Friday, August 15, 2008

Spirit Conjuring Overview

Due to recent experiences at the Spirit Summoning yahoo group, I've decided to write a quick, down and dirty introduction to spirit conjuration. You won't be a pro after reading this, but you will know enough to start asking the right questions, and maybe conjure a spirit or two. No promises on it not eating you though. Especially if you're not a Christian.

That was a joke.

To conjure a spirit, you have to know a couple of things. Who are you to conjure a spirit anyway? Why should they answer you when you call them? What are you going to tell them to do? How can you be sure of success?

If you know those things, you're ready. If not, read Agrippa's Third Book of Occult Philosophy. Skim the bits that don't make sense yet. Go back and re-read those parts some other time. Get familiar with the basics of magical conjuration.

To conjure a spirit, you need its seal and/or its name. You'll need some method of communicating with it. You'll need to know what its native pantheon is, and who it answers to in that pantheon. Here's a hint: If you're not in the pantheon somewhere, don't work with that spirit. In traditional grimoires written from a Christian perspective, we get to conjure spirits because we are the "angels" of the Earth, and we have a place in the hierarchy. In Pagan stuff, if you weren't an initiate into the Mysteries, your place in the pantheon was "target."

Once you've got the spirit's name and/or seal, draw it out on paper and wear it on your chest. You can engrave it in the appropriate metal, or color it according to the spirits' favorite color scheme, or whatever details you want to add to make it more effective, but at least start with the Name/Seal on paper on your chest.

Now you'll need to know its superior in the hierarchy. If you don't have this, have a damned good reason to call the spirit anyway. Like, "Tezcatlipoca, I conjure you as God of Sorcerors to aid me in my sorcerous warfare against Magician X! You, oh God of Sorcerors, alone have the power to destroy him" and so forth. Convince them that they need to be here, or that they'll get something out of the deal.

If you've got the name of their superior, use it to conjure them. "In the name of God IHVH Tzabaoth I conjure you, Archangel of Venus ANAEL to appear before me in this crystal..." and so on.

Then you talk to the spirit. Tell it what you want. Check to see if it's who you expected (make it say "Jesus is Lord" if you're a Christian). See if it can do what you want it to do, or if there's another spirit that's better suited. Get a personal seal and/or name.

When you're done, tell it goodbye. "Thanks ANAEL forstopping in, I had a great time, come back when I call you by the name you gave me and the seal, and if I even imagine the seal and say your name, be with me immediately. In the name of IHVH Tzabaoth, go in peace."

Do something physical to ground yourself out. Hold a hunk of Iron Pyrite, Hematite, or go outside and stand barefoot in some dirt. Take a bath. Imagine you're a piece of rock, molten in the earth's core, oozing up through a crack in the ocean and then hardening as the sea water sizzles against your skin. Whatever works for you.

That's a spirit conjuring overview. Most of the rest is details, and you'll pick them up in researching each grimoire's internal structure. After a while, you won't use the grimoires because you'll already have made contact with the spirits, and they'll be guiding you directly. It's neat.

5 comments:

  1. One of the things that I suffers the most is the difficulty to sepparates what the spirit has to say from what I am thinking... more than once I think that this has drive the entity away.

    any advice on this ?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Get to know where in your head your own thoughts originate. Sit and listen to yourself think. Meditate by stopping each thought as it forms. This is hard for a lot of people, but practice makes it easier. When you've got your mind mostly still, trace each thought in your brain to its origination point. Poke yourself lightly with a pin and see where the pain flashes in your brain. Rub a feather across your arm and see where that feeling manifests in the brain. Think thoughts of love, hate, pride, and joy. Get to know your brain and how it works.

    Then when the spirits talk, you'll know that they aren't you.

    Also, ask them to speak more clearly. Sometimes that helps.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I just called Raphael using your table of practice.

    As always, I sense him here, but was hard to communicate.

    Then he slammed the door and scared me ! I don´t know if this is common, but I sensed it was his "sense of humor".

    When I called Raphael from the archangel of Air, he was all light and wisdom... I guess this one is really of a more mercurial nature !

    Best regards

    ReplyDelete
  4. I appreciate your comments about "who are you anyway to be summoning a spirit"...

    In my nun wannbe days, a wise priest once said to me, "if you feel comfortable talking directly to God, by all means, go for it, but as for me, I offer up my petitions through the Blessed Mother"

    Now, I am no nun, a witch to be exact, but for me the concept still applies in many situations...although in truth, it's hard to be humble while casting because you really need to be confident and sometimes, it's difficult to reconcile the 2. Could be the same when summoning a spirit, you can't be a wimp about such things, but you must be reverent...right? Or, perhaps I am completely off base. Please advise...while I make the Great Egress out of this blog! : ) Kind regards & Pax et bonum. Grainne (from the Strategic Sorcery group)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, there's nothing to be a wimp about, really. You *were* made in God's image. It's not just a Judeo-Christian myth, it's also a Neo-Platonic teaching that explains the emanation of Man from God. God the First Father. I think pagans call it "Pangenitor," Father of all things or something like that.

    Everything else before that had been brought into being by and through the Word. The LOGOS. God SPOKE everything into being. Except Man.

    Man was an exact image of God, and was loved by and taught by all the Seven Governors of the Celestial Realms. Man went exploring through the emanations, and got to the realm of Nature. He popped his head through the sphere and caught a glimpse of... himself. In the water. And fell in love with that.

    Then Nature made the first body, because she Loved Man, and Man entered the body out of Love for Nature. Or at least of the body Nature had made. I guess having flesh *is* pretty cool. :-)

    So Man gets Seven Worldly Governors (and don't even be tempted to name them after the Seven Dwarfs), physical manifestations of the Seven Celestial Governors. These Seven Worldly Governors I equate with the "Demons" of the Goetia, and other grimoires. Some Gnostics (but certainly not all) equate the Seven Worldly Governors with the Urges, and the First Man as the Demi-Urge. I'm not into that.

    I'm more into man needed a big reminder that he was in a depraved world that is not his true home. So Logos, Word of God, came back to earth to remind us that we could seek the Monad First-Father God without trying to be perfect first, worrying about right and wrong and good and evil, and letting that be an excuse to maintain a distance between us and God. The Atonement was to remove the curse of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil."

    Haha! Didn't think I'd wax all Preacher o' the Neo-Platonic Christian Doctrine at you, didja?

    Anyway, when you can understand everything I said above, even if its in the vocabulary of your own belief system, then you won't have to be a wimp. You'll be fulfilling your assigned purpose in life, to order the Spirits that manifest your reality and give them the direction they need while you're in the flesh, while at the same time enjoying your relationship with the First Father who created you because he wanted someone in his own image, like himself to talk to and hang out with. When you know who you are, and what place you fit in within your cosmology, the spirits will obey you because it is their nature to do so. It's what they're made to do, and what we're made to do.

    It's not confidence or even belief, it's how things really seem to work. :-)

    -R.O.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comments, your opinions are valued, even if I disagree with them. Please feel free to criticize my ideas and arguments, question my observations, and push back if you disagree.