Can you Do Grimoire Magic For Free?

A lot of people – magicians and non-magicians alike – have noted that you need money to do grimoire magic. I’ve strolled through a magic shop with my non-magician buddy and he’s been impressed by how costly magic is.

 

It can definitely seem like a barrier to those approaching it. Not only does it feel like there are a ton of books to read, things to learn, and tools to make and buy…

 

…but the books and the tools are expensive.

 

Especially when folks insist that you need proper gold implements, custom parchment from a sacrificed virgin goat, and sticks cut in a single stroke on a certain hour on a certain day with the moon in the right phase and the stick not having grown more than a year.

 

Seems daunting, and if you want to buy the parts, it’s expensive.

 

There is also always someone willing to sell it to you. Those folks willing to sell it to you will also tell you that you can only get the success they have if you exactly follow all the steps and exactly have perfectly created tools. They might even say that folks doing it other ways are, ironically, just trying to sell you something…the idea that anyone can do this.

 

The reality is the textual history, and what survives of material evidence shows pretty clearly that people did things with a lot of variance and alternatives historically. People innovated. People used simple methods to call on spirits and had the spirits teach them more personalized magical work. With the amount of treasure finding magic out there, magicians who had nice stuff may have even did simpler cheaper magic to get money to get that nice stuff.

 

You can go the purist route, or not. Either way, if you’re looking to get started and you’re pressed for cash you can still begin working within the grimoire tradition without spending money. You can begin contacting spirits, building relationships, obtaining means to contact them outside of ritual to accomplish magical goals. You can even taking the Jupiterian prosperity gospel of magic approach – use magic to get your financial and material life in order so you can focus on your magical life.  

 

So how do we go about this?

 

Well, the first thing to remember is that the grimoire tradition mostly exists in a medieval and Renaissance Catholic context…later on in a sometimes Catholic sometimes Protestant context. In that worldview, natural permissible magic existed alongside the more legally restricted magics often recorded in the grimoires.

 

Angels, and some other spirits, could be contacted without circles, without seals, and without complex rituals. Some of these you could encounter just through prayer and appeal to God, some you could call upon by going to places they resided, or gathering natural items during the right times. In terms of prayer to God, some of the simpler methods presented in books of magic pretty much boil down to that approach.

 

There are a ton of resources you can read for free online. Many of the ones that you should be checking out are available at Joseph H. Peterson’s excellent site, www.esotericarchives.com. Once you’ve conjured some money by working with less expensive methods and free online copies of grimoires…spend some of it on his excellent print editions.

 

So, where do we get started in the free approach to the grimoire tradition?

 

Trithemius's Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals can be used with minimal equipment and is free to read online. You can get it at JHP’s site, or my site. There will be some additional resources for using it on my site also. In my blog, I’ve talked about that approach to working with angels and presented an alternative version of that kind of crystallomantic conjuration from Scot’s Discouerie of Witchcraft.

 

The main thing you’ll need is the crystal sphere. Other elements can be helpful, but God can send an angel to speak to you in a crystal ball, or even a bowl of water if he so choses. Prepare yourself, purify yourself, truly devote yourself, and you can get started…quite literally on a wing and a prayer.

 

You might look at that and say, “is this really grimoire magic?” If you look at handbooks that collected magic people actually did, or look at surviving accounts of magical practice, this definitely fits in. We can look at a grimoire example that confirms that though…

 

The Arbatel is perhaps the simplest approach and can provide insight into other angel magic than just work with the Olympic spirits. It’s also free to read online.

 

In the Arbatel, the magician is given a series of Aphorisms to study, mostly about how to lead a good life. A section of those Aphorisms provide seals, names and descriptions for a group of angels called the Olympic spirits. There is a prayer provided to call upon the spirit you desire. There is an additional prayer that is useful to go with it. That’s about all you need. Several people have even encountered the Olympic spirits and asked about using more tools or materials and they generally don’t seem super interested in that. With them you can keep it simple…and keeping it simple keeps it in line with the text’s instructions.

 

The Arbatel provides us with a grimoire example of working with angels with just a name, a sign, and a prayer. You can easily use that approach with other angels. The Olympic spirits also provide familiars, so you can use this approach and still work one of the important components of grimoire magic. A grimoire magician does not always use complicated grimoire rituals to conjure spirits. Spirits with whom the magician has a relationship should provide means to easily call upon them to help the magician with magical tasks. If that spirit provides a familiar, the familiar should – more or less – remain with the magician and aid the magician and teach him additional magic.  

 

This kind of work with angels will be easier if you’ve been cultivating a relationship with the angels, working on purity, and engaging in devotional prayer.

 

The seven penitential psalms could work as a daily prayer and meditation practice to help build the devotional element of your work and bring you more into a place for the angels to be provided for you.

 

The Seven Orisons from the Enchiridion of Pope Leo provide magical prayers which the magician could pray daily at sunrise, or nightly before bed in order to build on that devotional practice. You can read those prayers for free here.

