Lately I have seen a number of beautifully constructed scrying stands called variously Trithemius table of workings or watchtower scrying stands. I recall that Alex Sanders possessed one of these devices and they appear to be a popular tool amongst ceremonial magicians today, especially those espousing a more traditional approach to grimoire magic. As impressive and beautiful as these devices are, they rely on an age-old approach to interacting with the domain of Spirit, or the Inner Planes, and that is to activate one’s clairvoyant abilities and summon spirits, opening a “gateway” within the scrying stone to see and relate what the spirits say, or to receive symbolic and visionary imagery, or a combination.
While this might seem like a very impressive and powerful mechanism to communicate with entities and to gain a visionary insight into the domain of Spirit, and it has now become a very popular methodology, it is not the only method of communication and visual entry into that domain. It also relies on the abilities and attuned senses of the scryer, and I believe that clairvoyance is something that is neither consistent nor reliable. There are methods of astral projection, spirit vision, and a system that I have developed, which is what I call immersion. First, let’s look at scrying and see what it is like.
If we look back at the history of this technique or approach to magical operations, the most famous scrying sessions were those that were performed by Edward Kelly for Dr. John Dee. While Edward Kelly functioned as the scryer, what was passed by him to John Dee was carefully examined and given a coherent context, so that it was actually the two of them working together who brought forth the Enochian system of magic. Edward Kelly, by himself, could not have produced such an ordered and sensible system, and without him, John Dee could not have penetrated the unseen world of angels and good spirits.
Yet Edward Kelly was sporadic, moody, and not always able to produce results, and it is likely that some of what Kelly passed to Dee was not particularly significant, coherent, or informative. While the Enochian system itself is nearly peerless, much of what the angels and spirits passed to Dee through Kelly was deceptive, erroneous or even somewhat delusional. Promises were made by the various spirits and angels of wealth and fame, but failed to have any practical application or basis in reality. Kelly went off on one of his escapades seeking to exploit the secret of alchemically producing gold, and Dee succumbed to poverty and defamation after returning home. Without Kelly, Dee was never able to produce the results that he had previously.
This example of scrying is probably one of the greatest and best known, but other examples show an inconsistency in producing results that might otherwise be a potential occult breakthrough, like what Dee managed to produce, and instead have a tendency toward triviality and irrelevancy. Even Dee passed on a lot of communications in his diaries that are mostly irrelevant and trivial, making them particularly meaningless today to modern occultists. This tendency toward irrelevant communications was also what happened during mediumistic trance sessions in the 19th century Spiritualism movement. I believe that indirectly contacting the domain of Spirit either through a trance medium or a scrying session loses a lot of context and meaning by being displaced from the place where the spirits actually reside, which is a domain ruled by symbols and analogues, much like the place of lucid dreaming.
I think a better example of what is required for a closer, direct, and intimate communication are the mystery cults of the dead and death, where the candidate was expected to journey to a place or sacred location and experience the mystery physically and mentally immersed. This is true regarding the Eleusinian Mysteries, or others, like the Oracle of Trophonius with the famous grave passage, or the Oracle at Delphi, found in a remote cave. However, since I live in the U.S., I lack any such famous historically sacred place or location that could be considered a gateway into the underworld. However, the idea of a location where a gateway to the underworld could be found or even forced is a compelling example of what I have come to know as immersion.
Crowley, in his masterful ordeal, performing the 30 invocations of the Aethyrs and fully realizing their powerful and transformative visions, was done in the backdrop of the sacred space of the great Algerian Saharan desert. Crowley performed these rites in a physically sacred space, intoning the 19th Enochian key, and did not use any kind magic circle to protect himself or his accomplice. There also wasn’t any scrying stone or other kind of device. Crowley's experiences was direct and without any boundary or obstacle, so his magical experience was through immersion. I believe that the magical process of immersion made his book, “Vision and the Voice” containing these experiences far more potent than they would have been had he employed a system of scrying.
Unlike Crowley, I couldn’t travel to some far away land to perform my magic in some sacred place. Lacking any sacred terrain to make this kind of underworld egress, I did find two powerful and useful tools in my regimen of ritual structures. That is the triangular gateway ritual structure and the cross-roads negative vortex ritual structure. These are patently new ritual structures that I have not found in any other system of ritual magic. They work with the symbology of entering the underworld, and generate the appropriate energy fields that simulate entry into another domain, and combined together, produce a potent analogue of the underworld entrance that is a key to acquiring an immersion within the energized symbology of the underworld and all that it contains.
