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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Local Dead? Local Friends.

A few weeks back my fellow Brodepti and I took a field trip. Apart from our regularly planned dinner at a bar to discuss magical things, community stuff, our current work and things about which to be aware we decided we would take a trip to a local cemetery. There are three in the area I want to visit, one because it's near me, one because it has a folk legend associated with a statue that has since been removed, and one to find a relative. Hanging with other magicians seemed the perfect opportunity to check one of the cemetery visits off the list.

My town does not have a lot of cemeteries. In fact, I believe we just have one historical one, with the other more active ones all being in the neighboring city, or in other towns adjacent to us. The one we have though is essentially walking distance from me, maybe about a 10 minute walk, and I pass it multiple times a week just going to and fro. So it seemed like the most reasonable option for creating a relationship with the local dead.

I work with my ancestors quite a bit, but with the exception of my father, none of them lived in my town. Obviously most spirits with whom we interact won't be ones tied to our locality, but our location can be a big factor in our magic. So we should make connections with the local nature spirits, with the land itself on which we reside, and with natural features that are nearby, particularly if they impact us our our communities.

Working with local magic helps in a few ways. It connects the work you're doing to forces already tied to the place where you are likely looking to have your impact manifest. Other people in your area may interact with or be impacted by local spiritual forces even if they aren't aware of it. These spirits might also have concerns related to things around you, or connections giving them greater influence over things around you. If you're dealing with a spirit that means something to the people of your community, like one which is associated with a natural formation, or a folk legend, or the spirit of a local hero or historical figure there is also a significant local awareness that feeds and empowers that spirit within the environment in which you're working.

So, don't overlook your surroundings.

Creating ties to the local cemetery is something I've wanted to do for awhile, and it's something I still have further work to do to deepen. But this was essentially what was involved in my first step.

We went to the cemetery with offerings, and supplies for our work. We went a little before dusk on a weekend, so that while hopefully there wouldn't be a lot of people around, it wouldn't be completely unusual or suspicious if someone happened upon us since it wasn't at night. This particular cemetery is an historical cemetery and so there are no gates or walls, it just sits right along one of the town's most major roads, next to a building run by one of the biggest land developers in the state. So it's not particularly discreet, but it's also somewhere no one really goes these days. We were unlikely to be bothered, still, we chose our time cautiously, and I carried four bay leaves in my pocket, one to hide us in each of the four directions.

When we got there we set to work looking for the oldest grave. The first body buried in a cemetery is that cemetery's equivalent to the first man to die, the ancestor of all ancestors who oversees the passage between life and death and the people who live in the space of the dead, the cemetery. They're basically the head honcho spirit for that location. Now, admittedly, my planning was poor here. I did not look up who it was before hand. One of the other Brodepti decided to contact her town's historical society and they were able to tell her which graves were the oldest in her local cemetery. So I would advise anyone engaging in such an endeavor to start by doing that.

Since we didn't know the grave we were looking for, we searched through row by row, eventually we found a plaque that explained the history of the cemetery, including when the church was built and when they decided to begin using it as a cemetery. Most of the oldest graves were 160 years old, and so many were pretty worn, we settled on a head stone which seemed to be the oldest marked grave. The individual there was laid to rest within the year following the opening of the church, and so she seemed a good candidate for the oldest, and if not the oldest, at least a reasonably respectable contender to a position of importance within the cemetery.

We began by taking snow (in less wintery weather dirt or salt or one of the libations could be used) and making a three-way crossroads on the grave and making prayers to Hekate, and prayers to the gods and goddesses of the land of the dead to grant us access to the spirit of the person laid there, and to join her in receiving the offerings which we would now make.

We then poured out libations of wine, honey, milk, and olive oil on the grave with prayers to strengthen the spirit, stir it to life,to give it sustenance, and to remind it of the pleasant things in the world of the living. We left cakes of grain and fruit to further feed the spirit and asked that we might form an alliance with it and take a small amount of dirt from her grave as a connection to her.

Once we had completed our work with that spirit we took whiskey and more cakes and laid them out in a place towards the center of the patch of graves but in a space where no one was buried and we made an offering to the dead of the cemetery in general and asked for the same friendship with them, and to be allowed to take dirt from the cemetery generally as well.