 

While looking at sets of seven daily prayers, we shouldn’t slouch on the ones from the Heptameron. The Heptameron of Pietro D’Abano has a prayer for each day of the week which conjures the angels. Several magical sources encourage the magician to use these prayers or prayers like them as a daily practice. On any day where he intends to do magic, the magician should recite the appropriate prayer in the first hour (at sunrise) of the day. It’s advisable for the magician to make this a regular practice even on days where he isn’t doing other magical work. Doing this can help keep the magician’s focus on angelic work and bring the angels into the magician’s orbit.

 

For one last example of a daily devotional prayer, Reginald Scot provides a conjuration through which God binds spirits to obey the magician. I’ve presented the prayer in one of my books, but you can also read it for free in my blog here.

 

We talked about purity. Obviously, living a solid good life is a big part of that. Ritually speaking, fasting, bathing, anointing, things like that help prepare the magician. Attending religious services is an option too. If you want something simple, ritually bathing and praying the psalms is a good start. Several grimoire provide psalms for this purpose. Joseph Peterson has provided a list of purposes assigned to psalms in the grimoires. You can find psalms for your cleansing bath, psalms to consecrate your candles, psalms for putting on special ritual clothes, and for a host of other purposes. You can peruse thathere and select psalms for your various needs.

 

As you save a bit of money, or get some from calling on angels to aid you, you can start acquiring tools and exploring more deeply through the grimoires. You can approach them in a purist approach or an idiosyncratic approach.

 

The Heptameron is one of the simplest ones. You can use it for angels, for aerial spirits, and also for demons. If you want an approach with few tools that builds a lifetime of practice, there is the Abramelin. It will involve a lot of time and devotion but it doesn’t need a lot of tools and will give you access to spirits and magic that don’t need a lot of tools. The French version adds a lot of things…things the system seems intended to avoid…and so it will involve more tools, but the German version keeps it simple. You’ll need a few things but not a ton. It’s also the one book we’re mentioning that you’d need to buy. You don’t really need classes or instruction or other books to learn how to do it, just trust your guardian angel to guide you.

 

So, there you have it. I’m not telling you to buy my books or anyone else’s books or take my classes or anyone else’s. You can learn and do grimoire magic with no cost if you really put your mind to it. There are some great books and some great classes out there too which can help you…but don’t think that’s the only way to get started. Once you get started, you can always jump deeper and explore those options…but don’t let the cost of books, classes, and tools keep you away if you feel this is what you should really be doing. Don’t let apparent complexities keep you on the bench either. Jump in. Doing is learning.

 

Like most of my posts, stuff I offer will be linked at the end. Those are standard links, they aren’t an answer to “how can I do this if I can’t afford much.” The actual content of the blog post answers that question.

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If you’re curious about starting conjuration pick up my new book – Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration

 

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Is it a Bird? Is it a Ghost? Is it a Bird and a Ghost?

Any given day, scrolling a Facebook feed full of posts from magical and NeoPagan forums of varying levels of experience you have a fair chance of seeing a post in which someone describes having seen some sort of bird and wanting to know the spiritual significance of seeing a bird.

 

The correct answer is obviously: You live in a place with birds.

 

It doesn’t always make sense to try and find a spiritual significance to everything, but people sometimes do because they’re new and excited and they’re now paying attention in ways they didn’t before and so the ordinary seems extraordinary.

 

There are times when little things like this might have meaning. I was once hanging out with a friend who worshipped Hermes and had a living statue hosting a daimon given by Hermes. We had lunch by a pond and then walked the trail surrounding it. We noticed a turtle, then another, then another. Turtles everywhere. The significance? We were at a pond. Turtles are normal. But we were surprised by how abundant they were, so we counted how many we had seen to see if there was some Hermetic number. If they had been some peculiar number, or if we’d been in a place normally devoid of turtles, or if we’d just asked for a sign from Hermes and a turtle appeared, or if say a turtle carrying a harp rode up on a cow wearing sandals…it might be a sign. In the end, it was just a bunch of turtles. One of my favorite animals, in abundance, on a pleasant day, with good food, and the company of a friend. So, something nice, whether it had greater spiritual meaning or not.

 

If you hang around forums enough, you’re also bound to see people asserting to always look for a mundane cause before considering a magical one. Most things end up being completely mundane if we really examine them.

 

This is bad advice though.

 

Something having a mundane cause doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have a spiritual cause or a spiritual reality to it. In fact, the fact that a thing exists or an event is occurring means it does in fact have some spiritual reality to it and there are spiritual causes at play. Those spiritual causes and realities may be ordinary and not especially significant though. In some cases, the mundane cause may be less important than the spiritual one.

 

We have to look at our situation, look at what we’re encountering, and determine which is important or if both are important, and how to respond to each element appropriately.

 

What got me thinking of this was telling a non-magical friend about a bunch of weird occurrences associated with the dead which happened a few years back. Yesterday, Jan 27^th, was the 10^th anniversary of the death of my fencing coach. He was a pretty awesome man who left a major impact on the lives of people he encountered.

