If you haven’t read it here’s part one.
It may have been more appropriate to call this drinking with a demon…we ate food, mostly after hanging out with the demon. But the demon was only interested in the booze. You know, you bring someone out for a nice evening and then you realize in the end they only want one thing…I guess that’s just how it goes.
It may have been more appropriate to call this drinking with a demon…we ate food, mostly after hanging out with the demon. But the demon was only interested in the booze. You know, you bring someone out for a nice evening and then you realize in the end they only want one thing…I guess that’s just how it goes.
Anyway.
This ritual was an interesting experience, leading up to it, during, and after.
The original ritual, the one in which we originally bound the demon, was cool
too. But it had less of a lead up, probably because we didn’t have a
relationship with the demon being called beforehand, whereas this time we had
two years of work with the spirit who was literally taking center chair.
When
we did the original ritual I had spent weeks prepping. Making the incenses, the
paint, collecting and consecrating tools, preparing myself. Building the space
for the experience and drawing together the forces to create it. Again, nothing
too interesting happened as part of that process though, at least nothing that
jumps to mind two years later.
During
the ritual itself we had a couple pretty cool moments though. Particularly,
visions the scryer had of the spirit responding to things I was doing of which
she was unaware, and then multiple people having visions of the same spirit.
Several other people came up and told me that they had interesting experiences
communing with the spirit. Part of me has always kind of wondered about people
individually communing with a spirit simultaneously. In most smaller group
rituals I’ve run people take turns interacting with the spirit or interact
through a central person. I never really heard what people got out of the
ritual in this case. But again, since multiple people had the same vision of
the spirit maybe the spirit can talk with more than one person at a time. It
makes sense from certain angles.
This
ritual was different from that though.
This
time we were calling on a spirit with whom we have a very involved
relationship. He is housed prominently in our lodge space with his own altar.
His altar receives decorations and gifts during parties. He’s fed according to
his contract every event and sometimes more often than that. He has a close
relationship with his two primary caretakers. He has been involved with one of
them previously in possession work during a spirit fete hosted by a guest
organization. So the spirit is pretty closely tied to us, and in particularly
closely tied with the woman who would be his vessel.
The
things that happened before we called the demon were pretty minor.
Coincidences, synchronicities. Maybe they were nothing. Maybe they were the
demon poking at things.
With
this ritual I did not do weeks of preparation. I barely had time to put the
ritual together. I had hoped to. But it just wasn’t the time. Everything seemed
to lead me away from preparation, so I ended up running around just before the
ritual frantically grabbing things…but then also realizing…I needed a lot less
for this.
One
of the things I needed was perfume. While prepping the ritual the thought
entered my head that this wasn’t a Holy Water ritual. It should be sensual.
Perfumes and colognes should replace the Holy Water. Robes should be replaced,
for most people, by freedom to dress or undress as they so desired. It should
be an opportunity to, as certain goats say, live deliciously.
I
did not want to bring the Old Spice I had at home. I wanted new cologne. So I
went to the store and discovered all the perfumes and colognes were locked
up…except…for the Old Spice. It was the day before Fathers’ Day and they did
not even have colognes in the Fathers’ Day aisle. I only had a few minutes and
there were no sales people. I was stuck with Old Spice. It was weird because
the Old Spice was about $8 and some of the locked-up colognes went as low as
$4. There was no logic.
When
I got to the Lodge somehow the Old Spice ended up on the table in the meeting
room, all my other supplies were still in the single box I carried into the
temple. When I happened into the meeting room our Vessel was questioning why it
was there and if someone was pranking her. When I explained what it was and how
we ended up with it, she explained that her father generally smelled of Old
Spice and Deet. She’d been outside at an event all day and was covered in Deet
and now I’d be baptizing her in Old Spice. Due to past trauma she has no
contact with her father or other members of her family. Based on some other
conversation and interaction with the spirit this was taken potentially as a
prank at his arranging and it was determined to stick with the plan rather than
adjust.
Almost
immediately after this, the Lodge’s Abramelin oil was found to be missing. So
we had to switch the anointing oil to High John the Conquerer, which honestly
seemed more appropriate for reconfirming the demon. High John has associations with
blues and blues musicians are children of the devil – their own words not mine.
The magic associated with High John has more connection to figures like the
crossroads devil, than the temple and angelic associations of the Abramelin
Oil.
