This post first appeared on the fourth and final version of the blog ‘Hermekate.’
The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain.
Their seals, therefore, represent (Mr. Spencer’s projected cube) methods of stimulating or regulating those particular spots (through the eye).
The names of God are vibrations calculated to establish:
(a) General control of the brain. (Establishment of functions relative to the subtle world.)
(b) Control over the brain in detail. (Rank or type of the Spirit.)
(c) Control of one special portion. (Name of the Spirit.)Aleister Crowley, from his Introduction to "The Goetia."
There are few terms in occultism that are more controversial than the word, "demon." What is a demon? There are various schools of thought on the subject, which are divided and then subdivided such that hardly anyone fully agrees. On this point, consensus seems to be a pipe dream.
The first major division is between the Spirit and Psychological Models of Magic(k): The Psychological model views demons as parts of our own minds, and thus highly personal at that; from this point of view, we might well perform Ceremonial Magic(k) in order to work with them, but in the end, the "demons" we summon are held to be psychological complexes, likely born from some trauma or past soul-wound that needs healing.
The Spirit Model, which takes demons at face value as spirits, manages to be even less clear in its (multiple) stance(s); it's not enough to define them as spirits, we also need to distinguish them from other spirits. Are they good or evil? It turns out, people disagree. The more traditional school of magic(k)al thought, born of medieval grimoires and the like, says they are evil and malevolent spirits that are not to be trusted, and the ceremonies and protocols for dealing with them advocate taking a firm hand, badgering them with threats and menacing them with magic(k)al weapons. By contrast, the school of Demonolatry advocates approaching and working with demons not unlike the way Neopagans approach and work with various deities: As potential friends and allies. They are still held to be a bit "slippery," but the ethos here is to leave prejudice aside and to be nice to them and see how that works. People who operate under this paradigm often seem to swear by it, and I am in no position to argue with them.
This post will explore my long and tense relationship with the Goetic demon Vine. I share the tale—despite numerous misgivings—because my own experiences have brought no clarity whatsoever and that seems meaningful to me. Based on my experiences, the best answer I can give is, "All of the above are true in some way."
I don't normally do trigger warnings (as a recovering alcoholic who doesn't have the luxury of "censoring" the existence of bars and liquor stores, my view on trigger warnings is that they do nothing to aid anyone in their own recovery, that we can't control what others say or do, and that we shouldn't rely on that as a road to healing ourselves—and this story will deliver that moral in spades), but this post will deal with such issues as substance abuse, mental illness, and domestic violence. It includes graphic imagery. Finally, in case it doesn't go without saying: Please don't repeat the magic(k)al steps I took in this post. If anything, the actions I will describe below were extremely reckless. Another reason I share this story is to add my voice and testimony in support of the one thing all schools of magic(k) agree on: Demons are not to be toyed with; cross them, and they will mess you up.
Vine is the 45th of the 72 spirits of the Ars Goetia. He is an Earl and a King of Hell with 36 legions of spirits at his command. He is depicted as an anthropomorphic lion holding a snake for a staff in his right hand and riding atop a black horse. Like almost every other demon, he tells of past, present, and future; he also discovers hidden objects and witches, causes storms, disturbs the seas, brings walls down, and builds towers.
I can't remember when I first ran across his name, his sigil, his image, etc.; more than likely, it was via The Daemon Tarot oracle deck by Ariana Osborne, which my ex-wife and I would goof around with every morning before work. However, I know that eventually—years later and near the tail end of my troubles with him—I would look back and suppose (through the lens of the Spirit Model) that he may have shown himself long before I..."became informally acquainted" with him. In my post Institutionalized, I detail a tumultuous adolescence involving drug overdoses, a Near Death Experience, and trips to the Emergency Room that resulted in multiple psych hospitalizations at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, IL. Right across the street from the hospital is an old building, The Berwyn State Bank. I distinctly remember that in my hospitalization following the Near Death Experience, I was put in a room on the psych floor from which I could look out the window and see the lion's head sculptures decorating the facade of the building. I also remember that I had always felt a sinister vibe from the place. I felt that it was most certainly haunted. Looking back, I have wondered if this was not when Vine first attached himself to me and I just didn't know it.
