taken from Vassago Demonology
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A personal account of recurring dreams set within the House of Darkness, where mirrors become gateways, the dead deliver messages, and a mysterious figure known as Vassago emerges from beyond the threshold of ordinary perception.
Since childhood, I have dreamed of the House of Darkness. It is a place where I sometimes find myself suspended between waking and dreaming, but also a place where my dreams become lucid. The House of Darkness is therefore a place of awakening, but also a place of encounter, for that house is not empty. It is vast and shadowy, devoid of anything romantic. Instead, it radiates a heavy atmosphere that can only be described as demonic. There is something within it that affects beings and consciousness itself, something that possesses the power to imprison minds and spirits, although it does not always do so. In addition to the natural awareness that I am dreaming whenever I find myself there, it often happens that I cannot leave that dream. And even when I do manage to escape, I discover that I have merely entered another dream.
The House of Darkness sometimes spills its contents into this world as well. I perceive this as a slight uneasiness, the same oppressive atmosphere that exists within the dream, or within that strange state suspended between sleep and wakefulness. At times, in the dead of night, figures emerge from the shadowed corners of my bedroom, carrying that same weight with them.
On several occasions, the screen of my mind has been flooded by the impression of a woman gradually taking shape in the air. She is usually elderly. I can see her face clearly, as well as the eyes fixed unwaveringly upon me. I do not know who this woman is. She is not one of my deceased relatives, nor anyone I recognize. She is merely a presence whose origin I cannot determine.
The House of Darkness is also connected to the House of the Dead. The dead may enter it, while the inhabitants of Darkness may pass into the domain of Death. Yet the nature of these two places is entirely different. The House of the Dead is, for me, an extraordinarily pleasant place. I feel calm there, as though I belong within it, as though it were my true home.
Whenever I find myself there in a dream, I often wonder:
Why do I spend so much time away from this place?
Why do I not simply return to where I belong instead of wandering through a foreign world?
Why not sit upon a couch and enjoy the silence that reigns there?
The House of Darkness, by contrast, is a place of work, but also a place where the mind is in constant danger of becoming trapped. This distinction, home versus place of labor, will run throughout this entire essay, and I shall return to it later through a Kabbalistic interpretation.
Once, within the House of the Dead, I encountered my deceased grandmother, who often brings me messages from beyond. Her presence briefly transformed the melancholy atmosphere, filling it with warmth and a peculiar sense of longing. During that encounter, I momentarily turned my gaze away from her and looked into a large vesica-shaped mirror. It possessed a dark green frame, sumptuous and heavy, carved from wood and large enough to contain the reflection of an entire human figure.
Yet it did not reflect me. Instead, a tall figure stood within the mirror, vaguely human in shape, though unmistakably not human. It wore a completely black covering. Its head was elongated and hairless, its ears sharp, and its hands resembled the talons of a bird perched upon a branch. It simply stood there, watching me. Then, suddenly, I heard a voice sharply whisper a name: Vassago. The double s was distinctly emphasized. At that moment, I awoke.
Strictly speaking, I am describing this as a single dream, but in reality it is a composite of impressions that have returned to me on several occasions within the same environment of the House of Darkness. The figure in the mirror and that characteristic whisper appeared repeatedly, and what follows should therefore be read as a synthesis of those recurring encounters rather than as an account of one isolated event.
The being I have described bears a remarkable resemblance, if not complete identity, to a figure that occasionally appears in my dreams and that I associate with GOTOS, the personalized manifestation of the egregore of Fraternitas Saturni. I do not draw this association lightly. The same elongated and impersonal form, the same cold and observant presence, accompanies dreams that I otherwise connect with the Saturnian, geometric quality of GOTOS. This time, however, the voice was unequivocal in identifying the apparition as Vassago. I am aware that Vassago is a demon of the Goetia and that he is not traditionally described in this manner. Yet this is how I saw him.
I have an unfinished intuition concerning all of this. The House of the Dead resonates with Saturn and with the Kabbalistic idea of the Great Mother, the Sephirah Binah. Following that chain of associations, one might logically conclude that the House of Darkness, since it echoes the energy of the Moon, should resonate with the Sephirah Yesod, the Foundation of the Tree of Life. Yet that is not what I feel. What I perceive there are solar vibrations.
In that sense, the House of Darkness is a manifestation of the Chthonic Sun. Figuratively speaking, it is a Sun concealed behind the Moon. The House of the Dead, as a place of complete peace and of returning home, resonates with the Upper Waters of Binah. It is the place from which souls come and to which they return in silence. For that reason it is home, whereas the House of Darkness is a place of work.
The mirror I described is not an ordinary object. Its form, the Vesica Piscis, is in geometry and esotericism a symbol of a gate, a passageway, and the birth of form itself. It arises from the intersection of two circles, the Upper and Lower Waters, while the space between them constitutes the opening through which consciousness passes from one world into another. Its dark green, sumptuous, and heavy wooden frame points toward Venus, whose presence in dreams is often expressed through form, beauty, and reflection. At the same time, the wood and its weight anchor this gateway firmly within the structure of the House of Darkness. That mirror does not reflect personality or ego. Rather, it devours the reflection of the one who gazes into it and replaces it with an archetype.
In the traditional Goetia (Ars Goetia), Vassago is the Third Spirit, described as a Mighty Prince who is by nature good and well suited to the operator. His primary function is to reveal the past, present, and future and to discover hidden or lost things. He is, in essence, a seer and a revealer. The dream figure I have described, with its elongated head, sharp ears, bird-like hands, and its identification with GOTOS, perfectly explains why it appeared in precisely that form and under that name.
