Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 5: Intermediary and Crossroads Spirits

Presenting part 5 of 8 of our series on Conjuration and Spirit magic for beginners. Today we'll talk about establishing relationships with Intermediary and Crossroads spirits. 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, and yesterday conjuring the elementals. Today we'll look at the elementals before moving on tomorrow to intermediary and crossroads spirits. So please like us on Facebook, and share the post with your friends so that can enjoy it as well. Bonus...in our scrying post we linked to a class on angel magic, but the link did not go through so we're including it today.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 5: Intermediary and Crossroads Spirits

So maybe now you've gotten comfortable making offerings at your devotional altar, and you've become friends with some elementals, and you're ready to move on to some more...interesting...spirits. Angels? Demons? The stuff we tend to think of when we think of magical conjuration. So you strip down, spritz yourself with spring water, put on your nicest robe blessed by a priest, pull out your sword consecrated at Mass, put on your crown burn your incense, and sonorously intone in your most beautiful voice all the glorious invocations of God and all the most heinous and intense curses which command the spirits, and no body answers.

 There could be a few reasons why. One possible question we could ask to find one solution is “who are you that they feel they should answer?” Spirits aren't all just functional manifestations that run automatically like computer programs when the right buttons are pushed. They aren't anthropomorphized externalizations of internal mental and emotional concepts. They are spirits. They don't have the same sort of conscious will as humans, but they are still aware individual beings. Now there are some people that take the view that when Iamblichus describes spirits who aren't very bright and are easily tricked by magicians, that these spirits are the demons of the grimoires, and so a magician dressing like a child playing at being King Solomon is enough to trick them into thinking you're Solomon. Others might take the view that angels obey magicians because God says so, and demons do because man is above them in the hierarchy. There are lots of philosophical and cosmological explanations, and some of them can work well, but it remains that the interactions don't always run perfectly, so spirits clearly have some wiggle room, even if they don't have full freedom in the matter.

So, the spirit isn't answering so you ramp up your use of names of God. But do the names belong to you? Do you have the power to use them. Think of more modern vampire movies...the clumsy would be hero tries to stop the vampire with a cross or religious relic, and the vampire laughs it off because the hero, being your average modern person, has no real faith in the spiritual power behind the symbol. The spirits obey the names but you have to be in a position to actually use them. A large part of grimoiric magic comes from the sacramental rite of exorcism, in which the exorcist by virtue of names and signs calls upon divine power to command spirits. The exorcist however had to be spiritually fit and in a state of sacramental grace to make use of the names with any efficacy. So the exorcist had to attend confession, make prayers to prepare themselves, and preferably attend Mass prior to the exorcism. Liber Juratus has this same admonition to attend Mass. Most grimoires require a period of spiritual purification, the use of psalms to prepare and consecrate oneself, and various prayers found in the grimoires to that bring about that effect as well. So you need to be spiritually fit and able to connect to the power of the names. This doesn't necessarily mean being a good Christian. In the case of some of the PGM rituals it might mean being initiated into a mystery tradition, or having done a magical ritual to give you access to the powers behind the names. In the grimoires it might just mean having a certain spiritual steadiness and balance while accessing some authentic understanding of a spiritual power behind the divine names or the thwarting angels. As you explore these systems you can find what this readiness means to you, and the more in touch with it you become the better your results will be.

There is another element which might help in addition to this readiness, and we find it referenced in the PGM, as well as hinted at, or maybe expressly present, in some of the grimoires. The idea of an intermediary spirit, or a spirit who helps connect you with other spirits. Now, calling it an intermediary spirit kind of pigeonholes this function, when in reality several systems have several ways of filling this helping and idea, and they're not all precisely by using go-betweens. To illustrate the essential idea though. If you didn't like something Microsoft was doing, and you walked into a board meeting and told them to design some new software that fit your needs better, they would be confused as to who you were and why you were there, and they probably wouldn't listen. If you were friends with Ted Turner, and Ted called up Bill Gates, and Bill called the board and said “Hey, Johnny Magician is a cool guy, he needs this software, can you help him he'll call you tomorrow about it” then they'll be expecting you and know you're someone they should listen to.

The PGM presents this idea in various rituals having to do with acquiring a daimon or a spiritual assistant. In the NeoPlatonic worldview this was a spirit who wasn't quite a human spirit and wasn't quite a divine spirit, but it could go between human theurgists and the gods and carry prayers and offerings up and blessings an assistance down. In a more magical context it could go about and accomplish things for the magician and it could help the magician in calling upon gods and spirits in other spells to aid in his work.

In The Testament of Solomon St. Michael the Archangel comes to Solomon and delivers a ring which imparts divine grace and wisdom upon Solomon allowing him to command spirits. The demons are commanded by angels, but the ring and the spiritual presence which accompany the ring give Solomon the authority over the demons and probably also make the angels obedient to him, even though we don't ever see him needing to make use of the angels. In Solomonic grimoires this same presence, essentially the Holy Spirit, is sometimes called upon by magicians to grant the power and authority to command the spirits. In such an example we could look at either the angel, or the Holy Spirit as functioning somewhat as an intermediary spirit, however we could also look at the presence of the Holy Spirit as simply initiatory in nature if it were taken as a permanent presence.

