More Demon-Hunting: Gremory and Malphas

Gremory

I was wandering in recreation grounds when I decided to continue the demon experiment. The grass was thin and the soil sandy, so I traced a triangle in the ground with my finger. Two men approached, one of them a colleague from work, and watched me from a respectful distance.

The first demon that came to mind was Gremory, who traditionally takes the form of a beautiful woman, so I supposed this might be interesting. Like last time, during the evocation it seemed the demon was coming from inside me rather than without. And again, it tried to delay its manifestation, but this time I managed to bring it fully into view.

Gremory

Gremory. 'He... appeareth in the Form of a Beautiful Woman, with a Duchess's Crown tied about her waist.'

As Gremory slowly appeared he took up the whole of the dream space. I thought at first I was losing lucidity, but actually what had happened was that Gremory had taken up so much space there was none left for me. He took the form of his name written in beautiful white letters, written over itself again and again so that the thick, rounded characters formed thousands of layers, all flowing over each other. This expanded visually out of the triangle (although I sensed he was still safely contained within it ‘spiritually’) until I was left facing only this two-dimensional, shifting surface.

I had to take a mental step backwards, but it was possible to maintain the state as long as I continued to cope with how there was no space left for a representation of me. It was all Gremory. He seemed under control, and I didn’t bargain or communicate with him at all. I just watched him silently.

The form and space that Gremory occupied was the same – I realised – as that bizarre dream state with no name that I describe in OEITH (p. 106). In this state the dreamer is conscious, but the ‘world’ consists of a flat or limited space or object.

I also wondered if this dream space isn’t created by the lack of an imagination in the lucid dream state. Consider: in a lucid dream, because we are asleep, there is no perception (i.e. no input to the physical senses) but only mental imagery, produced by the imagination. So if we then decided to imagine something in the lucid dream, where would be the ‘space’ for this to manifest? The appearance of Gremory in this example may be the answer to that question.

Malphas

I was in a hotel room where my cousin and his family were spending their holiday. It was tempting just to gaze at the view beyond the huge window: a town on the side of a hill sloping steeply toward a like. The streets and roofs were dusted with snow in the evening light.

Then I decided to go to work and moved off into a corner. I traced a triangle onto the patterned carpet and the first demon that came to mind was Malphas. As I evoked I heard someone walking towards the room from the corridor. A tall man came in with brown wrinkled skin and a shock of curly grey hair. I supposed he had come to watch, but to my surprise he stepped sideways into the triangle.

Malphas

Malphas. 'He appeareth at first like a Crow... and speaks with a hoarse Voice.'

‘Malphas?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he nodded.

Now that I had a demon in a form I could easily interrogate I decided to cut to the chase. ‘Okay. So tell me, does evoking you in the lucid dream state make any difference at all to your nature?’

‘None whatsoever,’ he answered calmly. ‘And listen: you’re doing all these evocations, but I might as well tell you, I’ve been evoked at least thirty times by people in the lucid state.’

The dream unwove after this point. It’s always risky to take a goetic demon at its word, but this seemed a clear enough answer. If I ever need to evoke these spirits in future (and I have no intentions at present) I may consider doing it in the lucid dream state because it’s far easier to obtain a solid manifestation than in the usual waking state.

Before this dream there had been an episode of a false out-of-body experience – i.e. a lucid dream in which I will myself out of body, and seem to attain it, yet it is just an image of the out-of-body state and not the real thing. It’s very rare that I attain the OOBE state – but the next time I do, I must remember to complete the experiment and see if there’s a difference when it comes to evoking demons.

12 thoughts on “More Demon-Hunting: Gremory and Malphas

  1. Very Interesting – I’ve encountered a rippling 2-d “surface”, covering my entire field of vision, several times, right after the conclusion of OOB-like dreams (which were non-lucid): always with a matte black substrate with greenish and (once) pastel blue and off-white markings or letters or wiggling worms or larvae in honey-combs. A bit like the matrix screen-saver. This was always a lucid state, i.e. I knew I was not awake, but not dream-like at all either, very crisp and easy to focus on, and quite resilient to attempts at “seeing through”. Some after-effect of 4th Jhana or a manifestation of some Iddhi, I guess.

