Hollywood Drama and Real Spirit Encounters

One of the things that really bothers me about the culture I live in is that so many people actually believe what they see in action, drama or horror movies is somehow true. This is especially a problem when it comes to encounters with spirits. These rather highly graphic and CGI enhanced images shape people’s expectations and how they perceive entities within the domain of spirit. The typical person that I have met doesn’t quite believe in God or necessarily goes to church regularly, but they do indeed believe in malevolent spirits, demons and perhaps even the Devil himself. How odd it is that someone could believe in spiritual evil but not believe in spiritual good, or in some kind of Deity. How indeed can one exist without the other?

I guess the perpetrator of all these strange assumptions and beliefs is Hollywood, which has produced a lot of horror and suspenseful movies about the Devil, demons and other evil entities. These themes have found their way into other media, too, such as video games, D&D, novels and anime. Don’t get me wrong, I love to be entertained by these various media, but I don’t allow such tropes to influence how I see the spiritual world. Coincidentally, these various movies and media have focused very little on the opposite forces of good, and the spiritual or magical power used to generate positive effects that would counter negative threats. That makes the threats seem overwhelming, and the means allotted to mere humanity to fight against them seem weak at best, or pathetic at worst. It all appears rather pessimistic to me, but then again, I just enjoy the stories and don’t try to use them to either explain occult truths or allow them to bleed into my perceptions of the real world.

Of course, as a Witch and a Pagan, I don’t subscribe to any kind of spiritually polarized or dualistic world view where the forces of good and light are arrayed against the forces of darkness and evil. In my opinion the world is quite neutral and so are the spirits that populate it. This is hardly the dramatic stuff of evil pitted against good as employed in Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent, Judaism. Yet you would think that people (of the Abrahamic faiths) who have been taught at least something in their respective places of worship would subscribe to the view that evil can be successfully combated by good. I suspect that cynicism is also playing a part, since the rich and powerful in our culture often seem to get away with committing heinous crimes while the lowly slob usually ends up heavily penalized. Add together the unhealthy qualities of political cynicism, post-modern Hollywood induced superstition, various conspiracy theories and a moderate disbelief in an active force for good and you have the special toxic cocktail of ignorance made to order for the rationally handicapped people of our post-modern age. I am glad that I am not one of those individuals so afflicted by our post-modern malaise (or so I think).

Needless to say, the three basic questions that everyone who would actually like to engage with spirits and spiritual beings without being paralyzed with fear are: how do we experience them, what do they look like, and in what world do they exist. I would like to take a moment to answer each of these questions separately and hopefully that will make things a lot more clear. These are good questions to consider whether one is an experienced magician, a beginner or someone not even trained in the magical arts.

How Do We Experience Spirits?

First and foremost, spirits are all around us and live in a domain that is coexistent and contiguous with our own. However, despite that proximity, nearly everyone can’t see them without some kind of special conditioning. A few rare individuals don’t need any preparation to see spirits, but they are usually highly gifted psychics, spiritual or magical masters, or acute psychotics. The rest of us, and that also includes myself, must perform specific meditations and trance techniques in order to shift our conscious mental states so we can perceive spiritual beings and even get a glimpse of their world. The necessity of acquiring a powerful altered state of consciousness in order to see spirits indicates that there is an excellent barrier between the domain of spirit and our mundane domain. It means that I can focus on something like my mundane job without being distracted or disturbed by some spiritual entity that, for whatever reason, wants my attention. It doesn’t mean that I am completely insensitive, but it does demonstrate that I can focus on mundane things unless something really critical or important enters my field of awareness.

Therefore, I can’t even imagine what it’s like for someone whose psychic sensitivities are always turned on. It must be highly distracting or perhaps even maddening if one weren’t able to turn it off and focus on other things. I have compartmentalized my world so that there is a time and a place for spiritual and magical workings, and there is a time and a place to function in the mundane sphere as well. The two typically don’t intersect, but when they do, there’s usually a very compelling reason for it. This allows me to function in both worlds without being overwhelmed by the differentiation or adversely afflicted by otherwise unseen forces and beings.

Why do I need to adopt a rigorous altered state of consciousness in order to perceive and communicate with spirits? The answer is quite simple. Spirits, if they have a material substance at all, are extremely subtle and not part of our normal perceptions of sight, hearing, smelling and touching. My theory is that spirits exist as beings embodied in pure consciousness, therefore, they don’t have any kind of physical body or at least none that we could scientifically measure. That means that spirits don’t occupy space and time the way that we do. They live in world that is also purely within consciousness, and that world is populated with all sorts of mythical creatures, deities and ghosts as well. I will talk more about this world when I answer the question about where spirits reside; but for this particular question, I can say that spirits are so subtle and nearly invisible to our senses that almost everyone will neither be able to sense or perceive them without aid.