So in addition to linking to the specific ancestor of the cemetery we linked to the cemetery itself, and had both grave dirt and graveyard dirt to bring home for magical work and for installing in our ancestor altars in order to further feed and develop that connection, and to empower our own dead further by linking them to a local place of power and soil rich with the presence of the dead. 

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Do You Have Any Dead People?

I have a friend who occasionally asks me questions about magic. While talking the other night when we got to the subject of conjuration he noted that he didn't really feel he had the position or connections to get heavy into spirit work yet, and so I of course asked “do you have any dead people?” I think a big hurdle for people with ancestor work is needing to have someone die. If you're not brought up in a culture of acknowledging your ancestors, it might be a little foreign to think of if you don't have your own dead people. In any case, he responded with a few questions about necromancy and the religious affiliations of the dead. Now the great thing about him asking questions, is I'm rather fond of him and enjoy talking with him, and so I tend to answer his questions by rambling out short extemporaneous essays...which...sometimes become blog posts. So what follows is me being pretty candid about different elements of different modes of work with the dead, with some of it expanded or clarified. I hope you enjoy it and it's useful to you.

I run a bit beyond the questions, but what kicked if off was essentially this:

“Concerning necromancy, what's your opinion when it comes to dealing with ancestors who in life would be completely opposed to the idea of magic and especially necromancy? Do you think those feelings would continue after death? Or do you think the rite of passing itself would distance them from their worldly dispositions and opinions? Or even simpler they'd have no care for religious matters?”

So there is a bit to unpack there...first...necromancy...and ancestors...and the rights of spirits to have opinions...

If you're working necromancy, it can often be more coercive, but doesn't have to be. So it depends a bit on the spirit and the relationship. If it's a random dead person then their views don't matter so much. If it's an ancestor that you're contacting through more necromantic means then you might use a method familiar to their religious view out of respect and to help maintain the relationship.

To really answer these questions we have to look at the particular sort of relationship we're dealing with. I would distinguish between necromancy -- ancestor work -- ancestor worship

Necromancy is ritual magic where you conjure and empower the dead with life and magical force and request that they perform tasks or provide information you need. Alternatively you can descend to the underworld to speak with them. But necromancy is largely associated with raising the dead because its mode of spirit magic involves bringing them into this world and feeding them with elements to enliven them to bolster their ability to interact with you or perform tasks for you.

A lot of time you'll use gods or spirits to exert authority, such as requesting access from Hades and then commanding that spirit in Hades name, or in a Christian context perhaps using Azazel. Similarly you might make a pact with the dead. You could gain access, feed them, and then ask them to do something with the offer that you might do something else for them or continue feeding them. Reginald Scot gives examples of procuring a pact with a dead person and then sending that now bound dead spirit to fetch and command other spirits for you. All of this falls under necromancy.

Ancestor worship is performing rights to honor the dead, or having meals with them to maintain a relationship so they look out for you and don't fuck shit up for you. A lot of traditional religion and magic recognizes that restless dead can be problematic and so you recognize and make offerings to them to help keep them from messing with you, or maybe to purge out missteps you've engaged in which might bring their ire. This is a sort of pagan version of “cooling the dead,” not so much removing the suffering or torment of purgatory, but soothing the difficulty an impact of being dead and displaced. There is a similar component with ancestors who have gone on to where they need to be. Ancestors want to be part of the family, they don't want to be forgotten, and they want to help their family continue well. But they also don't want you to do stupid shit, or mistreat what they've left behind. Ancestor worship maintains and strengthens the bond between living and dead members of the family so the dead ones stay happy, retain power and influence, and focus on having your back.

In my view ancestor working or ancestral magic is somewhere between ancestor worship and necromancy and has elements of both, but it also drops features from each. For example it isn't coercive like necromancy but it isn't passive like ancestor worship either. It kind of looks like ancestor worship but with a more direct expectation that they will help with specific things you ask for, introduce you to spirits or help keep good relations with you and spirits, assist in your magical work and maybe help guide spirits to outcomes you need. So you build a relationship like in ancestor worship and empower them like in Necromancy and they look out for you like in ancestor worship but they also do specific stuff for you like in Necromancy.

But the interaction differs, at least in my view. Both in terms of methods and the way each one feels as far as the interaction with the spirits.

