The Liminalist # 50: Demon Whispers (with James Quigley)

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Two-part conversation with artist James Quigley, on the shared secret of porn addiction, a trip to the basement, discovering porn at 5, the correlation between pornography and horror, a descent into the underworld, the video nasty and the Christian campaign against violence, breaking taboos, totem and taboo, id and libido, sexualized violence against women, Dario Argento’s Tenebrae, murder as penetrative act, hijacking the libido through fantasy, shaman porn in Guatemala, facing discomfort, a nudity cult, problems with nudity, being born into an incubator, a perfect storm child, connecting through violence, inheriting violence, the Age of Chivalry and the Crusades, family violence, panic attacks and nervous breakdowns, possessed by a demonic interpretation of the father, method acting as self-exorcism, obsessive hatred of pedophiles and homophobia, how family secrets are kept, the Lucifer fragment, passing on the father’s name, poison legacies, inheriting a bullet proof vest, the warrior’s arsenal, the ghost brother, the youngest child as poison container, how ancestral trauma is passed on at death, James’ demonology series, Crowley’s Goetia evocations, how occult information degenerates, half-ass invocations, how things fell apart.

James Quigley website & artwork.

Songs: “El Mariachi”  by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “Down in the Sewer,” by Hugh Cornwell; “Listen to the Oldman,” by Robert Tilly & Wooden Ambulance; “How You Like Me Now,” by The Heavy.

21 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 50: Demon Whispers (with James Quigley)”

  1. Quigley , from County Mayo , descended from O’Coigleach , an untidy person , possibly with long hair . Miracle you made it this far, made of stern stuff. Who knows how many generations back these demons go . The Catholicism seems to be the elephant in the room here . Have you seen “Calvary” and Fassbenders “Shame ” ?
    Huge cojones to be evoking the Goetia demons unsupervised , but you found out the hard way what “reality” is didnt you ? . It would be safer to pair your paintings with the minor corresponding tarot image and do them in corresponding order . A few of them are not to be approached at certain times of day , also . Get yourself a good zurich trained jungian analyst . Though i applaud your bravery , it could be dangerous doing public therapy with untrained analyst who may still have plenty of poo in his own didgeridoo . You could end up piling his stuff on top of yours , or yours on his .
    Good luck mate , and yes , you do need to banish .

    Reply
    • Indeed, my Irish surname is often translated as meaning an untidy person with long unkempt hair, my mother’s name, Clarkin means, “little writer”. The art-moniker I’m often referred to as is Gunsho, which in Japanese means “book of war”.

      The Quigley side of my family came to the US during the famine and settled in Philadelphia. My great-grandmother was an indentured servant and my great-grandfather was a horse trainer. They were living in Sligo before they departed Ireland. My grandfather was a horse-trainer and blacksmith like his own father, he also worked as a bookie, and ran a speakeasy during prohibition among other things.

      As far as the generational demonology goes and or it’s effects, I wonder how far back it goes myself. Who knows what sort of pacts my ancestors made in order to survive genocides and famines?

      You’re right about the Catholicism, but it almost seems too obvious. I was exposed to it briefly between going to a Catholic kindergarden and my father’s half-assed re-conversion at the end of his life.

      The majority of funerals I’ve been to have been Catholic. I’ve been to Fatima in Portugal to retrieve holy water (with my Father for one of my uncles). Though my childhood, both of my parents were ambivalent about being Catholic, but I’d say some reflexive conditioning and superstitious aspects of the faith remained in them. My mother at this point in her life is into studying the Druids and is in a neopagan Celtic group.

      I haven’t seen either of those movies, but I read the Wikipedia entries. Thanks, those look like films that are relevant to the discussion. I’ll check them out.

      I think it’s very easy for someone to infect my demonology narrative with Faustian suggestions, maybe a little too easy. I’m sure it’s very possible that I unconsciously implemented a “deal with the devil” myth into the exercise when I first began drawing them. Obviously, I don’t know.

      I have noticed here and there that sometime folks like to give me advice similar to yours about invocation. When I went to an OTO gathering in 2007 and experienced a wide-variety of opinions on the subject. Maybe I’ve got a chip on my shoulder but it seems to me that what some people see in my demonology work may be an opportunity to empower themselves in a way that seems somewhat typical of occultists– I’m sometime given occult advice as if I have less expertise than the advisor and it might be too late for me.

