Evocation For Non-christians, How do Pagans do it? Options

So I've recently been reading Summoning Spirits. It's an interesting book, but something that struck me is that the rituals in it are as Jewish as the proverbial Bar Mitzvah.

This begs a couple of questions.

1) How do people who adhere to non-Abrahamic religions perform evocations?
2) Are these rituals intended to imply that Judaism genuinely is "the truth," in a supreme or objective sense, to a greater degree than that of other religious systems?

So I've recently been reading Summoning Spirits. It's an interesting book, but something that struck me is that the rituals in it are as Jewish as the proverbial Bar Mitzvah.

This begs a couple of questions.

1) How do people who adhere to non-Abrahamic religions perform evocations?
2) Are these rituals intended to imply that Judaism genuinely is "the truth," in a supreme or objective sense, to a greater degree than that of other religious systems?

Well, there are more pagan ways to do evocation. If you want to work with grimoires, there are two points of view.

The first is that you must follow the grimoire to the letter, and more than that you must actually believe in what you're doing, therefore you have to make some kind of subconscious connection to the judaic and even catholic faiths.

That said, many practitioners believe that the spirits of the grimoires are objective spiritual entities who exist outside the physical planes. In this case, ultimately there is a formula that is used to summon them - and the differences between all of the grimoires suggests that there is not, really, only one way to do so.

So, I suggest looking into Hermetic Magick. Start at the root, with these books: Hermetic Magic and The Greek Magical Papyri.

A book that I also recently read, which turned out to be excellent although it is often, as far as my experience with it's 'followers' as it were, misinterpreted greatly, is here: Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation.

There are not many texts relating to pagan evocation, and many of the texts I have read that were more modern oriented turned out to be dead ends.

I think that building your own system of evocation requires a great deal of experience and knowledge, and of course the practice itself requires a great deal of dedication. The tendancy is to build a system which is expedient, simplistic, and quick - which evocation is not. It must be a formula which fully involves your consciousness, your being, it must exalt your mind and spirit, and make a connection with spiritual power that will allow for evocation to take place.

Also, there are two forms of evocation - physical evocation, which is concerned primarily with the manifestations of demonic entities and neutral, typically elemental, entities; and the evocation of intelligences. Physical evocation is for accomplishing material things, including in many cases the direct transmission of knowledge. Evoking intelligences does not require a physical manifestation - they can be communed with through some astral medium, such as a mirror or skrying bowl, or communed with directly if you have such a skill. Their purpose is to instruct or inform you, from my experience with them, which is personally my primary experience in evocation. While they can help you accomplish things as well, their purview is more along the lines of the necessary information to accomplish a goal, rather than doing it for you. Evoking angels is a similar thing, they will help you, instruct you, and bring higher currents of divine energy into your life, but they will not heed your beck and call. People may have differing views, ultimately much of it depends on your subconscious belief in what these various entities can do for you, because it is your consciousness they will use as a connection to this plane.

Also, while you may not agree with the religious doctrines of the Jewish and Catholic faiths, you do believe in divinity, yes? That there is ultimately a source from which all existence springs? Really consider your own basic beliefs, and then decide whether they are really so different from the beliefs of creation from these other points of view. Taking the dogma, the rituals of those religions aside. You don't have to be jewish or catholic to use the grimoires - but you do need to form a connection to those religions, and respect for them.

They don't imply that abrahamic are the supreme truth, but that the individuals that wrote them (they did not materialize from the source itself) followed them personally - and, given their practices, more than likely held a more mystical, non-mainstream view of them. Plus, as you may read in some of the books mentioned above, one of the reasons there is so much catholic imagery involved in the grimoires is because those that wrote them did so during a period where not being catholic was very dangerous. Many of the judaic grimoires more than likely did not survive that period intact, but some of them did.

peace

I suggest that you discover FIRST 'who' it is you are approaching in such work. It is the "God of the Grimoires" and is indeed one of the many facets to finding him. And yes, be careful with those who misinterpret Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation: these are New Agers. Know this: their explanations are like wheat which the wind blows away. Many times though, they are misinterpretations and THIS is the main difference--also, their ignorance comes from a lack of EXPERIENCE which is perfectly okay--they will learn--or won't. I have personally worked with someone from this forum and thankfully after much time, she came to the realization that she could properly evoke these beings using this way of approching God. You are not a 'quick fix' as it were, and if you think this is for you, then I'd happily answer any questions you may have. As Dr. John Dee said, "Divinity is as close to you as your hand and nearer than your breath." This is your starting point and we could always work with this belief system, but the rules are the rules and CANNOT be changed. Otherwise you will end up with MAJOR 'slingshot effects' and PARTIAL results. Try it for yourself. I am not wrong here. If the need should arise and you are SERIOUS about this, please contact me via the forum. I have dealt with individuals who were in your shoes from sacred-magick and they are now doing PHENOMENALLY well.