Like when I work with my dead, I make offerings, set lights, ask Charon to bring them, and thank them for stuff and ask for any help I need. If I want their help in magic I tell them what spirits I'm working with and ask them to help and maybe explain how. Alternatively I might call on them before beginning a conjuration or magical rite and ask for them to assist. Or I might leave a tool or object on their altar and ask for their blessing or empowerment before I use it for magic.

When I do necromancy it's got a more intense flavor. There's libations poured out on the ground, coins thrown into cross roads, chthonic gods called with Orphic hymns, maybe stuff involving blood and meat, or food abandoned in the night. Going to places where people died or where the dead are resting, or other liminal places at liminal times.

If I'm honoring an ancestor for like a birthday or holiday it's kind of like having dinner with them and is pretty laid back, and can also be pretty personal and emotional. There's some prayers and then we eat and I tell them what's new in my life or other family members. We maintain a familial relationship and connection the same way you would with living relatives, you basically visit with them, and keep them feeling like they're part of the living family.

Ancestral magic is kind of the daily traditional household magic, necromancy is intense goetic sorcery, and ancestor worship is visiting the dead for thanksgiving style catching up.

As to the religion thing...if they're Christian none of this will be familiar to them. Except in some traditional folk Catholic contexts, but anyone who is a product of a few generations of life in America as a Christian probably wouldn't die with the expectation that their relatives do this stuff. But once they're on the other side...maybe.

So I don't think it matters because for MOST people I don't think their expectations impact their afterlife. They get their and they find out what's what. At least the part of them that remains as that person continuing on.

If they weren't magical you probably want to talk with them about magic first and make sure they agree to help you with magic before you call on them to help with magic. You could still call on them to look out for you, and help you fix problems in your life. That's a little more of a hit the ground running kind of thing than being like “Hey, Aunt Judy, I know you didn't do magic...but I'm going to make this sweetening jar and I need you to help empower it, and maybe introduce me to a spirit who can help accomplish it's work.” I feel like it's like talking to a living person. You don't want to catch them off guard with a request. But just because it might catch them off guard if it wasn't discussed before that requests like that might happen, doesn't mean that they won't be cool with the request if they know it's coming. Make some offerings, have a conversation with them about the relationship you want, and what kind of help with magic you will want, listen for what they're cool with too, they should be talking back, it should be a conversation. Let them know you'll be working magic and you want them to be a part of it. I think most will be ok with that. Since you talking to them is kind of magic already.

But that said, they keep their opinions and ideas, at least on some level.

Like not 100% but if they were about helping people they still are, if they were about what's yours is yours they still are. Like basic core elements of how they saw things. But family is also important to them and contact and interaction and offerings and physical stuff, because that's what attaches them to our world, so it helps them maintain a piece of that existence. Even if it wasn't stuff that they'd be into when they were alive, the elements of this connection should become important to them now. But their thoughts and feelings and personality should also be similar to what it was in life.

These offerings, and this relationship isn't just important to them though, it should be important to you. It strengthens them to help us. So if you want the relationship to be useful to you this stuff needs to be there.

But yeah, as far as whether or not you need to call them within the context of their religion. Call them under the power of the gods who rule the world of the dead. They live in their kingdom now, whoever where their gods when they were living, the gods of the land of the dead are their gods while they're dead.

Unless it's like a Saint or a Blessed. If you're asking one of them to be in your ancestor court they're specifically empowered by Christian ritual and belief already. So it's like working with a god or mighty dead spirit from a religion, you contact them within that religious context. Part of what you're drawing on is the power associated with their religious role, so call on that within the context of that power. They're built into a different spiritual structure, and you're not working on the personal identity of that individual so much as that identity empowered with a religious iconography and spiritual power fed by a tradition of religious veneration. You're approaching a legend as much as a person.

So Azazel, Azrael, St. Peter, probably St. Christopher, St. Cyprian, St. Benedict, maybe St. Nicholas or some Saint associated with the dead or funeral customs would be the authority or the gate keeper, or assisting spirit to call upon when trying to access the spirit of a Saint or Blessed canon figure to work with in the context of your ancestors.

Otherwise, regular dead people, call them how you'd call them and talk with them about what you'd want and see if they're good with it.

