb. If you prefer the classical Roman image of the genius, you may think of it as a person dressed in a toga with one hand pouring a libation. Or, if you prefer the abstract, you may imagine it as a flame or shining ray of light. Eventually, the phantasm you create will change to fit the preferences of the being itself, and may even change over time to reflect a changing relationship.

Step 4: Raising your arms, say a prayer to the genius like this one, substituting the name of your genius for N., or leaving that part out if you don’t know it yet:

Hear me, Agathodaimon, called N., or by whatever
name you may be called and whether god or
goddess, and come from your abodes in the
empyrean to receive my praise. If ever I have
burned sweet scents to you, spoken words of
praise, or made offering in your name, come
and hear me, as you have done before. Give
me guidance to the One, true knowledge of
the hidden things, and authority over the
lesser daimones of the world, so I may fulfill
my purpose which is to join the gods in the
great work of creation. Accept this offering,
and by it may you be propitiated and increased,
and may it turn your face toward me.

Step 5: Offer the incense by lighting it, holding it aloft momentarily, and letting it burn down. If you’re using a censer instead of a stick or cone and it doesn’t have a chain or handle, don’t hold it aloft or you’ll burn your fingers. If you are doing this ritual empty-handed, you can rub your hands together and offer the heat to the genius by holding your palms up and imagining it rising upward like smoke; you can imagine this smoke taking on the forms of the preferred sacrifices and expanding to fill the available space.127 This technique isn’t necessarily original to ancient magical practices, but I find it useful.

Step 6: Spend some time in the contemplation of the genius, remaining receptive to any answer it may offer you.

Agrippa’s description of the three types of genius can be interpreted as three different roles of the genius in our lives: as spiritual advisers, as agents of fate, and as professional patrons. From one perspective, these three roles are the same act in three different domains. In the world of matter, the genius concerns itself with our material actions, our professions and avocations. In the world of the Psyche, it helps us understand the working of fate in our own lives. And in the world of the Nous, it helps us understand the timeless pattern of our lives and engage in the great work itself by seeking henosis.

Our professions are more than what we do to make money, of course: they are the way our ethics play out in our lives. If we find ourselves making money by causing suffering to others or diminishing them, we are clearly not living up to worthwhile values. It’s easy to justify such a life—after all, we have to live, we have to feed ourselves, those we oppress deserve it, and so forth—but the genius will not allow us to do so. At the same time, the genius can help us find a profession that is coherent with our natural talents and skills and values: that is, in other words, suitable to our fate.

As already discussed, fate is not so much the unalterable track of our lives as it is the circumstances we create and dwell in because of the moment of history in which we find ourselves. Here, the genius can act as a guide to that moment of history, and thus in this role is not only the genius of our fate but the genius of the times we live in. In this role, the genius acts as a doctor who teaches us how to develop our natural strengths and overcome our native weaknesses. In this, it acts as the conduit of what Crowley called the “true will,” the task for which we were made, which manifests in the world of matter as our professions, and is a manifestation of the timeless idea of ourselves in the world of the Nous.

Finally, the spiritual world of the Nous, wherein dwell the Ideas that underlay reality, is opened up by the genius, who acts like the personal Janus to this realm of the gods. The genius reaches down from the heights to lift us up and is the personal angel or messenger in response to our prayers. In this role, the genius is hierophant of our personal initiation. It can offer us the methods of its own invocation, as Iamblichus tells us, as well as means of theurgic and thaumaturgic ritual that will work best for us alone. It is difficult to speak more plainly about anything that has its roots in the world of the Nous.

The Paredros or Assistant

The genius, then, can guide you spiritually, morally, and ethically—but you can’t send it out on errands. And while some theurgists might sniff at the idea of conducting errands, I am not one of them: I think that thaumaturgy, or practical magic, has its place in theurgy as well. So we may want something or someone who will help us with our practical goals. For that, we need a different kind of spiritual being, sometimes called a “familiar spirit,” or a “familiar” for short. The witch trials of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries often included “testimony” of witches having particular animal or spirit helpers. These helpers lived with them and were thus, in the vernacular of the time, familiar or family-like. The instigators of these atrocities were relatively learned men and therefore knew that such spirits have a long tradition in esoteric practice, although depraved imaginings like the suckling of animals at a witch’s teat are of course simply the projected perversions of sadistic minds.

There are several rituals for summoning and binding a paredros, or magical assistant, in the Greek Magical Papyri. One of these, PGM I 42–195, can be found in Stephen Flowers’s book on hermetic magic, where he has adapted it somewhat for modern practice.128 I will present a different ritual, designated as PGM I 1–42, and described in the text as “A Technique to Attach a Familiar Daimon, so that he will reveal everything to you distinctly, and sit in conversation and conviviality with you, as well as in sleep.”129 The original ritual requires several sacrifices, some of which will be challenging to modern readers, and one of which I strongly suggest against. I have therefore made a few concessions to modernity. You may wish to consult the Appendix for hints on pronouncing ancient Greek words of power. Here is my revised version of this ritual:

Exercise 6.2: A Technique to Attach a Familiar Daimon

Step 0: This is a bit of a complex ritual, so to aid in planning here is a shopping list to get your mise en place prepared:

