For a magician who is operating through the magickal methodology of total immersion, the mystery gateway is one of the most powerful tools that can be used for a variety of magickal effects. Perhaps the most important and essential predication for this magickal mechanism is that the gateway is internal to the outer boundary of a consecrated magick circle. It is a gateway that opens within and overlays the magickal structures erected within the magick circle. We have already discussed this theme in a previous article, and I would advise you to re-familiarize yourself with it to enhance your understanding of this topic. You can find the link to that previous article here. However, there is a very specific Mystery Gateway used in the technique of invocation as performed in the Order of the Gnostic Star. That specific rite is called the “Gate of Revealing,” and this article will examine that ritual in greater detail.
We have already recently covered the ritual mechanisms used for the specialized Power Octagon and the Activated Septagram. I have indicated that through these two rituals alone, a magician might be able to fully invoke a spirit into manifestation in some manner. Yet the third step in this process performs two amazing and very necessary tasks. The Mystery Gate functions as a typical gateway in that it joins together into a unified field all of the previous ritual energy structures, and it unlocks and reveals a distinct spiritual domain, which is essentially based on the prior symbolic configuration of octagon and septagram. The Gate of Revealing thus fuses the octagon and septagram to produce a fifteen pointed structure with a triangle in its center. I call this fifteen pointed ritual structure device, the Quintedecim Complex.
When the magician performs an invocation of a spirit for the first time (in the Order), then he will perform certain specific steps to erect a vortex domain and an underworld gateway, and once within that domain, he will execute the steps to ensure that the spirit will materialize and become completely accessible. How this materialization process is accomplished is through surrogates for the blood and flesh of a victim, and those surrogates are the consecrated wine and host of a special performance of the Mass.
That I use the substitution of wine and bread instead of sacrificing an animal to fully materialize or quicken the etheric body and spiritual intelligence of a spirit would seem to be in agreement with the changes that have occurred in religious and magickal practices since antiquity. Some might find this substitution to be even worse than animal sacrifice, seeing it as a form of sacrilege. This accusation might be true if I were a Christian and the host and wine were consecrated in the name and guise of Jesus Christ. It’s even possible that Satanic magicians in the past did just that, incorporating the Black Mass for the purpose of empowering a goetic evocation.
However, the substitutions that I use are consecrated to pagan deities, particularly those with an easily predicated chthonic aspect, so I am giving to the domain of spirit something that actually belongs to it. The consecrated host and wine that I use in my variation of the invocative Mystery Gate are to be employed in nourishing and empowering the spirits that I generatively summon, and they are not to be used for any kind of communion rite. After the invocation is completed, these sacraments are given to the earth as a form of proper disposal.
I can remember, years ago, having a discussion with the Gnostic patriarch, Stephan Hoeller, who was visiting Kansas City at the time (autumn ‘88), about my mechanism for performing invocation. He asked me if I ever used any human waste products in my workings (like some other magicians are reputed of doing), such as semen, urine, saliva, mentrual blood, fresh blood, raw meat, or feces. I told him that I had no need for such things in performing an invocation because I used consecrated hosts and wine instead. I suspect that Stephen was initially relieved to hear that I didn’t use these organic substances, but then quickly realized that I used the sacraments instead. He was quite horrified and said nothing more on the subject. Still, I suppose that he didn’t realize that those sacraments had nothing to do with any deities that he might even consider to have contact with, and that I wasn’t violating any rules or boundaries that he would have considered sacrosanct. Others may believe this technique to be questionable at best, a kind of apostasy at worse, yet I have made certain that my intention and practice in this regards are done in complete accordance with the Godhead that I work through.
Now that I have dispensed with the most likely controversy in regards to the invocation Mystery Gate, let us continue with our discussion about this most critical of rites in the three tier invocation process.
