Modern Solomonic Magic

A few years back I began occasionally presenting angel conjuration rituals at the local OTO body, William Blake Lodge. We mostly did a conjuration based on Mathers's Greater Key of Solomon but at one point I decided to experiment with using the Solomonic structure to create a conjuration based on Thelemic imagery.


Some participants found that the Thelmic imagery spoke to and inspired them more than the more traditional Kabbalistic imagery. Most reported that the spirit seemed to arrive but with kind of a "what are you even doing?" sort of feeling coming from the spirit until we began using divine and angelic names, at which point the spirit seemed in their perception to kind of "snap to" and pay attention more ardently. 

This result is interesting in that several people mentioned this impression to me, and if it is the case it would suggest that yes, our modern magical practices do invoke appropriate forces, but the classic ways do tend to exert control over the spirits as that is their nature. I do not know precisely what things people asked for or what they got, but people reported being happy with their results. 

I would love to hear what results people get from experimenting with this.

Thelemic Solomonic Evocation v.1

Fr. VH

Preparation of the Circle

Let the circle me marked out in salt, or chalk, or carved into the ground as described.

As the circle is drawn Liber Lapidis Lazuli is read.

Ablution

Once the circle is drawn all exit the space devest themselves of their street clothes, wash in spring water and abramelin oil and put on white EGC robes. As they wash they say:

“He that is righteous shall be righteous still, he that is filthy shall be filthy still, deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are & not other.” AL 2.57 - 58

Before using the water it is consecrated by tracing the symbol of water followed by the rose cross above it and imbuing it with light while saying:

“Aye! Feast! Rejoice!! There is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.” AL 2.44

When this is accomplished all return to the temple and stand in the circle.

Consecration of the Circle

From the center of the circle let the Karcist recite before the altar, facing the high altar in the east:

“Oh circle of stars whereof our father is but the younger brother, marvel beyond imagination, soul of infinite space, before whom time is ashamed, the mind bewildered, and the understanding dark. Not to thee may we attain unless thy image be love. Therefore by seed and root and stem and bud and leaf and flower and fruit do we invoke thee.

Then the priest answered and said unto the queen of space, kissing her lovely brows, and the dew of her light bathing his whole body in a sweet smelling perfume of sweat. Oh Nuit, continuous one of heaven, let it be ever thus that men speak not of thee as one, but as none, and let them speak not of thee at all, since thou art continuous.”

Let one participant advance to the East. He will visualize the pentagram in brilliant red within his mind and fling it out ending in the sign of the enterer and say Chaos. He will then make the sign of silence. Then, making the sign of the Theoricus he will say:

“Hail unto Thee who art Ra in Thy rising, even unto Thee who art Ra in Thy strength, who travellest over the Heavens in Thy bark at the Uprising of the Sun.
Tahuti standeth in His splendour at the prow, and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm.
Hail unto Thee from the Abodes of Night!”

Then let one participant advance to the South. He will visualize the pentagram in brilliant red within his mind and fling it out ending in the sign of the enterer and say Psyche. He will then make the sign of silence. Then, making the sign of the Philosophus he will say:

“Hail unto Thee who art Ahathoor in Thy triumphing, even unto Thee who art Ahathoor in Thy beauty, who travellest over the heavens in thy bark at the Mid-course of the Sun.
Tahuti standeth in His splendour at the prow, and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm.
Hail unto Thee from the Abodes of Morning!”

Then let one participant advance to the West. He will visualize the pentagram in brilliant red within his mind and fling it out ending in the sign of the enterer and say Eros. He will then make the sign of silence. Then, making the sign of the Practicus he will say:

“Hail unto Thee who art Tum in Thy setting, even unto Thee who art Tum in Thy joy, who travellest over the Heavens in Thy bark at the Down-going of the Sun.
Tahuti standeth in His splendour at the prow, and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm.
Hail unto Thee from the Abodes of Day!”

Then let one participant advance to the North. He will visualize the pentagram in brilliant red within his mind and fling it out ending in the sign of the enterer and say Babalon. He will then make the sign of silence. Then, making the sign of the Zelator he will say:

“Hail unto thee who art Khephra in Thy hiding, even unto Thee who art Khephra in Thy silence, who travellest over the heavens in Thy bark at the Midnight Hour of the Sun.
Tahuti standeth in His splendour at the prow, and Ra-Hoor abideth at the helm.
Hail unto Thee from the Abodes of Evening.”

Then let each return to the center of the circle.