1. A three-dimensional image of a falcon carved out of some nontoxic material or made of clay. Try not to get one that is clearly meant to be Horus; this is a ritual to summon a solar daimon but not necessarily the god Horus himself. The original text required the use of a live falcon to be drowned and mummified. Do not do this.
2. Frankincense, ground fine.
3. Red wine. Two-Buck Chuck works just fine.
4. Myrrh ink. I just mix some myrrh tincture into some ink. To make myrrh tincture, soak some fine ground myrrh in pure alcohol like everclear for a few days. Shake well to suspend the gum in the alcohol and then add a few drops to ink.
5. A small piece of parchment or papyrus. Paper will work in a pinch.
6. Your own fingernails and hair. The original text specifies “all the hairs of your head,” but that may be impractical for many practitioners. If you can shave your head and keep your job, by all means, go for it. I didn’t.
7. Milk mixed with honey. The original specifies that the milk should come “from a black cow,” but that may not be easily arranged unless you have access to a dairy farm with a very understanding farmer.
8. Some fruit and vegetables for offering. You will partake of some of these as part of the final offering, so don’t include anything you don’t care to eat or are allergic to.
9. Juniper sprigs, if you can get them. If not, substitute other evergreens.
10. A small shrine in which to house your falcon. I modified mine out of a front-opening jewelry box.
11. Strips of cloth or ace bandages if you wish to mummify the falcon. I’m of two minds on the necessity of this part, because I’m convinced that the mummification step was merely for preservation, and a statue doesn’t need to be preserved. Mine is not mummified and works just fine.

Step 1: Purify yourself by abstaining from sexual contact for a week before doing this ritual. The original specifies contact with a woman, but I’m assuming some ancient sexism here. Best skip all sex of whatever configuration.

Step 2: Set up the ritual to take place just before sunrise, ideally on a Sunday, although the original ritual does not specify the day of the week.

Step 3: After cleaning the image of the falcon well, immerse it in milk and honey. Say something like the following:

“Image of a falcon, you are not an image. You are a
falcon, giving your spirit to this milk. Image of
a falcon, you are a falcon, drowning in this milk.
Breathe your spirit into this milk, falcon, and
be deified.”130

Step 4: On a small piece of parchment or papyrus, write the Greek vowels as below in myrrh ink:

Fig. 11: Greek Vowels in Double Wing Formation

Step 5: Place your hair and nails on that piece of parchment. Fold it up and smear it with a paste of frankincense and wine. This mixture will harden into a kind of sticky pink glue. This bundle is a sort of sacrificial object, an anathema, that links you to the spirit who will inhabit your falcon.

Step 6: Set up the falcon in a small shrine, which can be a simple shelf or a cabinet with a door. Make sure there is room for a small glass of wine and some offering dishes with fruit. Place the juniper sprigs over the shrine.

Step 7: Add the bundle to the shrine, and begin the ritual by drinking the milk and honey just before sunrise. The text says at this point you will feel “some inward divinity in your heart.”

Step 8: Make a sacrifice of the wine and fruit as you normally would, and address the falcon with this incantation:

A EE ĒĒĒ IIII OOOOO UUUUUU ŌŌŌŌŌŌŌ
Come to me, good gardener, good Daimon,

HARPON KNOUPHI BRINTATĒN SIPHRI
BRISKULMA AROUAZAR BAMESEN
KRIPHI NIPTOUMICHMOUMAŌPH.
Come to me, holy Orion, who sits up in the
north and pours out the flow of the Nile to
mingle with the sea, bringing forth life
like the seed of man in sexual union.
You have set the world on a firm
foundation.
You are young in the morning,
and old in the evening.
You descend below the earth,
and rise up breathing fire.
You part the seas in the first month,
Sending seeds into the sacred figs
of Heliopolis, unceasingly.

This is your authentic name:
ARBATH ABAŌTH BAKCHABRĒ

Step 9: When finished, step away from the shrine backwards, then sit and eat your breakfast before it. Your breakfast should be strictly vegetarian, as should any offerings you make to the shrine.

So that’s a bit of work. For one thing, you’ve got to memorize some words of power, prepare some offerings, and so on. I would recommend memorizing all of the words of power. Memorizing such words changes your consciousness in mysterious ways.

The fact that this ritual is more work intensive than the summoning of the genius is evidence, I believe, that this spirit is a different kind of spirit from that of the genius. The genius comes to us without much effort; it’s already here. This ritual asks for a particular companion, who can serve not only as the intermediate between us and the gods, but also a magical companion in the practice of thaumaturgy. In fact, while this ritual specifies that the paredros is of the divine order of daimones, Damon Zacharias Lycourinos points out that the various rituals and texts mentioning paredroi are as diverse as one could wish: sometimes it is a god, sometimes the spirit of a dead hero, and sometimes—as here—a daimon bound to a particular object like the image of a falcon.131 I regard this as an important insight, because it underlines that the role of the paredros is less about identity and more about use. In some sense, you are what your genius is; the paredros is a paredros not because of what it is but because of what it does. A paredros walks beside the thaumaturgist, an assistant and helper.

The falcon here is very much a solar symbol, and the sacrifice of the hair and nails connects the theurgist to the spirit, creating a bond. It is set up as a votive offering in the shrine of the spirit, enticing the spirit to enter into the falcon statue. Eating together is also an important symbolic act, as we know from the sacrifice ritual. Finally, the essence of the falcon is added to the milk and honey, which is consumed by the worshiper. This act creates another bond: where the essence of the theurgist is giving over to the spirit, the essence of the spirit is given over to the theurgist. The image of the falcon is a physical link to the spirit.

