I promise that this series on Dark Metaphysics is not for indulging anyone’s morbidity. Nor will I advocate the egotistical behaviour associated with many posers to the dark side. It may mirror for you your own path, and thus teach you more about your own way, and you may discover that it is your personal way. Perhaps finding a way for the first time.

Like cult leaders that just want to control young minds into giving them money. Oh, yes. There are groups that just capitalize on the idea that people are doing the forbidden. That is baseless idiocy, but it gets people plenty excited enough.

Yes. Don’t do that or the devil will make you go blind. The devil looks like an animal for a reason. Demons were also known as genius loci to use the Latin. They were spirits of locations, mountains and forests. This is why they said that pagans worshipped the devil.

The principle I speak of from my own spiritual tradition is practice indulgence to avoid compulsion. Principle. It allows us to live with the wisdom of the ancient curse, but in moderation. What is forbidden becomes compulsive.

Everything in moderation, even moderation. Yes. It’s also called enlightened self interest, among other things.

Have your cake and eat it, but save some for tomorrow. Or share your cake. Share your cake because it makes you feel good to see your partner smile. Partake of all of life’s joys so that you would deny none. Denying none of life’s joys, how would you deny them to anyone else?

Even in my financial strain, I don’t feel guilty for going on a holiday if it makes me and my husband feel good to do it. We need the time away. Yes. If Mammon doesn’t serve you, you will serve Mammon, and Mammon is a horrible slave master. Mammon is also known as Set, the God of gold or money in general.

It took a major spiritual insight for me to accept that I am “of the left hand path”. Azriel is no respecter of individuals. Being autistic, I don’t experience the “empathic” reaction.

Yet you seem like one of the most empathetic people I know. Thank you for saying so. I draw not from an instinctive sense of other peoples experience, but from the link to patterns and systems that I did not have a choice about, thus the developmental defect as they call it. So I draw the principles of my behaviour intuitively from these patterns, a sort of meta-insight. These help me manage my own constant crisis, and give me the insight into what people call the spiritual life as well.

You don’t feel it, you see it? Yes. Like being frozen in what they have called the long dark night of the soul. One of my wifes favoured musicians has a good song lyric to explain this. He says, “There is a crack in everything … That’s how the light gets in.” I see the cracks very clearly.

I am nice to people out of self preservation. If you are mean to people, they bite back. But if you are nice to everyone you meet, then when someone is mean to you, you have many allies to defend you. That’s very pragmatic. I am nice to people because I have to witness the flow of energy in my environment, and straining one person pollutes the whole web. Being a pseudo-synesthete this polluted energy “smells” bad. I prefer to stick to my artistic integrity.

I never used to like it when people said I’m so nice. I hate being called nice also, except in those few genuine moments when someone is moved by real emotion.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~