      For example, people have told me what sort of precious metal I should have used or that my depiction looks nothing like the spirits they saw in their own invocations. That’s generally why I don’t have anything to do with gatherings of occultists. For the most part many of those folks aren’t into my work, one lady told me once that she’s more of a “Beatrice Potter” type.

      As far as positive response to my demonology work goes, among those who do collect or buy the demons are a variety of people who I would say, had fairly rough lives– who have said similar things to me amounting my work feeling “healing “to them.

      Good observation about working with the tarot, my wife is currently working on that side of things. She’s been creating a series of ceramic ceremonial candle holders depicting her own interpretation of the major arcana of the Tarot. As well she’s begun a series of drawings for her own deck of cards. Here’s her work https://www.instagram.com/magickdeery/

      If there was a therapeutic aspect to my discussion with Jasun, I didn’t intend for that. I can say honestly that I’m not seeking therapy from the conversation, especially “public” therapy. You do bring up a point though, Jasun asked me if I was interested in talking about this stuff on the podcast and I was very interested in having a conversation with him through a medium that Jasun appears to be fairly comfortable with. I have zero experience speaking “on air”, especially being open about my life. Mostly I kind of felt like I was in Jasun’s terrain and I did my best to keep up. More than therapy I was interested in Jasun’s critique.

      Thanks for the banishing suggestion. What kind of incense should I use? 😉

      Reply
  2. I appreciate the improvisational tone and honesty of this conversation. I wanted to hear more about violent pornography, but it’s not an easy topic to sustain for an hour.

    As for the causes of the sexualized violence against women, I wondered about early childhood “programming” — i.e. organized, systemic, and programmed violence as opposed to something the self creates for itself, and feels guilt and shame about. Are some children programmed by sociopaths to become sociopaths — is our culture churning out pornography precisely for that reason, to further its own violent agenda? In that case, visualizing and drawing our demons is one way to expose the programming. In this case, the more talkjng, the better.

    Reply
    • As for the causes of the sexualized violence against women, I wondered about early childhood “programming” — Nessia

      Such as the programming young girls recieve to use their sexuality to hijack male violence and place it in service of themselves?

      Females are attracted to violent males because they intend to use their sexuaity to make that violence their own.

      Reply
      • Well, those are topics…

        By ‘programming’ I had in mind Jasun’s early childhood narrative with its parallels to Strieber’s abduction scenario, in which children were taken underground, tortured and murdered in order to traumatize the survivors and prepare them for positions of power in a world where sociopaths rise to the top,

        Which I connected to James’s description of violence being handed down from one generation to the next.

        I was thinking more about ‘class’ – not gender. And Clockwork Orange, which i didnt see, but I did read the novel, and I know the thinking behind it came from the Tavistock Institute, where MKULTRA mind control also originated in the 1940s and 50s.

        And then, the idea of having personal collection of violent videos was a bit disturbing, but Britain at that time was going through an extreme phase of social rage. How else would you explain Punk?

        I wasn’t really thinking about how, as a young girl, I tried to hijack male violence. I grew up before the rampant sexualization of children in the media. (As a female child, I may have been in some porn videos, though I definitely didnt ask to be — but that’s another story.)

        Can you offer some examples of how little girls ask to be programmed in the ways you mention? I’ve never felt the least attraction to violent males so I need to think that over, before offering up my own wild theory about “rape culture” or whatever. And if it’s all programming, why not go after the programmers?

        Frankly, it sounds like these are your experiences, your women, your culture — but you seem so angry, I’m afraid to ask.

        I

        Reply
        • “Can you offer some examples of how little girls ask to be programmed in the ways you mention?” — Nessia

          I don’t think they ASK to be programmed for attraction to violent males; it may be biological “hard wiring?”

          When females threaten to do you violence, it usually centers around getting a male to carry out her violence for her:

          “my

          father

          son,

          brother

          uncle

          boyfriend…

          cousin

          is gonna kick your *ss… bla bla bla…”

          All females are ready to call on some male to commit acts of violence in their service; the more violent, the better; up to and including a black president of the United States who has a “kill list”. A list of people he has decided can be kill WITHOUT NOTICE.

          You know that.

          What country you from?

          Reply
          • I’m from Canada. I grew up in a lower middle class white suburb and went to to a working class immigrant high school where I hung out with mostly Jewish girls and learned to be verbal. There were gangs but we didn’t need boyfriends to protect us back then or even later.

            I can understand why women under pressure to survive in the ghetto would call on men to threaten other men. I’ve only been to Washington once. What I noticed was all the white people looked, talked and acted like robots and seemed to be walking around in a trance. The centre of global power and all people talked about was what they ate that day and what they bought.