As Fritz Graf points out, sacrificing a falcon, a sacred animal, would have been considered an act of pollution and separation.132 It would have made the theurgist anathema in the modern sense of the word: set aside from the rest of the world that respects such creatures and does not murder them. It would have also made the falcon anathema in the original sense: a votive offering. He regards that separation as an important part of the ritual, but I respectfully disagree. The ritual of mummification described in the text is short and succinct, clearly meant merely to preserve the form of the falcon. There is no hint of opening its mouth ritually as one might do with a human mummy. Moreover, the later emphasis on vegetarian food seems to weigh against the sacrifice of animals in this sort of ritual. As an occultist familiar with obscure and often misleading accounts of rituals, I am inclined to treat this instruction as a blind. In any event, I have not found it necessary and do not suggest it (if nothing else, drinking milk in which you have killed a bird is a very good way to end up flat on your back with a bacterial infection or worse).

The paredros may be evoked for later use by making an offering of fruit, vegetables, or wine and speaking the spirit’s name ARBATH ABAŌTH BAKCHABRĒ. Then you can tell the spirit what you desire. The spirit is useful for relatively ordinary tasks you may not have the time or inclination to perform a full magical ritual for: finding a particular book, getting somewhere on time, meeting up with someone you want to see, and so on. Another ritual for summoning a paredros, the ritual in PGM I 42–195, promises that he “carries gold, silver, bronze, and he gives them to you whenever the need arises,” and “he brings women, men without the use of magical material.”133 He also is said to open doors, release from prison, bring all sorts of food (but not pork—evidently he keeps kosher), cause invisibility … in other words, anything ascribed to any magical operation whatsoever can be accomplished by means of the assistant. Sometimes, it’s clear that these are metaphoric aims; other times, it might be that he can attain seemingly miraculous effects. I have found him very helpful and effective in my own work.

Genii Loci

Some daimones or genii are connected to particular locations. One can always detect a place where a daimon dwells, because it is in some way separated out from the rest of the world. It is unusual in some way. Perhaps there is a large or strangely shaped tree in a glade of small trees, or perhaps it is a locale that is often struck by lightning. Natural springs often have daimones, as do impressive rock formations, as well as rivers (Achilles famously wrestles with a river daimon in the Iliad). Essentially, the tipoff of a daimonic presence is a sense of the sublime. As Longinus, writing about the sublime in rhetoric, states: “sublimity is, so to say, the image of greatness of soul.”134 He is speaking of the great soul of the author of a piece of sublime rhetoric, but in nature we see the natural sublime in the great soul of a daimon. Sometimes, nothing marks a particular location as the domain of a daimon other than a felt sense of presence. We find such places nearly anywhere, and not necessarily only in untrammeled nature; there’s an overpass in Chicago that I’m certain has a daimon.

The Greeks occasionally called nature daimones “nymphs” or “satyrs” and assigned them an anthropomorphic form suitable for mythology. However, the original daimonic presence is abstract and divine in nature, even if intermediate between the world of matter and the world of the gods. Later Roman writers identified satyrs with fauni, similar nature spirits with animal-like characteristics. Occasionally writers make connections between these nymphs and English fairies, arguing that they are similar in function, nature, or origin. I’m not sure that’s the case, however, as whether or not fairies are divine (historically or metaphysically) is a matter of argument while the nymphs are certainly divine in some sense; they partake of the power of a particular god.

The means of propitiating such a daimon is clearly laid out by custom: an offering of livestock, fruit, drink, or even coins is often made to such spirits. The rule appeared to be that one propitiated the daimones of the location before doing anything with or to it. It was merely polite to introduce yourself and make friends, in other words, when moving to a new place. This establishment of relationship served a practical purpose: it ensured cooperation from local spirits and gods. But it also served a theurgic purpose as well.

The theurgist who makes such a connection with the genii loci of his or her home makes a link between geography and the divine. After leaving an offering and making a prayer at the banks of a river, for example, he or she will never pass that river again without thinking of its god. The thoughts of the theurgist are elevated by the surrounding landscape, and the beauty
of nature has an additional layer of meaning as a reminder of the divine goal of henosis. Nature becomes a temple.

As an American, I find myself in a problematic position when it comes to working with spirits of place. While the idea that place has spirits is almost universal, the nature of those spirits and the means of contacting and relating to them is different from place to place. In the American continents, and especially in North America, the original inhabitants of these regions had their own means of relating to the spirits of the land. This includes their own names, rituals, offerings, and so on. And as the descendent of Europeans, I face a problem in dealing with those same spirits.

Take the river that flows through my suburb. The Potawatomi who lived in this area before European settlement probably had a name for its spirit, but I don’t know it. They may have offered it particular things, or perhaps they ignored it. Maybe they had legends and myths about it. All of that may be lost. And, of course, the Potawatomi were themselves immigrants to this area having been driven south by the Iroquois, so perhaps they themselves displaced older legends, all beyond the possibility of recovery.

More fundamentally, if the Potawatomi did have a relationship with that river and I approach it as an outsider, how will I be received? I lived in a town not far from here for several years and when looking into its history, discovered that it was the site of a massacre of Potawatomi who refused to leave when they were to be forcibly relocated. So you had not just the spirits of all those violently dead, but you also had the genii loci of that place, perhaps feeling rancor over the murder of people with whom it had a relationship. As an American theurgist, I try not to forget that at any time, there may be the bones of the dead underneath my feet.