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Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 7: The Dead

Presenting part 7 of 8 of our series on Conjuration and Spirit magic for beginners. Today we'll talk about what one of the less discussed and yet traditional components of conjure magic: Necromancy. Last week we posted a series of book recommendations and information on setting up a devotional practice to develop support in the spirit world. Monday we introduced scrying, Tuesday conjuring the elementals, Wednesday we talked about intermediary and crossroads spirits. Yesterday we discussed angels and demons. We've got one more in this series next week, and more interesting stuff in the future, so please like us on Facebook, and share the post with your friends so that can enjoy it as well.  

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 7: The Dead

In my early work with necromancy, as in magic of the dead not as in illicit spirit magic, I spent a lot of time working with Hades. There are a lot of deep mysteries to Hades and the continuum of gods who share in a series of functions with him. These mysteries go well beyond necromancy, but, Hades as ruler of the underworld has a lot to teach about necromancy. Incubation work with Hades is one of the first things you should be doing if you want to engage in necromantic work. He will be a better teacher than most you can find. One of the first things Hades communicated to me in my work with him was don't be a necromancer, and be careful of people who are. The idea here isn't that necromancy is bad or that people who engage in necromancy are bad, but necromantic work needs to be balanced out with other work. With the approach to conjuration we're presenting, the dead are one of the options we have for allies, for information, and for spirits to powerfully accomplish things for us, but they're not the only option. We have gods, the dead as our ancestors, saints, angels, demons, elementals, and faeries. We have the full axis of the world along which to operate. If we truly want to expand ourselves and gain knowledge and wisdom, to gain power, to work magic successfully, we need to move along that axis and use our full tool belt with all the parts working to accomplish their own particular piece of the overall function of the machine.

As alluded to when we discussed devotional work, honoring our ancestors, setting lights, holding dumb suppers, stuff like that, it isn't necromancy. Occasionally I've seen people trying to assert anything that involved the dead was necromancy and so all Pagans and sorcerers who keep communion with their ancestors are necromancers. Not so. In the ancient world your average everyday person kept communion with the dead, ancestors were enshrined as part of household worship. Necromancers held a separate function in society, and even that function had some variation. You had oracular workers who consulted the dead but were otherwise socially acceptable, you had corpse-scented sorcerers who spent more time associating with the dead than the living within even the fringes of society, and of course witches who reanimated corpses and used body parts for their criminal magics so terrifying that they were outcasts known mainly in legends and stories. Necromancy was a particular sort of magic with the dead.

Necromancers feed the dead to empower them and connect them to the world. In ancestor worship we might eat with the dead but it's largely out of remembrance, we offer them food so they can draw from it but only so much to draw their presence close enough to sit with them and renew our connections with them. When we necromantically feed the dead we feed them to empower their presence with a substantive power. We feed them with libations set for particular purposes. The classic image is that of Odysseus cutting a trench and pouring in blood and holding back the dead who sought to feed at it so that only his chosen dead could do so. Blood has a mystical quality of binding spiritual life to the physical body. It is through blood that magical connections to ancestors are passed in certain families because blood has this strange occult faculty of giving life. Blood is powerful in its ability to convey magical and spiritual energy and that is why so many magical operations involve blood, and why many types of spirits seek blood as food.

We don't always feed them blood. Sometimes we give other libations. Generally, in my experience, honey, wine, olive oil, and milk. These each relate to different elements of life and the spirit and not only connect the dead to the world by making an offering they stir the dead towards a stronger more lively and engaged connection with the world providing a base for them to recall and partake of some sense of what it was like to be alive.

Once the dead are empowered and vivified they, like other spirits, can be questioned for information or they can be conscripted for service through contract or through binding them. Like familiar spirits they can be bound to service, but most people today are not particularly fond of this idea, as it might appear disrespectful. Binding them for service can however include feeding and caring for them, or it can involve some benefit to the spirit once service is done. When one has a deceased person in their service they are generally tied to some object and that object is placed in a location which has objects that help to empower the spirit and where offerings can be placed.

But if we're not looking for something as drawn out as that we can also call upon the dead, pour out libations to them, and then ask them to answer questions for us or to go perform acts in service for us just like we would other spirits. In my practice I typically promise, and then provide, further libations as an offering of thanks once the service is rendered.

So, how do we go about actually doing this?

To some degree that depends upon our religious beliefs and what we think happens after death. If you don't believe in life after death, if you don't believe in spiritual powers that govern other worlds, you can't do this kind of magic.  

