So Speshuuuul! Now with MORE Satan.

About once a month I either hear or see this same comment somewhere out there in the Occulture:  “Once you get to a certain **point** in your magickal practice or relationship with the Daemonic, you no longer need rituals or to write things down.”

Why? Because apparently, you become sooooo speshuul the Daemons will just pop by for coffee on a whim, you’ll remember everything, and if you just think it – the Daemonic jumps right on it because you’re so damn special.

I’m beginning to think the people who spout this kind of crap are either – A. super lazy and just don’t want to do the work and this is their cop-out or B. haven’t really grown beyond the phase of using low magick to “get stuff” and have decided that magick isn’t really helping them, or they don’t really need it because they don’t aspire to grow and change, but that the image of being a magician/Satanist/whatever is still worth keeping.  And if that’s the case – awesome, but comments like these don’t help others, especially those just starting out, who may actually aspire to something greater.

But Steph, you judgemental cunt, you – maybe these people have a good reason for saying this!

Perhaps. Perhaps there are some super special folks out there who have mastered their will, and have no need for any of the rituals magickal practice entails. Perhaps their relationship with the Daemonic is so solid, all they have to do is “think Lucifer” and the Daemonic jumps to it. Though I really have to wonder if this is the case. For those who are truly embarking on The Great Work, does the work ever truly end? Especially since we are continually changing and learning.

I saw this sentiment spouted today as a qualifier to the above — “What I’m trying to say is I don’t HAVE to honor Daemons, I WANT to.”

Well duh. No one HAS to honor, or work with, the Daemonic. No one is being FORCED to do rituals.  Just because you choose to honor the Daemonic doesn’t mean The Great Work stops… unless the Great Work isn’t your goal.  I suppose it’s true that not all practitioners are magicians. There are spiritual Daemonolaters out there, but as I’ve said before, I don’t “get” those people. We have little in common other than our dedication to the Daemonic Divine.

I’ve been practicing magick since 1984. For those who don’t feel like doing the math, that’s 34 years. And you know what? I still write things down and keep journals. I still do rituals. Granted what I write in my journals and the types of the rituals I do have changed considerably from my younger years. No, I no longer need to do rituals to establish a connection with Daemons I’m already familiar with. But surprise-surprise — those aren’t the only types of rituals!  I also don’t tend to do as much low magick these days because I’ve discovered high magick is more efficient in manifesting long-lasting results in my life.  I’ve become more experimental in my magickal processes, I do a lot of self-work as my own Great Work requires, and I tend to take notes on everything I do, as well as writing down how it works, the manifestations of it, and any insight gained from the rituals themselves. Yes — even meditation and astral rituals.

Whereas new magicians fill their notebooks with recipes, rituals, and spells, mine include journal entries, dream notes, hypothesis, experiments, results, and sometimes my personal feelings and thoughts on my own Great Work. I don’t keep my journals for anyone else — I keep them for me, so I can review them every few years to see how far I’ve come, or to figure out what I’ve missed.

So while the magickal practice (and the rituals), and what gets written in the journals changes over time (and there may be periods in your life where you don’t journal as much) – most of the dedicated magicians I know still work ritual and still keep journals. Just not in the same way they did last year or five years before that. While some things may come easier to us as we progress on our individual journeys, just because we’ve mastered a single thing (i.e. connecting with our Daemons of choice for example) does not mean we have nothing else to master. If you stop the work there – you will never go any further and if the Daemonic doesn’t push you further – then I do have to wonder if there’s a genuine connection there at all. I have yet to become familiar with a Daemon who hasn’t given me homework.

Homework that doesn’t, by the way, include me groveling before an altar of offerings. Offering rituals are sweet and all and they may honor the Divine, but the Divine is more honored by the practitioner who gets off his/her ass and does their homework. If you don’t hand it in, they either ignore your ass thereafter, or you get a prod (sometimes not so gentle) to impress upon you the importance of The Great Work. Whether or not that prodding is gentle seems to depend on whether or not they think you can be taught without more aggressive measures. We each have areas we’re stubborn in and need an extra smack.  I don’t know how offering rituals suddenly became the ONLY foundation for a lot of Modern Daemonolaters’ practices. That’s a relatively new phenomenon. While offerings (of blood, wine, water, incense, and fire) have always been a part of traditional Daemonolatry’s rituals (magick and otherwise) – it’s not nearly the big deal, as in separate rituals just for offerings, in traditional Daemonolatry as it is for the self-styled Daemonolatries out there.  For us it’s like — Oh, you do tons of offering rituals to the Daemonic and post to FB everytime you do? How cute. Are you going to dye your hair blue,  get a nose ring, and take a selfie too?  

Or is that just me?  Am I just a curmudgeonly old bitch sitting over here waving my staff in the air, “You kids get off my lawn!” ???  

So why, all of a sudden, is it no longer the case that working with Daemons is to some higher end? Is this no longer the case with the bulk of inexperienced upcoming practitioners? To hear them talk, you just need to learn to connect with the Daemonic, leave a shit ton of offerings, and that’s it. After that — you’re good to go! Apparently.  No self-work required.