My point is, if I’m going to approach a genius loci in the United States, I’m going to try first to find out its history. Often, that’s impossible: there are even place names in the United States whose original meanings are lost because all those who spoke that language died, and the language with them. But insofar as it is possible, we make an effort. Then I need to approach it with humility.

Another problem arises in what ritual actions to take. Even if I knew them, it would be a mistake for me to try to perform the original ceremonies of those who first created a relationship with these genii. It would be disrespectful to those beliefs, perhaps inconsistent with my own, and probably offensive if not to the genius loci then surely to the spirits of the dead. By the same token, it might seem incoherent or even insulting to import the rituals of Rome or Greece here. What must be found is a neutral, simple way of making offerings to these spirits without offending them.

The choice of offering is also a matter of some concern. Alcohol as a libation is problematic; strong liquor wasn’t introduced until European settlement (although other, weaker fermented drinks may have already existed), and it has a bad history as a means of exploitation and enslavement of the indigenous population. Similarly, wheat may be alien, although perhaps a bit more acceptable because it lacks negative association. Maize, or what we call “corn” in the United States, is appropriate as is tobacco, but it’s important to recognize that we’re not trying to create an ersatz “Indian” ritual here. I’m not Native American, and I won’t disrespect Native American cultures by pretending to smoke a peace pipe or engage in a sweat lodge.

Of course, I eschew blood sacrifice entirely and urge you to as well, and it would be especially inappropriate here. As I said, there is a history of oppression and murder—not just of Native Americans but also of African slaves, Chinese indentured servants, and a large number of other ethnic groups. Inflaming the angry dead with blood is a bad idea.

And not just America has such a history. Parts of Europe are also graveyards. The World Wars turned much of Europe into a battlefield soaked with the blood of the violently slain; the atrocities of the Nazis, not to mention other genocides elsewhere, stain the land with angry spirits. Any effort to speak to those spirits must include humility and care and compassion for those who died there in those or other conflagrations.

I recommend stripping down the ritual to its core: a simple offering. In fact, this offering ritual can be used as a quick offering to any spiritual being. Just modify accordingly.

Exercise 6.3: Offering for a Genius Loci

Step 1: Select an offering, such as local fruit (apples, for my area), grain (maize), or just water or honey. A coin may work in a pinch, or you can use the offering gesture of rubbing your hands together and letting the heat rise.

Step 2: Find a location that seems to form a natural altar: a stump near the river, a stone, or just a natural swelling of the ground. Aim your hands outward with palms up and toward the most striking feature of the landscape.

Step 3: Say something like the following:

Spirit of this place, whether god or goddess,
by whatever name it pleases you to be called,
hear my prayer. I come in humility and friendship. Accept this offering of friendship, and may you be
increased by it, strengthened, cleansed, healed,
and made strong. Accept also this speech offering,
and be praised.

Step 4: You may wish to speak extemporaneously about what feature particularly attracts you.

Step 5: Lay the offering on the altar or pour out the libation. Imagine the form of the offering expanding out, multiplying, and filling the space with abundance.

Step 6: Say something like “May our friendship grow” to end. Only when you and the location have made a strong relationship should you try to ask for favors.

Other Daimones and the Dead

Daimones can come from any realm: there are daimones of the air, earth, water, fire, each of the planets, and even of human activities like agriculture. Each of these activities is governed by a god, and each daimon acts as an intermediary between the god and the practitioner in an unbroken chain of divine influence that, because of the graces of the daimones, flows both ways. So in regard to agriculture, for example, Ceres or Demeter rules over the grain. She is the goddess of fecundity in the world of matter. Beyond the world of matter, above the world of Psyche where time exists, she is outside of time and influence and thus changeless and perfect. But she governs daimones, who are reflections of her in the world of Psyche: souls, in other words, existing in time. It’s as if Ceres in the Nous is the shoulder, and the daimones are the hands and fingers. Thus we have daimones of farming, who do the work of Ceres. At the same time, we have daimones like Pomona, the daimon of fruit, and Dysaules, who rules the plow.135

There are daimones that govern every activity of the universe, and only some of them have names. The Romans simply gave many nouns a daimon to govern them, so there are Roman deities of luck (Fortuna), of virtue (Virtus), and even of sewers (Cloaca). These names are simply the common, day-to-day words for those things. Modern writers sometimes refer to them as “personifications” and even doubt that they were really gods with their own cults—which misses the point. These daimones were intermediaries between worshipers and gods and a recognition of the divine power, the numen, in everyday reality.

The dead, too, may leave behind daimones. The cult of the heroes became ubiquitous by the Hellenic period, and Romans went so far as to deify their emperors as a matter of course in the late Empire. This practice became so expected and so pro-forma that Vespasian was able to quip on his deathbed, “O dear! I think I’m becoming a god.”136 Whether or not anyone really believed that the emperors were divine is a matter of debate; perhaps some did, but for the most part philosophers seemed to regard the practice with only civil respect … and sometimes not even that. Seneca the Younger ridicules the ascension of Claudius by imagining the introduction of this widely disliked emperor to Olympus:

The news was brought to Jupiter that somebody had come,
a rather tall man, quite gray-headed; that he was threatening
something or other, for he kept shaking his head; and that he
limped with his right foot. The messenger said he had asked
of what nation he was, but his answer was mumbled in
some kind of an incoherent noise; he didn’t recognize
the man’s language, but he wasn’t either Greek or
Roman or of any known race.137

Yet other cults of the dead were active and respected. The cult of Hercules, for example, was widespread well into the late Empire, and Seneca the Younger uses Hercules as a character in his satire to question the new “god” Claudius, as a way of pointing up the absurdity of comparing the two. Similarly, the cult of the Dioscuri was important right until the end of Late Antiquity.

