DEMONS

Derived from the Greek word for one's inner inspiration, a demon now means a hostile, nasty and dangerous whatsit that is either to be avoided or bound to one's will.

People who like the idea of working with demons usually come out with pseudo-Jungian guff about demons representing repressed or repressing aspects of one's own self, but really like the idea of summoning really scary whatsits to impress other people and make themselves look butch. If you really believe that demons are beneficial, why call them that in the first place? Working with demons is almost always a slightly more advanced version of spraying pentagrams in the local churchyard after a few too many special brews.

The exception to this is when groups set out to explore or adapt mediaeval Grimoire magic. As occult historical research this is quite as acceptable as (but not much better than) morris dancing.

Of course, pretending to do lots of work with demons is a good way of scaring away new age wankers (on this subject see also: vampires, Crowley, mentioning that you can't be arsed to find out if your Tuna fish sandwich is dolphin friendly, pointing out that almost all crystals are gouged out of the earth with heavy earth-moving equipment and then collected by children in third world countries on slave wages, etc. etc. etc.)