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.