Individuals also honored particular ancestral spirits in their home. In Rome, these were called manes, and they were regarded as chthonic daimones deriving from ancestors. If one had good ancestors, and propitiated them appropriately, there would be good fortune, so often the manes were worshiped together with the lares at the family’s lararium. The manes of the city were offered games in their honor, a tradition stretching back to Homeric times when games and competitions were part of the funereal rites. These games later devolved into bloodsports in the late empire, an unusual example of state-sanctioned human sacrifice.

The worship of the dead was similar but not identical to the worship of the gods, and from a theurgic perspective the differences in the ritual are significant. The gods of the underworld are seen as below, dwelling in the realm of Hades, which in Neoplatonic writings is sometimes associated with hyle or matter itself. Thus, the theurgist did not aspire to join with these gods as he or she does with the Olympic deities of the Nous. Instead, these gods are honored and worshiped to elevate matter, and the manes and heroes, as their intermediaries, are similarly honored. Stories of heroes such as the Dioscuri rising to dwell in the stars are examples of this elevation of matter from death to eternity.

Yet there are similarities in the ritual of offering. First, libations are offered, then a sacrifice might be performed. Rather than an elevated altar there is often a trench into which the blood is spilled. The body of the animal is burned in toto rather than slaughtered and shared out in a sacrificial meal. To eat the food of the gods is to join them in society; to eat food given over to the dead is ill-omened. The offering given to the dead is given completely over to them and not shared. Similarly, the libation is poured out completely. Honey is a common libation to the dead, as it is a preservative and was used as an embalming fluid in ancient times. Similarly, oil is offered to the dead, sometimes poured on their grave markers as a means of making it glisten, thus recalling the goal of rising upward into the light of the Nous.

While eating food specifically dedicated to the dead was seen as improper, one could eat in their presence. Picnics at gravesites were common throughout antiquity, and the family would bring its own food as well as a share for the dead, which was left whole for them at the gravesite. The distinction between food for the dead and food for the living was maintained by keeping the sacrifice separate from the picnic. In this way, the manes could rejoin society for a moment, and the living and dead could join forces in the project of elevation.

As the blood sacrifices of the gladiatorial games illustrate, not all was sweetness and light when it came to the cult of the dead. In fact, necromancy—divination by means of the manes—was common in Rome, although legally proscribed. One could not only divine by summoning the dead, but one could curse by them, and we have a large number of lead tablets buried in graves or thrown into wells that were meant to curse individuals or sports teams (some things never change, it seems), sometimes for revenge and sometimes for love. A common love spell in ancient Rome takes the form of a curse: the soul of the object of love is given to the dead to torment if she will not come to the person writing the spell. Reading such tablets is a shuddery business at least for modern sensibilities, and since it was illegal to do these curses even in ancient times, probably no one regarded it as a respectable use of the manes. Nevertheless, respectable or not, legal or not, people in desperate times will take desperate measures.

We find a similar set of difficulties in dealing with the dead to when we try to work with genii loci: namely, that most of our beloved dead weren’t Pagan, may not have supported the practice of theurgy or thaumaturgy, or may have been downright hostile to it. My ancestral tree is filled with Catholics, Protestants of many kinds, and a few Mormons. So what am I to do? Not work with them because they weren’t my religion? Or recruit them from beyond the grave to the practice of theurgy? Neither seems respectful. Again, it helps to pare down the ritual as much as possible of any cultural elements that might be alien. Reducing it to a gift, rather than a “Ritual of High Magick,” satisfies both me as the theurgist and my ancestors as Christians. Also, it’s possible they may have changed their view of religion after death and now do not look on the practices I undertake with as much suspicion as they may have when alive. I can hope so, anyway.

Exercise 6.4: An Offering to the Dead

Step 1: Again, select an offering. This time, you may tailor the offering to the person: a person particularly fond of candy may prefer sweets, while one who liked wine might like a glass of chardonnay. A hero from legend or myth may have preferred offerings, or you can fall back on the all-purpose bread, honey, oil, or incense. I would suggest avoiding blood and meat, although historically animals might well be offered in such a ritual.

Step 2: Make a prayer to the dead, usually something simple like, “Hear me, N., my [relationship], and accept this offering of friendship. May you be increased by it, made strong and healthy and well in the world in which you now dwell, and may you look kindly on me.”

Step 3: Cut or break the offering and leave it in a shallow trench, offering dish, or on the grave. Do not eat any of it. Pour out the libation entirely. Again, imagine the form of that substance expanding out to fill the available space.

Step 4: If you like, make a petition. Ideally, this is connected to the person: “May I be as strong in dealing with such-and-such as you were when you did such-and-such.” Alternately, you can just praise the person’s virtues while they were alive, as a way of remembering their contribution to your own life.