 

He died just shy of three months after my father died. I was 28, my dad had died suddenly and unexpectedly, and less than 3 months in I was still barely beginning to process it and the adjustments it was causing for my family. Coach was killed in an accident, so it was also unexpected. I was coming up on my Saturn return (the funeral and my birthday were the same week I believe), and the year that followed was pretty intense.

 

By the time the second anniversary of Coach dying came around, I had made my way through most of the Saturnine effects and had begun to settle back in. But that day came with something that seemed super unsettling initially, but ended up being pretty nice.

 

Early the morning of the 27^th I had come home from helping with an OTO 3^rd degree initiation. I can’t go into details of the initiation, but it’s publicly known that the mysteries of the 3^rd degree relate to the mysteries of death. My drive home was occupied with thoughts about how the dawning day was my coach’s memorial day and I was entering into that day with my head buzzing in a headspace concerned with death, the afterlife, and the continuation of our influence beyond death. It was weird timing for working that kind of initiation but in a way maybe healthy and helpful.

 

As I got to the door, my thinking stopped.

 

I was unnerved and confused.

 

Before I got to my door, I could see someone had placed something within the screen door, leaving it slightly ajar. Coming home in the middle of the night and finding your screen door propped open is a little unnerving on its own.

 

As I got closer, I found that it was two antique-style fencing foils. Decorative ones. I had no idea where they had come from. We had similar ones at the fencing club.

 

I considered driving to the club to see if someone had taken them from the club and brought them to me. I couldn’t imagine who would have had access and would have also known where I lived. I wracked my brain trying to figure it out. I wondered if I was experiencing the most miraculous haunting with materialization of antique foils. No answer that crossed my mind made sense.

 

Then I looked down and saw there was also a bag. The bag had a book I had loaned to a friend years ago, but he had lost. That same friend had taken my nephew to a Baltimore Blast (indoor soccer) game that day because I couldn’t attend due to the initiation. I calmed down and determined my friend must have left the book and the foils since I had not been around to see him when he picked up or dropped off my nephew. I called my friend later in the day and he confirmed he had left them for me. He didn’t know it was Coach’s memorial day, he had picked up the foils as a late Christmas/early birthday present for me and had figured it would be a convenient time to give them to me.

 

So, death initiation, memorial day for my fencing coach, and mysterious antique foils appearing in my door. Quite the string, but not the end of it.

 

Later that day, in the proper morning, one of my Uncles texted me to let me know he would be in town and had to drop something off for me. He and my cousin stopped by that afternoon and presented me with a framed double portrait. The portrait was a 16x12 image featuring two pictures of my father. One was the last serious photo taken of him before he died (about a month earlier) and the other was a photo of my father when he was 8 years old. My other Uncle had put it together for my Grandfather and my Grandfather had a copy made for me.

 

So, two points in that day which included gifts that were like touch points for the dead.

 

The foils and the portrait have mundane explanations. My friend thought the foils would be something I’d like; my Grandfather thought the portrait would be something I’d like. The mundane cause doesn’t invalidate the possibility of a spiritual cause. If the dead wanted to reach out and let me know they were there with me, these gifts showing up together juxtaposed to elements of timing that highlights them is a more elegant way than rattling chains at the foot of my bed.

 

The spiritual world doesn’t encroach onto our world, it is a living part of it that underlies it and helps to shape and build it. It interacts with us constantly and we with it. Not every interaction has meaning. Just like there isn’t a social implication that arises concerning each person we pass while walking down the street. But when those people intersect with us in meaningful ways there is some social consideration, similarly, when the spirit world expresses itself we shouldn’t write it off because we can see the mundane path it used. We can’t take this as an excuse to find signs and omens everywhere or paint ourselves with a gilded air of magical majesty and importance. We should be settled and reasonable but also attentive and engaged – we should be ready to be enriched by more fully noticing the small things which communicate the greater depth of the world to us.

 

Not every bird is a sign. But two ravens sitting next to a one-eyed vagrant under a tree on a Wednesday might be. In the right circumstance, despite the apparent means to explain them away, less spectacular seeming things might be too. Vast worlds can exist in small moments. 

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If you’re curious about starting conjuration pick up my new book – Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration

 

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A Bowl of Hellfire – Using Luminarium for Demons

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the key elements of my new book, Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration, is that it is modular. The book presents an approach to preparing for and developing for conjuration, and then gives a system of conjuration. That system is presented as a means of working with angels and aerial spirits, but the system is also modular. Modes of connecting with magical powers can be adapted to different symbolic and mythological language based on your religious or spiritual leanings. Each part contributes a piece to what is being done, so you can identify areas in which you can do something similar and make a substitution.

 

Like in other areas of magic, a substitution does not necessarily do the same thing as the original piece, but it might accomplish the same goal in a different way. These ways might be related or unrelated. The substitution can possibly adjust the over all course of what you’re doing. For example, I can vanilla frosting by mixing powdered sugar, shortening, and vanilla, or I can mix powdered sugar, butter and vanilla. The consistency and the flavor will be a little different between the two but I will still have a sweet vanilla flavored icing for my cake. The shortening and the butter will do similar things but they aren’t quite the same. They’ll each serve the same purpose in the recipe, but accomplish the goal with their own style.

