VI Personal Experiences

If one does not have one's own experiences on a certain subject, all conclusions drawn from other people's reports remain somewhat questionable. Everyone has to make his own experiences, but I can at least contribute some of my own experiences here.

VI 1. A Demon

My magic teacher Axel had the motto"The main thing is that it bangs and makes you dizzy!" Accordingly, I experienced quite a lot with him pretty quickly.

One day he arrived with some copies and said that he had bought the instructions for a demon summoning for quite a lot of money. This was around 1980 – at that time such instructions were not so easy to obtain. I was much too shy to say that I didn't dare to do it. So we got chalk and incense and I made a divining rod out of a hazel branch and carved it with the prescribed signs.

Then we went to a crossroads in the woods at night on the next full moon and drew the prescribed circles, triangles and symbols on the ground with chalk and waited for the church clock to strike twelve times.

Axel's shepherd dog lay in one of the circles and stayed there quietly the whole time.

After the last chime we lit the incense. I took the divining rod and read the incantation from the photocopies. (As I now know, I was holding the divining rod wrongly, i.e. upside down, like a fork). I was inwardly curious and full of fear in equal measure – I was"electrified."

Nothing happened for a while, but then I saw some red lights hovering from right to left across the woodland-way a little away. Then someone coughed several times between Axel and me in the circle where we were both standing – it was neither of us. Next there were bright blue"cracking" flashes of light up in the beech trees above us. Then, when it started to smell like sulfur and Axel said"The guy is there – I can feel him right there!" it became too much for me and I said I wanted to stop.

So I said the banishing formula and we walked back through the forest. However, the coughing of the invisible man and the smell of sulfur continued to accompany us – so I spoke the banishing formula again, whereupon it became a little quieter.

The moment when Axel and I parted in the city and I went on alone to my home was one of my worst moments – I didn't know what was about to happen. At home I locked my room (which I never did), pulled the covers over my head and hoped that it would be morning soon – I didn't sleep much that night.

In the morning I said to myself,"Either the fear gets me or I get the fear." So I went back to that spot in the woods every day I could, until after a good six months I could sit there at night and relax and think about things other