I go with a Greek approach, but there are others. Egyptian traditions involve a lot of information related to the dead, but I will admit, I'm not as versed in that. There are multiple Christian approaches one can engage. I would imagine just about any religious view either has a structure for communicating with the dead, or enough information about what happens with them, and who oversees them, how their world is closed and how it is accessed, that a system or method can be put together for either going to them, or for having permission granted for them to exit so that you can call them to you.

See that is an important component. The dead generally have an overseer. Someone who keeps the halls in which they are held. Before you can approach the dead you have to approach their overseer. You have to demonstrate that you have the right to enter into audience with him and to ask for the dead to be released to speak with you or to render service to you. You need some understanding of the mysteries of the underworld and how they impact the dead and your access to them. You need to know how to approach the overseer, is it through going to them through trance-work or through conjuration? It depends on the tradition you're working. You need to know what offering the overseer takes. Is it lamb? Is it wine? Is it incense? Once you've worked with the one who oversees the dead you call upon the dead individual. Once you have the permission to call upon that individual generally you can continue to do so. Use your invocation to conjure the spirit under the authority of the overseer and make the offerings to strengthen the spirit. Then question the spirit or ask the spirit to provide the services you need.

If you want to go the Greek route read Daniel Ogden's books Greek and Roman Necromancy, and his compilation of primary sources on magic in the Greek and Roman world. Check out the Aeneid and the Odyssey. Spend a lot of time studying the Orphic Hymns. Pray with the Orphic Hymns. The Homeric Hymns can provide some insight too, but the way the Gods appear in the mystery traditions will provide greater insight.

Here is an outline of my approach.

1. Cleanse and consecrate the space

2. Make prayers to Styx and bless water in her name and anoint yourself and the space

3. Use the Orphic Hymns to call on Hades and Persephone

4. Make offerings of bread, wine, lamb, and lambs blood to Hades and Persephone

5. Anoint your forehead with the blood and consume some of the bread and blood

6. Ask permission of Hades and Persephone that the spirit be released to you

7. Make offerings to Charon and Iris and ask that they bring you the spirit

8. Call upon the spirit and make your offerings. In this case since you have the blood offer the blood. But also the four libations, in the future when calling the same spirit you can simply call them and offer the four libations without the rest of the ritual. You can also consecrate a candle or some other instrument to use as a focus when calling the spirit in the future.

9. When finished thank the spirit and release it. Give thanks to the chthonic powers that gave license or aid in the operation, and close the ritual space.

This all sounds pretty simple. I had a friend who engaged in such a ritual with me once, it was his first private magical ritual, and only about his second or third magical ritual at all. He didn't even know magic existed prior to meeting me. He was pretty put off from it after this though. It was a bit intense, a little frightening. Giving lamb as a burnt offering involves some pretty intense fire. You come into the ritual having stripped naked and bathed in spring water like you would for other conjurations, but now, you're not just robed, you wear a shroud in recognition of howling for the dead as a mourner, and in the tradition of approaching the gods with a covered head. You're putting on blood and eating it. In many cases you'll want articles of the deceased. Hair, or some other thing drawn from them if you have it, or a favored item, or dirt from their grave. It's the sort of magic that pushes buttons because it forces you into an exotically liminal space, one which we're naturally aware of and of which most humans have some fear of approaching. This same method can be amended for descending into the world of the dead, which has equal room for intensity. But, it's powerful, visceral magic. It's magic that has a serious impact on the magician. It's magic that shouldn't be your only magic.

You can use other methods though.

Looking at more Christian methods they seem a little tamer, but not by much. You conjure in a grave yard at night. You have to select a criminal or a suicide so that it's someone who won't receive a good Christian burial, and therefore their soul will not be saved or carried to heaven. You might even request the soul from one who is about to be killed for his crimes before he is put to death. But, you're not eating blood, so that's a plus.