The Abramelin presents this idea with the Holy Guardian Angel. The magician goes on vacation, and brings back an angel! Or...more honestly, the magician cloisters himself in an ever increasing devotional ceremony of prayers, culminating in an intense period of prayer and meditation at the end of which his Holy Guardian Angel appears. The angel teaches him magic and as part of teaching him magic aids him in conjuring the Demon Kings, and then all demons subordinate to them, and subordinate to their subordinates, and so on, and eventually including familiar spirits granted to him. He is then by the agency of his angel able to call upon these demons without the trappings of a ritual magician and make them do things they have sworn to do. He can start with his familiars and if they can't do something they will refer him to the proper demon to do it. So he has both the angel and his series of familiars to assist him in navigating the spirit world. The Golden Dawn and Crowley kind of took this idea and worked it into a variant of the Pentacostal initiation of the Holy Spirit we referenced above, but even in their approach the Holy Guardian Angel teaches you magic and helps you command spirits. In fact the Stele of Jeu from the PGM, which was an exorcism of spirits, was reworked by the Golden Dawn, and moreso by Crowley, to make it into an invocation of this angelic presence. One of the key adaptations is replacing the exorcism language with language directed at making spirits and magic subservient to the magician.

Liber Juratus takes an approach that is similar to the Abramelin, but taken in a direction again more like this baptism of the Holy Spirit kind of view. The magician engages in a spiritual retreat to achieve the beatific vision, or the vision of the face of God. By achieving this the magician then gains the authority to command the spirits and do the magic described in the grimoire. In this case it is not so much an example of use of an intermediary spirit but rather creating that spiritual rightness by which the power of divinity can be accessed. Juratus also seems to take an approach that the angels and the magician share in a love for the divine and this is why the angels are willing to work with the magician. Achieving the beatific vision is a reflection of this state of grace, or perhaps a cause of it.

Maybe we don't groove on all this Catholic type angel helper stuff. Maybe we want something more down to earth? In sorcery traditions part of the initiation is accessing a connection to the spiritual powers of the ancestors of the house into which you are initiated. In witchcraft you are born into the bloodline of your ancestors and therefore you are born with a connection to their spiritual presence. These spirits therefore are able to serve as your intermediaries. They help make introductions for you in the spirit world. They can help exert spiritual force when needed to help keep a spirit on board with doing whatever they agreed to do. They can help protect you from spirits who are taking advantage of the opportunity to work in the world that you are giving them in ways which might have otherwise been disadvantageous for you. So your dead, again, those guys you're feeding at your devotional altar, are a whole crew of spirits ready to vouch for you in the spirit world, and who other spirits know have your back if things go sideways.

Witches also often keep fairy or other kinds of spirit familiars who help teach them magic and accomplish magic for them. These spirits can also work as intermediaries to help call other spirits, and help leverage agreements with them. On the point of witches and sorcerers, we also have forest spirits and crossroads spirits who give power and grant access to familiars and to spirits. In European witchcraft this spirit is the Witches' Devil, who contrary to popular modern opinion, is not precisely Lucifer and has nothing to do with fallen angels. Rather this black spirit makes an agreement with the witch and teaches the witch magic. He can be met in the forest under a tree, at the cross roads, or at night at the steps of a church. He is sometimes described, and depicted in artwork, as cavorting with the witches and participating in magical rituals with them. Frisvold describes a similar spirit in the forests of Trinidad in his book Obeah: A Sorcerous Ossuary. The forest power of obiya is granted by these spirits who inhabit the forest, or the wild natural places, therefore a place with a power similar to that liminal power of graveyards and crossroads in that it is a place not fully held by society and it is a place containing some uncertainty. The spirits he describes remind me very much of the Witches' Devil.

Like the devils of witchcraft and Obeah, Vodou has Papa Legba. Legba is a crossroads spirit who either grants permission of denies permission of the person approaching him to speak with the Loa and other spirits. In Santeria Elegua also connects to the crossroads and grants access to spirits. Now I am not suggesting that you begin all your grimoire conjurations with an offering to Legba and Elegua, or by making a call to the Witches' Devil, but these traditions which present a more living view of conjure work all involve some intermediary to work with spirits. Even looking back to Europe we have Hecate, and Mercury at the crossroads and able to grant access to magic and spirits, and to move between this world and the underworld.

So maybe the grimoire work needs to work with gatekeeper spirits too. Fortunately the grimoire tradition has a few of these. Oriens, Egyn, Paymon, and Amaymon, are the Kings of the Four Directions and they grant access to this world by the spirits who reside within each of their directional kingdoms. They sometimes appear in lists of demons, but are also often listed elsewhere. They are terrestrial rather than infernal, and have infernal, aerial, and celestial spirits to whom they accord. They clearly stand in conjunction with this world, at the spokes of the cross roads, each one ruling the vertical crossroads between spiritual worlds. They are a little different than the basic idea of an intermediary spirit in that there are four of them, and they don't feature in the grimoires as being called upon before calling other spirits. Some magicians think you shouldn't ever conjure them directly, some think you can start at the bottom of a hierarchy and work up to them, some think you should start with them and work down. Maybe working with your intermediary spirit...you're spiritual assistant, your Holy Guardian Angel, you might under the presidency of the angel connected to the King and make yourself known to the king, maybe share some offering, and create an awareness of who you are so that when you call spirits from the direction he rules you can reference the king if need be in calling the spirit. In addition to name dropping the king also you have the gatekeeper willing to open the gate so your spirit can be drawn to manifestation.