 

The same logic applies in magic. If we know why a tool, or a rite is present, sometimes we can substitute something that accomplishes the same need by doing something similar. They won’t be the same. Diverge too much and you might get something recognizably different. Sometimes you just change the tone, or the way the connection comes through. Sometimes you might change the approach enough to direct the work in an altogether different direction as far as what sorts of spirits are being reached. Sometimes, but probably not most times, you might break the thing altogether and need to go back to the drawing board.

 

With Luminarium you could change out pieces because they don’t connect with you. For instance, if you don’t connect with your ancestors through a Greek influenced lens like the one that I present in the book you could substitute a rite which does similar things in so far as drawing your ancestors to be present and empowering them to work with you in the world. This probably wouldn’t change much of the over all ritual, but it could have some effect depending upon how your ancestors are encountered.

 

Alternatively, you could make changes built around working with different sorts of spirits through this structure. In our previous post we talked about recontextualizing to focus on building your space with nature spirits. Today we’ll talk about conjuring demons.

 

The book presents options for conjuring angels and aerial spirits, but there is no reason you can’t…and no reason you shouldn’t, use this for work with devils, the dead, and the fair folk as well. Each might need its own tweaks or additions, but it’s designed to accommodate that.

 

In the case of working with demons or devils we don’t need to change the ritual so much as add to it. The book already presents the option to conjure an angel and then conjure an aerial spirit under the authority of that angel. We can do the same with demons.

 

Now if we’re conjuring the demons under the authority of an angel, how do we know under which angel we should work?

 

There are a few ways to answer this, but none of them are definitive. You can try various options.

 

If you decide to go with the Testament of Solomon as your Liber Spirituum the demons provided Solomon with the names of the angels who “thwart” them. Beelzebul describes this process as being adjured by the oath. We often take the thwarting angel concept of one in which the angel is called to smite the demon, but Beelzebul’s description is one in which the angel is the power by which the demon is conjured. When working with the Testament of Solomon it provides the names of the powers by which the demons are bound in conjuration.

 

If you go with the text now called The Book of Oberon, a section of the Book of the Offices of Spirits describes several demons under the rulership of the Kings of the Four Directions. If working with that spirit list you could call upon the angel related to that king.

 

If not working with that text, you can take the same approach if you find some other means by which to accord the demonic hierarchy under the four kings.

 

Another option would be to look at the powers and appearance of the spirit, or the direction from which it comes if that is listed and try and determine a planetary association for the spirit. Once you have a planetary association you could call it under the angel associated therewith. If you work with spirits from the Hygromanteia planetary correspondences will already be available for many of them.

 

Once the angel is conjured you will instruct it to help retrieve the King and the demon and to aid in ensuring your safety and the safety of any of your concerns while the demon does its work. Then conjure the King, and then request that the King give access to the spirit and that the King or his messenger retrieve the demon in question and aid in its conjuration.

 

Then conjure, constrain, and bind the demon. If there any offerings or gifts to be given to the demon this would be done now along with any questioning and bargaining. Once this is done license it to depart.

 

You can obtain all the needed additions pretty easily, but we’ll provide some here as well.

 

Once you’ve picked your demon, and the angel you intend to call the next step is to select a conjuration for the appropriate king. Here are examples.

 

Oh great and potent spirit Oriens, King of the East, who rules the Eastern region of the world, I adjure you, I call upon you, and most powerfully and earnestly I urge you by, in, and through the virtue power and might of these efficacious and binding names, YHVH+, EHIH+, Adonai+, AGLA+, El+, Tzvot+, Elohim, of the Almighty, Immense Incomprehensible and Everliving God, the omnipotent Creator of heaven and Earth. I call you in the name of the Most High, whose name all the Celestial Angels honor and obey, and before whom all the holy Company and Choir of heaven, Incessantly sing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, and at whose Divine and inestimable name, all Knees on Earth give homage and bow, and all the aerial terrestrial and infernal spirits do fear and tremble and now by all these names I do now again powerfully adjure, call upon, constrain and urge you Oh great and Mighty spirit Oriens, King of the East, in the holy name YHVH+, within the presence of Michael+ that now immediately without further tarrying, or delay the spirit, you appear visibly, plainly, peaceably, affably in all serenity and humility here before me, and positively effectually faithfully, and fully aid me in all I request and answer all questions I ask, especially those things which accord to your office, without any delay guile or deceit or other illusions whatsoever. And I call upon you, Oh you powerful and regal spirit Oriens, by the power of YHVH+ in the presence of Michael+ to appear plainly visible before me, in pleasing form, in all mildness, peace, and friendliness, without any hurt, disturbance, or any other evil whatsoever, either to me, or this place, wherein I am, or any other place, person or creature whatsoever, but that quietly courteously and obediently you fulfill my desires and do my commandments in all things which I earnestly urge and command for you to do for me, Oh Royal and Potent spirit Oriens, in the name of YHVH+.

