On Evil¹

Evil are negative spiritual influences that superimpose their desires upon the subject. These influences may or may not conform to cultural expectations of the negative. For example, an ancestral spirit that has a strong affiliation with our person may wish to have people say good things about them. Accordingly, the spirit generates powers specific to that objective such as making a polite first impression, always being complimentary, and never being argumentative. From a cultural perspective, this behavior is not causing harm. Indeed, as an American, this sounds quite socially normal and nice. However, if this impulse is foreign, inconsistent, or at odds with the essential volition of our person then that involuntary action would have a degenerative result.

Let’s say the inherited spiritual impulse to “always make nice”, perhaps embodied by the genetic memory of our great-grandmother Gertrude, is foreign to one of the natural desires of our person: to overcome one’s enemies. As a case in point, our person is out in public with a group peers and an acquaintance begins to bully them with social degradations. Although their natural warrior instinct is to smash or volley those denigrations, our person hears and obeys great-grandmother’s voice: so they suppress their will and smile. Evil prevails. Our person goes home, replays the events, and regrets weakness. “Why don’t I ever stand up for myself”, they often punish themselves with such thoughts. “You did good,” says the evil spirit, “they will say good things about you.”

There are many such patterns in and around us: special, civilizational, cultural, ancestral, organizational, familial, and other relational powers push upon the essential authenticity of our person. The journey to recognize the difference between our rightful magical will and foreign, or inimical, inclinations is extremely challenging work. Speaking from experience, too often one who seeks inner fulfillment adopts the aims of others through imitation, indoctrination, contrivance, and conformance. The survival instinct is quick to normalize imitative heuristics that judge “good” and “evil” in black and white terms divorced from the correlative negative and positive impacts on our physical objectives. This is the way that evil, especially good-evil, infects the manifestations of our soul.