What do the Dead Know?

  I noticed two things recently. One was a slogan, “the dead teach us,” and one was someone asking for the source of a proclamation which JSK attributed to Crowley, in which Crowley asserted that there was no reason to bother with the dead because they don’t know anymore than they did while living. These represent two very opposing views on the dead. For a long time in modern magic, the dead were overlooked. Neither modern NeoPagan religions, nor ceremonial magic systems spent much time on necromancy or ancestor veneration. People would talk about how the dead and ancestors were important at Samhain. People didn’t teach or explore necromancy. As a teen, I collected together the handful of materials I could find on necromancy because I thought it was interesting and a rare approach to magic that wasn’t presented in readily available sources. I was proud at age 15, back in 1997, to have collected more necromancy items on my AOL webpage than I’d seen gathered in one place anywhere else. I think it only took about four pieces of material to achieve the goal of presenting more sources on necromancy in one place than I’d seen anywhere else. I’ve always assumed it was because relationships with the dead occur in religious areas of cultural development, and the “magical revival” developed in a social-fraternal context separate from the main culture rather than as a completely integrated cultural answer to religious needs. Maybe that’s why, or maybe people just thought like Crowley apparently did, that the dead don’t have much to offer so why bother?

The lack of conversation about the dead, about ancestor veneration, about necromancy, allowed space for people to come up with some weird weak-sauce ideas about the subjects. Despite the space for these ideas to take flight, fortunately, most haven’t spread. The main one I’ve encountered commonly is that all work with, or related to, the dead is necromancy. So, Samhain celebrations, much of Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, and any form of ancestor veneration are necromancy. That is…absolute nonsense - we’ll explain why in a little bit. I had the misfortune of attending a class where a teacher explained that fueling your car is necromancy because of the dead dinosaurs in the gasoline - hopefully they were joking, but I’m not so sure. These are examples of bad ideas and bad explanations that happen because people want things to be magical, but they don’t really have a grasp of the magic they’re trying to point to, so they just start applying magical thinking to every random thing. The aforementioned class did show me that there are a lot of other bad ideas about necromancy out there, as the teacher spent most of the class warning people about the nonsense they might encounter, but most of the other ideas fall into the territory of bad explanations that arise because people want to be creepy and spooky and so they make up outlandish things for shock value because it sells well to a certain audience. Fortunately, those ideas seem to stick to their niche of creepy books bound in black leather and sold for way too much money. Again, I wouldn’t have even known about (and honestly have forgotten about) most of those weird ideas had I not attended a class where the teacher began by disabusing everyone of the creepy nonsense out there. 

The lack of widespread acceptance of crazy ideas has had a practical benefit beyond protecting people from attempting silly or dangerous things. A little more than a decade ago, folks started digging more deeply into historical and traditional magical systems. A boom in publishing older magical source texts kicked off, and authors began to write about grimoires, goeteia, and all sorts of underexplored systems of magic, and magic-adjacent spirituality. As this exploration deepened we began to see more attention given to faeries and their forgotten place in learned magic. The works of cunning folk began to be explored and people began to realize that they weren’t the illiterate folk magicians NeoPagan books had long painted them to be, but they were educated professional magicians blending literate magic and folk magic into practical workable approaches. We began to understand that ancestor veneration was more than the occasional Dumb Supper at Samhain, and could be, and for many people should be, a major part of their spiritual and magical work. Connections between necromancy, goeteia, and witchcraft began to unfold into people’s awareness. The world of magic got deeper, and with that depth we found ourselves to be neighbors with the residents of the deep other spaces within the sphere of the earth, the faeries, the dead, the aerial spirits, and a host of other beings who previously were not so commonly discussed. 

The lack of weird ideas and misconceptions about ancestor work and the dead made it easier for good material and good ideas to spread without the pushback that new ideas and improved resources sometimes run into. 

Now, there are a handful of books on ancestor veneration. There is at least one business devoted entirely to spiritual classes and retreats focused on ancestral wellness. Ideas no one spoke of before like “generational curses” and “ancestral trauma” have become popular buzzwords. Ancestor altars and ancestral veneration are commonplace. Necromancy even has a place in mainstream occult publishing and amongst classes taught at conferences. To some degree, the attention to these forgotten parts of spirituality and magic have resulted in some things being a bit overblown. That kind of instant ubiquity is common when something new and useful becomes familiar to more people. Unfortunately, the excess noise that constellates around sources of new excitement can cause some people to miss opportunities for deep engagement. It’s easy to get distracted by the sizzle that everyone is selling, and in that excitement, end up forgetting to actually eat the meat. Despite that, for many people, the new prominence held by the dead has opened up doorways to very meaningful experiences. 

I would usually kick off the transition towards actually discussing the nature of the dead and our ability to work with them by asking a question like “So, with this newfound popularity the dead have, who is right? Those who agree with Crowley, that the dead don’t know anything and shouldn’t be bothered with, or those who see them as teachers, leaders, protectors and guides?” The question, while an easy rhetorical set up, would seem ingenuine to anyone familiar with my work. It’s pretty clear that I see work with the dead as beneficial and meaningful. I clearly am on the ancestor veneration side of the fence with no real equivocation about whether or not it is an important or beneficial thing to have within our lives. I believe modern Anglophone culture has a severely unhealthy relationship with the dead, largely because we avoid any kind of real relationship with them. We’re hurt by this fact, and it’s good that the bolts are shaking loose and more of us are finding the door open to reconnecting with those who came before us. 