            In my world, most of the violence was secret and hidden. Some of it was against women. I became a journalist — that world is run by men’s clubs, with a few blood-drinking Satanists (of both sexes) at the top.

          • “I can understand why women under pressure to survive in the ghetto would call on men to threaten other men.” — Nessia

            Nessia, I think you are missing my point; the female behavior I am describing is in no way limited to “the ghetto” or non white people…
            Indeed, given the States monopoly on the use of violence; this is the reason females support more and bigger government, vote democrat, socialism…
            BTW, please don’t patronize me by claiming I seem like an “angry black man”; that is the equivalent of me saying “you sound sexy.”

            Ultimately I suspect our differing world views are based largely on the differing levels of accountability our ancestors and ourselves are and have been forced to compensate for. Whether Biblically or evolutionarily based, we are products of a violent world rooted in death and killing. Either those violent killers are members of your own tribe, or members of the “other” tribe.
            For young, fertile females, of which you are or once were, submission to these violent killers of the “other” tribe did not result in your deaths; indeed, it often insured the perpetuation of your genes.
            For men, it meant death.
            This is why I say females are not qualified to discuss violence; because in the game, they are not players, they are the ball; they follow the wealth, resources and security, which in this world is and always has been the domain of violent men.

            I ain’t mad atcha.

          • This is why I say females are not qualified to discuss violence; because in the game, they are not players, they are the ball

            I think this is nonsense and feeds into the false premise that violence is exclusively or even primarily male-instigated. Women are as or more violent than men, domestically speaking. My own upbringing confirms it.

          • “Thwack, are you aware of the online “manosphere” phenomenon? Sort of a troll repository for neo-masculinists and faulty biological-determinism. I’ve seen it’s manifestations in some recent articles.” — James Quigley

            Hello James, I welcome your apt description of the phenomenon.
            Yes, I was a participant on the most notorious of those sites CHATEAU HEARTISTE until they banned me for pointing out their contradictions and logical inconstancies…
            It was both interesting and entertaining while it lasted. CH started out 90% “game” and 10% racism; but as the number of sexually frustrated white men on the site increased, the racists took over and now the site is 90% racism, 10% “game, pick up artists…”

            The mod didn’t want to ban me because I suspect he knew it was a weak, “bitch move”; but in the end I was too much of a distraction from what for all intensive purposes had become a white male “pep rally.” In addition I would “win the crowd” with my logic and blistering verbal “beat downs…” The first rule of “blog club” is don’t make the moderator look bad.

            Its kinda sad it ended that way because I was one of the few guys doing real work to help these guys get the tools to get laid. And no, my work was not altruistic or noble… Sexually frustrated white guys are a HUGE obstacle for black guys like me because of their sneaky, back stabbing, bitch like behavior. If they got laid more they would spend far less time plotting to undermine me.

            The members of Chateau Heartiste claim they want to start a mass movement and grow their numbers… but to me, they get more embarrassing everyday; its a fear and insecurity festival– no wonder they can’t get laid?
            And the horrible comments they make about women/girls really undermine their alleged confidence and “swagger”. Nessia will be horrified when she reads some of their comments; do you think she will accuse them of “seeming angry?” (sarc)

            As a former participant of the site, a site I studied extensively and conducted many experiments… I have come to this conclusion, and its a tragic one:
            The purpose of the Chateau Heartiste blog is to inspire one or more sexually frustrated white males to commit an act or acts of direct violence against those who do not share or support their narcissistic, nihilistic, racist sense of white male betrayal and abandonment.

            They never accepted me for who I said I was. Anyone effective challenging their flawed logic and hypocrisy is immediately accused of being a JOO and banned, blocked…
            Accusing each other of being a “Jew” is like a sport on that blog. Its what keeps everyone in line with the dogma; its a lot like a cult.

            Ironically, the joke may be on them because the moderator/owner of the site (Roissey) may be a Jew himself playing a long game version of “troll the racists” by agreeing and amplifying their racism to ridiculous heights.
            PS– ever since the blog went full retard racist a couple of years ago, the moderation has become extreme. They have one staff “shill” who acts as a fake, flacid opposition; but real challenging questions/comments are blocked, deleted…

            Actually, the entire blog has become theater; the comments, the articles, the personalities… could all be no more than a handful of people.

          • “Women are as or more violent than men, domestically speaking. My own upbringing confirms it.” — JH

            That is correct Jasun; but are they held as accountable for it?

