Warlock Asylum Interviews E. A. Koetting: Dark Knight of the Soul

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Well, the other day I had a chance to get in contact with a very special man with a unique ability in the art of unfolding seen and unseen worlds. Many of our readers may be familiar with the name E. A. Koetting, so without further delay, let us visit a conversation that I had with this renowned gentleman.

Warlock Asylum:  I am sure that many of our readers may be familiar with who you are and some of your published works. However, some of our subscribers may not be familiar with who you are. How would you describe yourself? Who is E. A. Koetting?

E. A. Koetting:  Well, let’s start out this manifold answer with the most obvious facts.  I am a spiritual mentor, the leader of what is becoming an entire spiritual movement, and I’m the author of now eight full-length books on the occult.  Most of my work focuses on the Left Hand Path and Black Magick, mainly because I recognize that the forbidden, and sometimes the downright evil, provides the fastest – yet most violent – route into the powers that would allow the individual to become a living god. 

Now, when I say that I’m the leader of what’s becoming an entire spiritual movement, that sounds pretty grandiose.  Maybe it is.  When I started this whole journey of teaching what I’ve learned to others, it was all really elementary, at least in my mind.  I could see and feel and touch real power in front of me.  I could mould it and shape it and toss it in any direction I wanted.  And I figured that most people had this ability too.  Instead, as I started getting out there and teaching people what I know, I’ve realized that even some of the “adepts” out there aren’t capable of half of this stuff, and that neophytes are completely blown away by it.

A problem that I’m seeing is that most, if not all occult authors and teachers out there keep hammering away on their readers and their students about this or that restriction, or boundaries that can’t be penetrated, or things that simply cannot happen.

I talk about becoming a living god.  I heard a quote recently by the late Dr. Christopher Hyatt, in which he said that people are not gods, they cannot become gods, and a bullet or cancer will prove that.

I have to tell you, I’ve lived a pretty risky life.  I should be dead a dozen times over.  From bullets, from disease, from accidents, etc.  I’ve literally had a bullet enter my body and dodge around every vital artery, bone, and organ, and exit the other side of my body, leaving me in pain and bleeding, but far from dead.  My physician at the time said, “I don’t know who you pray to, but you better start thanking him, because you shouldn’t be here.”  I’ve heard that time and again.

When I was at the peak of my descent into Satanism, at which point I went completely off the grid and engaged in the most illegal activities (you may be familiar with the Order of Nine Angles and what they promote).  I’ve had evidence collected against me, I’ve been indicted in federal court, but before official charges could be filed, the evidence simply disappeared from the lab. 

Becoming a living god means riding a whirlwind of power, and inside of that whirlwind, you are untouchable.  And your every thought, your every desire materializes in physical form nearly instantaneously.  And yes, you will be immune to death, until you consciously relinquish your life into the hands of your transfiguration. Warlock Asylum: I have read some of your book, which I will discuss in a moment. I must say that I am really impressed with your work and style of writing, being able to present rare occult subject matter in coherent form. How did you become involved with “occult studies” and what events led to your rise as a Dark Magician?

E. A. Koetting:  My grandmother by birth, my mother’s mother, was a witch.  She was not the sort of witch who reads books about candle spells and prays to the goddess.  She was a witch long before Gerald Gardner and Anton Lavey stepped onto the scene.  She was not a witch because she wanted to rebel against her parents or stand out in society.  She was a witch because that is the only word that she knew to apply to her ability to conjure and command invisible forces to her will.  She did not learn her witchcraft from books now accessible at every bookstore and library across the country.  She learned her spells from the spirits themselves.  Now, I didn’t know this until only a few years ago, as I was given away shortly after birth, and have only recently re-connected with my biological family.