While I’m solidly on Team Dead People (I should put that on a t-shirt…), I can’t dismiss the alleged Crowley comment as an example of him simply not knowing any better because he didn’t have the best resources available to him. There are definitely opinions and practices in the post-Golden Dawn approach to magic that can easily be explained that way, but this isn’t one of them. The idea that the dead don’t know much wasn’t a new idea. 

This may surprise some people, but the idea that the dead more or less only know what they new in life is kind of well attested. Joshua Trachtenberg wrote a brief section on necromancy and the dead in Jewish Magic and Superstition.  In it he presents the dead as relatively banal, and not in a “fires of banal” kind of way, but in the sort of boring and pedestrian kind of way. He literally describes them as people who spend a lot of time complaining about the clothes they’re forced to wear because of what their families chose to bury them in. Trachtenberg suggests that magic to contact the dead wasn’t especially common in a Jewish context because the dead didn’t know anymore than they knew in life. He presents a picture which leaves the reader to suppose that the dead’s concerns were generally the same kinds of concerns they would have had while living, but within a smaller community formed from the people buried near them. 

This wasn’t just a Jewish perspective on the dead though. Daniel Ogden in Greek and Roman Necromancy describes similar beliefs around the dead. He doesn’t present the Greek and Roman dead as complaining about the clothes they’re buried in, but he describes them as only knowing what they knew in life, or what they might have heard from people passing by in the cemetery. The dead are essentially the same people they were before, but now they have time to pay attention to the good gossip, if someone happens to speak it within earshot. It’s neither an exciting picture of what one is able to get up to in the afterlife, nor of the dead’s ability to meaningfully give us useful information.

Those who have crossed Acheron may fare no better. Having traveled the River of Woe and entered into the underworld, the dead were greeted by a Cypress Tree and a question as to who they were. If one was not taught the mysteries which allow survival through death, then their soul would drink the waters of forgetfulness and who they were in life would more or less be erased. What happened from there varied. Some accounts describe hordes of passive souls in the dark and quiet gloom, others seemed to think that these souls became the material of new souls to be born into the world as new people, having had their old identities erased. This certainly does not indicate that the dead would be useful beings to call upon. 

Despite that, necromancy was present as a system of magic amongst Greeks and Romans. Not only do we know that people utilized necromancy, and that oracles associated with openings to the world of the dead existed, we also know ancestor veneration was common. Both the Greeks and the Romans had cults of the dead. Historians, Pagans, and NeoPagans alike will sometimes talk about the Iron Age Celts as having been head hunters who had a prominent cult of the dead, as if this was their primary religious engagement and as if it was a mode of religiosity that was unique relative to their Mediterranean neighbors. Given that we have information on other modes of religion amongst the Celts, I would imagine that their cult of the dead is not decontextualized from other religious behaviors and that it was a prominent and important part of their culture just like it was for Greeks, Romans, and numerous other traditional cultures. For the Greeks and Romans, in addition to having household religious practices focused around the dead, there were important figures who were honored collectively by the community as heroes or ancestors shared by the community as a whole. There were multiple holidays throughout the year focused on the dead. Some focused on propitiating the dead, some focused on honoring and affirming connections with them. 

The dead were important. The dead were ubiquitous. This is part of why I can easily say that necromancy does not encompass ancestor veneration. In the ancient world, necromancy was, like it is in many cultures today, the work of specialists. In some cultures, these specialists are priests or powerful figures in the community. In others, as seems to have been the case in much of Greece, those who did this kind of magical work were outsiders at the periphery of society. Roman literature continues this trend of showing the necromancer as one who does questionable things and who lives outside the bounds of normal society. Ancestor veneration was wholly within the social norms, and was a necessary part of complying with social norms. In the medieval and early modern periods we still encounter the idea of necromancy. Veneration of the dead, and spirituality founded upon concepts of death and the afterlife were the normative central form of religious devotion through medieval and early modern Europe. Necromancy was a separate series of illicit magical practices outside the bounds of normal religion and society. Necromancy has always been separate from what the average person does in relation to the dead in cultures where the dead remain actively present in the spaces of the living. 

Jumping back to antiquity, we find a world where myths and stories tell us of the dead having their memories erased. We encounter a world which viewed ghosts as limited to the knowledge they held in life. Still, it was a world where the dead were honored and respected. We might ask ourselves why they were honored and respected if they weren’t seen as knowledgeable or effective in the world. From a modern perspective, it’s easy to settle on an answer. Even if the dead are gone, and have no part of our world now, we respect what they gave to us in life; we respect the heritage we have received from them, and we respect the comfort their memory gives to us or to others who knew them. They don’t have to have personhood or agency or the ability to connect with us for us to respect them, so it doesn’t matter if once they die they’re essentially gone aside from their existence in our memories.

That answer works in a relatively materialist world where we give lip service to the idea that basic respect is the baseline that everyone should start with. The reality is that we don’t live in a materialist world, and the kind of respect that becomes veneration usually develops when there are reasons suggesting that someone or something deserves that attention from us. This would have been even more true from the perspective of the ancient world. Clearly, people felt there was value in connecting with their ancestors, and they believed that people who had the ability to raise and empower the dead could gain useful information or accomplish necessary tasks by doing so. 

While Crowley’s apparent perspective, “the dead only know what they knew while alive,” might have been a common perspective in some ancient and medieval cultures, the idea that this meant “don’t bother with them,” doesn’t seem to have been commonly held. If they only know what they knew, what can we learn from them? Why should we connect with them? 

Well, first off, that question is only necessary if we assume that the perspective that they don’t know more than they knew is true just because it’s old. That’s not necessarily the case. It might even be that in the ancient world there were competing views about the afterlife and our relationships with the dead. Maybe some people didn’t hold the view that they were the same as they were while alive, or maybe some people held a view that multiple things go on when you die and so more than one thing can be true at the same time. It would be hard for us to ever know for sure what people used to think. Even if we could know what the average person in 253 BCE thought, we have to answer these questions based on our own perspectives now since these answers will inform our lives, not the lives of people 2000 years ago. 