When all are at the center the Karcist shall make the rose cross above the altar and say:

“Now let there be a veiling of thise shrine: now let the light devour men and eat them up with blindness.” - AL 2.14

After this pause for a space and contemplate the presence of the divine light.

Invocation of the Highest

Let the Karcist face the East and invoke the Holy Guardian Angel with these words:

“In the sphere I am everywhere the centre, as she, the circumference, is nowhere found.” AL 2.3

“I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. ‘Come unto me‘ is a foolish word: for it is I that go.”

“IO IO IO IAO Sabao Kurie Abrasax, Kurie Mithras, Kurie Phalle, IO Pan, IO Pan Pan, IO Ischuros, IO Athanatos, IO Abrotos, IO IAO, Kyrie Phalle, Kyrie Panphage, Kyrie Pangenetor, Hagios, Hagios, Hagios, IAO”

“I adore thee in song

I am the Lord of Thebes, and I

The inspired forth-speaker of Mentu;

For me unveils the veiled sky,

The self-slain Ankh-af-na-knonsu

Whose words are truth, I invoke, I greet

They presence, O Ra-Hoor-Khuit!

Unity uttermost showed!

I adore the might of Thy breath,

Supreme and terrible God,

Who makest the gods and death

To tremble before Thee: -

I, I adore thee!

Appear on the throne of Ra!

Open the way of the Khu!

Lighten the ways of the Ka!

The ways of the Khabs run through

To stir me or still me!

Aum! Let it fill me!

The light is mine; its rays consume

Me: I have made a secret door

Int o the House of Ra and Tum,

Of Khephra and of Ahathoor.

I am thy Theban, O Mentu,

The prophet Ankh-af-na-khonsu!

By Bes-na-maut my breast I beat;

By wise Ta-Nech I weave my spell.

Show thy star splendour, O Nuit!

Bid me within thine House to dwell,

O winged snake of Light, Hadit!

Abide with me, Ra-Hoor-Khuit!”

Conjuration

“0. Deeper and deeper into the mire of things! Farther and farther into the never-ending Expansion of the Abyss.
1. The great goddess that bendeth over the Universe is my mistress; I am the winged globe at her heart.
2. I contract ever as she ever expandeth;
3. At the end it is all one.
4. Our loves have brought to birth the Father and Creator of all things.
5. He hath established the elements; the aether, the air, the water, the earth, and the fire.
6. He hath established the wandering stars in their courses.
7. He hath ploughed with the seven stars of his Plough, that the Seven might move indeed, yet ever point to the unchanging One.
8. He hath established the Eight Belts, wherewith he hath girdled the globes.
9. He hath established the Trinity of Triads in all things, forcing fire into fire, and ordering all things in the Stable Abode of the Kings of Æ.
10. He hath established His rule in His kingdom.
11. Yet the Father also boweth unto the Power of the Star 418 and thereby
12. In his subtlety He expandeth it all into twelve rays of the Crown.
13. And these twelve rays are One.” Liber ARARITA 6:0-13

By Eheieh and Metatron we stir the world, by Yah and Ratziel we move thee forth, by YHVH Elohim and Tzafkiel we receive thee! By the name EL! We call and command thee Bariel! By the force of Tzadkiel we stir thee to action Bariel! By the presence of Sachiel we conjure thee with us Bariel! By the name of Iophiel we direct thee Bariel! By the hand of Hishmael thou art present Bariel! Hear our commands and answer our seeking, by the name of EL whose mercy is unending, by the name of EL from whom all gifts flow, by the name of EL, rich and fertile, by the name of EL whom you hold dear, we command you rightly.

All make their requests of the spirit.

License to depart

By the name of EL go forth Bariel and see to this work. Travel swiftly and in peace that you may succeed, and come again quickly when you are called. By EHIH, YAH. YHVH ELOHIM, and EL go forth and fulfill your commands!

Owning The Time of Your Magic

Have you ever had a magical ritual you wanted to perform where the outcome was pretty important to you, and so you wanted everything to go right, but little things that weren't under your control just weren't lining up?

I think everyone has this at some point if they do enough magic.

One of the little details that a lot of people want to include but find to be a pain in the ass to coordinate is planetary hours.

I've often seen where people believe they need to do something during a planetary hour but can't arrange their schedule to do their working to accommodate the planetary hour, or to combine forces with a particular hour on a particular day.

I personally am not very sold on the traditional planetary hour system, at least, not the way it is approached by people who base their use of it on the way it's given in Mathers' version of the Greater Key. In this approach it's just another correspondence, another way to add a particular force to the context of your work. So, while I'm not going to argue in favor or against it at the moment, I will note that as it is simply a means of contextualizing your work within a particular current of force, there are ways around it.

