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Just read this and thought , yep yep, spot on - and though it might be useful for others to find a solid baseline practice in conjuring. Vouching here for his description as accurate for a lot of this. There is more, but also not really required.
This is a magician as a teenager, living at home with their parents. It's very honest and self-revealing, warts and all. With none of that Try-Hard Look-at-me 'Super Magus' or "Witch Queen' vibes you usually get with this kind of write -up. Thank goodness. So tired of that stuff.
B.J. Swain - First Solomonic Experience
Call it a ' Minimum Viable Practice' (MVP). You can "improve" on it, by laying on additional requirements and ego-trips - but the most useful thing is just pick up some pendulum divination if you really feel the need to chat with them, and double check your spirit communications.
This is MVP. Dramatic manifestations do happen, and one should expect them to (which is part of the trick to having them happen) but in the end for results magic drama is not totally necessary.
Just do as B.J did and treat the experience as if they are there and complete the ritual, complete the 'charge to spirit' telling them verbally - out loud - what they want to do. The physical aspect is important here. Even if you are not sure they are they there. They often are, but are testing you.
Also, it's not useful here is is spending all you days chatting with spirits. You are here, they are there. If so you are giving them what they want - your attention, and in not requiring them to perform, then you are not a magician. Magicians DO things. Not chit chat and talking to their brain meats. Expect more out of your practice.
Jake Stratton-Kent, in his review of pagan spirit initiation practices, notes that the Pythia (priestesses) at the Oracle of Delphi would often use a letter-in-sand divination system and a pendulum hung from a tripod of hazel wood. If they were not 'gabbing' in their brain-meats all the time, so why are we now expected to?
It’s fine if people want to do, but to make it a requirement is a recent invention. The "internal voice only" requirement is largely a byproduct of late 19th-century Theosophy and mid-20th-century New Age movements. It shifted the locus of "truth" from the objective world (the sand, the pendulum) to the subjective brain meats (the ego).
MB
-------------------------------------
My First Conjuration
Fr. R.'.S.'.
-------------------------------------
This was originally posted on my blog “” but I have slightly cleaned it up and reposted it here because I think it expresses some stuff which might be useful for people nervous about trying grimoiric magic.
I was planning on doing a post about this sometime in the near future, but with some discussion tonight about the idea of methods of evocation, results, and visible appearance, I guess I'll do it now.
When I was a kid I really wanted to learn to conjure spirits. I'd gotten good at other forms of magic, but, mostly coming at it from a NeoPagan Witchcraft angle at first, no one talked about conjuration. As I got more into traditional Paganism and traditional witchcraft, and began studying ceremonial magic and hermetic Kabbalah I still wasn't really finding anything on it. People would direct me to things like the LBRP, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. Eventually I downloaded copies of the Keys of Solomon, and started exploring a few grimoires. Early on I saw enough of them to realize that there were several different methods.
I started exploring more deeply into ceremonial magic and the Kabbalah and began working with my teacher, and made friends with some people who while they weren't the super traditional and semi-academic grimoiric magicians of today, they were pretty practiced in demonology and utilized a few basic grimoires along with some modern magic. So I started to develop a view of the grimoiric system, and what I needed to do to develop myself towards to begin safely and successfully using it. I frequently debated with friends who were also studying but hadn't tried the systems in the grimoires how strictly we needed to follow them. My view was that it was like a radio receiver. You could make a workable one with a few basic parts, but adding more pieces of better quality made a significantly more effective one.
So, as I continued my development and got to the point in my training where methods of conjuration started to be on the table I had a lot of options and a lot of ideas on what I should and should not be doing. I started out with some stuff based in GD influenced stuff, looked at some Levi and Crowley based ideas, and after a couple years of playing with those methods I decided to try something more directly grimoiric.
