Let's start this with a warning. Maybe big bold letters can help: THIS POST IS A SIGIL FOR MY EVIL DEMON. He is bound into this text. Do not continue to read as reading this sigil might set him free... Well, not that my evil demon can do any harm to you; after all he is mine. But you know how demons are - they help each other out like real mates. And he might just figure where yours is kept locked inside? 

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One of the most fascinating results of my evocation of the Olympic Spirit of Hagith was her take on the interdependency of love and life. Love being a light that opens and life being the seed that is put inside. The simple, yet perplexing insight: nothing can receive life if it hasn't been opened by love before. 

Think that sounds cheesy? Well, let's consider this: life is a pretty general term. It is not the same as beauty, harmony or balance. Life includes all the nastiness and ugliness we normally don't tend to associate with it. Life is rainy days, depression and sickness - just as it is ice cream, sunshine and a walk in the park.  

So the key of love that Hagith provides opens all kinds of doors, irrespective of what has been kept inside... Still sounds too much like theory? Then let me share a story of a door that I had nailed shut for all the right reasons twenty years ago and which Hagith just decided to tear wide open...

When I first experienced the beauty and fulfillment of Tiphareth I was simply blown away by how quietly contempt and in love I could be with the world around me. At the same time, however, I realized that this brightness, this complete effortlessness, has an evil twin. A mirror face of the buddha-like smile that covered my face for many days after entering the realm of Tiphareth... Similarly, I realized that I wasn't exactly in a rush to hunt for this shadow and leave the beautiful sunshine in the garden of Tiphareth behind. 

So while I was sitting on my Tiphareth meadows for weeks in one long wonderful picnic, deep inside I knew that there was a gravel walk leading out of the park into a dirty suburb and to a run down door with a house number and a name on it... I even knew the house number and the name on the doorplate (see the Note at the end). Yet, I still was in no rush leaving my unfinished picnic, walking down the path and essentially spoil the entire day... First off I needed to achieve balance and stable connection to the forces of Tiphareth. There was still plenty of time left to go scouting in the suburbs afterwards...

Well, fast forward about a year: here comes Hagith. Suddenly I am standing in front of the run down door in that far away alley. I have no idea how I got here? The old door slams wide open: Inside is a room covered in ashes. All things are quiet and still inside. It is the living room of my parent's house. I am a child again, standing in the middle of the room and looking around me. This is the burial chamber of my past. I am right in the room I promised myself never to return to... I realize a part of me has been standing here since all these years: the same boy, the same clothes, the same haircut. The same bitter taste of sadness in my throat, the same profound disillusionment on my mind that life will never become for me what I knew it could be for others... It is incredibly quiet in the Pompeii house of my past. Surrounded by memories whose life I have drawn out and used to build up my future, surrounded by ghosts and furnitures made from ashes... I guess this is the place where my evil daimon lives.

Here is what Agrippa has to say about the nature of the evil daimon:

"As therefore there is given to every man a good spirit, so also there is given to every man an evil Diabolicall spirit, whereof each seeks an union with our spirit, and endeavours to attract it to it self, and to be mixed with it, as wine with water; the good indeed, through all good works conformable to it self, change us into Angels, by uniting us, as it is writ of John Baptist in Malachie: Behold I send mine Angel before thy face: of which transmutation, and union it is writ elsewhere; He which adheres to God is made one spirit with him. An evil spirit also by evil works, studies to make us conformable to it self, and to unite, as Christ saith of Judas, Have not I chosen twelve, & one of you is a devil?"(Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, Book III, chapter XX)

Well, I wish he had also called out this: My evil daimon is the spirit that never appears in full sight. He is the ugly part of me that everybody can see but I. He is the force that hinders, wears out and withers my ability to love and give. He is the strange gravitational force that holds me back when I need to speak, that closes my eyes when I need to see. He is the force that creates my armor of pride and the darkness inside. 

My evil daimon is the quiet usurper, he is the one who stands behind me, the voice that sounds like mine and the face I have never seen. At the same time, however, my evil daimon also is the force that allowed me to survive. By surrounding me like an armor of cold it sheltered what was kept inside. He didn't help exactly to escape from the room made of ashes, yet because of him I outlasted while I was caught inside. 

When things get so tough that I cannot allow love to help me anymore, my evil daimon is the last line of defense. He is the ugly truth and every touch of his leaves a stain. But I guess we all have been to places where we were willing to pay the price: By closing down all other resources, by slamming shut all doors, by embracing the counterforce of love, we can create a confined space of survival. A living grave, a shadow in the sun. 

The door to the room of ashes is wide open now. For the first time I can see my evil daimon. He has left the run down house, stepped out on the street, eyes wide open he is staring into the sun above the garden. The burning light pierces through his eyes, they burn and die down to ashes. My demon doesn't move, but keeps on standing and holds his face of ashes into the sun...

Suddenly I get it: every living thing has a right to be set free. Be it an evil demon or an angel, be it made of ashes or light. Hagith's love is blind.

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Note: When I prepared for the rite that took me through the veil of Paroketh and into Tiphareth I had worked with Agrippa's instructions on how to construct the name of your genius and evil daimon from your natal chart. You can download The Genius & Evil Demon Calculator in the Tools section on this site for free.