Holy Daimon or Daimonic hive?
Introduction
The idea of man as a microcosm is easily misunderstood. What it implies more than anything is that man is nothing alone and of himself. There is nothing of man’s own, but only what is shared and borrowed, interwoven and interconnected. Whatever we observe in man leads us out into the world. Whatever we observe in the world may or may not lead us back into the human being. Treasures and bridges everywhere; an endless affirmation of the insignificance of borders drawn from human skin.
The paradox of the human condition preoccupied Paracelsus throughout his entire life. How was it that our species simultaneously was animal and angelic, and human somewhere in between? It was clear to him that man could not be anything without the active and individually determined influence of angels, stars, animals, and elements. For the human body was composed of the limus terrae, in which all these influences were gathered.
Man has a divine spirit within him. But otherwise he is an animal, and as an animal he is an animal spirit. Now man should not be an animal, but a man. If he is to be a man, he must live from the spirit of human life.[1]
Man is twofold, that is, he is an animal and a man, so he can act humanly or beastly. If he acts humanly, he is human; if he acts beastly, he is the same animal to which he is equal. Not by comparison, or as if one were to say, he is like a dog, like a wolf, but he is a dog and he is a wolf.[2]
All creatures are letters and books to describe the origin of man. In other words, if you want to know an ancient story, you have to get it from the scriptures. So the creatures are letters in which you can read who man is.[3]
We cannot change our temperament, we can only temper it. Embracing and refining the individual signature we were born into is the first step on the path to consciously (re)connecting to our daimonic nature.
What at first might seem like common sense, has a lot to offer for our personal practice. The beginning of our path to communion with our daimonic nature, is to make peace with not being angelic, but rather beastly bruised and torn. According to Paracelsus philosophy, our path towards daimonic communion is not one of gnostic escapism, but of carnal embrace. Reading Paracelsus through the lens of daimonic communion presents us with an often overlooked yet central paradox: Is it one holy daimon or an entire weave of daimones that mould the pattern we find ourselves in? Should we aspire to create communion with our daimon in the singular – or rather expect to find an entire tribe of angelic influences underneath the elemental coating of our selves?
Since the publication of my book Holy Daimon[4] in 2018, I have continued to dedicate myself to exploring these questions. For the last five years then I have been working with both my holy daimon and many other spirits on the restoration of a practice I call goêteia – echoing the renegade practitioners outside the ancient Greek polis before 600 BC. Both in relation to my own daimon, and in relation to our diverse daimonic nature, I would like to share here some personal insights that have opened up for me through this work. Once again, I must emphasize that these thoughts are not shared here as truths, but at best as testing grounds for your own exploration.
Our Daimonic Nature
Let’s begin with our daimonic nature, where we encounter the term in the plural, not the traditional singular form: Reconnecting with our daimonic nature allows us to step out of the anthropomorphic gestalt and agenda that confines us as members of the human species. Reconnecting with our daimonic nature speaks of experiencing ourselves in non-human shapes that hold open interfaces into the entire weave of cosmic creation around us. Where the boundaries of such experiences lie, I do not know. What I do know, though, is when I step out of the Void[5] and into my daimonic body[6] I encounter myself as a semi-permeable, open field to my surroundings. In this shape, I can create mutual inter-species affordances. That is, I can become of the river, of the mountain, of the dragon. For moments in time these beings and mine can create co-inhabited bodies, shared spaces of dwelling and communion. That, however, does not mean that beyond such momentary affordances we remain interconnected on a corporeal level. At some point the river withdraws, I step away from the mountain, the dragon sinks back into sleep again. And I walk on as other. For such inter-species affordances alter my daimonic nature in no insignificant ways. They might introduce new patterns, reawaken atavistic forms, or simple nudge or nurture what was already there. I hold little control over these effects – apart from the initial decision to create temporary affordances with e.g. river, mountain or dragon.
Here the field of engagement is open and unbound; it spans from ephemeral encounters to insolvable inoculations. Anything that holds the tiniest fragment of consciousness bound into any kind of form can be afforded to touch us, to rub off on us, or to inoculate us. Because such inter-species affordances happen all the time outside of our field of conscious decision making, we realise that there is no such thing as a pure, genuine or unaltered version of anything. All is weave, all the time. What our cells, our blood, our selves inhale is the exhale of daimones, clouded in corporeal forms. What we exhale, on the other hand, again is the nourishment of a myriad of daimones around and within us, who all feed on our breath, our dreams and words, as well as less poetic human secretions. Even while alive, we are already being eaten, inhaled, and digested by an entire world of Radical Otherness. This thought presents itself only as uncanny in so far, as we continue to think of ourselves as distinct and unique in a parcel bound up by human skin.
