Defense And Deposit, On the applications of the servitor Options

Admittedly, the act of generating a partially self-sustaining entity for a specified purpose never truly made much of an impression upon me beforehand; I knew, rather vaguely, that it could be accomplished and, to some degree, I was even aware of some of the mechanics and preparation necessary to bring about such an entity, but I was never in possession of a motive for birthing said entity which in turn robbed me of much of my interest in the subject.

I still possess no motive for the creation of a servitor, but I find myself strangely curious as to just how versatile the servitor's role in the magician's life can be. There are two applications in particular, as hinted by the title of this post, about which I wish to inquire. The first concerns the servitor as a guardian, and the second has to do with the servitor as a receptacle.

A casual perusal of some of the other topics confirmed that the servitor could, in fact, be used as a guardian, but those same topics generally alluded to either an impersonal sort of guardianship (such as a servitor created to protect one's home and property) or a light-handed variety in which the servitor shields the magician from those that would do him/her harm in any capacity through subtle influence and nudging. I wonder whether or not the servitor can be used more intimately. Can it directly protect the magician from immediate physical harm by overtly (well...as overt as an astral construct can be) warning him of impending hazard? If, for instance, a would be assailant is rapidly closing the distance between himself and the magician, unbeknownst to the latter, could the servitor sound the metaphorical klaxon so that the magician could meet the threat appropriately?

Can the intimacy exceed even that which I described above? In a physical confrontation, can a magician symbiotically attach his consciousness to that belonging to a observing servitor so that he may be aware of opponents beyond his visual range? If so, what are the inherent dangers in such an undertaking; in joining his consciousness to the servitor's, even slightly, does the magician lose some of his ability to fully and physically react to stimuli on the same plane? Does connecting to the servitor run the risk of reabsorbing it? In a further point of curiosity, could the servitor, perhaps, glean the surface thoughts (which, one imagines, would be concentrated upon throwing a sequence of techniques) of the magician's opponents and relay them so that he could react with an uncanny swiftness?

Technically, any servitor is a receptacle for the magician that gives it life. It is a receptacle for the magician's energy given focus through will and whatever behavioral scripts the magician chooses to imbue the entity with. Can it be made to hold certain elements beyond that point, though? Can a magician charge the servitor with the task of finding and absorbing ambient energy in the environment and retaining it until he has some use of it in his workings? Are there any associated consequences? What of emotion? Can a magician impart his anger onto the servitor to keep until absorption at which point the magician would be nearly overcome with rage thus aiding in whatever (presumably destructive) working he was attempting?

I've been told that the only real limitation for the magician is his or her own mind and skill level. I have no clue as to whether or not anything that I've mentioned above is even remotely possible, but I thought to exercise my creativity and sate my curiosity at once. Thank you ahead of time to any that choose to respond to the many questions that I've included within this topic.

Greetings!
The creation of a 'servitor' is not something that should be considered until you are fairly certain of what you want. You intellectualizing is all well and fine but this can be taken just so far. I've noticed that servitor creation, demonic evocation and siddhi attainment are the primary focus(es) of the male newbie when starting a magical path. It has alot to do with the 'need' to stabilize self-esteem issues and ones ability to master ones universe.

You've brought up some interesting questions that are resolved through experience. This being said as each of us has a unique mix of variables which wherein the answers lie. 'Why?' should be within the first questions asked before leaping to the creation of a servitor. Truth be told, if you were to examine your own astral space you will find bits and pieces of semiformed servitors/thought images floating around already...created by you unknowingly.

Gaining that motivation, honing your needs will help towards the creation of a viable and useful 'servitor'. I also think, IMHO (in my humble opinion), that you should be working on establishing your own foundations before launching into your chosen path(s). Learn how to meditate, how your body works, how to breathe, what comprises the subtle body and how energy flows/works before creating a 'servitor'. All of this will help you explore and interact with the astral realms. It is alot of hard work!

I hope that you will continue to ask these questions as you work towards your goals in the path of magic. Look over the site...there are lots of information in the threads to get you started and the Library holds many treasures. Franz Bardons Initiation into Hermetics is a grand place to start (IMHO...) that we have here in the Library! Good Luck and be patient...our members are really quite nice and will fill you in as you go! Never hesitate to ask a question! (be sure to read up on the guidelines) Welcome aboard! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Greetings!
The creation of a 'servitor' is not something that should be considered until you are fairly certain of what you want. You intellectualizing is all well and fine but this can be taken just so far. I've noticed that servitor creation, demonic evocation and siddhi attainment are the primary focus(es) of the male newbie when starting a magical path. It has alot to do with the 'need' to stabilize self-esteem issues and ones ability to master ones universe.

You've brought up some interesting questions that are resolved through experience. This being said as each of us has a unique mix of variables which wherein the answers lie. 'Why?' should be within the first questions asked before leaping to the creation of a servitor. Truth be told, if you were to examine your own astral space you will find bits and pieces of semiformed servitors/thought images floating around already...created by you unknowingly.