Answering these questions could mean asking what happens when we die. This is a question I get asked a lot, I suppose because people know that my personal spirituality and magic both involve a fair amount of interaction with the dead. I often demur to giving a solid answer when asked this. I think people find it surprising because one would assume working with the dead would include feeling some certainty about what happens after death. To me that’s a bad epistemological assumption. Personally, I believe lots of things probably happen in the afterlife, even things which would be contradictory in our own living perspective. I don’t think while we’re alive we can or should grasp it in full. Even if the spaces of the dead are open to us, they aren’t open to us in full. Walking too deeply within them, without balancing that association with vibrant living anchors, can open us up to certain dangers. 

There are some things I’m comfortable saying based on my experience. The dead don’t gain access to omniscience or some deep well of all knowledge. They mostly know what they knew while alive, and a little beyond that because they experience things in the afterlife. The afterlife isn’t always entirely the same for everyone. There are better and worse experiences of the afterlife, and our interactions with the dead can and should include helping improve their experience of the afterlife just as we look for them to help us in our experience of life. The dead are more or less who they were while alive, but a lot of the baggage, and damage that is caused by that baggage, is stripped away and healed - death is a weakening of the body and a healing of the soul. In that regard, some of the bad elements of who they may have been, or how they seemed to us in life, aren’t always still there. Opinions and perspectives they had which were problematic might improve because death gives a new and broader perspective. This doesn’t mean the dead automatically become good, or who we want them to be. That broader perspective means that they may be aware of, or have insights into things we don’t see, both in the world of the living and the world of the dead. The elements which remain from who they were while living mean that they understand human experience and human needs in a way other spirits don’t, and it often means they are invested in us. The part of the person we interact with and see is not the only piece of them which exists; various components of our soul complex experience different things as the body separates from the rest of the complex. 

Learning from the dead, engaging with them, and connecting to them both for memory and for veneration, are not limited to an exploration of what knowledge they possess. In an esoteric sense, the world is built upon the sea of the dead. The world of the living sits upon the boundary between our world and the world of the dead. Elements of the afterlife mirror life. We are born into the world of the living, and we die from this world to be born in the afterlife. We grow and develop differently in life and afterlife, but both occur. The dead remember us, and we remember them, and when we support the dead we open doors for them to support us. We live adjacent to the dead even though a river separates us, and two worlds grow from that river, the world of Life and the world of Afterlife. 

Less esoterically speaking our world is built upon and from the dead themselves. Everything in our experience was once something else or a part of something else. The old thing is not what it was before, or is not in the condition it was before, and in a way no longer exists. It is the same idea expressed by the saying “you can’t step in the same river twice.” The very act of stepping into the river changes it in some way, even if it is a small and fleeting way. In a very direct sense, our furniture and our books are made from the bodies of slain trees. Our clothes and our food come from dead plants and animals, or at least parts of them that are no longer attached to a living organism. Plastics, gasoline, and natural gas come from the remains of ancient, now dead, organisms - but apparently, most likely not from dinosaurs. We think of things made from metal and stone as inert and not alive, but from an animistic perspective these things also have life and removing them from their context or changing them significantly might change elements of that life from what it was to something new. In terms of a continuity with organic material, as bodies decay, minerals which were in them leak out into soil and may become part of new stones or dirt, and so the more quotidian cycle of life and death might have touched the development of these non-organic materials as well.  

Living upon the sea of the dead in a world built from the dead means our potential for interaction with the dead and learning from the dead is near endless. There can be deep meaning in learning from the dead in fully exoteric ways. We can hear stories of those who came before us and learn what made them successful or what made them fail - both generally and in specific endeavors - and we can learn how to apply those lessons in our own lives. We can read books, journals, notes, instructions, and recipes left by those who came before us. We continue chains and lineages of teaching in numerous disciplines where things that were taught to someone generations ago are passed down to our teachers, through them to us, and then so forth to those that we will teach. We can look at remains that have been left behind, whether we mean clothing, tools, buildings, or bodies, and learn things about the world around us and how people once interacted with it and this can inform how we move forward. 

These means of learning from the dead are so necessary in life that they are virtually omnipresent. We don’t think of them as learning from the dead or engaging the dead most of the time. When we do, it can add deep meaning to them. When we do things like make a soup, or bake a cake, we might use a recipe our father taught us that he learned from his mother, that she learned from her father. When we prepare it we think back on memories of our father making it when we were young. We are reminded of visits to our grandmother, and her stories of her father who we might have never known. 

There is a comfort and connection produced in linking together these people who now reside within us and whose impact continues through our own interactions with the world. This gives us a space in which we can understand the comfort of ancestor veneration and the continuity that it solidifies into meaningful contact and connection without us needing to consider at all what the dead know or how we can speak to them to learn the secrets of the afterlife. The dead teach us in numerous ways. Those ways gain meaning when we understand that they are the dead teaching us and that the dead continue through us as we will then continue through those who learn from us. 

This is not all there is though. Nothing about what I described there is magic. It can be spiritually meaningful, and may even be part of how we engage the dead spiritually. The broader use of the word magical to explain a sort of comfortable sense of wonder certainly applies there, but the more proper “magical” -  the magical that is intended when we speak of sorcery and witchcraft - doesn’t have to enter into those exoteric ways of learning from the dead at all. The magic remains, and so that tells us that there is more. 