Start slow though. Keep feeding your ancestors. Talk with them about what you're going to be working on. Get them to sign on with helping you out with your conjure work. Just lighting some candles and leaving some candy and whiskey on an altar doesn't mean they're going to jump in and help with specific things you want. Talk with them about your life, and talk specifically about the work you plan to do and the help you want from them. When your ancestors are on board, pick what kind of intermediary you want. Do you want the spiritual assistant from the PGM? Do you want to work with the agathodaimon? Do you want to do devotional work to the Holy Sophia and draw on the Holy Spirit, or turn to the cults of the Saints and honor a saint related to spirits and magic? Saints like Cyprian, or Nicholas, or Benedict, or perhaps Joan of Arc, even St. Peter as the Gatekeeper could be an option. Maybe you want something more naturalistic and you do want to find a way to incorporate the witches devil or a crossroads spirit into your work. Maybe look at religions local to your environment and find what spirit locally served that purpose and make propitiation to him or her before your rituals. Or maybe you want to go all in with the grimoire approach as seen in the Post-Golden Dawn world and do the Abramelin working, get in contact with your Holy Guardian Angel, and work with him or her as part of your conjure work. Once you have your friend at the center of the crossroads, then maybe incorporate the kings, and see if your calls get answered more clearly.

You have options. Quite literally a world of options since there are so many variants of this idea from so many places. Poke around, find yours, fit it to your work. 

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 4: Elementals

Presenting part 4 of 8 of our series on Conjuration and Spirit magic for beginners. Today we'll talk about conjuring the elementals. Last week we posted the a series of book recommendations and information on setting up a devotional practice to develop support in the spirit world. Yesterday we introduced scrying. Today we'll look at the elementals before moving on tomorrow to intermediary and crossroads spirits. 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 4: Elementals

So now we get to our first phase of conjuration, the elemental spirits as defined by Paracelsus. A lot of people think of these elementals as being a part of Golden Dawn magic, or as coming from Eliphas Levi. There spirits are a big part of the GD system and post GD systems. The most common approach to their use is based on a chapter in Levi's Transcendental Magic (Ritual and Dogma of High Magic), that chapter being The Conjuration of the Four. Some people recognize that The Comte de Gablais by De Villars provides an earlier source. But in a slightly earlier and less readily available work, we will find their original description comes from Paracelsus. We don't find them in the Grimoires, but there may be similar spirits, or classes of spirits, or related spirits in the grimoires. Paracelsus as a source at least ties them into the same time and network of people collecting together the magical knowledge that informed the previous generations who produced the early medieval grimoires. Paracelsus also gave us the initial introduction to the Olympic spirits, described a generation later in the Arbatel. But honestly, where their original descriptions comes from doesn't matter so much as the fact that they are very accessible, and that they are good workers.

The elemental spirits, in my experience, and by most accounts, are relatively simple uncomplicated spirits. They are very function based in terms of ordering and carrying out the functions of their elemental realms. They don't have much of an agenda. Some agenda is implied in Comte de Gablais but I don't see any real sign of this in them aside from the fact that they seem happy to work with and help humans who work with them. Being elemental they are very physically concerned and are very much about clear real world manifestations. But the manifestations are often very simple, sometimes small, and very literal in their nature.

Two stories about work with Gnomes.

Recently I did a simple invocation of the Gnomes to help smooth out some monetary flow and deal with a handful of issues that people were bringing to me. I basically just asked for some money. The next morning I went out to my car to head to work and found a $50 dollar bill stuck in my door. I thought “what the fuck, how did that get there...oh, gnomes! Gnomes are awesome.”

A friend once told me about doing the conjuration of the Gnomes and then going out to a bar. While at the bar he was sitting there and suddenly the crowd of people parted like the red sea. A scruffy dirty man in a blue hoodie drawn over his head and sticking up to a point stood at the other end of the opening and walked up and hugged him and said “Hello Brother!” Then the creature turned and walked back into the crowd and it closed around him. A moment later the crowd opened again and the man walked up to him again and he poured coins and candy cigarettes and similar little things into my friend's hands and smiled warmly and said “here brother” and then turned and walked back into the crowd which closed around him and he was gone. My friend was convinced that this was a manifestation of the gnomes. To me it seems pretty probable.

The elementals don't really open you up to the same kind of life changing psyche shifting disruptions that often come with other spirits. They don't have a need to either fix your life (angels) or destroy order (demons) and so they're a pretty stable, easy to deal with relatively safe spirit to start with. They're still not precisely safe. Nothing in magic is exactly. It's still possible to experience an impure magnetism or obsession with a particular elemental force. It's possible to approach these forces incorrectly and create problems. It's also possible to conjure them and apply them incorrectly in ways that are destructive. If you invoke fire, be prepared to deal with fire. Crowley's Liber Librae, which is really just a Golden Dawn knowledge lecture repackaged, is essential to consider when thinking about how to approach the elementals in a balanced fashion. This balance is necessary. The balance is what the elementals are looking for when they deal with you, it's what makes them want to help you, because it helps you stand in a position where for them, you can be an ally who links them to the Lord, which is central to their call towards service.