The ritual Gate of Revealing has a basic preliminary operation that is done every time it is used. That operation is the drawing of an inner circle, placing the Quintedecim Complex trigon on top of the stack representing the Power Octagon and the Activated Septagram and then charging it with an invoking spiral and a violet colored energy. Twenty-two Trumps of the Tarot are placed around the periphery of that inner circle, representing the specific pattern of initiation that the magician is following. This pattern is then charged using the control crystal that normally is attached to a necklace that circles the magician’s neck. The magician projects the power of the crystal into each card, following the pattern of the four stages (of the Cycle of Initiation) in a widdershins vector. Upon the Q-Complex trigon, the magician places the consecrated sigil of the target spirit, where it will reside until the invocation is to be performed. In this manner, the core of the inner magick circle is set with the empowered invocation process, encircled by the pattern of one’s personal symbols of transformation.
Overlaying the central circle, the magician builds a powerful central pylon based vortex, where the four Watchtowers are each set with a trapezoidal cross in such a manner that a cross roads is formed (West to East, then South to North), with a trapezoidal cross also set in the Ultra-point. The four Watchtower devices are drawn to the center of the circle in the Infra-point (where the trigon stack is set) using the sword, after that, the magician draws an invoking spiral to connect the Ultra-point with the Infra-point, and then a widdershins spiral is used to generate the vortex proper.
A trapezoidal cross device is a distorted diamond cross that emulates the special qualities of the trapezoid, which in this case, generates a kind of separate reality apart from the normal domain of the consecrated magick circle. It is in this specialized para-reality that the magician sets an tetrahedral underworld gateway with a specific alignment to the West, yet the apex of that tetrahedron is in the meso-point. Thus the tetrahedral gateway is completely within and enclosed by the para-reality of the trapezoidal vortex. You could imagine the resultant prismatic energy structure that is residing in the magick circle as looking like a trapezohedron that is cut in half. This is the energy structure through which the core of the invocation process is performed. The combination of trapezohedron with an internal tetrahedral gateway causes the previous magickal levels of the Power Octagon and Activated Septagram to fuse into a singularity, and the interior domain that is created is potently imprinted with the symbolic correspondences of the target spirit. Therefore, through these ritual structures, the magician has encapsulated the point of the being-ness of the spirit, and has succinctly entered into a projection of its private spiritual domain. What remains to be done is for the magician to intone the Call of Preliminary Invocation of the spirit, where only it’s name is used as a variable and the rest of it is always repeated at this point in the rite.
From this point in the Gate of Revealing ritual, there are four possible tracks that the magician may follow. These tracks are independent from each other, but the track that completes the invocation process must be performed first, then through the use of a macro-ritual (which allows the magician to re-enter the domain of the already invoked spirit without having to redo all of the previous steps), the other three tracks may be subsequently followed. These four tracks are:
Although there are a total of four tracks written into the Gate of Revealing rite, we will be focusing on the primary track, which is the invocation through the media of manifestation. I may seek to elucidate the other three tracks at another time.
Invocation Through the Media of Manifestation
Once the invoking vortex and underworld gateway are fully established and passed through, the magician has some additional tasks to perform to complete the initial invocation process. To effectively engage the invoked spirit, the magician must assemble a focal point for it. I have chosen the Northwestern Angle because I believe that it represents the place of greatest darkness, and therefore, makes a most suitable place for an inner focal point. I also use a small rectangular trigon device that consists of the design of a blue circle enclosing a red triangle painted on a black background.
To continue with the directions, the magician places the invoking trigon device on the temple floor in the Northwest corner, just beyond the magick circle but still within its influence. He then charges that small trigon with an invoking spiral and a violet colored energy, and places upon it a small incense burner with a lit stick of incense. He then places a small chalice (used only for this purpose) on the invoking trigon, and pours into it some consecrated wine and a small amount of holy water. He should top off the chalice of wine with a particle of host, thereby fully empowering it as a kind of spiritual elixir of life. The sigil is removed from the stack of trigons in the center of the circle and placed on the invoking trigon, the magician taking care to fumigate it with the burning incense smoke. The piece of remaining host is also placed on the invoking trigon, which symbolizes the flesh of the victim - so there is the blood and the flesh residing on the invoking trigon. The magician takes the control crystal and dips it into the consecrated wine and then places that crystal briefly on the sigil, and then on his forehead, to establish a powerful linking mechanism (then replaces it around his neck). Finally, the magician draws a sealing spiral around the invoking trigon and projects a violet colored energy into it.