The most sensitive and untrained psychic might feel a chill or sense something unusual when encountering a spirit, but otherwise, the rest of humanity walks around the common topography of their lives without sensing any spirits whatsoever. What most people believe about spirits and then when they claim to have encountered them are perhaps based on an almost imperceptible sensation that is amplified greatly by their imaginations. And that imperceptible sensation could be triggered by a natural phenomenon. Often our imaginations make up for what we really can’t see or perceive, and that makes many supposed supernatural experiences nothing more than just spurious interpretations of naturally occurring phenomena. It doesn’t mean that spiritual phenomena are non-existent, only that they exist in a highly rarefied world that is mostly imperceptible. It also means that human nature dislikes any kind of unknown or vague occurrence, and so it fills in the blanks making use of our a volatile imagination and our hardwired flight or fight instincts. 

If what I am claiming seems to question or even invalidate what people typically declare as the basis of their beliefs in the supernatural and their encounters with spirits then why do I and most other occultists need to adopt an altered state of consciousness in order to be able to perceive and encounter spirits? Wouldn’t a naked perception of a spirit experienced by someone completely skeptical or untrained indicate that such a spirit has a physical reality that can be filmed, videotaped, or otherwise measured or captured using scientific tools? Even the most audacious reality TV show that claims to hunt and capture ghostly activity often comes up with nothing more than ultra-subtle evidence that could be just as readily interpreted as the results of a natural phenomenon. The extremely faint whisper, the bizarre reflection of light or even the strange air temperature fluctuation cannot be used to prove conclusively that ghosts exist as objective physical entities.

So, it would seem that very subtle cues are being interpreted by individuals who don’t have the training and experience to know a real manifestation from one that is spurious. Even the expert psychic or a trained occultist isn’t infallible when supposedly encountering spirits. Everything that is experienced regarding spirits and their domain must be rationally evaluated and examined in order to determine if it is real, and then, relevant. Even some of my experiences with spirits have proven to be valid occurrences but spurious because what was revealed by them was nonsense. This happens more often with earth-based spirits (like the spirits of the dead) rather than more evolved and intelligent beings. We must, as occultists, carefully examine and qualify any and all spiritual encounters to make certain that they are real, meaningful and significant.

After many decades of practice and engaging with spirits I might be able to easily slip into the altered state of consciousness needed to sense them without the lengthy or arduous process of meditation and trance induction, but often what I sense under these conditions is very subtle and indeterminate. Only when I perform the classic methodologies used to achieve the correct mental state, and confined in the sacred space of a temple or grove, will I be able to “see” and “hear” spirits without any doubt or the need to aggressively question and rationalize what I have perceived. What that means is that an impromptu adoption of this mental state outside of sacred space can cause me to misinterpret what I am sensing almost as readily as it does to the untrained. It means that even I am susceptible to the same subtle cues and sensations that might give other people the “creepy” feeling that something spiritual is active when in fact it is only a natural occurrence.

Let me give you an example from one of my many experiences over the decades with spirits. I was visiting two old cities in the southeast, namely Charleston and Savanah, some years ago and when I was wandering with the rest of the tourists around the old brick docks of the port of Savanah, I sensed something disturbing despite all of the distractions and people, sights and sounds. I felt sensations of fear, sadness, pain, anger and bitter remorse. It was just a feeling that came and went, and I couldn’t figure out why I felt those emotions, since they are not typical for me to experience. My lady and I went on the obligatory ghost tours in both of these towns, but all of the supposed tours visited the graveyards and antique homes of white people. Wouldn’t such a place be haunted by the ghosts of all of the slaves that lived and died in that place as well? 

I briefly wondered about that and then forgot about it. Later on when we visited Tybee Island, we talked with a person who was studying to be a root doctor and he said that the old parts of Savanah were full of the ghosts of slaves, and that the ghost tours of white-only locations was a sham. I then remembered my strange emotions and sensations and told him about them, He concurred that I was probably picking up on the many ghosts of slaves who built the old town and the port area of Savanah, often suffering and even dying while they labored. The old town was built by the sweat, blood, tears and bitter suffering of black slaves, and it is likely that a real psychic would be able to sense that perturbation in a much more pronounced manner than that of the white privileged owners who gained immense wealth from their efforts. Did I sense the ghosts of departed slaves who were earth bound and seeking some kind of peaceful release denied to them over the centuries? I believe that I did sense them, but I have no concrete proof. I only had the brief sensations that seemed not have any kind of origin within me as a type of subject verification. 