This magically defined domain that the magician has entered is highly suggestible, allowing the magician to define and establish a specific domain associated with a spirit that they would seek to summon. A magician then uses the symbols of correspondences associated with a specific spirit to build an imagos or image body for the spirit, and to define its home or domain. A spirit body is generated through an elemental or energy construct, and its intelligence is defined through the planets. A spirit’s name is its symbolic key, used to generate a sigil or seal, as well as lending symbolic clues to its essential nature.
Typically, a spirit also has a location within the Tree of Life (or below it), and has other symbolic qualifiers, such as the four elements, seven planets, twelve astrological signs, and also symbolic numbers and gematria word associations. All these symbols blend together to define a spirit and the place where it resides. When merging this symbology with the cross-roads vortex and the gateway underworld passage, it opens up the symbolic location where the spirit resides and allows for a direct exposure to this entity without a protective magic circle or triangle of evocation getting in the way. Using such a technique to gain a direct encounter with a conjured spirit makes such practices as scrying or evoking through a triangle seem anaemic and too displaced to have the kind of affect of a naked exposure.
Of course, my critics in the magical practitioner’s world would claim that such a direct exposure would be dangerous, and that it is critically important to shield oneself from potentially hostile spirits and the affects of their mind bending and twisted domain, whether associated with heaven or hell. Because I learned to perform conjurations as a Witch, I did not need to use any kind of protective magic circle to experience a form of immersion with the Gods and Goddesses of Witchcraft. Our magic circle was used to establish a boundary between the sacred realm of our Deities warded by the Dread Lords to fashion a world within a world. We did not need to be protected in our magic circle because it was populated with our powerful Deities and protective guardians. All we needed to perform invocations and evocations was to fortify ourselves to be able to experience such encounters, and to erect within that sacred precinct, a gateway and a cross-road vortex that open it up to the greater domain of the underworld. All magic and liturgy were performed in the same space, so the need for a magic circle of protection and an evocation gateway, as well as use of a scrying stone were for all practical purposes, unnecessary. Using that approach, I have build an advanced magical system based on a Witchcraft magical foundation.
To fortify oneself to perform this kind of magic without boundaries or protective areas, I have developed a methodology based on the Drawing Down rite, which I have renamed as godhead assumption. Since this is also a part of Witchcraft practices, to use it to empower and protect oneself seemed intuitively obvious to me. I made it an integral part of the magic that I perform very early on in my magical development, and it has me and many others quite well in the performance of this kind of ritual magic. Modern Witches and Pagans have always approached engaging with their Deities in a direct manner, and based on the structure of their magic circle and the rites of charging and empowering it, it would seem that ancillary rites to conjure spirits would be performed in a similar manner. Add to that set of liturgical and magical rites a godhead assumption and communion, and what you have is so sacralized environment that functions as the magical and spiritual base for all subsequent magical workings. These practices fuse the liturgical rites and magical rites to formulate a Witchcraft magical system that is entirely theurgic, and channels the Godhead into all the workings that Witches and Pagans might perform.
It is for this reason that I seldom use a scrying stone to gain any kind of magical contact with a spirit. I have no need for this kind of magical operation since I can just go and talk to the spirits first hand in their world. I can use spirit vision to travel with the spirits so they can show me places and give me visions, and I can use incubation, to peaceful sleep in their domain and to dream the answers to my questions. To me spirit vision or astral projection are similar, and sleeping in the activated symbolic domain of the spirit is similar to sleeping in the sacred space of a temple or grove in some faraway place. Additionally, directly engaging with conjured spirits in their domain produces a powerful transformative experience, which can trigger initiations and even brief forms of illumination. It would seem that what I have developed is, in my opinion, superior to the methodology of ceremonial magic that requires boundaries and obstacles so that spirits can only remotely engage with magicians.
My method of immersion is just another technique for gaining access to conjured spirits, and it is certainly not the only one. Scrying is a tried and true practice, and one that is guaranteed to be protected and safe. It also keeps the magician from having spiritual transformations and more direct communications such as might be produced if these boundaries were eliminated. Of course eliminating the boundaries requires fortifying the self through the agency of a Deity, and these kind of practices are specific to the ritual magic performed by Witches and Pagans, so they are not capable of being used by adherents of monotheistic faiths, who lack the agency of godhead assumption. There are possible exceptions, such as when a priest performs a mass rite and briefly becomes the Christ, but that mechanism has not been incorporated into magical workings as far as I know, and extending the mass rite in this manner might be considered blasphemous.
I offer the technique of magical immersion as another method, but I believe that is the best approach for Modern Witches and Pagans to practice the art of spirit conjuration.
Frater Barrabbas
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