Ok well just to start out i would like to say nothing personal to those who practice satinism or things of that nature. So i have been studying the goetia for some time now i am not an expert still novice but i am learning. I was just wondering if summoning demons using the keys of Solomon would be portrayed to god as devil worship? Because this is not a path i want to go on i would like to summon an angel or demon in the future when i am ready. If i do this i do not want god to be angry with me for going against him when this is not what i want to do. I realize that man has dominion over the birds fish etc. but do we truly have dominion over demons being that they are of more powerful nature i mean there are circles of protection and diffrent things like mental preparations as well. But is there still a risk in being possesed if something goes wrong or you freak when the demon actually does appear? Any help or comments would be appreciated...

It’s not devil worshipping unless you plan to actually worship the “demons”. Also the Goetia demons are mainly demonized gods from other pagan religions. There are numerous theories, for example the Goetia demons are the negative aspects of the pagan gods it use to be. So in a sense you may not be working with actually demons ( I think it‘s a mixture of Pagan gods and “demons“). If you feel this will be an offense to the God you believe in, then you shouldn’t work with the demons.

The odds of anything dramatic happening during your rituals is 1-100. If anything goes wrong it’ll most likely manifest as bad luck, misfortune, strange coincidences, chronic fatigue, negative gut feelings, etc. No possession, sudden death, energy burst or moving tables. Most new mages I know meditate on the sigil vibrating the spirit’s name (while holding a protection seal), pause, make request and statement of offering the spirit would get if request answered, then wait and see during a reasonable amount of time if the request is answered.

Thanks, Aphrodite for the post. I just wanted to clear some things up before i actually attempted any summoning. I will still be studying up way more before i attempt anything though.

just look at the methodology of it, you'll see that the name YHVH (one of the pre-vowel hebrew names for god) is used to presumably tap into god's power, as part of the summoning mechanics. That makes it definitely not devil worship. More like the dark side of monotheist summoning magick. Personally I'm not ideologically aligned with any abrahamic brand of monotheism, quite the opposite actually, I think it's a wildly erroneous class of beliefs. So my perspective on keys of solomon & the like is that it's fairly laiden with unnecessary 'fluff', and contains a lot of trumped up drama.

Anyway though, it's worth noting that a fair number of 'satanists' would be ideologically apposed to the idea of 'worship' itself. I'd agree with them on that point. So the idea of a 'devil worshiper' is a bit of a misnomer in many cases. Of course there are *some* theistic satanists who do just that though, worship satan I mean. A lot less than you'd think though, the cultural stigma is pretty far from the actuality (as cultural stigma tends to be with almost everything).

But basically I get the idea that your interest in asking this question is in trying to avoid "pissing god off". Unfortunately the answer is not simple. Since "god" is not really quite the same thing to any two people. Some would say that summoning daimons is forbidden by god, others would say that you're practicing a loosely god-based religious form of magick. Who's right? I dunno. nobody else does either. It's all pretty subjective. Rule of thumb, if you're very concerned with pissing god off, goetia may not be your cup of tea.

Myself, I think this 'god' we're talking about is just an egregore created by a relatively simpleminded & savage people. The resulting entity ('god') being a sort of ethical infant, misogynist, and megalomaniac, with a touch of MPD. So I don't really care what it thinks of me, and I'm not afraid of any repercussions. I'd rather be 'smote' than play some game of 'who's afraid of who' with it. I'm not afraid of it, and no amount of power would have any impact on that. I don't even particularly *like* it, as deities go. But um, I kinda get the feeling you're approaching this goetia thing from a very different frame of mind than I am. And in deference to your own paradigm, I'll say, as a former devout christian and amateur bible scholar, that there are a lot of people, and some scriptural basis, which would suggest that working with goetia may not be on god's "ok" list.

I guess really this is a question you'll end up having to answer for yourself. But to answer your question very literally, no, working with goetia is not 'devil worship'. Though there are some people who use goetia as a basis for demonolatry (which rather sort of is devil worship in many cases).

It's worth noting, that the Lemegeton and it's predecessor works such as Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, are not really all that old, historically speaking. They originate from the 16th & 17th century europe, along with a lot of other western esoteric occult documents. So, it's a bit of a stretch to say that it's actually got all that much to do with king Solomon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Christian mysticism was all the rage at that point in history, and everybody & their cousin was coming up with "brand new ancient texts". Mormonism itself is actually an example of this fad. So exactly to what degree you give the lesser keys of solomon veracity as part of the actual ancient hebrew religion, is kinda... well there's a big leap of faith there, is perhaps a good way to put it.

This post has been edited by Kath: Dec 17 2009, 03:42 AM

Mephistopheles,
breaker of veils.
Lamb of man.

Thsnk, you Kath for the post it was very informative...

Ps Dancing Coyote whats your post mean lol. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/confused012.gif)

Before doing anything with this you probably want to read everything IMperial Arts has to say on the matter of Goetia. His understanding of it appears to be extrordinarily extensive & fairly profound. He actually does it intelligently & would be the guy to talk to before even trying it..

best of luck

I disagree. Go find some Crowley or Peter Carrol.

I agree with Dancing Coyote. I also recommend the work of Phil Hine. I think the Q may be better addressed in the ceremonial magick forum than the Chaos magick forum anyway. CMT practitioners have a very different idea of what a "demon" is than a ceremonialist.

Goetic magick goes back to ancient times although the occult "Renaissance," which combined Neohermeticism/alchemy, neopythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, Jewish mysticism, and magickal Christianity was at its height between the 15th and 17th centuries. It went into decline and then the occult revival which drew on interpretations of pre-Christain magick mixed with medieval magick took off. This modern magick is giving way to post-modern magick in the late 20th to 21st century.

Goetic magick is not about "worshipping" demons. It is about summoning and controlling energies. In Solomonic magick, energies are confined and controlled using magickal seals--and there is the idea that the energies are actual spiritual entities. Also the demons of Solomonic or Enochian magick aren't Pagan deiities. They are entities within a very complex system of angelology.

In CMT, a person would more likely summon a demon with the understanding that the demon is an aspect of the psyche or at least that the demon is paradoxically an independent entity and an aspect of the psyche. It would be more of an egregore or thought-form. Interacting with it would be to have either a cathartic psychodynamic experience, or (as in traditiontal goetic magick) to assign it a task to carry out. In traditional goetia, assignment of the task also involves a bartering arrangment.

Some people ultimately can have bouts of emotional illness from doing certain kinds of magickal work (and this also holds true for doing work that people consider to be "spiritual," mystical or "yogic") . So this kind of work is not meant for the psychologically vulnerable or emotionally unstable or impressionable. On the other hand, as mentioned, a Working that goes wrong usually does not involve a cataclysm but just a day or two in which uncanny accidents or provocations or mood swings occur. In CMT workings, however, these kinds of experiences can also signal that a Working has succeeded and that paradigmatic shifts are occurring.

This post has been edited by SororZSD23: Jan 2 2010, 08:58 AM