But, growing up, I was adopted into a Mormon family.  When I heard the stories of the prophets and of Jesus, all I could think about was, “How can I have that kind of power?”  I had this knowledge growing up that there was another world, a world filled with magick and spirits and ritual, and that if I could only uncover the methods, that I could tap into that other world… or that I could enter it fully, or bring it to me.  I had no idea where this drive came from, and it was a source of concern for my adoptive family for sure.  As I said a second ago, it was something that traveled through the blood, it seems, something as innate in me as my eye and hair color. I should be clear here as well that my early life was filled with powerlessness, with horrid abuse.  My early life was a horror story, basically from six months old until around twelve years old. 

So, when I finally put the pieces together and realized that the mysterious pull that I felt was a pull towards witchcraft, towards ritual and the occult, it seemed the perfect engine for compensating for a lifetime of seeming powerlessness.  There was something very dark inside of me, the horrors of my early life having carved out some sort of spiritual abscess in me.  Rather than being content with candle spells and “magickal” salt baths or that sort of thing, I wanted to dominate others, to have power, and to exhibit that power in the most extreme fashion.  I wasn’t out to prove to anyone else that I had power… I needed to prove it to myself.

My destiny seems to have emanated from me, as I would quite organically draw others to me who could teach me, mentor me in the secrets of power.  Yogis from India, Tibetan monks, career criminals, underground diabolists, transcendental mediators.  I mean, you name it, and they were drawn to me, hungry to teach me.

Click Here To View and Buy Books By E. A. Koetting on Amazon

Warlock Asylum: I am familiar with at least three of the books that you have authored. It seems like you approach your material from a certain foundation. Is there specific magical/spiritual path, in lack of a better word, that you follow today or were initiated in?

E. A. Koetting:  After I was done playing around with the basic pagan Llewellyn books on magick, I really dove into Crowley’s work, and that really formed the foundation of what I initially used as my own system of magick.

However, what is very important to note is that once I was able to Soul Travel, perform Evocations, as well as Divination, working from the models of other humans fell by the wayside, pretty much.  Once I was able to learn directly from the spirits, from the demons, and from the powers and consciousnesses wrapped around the whole magickal paradigm.

In my most recent book, The Book of Azazel: the Grimoire of the Damned, the whole book is really written from that vantage, learning directly from Azazel, and from his “right hand man,” Ant’harratu, as well as other “Demonic Lords” that I encountered while under the Pact with Azazel. 

I have found, though, as I’ve put together my own working system of spiritual and magickal attainment, that it reflects a good deal of the deeper teachings of the Shaivistic/Shaktic current.

It’s really hard to say what my influences have been, though.  I’ve been initiated into dozens if not hundreds of different spiritual systems.  I’ve considered it my work to dig through them, to find the 1 percent gold, and to discard the rest, which is pretty much fluff and dogma. 

Warlock Asylum: How has your career as an occult practitioner and authority on subjects pertaining to such, affected your family life, relationship with loved ones, and overall approach to day-to-day living?

E. A. Koetting:  Again, to reference The Book of Azazel, I give an example in there of a ritual that I have since called “The Gatekeeper Ritual,” in which, basically, the gates of “hell” are opened up by the evocation of four gatekeepers, namely: Belial; Amaimon; Abaddon; and Azazel.  The catch is that, while Amaimon, Abaddon, and Azazel were evoked to visible materialization in incense smoke, Belial was evoked into a Triangle in which my at-the-time wife was sitting, offering herself as a human sacrifice and possession to Belial. 

She had never done anything like that before, and neither had I.  It was honestly one of the spookiest things I’d ever seen, watching my wife’s body thrashing and convulsing, and then sitting upright, but with another face superimposed over hers, and another voice issuing from her mouth.

There were about 30 people in attendance at that ritual, and every one of us was changed dramatically – and traumatically – by it.

For weeks afterwards, I had to perform exorcisms on a regular basis, as Belial did not want to leave my wife, and she didn’t really want him to leave her either.  We’d be watching a movie or driving down the street, and I would look over and see that it was no longer her, but the Demon staring out from behind her eyes.

