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
Is Goetia Like Devil Worship?
Dec 16 2009, 01:28 AM