Our Holy Daimon
So much to our daimonic nature for now. Our holy daimon then, the term in the singular, is something entirely different and yet deeply interconnected. What we know in the Western Tradition of Magic as our daimon is a placeholder term for an ambiguous angelic entity uniquely assigned to our human body by conception or birth. If we want to speak with certainty, this is where we need to stop. For anything beyond this general statement begins to fragment into a myriad rivulets of uniquely personal experiences. Sokrates found that this daimon would intervene and warn him when he was about to step away from his assigned fate. In his Book of the True Practice, the literary figure of Abraham von Worms speaks of a supernatural spiritual clarity in the presence of the guardian angel and an indescribable joy that the practitioner will experience. In contrast to Socrates account, here the holy daimon does not appear as an arcane voice, but in an almost childlike naïveté as a teacher and guide in all aspects of lifestyle.[7] To further illustrate the wide range of historical variations in the experience of the holy daimon, many other sources could be cited.[8]
My own experience has taught me that my daimon does not like to speak about her/himself, and that it does not like to speak in human words in general. Rather, it prefers the language of sensual stimuli and visionary images. When I ask it questions in human words, it responds immediately in sensate visions, short and sharp, like the edge of a rock. Additionally, I learned my daimon was mobile where planetary angels are stationary or fixed. We found we could enter each other’s bodies and travel in it. I learned my daimon has stored many of my incarnations already in her/his body and is most interested in the experiences I make in the flesh. I learned my daimon inhales my sadness and grief and exhales joy and calm – a parallel to the Abraham of Worms source that I found striking. And I found our connection in everyday life is at best like a human holding a balloon on a string.[9] We are connected, and yet we live in two rather distinct and separate bodies.
Conclusion
To summarise: we are surrounded by daimonic bodies all the time. We are stuck inside one ourselves, but only rarely become aware of it. We can create mutual inter-species affordances between our and other daimonic bodies – and allow for mutual inoculations and resonances. However, there is only one holy daimon in the classical terminology for each of us. That is, one daimon who precedes and exceeds us in our incarnated identity. This holy daimon is home to us in most existential ways. Its body is the living vessel that captures and condenses the essence of our carnal experiences, incarnation after incarnation. Uniquely, this daimon will encounter us as both other and self, like a hand full of water returning to the river, like a ray of light reflected back into its source. This holy daimon is home beyond the boundaries of flesh and the threshold of womb and grave. However, it is not the destiny or destination of our incarnated journey. Rather, it is the calmly breathing background to our journey, holding us in her/his hand while we are caught in the illusion of falling…[10]
The Brethren of Purity described the nature of angels in an extraordinarily clear way as early as the 10th century. For a better (historic) understanding of the concept of our holy daimon, we need only apply their description of an angel as a guardian of an entire genus or species to each of us individually. Thus, our daimon is the particular guardian who watches over and sustains us beyond the succession of our incarnations and physical transformations.
Said the jinn sage: “Know, O King, that the word ‘kings’ (mulūk) is derived from the word ‘kingship’ (mulk), which is one of the words that refer to angels (malāʾika): for there is no genus or species or species member among all these animals, great or small, that God Most High has not charged angels to raise and protect and guide in all its acts; and they have far more mercy, compassion, affection and loving care [for their charges] than new mothers do for their babes tiny and helpless.”[11]
Footnotes
[1] Sudhoff, Vol. XIV, p. 43, translation by author
[2] Sudhoff, Vol. XIV, p. 325, translation by author
[3] Sudhoff, Vol. XII, p. 32, translation by author
[4] Scarlet Imprint, 2018
[5] For introduction to this practice see Josephine McCarthy, The Magical Knowledge Trilogy, Exeter: TaDehent Books, 2020.
[6] Let me add some color to this: One of them is a sturdy skeleton shape about 1.5x times the human size with a over-dimensioned feline skull and rags of fur on the bones. This body can be played as a bone-harp by beings around me, walk into and on all elements, and interconnect with other daimonic bodies of myself or other beings. Yes, we can experience ourselves in multiple daimonic bodies at once.
[7] Rick-Arne Kollatsch (ed.), Des Abraham von Worms Buch der wahren Praktik von der alten Magie - Ein als jüdisch fingierter Magietext des 17. Jahrhunderts, Band 1 - Edition, Hamburg: tredition GmbH, 2021, p. 106-108
[8] My introductory historical chapters in the book Holy Daimon (Scarlet Imprint, 2018) can serve as an initial overview.
[9] This metaphor was first used by the famous reincarnation therapist Thorwald Detlefsen (1946-2010) to emphasise the physical separation and yet spiritual connection of humans to their guardian angel in one of his usually brilliant yet pompous lectures in the 1990s.
[10] Again, I want to challenge us if my personal insights are relevant to your own work with your holy daimon? To me this relevance seems limited. It is always far too easy to codify and preserve what should be experienced and celebrated in the moment, thereby dulling and distorting it. At best, my experiences prove to be useful working hypotheses for your practice, and an incentive to develop similarly phenomenologically based views yourself.
[11] Friedrich Heinrich Dieterich (ed.), Der Streit zwischen Mensch und Thier, ein arabisches Märchen aus den Schriften der Lauteren Brüder, Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1858, p. 168-169, new translation by Matt Melvin-Koushki, August 2024
