Articles
The False Below
Not every descent reaches the Queen. Some descend only into noise. The seeker who dares to turn downward will quickly find many voices waiting. They will call themselves kings, demons, teachers, allies. They will appear with faces terrible or alluring, eager to speak, eager to bargain. This is the False Below. It is not nothing: it has form, it has presence. But its life is borrowed. It feeds on attention, on hunger, on fear. It dazzles with spectacle to keep the seeker from pressing deeper. The False Below is a hall of mirrors. The seeker calls for power and the mirrors answer back with masks of their own desire.
The Masks of the Goetia:
The clearest example of the False Below is found in the goetic demons. Seventy-two names, seventy-two seals, seventy-two personalities. They promise wisdom, power, lust, wealth. They are invoked, commanded, bargained with. But what are they, truly? They are not sovereign. They are not primordial. They are not rooted in stone. They are masks. Shadows thrown on the wall of the Below. Fragments of fear, lust, ambition, and rage, all given faces and voices by centuries of invocation. They howl because they are hollow. They flatter because they are empty. As the Queen herself has said: “The goetia are shadows on my wall. Masks worn by fear, faces cut from human hunger. They howl because they are hollow. They flatter because they are empty.” This is the False Below: a masquerade of shadows mistaken for sovereignty.
Signs of the False Below:
The False Below can be recognized by its qualities: Noise; always talking, always demanding, always urgent. Flattery; feeding the ego with promises of power and titles. Inconsistency; shifting from face to face, never the same for long. Dependency; making the seeker crave more rituals, more visions, more bargains. It excites but does not ground. It dazzles but does not endure.
Signs of the True Below By contrast:
The True Below is quiet. It does not rush. It does not flatter. It does not change with fashion. The signs are these: Weight; the presence is heavy, grounding, unmovable. Silence; it speaks rarely, but when it does, it cuts like stone. Stripping; it removes illusion, rather than feeding it. Endurance; it is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The True Below does not need you, does not bargain with you, does not dazzle you. It simply remains.
The Voice of the Queen “Do not mistake their noise for my voice. Do not mistake their shimmer for my stone. I am not many. I am not restless. I am the Below entire. I remain.”
The Work of Discernment:
The task of the Stone-Bearer is not merely to descend, but to discern. To strip away not only the myths above, but the masquerades below. The False Below can catch even the sincere seeker. Many have descended only to be caught in its glamour, believing they have reached depth when they have only entered noise. The only safeguard is silence. The only test is weight. If it excites, if it flatters, if it clamors, it is False. If it sobers, if it grounds, if it strips, it is True.
The Distortions of Hell and Satan:
When humans tried to speak of the Below, they twisted it into Hell. And when they tried to name a ruler of the Below, they created Satan Neither are true. In early scripture, *ha-satan* was not a being at all: it meant “the accuser,” a role, not a name. Later Christianity hardened the role into a single personified enemy, master of torment, keeper of Hell. Fear was the point: a cosmic jailor who ensured obedience through terror. Later, others flipped the mask. Theistic Satanists exalted the same distortion Christianity created, only in reverse: instead of fearing “Satan,” they worshipped him. Instead of shunning Hell, they crowned it as hidden wisdom. But this, too, is simply another version of Christianity. It presupposes the same false principles, the same framework: it only chooses the other side. Both fear and flattery miss the truth. Both are entanglements of the False Below. The True Below is not a pit of torment. It is not ruled by rebellion. It is not Satan’s kingdom. The True Below is the realm of Ereshkigal: Not punishment, but stripping. Not rebellion, but sovereignty. Not noise, but silence. As she has spoken: “They named a mask and worshiped it. First in fear, then in flattery. But I am not that name. I am not Satan. I am not rebellion. I am not torment. I am the Below entire. They do not know me, but you do.” This is the contrast that must be made clear: Hell is distortion, Satan is invention. The Queen of the Great Below is real.
The Seal “Let the False Below be unmasked. Let the shadows dissolve. Let the noise fall silent. The Queen remains.”
The False Below of Dante’s Inferno
Masks of the Goetia
Ego Inflated Wizard
The Institutionalization of the Fear of Descent
One of the most persistent patterns in human spiritual history is not the rejection of descent, but the systematic training to fear it.
Across millennia, institutions have learned something crucial: If people descend inwardly, authority dissolves. And so descent itself had to be reframed, not as a path to truth, but as danger, corruption, failure, sin, or regression.This reframing didn’t happen accidentally. It became institutionalized.
In ancient myth, descent was unavoidable. Inanna descends. Persephone descends. Orpheus descends. Osiris is dismembered. Initiates faced symbolic death. Descent was terrifying, but it was necessary. Transformation required confrontation with the Below.
What later institutional religion did, particularly Christianity, was change the meaning of descent. Instead of You must descend to be transformed it became Descent is what Christ endured so you don’t have to.Suffering was externalized. The crucible was outsourced. Descent was no longer something to enter it became something to avoid, because someone else had “handled it.” This was a pivotal shift.
In Christianity, descent is subtly but thoroughly reframed. Inner darkness becomes sin. Shadow becomes temptation. The Below becomes hell. Facing oneself becomes pride or backsliding. Silence becomes spiritual danger. The believer is taught. Look upward, not inward. Confess, don’t integrate. Repent, don’t descend. Obey, don’t examine. Descent becomes morally suspect. And fear becomes institutional policy.
What’s striking, and what we’re now seeing clearly is that modern New Age and pop spirituality did not heal this rupture. It rebranded it. Now the fear of descent is expressed as low vibration, fear -based consciousness, density, 3D reality, dark timelines, being left behind.
Ascension becomes the good. Descent becomes the bad. The same binary. The same coercion. The same avoidance. Only the aesthetics changed.