There
was also some strange luck with the floor circles in which I was confused about
which King I was calling. Each spirit we called had a circle drawn on the floor
placed based upon its role or nature. After drawing the circles on the floor
based on my mistake…it turned out the circle was accidentally in place for the
correct King, before I realized I needed to correct which King. It also
improved the position for the Ancestors. The fortuitousness ended there as I
looked up the wrong seal, but it worked out.
At
least a few days before these things happened, it seems that another spirit may
have helped organize one of the gifts given to the lodge’s familiar. The lodge
recently did a ritual to the Witches’ Devil which resulted in people being
given familiars. There were some physical signs around the demon’s altar that
this ritual happening excited him. One of the main caretakers for our demon
explained how his familiar wanted to get a particular item as an offering, when
it didn’t work out his familiar told him not to worry about it that he’d taken
care of it otherwise. Someone else ended up attending, and this hard to find
item was the gift he gave. Apparently it arrived the same day he had been drawn
to a bunch of items which related to the caretaker’s familiar. This person was
previously unaware of the other familiars.
Like
I said, small stuff. Maybe nothing, maybe something. I’m being a little vague
on the gift one, which is unfortunate because of the small things it’s the most
interesting.
When
we conjured the demon there were two elements to the final conjuration. One was
me using names from the Hygromanteia to open the Vessel while she used a
modified conjuration from the PGM. The two ended up fitting perfectly, the last
word of each ending at the same moment. When the connection between the Demon
and the Vessel solidified he announced his presence by shooting back a full goblet
of whiskey. This kind of kicked off the rest of the process. Which was largely
drinking…a lot.
The
Vessel isn’t a fan of bourbon, and is allergic to wormwood. In the span of
about 40 minutes or so she did “shots” but those shots were full goblets of
whiskey and some absinthe. There were probably fifteen or so of these. During
the ritual it wasn’t striking the insane amount of alcohol she consumed but
later on it dawned on me. She remained lucid, coherent, stable, completely
unaffected for about two hours until the possession ended. When it wrapped up
there were two intense rounds of projectile vomiting of massive amounts of dark
vomit. Significantly more than seemed reasonable. I’ve done heavy alcohol
rituals with this woman before with no vomiting and I’ve seen her drunk on a
lot less. Honestly, she probably shouldn’t have been standing by the end of the
ritual let alone the time after the ritual. Once we wrapped up the spirit
continued to speak to people privately through her. She requested an agreement
with the spirit beforehand that he not indulge so much that she wouldn’t be
able to function at an outdoor event the next day. The next day she was
completely fine and able to function.
A
few days later we spoke about the experience, and she explained she had no
memory of anything after the point where we were doing the prayers together
until the point where she was laying on a couch after vomiting. Not in a black
out drunk kind of way. Her awareness ended before that started.
While
the spirit was interacting with people, standing a few feet away from him was
like standing in waves of sickening fire. But when the spirit was excited and
focused on talking with someone the fire focused in and relented. His aura
would then reextend with its waves of discomfort when he became less focused
again. It was kind of an interesting experience. I was glad for the assistance
of the Benedictine Rosary consecrated to Hekate, Mary, and the Dead which I was
wearing.
The
spirit also went on a long speech about why he was sent to us, and the work
we’d been doing. In doing so he began answering questions I debated asking but
had elected not to and hadn’t discussed with anyone. He touched on themes that
had come up in dreams and spirit experiences since I was a child, which I
hadn’t discussed with the lodge members. He even used descriptions that matched
how I understood certain spiritual powers and which related to some of my more
private magical work. Some of the description even touched on key words that
overlapped both an important dream from my 20s and an unpublished translation
of a medieval text I did a couple years ago.
All
in all the ritual seemed a success. I’d never worked with instigating a
possession before. The ritual was definitely more demoniacal than was the norm
for me, and to some degree as we prepared for it that stood out more than it
did when just reading it. My understanding is that at least one participant had
a pretty intense experience of one of the powers which were invoked to prepare
the ritual. I would definitely try it again. It was a useful and workable way
for interacting with the spirit. For the most part nothing material was asked
for outside of the spirit’s normal work. If anyone tries a varied version of
this with other spirits I’d love to hear how your results go, especially
practical ones.
If
you enjoyed this and want to see more of my thoughts on spirit magic please
order my book, Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits. (A great
way to celebrate our 100th post!)
If
you want to keep up with more of my posts, follow me on Facebook. And please
share this with your friends and in your forums!