 

 

Oh great and potent spirit Egyn, King of the North, who rules the Northern region of the world, I adjure you, I call upon you, and most powerfully and earnestly I urge you by, in, and through the virtue power and might of these efficacious and binding names, YHVH+, EHIH+, Adonai+, AGLA+, El+, Tzvot+, Elohim+, of the Almighty, Immense Incomprehensible and Everliving God, the omnipotent Creator of heaven and Earth. I call you in the name of the Most High, whose name all the Celestial Angels honor and obey, and before whom all the holy Company and Choir of heaven, Incessantly sing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, and at whose Divine and inestimable name, all Knees on Earth give homage and bow, and all the aerial terrestrial and infernal spirits do fear and tremble and now by all these names I do now again powerfully adjure, call upon, constrain and urge you Oh great and Mighty spirit Egyn, King of the North, in the holy name Elohim+, within the presence of Gabriel+ that now immediately without further tarrying, or delay the spirit, you appear visibly, plainly, peaceably, affably in all serenity and humility here before me, and positively effectually faithfully, and fully aid me in all I request and answer all questions I ask, especially those things which accord to your office, without any delay guile or deceit or other illusions whatsoever. And I call upon you, Oh you powerful and regal spirit Egyn, by the power of Elohim+ in the presence of Gabriel+ to appear plainly visible before me, in pleasing form, in all mildness, peace, and friendliness, without any hurt, disturbance, or any other evil whatsoever, either to me, or this place, wherein I am, or any other place, person or creature whatsoever, but that quietly courteously and obediently you fulfill my desires and do my commandments in all things which I earnestly urge and command for you to do for me, Oh Royal and Potent spirit Egyn, in the name of Shaddai+.

 

Oh great and potent spirit Amaymon, King of the South, who rules the Southern region of the world, I adjure you, I call upon you, and most powerfully and earnestly I urge you by, in, and through the virtue power and might of these efficacious and binding names, YHVH+, EHIH+, Adonai+, AGLA+, El+, Tzvot+, Elohim+, of the Almighty, Immense Incomprehensible and Everliving God, the omnipotent Creator of heaven and Earth. I call you in the name of the Most High, whose name all the Celestial Angels honor and obey, and before whom all the holy Company and Choir of heaven, Incessantly sing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, and at whose Divine and inestimable name, all Knees on Earth give homage and bow, and all the aerial terrestrial and infernal spirits do fear and tremble and now by all these names I do now again powerfully adjure, call upon, constrain and urge you Oh great and Mighty spirit Amaymon, King of the South, in the holy name Adonai+, within the presence of Uriel+ that now immediately without further tarrying, or delay the spirit, you appear visibly, plainly, peaceably, affably in all serenity and humility here before me, and positively effectually faithfully, and fully aid me in all I request and answer all questions I ask, especially those things which accord to your office, without any delay guile or deceit or other illusions whatsoever. And I call upon you, Oh you powerful and regal spirit Amaymon+, by the power of Adonai+ in the presence of Uriel+ to appear plainly visible before me, in pleasing form, in all mildness, peace, and friendliness, without any hurt, disturbance, or any other evil whatsoever, either to me, or this place, wherein I am, or any other place, person or creature whatsoever, but that quietly courteously and obediently you fulfill my desires and do my commandments in all things which I earnestly urge and command for you to do for me, Oh Royal and Potent spirit Amaymon+, in the name of Adonai+.

 

The conjurations could also be used if working with the King was your end game. You could use an abbreviated form if you’re conjuring the king to aid with calling another spirit, particularly if you’ve worked with the King previously.

 

Here is an example:

 

Oh great and potent spirit Paymon, King of the West, who rules the Western region of the world, I adjure you, I call upon you, and most powerfully and earnestly I urge you by, in, and through the virtue power and might of these efficacious and binding names, YHVH+, EHIH+, Adonai+, AGLA+, El+, Tzevaot+, Elohim+, of the Almighty, Immense Incomprehensible and Everliving God, the omnipotent Creator of heaven and Earth. I call you in the name of the Most High, whose name all the Celestial Angels honor and obey, and before whom all the holy Company and Choir of heaven, Incessantly sing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, and at whose Divine and inestimable name, all Knees on Earth give homage and bow, and all the aerial terrestrial and infernal spirits do fear and tremble and now by all these names I do now again powerfully adjure, call upon, constrain and urge you Oh great and Mighty spirit Paymon, King of the West that you might bring the spirit [NAME] and grant us peaceable access to his presence.

 

The others can be modified in this same way.