Once the invoking trigon is fully set up in the Northwest Angle, the magician takes her staff (which should be around seven feet) and lays it down on the temple floor so it connects the central stack of trigons with the invoking trigon with both ends. Then, armed with her sword, the magician sits down before the invoking trigon (and facing the Northwest) and focuses on the invoking trigon. The sword is resting in her lap and as she begins to slip into a mild trance, she intones the Call of Invocation of the Spirit Archetype. Once this is completed, the magician will assume a deeper trance state, beginning by sensing/visualizing all of the seven chakras upon her body connecting with her left and right hands, forming a kind of Tau Cross. In this manner, she has effectively charged her body of light and begins to internally call the spirit and draw it into complete and intimate contact. Assuredly, with everything that has been done, this response and access to the spirit occurs almost immediately. The magician has now achieved a potent connection with the spirit within its own domain, immersed in the forces and intelligence associated with that spiritual being. The resultant experience is likely to be unique in the annals of magick, and often has an profound initiatory impact on the magician, since the levels of communication between spirit and magician are multiplied many times and at their most intense.
After a period of time, the communication and interaction becomes quiet and seemingly dormant, although the spirit is still in residence and the magician is still in its lair. When the encounter is completed (and the magician will know when this has occurred), then she intones the license to depart, and waits for a short respectful period of time. Then the staff is removed to break the link, the invoking trigon is sealed anew, and the gateway is closed. All of the points of the magick circle (Watchtowers, Angles, Infra-point, Meso-point and Ultra-point) are sealed with sealing spirals before the magician may leave the magick circle. After a period of at least twelve hours, the magician will dismantle the stack of trigons and the invoking trigon, making certain to properly dispose of the sacraments. The consecrated sigil can be placed in a Liber Spiritus and used in future workings, such as to perform an evocation or skrying/projection session.
That is how I perform a primary invocation of a spirit using the ritual Gate of Revealing, and it is part of the core practices in the Order of the Gnostic Star. I hope that this article has been revealing and helpful for your own endeavors in the arena of invocation and evocation. More articles will follow that will specify how some of the other processes are to be performed.
We have already recently covered the ritual mechanisms used for the specialized Power Octagon and the Activated Septagram. I have indicated that through these two rituals alone, a magician might be able to fully invoke a spirit into manifestation in some manner. Yet the third step in this process performs two amazing and very necessary tasks. The Mystery Gate functions as a typical gateway in that it joins together into a unified field all of the previous ritual energy structures, and it unlocks and reveals a distinct spiritual domain, which is essentially based on the prior symbolic configuration of octagon and septagram. The Gate of Revealing thus fuses the octagon and septagram to produce a fifteen pointed structure with a triangle in its center. I call this fifteen pointed ritual structure device, the Quintedecim Complex.
When the magician performs an invocation of a spirit for the first time (in the Order), then he will perform certain specific steps to erect a vortex domain and an underworld gateway, and once within that domain, he will execute the steps to ensure that the spirit will materialize and become completely accessible. How this materialization process is accomplished is through surrogates for the blood and flesh of a victim, and those surrogates are the consecrated wine and host of a special performance of the Mass.
That I use the substitution of wine and bread instead of sacrificing an animal to fully materialize or quicken the etheric body and spiritual intelligence of a spirit would seem to be in agreement with the changes that have occurred in religious and magickal practices since antiquity. Some might find this substitution to be even worse than animal sacrifice, seeing it as a form of sacrilege. This accusation might be true if I were a Christian and the host and wine were consecrated in the name and guise of Jesus Christ. It’s even possible that Satanic magicians in the past did just that, incorporating the Black Mass for the purpose of empowering a goetic evocation.
However, the substitutions that I use are consecrated to pagan deities, particularly those with an easily predicated chthonic aspect, so I am giving to the domain of spirit something that actually belongs to it. The consecrated host and wine that I use in my variation of the invocative Mystery Gate are to be employed in nourishing and empowering the spirits that I generatively summon, and they are not to be used for any kind of communion rite. After the invocation is completed, these sacraments are given to the earth as a form of proper disposal.