Kakodaimones

Just as the daimones of everyday activity act as intermediaries to the gods, so do the so-called kakodaimones, or “bad daimones.” These daimones are the prototype for the Christian demons, and here the comparison is justified. Just as the good daimones govern every activity of life, the kakodaimones govern the miseries and misfortunes of humankind. We have long lists of such daimones from Hesiod, who seemed to take great pleasure in naming them. For example, we have the account of the children of Nyx or Night:

And Night bare hateful Doom and black Fate and Death,
and she bare Sleep and the tribe of Dreams. And again
the goddess murky Night, though she lay with none,
bare Blame and painful Woe … 138

Sleep (Hypnos) and the Dreams or Oneiroi (including Morpheus, their leader; Phantasos, the daimon of fantasy and hallucination; and Phobetor, the daimon of nightmares) are of course daimones, often helpful spirits who act as intermediaries between the god—Nyx—and humans. But at the same time Hesiod describes other daimones who are less pleasant: Blame, Woe, Doom, Fate, Death. These are kakodaimones, “bad” daimones.

The Wiccans in my readership well-versed in the lore of the dark goddess might be raising a finger to object, so let me head them off: Death or Thanatos is certainly not evil. Without Thanatos, the world might very well be an unpleasant place or at the very least, quite crowded. But the kakodaimones are evil in the relative sense: from our human perspective, death is a source of sorrow and pain. Blame is painful to us—but at the same time, without understanding blame we have no sense of responsibility. Our doom and our fate are hard concepts to wrestle—to the point where we pretend that we have no fate at all, but pure free will. But in the wrestling, we learn and grow. And woe is synonymous with sorrow—but then, there are times when sorrow or woe is a very good thing to feel, because it heals us and ties us back to the community of humanity.

The thing to remember about the daimones, all of them, good or bad, is that they answer to a god. There is no figure of evil in Pagan religion because evil is a matter of human perspective. Yes, evil exists: people do horrible things, and they do them for stupid, horrible reasons. Without getting into the very complex and sticky swamp of the problem of evil, and resisting strenuously the urge to quote Plotinus on the subject, let me just say that from the Neoplatonic perspective, evil is the absence of good. It does not exist in the Nous, or in the underlying pattern of the universe. It exists only in the farthest, dimmest reaches of matter, when our eyes are blinded by the fog and cannot see the underlying goodness any more. The kakodaimones are the shadows cast by the gods on the world of matter.

When in their proper place and role, their work can be good. A nightmare or two is a good way for the mind to blow off stress, and Phobetor is a good daimon when he brings such dreams. But if all Phobetor brings is nightmares, and you can no longer sleep, he has become a kakodaimon, a daimon of chaos and destruction, and he must be stopped. It’s all very well to say, “Well, so it goes, that’s the way the gods must want it.” But as theurgists, we have the power and the responsibility to talk back to the gods—or at least their daimonic representatives in our world.

Even after the kakodaimones got demoted to “demons” and all shoved under the awning of the one Big Bad Guy of the Devil, Christian Neoplatonists still argued that we had a responsibility to tame these demons and perhaps even redeem them. The second magical operation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, after the contact with the Holy Guardian Angel, is the summoning and binding of the demons. Ironically, many of the demons in these grimoires have names clearly derived from the names of gods (which is not to imply that the beings those names refer to are gods; far from it).

This sort of summoning and binding of kakodaimones was a common practice even in antiquity, even before the advent of Christianity. It was never approved of, however, more perhaps for the reason that it required unsavory and illegal ingredients, and was akin to necromancy in the popular imagination. The term for this kind of thaumaturgy, goetia, from which the Lesser Key of Solomon takes its name, may come from a root meaning “howling” or “groan.” Again, to the reserved Greeks and even more reserved Romans, any activity involving shrieking was a bit suspect. Even those reveries involving divine figures—Bacchus, for example—were frowned on when they got out of hand. How much more so an operation to summon a daimon with a name like Doom? Goetia disturbed the peace.

I personally don’t recommend the practice of goetia. There are so many beneficial daimones to call upon for thaumaturgy, it puzzles me why anyone would risk the very real dangers of dealing with goetic demons. Even the best intentioned kakodaimon thinks hurting people is its mission in existence. Using Goetic demons for magical tasks is like asking the nice tattooed young men and women hanging out downtown if they’d like to watch your house for a weekend while you go out of town.139 Kakodaimones are certainly no more powerful, and absolutely much more difficult to work with, than other spiritual entities. But there is one particular magical operation we can perform with kakodaimones that is quite worthwhile: that of protection from them.

Rituals like the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagrams were unknown in the ancient world. You banished an area by cleaning it—literally. The literal cleaning also cleaned away spirits who might be there. When, for example, Odysseus kills the men occupying his house (and trying to occupy his wife), his next step is to clean away the blood with water and sulfur. Disinfecting the house also rid it of the angry ghosts. Chernips is a wonderful means of clearing away kakodaimones. But I may surprise you by pointing out that clearing out kakodaimones is not always the goal. Take the example of Phobetor, who becomes a kakodaimon of nightmares for the person whom he relentlessly visits. Sending him away is a solution, of course, but it doesn’t get at the cause. Why is the person suffering such nightmares?

Perhaps she has had a traumatic experience, in which case Phobetor may well be doing his usual office right but at the wrong time. Instead of dealing with this stress during sleep, the victim may need to start working through such issues during the day. But how do you get Phobetor to stop long enough to get enough sleep to cope? By making it clear to him that you understand his message. In other words, by “propitiating” him.

The propitiating of a kakodaimon is not sucking up to, paying off (they’re not the mafia), or worshiping them. Instead, it’s acknowledging them with respect but taking on your own role as an intermediary between the gods. Remember, we too are a kind of daimon—we are “mortal gods,” as the Hermetica puts it—and it would be a mistake to think that we have nothing to say or share with even the fiercest of kakodaimones.140 Moreover, if you’ve been following up on the exercises and making regular offerings to the gods, you have powerful allies among the greater good daimones and divinities.