We live upon the sea of the dead, and from that sea forms and currents can arise which take the shape of powers and personages recognizable by different cultures. Elements of the dead give power and life to these forms which coalesce from our communal awareness, our aspirations, our needs, and our desires, interacting with echoes of people, legends, myths and stories that tell us about what came before and which carry the character and nature of those desires and aspirations. The power and life these forms have comes from the power and life of the collective dead, and their knowledge comes from the collective insight of that power spoken through the voice of the identity through which it manifests. 

The dead themselves can also, often with our help, arise through that sea. With the heat of fire, and the exchange of gifts, they can move through the river from which both worlds arise and speak with us, work with us, and aid us. Depending on how clearly we need them to speak, or how powerfully we need them to work, we might use different techniques to contact them and bring them forth. We might give them different things to give them a stronger voice, or to empower their hands to shape things in our world. We might have to link them to the world more, or speed their wit and brighten their memory. This is part of the depiction of the dead in the dark gloom of Avernus. The fog of beings who have forgotten who they are and who have lost the voice with which to speak becomes able to interact with us and aid us when given elements of life. That necromantic approach doesn’t require that we buy fully into an afterlife predicated upon drinking the waters of forgetfulness. It does imply that we understand that the state of the dead is not the same as the state of the living, and that some types of communication and interaction are more difficult and need more empowerment. 

Getting into the specifics of an ancestor work approach versus a necromantic approach and when to use one or another is outside the scope of what we’re exploring here. But, we’ve touched on both in the paragraph above. We can reach out to the dead and connect with them in a variety of ways. Those ways will impact our experience, as well as the experience of those we call upon. The different ways we call upon them and interact with them will color how they’re able to interact with the world - but we can experience communication with them either way, even though there may be differences in how we experience communication depending upon the mode of contact used. 

When we call upon the dead to speak with them and learn from them directly it is not unlike calling upon an older relative, friend, or mentor for guidance. We don’t have to be looking for deep esoteric secrets. We don’t have to be asking for hidden truths beyond the depths of the perceptions and understanding of the living. We can ask them about how to deal with the things we’re experiencing. We can ask them to guide us to answers that will show us how to do things or understand things that they didn’t have the chance to teach us in life. They will have perspectives based in their own life experiences, but also in their afterlife experiences. Those afterlife experiences may include awareness of elements of our lives and the spiritual components impacting our lives which we do not see. The dead have helped me figure out what spirits to call upon to deal with things, how to pray about a situation, how to adapt the magic I was going to work. They have also shown me simple things like when to wait, when to be patient or kind, or when to neglect or ignore things that seemed important to me so I can focus on things that truly needed my attention more. These aren’t necessarily the big questions that John Dee called upon angels to get answered, but they’re useful things that speak guidance and help to us drawn from the perspective of someone near to us, but who can see far more broadly than us. 

With that in mind, it doesn’t matter so much that the dead don’t tap into the expansive sources of universal knowledge. It’s ok if they’re like us. It’s good that they’re human. They understand us and our lives in ways other spirits don’t. Even if they only know what they knew in life that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother with them. Living life means we can’t opt not to bother with the dead because everything is touched in some way by death and the dead. But like those of us who are living, the dead still learn things about their world, and observe things when they have access to our world. Their knowledge remains a form of human knowledge, but it isn’t bounded solely by the moments which held their first and last breaths.

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Do We Need the Word Adorcism?

 I have, on a few occasions, asserted that I don’t like the word adorcism. I clearly like words. I make a lot of posts and comments about word use and the meanings of words. So, it probably isn’t surprising that there are words about which I have strong opinions. I am going to try not to waste a blog post by just writing “ugh, I hate adorcism so much!” My goal is to talk about modes of interacting with spirits while talking about why the word isn’t the best option for discussing spirit interactions. 

So…what is adorcism? It’s a word that developed in the field of religious anthropology. Luc de Heusch was a Belgian filmmaker who moved into the field of anthropology in the 1950s. He coined the word adorcism. It seems his original use of the word was to describe acts to placate a possessing spirit, or to make it happy. This allows for interactions with a possessing spirit, whether in possession of a person or a place, to be a positive relationship instead of only adversarial. The term reflects the fact that many cultures engage spirit relationships which include possession in positive and devotional contexts rather than purely apotropaic ones. 

Eventually, the word came to be used to describe positive possession or voluntary possessions. This seems to be the way the word is most often used, although “most often” is still kind of limited. It’s not a super broadly used term in modern magic and occultism. I have noticed some increase in use, but it mostly comes up amongst practitioners who have a background in Harner’s Core Shamanism. 

The connection with the Core Shamanism community makes sense since that system draws very heavily from anthropological ways of structuring and analyzing spiritual and religious traditions. The idea of voluntary possession would also be more relevant to that community than the broader occult community since positive possession has largely been under explored in most modern occultism. Fortunately, that lack of exploration seems to be shifting. 

As positive or intentional possession becomes more common in modern occult communities we need words to describe it. So, why not adorcism? 

Well, in a very basic sense, it’s a nonsensical neologism. While it has become popular to assert that language is descriptive rather than prescriptive, in order to function descriptively, it still needs to follow basic rules so people can understand it. 

Adorcism breaks the same rule polyamory breaks…although, maybe hypocritically, I’m fine with the word polyamory. Both words combine Greek and Latin elements. Typically, when we use Greek or Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes, we primarily stick components from one source or another - but not always. 

That’s a pretty minor problem though. The bigger problem is that the word is gobbledygook. Ad means to or towards, and is used as an opposite for ex, which means from. So, if exorcism is forcefully casting out a spirit then adorcism is kindly inviting a spirit, right?