Whether or not that's true, I am pretty sure I got Vine's attention in May of 2016 when my personal life had reached an intolerable crescendo. This part of the story truly begins with my relationship with my second wife. An incident occurred in February with her (at the time, we were engaged and not yet married) wherein I came out of the bathroom one evening to find her poking around in my email. Upon confronting her, she denied it, but later admitted she had been in my email because she was "worried about me." This led to a fight in which she demanded to see my Facebook Friends list and, upon seeing some women there she didn't approve of, became enraged, eventually pummeling me with a heavy copper pipe that she had previously consecrated to the Goddess Aphrodite. This was no laughing matter; other injuries were incurred as well, and a police report was filed the next day with the Jefferson Park Police Department. I left our home that night, forced by these circumstances to go stay with my mother in Berwyn.
Believe it or not, we reconciled after this happened, and while I refused at this point to move back in with her, my ex and I remained a couple. We ended up getting married the following January (2017)—a decision that seems highly irrational until I point out that one of the main topics of conflict on the night I was beaten was the accusation that I was stringing my partner along, with no intention of actually marrying her. My good faith was challenged and then I was beaten over it; so yes, when it came time to prove my intentions, I certainly stepped up to the plate.
I don't remember the exact circumstances, but we'd had a fight one night in May of 2016, and my ex was pulling some more of her flying monkey triangulation antics, turning all her friends against me. I knew for a fact that my ex would lay down a curse at the slightest sign of perceived disrespect. I had been drinking and feeling especially vulnerable to this, along with all of the mundane things she would do to stonewall me and take my power away.
I was also drinking heavily that night.
I had a wooden birch disk and a pyrography pen and somehow, I got the idea to burn Vine's sigil onto this disk and bind it to myself with a few drops of my blood. At the same time, I had the idea to make a witch bottle for defense, and as an added touch, drew up another sigil of Vine and included it in my witch bottle, burying it in the back yard underneath the raspberry bush.
Yes, I put the Goetic Demon in my witch bottle—without so much as asking, let alone having ever performed a structured ceremonial working of any kind whatsoever. I wasn't sure demons were real, and I had the flippant and arrogant attitude that working with Goetic demons was like building your own servitor out of a shared sigil, and that when working with the resulting spirits, everyone was dealing with their own individually-generated "instance" of the spirit.
It was the kind of dumb shit that only a scared, drunk, Aries would do. Who knew what my ex might pull? I couldn't put anything past her. I needed an ally who could crush her to dust if necessary. I knew Vine was tough, in fact regarded as one of the most powerful of the Goetic spirits and not for beginners at all. For me, this was war, so I needed a 4-star general on my side. Furthermore, I lived within walking distance of Hofmann Tower, already a personal power spot of sorts that stands in the nearby township of—wait for it—Lyons, IL (get it?). It was too perfect! So after burying the witch bottle, I made a nocturnal pilgrimage to a wooded area near the tower, where I left the wooden, blood-stained sigil of Vine without looking back.
I would live to regret it.
Things just didn't go that well for me for the next few years. As I mentioned, even after all of this drastic activity, I wound up going back to my ex. In part, that's how abusive relationship dynamics often go. Another factor was that it was really difficult for me, as an adult male, to be living with my mother when I could be living with my partner (as unstable as she was). I was also trying to get sober, which proved difficult in a house where marijuana was used consistently. I basically had no good moves to make at the time. By January of 2017, my partner and I had gotten married, although we were separated within a month after that. In an effort to break the self-defeating cycle in which I had been stuck, I made the choice to move into the YMCA in Niles, IL, which was close enough to my job at The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center for an easy commute.
