Season of the Spirits

So over the last two days I posted about Solstice and Equinox rituals using the grimoires as a basis.

You can find those here:

http://blog.ararita418.com/2016/07/grimoires-and-cycle-of-year-pt-1.html

http://blog.ararita418.com/2016/07/not-flashy-but-holy.html

I'm not going to post the ritual I used, but it was basically a series of conjurations of different types of spirits associated with the season based upon traditional correspondences. The information for these correspondences comes from Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, Cephar Razielis, the Heptameron, and Book Two of Agrippa.

You can easily put together a similar ritual yourself. Use the preliminary ritual components and purifications from your preferred grimoire.

Set up the tools, circle, temple space as you normally would with the appropriate conjurations of the incense, flame, circle, and whatever else you would use. Use the appropriate rites for robing up.

Then use the conjuration of the divine as you would do normally.

After this when you get to the point of conjuring the spirit, this is where it changes up a bit. You'll conjure several spirits, and instead of asking them for something you'll just ask for their help in achieving the blessings of the season.

The correspondences below will help you determine which spirits. The order in which you conjure them will kind of be up to you as well. Do you start elementally? Do you start with the zodiacal? Do you go right for the spirits of the season? The winds and direction? What comes first?

Well that depends on your way of doing things.

Personally I started with the zodiac, and conjured the element and planet of the zodiacal sign and then the angel of the sign itself.

Then the Sun, so that the sun is within the sign.

Then the element, the elemental king, the aerial spirits, and the spirits of the parts of the world and of the season itself.

So starting bigger and drawing smaller.

Some people like the opposite. Some people want to feel it unfold. So they start with the manifest components, the season itself, the parts of the world within the season, then elemental rulers, then planetary, then zodiacal.

It's up to you. The power, is unreservedly, held in your hands, to discover how you and your spirits want to work.

So...here is some guidance on the spirits.

Season	Direction	Element	Name of Season	Zodiac	Gregorian Months	Hebrew Months
Spring	West	Air	Talvi	The Sun enters Aries	March April May	Nisan – Full Moon in Aries Iyar – Full Moon in Taurus Sivan – Full Moon in Gemini
Summer	East	Fire	Casmaran	The Sun enters Cancer	June July August	Tammuz – Full Moon in Cancer Av – Full Moon in Leo Elul – Full Moon in Virgo
Autumn	South	Earth	Adarael	The Sun enters Libra	September October November	Tishrei – Full Moon in Libra Marchesvan – Full Moon in Scorpio Kislev – Full Moon in Sagittarius
Winter	North	Water	Farlae	The Sun enters Capricorn	December January February	Tevet – Full Moon in Capricorn Shevat – Full Moon in Aquarius Adar – Full Moon in Pisces

Season	Head of the Sign	Name of the Earth	Name of the Sea	Name of the Air	Name of the Underworld	Name of the Sun	Name of the Moon
Spring	Spugliguel	Amadai	Angustiz	Ystana	Hahan	Abraym	Augusia
Summer	Tubiel	Festatvi	Theon	Furayl	Cipaon	Atbemay	Armatas
Autumn	Tolquaret	Rabianira	Maddrylk	Oafion	Meresac	Abragini	Matasignais
Winter	Altarib	Gerenia	Sebillgradon	Gulynon	Aycyhambabo	Commutaf	Affaterim

Season	King	Angels of the Season	Angels of the Four Directions	Devils	Celestial Powers
Spring	Paymon	Caracasa Core Amatiel Commissoros	Raphael	Azazel	Jupiter and Venus
Summer	Oriens	Gargatel Tariel Gaviel	Michael	Samael	Mars and Sol
Autumn	Amaymon	Terquam Gualbarel	Gabriel	Mahazael	The Fixed Stars and the Moon
Winter	Egyn	Amabael Ctarari	Uriel	Azael	Saturn and Mercury

Season	Month	Zodiac Sign	Angel of the Zodiac	Planet	Hebrew Month	Angel of the Month
Spring	March	Aries	Malchidiel	Mars	Nisan	Oriel
	April	Taurus	Asmodel	Venus	Iyar	Safuel
	May	Gemini	Ambriel	Mercury	Sivan	Amariel
Summer	June	Cancer	Muriel	Moon	Tammuz	Moriel
	July	Leo	Verchiel	Sun	Av	Byny
	August	Virgo	Hamelial	Mercury	Elul	Magnyny
Autumn	September	Libra	Zuriel	Venus	Tishrei	Suriel
	October	Scorpio	Barbiel	Mars	Marchesvan	Karbiel
	November	Sagittarius	Adnachiel	Jupiter	Kislev	Adoniel
Winter	December	Capricorn	Hanael	Saturn	Tevat	Anael
	January	Aquarius	Gabiel	Saturn	Shevat	Gabriel
	February	Pisces	Barchiel	Jupiter	Adar	Romiel

Grimoires and the Cycle of the Year Pt 1

How does time play into our magic? What about space? Aside from conjuring spirits to teach us about magic or about themselves are there ways we should ground ourselves or explore the powers we invoke aside from practical magic? Yes. Yes, there are, or, there should be.

