After getting my book on the Qabalah published there was a bit of a lull in my literary activities. It was a time for writing a lot of articles on my blog, a media boon shown to me by my mentor Taylor Elwood, developing some new magical approaches and attending pagan conventions. A new convention started in Minneapolis called Paganicon that I attended, and I also attended Pantheacon one last time. It was a busy period for me, overall, and I hadn’t had the opportunity of trying to figure out what I wanted to work on for a new manuscript. I had some ideas that I was kicking around, but nothing really firm or focused.
It was during this interlude that I got more involved with my Witchcraft community, and I was examining my own history and path as a Witch and a ritual magician. One topic that was all the rage at the time was medieval and Renaissance grimoires. Quite a number of newly translated grimoires became available to the public, many appearing for the first time in print. While this area of magical practice had become something of a major focus for ceremonial magicians, I had already developed several different ways of performing this kind of magic back in the 1980's in conjunction with my particular methodology for working planetary and elemental magic. I felt a certain disdain for the emphasis on Christianity or Jewish monotheism that seemed to be the core spiritual perspective for these newly published grimoires. I felt that the cultures of the 16th and 17th centuries that had produced these grimoires was so far removed from us today as to make their approach to magic and religion to be antiquated at best, and somewhat superstitious and ridiculous at worst.
While the baseline for magic and western occultism was established by the writings of Agrippa and Paracelsus in the 15th to 16th century, and followed by a number of others, it was the occultists of the 19th and early 20th century who had brought these ideas and practices into the modern age. The older teachings had their relevance in the continuity of ideas from that period to the present. Just as I would find the writings of Blavatsky or Dion Fortune to be dated and even a bit anachronistic, the writings of Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dee, Ficino, and Pico Mirandola were even more dated and immersed in a cultural context that no longer existed. To take any grimoire as originally written and to practice it would require the individual to also reconstruct the cultural beliefs and practices of that time, which by now is nearly impossible. Even the grimoire purists had to pull together various practices, both antique and modern, along with a very modern perspective on magic in order to make these books useful and viable, although they would downplay or even deny that activity.
Since I was a very modern practitioner of ritual magic and had developed my magical technology out of modern practices and extended by my own experimentation, I felt that this approach was the best one for modern Pagans and Witches. So, after banging around some ideas in my head for a while, I came upon the idea of writing a book for Witches and Pagans on how to use the magical tech that they already had, with a few extensions and additions, to practice a form of classical evocation that would fit within the practices of modern Witchcraft. I asked the acquisitions editor for Llewellyn what she thought of such an idea for a book, and she was quite interested and said to send her a table of contents, a pitch for the book and a sample and she would give it some serious consideration. So, that was how the book “Spirit Conjuring for Witches” was born. I wanted to give to my community something very valuable and missing from their current practices. I set to work on this project in the spring of 2015, sent in my author questionnaire with the pitch, table of contents and a couple of sample chapters and I proceeded to work on this latest book project. I completed this work and presented to the publishers in early 2016, and it came out in print in early 2017.
This book, like the previous one, required me to do some extensive research. My research project was to examine the history of witchcraft and determine the reports and nature of the familiar spirit in both antiquity and the middle ages. My main thrust in the book was to equate the familiar spirit with the modern concept of the higher-self or inner deity. It is my belief that there is an inner deity in all humankind, existing in various stages of conscious awareness. When it is recognized and actively celebrated, it acts as a liaison between the domain of spirit and the host’s human consciousness. I proposed that it was an important component for performing evocations within a Witchcraft context, representing an integral connection with the Witchcraft practices of antiquity. Once that tool was defined and developed, along with the correct attitude and mind-set necessary to enter the spirit world, then the Witch followed the five classical steps for conjuring a spirit. Those steps are purification, invocation, constraining, binding and releasing. These steps are likely the same as those practiced by the great Witches of antiquity, although the cultural context and proper mind-set are completely modern.
None of these practices are explained in any Book of Shadows that I have ever seen, either private or public. The base-line practices of Witchcraft today typically are rites that are performed by a coven or small group. A single Witch practicing her craft and engaging with the Deities and the Spirit World seemed to be something that the witches of legend or fairy tales would have been able to do. My book placed the practice of Witchcraft magic back into the context of the individual practicing alone and without the need or desire for a coven or group. It is a powerful method of magic for the solitary Witch, which I believe is much more like the Witchcraft of tomorrow than what might be found today.
The book included a few bon mots, mostly because I wanted some feedback and support from the community for what I was about to place into the hands of the Witchcraft community. Yet here is the advertisement found on the back of the book helping folks to figure out if they would want to buy this book.