 

Then you would call the spirit. I will provide an example using Hoistros from the Hygromanteia. A ritual for conjuring him appeared in my book Living Spirits:

 

I do invoke and conjure you Hoistros by Beralanensis, by Baldachiensis, by Paumachia, and by Apologia Sedes, by the most mighty kings and powers, and the most powerful princes, genii, Liachidæ, ministers of the Tartarean seat, chief prince of the seat of Apologia, in the ninth legion, I invoke you N, and by invoking, I conjure you Hoistros and being armed with power from the supreme Majesty, I strongly command you Hoistros, by Him who spoke and it was done, and to whom all creatures are obedient; and by this ineffable name, YHVH, which being heard the elements are overthrown, the air is shaken, the sea runs back, the fire is quenched, the earth trembles, and all the host of the celestials, and terrestrials, and infernals do tremble together, and are troubled and confounded: wherefore, forthwith and without delay, shall you, Hoistros, come from all parts of the world, and make rational answers unto all things I shall ask of you; and come peaceably, visibly and affably now, Hoistros, without delay, manifesting what we desire, being conjured by the name of the living and true God, Heliorem, and fulfill our commands, and persist unto the end, and according to our intentions, visibly and affably speaking unto us with a clear voice, intelligible, and without any ambiguity.

 

Once the spirit arrives it must be constrained to appear in a particular spot, in a particular manner, and in a way which is not harmful to the magician:

 

By the seals which are present, by the Great Seal of Solomon, by the names which have been aforesaid, by the name of John the Baptist I command Hoistros that you appear in pleasing form in this bowl and answer honestly all questions and expediently provide for all requests bringing no harm upon those of us who have called you.

 

Finally, the magician binds the demon by whichever divine and angelic names are appropriate to the agreement which they have come to. This agreement will include what the demon is to do, and any proscriptions on how, as well as what the magician is willing to pay the spirit for this work.

 

You could also make these adjustments without working in the context of calling an angel. In that case the ritual would open as normal up until the point of calling the angel. If you’re working in a planetary context then you would proceed with some other prayer accorded to the day of the week, or the hour in which you are working. If not working in a planetary context and electing to work under the auspices of the chiefs and princes of Hell, then invoke the appropriate chief followed by the appropriate prince as provided in Agrippa’s table of four. Then the king and then the demon.

 

One of the test team for Luminarium referenced using the method given for work with a demon. The method in Luminarium was originally tried in a group ritual for conjuring a demon which provided several people with several large manifest results involving jobs, property, and money.

 

Have you tried using Luminarium for working with demons? Or for something other than angels? Let me know about it!

 

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Three Dirty Words

 

          Sometimes magicians say some rather silly things about words. “I don’t like labels,” “I don’t want to be limited by applying a name to myself,” “it means whatever you want it to mean.” Things like this miss how language works, they also miss an important component of magic. Language is a partnership between ourselves and anyone listening to or reading us. We agree to use words as symbols with a particular meaning. For magic, language is a chisel, the world is a stone, and our placement of words is the hammer. We define, shape, know, and explore things by cutting away bits and pieces until we reveal what a thing is, or shape what a thing is, through the judicious use of words.

          Meaning is important. The ability to convey meaning is important. Care and consideration of our words is important.

          Sometimes words have meaning beyond what they say, and we need to consider what they express. This is, as I’m sure almost all people reading will know, the difference between denotation and connotation. What a word denotes, what it means, can be pretty static, over time it might evolve some, but its core should be pretty steady. If it is evolving, it should be slow enough for broad agreement to occur in order for our partnership between speaker and hearer to work. Connotation is weird, because it can be contextual, it can be shifting and specific and impacted, or it can be a generally socially accepted thing. It can change on the fly due to lots of factors. Because it has to do with feeling and implication it can be harder to change it intentionally than it is to change meaning.

Today I’m going to suggest we work on changing connotation, and redeem some potentially useful words from the mire they have accreted in their short stint as part of magic’s in-crowd phraseology.

Those words about which we are going to speak? Unverified Personal Gnosis.

Jason Miller and I had a fun chat this afternoon, and the use of the phrase UPG was one of several things we discussed. I believe he is going to be writing about it too. As I understand it, his position is that we should more or less drop the phrase. It creates unreal standards. It asks for things without really defining what those things are. It creates a hierarchy of value for experiences based on some potentially faulty logic.

I agree with those criticisms. I think a lot of things people want to see change in the magical community and the pagan community can fall victim to those same criticisms. We need standards, but are the standards people are asking for what they really want? We need structures, but what are those structures and why do we need them? How do we determine what’s good or bad, or what’s meaningful or not meaningful? We can find a lot of things which should be, but aren’t always, confronting those questions.

As far as UPG, my take is more cautious. I use the term, but with a bit of trepidation. I don’t want to convey something by it that I don’t mean. I know my audience might easily take something from it I don’t mean, even if my audience is, as was this case this afternoon, an individual friend with whom I’m chatting. I think the words themselves are a really good description for a concept that is important and one which should be so very quotidian that we probably do need ways for discussing it, placing it, and exploring it. I think these three words have some baggage though. They’re dirty, not in the sense of being vulgar, but in the sense that people have used them vulgarly and got them a bit dirty in the process.

I think we can clean them up, make them useful, and in doing so highlight how important actual magic and actual experience of the numinous, and of the individuated spiritual ecosphere are to…you know…magic.

