‘Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.’ (1 John 4:1).
Here at Holy Order of The Phoenix we are accepting of people of all belief systems, with our goal being to help people freely reconnect with and experience the divine. In keeping with this goal, we must guide people with the clear truth, and not with the dangerous and non-historical practices that have developed over the last two centuries. Surely there has been much good progress in spirituality made in this era as well; however, with this revival, came both good and bad ideas.
Let us start with the most dangerous examples:
- Modern practitioners downplaying the danger of working with demons.
- You can go to Reddit and check out the Demonolatry subreddit to see the careless practices going on. Since ancient times, virtually all cultures had conceptions of spiritual beings with primarily negative aspects, such as death, disease, madness, etc. This idea predates Judeo-Christian ideology, with exorcism-like rites being used by the ašipu (healer priests) of Mesopotamia around 3200 BC (Over 5,000 years ago!)
- Once Christianity was established, elaborate exorcism rites were used to great effect. In fact, some scholars believe the success of Christianity is due to the effectiveness of their exorcism rites compared to the rites of other cults in the Ancient Roman Empire.
- Moving specifically to occultism and western esotericism, virtually all classic grimoires acknowledge the dangers of working with demons, providing numerous safety procedures before doing such works, such as surrounding yourself and the demon with names of God, using incantations and threats to bind the demons, and preparing for the work by fasting and receiving the sacrament of Absolution.
- Now in the secular era of today, people are returning to spirituality without the guidance of those who have gone before them. As a reaction and protest to the corruption and excesses of the Roman and Protestant churches, people have flocked to working with demons and satan, mistakenly thinking that they are working with ancient “gods” demonized by Christians, or merely psychological archetypes for aspects of themselves, when in reality they are letting into themselves the universal principles of evil. For someone who has been hurt by Christianity, it would make more sense for them to find a new religion completely than to worship the Christian conception of evil, which has analogies in every other system. Satan has fooled these people into thinking evil does not exist, even while the signs of death, war, oppression, inequality, are all visible around us. So when someone works with these entities in this blind way, they are inadvertently aligning themselves and providing their energy to these harmful realities.
One need not look far to see the consequences of incorrect practice; Aleister Crowley, often regarded as an expert on Occultism, despite his ritual knowledge, ended up isolated, addicted to drugs, and poor, begging his followers for money. Does this appear to be the life you would expect an effective ceremonial magician to have?
While Crowley did make some contributions to what we know about the occult, most of his material was sourced from others such as The Golden Dawn, along with him adding in his own ideas, to the point of creating the religion of Thelema. While some regard this man as a prophet, truly he was a flawed practitioner with such a grand ego that he saw himself fit to “correct” and modify practices that had been effectively used for thousands of years.
Disclaimer: This is not meant to disparage Aleister Crowley or Thelema specifcally; there are things that can be learned from his works, although one must take them with a giant grain of salt, acknowledging that they flowed through a flawed human vessel, not an infallible medium. This being said, Crowley, known ecclesiastically as “Tau Baphomet” is one among many who are in our Church’s spiritual lineage, but he is not to be revered as above any other person, nor is his “Thelemic” Succession to be considered equivalent with Apostolic Succession.