Our marriage dissolved quite rapidly after that ritual.  I can’t blame that one ritual for that, though.  I received a specific deep initiation into Haitian Vodoun – a sort of initiation that very few people even know about, let alone receive – and the changes that took place in me and in my life drove us apart even more rapidly.

Being a Black Magician also makes parenting an interesting undertaking.  My daughter is a brilliant and sociable seven year old, and she’s been raised with the awareness of the overlap between the spiritual and the physical.  She’s bright enough to understand that classmates and teachers won’t share her appreciation for the occult, but I won’t be surprised if that changes as she gets older and her inhibitions lax a bit more. 

It is interesting, though, as I’ll casually say to her, “You know, kiddo, I could use a new car (or some other thing in life), so I’m going to call on some spirits to make that happen.  Do you want to help me with that, or play in the other room?”  I mean, it seems a bit dysfunctional, but much more authentic than I think most families are. 

As far as my day-to-day interactions go, I don’t present myself as a Master Black Magician or anything.  I dress sharp, I’m clean-cut, friendly, outgoing, and generally am able to make just about anyone feel completely at ease and even friendly towards me.  It’s really a matter of putting aside the costumes and instead letting your power move out before you.

Warlock Asylum: One of my favorite works by you is “Evoking Eternity,” which was published in 2000. I am also a big fan of “Works of Darkness,” as well as, “The Spider and the Green Butterfly.” If you do mind, can you describe what inspired this material and some of the transitions you had to make before approaching some of your newer projects released in recent years?

E. A. Koetting: I love reading, and I love the occult, so I always try to combine those two passions whenever possible.  However, as I’ve progressed, I’ve found less and less interesting books on the subject.  It was really one day, when I was living up in Green Bay,Wisconsin, that solidified in my mind that Works of Darkness had to be written.

I was at a chain bookstore, like a Barnes and Noble or Borders or something, sitting on the carpeted floor in front of the “New Age/Occult” shelf, and I pulled the book “The Black Arts” by Richard Cavendish off of the shelf and started reading it. 

I thought to myself, “Really?  Is this seriously the best that people can do with this subject?”  It was ridiculous to read through that book, and so many others like it, and see how most of it was absolute garbage. So, I basically saw that there was a dire need for real information on the occult, and that I could fill that need.

I do want to back up a bit, though, by saying that I was a writer long before I was an occultist.  Writing has always been my life’s great passion.  So, I was basically a writer looking for a new avenue of expression, and my passion for the occult fit perfectly!  One of the biggest complaints about my books that I’ve noticed is that, basically, I write like a writer.  I try to write beautifully, captivatingly.  I try to use words and cadence to pull readers into the books.  I try to craft my books into not only occult instructional manuals, but downright interesting books to read as well.

I can only conclude that those critics who say that my books are too descriptive, autobiographical, or flowery simply don’t enjoy reading, which is sad, really, because language is possibly the greatest human invention.

Warlock Asylum: In the book, Evoking Eternity, you mention some experiences you had working with the Simon Necronomicon. What is your perspective on the Simon Necronomicon and the Necronomicon Tradition overall, since many of our subscribers are Initiates, myself included, of the system?

E. A.Koetting:  You know, Simon’s Necronomicon was the first grimoire that I evoked from, and it worked amazingly well.  I think that the real power of that book is that, although the back story is obviously flawed and quite possibly fabricated, it still connects the reader and the magician with real entities and powers extant since the known history of man, back to the first civilization of Sumer. I do think that the path-working of traveling the Gates is a great initiation in itself. 

Warlock Asylum: What advice would you give to Initiates of the Necronomicon Tradition and the occult community overall?

E. A. Koetting: My advice to those who want to really work through that path-working is to not rush from one gate to the next.  Spend some time inside of each kingdom, contact the spirits there, learn from the Gods beyond the gates.  You can learn some amazing rituals there, and you can compile a grimoire of previously undiscovered spirits that you can later evoke and make use of.  Don’t just go through the gate once, but go again and again until you have mastered the powers of that sphere before moving on.