Because that’s the thing. We can’t be magicians, and consistently look down on people having experiences of the magical. When we have a set of words to describe all such experiences, and people equate that set of words with hopelessly idiosyncratic at best, and worthless trash at worst…we’re tossing out the existence of magic. We’re throwing away our ability for magic to grow as a living breathing experience within a broader community.

So, how do we clean these words up so they can be useful again?

Let’s start with what the words are. UNVERIFIED Personal Gnosis. I’ve seen some people render the U as Unverifiable. Which would mean we could never confirm if it was real or not, if it has veracity, or a core of truth in it. If something can’t ever touch truth it’s probably just a fantasy. If something can be true, we just aren’t sure yet, it is something which potentially propels us to explore learn and grow.  Unverified just means we don’t know yet. If a spirit tells you what the outcome of a major sporting event will be it’s unverified until the event happens, after which you’ve either verified what you were told was true or it wasn’t. Information we get from a spirit isn’t necessarily unverifiable.

Any information anyone gets from a spirit will begin as Unverified Personal Gnosis. The spirit generally isn’t talking to a bunch of people so, any communication will be personal. That doesn’t mean the information is only for the person receiving it. Sometimes we try to dismiss UPG as if it only applies to the person who got it. It really depends on the nature of the message. I’ve had interactions with gods and spirits who have told me things about their nature, things they like to receive, or things about how they are represented which I later encountered in historical sources or works describing their history. Those messages weren’t for me, they were just messages being told to me. Sometimes many people dealing with a spirit will get the same or similar information about a way to work with the spirit. The message is personal in that they’re each personally told the message, but many people receiving it shows it isn’t just for them. A message about events that are going to happen could also be a message for a wider audience than just the person receiving it.

Calling it Gnosis just means it is knowledge but implies something personal and experience driven. It can also be taken as a way to write it off by pushing it closer to the category of WooWoo. Probably my least favorite word choice of the term. Either way, it’s just information.

UPG should be the goal of magic, religion, mysticism, really anything in life. If we’re not personally developing and gaining knowledge or information from our actions and interactions what are we even doing? When we get a tarot reading or a geomancy consultation, the information the reader receives from their spirit contacts is UPG, just UPG intended for the specific client in the specific situation, and hopefully it will be verified in the near future. We have no problem with info being received in that context. So we don’t tend to apply this particular term of potential derision to that kind of information even though it’s no different.

So, what’s the problem with UPG?

People use the term dismissively. They act like any information that falls under UPG needs to be ignored. People act like it should never be considered or discussed. That kind of position is counter-productive. Conversely, ignoring all tradition, history or evidence and proclaiming UPG as truth for everyone or providing it without qualification is also a big, and common problem. That latter problem is why, in my opinion, the term is useful. We need a way to note when something is untested and is sourced from our own experiences. We should also be able to note when something is experientially derived, but when it has been confirmed in some meaningful way. We need a way to view information like this which doesn’t make any experiential information automatically dismissed or derided.

Less discussed, we also need to distinguish between UPG and people’s individual reimagining. If someone is just interpreting historical sources in a weird way, or deciding they don’t like the historical context of a thing and reimagining it for modern times, that is something wholly different. I won’t go into the merit or lack of merit of such an approach right now, but we should be able to distinguish stuff someone is making up, from stuff someone received from spirit contacts. Being able to say “this is UPG,” “this came from an article by Claire Fanger,” or “I made this up,” should all be simple propositions.

UPG becomes problematic because of people’s values and biases. I think a little of this is fair. The NeoPagan community, which the magical community was pretty intimately tied to until maybe ten to fifteen years ago, is full of bad history and fiction and fantasy being equated with truth. Major segments of the magical community have inherited this kind of “it can be whatever I want it to be,” mentality. Counter movements like the Reconstructionist movement, which seems to have been replaced by the Polytheist movement, and the Grimoire Revivalists, have reacted by insisting on exacting historical scholarship…sort of. The scholarship definitely varies and the means by which it’s judged are inconsistent.

I myself lean hard into valuing history. I was into Reconstructionism as a teenager. I studied Classics in college. I took enough Latin in college to qualify to teach high school Latin.  I lean hard into valuing magic too. I was never into the psychological model, or doing magic for catharsis. To me, spirits, gods, and magic have always been about connecting with and doing something real. From that perspective while I like history as a bench mark, as a starting point, and as something to use to guide ourselves and compare our results to…I think we need to be intensely concerned with what we experience and discover and how these powers remain vital active and continuously unveiling parts not only of our lives, but of the wider world.

When we consider how history and UPG can interact, we should try to remember that historical material probably started as someone’s UPG that got widely accepted and redeveloped and institutionalized over time. With some historical material we don’t even know if it became accepted or stood the test of time, we just know someone wrote it down and it survived long enough to reach us. We should value historical info, especially historical info that we see was disseminated throughout a broad group of people, or over an extensive period of time. We can presume that it endured and spread because something rang true for people and they had some success adhering to those understandings and practices. It still started with someone receiving some inspiration or some message.

Unless we believe in a degeneration of spiritual contact through the ages of man, and that there are no more prophets, no more sages, no more saints, no more visionaries amongst your everyday people…then we have to accept that people might receive things that are real and meaningful.