I worked with Mathers's edition of the Greater Key. This was 2007 and it was just before I began collecting all the Golden Horde stuff. I had a privately published edition of the Lemegeton as well as the Mathers, a few books on Grimoiric magic, and a couple other grimoires and grimoire based books. The Greater Key seemed like the most straight forward starting place. Oddly, Trithemius' material was my favorite and I'd originally looked at his method years earlier in high school. But it's simplicity made me feel like I should perfectly gather all the pieces to use it which is ironic since it's one of the most low impact systems in regards to tools. But I also felt like doing more thorough evocations first would set up the relationship with the spirits to allow for me to work the Trithemian system. In any case, that was all wrong thinking, if you want to get started, draw some spirits into some crystals, it is the easiest method for getting your feet wet.
But I did not do that, I did the Greater Key. I had my white robe, worn by a priest celebrating Mass (as per the Heptameron), I had my magic sword, instead of a crown I had Abramelin oil, I had my censers of incense, and I had my seal and some candles. I also had the magic circle painted onto a sheet to lay out beneath me, and my bible opened up to psalms. I was ready to go.
I decided to work with Bariel, a spirit of Jupiter, and of course I requested bunches and bunches of money. I was used to working in a Mercurial milieu so I wanted to win money. That didn't happen, but I got really good results all the same.
I began with some ritual cleansing, did a bit from the GKOS, then the Headless Invocation, and then more GKOS material. What my pattern eventually developed into can be found .
At the time I'd been out of college for about a year and a half, and so I was, as most millenials do, living at home. I had five burners of incense going. I'm conjuring like a madman when suddenly I hear a voice from above...
“BJ!”
I pause, I think, “Oh shit, Lisiewski made it sound like you'd basically die or at least never be able to do magic if your conjuration gets interrupted midstream, what horrors await!”
I respond: “Yes, Mom?”
Mom: “BJ, put out that incense, you know I don't like incense, what're you even doing?”
BJ: “Nothing mom, it's ok, don't worry about it, sure thing.”
She goes away, and I think “what do you do now? Finish like a beast I guess.”
So I finished my conjuration. I definitely felt the presence of the spirit, now, 8 years later, I still very vividly remember it, but the whole time I was thinking “No, I got interrupted, it very clearly feels like the spirit is here, the space even seems sort of ripply and charged with presence over in that direction over there where it feels like he is, but this is clearly BS, I got interrupted, Lisiewski said there would be no success, only horrors would await me now.”
I guess I didn't mention I'd also read that book the Power of Ceremonial Evocation as part of my final preparations.
So I told Bariel what I wanted, polished everything off and wiped up, and moved along certain I'd failed despite everything seeming successful.
I didn't win any money. Instead, I had much more Jupiterian results. Which was good, since in addition to asking to win money, I'd asked for financial stability and a promotion and raise and for things to just have a general financial fecundity.
So within a couple weeks I had been told at work that while they couldn't promote me right away, because our staffing compliment didn't include a second person in the position they wanted to move me to, that I would get a smaller promotion and a bonus. They'd also be giving me a raise to max me out for what was my current job grade...and they were working on adjusting the staffing compliment to promote me. At this point I'd been in my role for about a year, and had been trained for the job to which I wanted to be promoted for about 8 months, but there were no openings anywhere. Within a couple of weeks, I interviewed for the position at two other locations, was told that if I waited awhile longer they'd probably fire someone at a third location and give me his spot, and in the end I was given the job at a fourth location with no interview or anything, I just got a call offering it and all I had to do was say I wanted it. My managers gave me my year end performance increase, and then gave me the increase for the promotion afterwards so that I ended up with a higher salary than they told me I would.
All in all within the period of about a month, I achieved a 33% increase in my income in addition to an extra $500 bonus, and being told that I had been short listed for the next round of management school.
During this same time, I was expecting to have to give my mom some money for things, which she ended up telling me I didn't have to do because my parents discovered they were paid ahead on a bunch of stuff and the addition they were putting on their house was way cheaper than expected.