Magic should be part of a lifestyle and to some degree a culture, and a lifestyle and culture which is spiritual should generally involve something religious. Not necessarily belonging to a Church or adopting a religion, but a way to routinely connect with and seat oneself in the context of the LIVING COSMOS OF SPIRITUAL FORCES with which your magic is engaged. Religion is at its core a pattern of rituals. Those rituals mirror the ideas we have about creation, existence, and the end. So for a magician magical religious ritual would be the exploration of these cosmic forces in the light of our understanding of the world.

We see this somewhat in the modern magical religions. Feasts of the times are important for Thelema because they're a way of doing this, and accessing important knowledge and mysteries within that system on multiple levels. Similar magical holidays play into the Golden Dawn, Thelema, Wicca, Druidry, and various other groups from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. These holidays deal with natural and cosmic movements which reflect the changes in the forces and concepts central to these particular worldviews. For those of us that are magicians, we're dealing with the forces that shape and move the world, so rituals to acknowledge the very visible, physical, movements of those forces are a reasonable way of engaging this same religious benefit. But for those of us not working purely in a modern context do we have a way of doing this? If we simply engage religions like Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, which helped shape the grimoires, we won't address the powers and forces relevant to magic. Can we structure feasts of the times for traditional magic?

This idea sprang forth in full armor from my mind while working on another project. Rufus Opus had challenged me to reconstruct a complete and workable system of grimoiric magic from the mish mash of pieces and references held within the Heptameron. (As it is, you could pick up the book and work it, but it's really presenting several different magical ideas all swirled together). I had already been working a little bit with ideas regarding the angels of the planetary hours, and the very cursory approach to grimoiric timing found in modern magic versus the robust focus on the powers of time in the grimoires. So while working with the Heptameron, and the Raziel texts, and various Solomonic texts, I kept coming back to the INTENSE IMPORTANCE of TIME and SPACE in real magic. We talk in modern magic about “time outside of time, and place outside of space” which is a neat idea, but SPACE-TIME is fucking magical on it's own, and when we begin looking at directionality, the spiritualization of locality and the environment of the moment, the powers of time as they manifest in hours, days, months, and seasons, we begin to see that there is a whole magical way of addressing the reality in which we live, work, and manifest magic, and without connecting with and understanding the magical forces that build and move the context of our existence, we miss out on a huge way of connecting with creation and the power therein.

As I read through more and more of Raziel instructing Adam about the importance of understanding time, and it blended with the ideas of time in magic found in the Heptameron, and it ran up against my remedial explorations of astrology, I began to form a greater picture of what I was looking at. The idea of invoking the components of time and place more clearly than we tend to in modern magic had already begun creeping in for me based on the PGM, but in that context it seems to sometimes be a simple acknowledgment of time and place, what we see in the grimoires particularly those influenced by the Raziel tradition we see something much deeper than just mentioning them.

The grimoires understood every element of time and space in a way which allowed it to be approached as a spirit, or at least, a spiritually imbued part of our interaction with the Creator. Each element of time and direction has a name, it has a spirit, or spirits associated with it. We see pieces here and there in the grimoires referencing these spirits of time but not necessarily integrating them. While looking for this integration the circle in the Heptameron became an inspiration for more deeply engaging these forces directly, it became much more than simply as a map laid out on the floor of the space in which a ritual would be performed.

So while getting excited about all this, and about the magic of time and space, and while mapping out secret names given by the Heptameron and Raziel it occurred to me...ceremonial magicians not engaged in modern magic don't have rituals to observe major moments of time...but we could, and maybe long ago some system from which part of our system is drawn may have had such a thing. And the grimoires map out everything we need. In fact, with the importance of astrological timing in the older forms of magic, and the astrological treatment of the seasons in the grimoires, and the break down of correspondences mapping the seasons, the directions, and through them connecting the celestial, sublunary, and infernal realms made it apparent that marking the seasonal shifts was an easy way to incorporate all the various elements of time, space, and our overall cosmology into a ritual structure of observance.

So, over the last couple months the back of my mind has been playing out how to set up such a ritual, and I decided for the Solstice I would try it. It was pretty awesome. It was subdued, but it was pretty nifty. There were moments of being bathed within the various forces that make up the shift into the season of summer and define its nature. A lot of beautiful imagery conveyed by the spirits. Quiet moments to chill in their presence and to drink in their blessings and power.

The ritual was pretty nifty, and I definitely noticed beneficial currents in my life following its performance. Tomorrow we'll go into more about the ritual and the experience.