Shax — Devalued Words

The magical significance of words is well known and we have already discussed it several times here.

And it would be surprising if the immovable power of the Magus’s word did not become a target of destructive forces.

The power that convinces the mind that they have little value of words and promises is traditionally personified as an air demon (air in general is the principle of thought, and therefore all demons that distort this principle are of an aerial nature) — Shax (Shax).

The Lemegeton describes this Demon briefly:

“Shax — a great Marquis. He appears in the form of a clintuha (in Weyer — a stork); he speaks in a hoarse but insinuating voice. His service is to deprive other men and women of sight, hearing and understanding at the conjurer’s command; and to steal money from the king’s treasuries and return it after 1,200 years. At the conjurer’s bidding he will bring horses, or fetch any other things. He can find all hidden things, except those guarded by evil spirits. Sometimes he gives good companions. He rules thirty legions of spirits.”

In the Grimoire’s language, the falseness inherent in the Demon and his ability to “deprive others of understanding” point precisely to the mental nature of his disruptive influence.

Shax is the Demon of broken promises. He instills in people the idea that these are “mere words,” that they mean nothing and can safely be broken and ignored. This is precisely what the Grimoire means by the “blinding and deafening” of the Demon’s victims.

By nudging people into a flippant attitude toward words, Shax not only accustoms the mind to inner dishonesty, he robs it of its creative, manifesting power — its logotic nature — reducing it to a rotten, hypocritical state.

By renouncing one’s words, a person does not merely grow accustomed to irresponsibility; he disrupts the very order of manifestation, severing the link between the world of ideas (thoughts) and the embodied world, which is formed as a result of the creative action of word-Logoi.

Instead of word-Logoi, Shax feeds the mind ‘horses’ — thoughts that gallop wildly through the spaces of the psychocosmos, which are often very difficult to rein in.

Therefore the Demon not only disorders language and breaks the connection between a word and its source — the mind — it undermines the mind’s structure, making it undisciplined, wandering and unstable.

A person under Shax’s sway who does not take responsibility for their words pays no attention to the structure of their thought process, and the same disorder governs his thoughts and deeds too.

The Magus must understand that his word is unshakeable and his promises irrevocable. He knows that to annul a Magus’s word is, in fact, to annul the Creative Logos that brought the world into being — that is, to violate the very primal foundation of manifestation.

It is in this understanding that the key to creative success and effectiveness, and immunity to Shax, lies.

The Magus does not scatter words; he does not make promises unless he is sure he can fulfill them, and once made he exerts every possible effort to carry them out and bring them into being. Then his word becomes what it is meant to be by its purpose — a creative Logos.