The simplest approach would be some invocation of the planet, like through the Lesser Hexagram Ritual, or through reciting the appropriate Orphic Hymn.

Some people might not like this because it's just a way of ritually setting the space, where the hour is a fixed condition of the environment.

So let's look at another way. We can approach the problem hierarchically like we do in spirit magic. If we want to go a rung above the planetary force, then we would call upon the zodiacal force. The zodiac are generative, the planets and metals are reflective/manifesting, and the elements are producing or manifesting. If we start with the zodiac that determines the chain of manifestation going down into the planets.

The zodiac signs have ruling and mystical planets, but more to the point of an actual fixed condition of reality, the planets sit within regions of the sky mapped by the zodiac. Agrippa's description of the influence of the stars and planets relates to their radiance and their placement. So by invoking the planetary force based on its position in the sky we entreat the source of radiance and the placement while working with our actual environment.

Doing this is actually incredibly simple and can be added before any ritual easily.

Each zodiac sign has an element and a ruling planet. Before your ritual go to each quarter and trace the sign of the ruling element and planet for the sign in which the planet pertaining to your ritual resides at the time your ritual is beginning. Therefore, if you are doing a ritual of Mars and Mars is in Libra at the time of your ritual you would go to each quarter, and trace a symbol of Air, a symbol of Venus, and call upon Zuriel. In each quarter, seal the invocation with the sign of the cross and the seal of the zodiacal sign. Your ritual is now occurring within the light of the sign in which your planet resides, and thus, you and the planet are within the same space.

Even rituals which are defined primarily by the planetary hour, such as Trithemius's Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, can be set and determined using this opening.

Like a Virgin, Evoking for the Very First Time - a Recollection of Conjuring in 2007

I was planning on doing a post about this sometime in the near future, but with some discussion tonight about the idea of methods of evocation, results, and visible appearance, I guess I'll do it now.

When I was a kid I really wanted to learn to conjure spirits. I'd gotten good at other forms of magic, but, mostly coming at it from a NeoPagan Witchcraft angle at first, no one talked about that. As I got more into traditional Paganism and traditional witchcraft, and began studying ceremonial magic and hermetic Kabbalah I still wasn't really finding anything on it. People would direct me to things like the LBRP, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. Eventually I downloaded copies of the Keys of Solomon, and started exploring a few grimoires. Early on I saw enough of them to realize that there were several different methods.

I started exploring more deeply into ceremonial magic and the Kabbalah and began working with my teacher, and made friends with some people who while they weren't the super traditional and semi-academic grimoiric magicians of today, they were pretty hefty into demonology and a few basic grimoires along with some other modern magic. So I started to develop a view of the grimoiric system, and what I needed to do to develop myself towards safely and successfully using it. I frequently debated with friends who were also studying but hadn't tried the systems in the grimoires how strictly we needed to follow them. My view was that it was like a radio receiver. You could make a workable one with a few basic parts, but adding more pieces of better quality made a significantly more effective one.

So, as I continued my development and got to the point in my training where methods of conjuration started to be on the table I had a lot of options and a lot of view on what I should and should not be doing. I started out with some stuff based in GD influenced stuff, looked at some Levi and Crowley based ideas, and after a couple years of playing with those things decided to try something more directly grimoiric.

I worked with Mathers' edition of the Greater Key. This was 2007 and it was just before I began collecting all the Golden Horde stuff. I had a privately published edition of the Lemegeton as well as the Mathers, a few books on Grimoiric magic, and a couple other grimoires and grimoire based books. The Greater Key seemed like the most straight forward starting place. Oddly, Trithemius' material was my favorite, but there was stuff I wanted to do to prepare for it first, mostly in terms of tools which is ironic since it's one of the most low impact systems in regards to tools. But I also felt like doing more thorough evocations first would set up the relationship with the spirits to allow for me to work the Trithemian system. In any case, that was all nonsense, if you want to get started, draw some spirits into some crystals.

But I did not do that, I did the Greater Key. I had my white robe, worn by a priest celebrating Mass (not a GKOS thing), I had my magic sword, instead of a crown I had Abramelin oil, I had my censers of incense, and I had my seal and some candles. I also had the magic circle painted onto a sheet to lay out beneath me, and my bible opened up to psalms. I was ready to go.

I decided to work with Bariel, a spirit of Jupiter, and request bunches and bunches of money. I was used to working in a Mercurial milieu so I wanted to win money. That didn't happen, but I got really good results all the same.