How does one assume the proper altered mental state to sense spirits and the spirit world? It is done through a medium level trance state inducted from a deep meditative state. The simplest method for assuming a trance state is to stare at a fixed point for a period of time, such as a Yantra, diagram, wall painting or anything that is stationary or cyclically oscillating. Thus, a revolving light or shining object can also be used. The subject performs this type of trance induction once a deep meditative state has been achieved after performing many minutes of assana, breath-control and mantram vibrations. You can find these techniques in many books on meditation and trance, or you can fully read chapter two of part two (starting at page 204) in my book “Disciple’s Guide to Ritual Magick.”  The assumption of a moderate trance state is the foundational state that I use to sense and perceive spirits and their world.      

What Do Spirits Look Like?

Here is where the imagination comes into play, since without it, the many spectacular visions of angels, demons, ghoulish ghosts and other kinds of spirits would be subtle and unremarkable occurrences. What this means is that without any embellishment of the mind a spirit will look like a transparent egg-shaped sphere of light. The color of that light varies, of course, depending on the quality and vibrational rate of the spirit’s conscious being; but this is hardly the stuff of myth or imagination. However, a spirit, when it is perceived and encountered by a human being, can and does assume different shapes in accordance with the expectations and the imagination of the seer. In other words, a spirit can project an image of itself in a completely imaginary form within the mind of the seer, and it can also speak and produce other phenomena (music, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, etc.), but all within the mind of the seer. This means that what is perceived by the observer can’t be captured by a video camera or other measuring device, since it is not an objective, physical reality. Not only can the observer sense the spirit, but also a good seer can see the world (or the specific occult symbolic context) in which the spirit resides.

An effective seer experiences a spirit as a fully immersed occurrence, which includes that specific entity and its domain. All sorts of visionary imaginings are triggered when encountering a spirit, and often powerful visions occur as well. If we expect to see a terrible and grotesque entity stinking of sulphur and brimstone when evoking a demon then that is what we will experience. Since magical practitioners of different spiritual persuasions experience the evocation of a spirit differently, and sometimes even radically different, then we can rationally assume that our expectations play a powerful role in what we experience. This is yet another indicator that spirits are not physical beings like us simply because of the variety of impressions and experiences that many magicians have had when evoking them.

It might even be said that magicians experience something unique when evoking spirits, and that no two such experiences of the same spirit are identical. Spirits reside entirely within the fields of consciousness so they can be perceived in a myriad of imaginary forms. I would suspect that even the egg-shaped point of light is imaginary, except that it has the precedence of accepted modern occultism to back it up.

So, what does a spirit look like to the apparent seer? It looks like whatever they think it should look like. That would at least inform the would-be magician to be quite clear and also careful with his or her expectations when planning an evocation. It wouldn’t do to get the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man when attempting to invoke the spirit of a demon or a revered spiritual ancestor.   

In What World Do Spirits Reside?

As I have said, the domain of spirits is all around us and contiguous with our own world, except that we can’t normally see or perceive them, or for that matter, their world. Since I have proposed that spirits reside in a world that exists entirely within the domain of consciousness, then all we need to do in order to see them is to change our conscious state using some ecstatic technique. This is also how one would enter into their domain, and that ecstatic technique has been part of the magician’s repertoire since the days of the shaman.

Because the domain of spirit is entirely within consciousness, it has a completely symbolic quality to it. Basically, the spirit world, which I might add is contiguous with our own world, has three basic levels, and each level is populated by different kinds of spirits. These three worlds are also found in classical shamanism and therefore, represent a kind of fundamental representation of the human experience of consciousness itself. These worlds are the heavens, the underworld and the surface world (where we reside). Spanning these three worlds is a device that connects them, which could be seen as a tree, ladder, pole or stang, or similar bridging mechanism. Let’s quickly examine each of these worlds and speculate about the kinds of spirits to be found in each.

Spirits of the Heavens

This is the place of stars and planets as well as the celestial Gods of the sun, moon, wind, clouds and storms. It is also the place of winged spirits who appear as birds or even angels. When considering the three worlds of spirit we should keep in mind that it is all based on symbology that has only a small bearing on the real objective world. This view is based on our subjective experiences of the world and the inner psychic structures that these experiences create.