A couple months later I ended up conjuring Bariel again using the same method, and I told him I wanted a new job with a salary that was about an 18% increase above where I was and I wanted it to include some better growth opportunity. Within a couple weeks I got a call inviting me to apply for a job which would include training and licenses that I wanted but couldn't get at my then current company. I ended up taking the new job, and while the initial offer was only about 9% above where I was I ended up making about 26% more in the first year than I did at the previous job, getting training which has led to a job that was originally intended as an interim thing becoming a career and giving me a fair amount of stability.
So, I would say those first two evocations were unquestionable successes.
Neither one had what I envision when the bad asses of magic describe evocation to visible appearance. Neither one was a hundred percent a pure execution of the material described in the grimoire. It was a faithful execution of the system described in the grimoire definitely. It was a workable execution, and it was a successful execution.
In posting this, my point is two fold pretty much...maybe three or four fold, we'll see as I type.
1. Your execution can have mistakes and still work
2. You can create a ritual based in the grimoires which earnestly follows the system without slavishly following the book
3. You can get results without a lot of the crazy claims people get intense about, just stay chill and do what makes sense
4. You don't need perfect or beautiful tools or even everything that's there. Study a bunch of grimoires, look for what consistently seems important use that.
5. Get off your butt and do it, because magic is awesome, you're awesome, and results are real...especially when the spirits are not just imaginary friends.
I should also note that this was before I achieved K&C, so it was not an instance of the spirits being super anxious to help me because I was an adept. I was a Dominius Liminis, or more accurately within the A.'.A.'. system an Adeptus Minor Without (preparing for K&C but not having done it yet). So, while some methods of evocation are better suited to people who've done K&C, if you are properly prepared to do the work you can still do the work prior to that. But stick with angels and spirits under the sway of angels in that case, and with systems that involve invoking grace first.
Oh, that Mr. Swain as a teen had read Joseph C. Lisiewski's horrible actually-anti-magic book Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation - and still moved forward is a real testament to him.
Terrible book. The 'boomerang effect' does not exist and is just another manifestation of anti-magic ideas, that unless you do "the spell" perfectly then all Hell with break loose. Ugh. Seriously ignore that book. While there are part of it I like, it's a net-negative and just makes everyone cramped, constipated, and messed up in the head.
Also one more thing about the stream-of-words chit chat.
I have rarely experienced spirt communication this way. I have found it's just knowing the full concept - the gist - at once.
A IRL example :
This past Sunday my girlfriend and I were browsing at a used-book book store. We were browsing the architecture section , when she asked if there was a book in particular was looking for.
In that moment I had a "voice" in my head say, to the effect of, " Hey! This certain book on cinematography you gave away and miss, (full title, colors, author) is over in this aisle, (picture flashes in my head), this row, in the middle. "
When in reality it all happened in a flash and I "knew" this book was over there, across the store. So I walked over and found it where I was told it would be. I certainly didn't have to stop everything I was doing and spend time listening to some drawn-out verbal communication, as is it's painted the magic chattering class. This is usually how it goes for me.
I wish I had written this. (below)
This is a magician named Macross137
(I'm also sick of "magic authors:" plagiarizing everyone by harvesting friends, books and forum posts, so giving credit where credit is due.)
--------------------------
Q: What am I doing wrong?
I hear a lot of people saying that they have demons say words to them, even with quotes, or they can see/visualize them in their mind when they do this? Why don't these happen to me? They've made their presences very known, but I haven't ever heard words from them. Is there something in the ritual I'm doing wrong? Do I need to do it more to gain focus? Am I not looking in the right places?
A, from Macross137:
You know the comprehension you have of a question or topic after you've understood what somebody told you about it? Spirit communication often cuts to that part, without parsed-out dialogue. Dialogue, like visual apparition, is attainable and nice but not necessary or even typical.
As for online anecdotes and FOMO, always remember that some people have been practicing longer than you think, some people are just naturally talented, and lots of people are just making shit up.
