Grimoires & PGM - looking for others

[Magus314]

I hinted at this in my intro, but I’ll be more explicit here.

I’m looking to connect with magicians who work with spirits through the grimoires in a way that stays reasonably close to the textual sources. Most of my background has been in GD and Crowley influenced CM-style work, which was great but I didn’t encounter anything I’d call genuine spirit contact and manifestation until about five years ago (via a non-lodge based magical tradition), which pretty much reshaped how I approach my practice.

Anyone here working the Grimoires or the PGM in a way that might count as “true to the textual tradition”? I use that phrase loosely as I'm aware - at least to my knowledge - that these are not living traditions with intact lineages, so we’re all reconstructing to some degree.

For my own work in recent years, I’ve leaned heavily on Julio Caesar Ody’s Magister Officiorum for Goetia and have been following the Heptameron as closely to the text as possible. I've made some progress, but feel as if there is a still so much I am missing. I've been away from online forums and social media for years so I don't really know where else to start or if there are dedicated forums for this type of work.

If anyone else here works the grimoires or the PGM in a text-faithful way ( especially if you’ve navigated early communication issues) I’d be interested in comparing notes and methods.

 

[AbammonTheGreat]

Theres a lot that goes into getting to a place with conjuration where the spirits respond, clearly, and every time. I came from a similar background as you and was dull in the sense of the clair-skills. I am by no means a natural psychic and so seeing and hearing spirits took a lot of time to develop.

Thankfully what I appreciated about the magical system path at the beginning of my journey is that I do believe that that the emphasis on basic divinatory skills was essential in the development of this skill (a focus on tattva and tarot) but I spent years and years refining a mastery of lucid dreaming and its surrounding skills on top of that. Being convinced to a man that hypnagogia was going to be the skill that unlocked conjuration for me. Along the way I picked up hypnosis, crystal scrying, and became dedicated to the mastery of the Picatrix which oddly enough my training in 19th century ceremonial helped me with immensely. Learning from them the anatomy of a ritual and adapting it to a more classical/mideval style.

I will say that your success with spirit conjuration does not lie with what grimoire or system you are working, though I do believe OTO and GD are restrictive, but there is no secret key in the PGM or Heptemaron that are going to make it click. What you are dealing with is a matter of consistency, intuitive training, experience, and developing a rounded magical practice.

I 100% recommend sticking to one of these tomes and mastering it with repeated practice and experimentation. This is a matter of initiation and the spirits will respond with a level of commitment. Your technique with the grimoire will become more refined, they will give you keys along the way, and you will begin noticing the underlying PERENNIAL conjuration technique that is underneath all these grimoires. I highly encourage you to keep working with them, afford yourself patience, and you will cross a threshold.

Something I struggled with for the better part of a decade is now second nature to me. You'll discover your method my friend. As for classical methods ill share some of the essentials ive learned across grimoires, traditions, and experimentation. I spent a while when I left the golden dawn stripping away the fluff of ceremonial magic to find the bare essentials of operative conjuring.

1. Magic circles are crucial, I naively tried to strip them away for a classical practice and learned that this is not an invention but a necessity in conjuration.

2. Always call the winds, quarters, directions, kings, whatever. The PGM has winds in it you can find in there. The number of these differs according to tradition but they are essential get spirits to respond everytime so find your spirits of the directions.

3. Pay attention to detail with synthemata, this is important for physical manifestations.

4. Conjuration is best done in a receptive state.

 

[ModernAlchemist]

Anyone here working the Grimoires or the PGM in a way that might count as “true to the textual tradition”? I use that phrase loosely as I'm aware - at least to my knowledge - that these are not living traditions with intact lineages, so we’re all reconstructing to some degree.
...
If anyone else here works the grimoires or the PGM in a text-faithful way ( especially if you’ve navigated early communication issues) I’d be interested in comparing notes and methods.

A bit of a magical historian here, and will echo what was said above - if you find a particular text, system, idea or experience compelling - that's your north star. Double down on what works for you. In terms of "historically accurate" or "textually faithful", grappling with older materials, attempting conjurations, failing, conjuring + fortifying and then expirementing is the most faithful and accurate practice accross magicians in any time period. That process of doubt, failure, faith, exploration ... that kinda is the most text-faithful tradition and I'd claim it is the living tradition of magic.

But to the heart of you question, let me share a few things not mentioned above that you may find useful.

- There is a giant gap of time and magical headspace between the PGM and the Goetic / Solomonic cycle's material you may be reading; unless you're enjoying synthesizing that, I might recommend leaning into one as the base. If you feel compelled, look into the Hygromantia which does help link the Solomonic tradition to the older Greek magics.

- Keep in mind that working magicians of almost any time period will omit what they didn't need to write down, their era's common knowledge. As mentioned above, "everybody" knew summoning goetic demons "required" a conjuration of the four cardinal kings / winds; something that gets omitted / later reinserted into various grimores.