Because of this ease of cozying up to the elementals in a relatively safe fashion they're a good place to start. When I was a Philosophus and was given to working on early experiments of conjuration, elementals, articifial elementals, and servitors were the teeth cutting entities I was pointed to for exploring that magic. For that reason, and the simplicity of working with them, they'll be the first spirits we look at.

The Conjuration of the Four by Levi will provide the basic framework you need for approaching work with the elementals. Essentially, these are the things to remember. The elementals desire to create orderly manifestation of the forces of their particular elemental worlds because this is what the Lord has dictated for them. Now the Lord here is not necessarily Jesus Christ, or God the Father, but rather the NeoPlatonic Demiurgos, the extension of the One and the Good who orders time and space into creation and diverse manifest pieces. From a Hermetic perspective we can look at this Lord like the Logos or the shining extension of the force of creation beloved by the spirits of order and creation who willingly serve that force out of their love for the beauty of the divine source. This is the perspective of the elementals. That said, the elementals don't necessarily have a clear apprehension of what order and creation are, they just do what they're told by the particular expression of the Light which is present for them. As the magician you fulfill two roles in this interaction. You invoke the Lord so that you can stand as his lieutenant or as his image for the elementals to gather around you and do service for you, and simultaneously you worship the Lord while standing in the perspective of the elementals so that they rejoice at your unity with them and they feel bonded to helping you.

What does it mean to stand with them? LITERALLY STAND WITH THEM. So if you're calling the sylphs you don't stand in the west and look east and call them from the east like you would a spirit who comes from the east typically. You stand in the east, and face the altar (now to your west) and you say the prayer of the sylphs, which is not a conjuration of them, but is rather the prayer that the sylphs utter in honor of the Lord. The sylphs gather with you for the prayer and feel bonded and aligned to you as one of them, but as one of them who is in the image of the creator and who possesses the complete soul which they do not, but which they desire to be close to. You give them joy and hope. When you say the prayer, try to feel like you're part of the community of these elemental spirits, try to feel the joy and love they feel in working for their creator. It's pretty uplifting to feel this and creates a pretty healthy and beneficial relationship with these spirits. Once you feel that community you can ask the spirits for what you want, and instruct them to go off to do their work toward that end.

It's really about that simple. I would recommend for whichever elemental you're calling you should have some material representation of their element. Incense, a candle, a bowl of water, or a crystal are simple easily obtained material representations of these particular elements. Representations of the platonic solid associated with the element, or of other spirits or powers related to the element can add to harmonizing the vibration of your space to that of the elemental. You can call the elementals in a larger magical ritual or evocation ritual so that the elemental spirits can assist with whatever magic is being done by you or by whatever other higher spirit you're calling. Or you can do a ritual simply to call the elementals and ask them for help.

My approach goes like this.

Conjuring the Elemental Spirits

Place upon your altar five candles, one for the Divine Presence, and one for each element. Place upon your altar the material representation of the element and any symbols for that elemental world. Light the five candles.

Raise your hands and look upward and say:

Holy art Thou Lord of the Universe

Holy art Thou Whom Nature Hath Not Formed
Holy art Thou Vast and Mighty One
Lord of Light and of Darkness

Face east and in each quarter trace a downward pointed triangle saying as you move through the quarters:

First then the priest of fire must sprinkle the lustral water of the loud resounding sea, hear now the voice of fire.

Returning east and following in each quarter trace an upward pointed triangle saying as you move through the quarters

Then when all the phantoms have vanished, you will see that holy and formless fire, that darts and flashes through the hidden depths of the universe.

Step to the quarter associated with the elemental spirits being conjured and earnestly pray the prayer appropriate to those elementals.

When you feel the presence of the elementals explain clearly what you desire and ask them to go make it occur.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 3: Scrying

Presenting part 3 of 8 of our series on Conjuration and Spirit magic for beginners. Today we'll talk about scrying. Last week we posted the a series of book recommendations and information on setting up a devotional practice to develop support in the spirit world. Today we're introducing scrying. Tomorrow we'll begin with more and more exciting topics more directly reflecting the work itself. 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 3: Scrying

A few months back while Rufus Opus was visiting I was giving a class on spirit magic at William Blake Lodge. Rufus attended and he got to to see my approach to working with Trithemius in the ritual which followed the lecture. In addition to Rufus being there, one of my friends who has an interest in magic but as of that time no real experience, also came along. After the ritual everyone was a-buzz with their excitement over things they saw in the crystal and the new information and insights they received. Everyone except my friend who tagged along. He clearly felt awkward over the fact that he got nothing. Not because of inability to connect with spirits, but because he not only didn't know how to scry, he didn't know what it is. Scrying is one of the things magicians think of as a very basic skill, and so you don't see it treated thoroughly all the time. It is however a very diverse skill with many applications and it is essential when one chooses to work in crystallomancy. So I figured we'd talk about the basic idea, and some resources and exercises.

Scrying relates to many elements of contemporary magical training as well as to many elements of mentalism or psychic activity. People most often define scrying as “gazing” and discuss it as an act in which one looks into something such that they lose focus in their eyes and eventually open up to seeing with the “third eye.” This is not a completely inaccurate description, it is a part of it, but it also might imply that it's like looking at a magic eye book, in which we relax our focus and allow our eyes to see things in an unconventional manner so that we can trick ourselves or see secondary images hidden in things. Scrying isn't an optical illusion. Scrying is about a connection beyond sensory and temporal-spatial modalities. The act of gazing allows the mind to settle and subdues visual focus, but it also creates a mental focus on the object being scryed. The scrying device becomes a means for creating a connection between the magician and the actual object of his observation.