-----------------------------
This is a magician as a teenager, living at home with their parents. It's very honest and self-revealing, warts and all. With none of that Try-Hard Look-at-me 'Super Magus' or "Witch Queen' vibes you usually get with this kind of write -up. Thank goodness. So tired of that stuff.
B.J. Swain - First Solomonic Experience
Call it a ' Minimum Viable Practice' (MVP). You can "improve" on it, by laying on additional requirements and ego-trips - but the most useful thing is just pick up some pendulum divination if you really feel the need to chat with them, and double check your spirit communications.
This is MVP. Dramatic manifestations do happen, and one should expect them to (which is part of the trick to having them happen) but in the end for results magic drama is not totally necessary.
Just do as B.J did and treat the experience as if they are there and complete the ritual, complete the 'charge to spirit' telling them verbally - out loud - what they want to do. The physical aspect is important here. Even if you are not sure they are they there. They often are, but are testing you.
Also, it's not useful here is is spending all you days chatting with spirits. You are here, they are there. If so you are giving them what they want - your attention, and in not requiring them to perform, then you are not a magician. Magicians DO things. Not chit chat and talking to their brain meats. Expect more out of your practice.
Jake Stratton-Kent, in his review of pagan spirit initiation practices, notes that the Pythia (priestesses) at the Oracle of Delphi would often use a letter-in-sand divination system and a pendulum hung from a tripod of hazel wood. If they were not 'gabbing' in their brain-meats all the time, so why are we now expected to?
It’s fine if people want to do, but to make it a requirement is a recent invention. The "internal voice only" requirement is largely a byproduct of late 19th-century Theosophy and mid-20th-century New Age movements. It shifted the locus of "truth" from the objective world (the sand, the pendulum) to the subjective brain meats (the ego).
MB
-------------------------------------
My First Conjuration
Fr. R.'.S.'.
-------------------------------------
This was originally posted on my blog “” but I have slightly cleaned it up and reposted it here because I think it expresses some stuff which might be useful for people nervous about trying grimoiric magic.
I was planning on doing a post about this sometime in the near future, but with some discussion tonight about the idea of methods of evocation, results, and visible appearance, I guess I'll do it now.
When I was a kid I really wanted to learn to conjure spirits. I'd gotten good at other forms of magic, but, mostly coming at it from a NeoPagan Witchcraft angle at first, no one talked about conjuration. As I got more into traditional Paganism and traditional witchcraft, and began studying ceremonial magic and hermetic Kabbalah I still wasn't really finding anything on it. People would direct me to things like the LBRP, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted. Eventually I downloaded copies of the Keys of Solomon, and started exploring a few grimoires. Early on I saw enough of them to realize that there were several different methods.
I started exploring more deeply into ceremonial magic and the Kabbalah and began working with my teacher, and made friends with some people who while they weren't the super traditional and semi-academic grimoiric magicians of today, they were pretty practiced in demonology and utilized a few basic grimoires along with some modern magic. So I started to develop a view of the grimoiric system, and what I needed to do to develop myself towards to begin safely and successfully using it. I frequently debated with friends who were also studying but hadn't tried the systems in the grimoires how strictly we needed to follow them. My view was that it was like a radio receiver. You could make a workable one with a few basic parts, but adding more pieces of better quality made a significantly more effective one.
So, as I continued my development and got to the point in my training where methods of conjuration started to be on the table I had a lot of options and a lot of ideas on what I should and should not be doing. I started out with some stuff based in GD influenced stuff, looked at some Levi and Crowley based ideas, and after a couple years of playing with those methods I decided to try something more directly grimoiric.