- Most historical necromancers were professional scribes (masters of the quill unite!) and almost all medieval magicians were clerics of some ilk (not nessisarily preiests, but very catholic). Remove Christianity as you desire, but consider the technique / idea behind what they're doing. But remove the physical process of writing your own grimore out at your peril; physically inking out a copy of your ritual materials was definately part of the magical process to them; the consecrated their grimoires as a ritual object. There is definately something to that worth exploring.

- To that end, consider creating from scratch all your ritual materials - including your books, your black knife, your wand / sword, your paper or vellum ... I find that the devotion to the idea through work is magic that merely concerating an object won't achieve.

- To reiterate, writing down a demonic registry as well as the didactic particulars of your method by hand is an eye-opening thing, very much part of the literal textual tradition that I think folks skip.

-

 

[Magus314]

Theres a lot that goes into getting to a place with conjuration where the spirits respond, clearly, and every time. I came from a similar background as you and was dull in the sense of the clair-skills. I am by no means a natural psychic and so seeing and hearing spirits took a lot of time to develop.

Thankfully what I appreciated about the magical system path at the beginning of my journey is that I do believe that that the emphasis on basic divinatory skills was essential in the development of this skill (a focus on tattva and tarot) but I spent years and years refining a mastery of lucid dreaming and its surrounding skills on top of that. Being convinced to a man that hypnagogia was going to be the skill that unlocked conjuration for me. Along the way I picked up hypnosis, crystal scrying, and became dedicated to the mastery of the Picatrix which oddly enough my training in 19th century ceremonial helped me with immensely. Learning from them the anatomy of a ritual and adapting it to a more classical/mideval style.

I will say that your success with spirit conjuration does not lie with what grimoire or system you are working, though I do believe OTO and GD are restrictive, but there is no secret key in the PGM or Heptemaron that are going to make it click. What you are dealing with is a matter of consistency, intuitive training, experience, and developing a rounded magical practice.

I 100% recommend sticking to one of these tomes and mastering it with repeated practice and experimentation. This is a matter of initiation and the spirits will respond with a level of commitment. Your technique with the grimoire will become more refined, they will give you keys along the way, and you will begin noticing the underlying PERENNIAL conjuration technique that is underneath all these grimoires. I highly encourage you to keep working with them, afford yourself patience, and you will cross a threshold.

Something I struggled with for the better part of a decade is now second nature to me. You'll discover your method my friend. As for classical methods ill share some of the essentials ive learned across grimoires, traditions, and experimentation. I spent a while when I left the golden dawn stripping away the fluff of ceremonial magic to find the bare essentials of operative conjuring.

1. Magic circles are crucial, I naively tried to strip them away for a classical practice and learned that this is not an invention but a necessity in conjuration.

2. Always call the winds, quarters, directions, kings, whatever. The PGM has winds in it you can find in there. The number of these differs according to tradition but they are essential get spirits to respond everytime so find your spirits of the directions.

3. Pay attention to detail with synthemata, this is important for physical manifestations.

4. Conjuration is best done in a receptive state.

Thank you for this!

A lot of what you wrote lands for me, and it lines up with what Ody emphasizes in his books (and online) as well as what Leonardo and I talked about years back. Both stressed the absolute, non-negotiable role of the circle, and the chain of command starting with the aerial kings of the four directions. They were also in full agreement on the need for a properly forged and consecrated black-handled knife, and the gold ring for later LKS work and about bringing a mediator spirit into the picture early (Gremory was the one suggested).

On the synthemata piece, could you say a bit more? Are you talking about the correctness of the sigils themselves, or the appearance of sigils during the manifestation?

 

[Faria]

I’m looking to connect with magicians who work with spirits through the grimoires in a way that stays reasonably close to the textual sources.

In my teens I was more interested in spells and Hoodoo type work, as it seemed like those were more accessible, but I've been exclusively working Solomonic grimoires since the late 90s.

The main thing I've learned about Solomonic magic, probably the most significant divergence from the norm, is that I do not regard it as "LHP" at all, in any way. I see the entire broad spectrum of Solomonic magic as essentially made for people who want goodness, righteousness, and a connection to ideas about God and spirits that don't come from churches or scriptures. Material gain and temporal dominion, yes, but according to some form of universal moral law rather than seeing the grimoire as a telephone directory for anything desired.

I also still regard Solomonic magic, and most other similar traditions, as enshrouded by superstition and misunderstandings. Despite that, they are the foundational documents for what the general public recognizes as ceremonial magic, so I think they are worth fully exploring. We can't know what's right or wrong about them until somebody (like you & me and the others here) does the work first and tells other people how that went. I like to think that we will get there faster if more people try to do something with it - conjure spirits and make them do things - than just trying to explain it or put together the best how-to manual.

 

[MorganBlack]

It's nice to have more company in the grim trad practices.