            This is my point and the reason I say they are not qualified to discuss and or set the “rules” for violence.

            Do you need a better example?

  3. Cheers James , sorry if i came across patronising . I too would rather drink battery acid than attend a gathering of occultists . When i say ” dangerous ” and ” unsupervised ” , i meant rather than being boogie men , these things will simply flush out into the open whatever you have hidden away in your didgeridoo , which could be dangerous depending on the power and severity of whatever one has hidden there . A good psychologist or friend ( or wife) could watch over you for any sudden strange eruptions of destructive patterns . In an extreme case , you could unwittingly enter a situation where you physically / financially / emotionally hurt yourself . When i started messing about with this stuff , The Lords Prayer was as good a banishing as any ! . Though a nice meal and a good shower also works well . No lack of courage with you mate and with your artistic ability am sure it will be a stunning series of paintings with enormous healing qualities
    Cheers

    Reply
  4. “All females are ready to call on some male to commit acts of violence in their service; the more violent , the better ”
    – dear Thwack , that is a very sweeping statement . Its easy to fall into misogyny if you have been hurt by your mother or some other woman . Its a long hard road out of that particular hell. I often feel people wounded in that particular way end up on a collision course with the unconscious itself , which is oft equated with “the feminine principle ” Also the planet and the body are often seen as ” feminine ” . I suppose in many ways , men fear women because of the mortality conferred on them by their mothers . He who is born is fated to die , and this makes some people very angry and scared . For our bodies to dissolve back to the planet stuff and our psyches into the great primal sea of the collective unconscious , these are challenging concepts . It would be good to hear more about this “black president ” of yours
    Hang in there mate

    Reply
    • It’s okay, Thwack – i was just trying to draw you out (it’s a girl thing) — I know you’re not an angry black man. You think women love living in a violent world because we are bloodthirsty from birth. But I disagree. I survive by being 6 feet tall with a piercing scream that paralyzes rapists. Also, I have weird spiritual powers that have saved me from death numerous times. As I was just saying to David Wilson, I used to live in the LA ghetto not far from where Marvin Gaye was shot. I was told by some white people that it was dangerous to cross the street to mail a letter but eventually i got up the nerve to walk to the grocery store. Later I rode my bike everywhere and the gangs would salute me “There goes that big tall white lady on the bicycle.” In LA only the black people acted human, I thought. I met a black lady who had grown up in Glasgow, Scotland, in the 1930s, the daughter of the only black doctor in town, and Sigmund Freud used to stay at their house after he fled Vienna. Jasun will find that interesting. Also Mahatma Ghandi used to visit,and he told her “Mary, I had a dream. When I return to India, I will be shot soon after I get off the plane.” And he was. She was a nice woman in her 70s by the time I met her, still very sexy and the unofficial neighbourhood psychic, never lost her Glasgow accent.

      Thanks for not ‘cock blocking’ but why you would be so protective of women you lump together as bitches not worthy of entering your ‘manosphere’ — anyway I’d rather knit booties than intrude on a race war in the making,

      Reply
      • “Thanks for not ‘cock blocking’ but why you would be so protective of women you lump together as bitches not worthy of entering your ‘manosphere’” — Nessia

        *sigh*

        Nessia, I may be in the manosphere; but Im not of it.

        Whats the difference?

        Women are worthy of being women; but the manosphere is a place for men to discuss methods and mechanisms to retard the use of resorting to VIOLENCE when we disagree.

        That all it really is.

        I don’t see the female behaviors many men complain of as “bugs”; but as “features.” Thats one reason they kicked me out of The Chateau; I kept pointing out they were complaining about women acting like women; I even suggested some homo eroticism on their part by alluding what they really want is women to act like young boys (persons easier to control with reverence and obedience towards them?)

        I think a major flaw for the sexes results from each attempting to project their values and desires onto the other; always a huge fail due to the disappointment it generates.

        Nessia, you females have more than enough power in this sex game; maybe its a good thing so many of you don’t realize it?

        Reply
        • i think we agree on the basics, thwack. as a canadian, i would e.g. talk to black people i met in the neighbourhood and this amazed my white companions who would cross the street to avoid a black man. LA culture seemed close to an apartheid state. a lot of our life-threatening problems really are ‘in our minds’

          it’s not easy being either sex, and these days the main obstacle to relationship is rhetoric, not morality. i guess there needs to be some tension or we would all merge into a genderless blob.

          Reply

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