Right outside my 8th-floor corner window was the famous "Leaning Tower of Niles." Believe it or not, living in its shadow and hanging out underneath it with the rest of the smokers at the Y was the first sign prompting me to reflect and consider that perhaps, Vine had something to do with my string of hard luck. I was also drunk every single night that I lived there (which went on for months). I remember associating that tower with Vine, and soon beginning a long stretch of magic(k)al work meant to forge a connection with the tower itself and the telluric currents which, I had been taught by Ilyas, run through such structures (this is an idea we can see in Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, but is one of the examples of things my spirits taught me before I read anywhere). I also wove it together energetically with the Hofmann Tower in Lyons. I was building a "tower defense network" that tapped the Ley Line intersection that myself (and other, independent observers) swear coalesces in downtown Chicago. Somehow, I knew that although he was kicking and screaming and causing all sorts of tumult in my life (was this, symbolically, him "disturbing the seas?" "Causing storms?"), he was also still forced to help me out as long as he was in my witch bottle. This was, in essence, a power struggle, and it would continue even long after my relationship with my ex was finally over.
Although I associated the Leaning Tower with Vine, I would later come to theorize that it might also signify the intervention of Rose, my protector spirit and anima figure, who had also promised to incarnate and be with me (it sounds even crazier than the rest of this story so far, but read the post Imperfect Love, Imperfect Trust to see how I make these connections.
Changing the Subject
In this middle section of the post, I will veer off the topic of Vine as an independent spirit, and explore the subjective associations and connections that I made with him over time; after all, since my attempts to magic(k)ally subdue him were not working out very well, I needed to switch up my approach. Assuming Vine was a demon in the sense of a psychological complex, what aspect of myself did he represent?
The short answer, which I will flesh out next, is this: Vine is the Demon of Toxic Masculinity and Patriarchy. Let's look at the symbolism, from the more universal to the more personal:
First and foremost, there is the fact that Vine is a King, and monarchy is unequivocally associated historically with patriarchal systems, even when monarchs are female. As a builder of towers and a toppler of walls (both fortifications that arise from the reality of warfare), he has decidedly phallic connotations that also tie him to male pride and "cocksureness." He rides around holding his snake in his hand, what more do we need to say? He's kind of a wanker that way. What do "alpha male" dude-bros the world over like to call themselves? Lions.
Tying together the above connotations with his number (45) and the chronological timeline of my involvement with him (roughly from May of 2016 through August of 2021), my showdown with him corresponded neatly with the reign of another patriarch associated with both towers and the number 45:
Donald Trump.
By performing the ritual work that I did, from burying the witch bottle containing his sigil in my Berwyn backyard to leaving the wooden disc with his sigil in a forest perserve in Lyons, I also irrevocably tied him to my locale, thus rendering him a "genius locus" of sorts.
Lyons has historically been a shady town that has its own share of patriarchal energy; motels known as "houses of ill repute" still dot Ogden Ave. (Historic Route 66) to this day and time was that the town's main claim to fame was a strip club. To this day, Hofmann Tower stands next to a restaurant named P.J. Klem's, from which a local politician with Neo-Nazi ties had hosted fundraising banquets (I want to be clear that these associations are not meant to shame sex work in and of itself; it’s not good, however, when it is run by pimps, and the kind of men frequenting these joints probably weren’t kind to their ladies of the night).
The tower also sits on the banks of the Des Plaines River, which serves as the border between Lyons and Riverside. As a town, Riverside has connections to the mafia, and via those mafia ties, to Hollywood. This all comes via onetime crime boss Frank Nitto enforcer to Al Capone, who once lived in Riverside at 712 Selborne Rd., and who was indicted for his involvement in extortion rackets targeting such studios as Columbia Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. For even more Hollywood ties, my uncle Jake also lived in Riverside while working on such films over the years as Blues Brothers, The Road to Perdition (and how "meta" is that?), and Backdraft (he set every single fire we see in that film).
I don't think I need to take the time to explicitly paint the picture of how such figures as mafia crime bosses fit into the overall theme of patriarchy and its effects/consequences. However, there's an unsettling link to the consistent depression I endured while under this power struggle with Vine, and the mental health consequences of an excessively patriarchal lifestyle: Frank Nitto ended his own life on a set of train tracks that run near my High School, Morton West (and this has ties to some other posts I have planned, as the first traumatic fight I had with my mother that involved the cops occurred at Frank’s Nursery, which once stood in the same shopping plaza where Nitto died, right next to North Riverside Park mall).