Propitiating a kakodaimon is not the same as entering a contract, negotiating, or begging. It’s a way of establishing power using the universal obligation created by a gift. By making an offering to a kakodaimon, you obligate it to you and thus can direct it in healthier and more beneficial ways. In other words, you use beneficence and grace to reconstitute order, which is exactly what the One is doing all the time. If one finds oneself in a state in which the influence of a kakodaimon is evident either supernaturally or naturally and you have achieved some measure of success with working with other daimones, especially the genius, then this ritual of placation might be beneficial.

This ritual can also be a means of self-improvement: every character flaw you have has a daimon who governs it, just as every virtue does. By propitiating those kakodaimones, you take away some of their sting and can begin to work at changing that flaw. Mental and physical illness, of course, should be treated by a professional in addition to any magical work you do. But even our ordinary jealousy, pettiness, fear, or lusts can be tamed with this ritual.

Identifying the kakodaimon that is involved is a simple matter: the ancients rarely bothered to give them names other than the name of the thing they governed. Phobetor, for example, just means “frightener.” You can name these kakodaimones in English, or look up the equivalent word in Latin or Greek. You could also comb Hesiod for the names of such daimones as he lists and see if any of them are relevant.

Exercise 6.5: Propitiating a Kakodaimon

The proper offerings for a daimon include wine, bread, and fruit. For this ritual, a libation dish and a cup of wine is sufficient. You will also need two kinds of incense. One should be appropriate to your genius, which you may have learned directly from it, but if in doubt you can always use frankincense. The other is a lunar incense—myrrh or storax being most common, unless you have a particular lunar scent you like. You will also want your wand, which can be your usual wand or a sprig of yew if you can get it. You will also need a iunx (see chapter 4). Of course, you will prepare the fire and chernips according to the methods already explained in that chapter; I’m not going to cut and paste them, as I don’t get paid by the word.

Determine the superior god of the daimon you are propitiating, either by looking for clues in Hesiod or through reason. For example, if Hesiod tells us that a particular daimon is the child of another god or attends to that god, then use that as its superior. Hesiod tells us that Phobetor is the child of Nyx, so we can call on her as his superior. If in doubt, you can use Hekate, whom you will call upon anyway, as queen of all daimones.

Step 1: Purity is always important, but here it is doubly important. In addition to purifying yourself with water and natron, or chernips, you may also want to have a phylactery that protects you from evil influences. A little bit of sulfur in a gold locket or box around your neck is a traditional and simple amulet you could use, or you could draw an ouroboros—a serpent eating its own tail—on a piece of parchment with a prayer for protection inside it. Magical protection circles do not often appear in ancient magic, but if you wish to use one it’s not necessarily a bad idea. Carry the dish of chernips around the circle, sprinkling as you go.

Step 2: Begin by picking up your wand as a symbol of authority and stating, in a loud voice, “Hekas, hekas, este bebeloi,” which simply means “begone, begone, profane things.” It’s a traditional signal that a ritual is about to begin.

Step 3: Light incense or add it to the censer and say something like:

May my Genius hear my prayer and stand beside me
in this working. If ever I make an error, by omission
or commission, leave out a word or speak awry, or
in any way fail in my ritual obligations, let it be as
if I had performed the ritual correctly. Accept this
offering, Agathodaimon, and deliver me from
any evil.

Step 4: Add some myrrh or appropriate lunar incense and speak the following prayer to the Phantasm of Hekate:

Hear me, Hekate, Goddess of Daimones, Threefold
goddess of the gate, Apotropaia141, Soteira142, and
by whatsoever name it pleases you to be called. If
ever I have kissed my hand to the moon, made
offering, or pleased you in any way, come and
stand over me in this working.143 Protect and
guard me from evil, and speak with me when
I speak. Accept this offering and be kindly to
me, for I know your secret words:

Step 5: Recite the following words of power, a phylactery against daimones:

ACHTHIŌPHIPH ERESCHIGAL
NEBOUTOSOUALĒTH SATHŌTH
SABAŌTH SABRŌTH144

Step 6: Imagine a phantasm of the daimon standing just outside of the circle around which you circumambulated, while you spin your iunx and repeat this phrase every time it changes direction: “Magic wheel, bring N. to me,” N. being the name of the daimon. Spin the iunx and repeat the formula until it becomes clear. If the phantasm attempts to become grotesque, point your wand at it until it assumes a more pleasing form. Try not to allow it to become zoomorphic or monstrous, even if you’re a fan of Dürer.

Step 7: Address it thus:

Hear me, N., daimon of [Superior god], by whatever
name you are called in the heavens or under the
earth, and from whatever abode you come, for
I am [your name] whom [your mother’s name]
bore, and I stand in the presence of Hekate your
Queen, to whom you must bow.

Step 8: The phantasm should bow. If it does not do so without you forcing it, again point your wand at it and place the fingertips of your other hand on the altar until it does.

Step 9: Continue:

Accept this drink offering, and let it mark friendship
between us, that you work for my good and
under the instructions of the goddess Hekate
and my genius, for I know the secret words of
Ephesus which are ASKION KATASKION LIX
TETRAX DAMNAMENEUS AISIA to which
your kind is bound to answer. Let therefore
enmity be done, friendship begun, and may
you submit to the authority of the gods.

