Converting demons

There are religious stories where demons have been converted to the “right faith”. These are fascinating stories of great spiritual masters defeating wild demons in fights and making them obey. After this conversion, the demons follow higher, spiritual ideals and take the position as protectors of the faith and the followers, also of holy temples.

From the hermetic point of view, these are nice stories and obviously based on real happenings. The point is that we have to differentiate between real demons, – which are negative spirits in the spheres and dualistic astral beings which belong to the realms of nature, which can be understood as deities of nature. So, in the hermetic language, we cannot “convert demons”. We only can get into control of these astral beings and make them follow higher purposes. This has happened in the stories. A real demon is a spirit far away from earth, a being of the spheres, with a well-defined field of action in the administration of creation. A spiritual master can get to know demons and their functions, and a master can appear to a demon as a higher, divine authority to whom the demon must obey.

These are possibilities and a master must decide if there is sense in getting in control of certain demons. Eventually, it might be for study reasons or as a part of initiation, growing on the spiritual path, or it is necessary for specific divine missions and tasks. In most cases, it should be sufficient to work with the opposite, the so-called angels, better called deities.

One interesting aspect is the idea to use demons to deal with dark forces, negative people or beings. Here we get to the idea of the Catholic Church which normally condemns the evil and all evil beings, but on the other hand proclaims the power over the dark forces. Indeed, the Catholic Church has the idea that it rules over all forces of light and all forces of evil. And so, the devil is just an “employee”, doing his job, punishing bad souls in the hellfire. This must be understood. For this reason, we also find all the gargoyles at the cathedrals, demons which should scare off evil forces. 

In conclusion, it is a big difference if you belong to the “good” side, the “bad” side or if you understand yourself as superior of good and bad and in control of both to strive for your aims. Here we have the dualistic attitude to do both depending on personal preferences, the ego and the situation. “The end justifies the means!” This is the slogan of the dualistic attitude. Especially, the young religions follow this idea. Besides these ideas, there is the attitude of the righteous, – the true initiate and spiritual master. The righteous one is a temple of God, embodies the laws of creation and follows the divine wisdom in all he does. He does not care about the ego but only about what is good and right, regarding the laws of creation, the principles of wisdom. He asks for the higher sense, the causes and the consequences.

These are some thoughts about an interesting topic. It is useful to be able to differentiate and to understand these things.

Now let us do a thought experiment. Let´s imagine that you are a normal man with family, enjoying a peaceful life. But one day, you hear the news that wild warriors are on their way to raid your home. Now you have two options. First option: You fight against the wild warriors. Second option: You hire a wild warrior to fight them.

The first option is good against bad and as you are not a warrior yourself, you have a big problem to deal with them. Second option is bad against bad. Here is the advantage that your hired warrior knows exactly how the other warrior will behave as he is from the same nature. Indeed, it is the old idea to “fight fire with fire” which is also used in the homeopathic treatments.

Now imagine that a noble knight has to fight with an evil warrior. The noble knight is limited by high ideals while the evil warrior will use all means to win. Fair against unfair. This is a problem. Again, it makes sense to let two evil warriors fight each other. Your evil warrior serves a higher, good purposes while the other one follows selfish desires.

In conclusion, we often face this question: Shall we balance one pole with the opposite pole, or shall we balance the negative pole with itself, working for the higher purpose? Water with fire or fire with fire?

When we transfer this to the level of society, then we see the same problem on a bigger scale. The good people in society try to deal with the bad people. This is like sheep against wolves. It does not work, unfortunately. Sheep do not understand the nature of wolves and so they cannot understand their strategies, their instincts and drives. And sheep do not have the sharp teeth of wolves. Here it is hard to balance fire (wolves) with water (sheep). The only solution would be if sheep hire some wolves to fight and defeat the evil wolves. This means that some professionals of the dark side need to be “converted” to serve positive values, fighting their dark brothers.

This is a nice and fascinating idea and it could work out. Unfortunately, it is the other way round and the dark side infiltrates positive structures of society, converting good members into evil to take over power and control.

It is a topic to think about. Why must noble knights fall while evil warriors are unlimited in their work?

By the way, Pope Paul II. used this strategy to manage his financial problems. He simply hired a wolf of the financial sector to make as much money as possible for the church. The wolf had only one request, – to give him freedom of action (for the dirty business). And the Pope agreed. In shortest time, the wolf realized the desired results, – great profits for the church.