That would work if “orcism” meant something like “cast” or “direct a spirit.” Exorcism would then mean “direct a spirit away from,” and adorcism would mean “direct a spirit into.” It would make a lot of sense. But, “orcism” doesn’t mean anything. It’s derived from “horkizein” meaning “to cause to swear” and horkizein, in turn, comes from “horkos” meaning “oath.” 

Exorcism doesn’t mean driving out a spirit, it means conjuration. Conjuration essentially breaks down to “bound together by oath.”  Both words refer to the application of a source of authority, usually in the form of a name of or relationship with a divine figure. By applying this authority the magician and the spirit are bound together by the power of that authority to each uphold their duties and responsibilities to one another and anything they agree on together. 

From that perspective, while “ad” may be an antonym for “ex,” adorcism is not an antonym for exorcism. Now, I’ve seen some people say that they hadn’t thought of it as an antonym for exorcism, but that seems to clearly be the idea behind the word. That idea is part of the problem. By framing exorcism as the forceful casting out of a spirit and adorcism as a devotional invitation of a spirit it misinforms the populace. The type of relationship and interaction which is described by “adorcism” is in a wholly unrelated category from the relationship described by “exorcism,” and the difference isn’t one of in/out, willful/non-consenting - the whole mechanism and the perspective on the spirits and their role within the community or while interacting with humans is entirely different. 

To start unpacking this, we should first circle back to the idea of exorcism. 

Exorcism is not always or exclusively the casting out of a spirit. Exorcism includes willfully calling upon spirits. Voluntary possession can also occur within the context of exorcism. Magicians are referred to as exorcists in some magical texts. An exorcism is establishing a relationship in which the exorcist can interact with, influence, and possibly direct a spirit through the application of divine authority. There is an inherent component of binding when discussing exorcism, but, again, not just of the spirit, also of the magician. 

The binding element is one of the factors that distinguishes the relationship in exorcism from that of adorcism. Another element that distinguishes them is that exorcism can both be used as a process for calling a spirit in as well as for sending a spirit away…at least, that seems like a distinction at first, but it may not be. 

Exorcism can be a magical act in which we get spirits to do things for us or explain things to us. The Catholic Church recognizes this and actually instructs its exorcists against using the process that way. They understand that the Roman Ritual Exorcism has the same essential elements needed to perform a magical exorcism. Exorcism can also be a curative act in which a vexing spirit is sent away. It is not the drawing out of a spirit, but the commanding and binding of a spirit. When used to send a spirit away, specifically, it is apotropaic exorcism. 

For those unfamiliar, apotropaic magic is magic that protects against something. An apotropaic exorcism is the use of binding and commanding a spirit to prevent it from harming or bothering someone. But, not all exorcism is apotropaic. 

As said above, we can use exorcism to call upon spirits to ask them to do things. Anytime we use the rituals of the Heptameron, The Dannel, the Ars Goetia, or even several PGM texts, along with numerous other rituals from various grimoires and remnants and fragments from other cultures, we are using forms of exorcism. The PGM texts include examples of using secret and magical names to call upon gods and spirits to directly appear. This theurgic or magical experience of a god or spirit showing up in a clear vision for the magician is called an epiphany. There are also a few examples in the PGM where the spirit is called to inhabit the person who is doing the spell, or a vessel who is working with the person casting the spell. This is a form of voluntary possession accomplished through tools of exorcism. In Familiar Unto Me: Witches Sorcerers and Their Spirit Companions I published a ritual and discussion of the use of the ritual in which the tools of exorcism were applied for the purpose of willful voluntary spirit possession. 

What are we talking about when we use the word adorcism?

Heusch described it as actions to placate or accommodate a possessing spirit. Later definitions say that it is voluntary or curative possession. These are very different things. We should explore each of them. 

Accommodating or placating a spirit gives us a lot of direction in thinking about this. When we call upon spirits we often do things to welcome them and in that process we might do things that make them easier to receive or easier to work with. This might include giving them water to soothe them, using soothing music, or giving sweet foods to sweeten or please them. Sometimes this might involve coaxing or complimenting language, although that might also be used in calling them in the first place. 

This is working an entirely different type of relationship from exorcism. In exorcism, even if there is not antagonism between the exorcist and the spirit, there is typically distance between them. The process is not a friendly process, even if we feel friendly and comfortable with the spirits. They are commanded to come, or compelled to come when we work through an exorcistic structure. This other mode of working implores the spirit to come, or requests for the spirit to come by calling upon or asking the spirit itself. We aren’t calling upon the spirit’s superiors; we’re calling to the spirit directly. In many traditions music is involved. Sometimes the spirit is praised. Sometimes gifts are presented to the spirit in the process of calling it. 

The spirit has the power and the ability to make decisions when we invite the spirit by approaching it as a supplicant, an ally, or a friend. This is the big difference between exorcism and techniques we might describe as adorcism. In these more congenial processes there may also be particular rhythms, songs, materials, designs and decorations, or other ritual techniques which might increase the likelihood of success or which might give us a little more leverage in creating the interaction. In many such cases, when multiple people are involved, the spirit might choose who it wants to interact with or through. There is, to some degree, a more open and organic structure in such circumstances. 

When we consider the idea of placating a possessing spirit, that could also involve dealing with a spirit that is possessing someone or inhabiting a place non-consensually, or in a vexing manner. So, apotropaic adorcism is also possible. The easiest example to think of in such a case is a haunting. You can go into a haunted space and call upon more powerful or authoritative spirits to forcibly clear the haunting or to command out the haunting spirit. Or, you can go in and offer gifts and consolation to calm the disturbed spirit, you might need to coax the spirit out, or calm the spirit and offer it a new place to reside. 