Gaining that motivation, honing your needs will help towards the creation of a viable and useful 'servitor'. I also think, IMHO (in my humble opinion), that you should be working on establishing your own foundations before launching into your chosen path(s). Learn how to meditate, how your body works, how to breathe, what comprises the subtle body and how energy flows/works before creating a 'servitor'. All of this will help you explore and interact with the astral realms. It is alot of hard work!

I hope that you will continue to ask these questions as you work towards your goals in the path of magic. Look over the site...there are lots of information in the threads to get you started and the Library holds many treasures. Franz Bardons Initiation into Hermetics is a grand place to start (IMHO...) that we have here in the Library! Good Luck and be patient...our members are really quite nice and will fill you in as you go! Never hesitate to ask a question! (be sure to read up on the guidelines) Welcome aboard! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

Greetings Bym!

Indeed, the birthing of a servitor is an undertaking that should be contemplated with no degree of frivolity; trust me when I state that I have absolutely no intention of forming one in the absence of a clear and defined purpose beforehand. Everything that I wrote in my initial post points to a curiosity that may be realized at a later date, but as of now there simply is no justification for the entity's existence. It has no raison d'etre.

Having said that, I should mention that my refusal to create a servitor at this point in time does not necessarily correspond with what is in actuality already in place (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) . Because I have only recently begun the transition from an academic of magick to a full practitioner, I am acutely aware of what limitations I am burdened with by virtue of my lack of practical skill and my relative ignorance of non-theoretical knowledge. Thus, I know that I am ill-prepared to attempt any sort of evocation or communion with entities external to myself; and I have not, accordingly, taken on any such projects. Yet, I am beset by a packet of circumstances that my readings have shown me to be indicative of a successful evocation and a failed banishing. Mostly at night, especially when I'm trying to gain purchase on sleep, I will hear strange knocks, creeps, goans, and scratches that frequently cannot be rationalized as the ambiance of an old apartment complex. Very rarely, I will hear the slightest of the slightest vocalizations emanating from seemingly nowhere and everywhere at once.

I don't know if the semi-formed servitors and thought-forms that you refer to have the power to produce these phenomena, but given what you said about the possibility of me inadvertently giving rise to these entities, it seems very probable. In any case, I'll perform the proper banishings to rid myself of the nuisance.

I do have some questions pertaining to the foundations that you speak of, but I'll reserve them for another dedicated topic. Thank you for your input, Bym. It was as insightful as it was helpful!

The short answer is yes, the long answer is included in the bottom as an append. I have had a servitor for years, one of my first, who does essentially just this thing - warns me of impending danger or doom, and as a consequence I've stayed accident, illness, and assault free since then, save for two confrontations that were unavoidable - but at least I knew they were coming. The mechanics are simply, but their implementation can be tricky, and the key to pulling it off successfully is learning to pay attention to your feelings. The second mechanic is how, or rather 'where' to implement the servitor - which is not in the present, but rather, some short distance into the future. No more than 30 seconds or so, as beyond this point the variables rapidly start to get uncomfortably vast. The future is not just in flux, it's practically a maelstrom of possibility. The implications of being able to put a servitor seconds ahead of yourself in time, now no doubt joggling around in your brain, are indeed interesting, however in practice I've found they can communicate very little consequential information due to the unstructured nature of future-spacetime.

Because you state that the key to benefiting from the "watchdog" servitor is a keen awareness of your feelings, I'm going to assume that your servitor communicates with you primarily through empathic means. Granted, your servitor is already in existence which means that its "programming" is essentially etched in stone, but would it be possible to slightly alter your servitor's directives to include something approaching vocal ability (for use with clariaudience)? I only ask as a precursor to the time in which I choose to create my own--sort of weighing the options that I may choose from in the entity's spawning.

To reduce the bevy of possibilities and potentials that a servitor would have to sort through in order to deliver to the magician viable information, could one simply advance the entity's temporal placement by a lower time differential? If, per the example given in my initial post, you restricted the servitor's placement to a mere ten seconds into the future, wouldn't that allow the entity to accurately deliver to the magician his opponent's next attack given the short window for variation?

Caveat: Even as I write this, that unsettling feeling that one acquires when one begins to logically defeat one's own assertions is building; the little voice in my head is screaming "reducing the time differential will do nothing you buffoon! Even if you place the servitor two seconds into the future, your actions in the present can easily shift outcomes that haven't yet come to be. The servitor would have to be able to adjust and compensate at an unimaginable level to even get one parcel of useful information to you!" But I pose the questions above anyhow, because you may very well see something that I cannot, VagrantDreamer.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to you as well, VagrantDreamer, for taking the time to answer the questions posed. I have more commentary and an even greater amount of inquiries to throw your way, but I'm afraid that time is pressing heavily upon me. Once I am free to return to SM, I'll return to this topic and edit it to display my extended thoughts. Thank you again.

