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CHAPTER FOUR

VARIETIES OF DEMONIC EXPERIENCE

You don’t learn about people from books. Discuss.

The first point is that it is not true—of course we learn about people from books. I’ve never met Aleister Crowley, so most of what I know of him has come from biographies.

The second point is that the sentence, although not strictly true, does contain a truth. Although I gained most of my knowledge of Crowley from books, I also learnt something about him by talking to others who had met or worked with him. Without the greater depth of empathy and understanding this personal contact provided, my knowledge of him would have been more brittle, fragmented and stereotypical. The added input had a bigger impact on the quality of my understanding of the man than on the quantity of my knowledge.

I also believe that we learn more about our fellow humans from fiction than from non-fiction books, and this is because stories encourage us to enter into the scene described and empathise with or ‘become’ one of the characters. In imagination we are no longer reading a book but participating in a drama.

This is not to say there is anything innately wrong with non-fiction books about people, but simply that they are labouring under a disadvantage as long as they simply present facts and do not weave stories that engage the imagination and encourage the reader to participate.

So the opening sentence should be replaced with this: We learn most about people by living among them and interacting or observing them in a receptive manner. We also learn something from books, especially when the books manage to emulate the experience of human interaction.

The same applies to demons. You will, I trust, learn quite a bit about them from this book, but will only really understand them insofar as you work with them in your own life. Meanwhile I will attempt to increase the teaching potential of this book by giving a few examples based on real life to illustrate the process in some of its diversity.

I won’t go as far as to weave stories from these examples, I will simply seek to distil from them a few useful guidelines for the next chapter.

DEPRESSION

Depression is a recognised medical condition, and I believe it is possible to be permanently depressed. In this example, however I am using the word in a more popular sense to describe a feeling of despair, pointlessness and utter lack of energy or motivation that can descend upon one’s life and then lift again.

It may happen for a reason – an unhappy love affair or loss of job – but it may also just descend for no obvious reason and cast its shadow over a period that could otherwise be a high-point in our lives. This can be even worse – what is wrong with me, one asks, that I should be feeling like this when I have so much to be grateful for compared with others less well off in life?

When in this state of despair, it is hard to imagine that any other state could exist for oneself – happiness seems like a prerogative of other people. It is important, then, not to exercise the imagination but rather the memory. Give imagination a rest and focus on the fact that one has been in this state before, and that one has since been out of this state. The condition comes and goes. Therefore, however unlikely this might seem, there is reason to suspect that one might again be happy at some time in the future.

This can be a very useful revelation. I began the chapter with an example of a sentence that was not true, yet contained a truth. It illustrates an important principle, namely that most people are not demons yet they contain demons. In this case there is enormous pressure of temptation to identify with one’s black despair and see it as ‘me’ rather than something that visits me and departs again. Instead I encourage the depressed person to detach from the condition – and remembering that the condition has come and gone in the past is a very great help towards achieving such detachment.

If depression is a recurring problem, it deserves also to be addressed in those times of relative joy between visitations. When feeling good, it is tempting to turn one’s back on the depression of yesterday and throw oneself into life again ‘making up for lost time’ in a frenzy of fun. Instead I suggest you invite depression to join you at times of hope: when feeling confident and optimistic, think back to the arguments you used to convince yourself that there was no future, that you were a loser and there was no hope. Don’t work yourself back into that state of depression, simply converse with your memory of that state, take its arguments seriously and give them the respect of a serious refutation. Take those arguments apart gently. And next time you are depressed, think back to that inner conversation and invite it in turn to participate in your depression.

Note my wording: when I say that the depression “deserves also to be addressed” I am beginning to anthropomorphise the state. Then I invite it to join a conversation. What I am in effect doing is seeing the condition as a demon that visits rather than simply a change that comes over one.

But how much respect should one allow for such an unwelcome visitor as this?

The answer came to me when visiting a friend in a nearby parish. As we chatted over tea he looked out of the open door and said “Oh God, no. Not Jules.” A moment later a small, fussily dressed old man entered and proceeded to bore us with his conversation until my friend invented a dinner date as reason to flee his presence. In truth, I did not find Jules boring at first—he had some interesting views on literature and a passion for first editions—but it became clear that my friend had heard them all before many times and the boredom soon rubbed off on me.

I’ve met this in several communities: the presence of an idiot, bore or nuisance that everyone dreads and groans as they approach. Linda Snell, the interfering busybody dramatised in The Archers – BBC radio’s favourite soap opera—fits the bill, though she is far from being a bore and much more of an irritant. But I’ve also noted that such people play a definite role in the community. Everyone laments their existence but, if the character dies or goes away, they would equally be missed. After all, if Linda Snell really was of no value to The Archers, she could have been written out of the script long ago. Sometimes we need someone to complain about, or to blame: “Sorry I didn’t get back to you yesterday. I was intending to come over but ruddy Jules turned up – you know he goes on – and that was the end of my afternoon.”