Some people might position the difference between these approaches on the basis of animism. Some would claim that one is animistic and the other isn’t. This is kind of an unfair value judgment. Both approaches are animistic. One is friendlier than the other, but just like with humans some situations need a friendly approach, some need a forceful one, and some need you to call in someone with more power and authority. 

This is another issue with the adorcism/exorcism dichotomy. While there isn’t an inherent expression that one is better than the other, by using words which suggest that they are opposites it can easily imply or indicate to people that they are opposing approaches, which for many people would lead to the assumption that one is good and one is bad. In reality, both are tools to have in a toolkit. It is reasonable to assume that cultures with a more animistic awareness will often have both approaches available to apply in the appropriate circumstances. 

So, if we really think about it, most of us are probably familiar with interactions in which we placate or accommodate a spirit. If we keep a shrine and make offerings, if we pleasantly entreat a spirit and give it gifts when it arrives, if a coax and sweet talk a spirit into aiding us, or any manner of thing we do to be pleasing or to seem kind and inviting when dealing with a spirit to get it to show up, help out, or vacate a space falls into this category. 

Framing of the concept of possession might need to be expanded from what most people think of when they think of possession if we want to keep this concept specific to “possessing” spirits. Possession doesn’t always mean a spirit is in the driver’s seat occupying a body, or that it is occupying a space and keeping people out. Possession can refer to a closer interactive proximity between a spirit and a human, or a spirit being present in a space in ways that are noticeable and interactive. 

When we consider these factors, many of us engage in these interactions with spirits. We don’t necessarily think of them as adorcism, even though the original meaning of the word would include these things. Whether we need a word or not to describe these activities is a question that I’m not sure I have an answer to. If we have a shrine and a spirit resides there or routinely occupies that space and we give it cool water, flowers, and sweet incense then we’re making offerings. We’re tending to the shrine. We’re honoring our spirit relationships. We don’t call these things adorcism, and if we did, it would likely create confusion. We have clear ways to describe these interactions even if we don’t have a set word for them. 

Do we need words for cooling or soothing a possessing spirit beyond the words cooling or soothing? Do we need a special term for coaxing out a ghost by resolving its issues or offering gifts and a new place to live? Maybe, but maybe not. 

Either way, while we could technically apply adorcism in those instances, it isn’t how most people use the term. Voluntary, desired, or curative possession is the more common usage. Adorcistic invocation might be used to describe ritual processes for calling a spirit in for a temporary possession, regardless of whether the intention is a partial or a full possession. So, let’s explore that concept. 

First, let’s consider a popular form of intentional possession in European Traditional Magic. The Abramelin working. The Abramelin working is primarily focused on preparing the magician and focusing the magician so that they are ready to receive their Holy Guardian Angel. The Angel doesn’t enter into and control the magician, but the invocation of the angel at the end of the months long preparatory ritual establishes a special relationship with the Angel. We can call upon and interact with the Angel without doing the Abramelin ritual. The point of the Abramelin ritual is to immerse us into such a focused and purified state that we can enter into a closer communion with the Angel and create an on going bond of awareness and interaction. We’re causing the spirit to reside in close and openly interactive proximity. We’re creating a form of possession. Most people would not call the Abramelin ritual adorcism or adorcistic. 

The anthropological origin of the word associates it with cultures outside the white European context. When we think of adorcism we think of North Asian shamans and African religious and magical systems. Those were the sorts of cultures the word was developed to describe. In Pagan and NeoPagan contexts sometimes it is used to talk about supplicating a god in the manner that many NeoPagan books would call invocation, or calling upon a god or spirit with the intention that it enter you. Most NeoPagan books use the term “invocation” for this process, but that word is incorrect. Some writers and teachers have adopted adorcism as an alternate term. In wide use though, we don’t apply it in those more European inspired contexts. 

There is an element to the term which reflects the colonizer’s ethnographic gaze. 

Despite that, is the term describing something which is exclusively different from exorcism, or something which needs its own special word? 

Let’s start off with the idea of curative possession. This could include rituals in which a spirit is called upon and the possessing spirit enters and afflicted person and repairs the underlying spiritual conditions which have allowed, or which maintain the affliction. Curative possession can also involve the religious functionary or magician being possessed or partially possessed by a spirit and the spirit works through that individual to cure an afflicted third party. 

These curative components can be achieved through exorcism as well. The most obvious way in which exorcism is applied as a cure is to bind vexing spirits and direct them to leave the afflicted individual. Rituals which use smokes, clanging instruments, bells, and physical motions meant to drive out a spirit work from a similar perspective of driving out an afflicting spirit. This latter series of approaches would neither be adorcism nor exorcism but we might associate these kinds of practices with the same sorts of functionaries whose approach to spirits would be seen as adorcistic. 

If we’re looking at the functionary as working with a possessing spirit to heal a third party, the possession could be achieved either adorcistically or exorcistically and have the same result. Similarly, if the spirit is being called upon to enter or interact with and heal the afflicted directly, this could be accomplished in either manner. If we are driving the spirit away, it could be removed from vexing the afflicted individual either through command and authority, or through coaxing and pleasing offerings. Both approaches can be applied curatively. The prevailing difference is the nature of how we call upon or interact with the spirits involved. 

Being curative is not in and of itself a distinction, or an element which we can say defines something as adorcistic rather than exorcistic. Both can be curative. Both can be used for essentially the same approaches to being curative. The main distinction is how we interact with the spirit and where the control resides. 

So, then, voluntary or desired possession. This is really the part that stands out because this is how the word is most commonly used. An individual might engage in adorcistic prayer to call a spirit into them to possess them. The nature and quality of the prayer aren’t necessarily the distinguishing factors, but the idea that the possession is a willful voluntary process either initiated by or welcomed by the possessed. 