Even though science has explained all of the natural phenomena seen in the sky during the day and night, our subjective and mythic experiences are still real and valid, based as they are on our collective perceptions, beliefs and culturally determined conscious topography. We can still think about the “Man in the Moon” even though it is deemed by science to be an impossibility, it has stubbornly resisted scientific explanations and retained its mythic value in our culture. The same is true about the apparent constellations of stars, whose outlines represent merely our subjective perception and interpretation of stars and galaxies from our earthly vantage point. The spirits of the heavens have a more macrocosmic perspective, and so they are remote from the events and occurrence of human activity, of course, with exception of those who function as messengers or intermediaries.

Ritual magicians are interested in the spirits of the sky because of their ability to see things from a lofty vantage point, and they often are able to give excellent long term oracles and also understand the world from the vantage point of the cosmogonic cycle. What they are not particularly good at is giving concise oracles about individuals and short-term events, since that is something that a remote viewing would be unable to discern clearly. 

Spirits of the Underworld

This is the place of darkness that lies under the surface of the earth, and so it symbolically represents all of the things associated with that domain. The spirits of this place are subject to the chthonic deities of the underworld and their intermediaries. The underworld is the place of our departed ancestors, both genetic and spiritual. Anyone who is dead and not trapped on the surface world is to be found in the underworld. However, the underworld is not confined to just a repository of death, darkness, coldness and things inimical to life. Indeed, the underworld is also the place of fertility, birth, a reservoir of the life-force, underground aquifers, streams and even rivers, as well as the treasures of gold, silver, gem stones and other precious or semi precious stones and metals. The underworld is also the well of souls to be born and the potential of everything that is manifested into physical form. Underground localities, such as caves, gorges, or man-made barrows and graveyards can represent symbolic and actual entrances to the underworld, but to engage with the spirits of the underworld only requires the right mental state and the ability to enter into the domain of darkness, death and rebirth.

As you can imagine, the spirits of the underworld are more intimate and relevant to our surface world than the spirits and deities that reside in the sky. If you want to acquire a material thing or objective, then the spirits of the underworld will be much more helpful and immediate in their aid than will the spirits in the sky. This is because the underworld is the true repository of everything material, including life itself, and it the place where everything that lives, returns. It is also the place where a ritual magician would go to learn about his or her specific destiny or about a short-term possibility. Oracles involving the dead and chthonic deities are often very specific and unambiguous, but they are less capable of perceiving the long term or the greater destiny of a people or a nation.

Spirits of the Surface World

The surface world is filled with spirits as well, and these are often associated with a specific places or geographic features. A large and unique looking tree, a lake, stream or river, hill or mountain, forest, fields, giant rocks - anything peculiar or interesting. It can be man-made, such as sacred locations (churches, temples, ancient ruins) or even villages, cities, town or massive urban locations, or it can a pristine natural and inaccessible location.

Spirits are everywhere in the surface world (and so are deities, yet not as populous), but they are mostly invisible to humans. Even so, it is easier to engage with spirits in remote locations than in the middle of large city, for the obvious reasons of distractions, noise and people. However, I have experienced spirits in a city late at night when distractions are at a minimum, and it was just as thrilling (and unnerving) as the same kind of experience in a natural setting. The spirits in such locations are quite different, since the location and the geographic context does have some influence on how such spirits appear and function, although the imagination does the real embelishing.  There are also wandering ghosts on the surface world who have not found their peaceful place of repose (although they are more rare than some people would believe), and there are swarming numbers of entities that are associated with the confluence of geographic features, ley-lines and other kinds of grids, both natural and man-made.

Therefore, it is just as possible for a city shaman to engage with distorted human-created paramentals in an urban setting as it is for a hedge-witch to engage with nature spirits or to walk the ghost roads of the ancestors in some remote location. Either approach is similarly valid, and it represents the fact that spirits are uniformly everywhere. All we need to do is to develop the methods and techniques of being able to see and engage them. Out of that experience comes the structures and systems of the occult and the spirit matrices of practical ritual magick.

What this article informs us is that spirits are everywhere, and that they can assume a shape based on our expectations and beliefs. However, spirits are nearly impossible for most people to see, experience or in any wise engage; so for most of humanity they are the stuff of myth, media and religious belief and not particularly real. Only the preternatural psychic, trained occultist or acute psychotic can see and engage with spirits, and of these, only the first two are likely seeing what is really there. 