Depression can play that sort of role: an unwelcome guest yet a part of your life ecology; a time to slow down, turn inward, tend your wounds... even an excuse for time off work.

Winston Churchill named his depression as his “black dog” and I like to believe that his very phrasing gave him enough detachment to help cope with the state. For that is indeed the approach that has helped myself and other melancholics to handle our periods of gloom.

First: grant it the status of a living being, a demon. Second afford it the modicum of respect that goes with such a status: treat it as a visitor—even though unwelcome—and talk to it. In many cultures a guest always has status once allowed past the door. Even if you then discover that he is your worst enemy, you are bound to preserve hospitality until he leaves —ok, then you kill him.

As a youth I was the sort of person folks turned to when feeling blue. I had a number of such ‘foul weather friends’ who would turn up to be comforted when things were bad, but who had no time for me when they were feeling good, and would rush off to enjoy more extraverted and with-it company. I sometimes resented that. So don’t treat depression in that way, but remember it sometimes when things are good and invite it to debate the pleasures of life as I suggested above. See how well its negative arguments work when you are on a roller – and remember and remind it of your discussion next time you are again feeling low.

Am I trying to give you a ‘cure’ for depression? No, rather more a solution: a solvent to dissolve that sharp boundary between times of gloom and times of joy and thus discover a spectrum of possibilities instead of a binary discontinuity.

I, for one, have learnt to enjoy somewhat my times of gloom and low energy. I liken them to a sort of “soul sauna” in which I can wallow on my own and sweat out life’s surplus. These dark days seldom last beyond the next sunny morning.

Admittedly there are others I know who began from the same position as myself but went down the path of medication. With the force of medical opinion behind them they can argue that depression is a clinical condition subject to understood and ever-improving remedies. I would never try to deny their approach, and I am sure there are levels of depression so severe that the full comforts of professional expertise should be available to address them.

My plea to those who started from the same position as myself is simply to recognise that there are other approaches worth exploring.

SICKNESS

What has been said about depression could apply to a number of minor illnesses.

I recall my days as a computer programmer in the mid 1970s when one had to spend boring ages at a typewriter terminal. I had already conceived the idea of a VDU, so it was all the more tedious having to type commands and wait for the computer to type out a response.

One day I had flu, and realised that I was actually better at the job in that state because my energy was so low that I did not get bored and fidgety. The experience transmuted my experience of flu from one where the condition was simply an illness—i.e. a defect to be corrected as soon as possible—to an understanding that flu could be seen as a condition where I was less well fitted to everyday life but actually better fitted for certain specific activities.

I am writing about the sort of flu where you lie still in bed and actually feel quite good. It is only when you try some frantic activity like raising a finger or turning over in bed that the illness is felt. That sort of flu can be brilliant for meditating upon Life and taking stock. I have learnt to thank it for visiting me and, to some extent, even negotiated less inconvenient times for its visits.

And as for my memories of my prep-school: being sick was the only time one could get away from all that frantic timetable of bells and lessons and actually read a few detective stories.

In terms of demonology then, it becomes reasonable to address minor ailments—from sneezes, through head and back aches to bouts of flu—as tiresome guests who might actually have something to teach us. So you can lie there and ask the ailment why it has come, whether it has a purpose, and whether it appreciates that it is not altogether welcome in your life. Note especially that last point: one of the excuses people have for not addressing demons is that they believe it means moving from total condemnation of the condition to fawning acceptance. Not at all: you can be quite straight with a demon in explaining why it is unwelcome, as long as you are prepared to listen to its reply.

I have learnt quite a bit about myself and how to regulate my own health by talking to my illnesses as pesky demons with a point to make. There are also times when I’m simply ill like anyone else—and if you think that funny, or a blot upon my thesis, I would reply that even the best inter-human relationships have been known to break down or go through bad patches, but that is no reason to give up on them.

NOSTALGIA

Here’s an example where the personification process is clearer and easier to visualise, so I’ll weave a little more fiction into it to make the story more vivid.

He was the product of the sixties: a star who had rocketed to fame while still a teenage hippy. His manager had called him back from a Caribbean island idyll, telling him that a recording he had made before setting off on his travels had become a surprise best seller and was now at number one in the charts.