To understand this, we have to remember that possession can refer to a wide range of things. In most cases in modern occultism and in NeoPagan traditions, we’re talking about partial possession. This could be as minimal as the supplicant receiving the presence and blessing of the spirit with some part of the spirit’s power moving through them. The supplicant remains aware and in control and can direct that power as they need to. A step further from that might include the spirit or god communicating closely with the supplicant while they are in communion with one another. The supplicant might hear the voice of the god or spirit, or have thoughts or knowledge arise that are originated by the possessing spirit, but the supplicant again remains in control. The next step, or perhaps a parallel step, might involve the supplicant speaking or acting in ways which convey the presence of the spirit, or even exuding a presence that other people recognize as that of the spirit. This could happen while the supplicant remains primarily in control, but their tone, manner, or movement show influence from the spirit, or this kind of possession could be a more negotiated control in which the supplicant and the spirit are in control together or each intermittently. The final variety is full possession in which the spirit is primarily in control, and the supplicant is a present observer, or the supplicant may have no or limited awareness of what happened while possessed. 

These various phases may be more or less familiar to people depending upon their background. Even for magicians, Pagans, and NeoPagans who have not worked in a living spirit tradition which utilizes possession, some of these types of partial possession might still have been experienced. 

In the typical vernacular of mass market alternative religion and spirituality the process of calling a god or spirit into you in any capacity is often called invocation. This is then distinguished from evocation, in which a spirit is called to appear or interact with you but not to enter you. Both of these interactions could be forms of possession or partial possession. The use of the terms invocation and evocation here is an incorrect usage. That usage has been popular for quite some time. Ceremonial magic writers made a distinction between invocation and evocation claiming that invocation involved higher spirits who were called into the circle with the magician, and evocation was for lower spirits who were called to appear outside of the circle. Since the circle and the magician are connected as a congruous spiritual space it’s an easy jump to interpret invocation as referring to calling spirits into the magician, particularly if one also adopts a dichotomy of higher and lower spirits, in which case you would be comfortable calling higher spirits into you, but not lower spirits. 

The usage in Ceremonial Magic is not correct either though. It is likely that early writers in modern Ceremonial Magic were familiar with the stages of Solomonic conjuration, as these are outlined in Agrippa. Invocation of God is one stage, while another stage is called evocation and refers to calling upon the spirit. This could easily lead writers to think of higher spirits as invoked and lower spirits as evoked. 

In the case of Solomonic magic, the distinction probably isn’t about who is being invoked or evoked, but simply that different words more clearly convey that these are two different elements of the ritual. The words invoke and evoke are more or less synonymous. Outside of religious language there is some distinction between them in terms of how they are used but the meanings remain similar and they are often defined using each other. To invoke or to evoke, in the context of religion, is more or less to earnestly pray and call upon someone or something. So these words don’t describe what we’re doing when we engage in voluntary possession, but they interchangeably describe the act of praying for such a thing to happen. The prayer could be described as invocation regardless of whether we are using an adorcistic prayer of an exorcistic prayer. 

So, the distinction isn’t one of into us, versus into our space, as both can be possessing relationships. The distinction isn’t one of how deeply possessed the individual is. The distinction is who are we asking and how are we asking. 

If I draw a pontos on the ground and offer cachaca and cigars, red palm oil, and flat bread and sing:

“It was Exu Rey who sent him

It was Exu Rey who sent his Marabo

He will take care of everything I do

If I make a request he will back it up

His Marabo is coming from the crossroads

He comes from afar, he comes from there

There is no arrogance, only wisdom

It is also the strength of the people of the sea…”

We could say I’m working adorcistically.

If I draw a seal surrounded by planetary characters, trace crosses in the air with a sword, and ardently pray:

Most High God, Creator of Heaven and Earth before whom all knees bend, by your Holy Name Adonai Tzaveot I call upon the archangel Michael. Michael of the second heaven, where the angels pray daily Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh, I conjure upon you by the Holy Name Shaddai El Chai, the Most High God, the Lord of Life, come forth by the power of the name you adore, Eheieh Asher Eheieh, and aid me in all tasks put before you, in the name of the Lord of Hosts…

We could say I’m working exorcistically.

In either case, the resulting intention could be myself or another individual being possessed by the spirit being called, and that possession could be pursued to any of the above described levels of possession. 

Willful or voluntary possession itself is not the distinction, nor is the nature or thoroughness of the possession. 

The distinction is whether we are asking or we are commanding. Does that distinction require a difference in terms? Possibly…and if it does, we have an easy pair of terms to use. Exu Rey is being supplicated and Michael is being exorcised or conjured. 

Neither of those words tell us that possession is going to happen though. The original use of adorcism didn’t described causing a possession. It described interacting with a possession. The original use is more useful in giving us an understanding of the distinction because it describes a particular manner rather than a goal. As we have pointed out, the goal can be achieved using the tools of exorcism, or it can be achieved using supplication. 

That said, neither supplication nor exorcism tell us that we’re seeking a possession. More importantly than words to distinguish appealing to the big boss man from pleasantly and sweetly asking modern occultists need words to describe the pursuit of possession and probably also the various gradations of form it takes. 

The Catholic Church has words to address different levels of possession. Infestation describes possession of a place, typically, and often involving more than one spirit. Obsession refers to possession in which the spirit is often present and occupies the attention of the individual and may communicate closely with the individual. Oppression is when the spirit is present more directly within the individual and guides, directs and influences them. Full possession occurs when the spirit is often or primarily in control. 