Consider common scrying devices, a crystal ball, a mirror, a bowl of water, a vessel of ink, a candle flame, or steam smoke or mist. They might not seem exceptionally similar but there are certain similarities. For one several of them are things with clear elemental links, a bowl of water, a stone, fire, and cloudy air. The mirror and the ink are essentially alternatives to the stone and the water. When we consider the crystal, the water, and the mirror they all have physical properties which impact light, these properties have to do with the structures of the materials in question, which all have their own particular specialness. Water's molecules are set up to make it the perfect solvent, the ability to dissolve implies this ability to connect various things into a singular interconnected moment. Crystals have a very ordered structure which allows for multiple ordered connections within the crystal, again reflecting the ability to create connections. The flame is literally light and energy being released from matter in a way which interconnects the four elements. Clouded air similarly overlaps elemental states, either air and water, potentially by way of fire, or air and earth by way of fire. Common scrying devices are therefore objects which reflect states of being in between and states of connection, these are of course the basic mechanisms of scrying.

Scrying is a shift in the locus of consciousness. The Golden Dawn teaches the individual to scry in a manner which is similar too, and in fact connected to, their instructions in astral projection. The key differences seem to be the level to which the magician's locus is shifted. In astral projection some piece of the magician's being is moved into his astrally constructed body so that it may travel through that plane and carry the magician throughout. In scrying the magician likewise extends a ray from himself into the object of his scrying and transfers some element of his awareness along that ray. The magician remains chiefly seated in himself, not merging his being with the scrying device or with the spirits or places being viewed through the device, but rather he moves his focus, his attention, the centrality of his perceptive faculties into communion with the device, so that the device, now Essentially (in the Aquinian sense) the same as the object of the magician's observation, becomes a bridge by which he and the observed may interact.

In preparing to learn to scry one needs to develop a certain level of mental control. The ability to focus and to reduce or shut out distraction or wandering thoughts is helpful if not necessary. Crowley's A.'.A.'. system is useful for this. This is not to say that you should go join the A.'.A.'. but check out the “yoga” described in Crowley's works such as Mysticism, within Liber ABA, or the Libers presented in the Equinox which deal with instructions on meditation, yoga, and mental discipline. Prior to working with these an understanding of, and awareness of your own mind might be helpful. Crowley talks a lot about eliminating or destroying un-willed throught, but apprehending and either integrating or resolving the source of un-willed thoughts can be a more complete approach. Exploring some basic forms of Vipasana can help dramatically with this, particular for people dealing with simply the normal distractions and distress of day to day life. If deeper issues are dramatically disturbing your ability to focus, it may make sense to talk with someone who can help with that resolution prior to plumbing deeper into your mind and soul.

As one develops mental control a vivid set of mental sensory abilities is helpful. Ben Rowe advocated working in successively more complete mental temples to build these faculties. Entering the active imagination and constructing a temple or a world and working to explore its sensations until it becomes a more and more complete reality. This mental temple may be useful for a lot of things, but for our purposes it is primarily a means of getting your mind comfortable with fully perceiving constructs of mental awareness.

The ability to transition awareness is a significant, perhaps the most significant skill needed by a scryer. In general our experience of the world is based on an awareness focused around our eyes and ears. We know the world from the perspective of our heads, both in terms of it interpreting what we sense, but also in that we feel our thoughts as if they are in our heads; we interpret the world primarily from sensations which are tied to our heads. This is where our focus and awareness is. But could our thoughts, and our main locus of awareness take the perspective of coming from our hands, or our feet, or some other part of our bodies? Can we focus on those parts to the point where our experience is from that perspective? Yes. This is one of the simplest means of transferring perspective because it is still our own perspective we're dealing with. Can we then expand our perceptions of ourselves to encompass objects with which we are in contact or with which we are interacting? Can we hold a ball and feel our self image as if the ball is a part of it and as if we are aware of how we are moving or experiencing things as if the ball is part of what we're doing? Again, yes. Here our awareness isn't leaving us, we're not throwing all our being into the ball. We're just expanding our self awareness to include the ball. This is a little harder, but still not too hard. This is a significant part of most training with regularly used sporting equipment. The next and final phase is more difficult, could we move our awareness to the perspective of the ball even if it may not always be in physical contact with us? Again, yes we could. We can make that same move we make with scrying devices and let a ray of awareness enter into the object. This is the actual act of scrying, moving your awareness into the device being scryed, and allowing your awareness to inhabit it such that it perceives that world.

From there practice is important, but so is refining your understanding of what you're doing. Explore various spirits and spiritual powers, but make sure also to test your visions and the powers you encounter. Check out more resources that give you insight into the nature of scrying and the nature of the tools involved. As you develop more insight you may also refine your approach to gain better results. In addition to the texts mentioned above I would also recommend Fr. Achad's Crystal Vision through Crystal Gazing, and materials by Florence Farr on the subject. The Golden Dawn knowledge lectures also present good material on this.