Frater Barrabbas

Various Assorted Thoughts and Considerations About Ritual Magick - Part 2

This is part two of a two part article that discusses some of the various issues that have been buzzing around the blogsphere.


Are Spirits Real or Mental Constructs?

Lon Milo Duquette has been reputed to have said regarding spirits that they are all in your head. It’s just that your head is a lot bigger than you think. Others have proposed that spirits (especially demons) are psychological constructs, while others have even gone so far as to say polytheistic gods and goddesses are psychological archetypes found within the collective social mind of the culture or race. In such a manner, all spiritual phenomena are relegated to manifestations of the mind, and they cannot be seen apart or distinct from human consciousness.

I think that this perspective has its foundation in the fact that spirits don’t appear to have a separate existence outside of human interaction. The argument goes that because they don’t have an objective physical existence that can be empirically proven, they can’t exist as physical entities separate from the human beings who claim to experience them. Of course, the same thing can be said about the proposed existence of Deity or Deities. Everything is a facet of the mind. Everything spiritual is purely psychological.

This perspective is true, but only if you wholly or exclusively accept the psychological theory or model of magick. In fact, I would rate this perspective to be reliant on an overly aggressive use of the mind model of magick. There are, of course, other models, and if you adhere to any of them, the aggressive mind model would not only be immediately rejected, but it would also be considered intrusively obnoxious. The paradox of the reality of spirits is that they become identified and defined by the model that one uses, even though any definition or model will fall short of actually defining them. The same logic can be used in the discussion of the nature of the Godhead - it depends on the model or perspective that you are using. I would suspect that there might be some quantum magic to be found within these paradoxes.

If you are using the spirit model of magick, then everything is centered around a definition of spirits that is external and subjectively objective to the magickal operator. This model is very concise and simple to apply. You develop a relationship with specific spirits (invocation, evocation or votive offerings), and they in turn may be called upon to perform certain operations.  The most important task that a magician using this model performs is to consistently establish and build on one’s spiritual alignment. This process has both a liturgical and an operational quality, which means that the magician functions as a kind of priest/ess or spiritual intermediary. Devotion, service, performing periodic liturgical rites, as well as invocation, evocation and assumption represent the core practices of this methodology. All of these techniques are important practices for the magician who adheres to the spirit model of magick.

However, if the magician is strictly engaged with the energy model of magick, then he or she perceives magick as a kind of energy exchange, and that the typical source of that energy is the human operator. Another aspect of the energy theory is the thaumaturgy model of magick, which proposes that a magickal operation is nothing more (or less) than the combining of various specialized elements to fashion or create a spell which produces a specific effect or impact. A pure energy model is very similar to a pure thaumaturgy model of magick, since both use specific elements to produce a magickal effect. To a magician who uses the energy model in exclusion to any other model, the questions of the reality of spirits is irrelevant and unimportant. Still, they would object to any theory that attempted to nullify their belief in an energy that exists as the foundation of their magickal practice. An aggressive psychological model would postulate that any kind of energy, combination of components, or the use of spirits are nothing more than psychological tropes. Such an over-reaching theory or model would make everyone unhappy, except those who whole heartedly subscribed to it.

Since I seem to function as such  hybrid in my practices and beliefs, I would subscribe to all three models simultaneously, as I suspect many others do as well. That would mean that I believe, to a certain extent, in the subjective objectivity of spirits, but that I can also see their operation and impact within my mind and deeply embedded in my spiritual nature. Because I am also a spirit (as well as a body and a mind), then there must also be Deities and Spirits both within me and in the outside world. 

These entities can also be found embedded in our culture and exist as pure symbols within what I would call the “super symbolic reality.” That spirits are both completely subjective (mental constructs) and subjectively objective (disembodied entities that exist and reside in the higher and lower strata of consciousness) is a known paradox, but one that I have had to make an accommodation with in order to make any sense out of what I have experienced. My magickal associates have worked magick with me, or independently using the same techniques and devices to invoke spirits, and have had analogous experiences to what I have had. This would indicate that there is a certain objective quality to spirits, although they remain a purely subjective experience.

Spirit Invocation/Evocation - Must Spirits Be Visible?

If spirits are subjectively objective, then one would assume that they must be visible, and that a successful invocation or evocation would cause the target spirit to be visually apparent. This is another topic that is making the rounds of the blogsphere, and most of the magicians who have written about this subject seem to agree that invoked/evoked spirits should be visually apparent.

