when I was a child and summoned a demon, did I summon my dad? and did he implant something demonic inside me in that moment?
reviewing an extract from “demonic encounters” in my old blog, “the severed branch”
did I summon my dad?
extract:
I started reading about how to summon demons in The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish. This brought to mind one night long ago in the early 90s. I was a small child then. A friend was sleeping over. Our parents had taught us that demons were real. And they were not something to be joked about or played around with. Due to this, I wasn’t even allowed to use Ouija boards. Even the movie Jumanji was suspect, as spirit-possessed board games were, the church said, a reality.
Intrigued, my friend and I sought to summon a demon in my living room. We believed we could communicate with it by luring it into a perfect circle made from pogs. We arranged the pogs on the carpet, and then, sitting on either side of the circle, we improvised a few incantations that we thought might convince a demon to come into the room and reveal itself. I concentrated my energy until I felt the sudden sensation that there was a third, malevolent presence in the room.
At that moment, my father informed us that we were being too loud. He seemed oblivious to the purpose behind the circle of pogs we had created or the noises we were making. We put away the pogs and, as we fell asleep, I felt that we were being watched from a dark corner.
“Even if no spirit has appeared at all,” writes Richard Cavendish, “and the operation seems to have been a failure, the license [for the demon] to depart must be spoken, because the spirit may be lurking outside the circle unknown to the magician.” Reading this sent a chill down my spine. After all, that attempt at a demonic summoning had preceded all subsequent supernatural encounters.
But upon further reading of Cavendish, I learned that my friend and I had made mistakes going far beyond not commanding the demon to depart.
First, while a perfect circle and an accompanying incantation are indeed required for these ceremonies, we did not design our circle in accordance with other traditional requirements. Such circles should be nine feet in diameter, made from the points of magic knives, enchanted swords, chalk, or charcoal. Medieval magic also suggests using vermilion paint, since this contains the power of mercury and sulfur, which are associated with the powerful Philosopher’s Stone. Additionally, a triangle should be constructed outside the circle. The demon will appear there.
Secondly, the magician is supposed to stand inside the circle, which is meant to protect them from the evil spirit. We were outside the circle, and the demon would have been there with us. According to Cavendish, there is a consensus among magicians that anyone who invokes a demon without remaining inside the sacred, protective circle is playing dice with their life. Supposedly, when the famed British sorcerer Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947) was summoning a demon with his friend in a desert in Algeria in 1909, he briefly knelt outside the protective circle. There, he was suddenly possessed. He transformed into the shape of a woman who sought to lure his friend out of the circle. Then he took the form of the demon itself. Kicking a hole in the outline of the circle which had been drawn in the sand, he attacked his friend.
Unlike Crowley, we did not target any specific demon with appropriate supplies and ingredients. Depending on the demon one is summoning, Cavendish explains that the ceremony might require dried frog heads (for demons associated with the moon), fox brains (for demons associated with Mercury), or opium and sulfur (for demons associated with Saturn). Other sorcerers, whom Cavendish also discusses, suggest using the skin of a goat which has had sex with a woman, the robe of an executioner which has been used to wipe a sword after beheading a criminal, or nails taken from the coffin of a dead child. We had just used pogs.
But despite everything we did wrong, it could have worked. Cavendish suggests that there is not necessarily only one correct incantation or procedure. The purpose of these unsettling spell components is not necessarily in their literal value (although sometimes it is, depending on the strength of their connection with the being in question). Their function is rather to concentrate the sorcerer’s energies and awaken powerful emotions. The object’s symbolism is important because it can aid the magician in concentrating her emotion toward poetically connected outcomes.
Whereas my scientist friend told me that the circumstances in which I had perceived my demons disproved their existence, sorcerers tell me that we can only correctly perceive the nature of the universe if we immerse ourselves in the very conditions which seem to disconnect us from reality. Connecting with the demonic may necessitate forgoing sleep, fasting, taking drugs, enacting sacrifice, embracing the darkness, utilizing poetic thinking rather than logical thinking, and inhaling hallucinogenic fumes during an orgy. What we perceive in these states may be more real than what we perceive when we are sober, awake, chaste, and full.
did my dad’s cousins send a demon after me?
extract:
At 16, I stood beside the elder on a gravel road built into the side of a mountain in Colorado. We were overlooking the many layers of summits and precipitous drops which stretched out around us into the distance. The clouds which covered some of the craggy peaks began to move away in the wind. Snow-capped crests gradually materialized.
We stood together silently while sunset began. Orange light reflected off the distant snow. As the sun vanished somewhere behind us, the shadowy mountains settled beneath a strip of twilight. A transparent curtain of cold misty dusk materialized from nothing. This dark blue shroud brought out enchantingly murky shades of green and white in the frosty, forested inclines. I thought I could just make out the star-like glow of a settlement several miles away.
