It’s pretty hard for me to write posts that are reader Q&A these days since most of my answers to the questions are printed in my books and most readers have read the bulk of my books. So everyone knows my opinion on this stuff.
With regard to possession, suffice to say that I view possession as being something that happens “against a person’s will” whereas channeling is where the magus/medium is a willing participant to the spirit speaking or doing things through them. Yes, mincing semantics but nothing annoys me more than people running amock tauting, “I’m possessed! I’m possessed!” Not to mention I once met a guy who actually thought he was “possessed” by a squirrel. But we won’t go there. That’s another tale for another time perhaps. Everyone else here chose possession as their topic to discuss so I’ll discuss the astral and dream work.
First, let me say that if you’re a magician of any sort, Dream Work and Astral Work both have their place, but they should never be a sole method for all magick. I personally think the magician loses a great deal when they do everything astrally. I also think this is why some magicians are ineffective. Sure – there are exceptions and I have met that rare one or two astral magicians who do have some flack to herald magickal success from astral and dream-work exclusively. But otherwise I think astral and dream-work has a primary purpose and that purpose is communication with spirits (of all types).
Now for exclusively *spiritual* Demonolaters – go ahead and do all the astral and dream work you can. When it comes to devotion and prayer you really don’t absolutely need a physical temple. But as a magician, things are a little different.
For some people astral and dream-work is the only way they’re able to practice ascension or communicate with the Daemonic. I prefer it when I’m looking for very specific instruction on how to do something, or I would like to have an extended conversation with a Divine Intelligence. This way I get full visual input as well as verbal input. But alas – I’ve learned to communicate without astral and dream-work, too. I think it took me just as much practice to learn how to effectively dream-walk and astral travel (they’re different) as it did to learn to trust my intuition and speak with the Daemonic while being wide-awake and completely in control of my faculties.
Think of Dream Work as lucid dreaming with a goal and think of astral travel as being able to put yourself into an awake, but meditative state to where you actually disconnect from your body and are able to travel anywhere in this world or other planes of existence/realms. It’s similar, but not quite the same thing. That’s my two cents.