My friend Ananael Qaa has written an article on this issue in his blog “Augoeides,” which highlights some of these points as well as highlighting the other individuals who have commented on them (you can find it here). Even Donald Michael Kraig has opined on this issue in his Llewellyn blog. Some in the “exclusive use grimoire” crowd have gone so far as to say that not only should the spirits be visible when successfully invoked, they should also be fully verifiable physical manifestations with an accompaniment of various psychic perturbations. This, of course, is the theory that Joseph Lesiewski has promoted in his book on magickal evocation. I have pretty much debunked the whole physical manifestation model of successful evocation requirement, but the other considerations for some kind of visual affirmation remain.

I guess the whole argument is that if you don’t at least see the spirit, then it can’t really exist, or at least the attempt to invoke or evoke it has failed. I might agree with this opinion if were not for the fact that there are quite a number of ritual systems used to channel the powers and abilities of spirits, and not all of them require a verifiable apparition. Sometimes a skrying device is required, other times a young child is used as a medium. John Dee didn’t see the many spirits that he conversed with, and he had to rely on the services of Edward Kelly as his seer. 

It would seem that whether or not a magician is able to visually apprehend a spirit which is invoked or evoked has to do with whether or not he or she is so gifted. I have met individuals who don’t have visual experiences when they work magick, and others who are more prone to hearing spirit voices or sensing them in some other way. I think that it is narrow minded to discount dream incubation, which has an ancient providence, or other signs and portends as being less valid than a visual apparition. My theory is that spirits communicate on multiple levels simultaneously, and that the visual phenomenon that one might experience may not be the most important or significant.

As for myself, I am extremely visual and also gifted in the ability to clearly hear the spirits speak to me. Often when I perform an invocation or evocation, the apparition of the spirit is accompanied with a complete visual-like dream-scape. I not only see and hear the spirit, but I also see the spirit’s domain as well. It’s as if I were somehow consciously transported to another world altogether. When I have talked to other magicians, I seem to be part of an extreme minority in regards to this phenomenon. It is one of my magickal talents and it has served me very well. 

Yet even though my senses have allowed me to be transported to another world, others who have either worked magick with me, or performed the same rite independently, haven’t had the same level of visual experiences that I have had. It is my gift, just as others have their gift or ability in the business of magick, and who is to say what gift is greater than the other?  For one thing, I don’t bother using a skrying glass or crystal, and I don’t astral project. I don’t need to, but others might have one of these abilities fine-tuned to a point that would be analogous to what I am able to experience, or perhaps even greater. So I believe it has to do with your innate talent and ability. Certainly, having a powerful imagination is very helpful, but it isn’t necessary.

I have met a few powerful magicians who work with spirits and don’t receive any visual proof that the invocation has been successful. What they have instead of a knack for visualization is a powerful relationship with a spirit or group of spirits, and by assembling the components of the spell and directing the spirit to perform a service, the magick is succinctly accomplished. 

One of my friends was a practitioner of Afro-Carribean religions and magick, and he never visually saw a spirit nor could he hear it speak in his head. He sensed a presence in his gut and his emotions, and communicated through divination tools, such as various kinds of dice, colored pebbles, knuckle bones, etc. He also had a very tight relationship with his chosen demigods and associated servitor spirits, but he never saw any specific apparition. Was his magick a sham or somehow less effective than someone who does see a visual apparition? I think that anyone who would have said as much to him would have really pissed him off. He would have been insulted by that kind of judgement, and rightly so. Magick encompasses a huge variety of practices and experiences, and every magician is nearly unique in how they practice magick and how they perceive it as well.

I think that making rules and establishing assumptions about how magick should work if it is to be considered valid is misleading, even when concerning the specialized magick that deals with spirits. The proof is whether or not the magick works, and that the magician is using his or her talents and abilities to their fullest potential. The rest is just the multitude of various possibilities that one can experience or somehow sense when performing any kind of magick.

High Tech Pirates, SOPA and PIPA - My Opinion

Arrgh! Avast ye swabs! Even a pirate has a pirate’s code! (OK, I got that out of my system!)

Nearly everyone has weighed in with their thoughts and opinions over the ongoing debate about various forms of media piracy. As an author, I am, of course, interested in preserving my literary assets (meager as they are), which I have spent many years developing, acquiring and writing for others to utilize. I don’t look kindly upon pirates, but I also believe that it’s probably impossible to eliminate them altogether. Unless we are to live in a police state with invasive government control and strict censorship, media piracy is going to happen.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to curtail anyone’s freedom of acquiring information or expressing their opinion. There are already strict copyright laws, fair usage guidelines, etc., and every now and then some media pirate gets put down through international legal mechanisms (such as what happened recently to Megaupload). I don’t believe that we need more laws to govern the use of media, and I am wholly against any kind of interference, control or censorship of the internet. Thus I am glad that both SOPA and PIPA were defeated, although there are still opportunities for the moneyed elite to oppress the powerless masses. All we need to do is to be vigilant and scream bloody murder when someone attempts to curtail our slowly dwindling rights.