A bird of prey, whether hawk, falcon, or owl, is a universal symbol of sight penetrating darkness. A being perched upon a branch, silently observing, is one of the most powerful symbols of vigilance and watchfulness. GOTOS, on the other hand, operates through cold intelligence and the laws of geometry. Within my personal myth, the Goetic Vassago is the operative face of that same principle. When GOTOS wishes to communicate within the Hall of Mirrors, he dons a black covering and presents himself under the name of Vassago.
Thus, in my personal experience, Vassago is not an entity from medieval grimoires that may be summoned into a circle through prescribed instruments and procedures. He is the entity of the mirror and the guardian of the gate between the House of Darkness and the House of the Dead. Since his Goetic function is the revelation of what is hidden, he appears precisely at the moment when my deceased grandmother, a messenger from the other side, brings me a message. Vassago is there to validate the communication and widen the field of perception. He is the intelligence of the mirror itself, the one who makes awareness possible within the House of Darkness, preserving consciousness while the body remains imprisoned within the dream.
The name VASSAGO, pronounced with an emphatic double S, vibrates with a frequency that stabilizes the reflection. Within Hebrew-operational logic, it may be written in several different ways depending upon which sound receives emphasis in the dream. In traditional Kabbalistic and Hermetic practice, particularly within the Golden Dawn tradition, which was among the first systems to systematically transliterate Goetic names into Hebrew in order to calculate their angelic and demonic correspondences, the name Vassago may be rendered in two principal ways depending upon whether emphasis is placed upon the root consonants or upon the phonetic pronunciation with the doubled S.
First Variant (VSAGV)
According to the root consonants:
Vav (6) + Samekh (60) + Aleph (1) + Gimel (3) + Vav (6) = 76
which reduces to:
7 + 6 = 13 → 4
The number 76 also corresponds to several expressions connected with secrecy and concealment, with that which remains hidden.
Second Variant (VSSAGV)
This spelling preserves the whispered emphasis through a duplication of the letter Samekh:
Vav (6) + Samekh (60) + Samekh (60) + Aleph (1) + Gimel (3) + Vav (6) = 136
This number is equal to the sum of all numbers in the magical square of Jupiter and also corresponds to the names of the Jovian Intelligence and Spirit, Jophiel and Hismael.
Reduced numerologically:
1 + 3 + 6 = 10 → 1
The same value is also carried by the Hebrew word kol ("voice").
Third Variant (VShGV)
Since the whispered sound possessed a sharp, hissing quality more closely resembling the letter Shin:
Vav (6) + Shin (300) + Gimel (3) + Vav (6) = 315
which reduces to:
3 + 1 + 5 = 9
The number of the Moon.
The number of Yesod.
The number of the Mirror.
The value 315 is also associated with Hebrew words denoting ice or crystal, with Yetzirah understood as formative power, with expressions referring to the vision of radiance or the mirror of splendor, and with Kurgasiax, the Qliphotic guardian of the Twenty-First Tunnel of Set corresponding to the letter Kaph.
Viewed in this manner, the appearance begins to make symbolic sense. The bird-like hands, the cold vigilance, the gate of the mirror, the lunar quality of reflection, and the function of discovering hidden things all converge into a single image. Vassago therefore appears not as a demon to be summoned but as a mask worn by a deeper intelligence. Within my personal mythology, he is the face that the geometric and Saturnian current of GOTOS assumes whenever it speaks from within the mirror.
I consider these three variants sufficiently suggestive in themselves. Each corresponds to a different layer of emphasis that I heard within the dream, and together they reveal the polyvalent nature of the name. I have encountered a similar sense of an emphasized double S in other, related situations, which suggests to me that this phenomenon is not exclusive to Vassago but belongs to a broader pattern.
On one occasion, I found myself literally haunted by the name of the demon Glasya-Labolas. Yet I heard it in an altered form, as Glassyabolas, with a distinctly emphasized S. Likewise, the first name that attached itself to me in this peculiar manner was Aiwass, which also contains the doubled s. These names sometimes appear in my mind like an irritating tune that refuses to leave, a melody accidentally heard yet impossible to forget.
The strongest impression of all, however, was produced by a barbarous word from Liber Samekh, which I found myself involuntarily and almost mechanically repeating as Essalonai. In my experience, this word conveyed the meanings of speed and boundary simultaneously. I had the distinct impression that it was the name of a hunter standing upon the edge of worlds. In any case, this prolonged and emphasized hissing functions like tension upon a wire.
The letter Shin represents the element of Fire. When it hisses, it burns away obstacles and pierces the mental screen. Samekh, on the other hand, signifies a pillar, a support, or a shield. Yet both visually and conceptually it also evokes the serpent biting its own tail: a closed circle, a mirror, a boundary. When the mind automatically transforms Glasya-Labolas into Glassyabolas, or when it fixes upon names such as Aiwass and Vassago, it is essentially inserting a condenser into an electrical circuit. These names become glassy in character: reflective, sharp, and edged. They become mirror-names.
I do not know whether the being in the mirror was truly Vassago. Perhaps it was merely a mask assumed by a deeper intelligence. Perhaps it was GOTOS speaking through a Goetic image. Or perhaps the mirror itself required a name in order to become visible to the mind. What remains certain is that the figure did not show me my reflection. It replaced it. And ever since then, whenever I return to the House of Darkness and pass through its halls, I am unable to look into a mirror without wondering what may be standing there before me, waiting for the moment when my own image once again steps aside.
NOTE:
Originally published in Serbian. This English version is an AI-assisted translation of the original text.
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