This post has been edited by Mokuso: May 18 2008, 03:38 PM

Because you state that the key to benefiting from the "watchdog" servitor is a keen awareness of your feelings, I'm going to assume that your servitor communicates with you primarily through empathic means. Granted, your servitor is already in existence which means that its "programming" is essentially etched in stone, but would it be possible to slightly alter your servitor's directives to include something approaching vocal ability (for use with clariaudience)? I only ask as a precursor to the time in which I choose to create my own--sort of weighing the options that I may choose from in the entity's spawning.

Well, first of all before I get into the other parts, having a servitor already created does not mean it is etched in stone. It's good to leave it as it is for a while at first, but if you intend to keep it around, it's perfectly acceptable to make changes later on as long as you are careful not to make alterations that are counter to its primary function.

Now, as for the means of communication - the problem with telepathic, i.e., particularly vocal communication is one's own mind. You have thousands of thoughts in your head constantly, and you don't even remember most of them, and in that din of mental chaos, the superficial 'words' of a telepathic entity of any kind can often be overlooked, ignored - and more importantly, your own imagination will often conjure up communications that aren't real or pased on anything in the first place, and then you're jumping at shadows, and ultimately train yourself not to trust your own servitor's communcations - was that me, or my servitor?

Emotional communcation, however, is more visceral, and especially for the magician who has trained his emotional control, changes in that emotional state - 'irrational' alarm, anticipation, etc. perhaps, in this case - is going to be a clearer, more dependably form of communication because of the nature of the role that emotion plays in the field of consciousness. Obviously the prerequisite is some degree of general emotional awareness, but even for a beginning magician this is a form of communication which can be far more efficient than any other form - less distracting from the situation at hand whatever it is, and far more integrated already into actually remaining functional in the world. While you may often ignore the world around you while having a conversation, a daydream (visualization), etc., your emotions are an ever-present back drop to your experience, constantly coloring the world around you and influencing your actions from moment to moment without actually pulling you 'away' from the world.

To reduce the bevy of possibilities and potentials that a servitor would have to sort through in order to deliver to the magician viable information, could one simply advance the entity's temporal placement by a lower time differential? If, per the example given in my initial post, you restricted the servitor's placement to a mere ten seconds into the future, wouldn't that allow the entity to accurately deliver to the magician his opponent's next attack given the short window for variation?

Like I said, it's a complicated situation to create for yourself, but it's not exactly like being told in your ear "this will happen next" it's more like a sense of expectation that is ill defined. Five to ten seconds is just fine, I cited thirty seconds as the maximum because it gives you time to make those alterations based on the information you're recieving - most people don't have the reaction time to successfully make a significant alteration in as little as ten seconds, often by that time you're already in the situation you're trying to avoid. However, with some practice in communcating with the servitor, you can learn to easily push it 'forward' or pull it 'backwards' through the temporal dimension for one purpose or another, and over time it will learn to compensate based on the kind of information you need from it. Or rather, your subconscious mind will learn the pattern and take over.

As far as combat specifically is concerned, the likliehood you will encounter someone - assuming you are not a competitive fighter of some kind - who can react to the changes you make based on the information you receive, on the fly as the happen, is fairly low. That's an order of skill bordering on professionally trained - and very experienced - fighter.

Getting your conscious mind in the way in a situation like that, as a further explanation of the previous point of communcation, will slow you down. Like a Jedi, you must simply let go, trust your feelings, and react. You cannot do that while someone explains your situation blow by blow in your ear, but you can do it while you ride your instincts from moment to moment.

Caveat: Even as I write this, that unsettling feeling that one acquires when one begins to logically defeat one's own assertions is building; the little voice in my head is screaming "reducing the time differential will do nothing you buffoon! Even if you place the servitor two seconds into the future, your actions in the present can easily shift outcomes that haven't yet come to be. The servitor would have to be able to adjust and compensate at an unimaginable level to even get one parcel of useful information to you!" But I pose the questions above anyhow, because you may very well see something that I cannot, VagrantDreamer.

There's about a three to five second lead time into the future spread of possibilities, due to the limits of human biology, our brains are typically a few seconds 'behind' actual events as they occur. Because of this, what we might call the 'uncertainty field' to borrow a quantum mechanics phrase, rapidly collapses the closer you come to a temporal coordinate in the future, to the point where variation is almost negligible - even if you know what's going to happen, you have only enough time to quickly evaluate instinctively at the most one other variable. I have my servitor programmed to push me towards a preferable outcome, and over time they have become, shall we say, more preferable.

The key, to sort of beat a dead horse again, is to establish a form of communication that hinges on the instinct, the unconscious element of the mind, because only the 'conscious' mind will complicate what can often be and incredibly simple set of variables.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to you as well, VagrantDreamer, for taking the time to answer the questions posed. I have more commentary and an even greater amount of inquiries to throw your way, but I'm afraid that time is pressing heavily upon me. Once I am free to return to SM, I'll return to this topic and edit it to display my extended thoughts. Thank you again.

By all means, this is one of a few areas where most of my experience lies, and where I have far more success than failure, after many years of trial and error. I always have something to say, and love contemplating or addressing questions I haven't asked myself before.

peace