It became increasingly evident that, within the domain of the Self, all of these themes had their reflections within me, as regrettable as that might be. Throughout the entire time I fought with Vine for control, I was awash in alcohol. I couldn't stop drinking to save my soul, not even after meeting my current partner and going to rehab (I stayed sober all through outpatient treatment while being drug tested, but was high again the same afternoon I graduated from the program). I didn't realize it until later, but this was all reflected in the "heritage" of Hofmann Tower itself—which, I only learned recently, was erected by the patriarch of a local brewery. The tower is literally synonymous with beer.
It became obvious that any "exorcism" of Vine would also involve exorcising alcohol from my life.
By the Power of Thoth-Hermes
So, what was it that finally worked? How did I bind Vine finally and irrevocably to my Will? As it turned out all along, classical Hermetics held the answer: To bind the spirits, it is often whispered, you need the blessing of the Thrice-Greatest.
Although I had gotten myself into this mess largely in order to deal with a terribly destructive relationship, the ante only seemed to be upped once that relationship reached its spectacular end as I met my current partner and voluptuous goddess, Veronica. What had previously manifested mostly in symbolic ways that were inferred by feeling out the vibes connecting Vine with the downward trajectory of my life took on a more literal tone after I met Veronica (which fits an overall pattern of extremely magical shit happening when she and I are paired up).
As she began to sleep over with me, she would also report in the morning that she'd heard a small animal sniffing and rustling around my windbreaker hanging on the banister behind us as we slept; the only problem was there were no animals in the house. As soon as she mentioned this, my mind flashed immediately to Vine, and I told her about him frankly. She laughed it off at first.
Months later, after I moved in with her, she discovered what looked like a bite mark on my ankle and asked me who the hell was biting her bb? I laughed and replied, "It's the demons. I told you they'd follow us here." That very moment, the television turned on by itself in the living room, as if to confirm this.
I knew then that something had to be done, and I began the first of my attempts to rectify the situation—starting with digging up that witch bottle, fishing out the Vine sigil (which was disgusting, if you know anything about this kind of witch bottle), and ceremonially cremating it with some frankincense in-circle with my Patron Goddess, Hekate. Vine showed up, and he trotted away after being released from his physical vessel; I got the sense that, at the very least, he did respect my chutzpah on some level. However, there was also a foreboding sense, as he rode away on his horse, that he still wasn't done teaching me a lesson.
I continued drinking, and got us thrown out of our apartment.
I tried a couple of other operations involving the construction and destruction of another Vine sigil, and I thought it had succeeded; alas, I could still feel the fetters of the attachment with Vine, and I still couldn't stop drinking.
What finally worked was taking frank advice from the likes of Mark Stavish. At first, I was a bit skeptical that he might be self-promoting for its own sake, but he earnestly urged me to get a copy of his Liturgy of Hermes and carry it out according to the instructions (to be clear, this advice was given in a more general context, as I wasn't asking him specifically for help with Vine). This is a 42-day (at the minimum) liturgical practice meant to attune the practitioner with Thoth-Hermes and his associated magic(k)al current. I got all the materials necessary, and incorporated some symbolism of my own (a carefully-chosen bottle of wine complete with a black horse on its label and the Initiatically-significant name of 14 Hands was part of the liturgy for me; I wanted to be sure to offer Thoth-Hermes some red wine every single day as a way of demonstrating to myself that I could overcome alcohol). I performed the liturgy successfully without drinking at all; and that is how I came to know lasting sobriety again (although it would tank later on when I let my practice lapse).
This highlights one final reason I share this story: I remember seeing some testimonials from other students of Mark's who had attested to the power of this beautifully-written Liturgy, saying that it was "life-changing" without specifying how. Hopefully, this story will serve as a sufficient example of what a simple daily ritual—done in a heartfelt way—can accomplish. It should also serve as an overall demonstration of the importance of daily practice.