The internet is like the wild west before it was supposedly tamed. You can find nearly anything you want to find on the internet. Uninformed opinions, urban myths and complete misinformation abounds on the internet, and all we can do to cope with it is to use as much critical thinking as possible, and to try to put out the truth wherever feasible. The internet is an infant medium that is undergoing a great deal of growing pains. It has already caused a lot of good and also posed some major social problems, but I think that it should be allowed to evolve into something more splendid than it is, and not be egregiously curtailed before it can mature.

Even though I occasionally find sites that purport to offer free downloads of my books (most of them are empty ghosts sites), and I do attempt to do something about them, my books and writings will end up on someone else’s media device without either recognition or payment of any kind. There isn’t much that can be done about this, and I suspect that eventually it will make most writing jobs and the many works that such individuals  produce worth very little if anything. I also notice that there are quite a slew of books that can be bought on Amazon for as little as a few cents (the postage costs far more than the book, and downloading an ebook costs next to nothing). These wholesale sites put pressures on book publishers to make less money, and this will ultimately kill most of them off.

Most people don’t have a clue what it takes to produce a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, and I understand that. I had to learn how to write, both grammatically as well as communicating ideas in a recognizable format. As a writer, I often have ideas and whole stories living in my head and heart for months or years, anxiously waiting to be given a verbal expression. I have hundreds of characters and stories aching to come out, and as my skill as a fiction writer improves, I hope to give those stories and characters life. I am also very passionate about my practices and beliefs regarding ritual magick, and I feel moved to write about them and share them with my reading public. I don’t expect to make very much money doing this, but then again, I do it because I love to do it. Writing has become my passion and also the manifestation of my ultimate magick!

It’s all so ironic because I used to be a terrible writer, and I have reams of writings and notes to prove that point. When I was a young man I was a poor writer, and it has required me to work very hard to become as proficient as I am today, which, I might add, is far greater than I was, but a long way from where I want to be. Considering the hundreds of hours that I have spent developing, writing, editing and rewriting to get my message to you, my readers, I should think that spending a few measly bucks for my books would not be too much to ask. After all, I am constantly giving away a lot of my writings on this blog, and I also share my rituals and workings with the members of my Order, all at no cost to them. To honor me as a writer and as an individual who is passionately seeking to communicate my ideas, you could do no less than buy at least one of my books (even at a bargain price), attend one of my workshops, or even perhaps buy me a drink someday. After all, I am doing this for you as well as myself. My hope is that some of what I have written will be useful and helpful so you can produce your own magickal system, which is my overall writing objective. 

So for this reason I have been steadfastly against legislation such as SOPA and PIPA, but I am also against media piracy of any kind, even though I know that at times the innocent are often duped into purchasing pirated merchandise. This has happened to probably anyone who has sought to order things more cheaply through the internet than buying something at a store. I have found that if the price for a given item is too good to be true, then it is likely either pirated or fake, or a combination of both. We have to protect ourselves and use good judgment while the internet and its various offshoots mature and become more self-governed. Anyway, that is my opinion on this matter for the moment, and it could even change in the future, depending on what happens. I might support a fair set of legislation that enforces a modicum of order on the internet, but considering how cagey most hackers are, any rules will have technical loopholes.

Frater Barrabbas

Some Thoughts About Invocation and Evocation

Continuing with my articles on the methodologies of practicing invocation and evocation in the system of magick promoted by the Order of the Gnostic Star, I thought that I would extract some paragraphs from an unpublished document circulated in that organization. I felt that it would be a good idea to start with the definitions of invocation and evocation, since the way that these terms are used in the Order are different than how they are used in ceremonial magick. Whether you agree with these definitions or not, this is how we decided to define these terms, and I think an honest examination of them will show that they are unremarkable and rather functional. I will let you decide what you think of this bit of revisionism.


Introduction

I have written this treatise on magickal evocation to lay the groundwork for the advancement of the practice of ritual magick. The previous work, as found in the teachings and practices of the Order have been confined to lesser but necessary practices, which lead you to the ultimate task of attempting to summon and materialize a spirit, whether it be an angel, nature spirit, or daemon. In antiquity, a person was not considered a real magician unless he or she had a familiar spirit, i.e., a spirit helper that was summoned and constrained by the magician. Although the nomenclature has changed somewhat over the passage of centuries, this task remains the greatest challenge that you, a student magician, may attempt to accomplish.

