To divide in an absolute sense all the Gods, spirits, mythbeings and deities into on one hand, bad “evil” entities such as demons, manifestation of “Jungian wetiko” and archons, and on the other “good” loving shining beings looks sometimes like a helpful strategy, but it may not be.

Many modern spiritual teachers have tried this: their love and light sensibilities are at first horrified by the wild and bizarre denizens of the otherworld that they encounter and they divide the otherworld in an absolute sense into a “good” part and a “bad part.”

In doing so modern spiritual teachers replicate the logic of feudal systems and some ancient hieratic city states, who took a similar attitude of dividing the world into “above” and “below”, “us” and “them”. A strong division is made between who lives in the walled city, and those who are an outcast.

A strong division is made between those who live in the palace and who lives in the marketplace, and between the lord and the vassals or peasantry. The same logic is applied as a kind of “class system” in the spirit world.

And yet often the more the spiritual teacher tries to identify solely with the shining light-filled beings the more the con-beings, grifter entities and predator beings possess them and turn them into con-men, predators, cult leaders, paranoics and fundamentalists.

It seems its just not possible to “keep the devil down in his hole” as Tom Waits sang. The more you push them down and try to be the shining spiritual teacher, the the con-beings secretly take over your intent.

Equally maybe it’s not the case that its all the supposedly dark entities “down below” who are the problem, but rather the “demons of the light.” To be possessed by the white light can be a much greater horror than the fecund darkness.

Perhaps there are no “absolutely bad” and “absolutely good” beings. Rather there are, just like humans, some beings that are more or less traumatised. Just like with humans, its not helpful to be niave: some beings are traumatised to the extent that they ignore consent, or perform acts which, relatively speaking, we might name as “evil”.

There are also naturally occurring beings which are far from evil (either in the relative or absolute sense), and yet would consume, kill, maim or disintegrate humans, like a volcano or a lion, without batting an eyelid.

However much of what we label devils, demons, manipulative aliens and archons are often compound ghosts who haven’t been ancestralised, or land or sky based mythbeings that are acting destructively because they haven’t been ritually tended to or fed.

Even the “Satan” figure was originally a trickster figure, an ally to God, before an influence of ethical dualism turned him into an adversary. Many “demons” were originally “daimons”, helping spirits who suffered mythological defamation and may have acted symptomatically or destructively as a desperate strategy to be culturally reintegrated.

Some of the demonic beings described in renaissance era grimoires consists of mythbeings that have broken down ecological relationships with humans in far off ancient times, thousands of years ago.

Also there are numerous wild, aggressive, bloodthirsty, lustful, destroying, chthonic, mysterious, wyrd, bizarre or grotesque beings who are not traumatised and have many delicious and miraculous gifts for humans and other lifeforms

Rather than absolutely “bad” and absolutely “good” beings there are beings whose natural helpful ecological tendency is to be chthonic, predatory or destructive and also, those that are traumatised, in the wrong place or need alchemical transmutation, or ritual tending or feeding. Some traumatised beings require of entire human populations generation-spanning ecological and community restoration to be able to be restored and manifest in their relational fullness