One day he was living the life of a beachcomber, easily at home with the native islanders, fishing, swimming, leading a simple life and composing songs to play to friends and neighbours on balmy evenings. The next day he was being mobbed in the swinging streets of London, feted at the grandest hotels, flown by helicopter to wild parties in stately homes and setting out on gruelling concert tours. Unlike some who totally cave in under such pressures, he kept his sanity more or less and rode out his success over the years, putting enough money aside to be able to settle down comparatively when the frenzy of fame abated.

But as he entered middle age, no longer a chart buster but still with a loyal following of fans, he began to yearn for that simple island life he’d left far behind. It wasn’t just a question of retiring to comfort in the sun, he missed the innocence of one who has known nothing but the simple life, for whom creativity is just a natural, spontaneous response to the beauty of nature and fellow beings—rather than a cash-cow being milked by greedy agents.

As you can tell from my description, this is an idealised picture. It is not real. For people living the simple life need be no more innocent than anyone else. So, if it isn’t a real person, what is it? In my terms it is a demon, albeit a rather nice one, and it deserves to be properly addressed.

So I asked the man how well he could picture himself as that hopeful youth, full of creativity and dreams and happy to express them in a relaxed and joyful way in the sun. He could picture him so easily, as he had been daydreaming now for months about that lost youth.

So how did he see himself compared to that ideal youth? A middle aged figure, not unlikeable but a little jaded, dried up, less able to enjoy simple pleasures for having been everywhere, done everything.

The irony was that, to his fans that youth was still very much alive in him. When he played his music they saw the flame sparkling as clear as ever, the humour, creativity and fresh outlook on life still shone in his music. That was why they loved to hear him play. But for him that same youthfulness was a will ‘o the wisp: just out of reach, ever teasing and seducing but never quite there.

What was not working in his relationship with the demon of his innocent youth was that he had given it too much value. I have so far been arguing the case for giving value to demons, but you can overdo it by putting them on a pedestal. It can be fun to be idolised, and some people actually need a bit of that to compensate for unhappy feelings, but in general most people admit it is not so easy to live with someone who keeps you on a pedestal.

The right value to give a demon is to empathise – i.e. assume that it has a value similar to yourself until proven otherwise. What he was doing was giving the innocent youth all of his own value— devaluing himself and inflating the youth.

So what I suggested was that he should not only visit the youth in his imagination, but also see himself through the youth’s eyes. Remember himself as he was on that island and imagine how he would have felt if a famous star like himself came to visit. Would the youth have refused a visit from this dried up middle-ager as he saw himself? I doubt it. If I was that youth I might put up a certain show of not being impressed by the man’s star status, make a few jokes to my friends about what this ‘stuck up star’ would think of the island, but inside myself I’d be utterly thrilled and honoured by the visit.

So, if he could really imagine his young, callow self meeting his old self, and realise just how exciting, worldly wise and experienced he would seem to the youth, then he would have taken back some of the excess value he had given away. Imagine the youth saying “wow! Did you really play with Hendrix? Is it true you dated Marianne Faithfull? You played at Woodstock?” And other such eager questions.

This is when the real dialogue starts. Instead of psychic pederasty of an old dried up middle-aged bore chasing a golden youth, we now have a mutually rewarding meeting between an aspiring youngster and older mentor. He can see his present life through the youth’s eyes and realise that, although he was feeling bored and suffocated by it, it is actually pretty amazing. In turn he comes much closer to that once-distant and unobtainable youth, realises the sorrows and frustrations of being young and can begin to heal his own past. The youth never died in him, he simply left it frozen on an island.

A whole class of demons is like that: parts of ourselves we left behind in growing up; parts that have been locked in the past, unable to grow up with us because they have been split off and frozen. The freezing can be as a result of shock or denial—as when an act of violence leaves a psychological scar that becomes repressed—or through sheer preoccupation with life’s other pressures as in this case. Can you blame these discarded selves for turning into demons and returning to us in dreams and nightmares when we allow them no other form of life? Nostalgia can be a source of great wealth if thoroughly enjoyed.

There is a poignancy in this example. It arose from the fact that the star was about to go to hospital to endure a worrying operation, and it was this portent of coming old age that had precipitated his nostalgic contemplations.

I pointed out to him that there were probably other such demons—old neglected or forgotten parts of himself left behind in the rush to fame—and that they were still around. If he would allow them and give welcome, they could gather at his hospital bedside and offer support. Some would support him eagerly, some grudgingly, but whichever way he would be surprised by the sum total of goodwill and affection they could offer him in his need—just like a real family that gathers around and supports even its less popular members when life comes to the crunch. He need not feel alone.

THE BODY

The book began with a very simple, down to earth example of an office machine that misbehaves, and then quickly proceeded to address much more abstract forms of demon. Rather than lose sight of my roots I include a very concrete example now— treating one’s own body as an autonomous being or demon.