I worked with Mathers's edition of the Greater Key. This was 2007 and it was just before I began collecting all the Golden Horde stuff. I had a privately published edition of the Lemegeton as well as the Mathers, a few books on Grimoiric magic, and a couple other grimoires and grimoire based books. The Greater Key seemed like the most straight forward starting place. Oddly, Trithemius' material was my favorite and I'd originally looked at his method years earlier in high school. But it's simplicity made me feel like I should perfectly gather all the pieces to use it which is ironic since it's one of the most low impact systems in regards to tools. But I also felt like doing more thorough evocations first would set up the relationship with the spirits to allow for me to work the Trithemian system. In any case, that was all wrong thinking, if you want to get started, draw some spirits into some crystals, it is the easiest method for getting your feet wet.
But I did not do that, I did the Greater Key. I had my white robe, worn by a priest celebrating Mass (as per the Heptameron), I had my magic sword, instead of a crown I had Abramelin oil, I had my censers of incense, and I had my seal and some candles. I also had the magic circle painted onto a sheet to lay out beneath me, and my bible opened up to psalms. I was ready to go.
I decided to work with Bariel, a spirit of Jupiter, and of course I requested bunches and bunches of money. I was used to working in a Mercurial milieu so I wanted to win money. That didn't happen, but I got really good results all the same.
I began with some ritual cleansing, did a bit from the GKOS, then the Headless Invocation, and then more GKOS material. What my pattern eventually developed into can be found .
At the time I'd been out of college for about a year and a half, and so I was, as most millenials do, living at home. I had five burners of incense going. I'm conjuring like a madman when suddenly I hear a voice from above...
“BJ!”
I pause, I think, “Oh shit, Lisiewski made it sound like you'd basically die or at least never be able to do magic if your conjuration gets interrupted midstream, what horrors await!”
I respond: “Yes, Mom?”
Mom: “BJ, put out that incense, you know I don't like incense, what're you even doing?”
BJ: “Nothing mom, it's ok, don't worry about it, sure thing.”
She goes away, and I think “what do you do now? Finish like a beast I guess.”
So I finished my conjuration. I definitely felt the presence of the spirit, now, 8 years later, I still very vividly remember it, but the whole time I was thinking “No, I got interrupted, it very clearly feels like the spirit is here, the space even seems sort of ripply and charged with presence over in that direction over there where it feels like he is, but this is clearly BS, I got interrupted, Lisiewski said there would be no success, only horrors would await me now.”
I guess I didn't mention I'd also read that book the Power of Ceremonial Evocation as part of my final preparations.
So I told Bariel what I wanted, polished everything off and wiped up, and moved along certain I'd failed despite everything seeming successful.
I didn't win any money. Instead, I had much more Jupiterian results. Which was good, since in addition to asking to win money, I'd asked for financial stability and a promotion and raise and for things to just have a general financial fecundity.
So within a couple weeks I had been told at work that while they couldn't promote me right away, because our staffing compliment didn't include a second person in the position they wanted to move me to, that I would get a smaller promotion and a bonus. They'd also be giving me a raise to max me out for what was my current job grade...and they were working on adjusting the staffing compliment to promote me. At this point I'd been in my role for about a year, and had been trained for the job to which I wanted to be promoted for about 8 months, but there were no openings anywhere. Within a couple of weeks, I interviewed for the position at two other locations, was told that if I waited awhile longer they'd probably fire someone at a third location and give me his spot, and in the end I was given the job at a fourth location with no interview or anything, I just got a call offering it and all I had to do was say I wanted it. My managers gave me my year end performance increase, and then gave me the increase for the promotion afterwards so that I ended up with a higher salary than they told me I would.
All in all within the period of about a month, I achieved a 33% increase in my income in addition to an extra $500 bonus, and being told that I had been short listed for the next round of management school.
During this same time, I was expecting to have to give my mom some money for things, which she ended up telling me I didn't have to do because my parents discovered they were paid ahead on a bunch of stuff and the addition they were putting on their house was way cheaper than expected.
