Not (Just) a Beginner Book

           Before posting announcements about my new book, Familiar Unto Me: Witches Sorcerers and Their Spirit Companions, my last blog post was about intermediate and advanced books and training.

          People often bemoan the lack of advanced books on magic and NeoPaganism. It's easier to write beginner books, and with a beginner book, you don't have to wonder if people will have the background to understand or use what you're writing. It's still important to have books that move out of that beginner comfort zone.

          In my post on intermediate and advanced materials, two of the options for advanced work and advanced material were either perfection of basic elements or in depth focused exploration of a specific subject.

          Familiar Unto Me falls into the latter category. The text covers just about everything you could cover on familiars and treats ideas often related to familiars. We look at practical elements, the nature of the idea and the nature of the relationship. We explore the history of ideas and beliefs that build a worldview in which familiar spirits can exist. We look at several options for acquiring them across several different approaches to magic. We look in depth at a particular case of a group working with a familiar, and we look at how familiar spirits can tie into efforts to create new living traditions of spirit work.

          It is a deep dive that covers a broad range of elements of a specific topic.

          So the book is well suited to intermediate and advanced audiences because of its thorough treatment of a singular topic. It can also be useful for beginners, not necessarily people reading their first book or two, but people who are starting off and figuring things out. Exploring specific topics in depth can still be useful and interesting in that phase. This will also introduce a lot of more intermediate concepts, ideas, and practices, which will give readers who are still in the beginning phases of their explorations some direction around where to explore. Since it covers a range of traditions, it will still serve the beginner who wants to add work with a familiar to their spiritual experience.

          It does not introduce beginner techniques. There is no grounding or shielding, there is no work on energy, or scrying, or clairvoyance. We don't introduce what conjuration is, or what spirits are, or how to communicate with them. Readers intending to work the material in this book will need some skills and knowledge in those areas. This post will include some suggestions at the end for books which will help establish those elements for people who need them.

          The book does cover all the elements needed to acquire a familiar in several systems of magic, and so anyone with basic magic skills will find a method which is workable for them.

          It also breaks down benefits and difficulties of different types of spirit work. While this is an underexplored discussion, it's important, and well suited to intermediate practitioners trying to decide what directions to focus on. This will also be useful in guiding beginners who are starting to explore spirit work.

          The wide range of perspectives addressed and the far reaching depth of exploring every corner of the idea of familiars means the book has a wide range of audiences it can serve, but will also have material that just isn't for some of its readers. Hopefully, people will appreciate the thoroughness and enjoy the parts that are relevant to them, and find interest in looking at approaches outside of their practice. With this wide range, while the book serves advanced and intermediate practitioners, it has a lot to offer for those starting their journey as well.

          If you find yourself looking for an introduction to some of the elements and skills that underlie this book and the practices contained, here are some options. You don't need all of these. Most readers will be ready to pick up Familiar Unto Me and just run with it, but if you're feeling like you need some more background, any one or two of these will probably close the gaps.

 

The Sorcerer's Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magic by Jason Miller - a general introduction to the skills and practices of modern sorcerers

 

Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits by BJ Swain - includes introductions to scrying and spirit conjuration and explains a wide range of spirits and how to work spirits into practical magic

 

Seven Spheres by Rufus Opus - an immersive, potentially initiatic, approach building relationships through spirit conjuration designed to be simple and user friendly. Introduces new students to conjuration and spirit work

 

Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration by BJ Swain - avoids a lot of theory and ideas and focuses on laying out simple skill building practices to make you more capable at spirit conjuration. Provides a simple system of spirit conjuration. Designed to be able to take a complete beginner through introducing the idea, using preparatory practices, and gathering tools into readiness for their first conjuration in as little time as possible.

 

Folk Witchcraft: A Guide to Lore Land and the Familiar Spirit by Roger J Horne - a collection of witchcraft folklore and introduction to witchcraft ideas which can be used for building witchcraft practices drawing on historical content and ideas

 

Consorting with Spirits: Your Guide to Working with Invisible Allies by Jason Miller - This book covers many elements of spirit work and several useful ideas to consider while exploring spirit work. It presents a couple approaches to working with spirits. Many of the ideas and practices here can be pair with approaches to working with a familiar. 

Sex Sorcery and Spirit: The Secrets of Erotic Magic by Jason Miller - will introduce elements of sexual magic which may help the magician with spirit work and provide more background for those looking to use the sex magic practices described in Familiar Unto Me

Image: High King Margo. From SYFY's The Magicians. Went with this photo because Margo is in grad school for magic, so it fits the theme of intermediate and advanced work...also...Margo is the ultimate bad ass and I'd be honored to have her reading my work on Familiars. 

Cover: Arise Witch Queen!

 

The original draft of Familiar Unto Me looked at basic ideas and practices, but didn't explore the history, cultures, mythologies, and folklore related to those practices. When I decided to explore those things it led to a lot of opportunities for interesting research and presenting interesting information and conclusions.

 

The book is kind of like three, almost four, books in one. The first part discusses familiars more generally. It presents some options from a traditional witchcraft and grimoire perspectives for acquiring familiars and how to work with them.

