“And the evil spirit answered…Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?”
—Acts 16:19
For most, demons are a thing of fairy tales, ‘myth,’ superstition.
Lucky them.
C.S. Lewis warned of the polar extremes surrounding demonology.
“There are 2 equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
I fell into the ladder camp.
Not so much with demons in particular but spirits in general.
The invisible architecture of the psyche and the cosmos.
Psychedelics opened this door into the unseen world(s).
Heavenly at first, then…
Hell.
The material world became rather dull after these experiences.
It was the labyrinth of the sub-conscious, the esoteric, the spiritual that had my attention now.
My guides?
Dead guys mostly.
Primary among them, the infamous Aleister Crowley
Dun dun dunnnn
I carried his autobiography around like scripture in my twenties. I wasn’t strictly speaking a ‘Thelemite’ (Followers of Crowley’s religion; ‘Thelema’ meaning ‘Will’ summed up in the phrase ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, Love is the Law, Love under Will) but I was a Crowley apologist for sure.
Then came Terence McKenna, and the path of the psychonaut took precedence over the ceremonial magic(k)ian.
After discovering the world of McKenna and friends, I knew I had to go to the Amazon.
I knew I had to drink Ayahuasca.
So, I did.
And I went back.
And back again; this time for the long haul.
In 2017, I spent 10 weeks learning the ways of the curandero.
33 ceremonies in 10 weeks, 1 led by me.
I had been initiated in the way of the Shipibo.
And so, I received a blessing to begin my ayahuasca ministry.
I flew back home to Detroit with a suitcase full of Palo Santo, Mapacho, a 3 liter of ayahuasca and went to work.
I started with my girlfriend and gradually started holding ceremonies for friends.
Things went smooth, the ceremonies were mild, I wasn’t healing people’s childhood traumas, but people walked away with a positive experience and some insight.
I thought the “bad trip” days were behind me.
Wrong.
Ok. I need to be transparent here. I was naïve, reckless and immature for sure. I was 27 and I grew up like you, relatively comfy, overfed, tv, materialism, etc.
I had drunk ayahuasca about 50 times and hadn’t let go of many of my bad habits. Including recreational drug use. Marijuana and kratom mostly. I did not heed the warning that one should essentially give up other substances if one wants to continue their relationship with ayahuasca.
Old habits die hard.
And so do old friendships.
A childhood friend caught wind of what I was up to these days and wanted to try.
The kind of guy who always seemed to have a prescription for Adderall and Xanax.
What could go wrong?
I was running low on medicine and so I put in an order with a mutual friend to send me some more.
$500 got me a brick of ayahuasca that reconstituted into 2 liters of medicine.
I would serve him the old stuff and try the new stuff on myself.
The day arrived.
At the time I had a big garage, bigger than my house actually, that I had turned into a kind of psychedelic yoga den, equipped with a float tank and all.
It was winter, a couple inches of snow on the ground.
Evening came; I put on my Shipibo regalia and made my way into the garage where my friend was making himself at home.
I got him bucket, a blanket and gave him a few mapacho cigarettes.
The usual.
And I began the ceremony as I was instructed.
Soplay. Pray, to God, to the Medicine.
Serve the medicine.
Wait.
Dark.
Silent.
Sing.
I got through maybe 3 songs before the medicine came on.
And it came on STRONG.
This was the first time that what I saw with my eyes closed was the same thing I saw with my eyes open.
No where to go.
I usually purge a good hour to 2 after taking the medicine.
Not this time. I purged violently less then 45 minutes after taking the medicine. Usually the purge knocks the mareación (the name for the altered state from the ayahuasca) down a notch.
Not this time.
The intensity continued to increase.
And then it happened…
As if using the smoke for a temporary body
A face, the color and likeness of fire embers, rose in the air as if being freed.
Lustful.
Like an intelligent hyena.
It was on me before I knew it.
I had no chance.
I showed up to a gun fight with a plastic spoon.
Shame on me.
“Be alert and of sober mind, your enemy, the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” -Peter 5:8
Then I made the fatal mistake.
I panicked.
I hit abort.
I burst out of the garage into the winter night.
Stumbling barefoot into the house to find my wife in the shower.
“Briell, I fucked up. Oh god what have I done.”
My mind was falling into chaos.
I had opened a portal for demons; they were flooding into my garage as we speak and soon the entire universe would be ravaged.
My friend was surely dead.
I was locked in this nightmare for eternity.
And I had done it to myself.
It’s impossible to explain madness since by definition it is incoherent.
The mind desperately trying to understand what’s happening grasps at any and all impressions both internal, from memory and external from the senses.
The result a chaotic nightmare narrative that seems eternal.
It’s hard to say how long this lasted.
I remember being frozen in place, my vision fading, barefoot in the snow between my garage and my backdoor not sure if my wife was with God or the Devil.
Finally, she coaxed me into the house and thawed my feet as I lay in the doorway wrestling with the terror of madness.
Eventually she convinced me to take a shower, I still couldn’t shake it. I would calm down for a second and then break into panic, I started to scratch at myself and bite myself.
“You don’t understand. It’s over!” “I’m dying.”
She got me into the bed.
And at last, I started to come out of it.
My friend (still alive) had left at some point during the night.
I called him over in the morning and we talked about what happened.
His experience was pretty mild; he said the songs brought on some interesting visuals and some childhood memories. That’s about it.
Lucky him.
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
-Ephesians 6:11-13
