When it gets to my spiritual experiences I've been through a couple different groups in regards to the new age or occult scene, and I have yet to see the actuality of a any demon appearing out of thin air. The closest thing I've seen is lense flare effects of orbs and the background white adjustments, and a whiff of incense smoke and some rising candle flames. Other than that I do not see the effect of a demon appearing in scrying mirrors or within the smoke as a physical entity. Many people would call people who get into the new age or occult stuff gullible. A little naieve in regards to people ripping other people off and the fraudulent history behind things like the fraudulent mediums act. I am not a gullible person. I am completely aware of the risks involved and scams out there that get people enlisted in their followings who are defrocked priests or wanna-bes who have no official experience or certifications to speak of.Practical experience for me is the best teacher, and it's taken me 20+ years to get to the point that I am at now of reading literature and exploring things like necromancy and divination. A lot of it is superstitious horse nonsense. Like the horror fad of being possessed and movies like the Exorcist and Poltergeist. The main message of those films being to stay away from occult teachings because it will get you possessed, which seems to be the central aspect of horror flicks in regards to the occult all together. Which is a sad thing. Because there is wisdom and truth to be found in the occult. In fact wisdom can be gleaned from all other religions, and at the very same time they are all wrong and corrupted somehow. Through comparative religion one can see through out history that there are parallels of lessons to be explored, usually different cultures regardless of who those cultures are have stories of deities appearing on earth from their spiritual abode. All the way from Native American teachings to Norse and Egyptian myth have these stories about Gods and Goddesses. this goes back down to paleolithic man who had goddess and god fertility images from the ancient days. The basic concept at the earliest time was the idea of a pregnant female or a fertility symbol representing the male. Hence from comparative religion we see the general concept of Male and Female. This is related to us because we are human and we see the human perception of divinity. An early concept of deity also across cultures is the idea of pantheism. There were storm gods and lightning gods and gods of earthquakes, goddesses of the deep, a god of the sun or goddess representing Venus, the physical aspects of gods and goddesses again being human form because of our human perception. Throughout cultures such as egypt there has been gods of magic and wisdom. Odin was in norse mythology, hekate in greek myth and the practice of heka by egyptians through gods such as thoth have been remnant throughout time. I find it interesting of word similarities between cultures and different languages. In some of the earlier cultures such as Egypt and India there were cultures identifying hidden or invisible aspects of the gods. In egypt monotheism came about during the time of Amun-Ra, and the idea of Sati in Hinduism in the sanskrit languages was of the true unchangeable essence. It was not until much later during the iron age that the Hebrews came about with their literature of the old testament during and after their 2nd captivity to Babylon, which had major influences in their writings as well as cultures like Canaan. The idea of the trinity as one god is relevant in Catholicism, and was also based upon ancient pagan concepts of the truine god that could be found in much celtic lore like the Morrigans. In early existing times before 1200-600 bce, there existed these spiritualities spanning accross cultures like Greece, Babylon and Egypt, India, Brittain and Ireland, and even the Americas had pre-christian culture of the Native Americans. We can see the evidence of these cultures through various writings of original pagan writings of history like Tacitus and Celsus, and we see also christian writings such as St. Augustine and Origen, and Josephus and St. Thomas Aquinas. By comparing texts of authors from history we can see the relevant idea of truthful principles about whether something said about a certain time frame is honorable or not in the way that they are presented. This is how I've come accross the material as well as reading translations of ancient documents like the epic of gilgamesh and the enuma elish, the nermer pallettes, the egyptian book of the dead, the prose edda, and other various documents. One text that has been more within the 19th century was called the kyballion which claimed to teach ancient principles of Egypt. In the kyballion we read a statement about the substantial reality of the universe. Beyond or Underneath the physical matter, lies the mind of "the all", which can be related to the concept of God or Goddess. It is neither female nor male. It is energy of vibration, and the universe eminates from this source. Our human perception interacts with this source through various means. Certain events happen and we interpret things on a relational level in the form of god and goddess either in anthropomorphic terms or pantheist or a combination of anthropomorphic and animal forms. This is interpreted through the subconscious levels of the brain within dreams and visions. i believe that the original lessons taught to us that we learned as well as through our experiences were transmitted in the purest sense from this unchangeable essence through the initial god and goddess figures. I chose to relate the name Satan, Lucifer and Asteroth as these initial deities. They are not the demons outcasted from heaven in christian cosmonopoly. They are not destructive towards man, they are trying to teach us things, and taught us a lot in the beginning. Throughout time different experiences and learnings came through practical experience. How to cook meat, start fires, bathe, and what marriage is and mating and all the typical aspects of life as well as spiritual principles like the afterlife and burying the dead, and rites of passage into adulthood and the age of becoming, hunting and other aspects were taught and learned and through time things became muddled with people who wanted control over others and became antagonistic towards original pagan heathanism. The source religions of the world that are close to nature and its manifestations. People thought about sympathetic magic early on. They thought about controlling the outcome of the hunt by performing rituals or doing actions prior the hunt. Also an early teaching was about offerings to appeal to the great forces of the universe, to open the doors to prosperity and wellness. I've got more articles on the way about these teachings from what I've learned. The basic idea now is that we have all these religions it takes experiential reading from all different sources from the Pali cannon and Bgita, to the greek philosophy and egyptian pantheons to find true principles about what things in life mean and what is truly practical in consideration of life and death. to be continued....