I’ll be skeptical when reviewing things people say. If they got something from their experiences and it feels true, or evidence backs it up, or it seems reasonable based on things I know or have experienced I might be inclined to accept it. I don’t have to accept it. I should respect the possibility that it has some truth to it. I should also retain the reason and discernment to recognize when something is just fantasy.

Usually it’s not a hard line to walk. I think when we forbid discussing UPG, or when we decide we shouldn’t note when something is UPG we’re deciding not to use our reason and our faculties of discernment. We’re saying only the historical is valuable…despite that it can also be wrong, or we’re saying nothing is inherently valuable so it doesn’t matter where anything came from. I don’t think either of these positions is true. We should encourage exploring and educating oneself in tradition just as we should encourage diving in and experiencing the richness of the reality of the spirit world. We should openly discuss information derived from both, but we should make it clear where we’re getting that information from. We shouldn’t dismiss things that could be very valuable or useful for us just because it isn’t traditional so it’s just made up, any more than we should because it came from tradition and tradition is just old superstitions. Either way, we should explore, evaluate, and make informed choices.

 

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My Non-Relationship with Saint Cyprian

 

A few days ago, we finished the days of the Cyprians, a Novena which some magicians celebrate to Saint Cyprian between the feast days of Saint Cyprian of Carthage and Saint Cyprian of Antioch.

 

Saint Cyprian has become a hugely popular Saint amongst magicians in the last decade or so. As Catholic influence becomes more common in magic he seems to be the center of that approach for many. Like Hekate, he is a spirit who was once obscure in Anglosphere awareness of magic…despite appearing in some English works of magic…who is now everywhere. To me, he seems to clearly be a spirit on a mission, a spirit spreading the awareness of himself. To me this suggests there is something important in exploring magic related to him.

 

Despite feeling there may be some important magic to explore in building a relationship with this Saint, I sometimes feel like maybe it isn’t on the table for me.

 

I tried once with formal prayers and rituals during the Days of the Cyprians and got nothing. Nada. No presence, no message, no visions, no dreams. I felt a bit put off from it and figured Cyprian wasn’t for me. Time passed and eventually an essay by Jake Stratton-Kent inspired me. I felt more drawn to the Saint. I felt excited. I tried gathering some stuff. Lot’s of stuff. But this time the failure was on my end, time never felt right to use it, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to use it, so I didn’t.

 

Finally, I got a nibble. I decided to try a novena again during the Days of the Cyprians. I searched for prayers, and then remembered another time I had trouble connecting with a spirit, and the spirit led me to be less formal and be more personal. To approach as one living being to another, actually reaching out with feeling rather than just rote form. I prayed from my heart, opened myself to receive him in dreams instead of searching for presence and signs. I had some dreams, my sleep was not adequately sleep – having been taken up by this communication. Still, it didn’t really build up to a connection or take me anywhere. It didn’t lead me to where I should go next with it.

 

I tried again this year, and more or less, got nothing. I had a single dream, which gave me some interesting thoughts I still have to unfold. The rest of the nights, nothing. Sometimes a feeling of maybe having had some interaction, but no memory, no lesson, no message.

 

I feel like there is something to explore with Cyprian. But I also feel like maybe Cyprian doesn’t feel drawn to explore anything with me.

 

This is an important lesson to learn. Magic is about what’s real. It’s not about our whims or our satisfaction. In a world where things are real and where we aren’t the only identity that matters, sometimes the powers that exist out there won’t pick up the ball and play just because we toss it in their direction.

 

Even if they don’t pick up the ball, if we feel like there is something there that we are drawn to, we have to look at ourselves and see if it makes sense to really jump in and try and make it happen. If we’re drawn to something there and the spirit is just not drawn to us, then maybe we need to figure out where we find what we’re looking for. Do we find it in some better way of trying to approach that spirit? Do we find it in some other spirit of a similar nature?

 

It will depend in part on our own nature and needs, but also in part of that of the spirit as well. And that’s really the crux of it. Like us, these spirits are living things. Things won’t always be exactly what we want or expect, and that’s ok. We should encounter moments like this. From them we should figure out what we really need, and how to get it. Sometimes that is a better or different effort with the same spirit. Sometimes it’s moving on to something more right for us, sometimes it’s finding the right time. Reflection, divination, and searching for help and insight from our close spirit relationships can help us sort these things out. That’s what we have to do, sort those things out and see the reality that sometimes doors we knock on aren’t ready to open, or aren’t ready to open for us. This isn’t a reason to stop, it’s a reason to plan for the next time.  

 

Would you like to Follow us for Updates or Support our Work?

 

If you enjoyed this please like, follow, and share on your favorite social media! We can be followed for updates on Facebook.

 

If you’re curious about starting conjuration pick up my new book – Luminarium: A Grimoire of Cunning Conjuration

 

If you want some help exploring the vast world of spirits check out my first book – Living Spirits: A Guide to Magic in a World of Spirits

 

More Opportunities for Support and Classes will show up at Ko-Fi