I began with some ritual cleansing, did a bit from the GKOS, then the Headless Invocation, and then more GKOS material. The ritual over all was about 8 or 9 pages.

At the time I'd been out of college for about a year and a half, and so I was, as most millenials do, living at home. I had five burners of incense going. I'm conjurng like a madman when suddenly I hear a voice from above...

“BJ!”

I pause, I think, “Oh shit, Lisiewski made it sound like you'd basically die or at least never be able to do magic if your conjuration gets interrupted midstream, what horrors await!”

I respond: “Yes, Mom?”

Mom: “BJ, put out that incense, you know I don't like incense, what're you even doing?”

BJ: “Nothing mom, it's ok, don't worry about it, sure thing.”

She goes away, and I think “what do you do now? Finish like a beast I guess.”

So I finished my conjuration. I definitely felt the presence of the spirit, now, 8 years later, I still very vividly remember it, but the whole time I was thinking “No, I got interrupted, it very clearly feels like the spirit is here, the space even seems sort of ripply and charged with presence over in that direction over there where it feels like he is, but this is clearly BS, I got interrupted, Lisiewski said there would be no success, only horrors would await me now.”

I guess I didn't mention I'd also read that book the Power of Ceremonial Evocation as part of my final preparations.

So I told Bariel what I wanted, polished everything off and wiped up, and moved along certain I'd failed despite everything seeming successful.

I didn't win any money. Instead, I had much more Jupiterian results. Which was good, since in addition to asking to win money, I'd asked for financial stability and a promotion and raise and for things to just have a general financial fecundity.

So within a couple weeks I had been told at work that while they couldn't promote me right away, because our staffing compliment didn't include a second person in the position they wanted to move me to, that I would get a smaller promotion and a bonus. They'd also be giving me a raise to max me out for what was my current job grade...and they were working on adjusting the staffing compliment to promote me. At this point I'd been in my role for about a year, and had been trained for the job to which I wanted to be promoted for about 8 months, but there were no openings anywhere. Within a couple of weeks, I interviewed for the position at two other locations, was told that if I waited awhile longer they'd probably fire someone at a third location and give me his spot, and in the end I was given the job at a fourth location with no interview or anything, I just got a call offering it and all I had to do was say I wanted it. My managers gave me my year end performance increase, and then gave me the increase for the promotion afterwards so that I ended up with a higher salary than they told me I would.

All in all within the period of about a month, I achieved a 33% increase in my income in addition to an extra $500 bonus, and being told that I had been short listed for the next round of management school.

During this same time, I was expecting to have to give my mom some money for things, which she ended up telling me I didn't have to do because my parents discovered they were paid ahead on a bunch of stuff and the addition they were putting on their house was way cheaper than expected.

A couple months later I ended up conjuring Bariel again using the same method, and I told him I wanted a new job with a salary that was about an 18% increase above where I was with better duties. Within a couple weeks I got a call inviting me to apply for a job which would include training and licenses that I wanted but couldn't get at my then current company. I ended up taking the new job, and while the initial offer was only about 9% above where I was I ended up making about 26% more in the first year than I did at the previous job, getting training which has led to a job that was originally intended as an interim thing becoming a career and giving me a fair amount of stability.

So, I would say those first to evocations were unquestionable successes.

Neither one had what I envision when the bad asses of magic describe evocation to visible appearance. Neither one was a hundred percent a pure execution of the material described in the grimoire. It was a faithful execution of the system described in the grimoire definitely. It was a workable execution, and it was a successful execution.

In posting this, my point is two fold pretty much...maybe three or four fold, we'll see as I type.

1. Your execution can have mistakes and still work

2. You can create a ritual based in the grimoires which earnestly follows the system without slavishly following the book

3. You can get results without a lot of the crazy claims people get intense about, just stay chill and do what makes sense

4. You don't need perfect or beautiful tools or even everything that's there. Study a bunch of grimoires, look for what consistently seems important use that.

5. Get off your butt and do it, because magic is awesome, you're awesome, and results are real...especially when the spirits are not just imaginary friends.

I should also note that this was before I achieved K&C, so it was not an instance of the spirits being super anxious to help me because I was an adept. I was a Dominius Liminis, or more accurately within the A.'.A.'. system an Adeptus Minor Without (preparing for K&C but not having done it yet). So, while some methods of evocation are better suited to people who've done K&C, if you are properly prepared to do the work you can still do the work prior to that. But stick with angels and spirits under the sway of angels in that case, and with systems that involve invoking grace first.