All of these themes that you hear consistently across different cultures and even modern encounters of high strangeness have standard tropes and idioms. I want to collect these tropes here at the site and make a “TV Tropes” for multi dimensional high strangeness experiences.

Have a look and see what you think of the video.

I haven’t read his books but think that I may just order them for the kindle soon.

My key take away’s from the video:

• More study should be placed on the origan and story’s of the daimons
• They appear at times of liminal states. Either on a macro or micro level. People historically see them at times like Halloween, a liminal time of the year. The full moon is also associated. But go a little deeper. You hear of modern people encountering strangeness in Liminal times of their lives. This is a key idea that has been talked about on Paratopia in recent episodes. The whole sleep paralysis thing is even a more micro level of a liminal state. You are in the state between being awake and asleep. Why are liminal states so important? I would think because this is where “Boundry Layer Transference” is occurring. In the information reality model that I have developed, information can not just pass between two states without there being interence, loss and noise. This is a meta concept that has roots in information theory.
• Marginalities of the culture. These things are always at the fringes, causing cultural noise that is an evolutionary force in the development of art, culture, technology and ultimately consciousness.
• Shapeshifters : These entities have a shapeshifting faculty which can be thought of as sublime and ridiculous. There is a level of mirth and strange connection of disparate elements like you find in surrealism. This is also a noise producing factor in the phenomena. This is a definite link to psychedelic thought and theory and needs to be investigated further.

Enjoy and leave any thoughts and feedback below

I personally think that no matter what viewpoint you are approaching your discovery of reality from (the paranormal, psychedelic, spiritual , psychological or other), an understanding of the tools that modern occultists use to interact with consciousness and reality is worth having. Lon’s books provide this viewpoint in a very easy to access way that writers of older generations, like Crowley just don’t provide.

In his latest books Lon Milo Duquette provides some very interesting accounts of his magickal adventures and keen insights into his worldview. We get an understanding of how he interacts with the world when conducting magical operations, and what the purpose of these operations are. (links to his latest books Low Magick & My Life with the Spirits here)

The main form of Ceremonial Magick that Lon performs is called Goetia. It involves the invocation of angels, but mostly the evocation of demons, of which there are 72 in the official system. This form of magick derives from the 17th century grimoire The Lesser Key of Solomon, and then refined by Aleister Crowley in 1904 in his work The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King.

The traditional story behind the whole system is that in ancient times, King Solomon is said to have summoned these sprits, trapped them in vessels of brass sealed with magickal symbols, and then he forced them to do his bidding and build the temple of Solomon. The magicians of the renaissance are then said to have discovered the key to working with these spirits, which they then recorded in grimoires and were then in turn picked up by the first modern occultists during the mid 19th century. There are a few variations on the actual technique of working with these demons, but most involve summoning the demon into a triangle, and then forcing it to do your will by threatening it.

The spirits themselves can appear via the aid of a scrying mirror, and can overtake and speak through people present in the operation, although this is not always the case. Quite generally the presence of spirits is determined by changes in atmosphere of the room, temperature drops, unexplainable noises, synchronistic events or the feeling of a ‘presence’. In general, quite a lot like ghosts are perceived in the paranormal realm.

Just as an interesting side note, Phil Imbrogno’s latest book “The Vengeful Djinn” goes into explaining how the Middle Eastern world and followers of Islam view these spirits that King Solomon is said to have imprisoned. The called them Djinn, and they are the origins for stories about Genies. To Islamic people, Djinn are fearsome paranormal beings, and very, very real to them. They manifest in ways that have been ascribed ghosts, demons and even aliens by us in the western world. The book is well worth checking out http://www.djinnuniverse.com/ .  You might want to go and listen to the Paratopia episode where Phil talks in depth about his experience researching the Djinn.

http://paratopia.org/?p=444

Lon Milo (and other progressive, thinking modern magickians) has a different view of the way that these Goetia demons / spirits might function. He puts forward the idea, backed up with 30 years of experience in dealing with these forces, that one way of considering these ‘demons’ (but not the only exclusive way) is that they are uncontrolled aspects of the self. These entities are real in terms of being both inside and outside of ourselves at the same time, dependent on the frame of reference that we use to interact and perceive them. What defines a demon is that it is an unclaimed, uncontrolled part of us that works as a powerful force driving us to perform certain actions. You might think of it as a habit, or a compulsion, or a pattern to use a pop psychology term. It’s a  behaviour that people do automatically until they develop a degree of mindfulness.

He also puts forward the point that they can take physical manifestation sometimes, and produce change in the physical world as well as in the minds of others. They are both inside and outside of ourselves simultaneously, and require a radical rethink on how we consider reality and consciousness to be constructed. This viewpoint dovetails so neatly into the enlightenment / meditation work that I have been studying for the past 10 years that it is

Far from being dungeons and dragons for adults, the Western mystery tradition of ceremonial magick with its different branches and influences is a huge source of theoretical inspiration and practical knowledge for investigators of strange phenomena, psychonaughts and enlightenment seekers.

Another point is that these ‘demons’ that are found in the Goetia are mostly bastardised versions of earlier pagan gods that were a threat to or conquered by Christianity. The religious and politcal situation of the time when these ‘demons’ started to appear in folk law and religious texts needs to be taken into consideration. I think all of us would make a huge mistake if we started putting these forces into Christian or even ethical baskets of Good and Evil.

There is a profound spiritual / consciousness applications for this knowledge, because by getting these demons (parts of us that are destructive / working against the greater good) under control we get them working for us, not against us. These forces when integrated and working in conjunction with your true self can give you extraordinary powers. For a real mundane example, a ‘demon’ that is always sabotaging you by draining your energy and shortening your attention span may be causing you to procrastinate. It might manifest in always getting you to check your inbox once every 10 minutes (I think a lot of us have been beleaguered by this nasty little critter from time to time). Once that part of the self is under control, it can motivate you to perform tasks quickly. Ceremonial magick operations are always dealing with larger scale problems than this, but i hope this gets the general idea across.

All of this brings us to the interesting observation that paranormal phenomena may very well be as much a part of our internal reality as our external reality, and that these two viewpoints may not be mutually exclusive. I see so many viewpoints and experiences, from the Above Top Secret forum to the Vaults of Erowid and between which show that we are getting an interplay between the contents of our head and the contents of outer reality when these phenomena manifest.

As Lon Duquette says in the latest book “It’s all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head is”

In the coming weeks I will be exploring this concept in finer detail. This first essay in the newest incarnation of the website s a fundamental one, with implications that touch on all of the major themes that I want to discuss. We can’t get to the bottom of the paranormal without looking deeply into consciousness, spirituality / enlightenment, psychology, magick, science and all other fields related to the way that we perceive and interact with the world.

I  think that we are so far away from a true view of what this phenomena is, that all rationally thought out theories should be thoroughly investigated. It is in the similarities and juxtapositions of viewpoints that those small, intangible slithers of truth might be discerned, and our understanding will slowly creep forward. We need to form the ground work so that progressive work may be done. The days of simple answers ie. ‘it’s just ghosts’, ‘it’s just demons’ or even ‘it’s all in their heads’ are hopefully coming to an end.