Step 10: Pour the libation completely into the libation dish. Kiss your fingers in friendship to the phantasm, then to the phantasm of Hekate.

Step 11: Say the following:

I offer you, Hekate, this speech offering in gratitude for
your aid. Continue, O Goddess of the Ways, to keep
and guide me, and protect me from evil. Accept these
sweet scents, and may it be acceptable unto you.

Step 12: Add more lunar incense.

Step 13: Step away from the altar, kiss your hand, turn around, and leave the room in silence to end the ritual. You can of course come right back again if you do most of your magic in the living room. But don’t put things away until the incense has all burned down and cooled. Then, dispose of the ashes of the incense and the wine outside, ideally at a crossroad or junction or, failing that, a liminal space like the side of a road. Don’t put it in your own yard or near your own house. At least cross a street to dispose of it.

The results of this ritual should be a marked improvement. For example, you may use it to propitiate Lytta, the kakodaimon of rage and madness, to control your anger. You should see that your anger is directed in healthier directions, less out of your control and less overwhelming. If you don’t, try to create a stronger relationship with Hekate by making offerings to her, and then try the ritual again when the moon is just past full.

Of course, if your rage is out of control and you’re hurting people, one effect of this ritual might be the quite practical effect of getting you arrested, charged, and sentenced to anger management training. So—handle kakodaimones carefully, and handle the gods even more carefully. The kakodaimones might hurt you and those around you; however, the gods will help and love you, and sometimes that’s not pretty either.

We are not, however, helpless pawns of the daimones: we have the flip side of theurgy, thaumaturgy, as a tool in our belt. In the next chapter, we will look at some ancient and more contemporary methods of practicing thaumaturgy as well as how theurgy can empower and inform that practice.

[contents]

111 Benjamin Jowett, trans. The Symposium by Plato. Accessed 15 May 2013. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html

112 Hugh G. Evelyn-White, trans. The Theogony of Hesiod. Accessed 14 May 2013. http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm

113 Aleister Crowley. Magick in Theory and Practice. Chapter Two. Accessed 15 May 2013, http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/chap2.htm

114 Aleister Crowley. Magick Without Tears. (Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon, 1991), 281–282.

115 Abraham von Worms. The Book of Abramelin. Steven Guth, trans. (Lake Worth, FL: Nicolas-Hays, 2006), 107. Crowley would have had access to an earlier, far inferior translation by Mathers, but I have chosen to cite this text because it is a superior translation. A more rigorous tracing of Crowley’s ideas would require comparison with the Mathers translation, but that project is outside of the scope of this book.

116 Benjamin Jowett. The Apology by Plato. Accessed 15 May 2013, http://www
.gutenberg.org/files/1656/1656–h/1656–h.htm#link2H_4_0002

117 Benjamin Jowett, trans. Phaedrus by Plato. Accessed 15 May 2013, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

118 Walter Burkert. Greek Religion. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 180–181.

119 W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, trans. Cato: De Agricultura. Loeb Classical Library, 1939. 139. Accessed 15 May 2013, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/I*.html

120 Mark Edwards, trans. Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 9–10.

121 Edwards, Neoplatonic Saints, 79–80.

122 Gregory Shaw. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 172.

123 Shaw. Theurgy, 217.

124 Agrippa. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Ed. Donald Tyson. (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2007), 527.

125 Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell, trans. Iamblichus: On the Mysteries. (Atlanta: Society for Biblical Literature, 2003), 341.

126 Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 103. PGM V. 96–172.

127 I got this technique from Jason Miller. The Sorcerer’s Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magic. (Franklin Lanes, NJ: New Page, 2009), 41.

128 Stephen Edred Flowers. Hermetic Magic: The Postmodern Magical Papyrus of Abaris. (York Beach, ME: Weiser, 1995).

129 This ritual is my own translation of the Greek. An alternate translation is available in Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 3–4.

130 This is not in the original. I have added it in order to compensate for the fact that we are not, in fact, drowning a living falcon.

131 Damon Zacharias Lycrouinos. “Conjuring Magical Assistants in the Greek Magical Papyri” in Occult Traditions, ed. Damon Zacharias Lycourinos. (Melbourne, Australia: Numen, 2012).

132 Fritz Graf. Magic in the Ancient World. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 114.

133 Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 5.

134 H. L. Havell, trans. Longinus: On the Sublime. (London: Macmillon, 1890). IX.2 Accessed 15 May 2013, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17957/17957–h/17957–h.htm

135 “Theoi Greek Mythology.” Accessed 14 May 2013. http://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/agricultural-gods.html

136 Valerie M. Warrior. Roman Religion: A Sourcebook. (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2002), 138.

137 Allan Perley Ball, trans. Seneca the Younger, Apocolocyntosis. (West Sussex, Columbia Univ. Press, 1902) Accessed 14 May 2013, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Apocolocyntosis

138 Hugh G. Evelyn-White, trans. The Theogony of Hesiod. II 211–225. Accessed 14 May 2013. http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm

139 Which isn’t to imply that all young men and women covered in tattoos are bad folks. I’ve known more than a few examples of stellar humanity and questionable ink in my time.

140 Corpus Hermeticum XII:1

141 “turning away harm”

142 “savior”

143 If you have not done any of these things, do not undertake this ritual, as you have not built up a relationship with Hekate.

144 Hans Dieter Betz. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 126. PGM VII 317–18. I have, with Betz, read a tau for the gamma in NEBOUTOSOUALĒTH, a name commonly associated with ERESCHIGAL and thence Hekate.