A couple months later I ended up conjuring Bariel again using the same method, and I told him I wanted a new job with a salary that was about an 18% increase above where I was and I wanted it to include some better growth opportunity. Within a couple weeks I got a call inviting me to apply for a job which would include training and licenses that I wanted but couldn't get at my then current company. I ended up taking the new job, and while the initial offer was only about 9% above where I was I ended up making about 26% more in the first year than I did at the previous job, getting training which has led to a job that was originally intended as an interim thing becoming a career and giving me a fair amount of stability.
So, I would say those first two evocations were unquestionable successes.
Neither one had what I envision when the bad asses of magic describe evocation to visible appearance. Neither one was a hundred percent a pure execution of the material described in the grimoire. It was a faithful execution of the system described in the grimoire definitely. It was a workable execution, and it was a successful execution.
In posting this, my point is two fold pretty much...maybe three or four fold, we'll see as I type.
1. Your execution can have mistakes and still work
2. You can create a ritual based in the grimoires which earnestly follows the system without slavishly following the book
3. You can get results without a lot of the crazy claims people get intense about, just stay chill and do what makes sense
4. You don't need perfect or beautiful tools or even everything that's there. Study a bunch of grimoires, look for what consistently seems important use that.
5. Get off your butt and do it, because magic is awesome, you're awesome, and results are real...especially when the spirits are not just imaginary friends.
I should also note that this was before I achieved K&C, so it was not an instance of the spirits being super anxious to help me because I was an adept. I was a Dominius Liminis, or more accurately within the A.'.A.'. system an Adeptus Minor Without (preparing for K&C but not having done it yet). So, while some methods of evocation are better suited to people who've done K&C, if you are properly prepared to do the work you can still do the work prior to that. But stick with angels and spirits under the sway of angels in that case, and with systems that involve invoking grace first.
Post automatically merged:
Oh, that Mr. Swain as a teen had read Joseph C. Lisiewski's horrible actually-anti-magic book Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation - and still moved forward is a real testament to him.
Terrible book. The 'boomerang effect' does not exist and is just another manifestation of anti-magic ideas, that unless you do "the spell" perfectly then all Hell with break loose. Ugh. Seriously ignore that book. While there are part of it I like, it's a net-negative and just makes everyone cramped, constipated, and messed up in the head.
Post automatically merged:
Also one more thing about the stream-of-words chit chat.
I have rarely experienced spirt communication this way. I have found it's just knowing the full concept - the gist - at once.
A IRL example :
This past Sunday my girlfriend and I were browsing at a used-book book store. We were browsing the architecture section , when she asked if there was a book in particular was looking for.
In that moment I had a "voice" in my head say, to the effect of, " Hey! This certain book on cinematography you gave away and miss, (full title, colors, author) is over in this aisle, (picture flashes in my head), this row, in the middle. "
When in reality it all happened in a flash and I "knew" this book was over there, across the store. So I walked over and found it where I was told it would be. I certainly didn't have to stop everything I was doing and spend time listening to some drawn-out verbal communication, as is it's painted the magic chattering class. This is usually how it goes for me.
I wish I had written this. (below)
This is a magician named Macross137
(I'm also sick of "magic authors:" plagiarizing everyone by harvesting friends, books and forum posts, so giving credit where credit is due.)
--------------------------
Q: What am I doing wrong?
I hear a lot of people saying that they have demons say words to them, even with quotes, or they can see/visualize them in their mind when they do this? Why don't these happen to me? They've made their presences very known, but I haven't ever heard words from them. Is there something in the ritual I'm doing wrong? Do I need to do it more to gain focus? Am I not looking in the right places?
A, from Macross137:
You know the comprehension you have of a question or topic after you've understood what somebody told you about it? Spirit communication often cuts to that part, without parsed-out dialogue. Dialogue, like visual apparition, is attainable and nice but not necessary or even typical.
As for online anecdotes and FOMO, always remember that some people have been practicing longer than you think, some people are just naturally talented, and lots of people are just making shit up.
-----------------------------
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