Reginald Scott presents this method:

“FIRST fast and pray three day, and abstain from all filthiness; go to one that is newly buried, such as one who has killed himself or destroyed himself willfully: or else get the promise of one that shall be hanged, and let him swear an oath to you, that after his body is dead, that his spirit shall come to you, and do true service to you, at you command, in all days, hours, and minutes. And let no persons see your doings, but your fellow. And about eleven of the clock in the night, go to the place where he was buried, and say with a bold faith & hearty desire, to have the spirit come that you do call for. Your fellow having a candle in his left hand, and in his right hand a crystal stone, and say these words following, the master having a hazel wand in his right hand, and these names of God written thereupon, Tetragrammaton + Adonay + Agla + Craton + Then strike three strokes on the ground, and say:

'Arise N. Arise N. Arise N. I conjure you N. by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you do obey to my words, and come unto me this night verily and truly, as you believe to be saved at the day of judgment. And I will swear to you an oath, by the peril of my soul, that if you will come to me, and appear to me this night, and show me true visions in this crystal stone, and fetch me the fairy Sibylia, that I may talk with her visibly, and she may come before me, as the conjuration leads: and in so doing, I will give you an alms deed, and pray for you N. to my Lord God, whereby you may be restored to your salvation at the resurrection day, to be received as one of the elect of God, to the everlasting glory, Amen.'

The master standing at the head of the grave, his fellow having in his hands the candle and the stone, must begin the conjuration as follows, and the spirit will appear to you in the crystal stone, in a fair form of a child of twelve years of age. And when he is in, feel the stone, and it will be hot; and fear nothing, for he or she will show many delusions, to drive you from your work. Fear God, but fear him not. This is to constrain him, as follows.

'I conjure you spirit N. by the living God, the true God, and by the holy God, and by their virtues and powers which have created both you and me, and all the world. I conjure you N. by these holy names of God, Tetragrammaton + Adonay + Algramay + Saday + Sabaoth + Planaboth + Panthon + Craton + Neupmaton + Deus + Homo + Omnipotens + Sempiturnus + Ysus + Terra + Unigenitus + Salvator + Via + Vita + Manus + Fons + Origo + Filius + And by their virtues and powers, and by all their names, by which God gave power to man, both to speak or think; so by their virtues and powers I conjure you spirit N. that now immediately you do appear in this crystal stone, visibly to me and to my fellow, without any tarrying or deceit. I conjure you N. by the excellent name of Jesus Christ Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. For this holy name of Jesus is above all names: for in this name of Jesus every knee does bow and obey, both of heavenly things, earthly things, and infernal. And every tongue does confess, that our Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of the father: neither is there any other name given to man, whereby he must be saved. Therefore in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and by his nativity, resurrection, and ascension, and by all that appertains unto his passion, and by their virtues and powers I conjure you spirit N. that you do appear visibly in this crystal stone to me, and to my fellow, without any dissimulation. I conjure you N. by the blood of the innocent lamb Jesus Christ, which was shed for us upon the cross: for all those that do believe in the virtue of his blood, shall be saved. I conjure you N. by the virtues and powers of all the royal names and words of the living God which I have pronounced, that you be obedient unto me and to my words rehearsed. If you refuse to do this, I by the holy trinity, and their virtues and powers do condemn you you spirit N. into the place where there is no hope of remedy or rest, but everlasting horror and pain there dwelling, and a place where there is pain upon pain, daily, horribly, and lamentably, your pain to be there augmented as the stars in the heaven, as the gravel or sand in the sea: unless you spirit N. do appear to me and to my fellow visibly, immediately in this crystal'”

In Scott's method we presume the magician has some clerical background and therefore has received sacraments, and probably some form of ordination which accomplishes the task of demonstrating the right to do this work. With that assumption the “overseer” is Jesus since he has conquered death and holds the keys to the gates of death, therefore participation in Mass is the interaction with the overseer of the dead, and the Mass is the offering made unto him. This might seem like a jump, except the soul of the dead here is specifically that of a condemned soul, and the magician is basically offering to remove that condemnation in exchange for service. So either the magician is a fraud (as Scott likely hoped to illustrate), or he is a priest and has the ability to grant a pardon for the sins of the condemned. This is interestingly parallel to some elements of medieval demonic conjuration which seem to imply that the demons may be redeemed at the final judgment by way of working with the magician.

Scott's method is also interesting because it ties the dead to fairies. The deceased here could be conjured for any purpose with this method given a small change of verbiage. Scott here specifies that the deceased is called for the purpose of conjuring a fairy. We won't be exploring connections between the fairies and the dead in this post. But it is a good segue towards Monday's post, in which we will discuss some thoughts on conjuration and fairies.