 

Part two dives into folklore, history, and mythology in depth. It works to look at ideas that existed in Northern European myth and folklore that present a worldview in which the idea of a familiar spirit could exist. Then it looks at how these ideas relate to practical work.

 

Part three discusses how a magical lodge obtained and worked with a familiar spirit. This becomes the back drop for looking at how familiar spirits and spirit possession fit into building living traditions of spirit work. It also lets us look at the place of these kinds of traditional spirit work in Victorian revival magical systems, and presents practical methods drawn from those systems for traditional spirit work.

 

The text covers a very complete range of material and addresses working from various approaches to magical work.

 

The original draft mentioned figures like Isobel Gowdie and Andro Mann. When I was editing, I was surprised how little I talked about them. This contributed to my decision to explore more folklore and history; I wanted to lean into their stories a bit. There were a lot of other figures and ideas to talk about as far as evidence of early modern beliefs surrounding the witch's familiar goes, some of them were more germane. But, Gowdie is one of the main figures people think of regarding historical accounts of familiars.

 

When I was considering possible cover motifs, Gowdie again sprang to mind. As the cover came together, it became suggestive of an idea that I really liked.

 

The lowest layer of the cover is an image from Edmund Spenser's 16th century text, The Faerie Queene. It depicts a beautiful woman with a spear, in a strong and commanding stance amid the trees and long grasses. A man, who appear nervous, looks on as he hides behind a tree.

 

A middle layer is formed from the text of Gowdie's confession as recorded in Pitcairn. The text describes the familiar imps and the nicknames the witches in the Aulderne coven had received.

 

Arising from Gowdie's words about witches and faery imps is the image of a strong commanding magical woman.

 

This seemed like an interesting and powerful composition.

 

Gowdie's confessions are popular because they have so much detail. They are elaborate confessions, spanning four instances, in which she describes not only what the witches accomplished but the details of their spirit interactions and magical techniques.

 

Some people look at Gowdie as a hero for witches. Her coven stole from the wealthy, killed nobles who abused the people, and provided a means of power for people who were otherwise poor and downtrodden. She has become a Scottish Folk-version of Aradia in the minds of many modern witches.

 

For others, she is a tragic example: a young woman we know nearly nothing about, except that she was taken into custody on the accusation of witchcraft. She may have been tortured, she may have been killed; the details of her experience aren't clear and so those elements are uncertain. What stands out most to those who don't like the idea of Gowdie being treated as a powerful witch figure, is that we don't know what motivated her confession. Was she a clever person spinning up magistrates who she knew would convict her regardless of what she said? Was she a delusional person who, driven by suggestibility, imagined vivid hallucinations that fit the desires of her accusers and led her to confess to things which damned her?

 

We don't, and can't, really know. Critics seem at odds with taking Gowdie's account as being a partially accurate description of her experience, but that is also a possibility.

 

I think it's important to consider the struggle Gowdie, and others like her, probably encountered. It's valuable to consider that their confessions may have been fabrications caused by a variety of motivations. There is value in considering the possibility of delusions, although a surprising number of people would have been subject to the same delusions, in that case. There is also a value in considering the possibility that these people were witches or magicians and that their confessions reflect their reality as seen through the blurred and dirty lens of a court stenographer's biases.

 

The cover art reflects that.

 

Our powerful magical woman both arises from and is obscured by the words which are present. The words reflect the plight of being caught by witch finders because they are sourced from a trial transcript, but the words, themselves, describe the wondrous visionary experience of these witches. The words are obscured, illustrating the fact that trial evidence simultaneously reveals and obfuscates elements of early modern popular magic and witchcraft. Taken together, there is a struggle between the words, the image, and the presentation itself, as each strive to become the central element defining the visual composition. That struggle is like our inability to determine the actual nature of these experiences, even as they draw us in and cause us to look deeply at them to ascertain what they can reveal. Ultimately, through the various pieces, regardless of what the reality was, we are able to see hints that cause us to imagine a woman of power and resistance, birthed from faery magic. We imagine Gowdie as someone who is fit to stand in the presence of the Faery Queen, and whose soul might have descended into the sidhe and barrows to become a magical equal with their powerful residents.

 

When I think about the cover art, this is what I think about...and I find it exciting. Between those covers, stories, folklore, myths, and history describe a world of exciting magic and spirit experiences sandwiched between descriptions of how we can be part of those same experiences. Hopefully, for those who desire it, this book will help them descend into the world of faeries, imps, and demon companions, and arise as someone able to work magic with their aid, and learn from their knowledge, until they too are competent to dine with the Faery Queen and the Witches Devil as welcome guests, empowered with the tools to navigate such spaces.

 

Follow on Facebook for more announcements, and info on the release of Familiar Unto Me: Witches Sorcerers and Their Spirit Companions, as well as blog posts and other items of interest! The book will be out sometime around the middle of this month, possibly a little earlier. The paperback may be as early as February 12th on Amazon with a hardback edition about a week later, and on Barnes and Noble the paperback and hardback are scheduled for approximately February 20th. 

 

 

Part Two: Dining with a Demon (100th post!)

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.

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 100^th 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!