However, the only materials that exist to guide you in learning how to master this art are manuscripts and published grimoires, many of which were a product of the late middle ages and the renaissance. These books, although required study by anyone who seeks the path of magick, are dated, filled with errors, and accompanied with a mind-state only the most orthodox of Christians or Jews would possess today, and none of them would be so bold or foolish as to attempt to perform the rites of the old grimoires. What is required is for an experienced magician to lay down a complete system of advanced ritual magick in a manner that you, an intermediate level magician, would find it easily accessible, and this is what I have attempted to do with this article.

As I have mentioned above, the true test of any person who aspires to be a magician is the accomplishment of magickal evocation. While the conjuration of Elementals and planetary or talismantic intelligences will allow magicians to control and influence themselves or their environment, the evocation of spiritual intelligences will grant them additional spiritual guidance, and greatly influence the events in their life-process.  The difference between the mere practitioner of magick and an adept is particularly emphasized by the adept's performance of rituals of evocation. Adepts are less concerned with controlling themselves and their environment and more focused upon the process of their own spiritual evolution, and so the practice of magickal evocation is the appropriate de rigeur for them.

The path of adepthood begins with their assumption of spiritual responsibilities, both for themselves and for others less spiritually evolved. Adepts have completed the psychological process of the exploration of their lower self, and have attained a level of mastery of it, which is internalized and maintained by their basic spiritual discipline. Their new focus is the exploration of the higher self and the discovery of their true spiritual purpose and ultimate destiny. From the standpoint of ritual magick, this new quest can only be assisted through intercourse with spiritual intelligences and by an exposure to the various realities encountered through path working. Therefore, magickal evocation is the key to fulfilling the requirements of adepthood. When adepts develop the ability to contact spiritual entities and to walk the Qabbalistic Pathways of the Inner Planes, the beginning of spiritual mastery is finally established.


Definitions of Terms

Traditional definitions of evocation and invocation are confusing. That is, they do not distinguish the fact that there are two actually distinct functional processes found within the magickal ritual process called evocation. As traditionally defined, these two magickal process cause a spiritual entity to be both summoned and projected into the conscious world of the magician. The traditional definition of evocation consists of the operations that manifest daemons or neutral spirits (goetia), and the traditional definition of invocation is the operation of summoning God-forms or good spirits (i.e., Godforms, Archangels and angels via theurgia). However, in the techniques of spiritual magick there would be little difference in the methods used to summon either daemons or angels.

Essentially, there are two functional processes that are necessary to spiritual magick; these ritual processes summon the target spirit and cause its manifestation, focusing its essence so that it may be projected into the mundane world.  Specifically, the first function assists the magician to make a connection with the spirit and develop its image, ideal form and characteristics; thus giving the entity a manifested body of light through which it may interact only with the magician inside his magick circle.  The second process is where the energy and personality of the spirit is constrained to a specific purpose and exteriorized into the mundane plane from the Inner Planes, thereby actualizing the transforming potency of the spiritual contact. The first function is an internal summoning or invocation (invocare: to call in), and the second function is an external projection or evocation (exvocare: to call out). In order to precisely define the two processes involved with spiritual magick, I have chosen to ignore the traditional definitions and adopt the functional definitions in their stead. In this article I shall use these terms in the strict sense of their function.

In addition to the processes of invocation and evocation, the magician is also concerned with path working, and this process is accomplished through either skrying or astral projection. Whereas invocation establishes the spiritual contact and evocation projects the influence of the spirit into the mundane world, the operation of path working opens the world of the spiritual entity to the magician. The technique of skrying allows the magician to passively observe the domain of the spirit without having to interact with it. In this manner, visions and symbolic concepts are communicated between the two worlds. The magician may analyze and note these phenomena while they are occurring. The technique of astral projection allows the magician to dynamically interact with the spirit in its  domain and to experience initiatory revelations therein. In this manner the spiritual world reveals its secret knowledge through immersion, and the resultant ordeal causes a profound transformation in the magician.


So that’s how I define these terms, giving them an operational context. Future articles will use these specific and operant definitions when describing the methodologies used in the Order. In addition, I am assembling a book that will contain not only these articles and discussions, but also the actual rituals that are used in this system.

Frater Barrabbas