So to summarize, build up your capabilities with preparatory exercises:

1. Develop mental focus through meditation

2. Develop awareness of your mental focus by recognizing your perspective and being mindful of your experience.
3. Shift your mental focus by moving your awareness to different parts of your body
4. Shift your mental focus by adjusting what objects are encompassed within your mental self image
5. Shift your mental focus into objects foreign to yourself and occupy the perspective of that separate space

For actual scrying. Relax. Set up your device, a bowl of water will do for the beginning. If you have some means to consecrate the device. Use some symbol or statement to define what you intend to observe through the device. Collect your awareness, and visualize a ray of light moving from your head into the scrying device. Move your center of awareness along the ray of light into the device. Then, and this is important but often forgotten in descriptions. Let go. Don't force the vision, don't desire the vision, don't question your capability. All of these things are distractions. Just breathe, relax, and dissolve. Let your awareness become diffuse within the scrying device. Let your focus stay within your work but relax it to a somewhat passive focus and allow yourself to be receptive and receive the connection. Test your visions. Record the results.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt. 2: Devotion

Yesterday's post kicked off this week's special series of posts giving an introduction to various elements of spirit magic and conjuration. This is post 2 out of 8. Please like and follow us on Facebook so that you won't miss any of the action, and please share the series so others you know can also enjoy it.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt. 2: Devotion

So this topic was actually one I was planning to post about on its own initially but it definitely has it's place within our discussion of beginning conjuration. I had a conversation with a friend recently about the importance of devotional work in magic. The A.'.A.'. system assigns Devotion to the work of the Philosophus and it is with this work that initial elements that could lead to spirit conjuration start to pop up. Aside from that though, devotional work with spirits and divine figures helps with conjuration work, and also, with life in general. It has a lot of elements which overlap with magical practice without necessarily being magical practice, so it can also be a good practical starting point.

So what do I mean by devotional work? Devotion, for many people, would imply some sort of religious commitment to some deity or saint. In our context it could mean this but it does not have to. All we're talking about here is creating an on going relationship with a spirit or spirits who will act as allies for you, both in life and magic. This borders on religious practice and can look like religious practice.

Some theorists on Indo-European religion talk about the guest-host principle as a basic ordering concept of the universe and society. This suggests that at times an individual may be a guest or a host, and that as a guest he must act in a certain way out of respect for his host, and the host must therefore provide him hospitality, and further in the future he will at times act as the host, and his former host is therefore deserving of being welcomed and treated well as a guest. This does not necessarily mean a literal house guest scenario, but rather, if you help your neighbor it should be expected that your neighbor will appreciate the help, and also make efforts to help you later, and that you will show the same appreciation and seek later to again help your neighbor; creating then a cycle of mutual appreciation and aid. Devotional work with spirits works much the same way.

So if it is a God or Saint that you select, you are not necessarily selecting them as an object of worship. You're selecting them as a guide, or source of inspiration, perhaps, or more simply as a benefactor who will help and protect you. The God or Saint receives the offerings you make, the benefit of any prayers you make as part of your devotion, and at times perhaps public recognition. It does not necessarily receive you as a devoted worshiper, but rather a devoted friend. You make routine offerings, spend time in prayer or meditation for them, maintain objects for your devotional work such as an altar, or perhaps simply a statue, an offering bowl and some candles. The means of outfitting your devotional efforts can be between you and the spirit. But having some physical central focus is both helpful in bringing your focus onto the spirit, but also it can provide faster means of connecting with the spirit. If there is a space dedicated for the spirit to take up as a residence, or some tool used as a conduit for contact with the spirit you may be able to more easily reach out and communicate with spirits with whom you have some alliance.

Other than Gods or Saints, the ancestors or the dead are common, and very good, choices for devotional work. Again, you're not entering into this as some kind of religious self subjugation or some deification of your ancestors. You're keeping open channels of communication, and maintaining, strengthening, and creating connections with spirits who can be powerful allies. I've spoken before about the benefits of work with the dead including the fact that they were once alive, and because they were alive they are aware of and ready to work towards the concerns of average people. It's also easy because we see this kind of relationship in historical magic as well as in folk customs and practices. It's a lot easier to sit down having prepared a deceased relative's favorite food, and then leaving out a plate of it for them while telling them all about what's happening in your life and your families' lives than it would be to do really hardcore necromancy. Fortunately you're probably not conjuring a deceased person to bind them in a pact. All your devotion with your relatives needs to be is routine contact to maintain the relationship, and the offering of food, drinks, or gifts periodically to not simply assure their favor but also to assure their strength and their connection to this world.

Both with the dead, and with Gods and Saints, our devotional work will often involve meditating at an altar or before some devotional object or picture. Frequently you'll give gifts and talk about what's happening with you. There may be prayers involved for the benefit of the spirit, or simply generally for your blessing. Otherwise most of your devotional sessions don't need to involve you asking for something. A lot of modern society associates all prayer with asking for something. Sometimes it's just about pausing to connect. Other times you might be thanking the spirit, or you may have discovered the spirit just likes certain poems or prayers and so they become part of your offering.

So by in large the basic devotional work of a magician can be pretty simple, or it can get more complex. It doesn't need to be tool heavy, but it can be if that's how you're called to approach your spirits.

Your spirits. In this case it means those spirits with whom you have a relationship. But it could also mean a familiar spirit, or a spirit given to your charge by a higher spirit. Some people build living vessels for their familiars and so work with the familiar may be very much like devotion work. For now I want to treat them as separate. Devotion work can be a little more casual, than other spiritual work. You don't have to seek to control the spirits, or move them from some far off place. For this, you're largely working with spirits that already have some overlap or connection with the world. But you're strengthening it by inviting them in and making gifts to them. You're asking them to work in this world and you're feeding them substances of this world. You're not just strengthening their spiritual capability by feeding it more spiritual substance; you are linking the spirits to the world by stirring up memories and desire.