The greatest witches of legend and folklore practiced their craft through spirit conjuration and by employing a familiar spirit. Now, centuries later, these arts can be acquired
and mastered by modern witches. Join witch and ritual magician Frater Barrabbas as he shares a system of witchcraft-based magic developed to safely perform invocations and evocations; travel in the spirit world; create a spirit pact; and construct your own rituals for spirit conjuring. Exploring history, folktales, myths, and personal experiences, Spirit Conjuring for Witches shows how to magically develop human-to-spirit relationships and ultimately master both the spirit and material worlds.
It is brief but to the point. This book provides the first of the missing lore that is not found in the Book of Shadows, and it represents a complete methodology that requires practice and a disciplined approach to make it work optimally well for the practitioner. There is so much packed into this tome that I cannot but fully recommend this book to my fellow Witches, Pagans and ritual magicians. If you haven’t read any of my books then this should be the one that you should read to start your own version of my literary journey. You will be skipping three books to get to this point, but the magical technology that it will bequeath to you will be extremely beneficial. There have been over 6,000 copies currently sold, so it must be pertinent in order to be so popular.
Some of the topics, aside from the spirit guide or familiar, that I present in this book gives the reader everything that she or he would need to engage in performing spirit conjuring. I have written extensively in this book about the godhead assumption rite and developing your own personal godhead votive cult, which is central to the spiritual activities of evocation. If you don’t develop a relationship with the deity within then there is little possibility of optimizing your experience with other spirits. I also discuss the classification of spirits, how to see into their world, and how to communicate with spirits. These techniques border on the paranormal abilities typical of those who are sensitive to such phenomena; but for those who do not have this capability I also discuss the use of dice or knucklebones, which is a tried and true mechanism for communicating with spirits or even deities. I also introduce to those who have not read any of my previous books the rituals of the rose-ankh vortex, the double gateway of the west (underworld) and east (ascension), and the methods for developing a spirit shrine and offering table and how and when to use them.
In the appendices I have produced lists of angels, demons and other spirits, and a guide for engaging with the grimoires within a Witchcraft context. Everything that a Witch needs to know regarding spirit conjuration is in this book. To my knowledge, I have omitted nothing and it is a good example of a comprehensive exposition of this kind of craft, which is something that I have built into all of my books. I don’t want people to accept what I am writing based on either trust or faith. Instead, I am inviting my readers to take the rituals and concepts and use them to find out for themselves whether these practices that I have outlined actually work. The proof in the pudding is in the eating, an old adage that is quite appropriate for my writings. If you want to know something then assemble the necessary components, practice the forms and then plan and execute magical workings. While I can only write about these topics and how I have engaged with them in the magic circle, it is up to my readers to go out and try them and see for themselves if what I have written is true.
My whole approach to writing books is to inspire others to experiment, develop, invent and create their own personal magic. Every magician, witch or goetes from the beginning of human consciousness has had to build their own methodology to work magic. If you can’t get beyond the stage of using rituals and spells written in books then you will never be able to develop yourself as a magical practitioner. You have to own your magic, and you can only do that when you learn to write your own rituals and develop your abilities through repetition and continued practice. There is an element of discipline involved in developing an expertise in the practice of ritual magic. There is also a need for openness, curiosity, inspired imagination, creativity and experimentation. It is part of the practical necessity for being able to own the magic that you are working.
The modern Book of Shadows for Witches has many areas that are lacking, much of it would be associated with a complete cultural immersion that a folk tradition would already possess. However, in the area of the practice of magic, there are three areas that are typically omitted in the traditional practices of Witchcraft magic. The first is spirit conjuring using a familiar spirit, which this book covers quite well. The second missing practice are the rites of using magical energies, such as elementals, and the advanced techniques associated with them, such as the vortex, pylon, invoking pentagram, and the techniques of resonance. The third missing practice are the rites of celestial magic, which is the making of talismans and working planetary magic. There is also a fourth missing practice, although it is implied and loosely covered in some of the rites of modern Witchcraft and the Book of Shadows, but these techniques, based on sacramental theurgy, need to be expanded and fully documented in order for the rites of a fully magical and pagan-engaged Witchcraft to be developed. These have been, and are, for the most part, my objectives in writing the “For Witches” series of book.
My purpose in writing the “For Witches” series is to fill in the missing lore for the magical practices allotted to modern traditional Witchcraft so that it can fully engage with all of the more advanced attributes of that magical faith. To be a fully realized Witch is to also be a fully capable ritual magician. These two roles are one and the same, since Witchcraft in terms of how I define it, is a magical religion. The two systems, religion and magic, are joined together and practiced as one tradition.
Frater Barrabbas
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