None of these terms work for discussing magic because they only address unwilling and harmful possession. Awareness of these sorts of categorizations is useful for magicians and for specialists and clergy in Pagan and NeoPagan religions because different levels of spirit vexation can occur, and having a language to address their severity can be useful in assessing them and determining how to deal with them. 

The fact that the European language of possession is largely rooted in Catholicism and presupposes negative, unwilling, or harmful possession is part of why a word like adorcism would come into being. Since exorcism is most clearly associated with the approach rooted in the Catholic outlook it makes sense that a word that seemed opposite to that would be applied for more holistic and positive seeming methods. But, as we have thoroughly discussed, both the structure of the word and the comparison misunderstand what exorcism is in the first place. 

In modern magical literature we do have words that describe some of the types of possession above. Assumption of Godforms, and Drawing Down both generally describe the idea of calling upon a divine or spiritual being so that some piece of them or their power enters into and works through or merges with the magician or cleric. These have relatively specific contexts which might imply that we’re talking about specific rites. Many people also don’t think of these acts as forms of possession even though they are. 

Another popular term in magical and NeoPagan literature is “aspecting.” Aspecting is the phase of possession in which the possessed speaks, acts, moves, or takes on mannerisms that are similar to the possessing spirit, or their presence exudes the energy and presence of that spirit. The possessed is usually still in control in the case of aspecting. Again, people don’t always think of this as possession. I have had some priestesses explain that when “Drawing Down the Moon” there is a theatrical component in which you dress and act to convey the presence of the Goddess to the coven. In the EGC, some priests and priestesses also think of their roles as theatrical. Rather than thinking of it as a spiritual presence inhabiting the cleric and influencing how the cleric moves, speaks, and acts, they think of themselves as reflecting upon, or maybe connecting with a spiritual nature or spiritual being and then actively conducting themselves in a way to convey what that connection feels like or expresses to them. In some cases, this is just a distinction in understanding, in others it’s more of a distinction in fact, but it’s certainly not the case for all clergy in these traditions. Some people recognize that they are engaging real spiritual presences or real spirits or real gods and understand that they are influenced by that engagement and that that engagement expresses itself through them to engage the rest of the people who are also present. 

So aspecting is a good and useful term when it’s framed in a manner that it conveys real interaction with a truly present spirit. 

That still leaves us in need of terms for the overall experience of willful possession. It may also be useful to have terms for the various phases and kinds of possession. I don’t claim to have answers for what all those terms should be or if we have terms for all of them. 

Regarding possession, I personally use “positive possession.” Another good option is “voluntary possession.” If we want to describe the act of seeking possession and specify the manner in which we are pursuing it we might use “I am supplicating Zeus to possess me,” or “I am exorcising Vassago to possess my medium.” There are potentially more poetic terms that could be used. Personally, I think horse and rider, or being ridden are great terms, but they might come across as culturally appropriative or imply particular religious or cultural contexts in which we may not be engaging. 

As far as phases of possession, that probably gets more complicated in terms of determining terminology. We’d need to determine how granular we want to get with phases. I’ve seen some teachers use Phase One, Phase Two, etc.. Amongst magicians working in the grimoire tradition, and some adjacent Ceremonial Magicians, terms like “Crowned” have become popular when describing a relatively permanent possession state, or “Seated” to describe some of the less complete and more temporary states. These words would work well if we had a clear delineation of what we mean by them, but they might also run into issues of appropriation. 

To clarify, these are English words and they’re relatively standard English words, so the words themselves are not a problem. The context and use as specific jargon might potentially feel or be seen as problematic. Horse, horsed, rider, ridden, seated, and crowned as words to describe possession all come out of uses in African Diaspora traditions. When magicians working in European Traditional Magic, the Grimoire Tradition, the Solomonic Tradition, or Ceremonial Magic use these terms it is directly due to influence from or awareness off these African Diaspora traditions. Because of that, it could come across as if we’re saying that our processes or experiences are the same as theirs when each has its own elements. There may be some similarity or a relationship, there may be inspiration, but that doesn’t make them identical. In that regard, the words could create confusion. It is that potential for confusion that could be problematic rather than the words themselves. There is a fair argument that because these words are English words, using them could be ok if it’s done so in a manner that makes it clear that they’re describing similar but not the same phenomena. I’m not sure we can fully make that clear without caveats, which would take away the convenience of using these words. 

Regardless of what words I would propose, they would only be useful if others also wanted to use them. In the end, this is, perhaps, a very long invitation, a supplication, and adorcistic invocation for you, dear reader, to consider the nature, kinds, and phases of possession, and the ways to engage possession and in doing so, ponder over what words we should uncover that might apply to these concepts. 

While I think I have demonstrated why adorcism and adorcistic are maybe not the best or most useful words, I hope it is clear that this post was really about spirit interactions. As we deepen our exploration of how to live and work in a world that we know to be a living and animistic spiritual ecosystem we have to engage and consider many elements of how we interact with that world. We need to consider the manner of our interactions, the purposes of our interactions, and the varied gradations which might give us greater detail in understanding the possibilities for interaction and therefore increase our options for being an engaged part of this world. That is really the main point of this exploration. I hope that was evident and interesting. 

Whether one chooses to continue using, or adopt the use of adorcism as a term, or to avoid it and look for something else, it gave us a really good jumping off point to deepen discussion of positive possession and how we can think about it, how we can approach it, and the tools we have to achieve it. Beyond just this one question of terminology, it also opens the door to considering a broader range of terminology for the various details and permutations of purpose, kind, and manner. Hopefully more of us will weigh in on considering the possibilities, both in terms of how we engage, utilize and more deeply explore these options as well as how we term and discuss them. 

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