Mr. Curi

This post has been edited by Mr. Curi: Jan 16 2008, 07:00 PM

Mr. Curi, Having read Lisiewiski's book, Ceremonial Magick etc., twice just recently - and I do not mean at leisure - it comes to my attention that there appears to be an aspect of his book that you are either ignoring, or are less concerned with given your own preference for the grimoires, and that is the process and application of Subjective Synthesis. Lisiewiski states implicitly in his book - and after having read through it, his website as well - that the practitioner may, and in fact ultimately must, develop his own magickal system that will work for him exclusively. Even in the use of the grammars of old system magic it isn't enough to simply follow the directions. Every tool, every verse, the place, purpose, and name of each spirit must be fully comprehended and grasped - this is according to his text specifically.

I was certain that no serious practitioner would make the sorts of claims that you suggested previously in other threads. While the grimoires offer a readily available method of evocation to physical manifestation, which is of course perfectly true, and while it is true that the heptameron is an excellent manual for the experienced beginner, that is, someone of modest means who is generally new to this particular field of magick, it takes no measure of interpretation to understand that the author himself understands that subjective synthesis is the key element to any magickal work.

This means, if you cannot accept the divinity of the sacred names of the abrahamic religions, if you cannot believe in that divinity, for whatever reason - and I do personally believe that those things can be viewed objectively, with no amount religious fervor, as vibratory formulas specific to no particular faith in and of themselves - and if your mind cannot be exalted by invoking the names of the Abrahamic God, of Jesus, etc., then you will not be able to bring about the necessary state of consciousness, and the grimoires, no matter how much someone tells you they will work if you follow the instructions, will not work for you. This is not a line of thought specific to Lisiewski, either. I believe there is no small amount of ego in his work, personally, but that aside, he does not suggest at all that old system magic is the most or more effective than any other magic - in fact, he cites true Hermetic Magic as the most pure and undiluted magical system available to us. Hermetic Magic is perfectly suitable for the pagan-inclined practitioners, and from it one can absolutely fashion a system of physical evocation, as this practice has been known in ancient cultures well before the advent of the catholic and judaic grimoires so popular with those magicians who practice evocation today. Such a system is very loosely defined within that tradition itself, as is much else thus far owing largely to the limited literature available on the subject, however, with careful study and experience with the essential basic practices that have been uncovered, this systems opens itself up beautifully to the earnest student. This is not 'new age theory' as you so snidely suggest so often, but a matter of my own personal Experience.

As I have said before, not everyone will want to work with the old system grimoires. As I have also said before - and which I know now is supported by your favorite author - it is the system, the law, and the connection one has to the symbols, the rituals, that enact those laws, which is most important for the individual. With that connection, and that understanding, one can erect a system of magic that will work perfectly for them, even if it bears only the skeletal resemblance to other systems of magic - including grimoire work. What I will concede, is that fashioning a workable, practical system of physical evocation (and I will maintain that astral evocation and the communion with entities is a far easier thing, and in many cases just as useful) is very difficult for someone not generally experienced with evocation, and I think requires of them a much more in depth study of the specific magickal laws enabling that magical action, on an intellectual and philosophical level, than other fields of magickal practice.

That is not to suggest that a practitioner can simply fashion such a system haphazardly - certainly the authors of the old grimoires were well versed in their own theology, kabbalah, and magickal theory generally, and were devout in their mystical faith (whether it was in fact judaism or catholicism, or that was simply the nature of the times they lived in) - but that it can be done, it is possible. No, it may not be the safest path, but no serious field of development and discovery is. The fact of the matter is, though, according to the sepher yetzirah, the 22 consonants of the hebrew alphabet - and it can be agreed that all the names of the spirits in the grimoires can be transliterated into hebrew - can be combined in any way to make words, names, which on the astral and causitive planes constitute living forces - spirits, if you will - as the 22 original intelligences are understood to be those which compose all ideas in creation. (that is, ideas of the One Living God, rather than simply mortal ideas, in case it needs to be made clear, I am not aware of the depth of your own education in kabbalistic mysticism). In the old hermetic system, there is even greater depth given to the 22 original ideas. While I am not suggesting that the pracitioner could simply use the same ritual format to evoke any name created by a haphazard combination of these Ideas - again, certainly the authors of the old grimoires knew what they were doing, and divined the names, offices, and purviews of those spirits with purpose and scientific knowledge of the kabbalistic system - it is not beyond the individual to accomplish the necessary work to do this himself.

In conclusion, my suggestion of creating one's own system of evocation was not meant in any kind of flippant or new age manner, and I believe I made that clear enough, though certainly the casual reader accustomed to taking only a cursory read over the text before him, might make that assumption mistakenly. You don't strike me as such a person, though of course I don't know you personally, but none the less it obviously needs to be said.

I believe that you, like Lisiewski, seem to be taken by the idea that because the modern day magickal associations - such as the Golden Dawn, et al., the advent of chaos magick, etc. - tend towards a 'new agey' point of view, that all modernist magick is therefore new age rubbish, and that any exploration and development of old magick into a modern synthesis is also pointless and vain. I, and many successful practitioners reaping the benefits of such exploration and successful synthesis, must disagree thoroughly.

@Petrus,
All points of view are valuable to some degree, even those that can be misleading - when you develop a firm grasp of magickal theory, not only do the grimoires and other magickal texts literally come alive as you read them, but you also quickly begin to realize that even in the new age doggerel that most certainly does infect the average modern magickal view, when it is there, the truthful bits make themselves known, and you will be surprised the places and people in whose company you discover them.

peace