An emerging spiritual force temptingly beckoned me to walk aimlessly into this vast mountainous wilderness. But I stayed where I was, knowing of course that I would die out there. I was already apprehensive of the creatures I might encounter in the night. Would they be similar to the demonic presences which had haunted me before?
The spirit of the Lord descended upon me as I beheld His Creation. “How is it possible,” I asked my older relative, “that people can look at this and deny the existence of God?”
They are blinded by the devil, the elder suggested.
That night, I sat in the elder’s lodgings for a while with my parents, my siblings, and my cousins. I was eager to return to my parents’ rented cabin so I could continue my studies. I feared I was falling behind in my readings. The book that awaited me was written by heretical theologians who, by positing a role for the free will of mortals, denied the absolute power of the Lord. I wanted to understand their arguments so as to better refute them. One day, when I became a theologian myself, I would be able to condemn with solemnly judgmental rhetoric informed by my bookish learning.
I could not so easily contemplate these musings here in the elder’s lodgings. My family meant well, but they were not as devoted as they should be to the Lord. They strayed often into unedifying secular topics.
Soon I excused myself so I could walk back to our cabin. I stepped out of the elder’s lodgings and into the cold night. The road leading up the side of the mountain to our cabin seemed much longer now than it had in the daytime. To my right was a slope of trees and shrubs. Above were many stars. But to my left, there was only an impenetrable blackness which erased the outlines of distant mountains.
There’s nothing out here that can hurt me, I reminded myself. God’s presence is here, especially in the beauty of the mountains, where the unmitigated power of His Creation is on display. The atheists, living as they did in big cities, simply never had to encounter the raw natural output of the Lord. They beheld the man-made buildings around them. They worshiped these instead, deluding themselves that mankind had overtaken the God of Abraham. But He would be here beside me, guiding me up this road, protecting me from the wicked creatures of the woods.
Yet I was still fearful. The loud laughter and eager chatter of the elder’s lodgings was hardly audible now. The elder’s voice, when it boomed in the now distant living room, arrived to my ears as if through a portal from the spiritual realm. I knew there were beings around me in the cold dark mountain air. The thinness of the atmosphere at high altitudes facilitates easier passage between the spiritual and physical worlds.
Ahead, I could make out a faint light from my parents’ cabin. Safety. I started walking faster to reach the warmth and security behind its doors.
Up the slope to my right, something rustled the leaves. I stopped and looked up, squinting into the darkness. The bushes and branches stopped moving. Something was looking at me. Its head was poking out from behind a tree trunk. I started walking again, this time quickly. But the sounds came again. The tall, lanky creature emerged from its hiding place and began moving parallel to me. It accelerated just as I did, maneuvering through leaves and branches while looking down at me on the road.
As I neared the dim light from my parents’ cabin, the creature’s tall humanoid outline suddenly became clear to me. Some ten feet tall, it was walking sideways on its two long legs, its thin arms dangling down to its sides, its whole body facing me, its head tilted down toward mine. But in the thick darkness of the forest, I could make out no features beyond its pitch-black shape.
My breathing intensified as I sprinted up the road. I heard the leaves whooshing and the branches snapping. I felt the momentum of this creature which pursued me. The noises from its movements grew louder, their source closing in on me.
Suddenly the branches and leaves stopped churning. Had it descended down to the road? Was it out of the trees and approaching me? I sensed the thumping of its feet. It was racing toward me across the gravel. At any moment, its hand would clasp onto my shoulder, dragging me back from the cabin. I could not get the key into the door.
I heard a skid on the gravel behind me. Rapid footsteps. My heart thumping, I finally got the door open, slamming it shut behind me. I locked it. I backed rapidly away from the entrance, ensuring I stayed in the absolute center of the cabin.
There was a glass window in the door. I struggled to catch my breath and contain my fear as I looked through it, waiting for the creature’s body to appear in the frame.
I could not keep my eyes away from any of the windows. At any moment its face would appear. Sometimes, in the corner of my vision, I caught its eyes peering over the edge of a window sill.
I paced back and forth. After some time, no further noises crept into my ears from outside. No further movements could be seen through the windows.
Shuddering, I sat down with the heretic’s book, God’s Strategy in Human History, a blasphemous argument in favor of free will. One which denied the sovereignty of God over all human behavior. I highlighted a few sentences and considered jotting some refutations of free will into the margins. How had I fallen so far behind in my readings? Reprimanding myself, I pondered the fact that I still needed to read the Puritan intellectual Jonathan Edwards’ great work, The Freedom of the Will. It was waiting for me at home back in Michigan. His was a godly argument against the freedom of mankind and in favor of God’s absolute authority.
But I could not focus on these debates any longer. Disturbingly, I could not even get excited about the great scholar Jonathan Edwards. I could only think about the humanoid outside.
I had seen these creatures before. When I was a small child, I woke up in the night and looked down the hallway. I saw the pitch-black shapes of two towering humanoid beings. They held staves and swayed back and forth, looking at me. I stood petrified near the threshold of my bedroom. They made no advance. They just stared at me.