So why go through this trouble, why not just get to the magic? Well, this is part of the magic. It's not just the act of magic, but also the preparatory acts which make us ready for magic which are a big part of success. When you have allies in the spirit world they become a spiritual currency for you, or spiritual street cred. Your ability to call upon and command spirits should increase as you strengthen the spirits who work with you and they are able to help provide you with authority in the spirit world. They can also help with controlling unruly spirits and keeping them to task. Another benefit though is the sort of invisible hand effect. They want to help you and they want to keep enriching your relationship with them. So as things happen in your life your spirits, especially those who have been alive previously, may recognize issues you encounter and help you with them prior to you asking because your spirits know you, they know what you need. So those little catastrophes in life might get smaller, or they might bring about less extreme problems, or problems from fewer converging sources than what we might expect with no one helping. With these things in mind, it's a good idea to keep your household or personal spirits in happy conditions.

So what does a devotional practice look like?

Let's say you have three ancestors you're working with as your personal spirits. You do your initial rituals to set up a connection and awareness. Then after that maybe you keep an altar with a picture of the three ancestors, a candle for each of them, and an offering bowl, or maybe one for each. Basically simple things. Maybe small possessions belonging to the departed. Perhaps once a week you light the candles, make a small offering of whatever their favorite drink was and say a prayer or two or simply tell them about your life. You might mark special occasions like birthdays, and other holidays, particularly May's Eve, and November's Eve with extra ritual work or prayer work or special gifts. For saints you might use their prayer candles and cards and other Catholic resources. Similarly for Gods obtaining a statue or image and other devotional gifts can be simple. But all in all this model can work fairly easily regardless of which type of spirit, though for Gods and Saints it's useful to draw on the traditions to which they are native and accustomed.

As you put together this part of your practice sometimes there is a tendency to pick one spirit, usually a God or Saint, and think of them singularly as your patron. Or conversely some people grab on to every God, Saint, and Ancestor they can find and try to juggle two dozen at once. Start small. I started with one ancestral spirit, and then selected a few others who felt significant. Then, and this can be an interesting devotional task in ancestor work, began exploring stories of my family's past to flesh out my sense of my pleroma of ancestors. Now your ancestral practice does not need to involve setting up devotional shrines for each ancestor or markers to remember all of them. Your personal maiores (great ones), the handful to whom either you or your work are most connected maybe two or three early on, those should have objects set for interacting, others can be considered and acknowledged more generally. If you're working with a God, don't jump to tie yourself down to a patronage but note two or three who might help with your work, similarly you don't need to set altars for a whole pantheon of deities, the same is true for Saints.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 1: Books

As mentioned in yesterday's post, this week will kick off a special series of posts. This is the beginning of an eight part series of posts giving instruction in how to get started with spirit conjuration. Please like and follow us on Facebook so that you won't miss any of the action, and please share the series so others you know can also enjoy it.

Beginning Conjuration and Spirit Magic pt 1: Books

A few months back a brother from a neighboring body reached out to ask for recommendations for people looking to get into conjuring spirits and grimoire magic. Rather than give a simple quick answer I figured it would make more sense to put together a list of book recommendations and post them because others might benefit from it too. Unfortunately for the last couple months some stuff has gotten in the way of blogging for the most part, so I'm a little behind, but we're going to get started...with that book list. In thinking on it though, there's other stuff we can talk about than just books. So we'll do a few posts going over some practices and skills as well.

In thinking about what books to read you probably want to also think about what kinds of spirits you want to conjure as well as what skills you'll need to develop to work with them. A lot of basic beginner magic books don't really teach traditional magic or the worldview or practices involved therein. Instead they teach stuff like developing mental awareness, capability scrying, an understanding of correspondences, the elements, talisman construction, and basic ritual techniques. While a lot of elements of modern magic are used for different purposes and in different contexts than in traditional magic, a grounding in modern magic can be useful.

Israel Regardie's Tree of Life, and The Golden Dawn, along with Crowley's Liber E, and Liber O will provide a lot of the basic modern foundation that you'll find useful. Norman Kraft's Ogdoadic Magic will give a bit more accessible approach to describing modern magic. More to the end of developing as a ritual magician, and one which I enjoyed as a teenager, is Steve Savedow's Magician's Workbook. Steve also wrote a book on modern Goetia based on working with the Goetia of Solomon, and released an edition of Sepher Raziel HeMalach. So his approach to Golden Dawn style magic was at least focused towards the kind of ritual magic that fit a Golden Dawn interpretation of the grimoires, even if some of his interpretations of spirit work aren't perfectly aligned with traditional magic.

As for actually looking into spirit conjure work or the grimoires...

Angel Magic by Geoffrey James (who also released Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee) was a significant influence on me as a teenager. His book is a survey of ideas and history surrounding the conjuration of angels. It introduced me to understanding some of the mechanics of talismanic work that I later found described more fully in alchemical philosophy and the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. This book won't teach you to conjure spirits but it will introduce some useful ideas and stories.