And my advice to the occult community as a whole would be this: the Left Hand Path is dangerous.  And I mean neck-on-the-line you could easily find yourself as Job dangerous.  With that in mind, jump in headfirst.  Abandon yourself to it fully.  Sacrifice yourself at the altar of your Destiny, and let the whirlwind take you wherever it takes you. 

Warlock Asylum:  Interest in magical societies, occult practices, and rare esoteric teaching has grown considerably since the rise of the internet and movies related to the subject. Do you think that the quality of the occult community has changed because of such and in what ways?

E. A. Koetting:  I think that it’s a two-edged sword.  It’s great to have the knowledge of the occult so available, but there’s also a million tons of fecal matter that you have to dig through to get anything of real value.  And again, that’s really what I’ve tried to do with the projects that I’ve been involved in is put aside the crap and get straight to the gold. 

What the rise in information availability has also done, however, is it’s allowed the occult to become a genre, a subculture, rather than a discipline and a path to attainment.  If half of the people who identify themselves as occultists actually practiced the occult, actually applied it in their lives, things would be a lot different, not just for those folks, but for the world as a whole, because they would attain and obtain their every desire in their own lives, and then would start to look outside of themselves, outside of their microcosmic environment, for focal points for their power.  Then, rather than having elite minorities swaying the history of the world, we’d have an army.

Warlock Asylum: In the book, The Spider and the Green Butterfly, you present some very detailed information about the rites of Haitian Voudon and your interactions with Baron Deprince. It was probably one of your more controversial works. How did this work come about? Do you think that the information appearing in this book could be used by someone who does not have access to receiving a formal initiation in this Voudon, as a way of foundation for communing with such forces?

E. A. Koetting:  I was in my hometown in the southwest United States bumbling through rituals to call upon Eshu and Samedi in order to manifest someone in my life who could teach me Voodoo (because at that point, I hadn’t even heard of Vodoun.)  At the same time, Dr. DePrince was in a Vodoun Temple in Paris calling down the Loa to manifest someone who he could teach his secrets to, and through whom he could reveal the Vodoun path to the world. 

You know, I’ve had the experience before of performing an evocation, and when the demon materializes, it demands to know my name, and to answer its questions, insisting that it was the demon who evoked me.  I’d argue, of course, that it was I who performed the ritual, and the demons’ rebuttal has been that I wouldn’t have performed the ritual had the demon not evoked me and caused me to do so.  It’s really a saturnalia type of experience.

This is basically what seemed to be going on with DePrince and I.

You do need to be initiated into the Vodoun current, not only to make use of it, but more so that those forces don’t turn against you.  It’s both an empowerment and a protection. 

Warlock Asylum: Do you have any projects that you are currently working on? What should we expect to see from Koetting in the near future?

E. A. Koetting: I’ve just send my eighth and final book, The Book of Azazel, to the printing press, and that should be on shelves in about a month.  I say “on shelves,” but the way it’s looking, copies won’t even touch shelves, as our inventory is being bought out in pre-orders.  Your readers can check that book out at http://www.nephilimpress.com.

I’m also putting together an online project called Become a Living God.  I’m basically using a multimedia format to walk aspirants through every aspect of every type of magickal system imaginable, from a very first meditation to the cultivation of the 3 Godlike Powers of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, reflected in the practices of evocation, soul travel, and divination.  You can check out that website at http://www.becomealivinggod.com

Warlock Asylum: Thank you so much for sharing your insights with the world through you writings. It is truly a blessing. What advice would you give to those who are newly interested in the occult? Any final thoughts?

E. A. Koetting:  Again, just jump in, and be prepared to sacrifice everything for power and knowledge.  Anything that is worthwhile is dangerous, but those who come out the other side of it are indeed Living Gods!