I can remember, years ago, having a discussion with the Gnostic patriarch, Stephan Hoeller, who was visiting Kansas City at the time (autumn ‘88), about my mechanism for performing invocation. He asked me if I ever used any human waste products in my workings (like some other magicians are reputed of doing), such as semen, urine, saliva, mentrual blood, fresh blood, raw meat, or feces. I told him that I had no need for such things in performing an invocation because I used consecrated hosts and wine instead. I suspect that Stephen was initially relieved to hear that I didn’t use these organic substances, but then quickly realized that I used the sacraments instead. He was quite horrified and said nothing more on the subject. Still, I suppose that he didn’t realize that those sacraments had nothing to do with any deities that he might even consider to have contact with, and that I wasn’t violating any rules or boundaries that he would have considered sacrosanct. Others may believe this technique to be questionable at best, a kind of apostasy at worse, yet I have made certain that my intention and practice in this regards are done in complete accordance with the Godhead that I work through.
Now that I have dispensed with the most likely controversy in regards to the invocation Mystery Gate, let us continue with our discussion about this most critical of rites in the three tier invocation process.
The ritual Gate of Revealing has a basic preliminary operation that is done every time it is used. That operation is the drawing of an inner circle, placing the Quintedecim Complex trigon on top of the stack representing the Power Octagon and the Activated Septagram and then charging it with an invoking spiral and a violet colored energy. Twenty-two Trumps of the Tarot are placed around the periphery of that inner circle, representing the specific pattern of initiation that the magician is following. This pattern is then charged using the control crystal that normally is attached to a necklace that circles the magician’s neck. The magician projects the power of the crystal into each card, following the pattern of the four stages (of the Cycle of Initiation) in a widdershins vector. Upon the Q-Complex trigon, the magician places the consecrated sigil of the target spirit, where it will reside until the invocation is to be performed. In this manner, the core of the inner magick circle is set with the empowered invocation process, encircled by the pattern of one’s personal symbols of transformation.
Overlaying the central circle, the magician builds a powerful central pylon based vortex, where the four Watchtowers are each set with a trapezoidal cross in such a manner that a cross roads is formed (West to East, then South to North), with a trapezoidal cross also set in the Ultra-point. The four Watchtower devices are drawn to the center of the circle in the Infra-point (where the trigon stack is set) using the sword, after that, the magician draws an invoking spiral to connect the Ultra-point with the Infra-point, and then a widdershins spiral is used to generate the vortex proper.
A trapezoidal cross device is a distorted diamond cross that emulates the special qualities of the trapezoid, which in this case, generates a kind of separate reality apart from the normal domain of the consecrated magick circle. It is in this specialized para-reality that the magician sets an tetrahedral underworld gateway with a specific alignment to the West, yet the apex of that tetrahedron is in the meso-point. Thus the tetrahedral gateway is completely within and enclosed by the para-reality of the trapezoidal vortex. You could imagine the resultant prismatic energy structure that is residing in the magick circle as looking like a trapezohedron that is cut in half. This is the energy structure through which the core of the invocation process is performed. The combination of trapezohedron with an internal tetrahedral gateway causes the previous magickal levels of the Power Octagon and Activated Septagram to fuse into a singularity, and the interior domain that is created is potently imprinted with the symbolic correspondences of the target spirit. Therefore, through these ritual structures, the magician has encapsulated the point of the being-ness of the spirit, and has succinctly entered into a projection of its private spiritual domain. What remains to be done is for the magician to intone the Call of Preliminary Invocation of the spirit, where only it’s name is used as a variable and the rest of it is always repeated at this point in the rite.
From this point in the Gate of Revealing ritual, there are four possible tracks that the magician may follow. These tracks are independent from each other, but the track that completes the invocation process must be performed first, then through the use of a macro-ritual (which allows the magician to re-enter the domain of the already invoked spirit without having to redo all of the previous steps), the other three tracks may be subsequently followed. These four tracks are:
- Invocation through the media of manifestation (always performed the first time),
- Evocation through the artifice of Exteriorization (to be followed by the Iron Cross Vortex rite),
- Projection of the astral body or skrying into the spirit’s domain,
- Summoning of the spiritual servitors of the target spirit.