    Cheers,
    Florian

  2. Phew! It’s not just me, then! :-)

    I’m convinced that this (whatever it is; perhaps we should name it…) is a distinct dream state. As you say, it’s lucid, but it’s without any sense of an external world, only a 2-D plane of imagery.

    My hunch is that it’s somehow connected with the ‘space’ that we use to imagine within a lucid dream. I’ve also noticed that this state sometimes arises alongside those episodes when we forget where and who we are as we begin to surface from sleep.

    Remember when Ken Wilber was taken ill recently and ‘died’ for a short time? His description of the ‘room’ in which he found himself, with the horrible wallpaper, also sounds suspiciously like this state!

    • The few times I’ve encountered it, it was always on the border from sleep towards awakeness.

      I like your theory that it’s some kind of canvas on which the class of experiences including lucid dreams and OOB dreams take place. My OOB experiences are always characterized by very “grainy” and dim vision, very much like an “out of focus” view of this “canvas state”.

      Maybe OOB and lucid dreams are the mind playing “connect the dots” with the “canvas state”, experiencing it with insufficient clarity, and trying to make sense of it?

      Very interesting in any case. I have absolutely no reliable way to access this state, but I hereby resolve to explore it on my next visit.

      Cheers,
      Florian

      • That was fast! A dream last night: I was looking at at a bathroom mirror and reeled back in shock from what I saw (which I couldn’t remember). Then I realized that this was a recurring dream, and gained lucidity. I deliberately looked in the mirror again, and saw a ghostly, hollow eyed, somehow square face looking back at me. I tried again, and it was a cartoonish duck head! Then the mirror dissolved into the “canvas state”, but once I was there I had no recollection of my resolve, and after a short time of looking at the rippling, bollowing drapery (can’t remember any colors or patterns this time, probably black-and-white), I woke up.

        So I resolve to remember to explore it on my next visit.

        Cheers,
        Florian

  3. Nice work, Florian! Interested to see how you get on… I’m wondering if it might be a characteristic of this state that it can’t be investigated! After all, it’s not as if ‘investigability’ is one of the three characteristics of reality is it? :-)

    • Got lucid in “canvas state” after a dream which I don’t remember.

      I remembered to investigate! I just couldn’t remember what that was supposed to mean.

      So I decided to just look at the show and remember. There were many colors (can’t remember which ones) in a harlequin-like patchwork, and a kind of revolving funnel in the surface. While the funnel was a unique feature, it wasn’t in the center, but it wasn’t off-center either. “Center” seems a pointless (!) term wrt. the “canvas state”.

      I resolve to investigate the canvas state for the three characteristics next time I visit.

      Cheers,
      Florian

  4. But has the girl ever had a dream in which someone she knows looks different from how they look in real life? See this post, for example.

    If so, how do you know it’s the person you recognise if they look different? Then how do we recognise Malphas? Are you seriously arguing that Malphas has objective characteristics like a physical object in the waking world?

    Confusing the criteria of the physical waking world (in this case, ‘sensory perception’) with the criteria of the astral or etheric domains (i.e. ‘thoughts’ or ‘images’) is a very common mistake in magick. It’s also known as ‘confusing the planes’.

  5. Guys, this reminds me (belatedly) of a series of events I had last December. Each time I would have an intensely vivid dream, visionary and nightmarish. I would become lucid and wake myself up to escape the fear. But when I awoke the room was full of “stuff” – a shimmering liquid reality that was almost tangible, consisting of pulsing shifting flowers, geometric patterns and so on. The first time it happened there was first a dark winged entity hovering over me when I woke from the dream. Disoriented and frightened, I did an astral banishing that was vivid and visual, with energy rippling in all directions. When I opened my eyes there was this intense hallucination of stuff everywhere, and I couldn’t get rid of it. It happened three more times that month. The third time I used a shielding technique and it vanished in an instant. Re-reading this comment thread I wonder if it is related to what you are mentioning here. Interesting!

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