qlipphoth

from the magician's dictionary

The reason people push gods "outside" is the same reason they shove everything else outside, separating everything and calling it evil because it is unwanted. Anything which is not self, including the planet earth, is felt to be of no real value. In fact, matter is simply unwanted "dirt." Most of the self is thrown away, at least that part of the self which demands the most work or struggle. All that may remain is the momentary gratification of physical need: food, drink, sex, rest, entertainment. To put a god into that strait-jacket, even a minor one, is to disrupt the routine, to interfere with the direct line of ice cream to mouth. Besides, the puffing up of an imaginary personal ego is a thousand times easier than the expression of difficult, real Divinity. Standing far enough away from the world empowers objectivity to serve as the perfect defense of the ego. Here ego cannot be challenged and "Science" and "Reason" become the last refuges of Subjective Solipsism.

In the Qabalah this peeling away of the self, this separation or "excrement" is called a Qlipha (pl. qlipphoth). The qliphoth are the negative personifications. All the expressions of Divinity have their "qlipphoth": Samael, Beelzebub, Satanas, etc., as we've said. And, in truth, these are what people actually bow down to: these idols that are made up out of excrement. Divinity that lies outside of self is not divinity.

In contemporary Occidental man's desperate struggle to separate himself we would do well to remember Alan Watts' comparison of the self to an onion. You can peel and peel until there is nothing left.