For more on gaining a grounding in the ideas and ideological context of grimoire work, the books in the Magic in History Series are incredibly useful. With these it really depends on how deep you want to get into exploring grimoire tradition and the history of magic as to how many of these you should read. If you mostly want to get into practice, I'd recommend checking one of these out, preferably one containing a grimoire, but you probably don't need more than that. If you want to develop a full sense of how grimoire magic developed and various forms of traditional magic, exploring as many of these history books as you can would make sense.

Some options for Magic in History books...

Forbidden Rites by Richard Kieckhefer

Ritual Magic by Elizabeth Butler

Conjuring Spirits by Claire Fanger et al

Invoking Angels by Claire Fanger et al

For books for actually developing as a grimoire magician...

1. 4^th Book of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa et al, edited by Stephen Skinner

The book is not actually a sequel to three books of occult philosophy. Most of it is not written by Agrippa. On Magical Ceremonies may have been written by him and is largely a practical summation of the information provided in Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Three Books of Occult Philosophy essentially presents the system of magical thought from the grimoire period, but it is a pretty large book and takes a lot to get through. If you want to get started, On Magical Ceremonies is a lot more accessible.

The collection also contains The Heptameron and The Arbatel. I definitely would recommend the Heptameron as a baseline for looking at the grimoires. It contains a lot of the grimoire orations and conjurations which appear in other popular grimoires. It presents a lot of important correspondences for spirit magic which also show up in later texts.

The Arbatel is one of the simplest approaches to spirit magic. The Olympic Spirits are powerful and interesting spirits. They also are very eager to work with magicians who approach them correctly. There really isn't ritual or tools or a ton of correspondences involved. Work with the Olympic spirits could be one of the easiest ways to get started.

2. The Magical Calendar

The Magical Calendar includes a lot of correspondences used in the grimoire tradition broken down into numerical tables. Three Books of Occult Philosophy contains similar tables, which are more extensive, in Book Two. These correspondences can help you with picking spirits with which to work, or determining how the various spirits relate to each other and to various situations and times and locations.

3. A Treatise on Angel Magic by Dr. Rudd edited by Adam MacLean or The Keys to the Gateway of Magic by Dr. Rudd edited by Skinner and Rankine

These texts collect together manuscripts by the somewhat mysterious Dr. Rudd. Rudd most likely was around a generation or so after Dr. John Dee. Like Agrippa and the Magical Calendar Rudd's work explains many correspondences useful in medieval/renaissance spirit magic. It also has Rudd explaining various concepts of magic such as talismans and image magic, explaining various types of spirits, various symbols of astrological magic and other similar topics. Rudd also presents info on spirits less commonly addressed in modern approaches to spirit magic, and he is a good example of linking Scholastic Image Magic with Grimoiric Ritual Magic. Rudd's work also includes Rudd's own grimoire and his approach to blending Enochian material into grimoire magic.

4. Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals by Johannes Trithemius

This is a pretty short text which you can get online. This presents a very simply form of crystallomancy or conjuring a spirit into a crystal. It's based on working with the seven planetary spirits but the system can be used for any sort of spirits. It uses very few tools, and not a lot of rituals, just a few simple prayers. In particular it is a very good introduction to how an altar has specific elements for manifesting spirits in grimoire magic. For a lot of magicians this work inspires their standard means of working with spirits.

5. The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon by Sibley and Hockley edited by Peterson

This book is pretty big and expensive. But it is fricken beautiful. It has images of the original manuscript pages, and these take up the bulk of the book. The manuscript pages have beautiful illustrations of the talismans and the book is printed on a really nice glossy paper. On the negative end, the actual “critical edition” of the text is only a very small portion of the otherwise huge book. That said, the book is essentially a pair of grimoires, with a handful of spirit conjure rituals sandwiched between them. The section by Sibley is very useful because unlike most grimoires which just collect prayers and descriptions of tools, Sibley is writing something halfway between a grimoire and a book about grimoire magic. Sibley was writing only a few generations before the occult revival that produced the Golden Dawn, so by this point books about magic, as opposed to simply books of magic, were starting to appear so Sibley gives a much more accessible series of instructions than we find in a lot of grimoires.

6. The Key of Solomon the King edited by S.L. MacGregor Mathers

This isn't the best version of the Key of Solomon available but it was the standard version everyone had for a long time. This was what I used for my first formal approach to spirit conjuration. It provides talismans for a lot of different purposes, and clear instructions for making tools and putting together your ritual. This is kind of the baseline of Solomonic instructions.

7. The Veritable Key of Solomon edited by Skinner and Rankine

This is probably the best version of the Key of Solomon currently available. This collects several different variants of the Key of Solomon. In addition to providing a full exposition of how to create the tools and how to do Solomonic Magic, but more importantly it provides several ritual instructions aside from the main conjuration method, and provides several different purposes for the system far beyond what one might generally connect with Solomonic magic at first consideration. It shows the breadth of Solomonic magic as a system.

So, in addition to these, again, I would recommend Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy. But don't let that slow you down in getting started. Read a handful of these, especially the ones that are easily accessible, and then start doing the work. As you do the work, keep studying and reading and expanding on how you work. Look into other traditional forms of magic like the Papyri Graeco-Magicae. Traditional Witchcraft, and traditional forms of European and Caribbean syncretic sorcery because these can also present ideas that are useful for consideration in spirit conjure and sorcery.