Although there are a total of four tracks written into the Gate of Revealing rite, we will be focusing on the primary track, which is the invocation through the media of manifestation. I may seek to elucidate the other three tracks at another time.
Invocation Through the Media of Manifestation
Once the invoking vortex and underworld gateway are fully established and passed through, the magician has some additional tasks to perform to complete the initial invocation process. To effectively engage the invoked spirit, the magician must assemble a focal point for it. I have chosen the Northwestern Angle because I believe that it represents the place of greatest darkness, and therefore, makes a most suitable place for an inner focal point. I also use a small rectangular trigon device that consists of the design of a blue circle enclosing a red triangle painted on a black background.
To continue with the directions, the magician places the invoking trigon device on the temple floor in the Northwest corner, just beyond the magick circle but still within its influence. He then charges that small trigon with an invoking spiral and a violet colored energy, and places upon it a small incense burner with a lit stick of incense. He then places a small chalice (used only for this purpose) on the invoking trigon, and pours into it some consecrated wine and a small amount of holy water. He should top off the chalice of wine with a particle of host, thereby fully empowering it as a kind of spiritual elixir of life. The sigil is removed from the stack of trigons in the center of the circle and placed on the invoking trigon, the magician taking care to fumigate it with the burning incense smoke. The piece of remaining host is also placed on the invoking trigon, which symbolizes the flesh of the victim - so there is the blood and the flesh residing on the invoking trigon. The magician takes the control crystal and dips it into the consecrated wine and then places that crystal briefly on the sigil, and then on his forehead, to establish a powerful linking mechanism (then replaces it around his neck). Finally, the magician draws a sealing spiral around the invoking trigon and projects a violet colored energy into it.
Once the invoking trigon is fully set up in the Northwest Angle, the magician takes her staff (which should be around seven feet) and lays it down on the temple floor so it connects the central stack of trigons with the invoking trigon with both ends. Then, armed with her sword, the magician sits down before the invoking trigon (and facing the Northwest) and focuses on the invoking trigon. The sword is resting in her lap and as she begins to slip into a mild trance, she intones the Call of Invocation of the Spirit Archetype. Once this is completed, the magician will assume a deeper trance state, beginning by sensing/visualizing all of the seven chakras upon her body connecting with her left and right hands, forming a kind of Tau Cross. In this manner, she has effectively charged her body of light and begins to internally call the spirit and draw it into complete and intimate contact. Assuredly, with everything that has been done, this response and access to the spirit occurs almost immediately. The magician has now achieved a potent connection with the spirit within its own domain, immersed in the forces and intelligence associated with that spiritual being. The resultant experience is likely to be unique in the annals of magick, and often has an profound initiatory impact on the magician, since the levels of communication between spirit and magician are multiplied many times and at their most intense.
After a period of time, the communication and interaction becomes quiet and seemingly dormant, although the spirit is still in residence and the magician is still in its lair. When the encounter is completed (and the magician will know when this has occurred), then she intones the license to depart, and waits for a short respectful period of time. Then the staff is removed to break the link, the invoking trigon is sealed anew, and the gateway is closed. All of the points of the magick circle (Watchtowers, Angles, Infra-point, Meso-point and Ultra-point) are sealed with sealing spirals before the magician may leave the magick circle. After a period of at least twelve hours, the magician will dismantle the stack of trigons and the invoking trigon, making certain to properly dispose of the sacraments. The consecrated sigil can be placed in a Liber Spiritus and used in future workings, such as to perform an evocation or skrying/projection session.
That is how I perform a primary invocation of a spirit using the ritual Gate of Revealing, and it is part of the core practices in the Order of the Gnostic Star. I hope that this article has been revealing and helpful for your own endeavors in the arena of invocation and evocation. More articles will follow that will specify how some of the other processes are to be performed.
Frater Barrabbas
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