My main grimoire is the Grimorium Verum, which I've used from the 1990s. This was before Joseph Peterson's vastly improved edition or Jake Stratton-Kent's excellent work reviving the contribution the Greek line of Goetia. Before then I was Golden Dawn (GD) and Chaos Magic influenced, spent time in the OTO, and time doing the Crowley-Bennet training system.

I have done G.V. by the book, and "by the book" I mean as best I could, and it worked better than my even earlier cobbled-together Goetia, with less fallout and trauma. I've also used Jake's Liber Pyramidos and more PGM-Thelemic liturgy, as well as simple conjure working. In my experience, they all work, but the GV is actually pretty flexible, if not in exactly the same way. I have even had theophanic manifestations from working in a simple conjure format, when the daimon appeared after the working had been completed. But this was after completing the more formal pacts and protocols. I hear the simple conjure workings s can work even without completing those.

We grim trad people get a lot of critiques thrown our way from the modernists. The call to mediocrity in modern magic is so strong, you're a 'grimoire purist', or a "ceremonial magician," said with a snide, condescending tone if you even think about having a structured and grounded approach. First, there was no way to even be a grimoire purist with the G.V. Seals, like the First Character to contact and form an alliance with the intercessor of the system, Scirlin, were either missing or not labeled properly. I feel part of the sucess here is the effort and sincerity put into it.

They miss the importance of the purification period, the time spent in meditation, contemplating your objective, thinking about the myths and stories, about who and where you are. They think the methods are all mechanical, and it's only about the outer stuff like fasting, prayer, ablutions. They are missing the inner significance of what grace and spiritual purity means.

I keep telling people the grimoires are a mythic journey, that journey is important, the Story is important. Without the Big Dream, all you have is your own default Little Dream, which is just you, your pettiness, your job, all your problems, and that one probably sucks for magic. In a very Bernardo Kastrup sense, it's not a narratively-formulated quantum reality where demons can appear and do amazing things.

I spend some time in the Demonalatry spaces and while I do like them , I have never used their simplfied mental-evocation methods. A common complaint there is thet people are getting no results. If so it seems especially hit-or-miss. What I see in practice there is often looks like a form of min-maxxing, trying to get eveything while giving nothing, spending no time, doing nothing.

What I do see is this anything goes approach ( Have it your way.. make it your way ... at McDemons! ) it appears to often create spiritual psychosis, and taking every stray thought as a communcation from your buddy Lucifer., Asmodeus, or Bune.

That said, I like many folks there. But many there get no results and they are starting to come over to the grim tad side a bit more. Even the founder of Demonalatry is now being called out for her mangling and presenting her UPG as fact.

It's not that simple appraches can't work, but they are missing some of the safeguards from the more formal protocols, and it's starting to dawn on on many there that having a more grim trad structured approach is worthwhile.

The grimd are not THAT hard , are they? Do the relly need to be simplfied so much. OK, some of the tools are a bit tough to make and aquire , but the GV is a very workable system, even by the book.

 

[Asteriskos]

I've also used Jake's Liber Pyramidos and more PGM-Thelemic liturgy, as well as simple conjure working.

I like your overall write up here. I thought at one time Jake Stratton-Kent was under appreciated, when I saw all his eulogies I knew I was mistaken!

 

[MorganBlack]

Thanks, man! I appreciate you coming over to the animist context to give a thumbs up. It tends to be very literaliist and medieval mindset space. This has put goetia on the radar of the pagan Calvainsts, which drives me nuts.

I'm just glad others liked him as well. I remember the flack he got when he was just coming onto the scene.

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About the Calvinism that creeps in.

NeoPlatonism helps a lot here to see that the daimons are shaped by us, to some degree at least. To what degree I do not know. Sometimes it see like they are none of us whatsover But I also don't tell the daimon to put on 'fair and comely shape, without any deformity or tortuosity'.

This does not mean they are all just in our brains , on one end... or totally objective, on the other. I just split the difference and call it half and half.
In some Kimbanda houses they will say when a Kimabandiero calls one of the Eshus or Pomba Giras, a third spirit will form that made of them (the spirit) and the priest-magican . And then people wonder why we have these prayers and purifications. In my view, we want the one that third forms in this temporary , mythic UI/UX room we are making with ritual , to be half made of our best selves, and not our worst.

 

[Asteriskos]

I appreciate you coming over to the animist context to give a thumbs up

The longer I practice the more I've observed that animism seems to be intuitive after a while with many practitioners, IMO.

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@MorganBlack

Just DM'ed you some info on "Solomonic Triangles", let me know your thoughts!

Post automatically merged: Today at 1:48 AM

The longer I practice the more I've observed that animism seems to be intuitive after a while with many practitioners, IMO.

Post automatically merged: Today at 1:30 AM

@MorganBlack

Just DM'ed you some info on "Solomonic Triangles", let me know your thoughts!

@Magus314
I'm not in the habit of DM'ing folks cold but as the OP of this thread you might find this of interest as well, if so I'll be glad send you a link.
I haven't figured if this is something that would be good as a general post quite yet, but it might interest a small circle of folks.