Servitor Trouble? Options

About a month ago I decided to try my luck in creating a servitor. I realize this is a bad idea now, but back then it seemed like just what I needed to both re-establish my faith in magic and solve a problem that is probably too complicated for just simple sigilwork. (I have been dabbling in magic for quite some time, since I was seventeen, but had a crisis of faith something like two years ago and have only lately begun to work in it again.)

Anyway, I charged the 'will' sigil of the servitor, and then began to meditate on it's appearance and tasks in more detail. Unfortunately the meditation was a bit too succesfull (no, I didn't fall asleep) since at some point I just had something of a spontaneus astral projection and decided to go with it instead of resuming my work with the servitor. This was probably another bad idea.

I just sort of assumed that the servitor project was a failure and thought nothing about it until a couple of weeks ago my roommate told me that she's been hearing noises during the night, and not the kind of small animal noises one would expect but ones that feel that there is some meaning behind them. I wear earplugs so I hadn't noticed anything, but last tuesday I woke up to someone knocking on my wall besides my head and many times just before falling asleep I think I hear speech, but too faint to make out. The strange thing is that there isn't any sort of 'presence' that I always felt when working with spirits when I was younger, so that led me to suspect that I actually did have some success in creating a servitor, just no way of communicating with it. I've also been really exhausted all the time since then. I tried to get it to communicate to me through dreams but it didn't quite work, though my dreams were a lot more vivid for a while. So, I guess if anyone has advice in how to either sort of 're-create' the servitor to actually match it's purpose or just suck it back into me, since I can't really communicate with it or tell it what to do?

Sounds like success to me! . . Banish it and make another I guess. . .

Agreed!! Any servitor you don't completely "own", ie manage, understand and percipitate its general behavior . . . absorb (or I guess banish/destroy... its just a waste though) and recreate it. Particularly early on, its just experimental . . . learn from it and make it more effective next time.

Anything you can take away from this as confirmation or personally supportive.... great.

Next time, expect more from yourself then assuming failure.

Keep working.... keep learning

Sounds like success to me! . . Banish it and make another I guess. . .

Can I just banish it like I would any other spirit? Since it is (to my understanding) a part of my own being, I really don't want it to just disappear into the astral or anything... But I guess I'll just try to come up with a ritual.

It'd be my suggestion to reabsorb the servitors energy. Its your energy, there's nothing good about letting it simply dissapate.... at best, or be consumed by "others". Either way, make a simple ritual/exercise to absorbe the critter.

Wow, people think differently than me.

The first time I had a Construct go crazy and "rogue" I let it be. I observed it, trying to figure out patterns in actions, why it is doing what it does, what changed etc. I generally let Constructs "free" if they are relatively harmless, I don't know how long they last with out me (though one is still spotted near my house even three years later, but she was my pride and joy, I doubt the others lasted anything like that long).

Anyways if you have the Sigil, use it. You can use the Sigil to Call the Construct, or at very least connect with it. When I've had some go rogue, but they were needed, I've called them back with the Sigil and reprogrammed them (I have a very techy/cyber Magick outlook). The Sigil is just like the Seals of a lot of Entities, it contains something linking to the Construct, so Call it, or connect to it, and if you want/can, reprogram it, otherwise reabsorb it, or banish it. Despite it's connection to you, you can treat it much like any other entity now, so your usual methods on banishing are probably sufficient.

Can you access the astral plane through meditation?

If so, go to a nice location and recall the servitor. What you do with it after communicating with it is up to you. It is your energy, if you can get yourself to the same frame of mind you had when you created it, you will have more trouble keeping from absorbing it then figuring out how to end it’s existence.

What was it’s job in the first place?

Success is measured in achieving it’s intended goals. If it did it’s job, for example of returning your faith and then it has done what you wanted. If it was something different it has had it’s time, and is now a distraction.

If after communicating with it, you see a reason to keep it going…then do so, if not create another with lessons learned.

If you are wondering how to recall it, the sigil would work. Also just feeling for it…this should bring it back instantly, once you feel it. Search out your energy pulls, it is one of them.

A good thing to get into practice is getting all your energy back to you. Everything you worry about, hope for….is a energy drain. Some gives a positive return some is a loss. Your servitor is somewhere in that mix, the less pulls you have the better for this type of work.
Identifying them all at first is a pain. But with practice you will lower the number and learn to identify when you are loosing energy. You will learn to place your energy where you want it, as opposed to it going all over the place.

Edit: adding the part below.

Ok, reread your post. Intent comes before creation, then focused intent and design. If you skipped that then…you created something with unintended purpose. Servitors…hmm let me rephrase.

I think servitors are best made specifically for a job, they are not Swiss army knives.

If you just created it…then wanted to give it orders…then it may lack the necessary abilities to conceive of how to communicate or understand your orders. Servitors should be lessons in efficiency, least effort for maximum results.

Last possibility is you sent bound energy out, and it attracted more. This may be in the form of a different entity, or in the form of a rouge servitor, both are useless to you and can not be trusted to do what you intend for them to do…they have changed in ways you do not know.

If a servitor, reabsorb, or destroy it…take just what you put into it, let the rest do whatever, if not your servitor…get rid of it.

In both cases you can’t trust it at this point for anything. But, it could be fun to play with and observe it for a while.

This post has been edited by paxx: Dec 7 2007, 12:08 AM

Can you access the astral plane through meditation?

Sometimes, but not consistently enough to trust myself in something like this.

A good thing to get into practice is getting all your energy back to you. Everything you worry about, hope for….is a energy drain. Some gives a positive return some is a loss. Your servitor is somewhere in that mix, the less pulls you have the better for this type of work.
Identifying them all at first is a pain. But with practice you will lower the number and learn to identify when you are loosing energy. You will learn to place your energy where you want it, as opposed to it going all over the place.

This is good advice, thank you.

Ok, reread your post. Intent comes before creation, then focused intent and design. If you skipped that then…you created something with unintended purpose. Servitors…hmm let me rephrase.

I think servitors are best made specifically for a job, they are not Swiss army knives.

It did have a specific purpose, which it failed. The part where I "lost contact" was giving it an appearance, specifics, and more energy, but it did already have a quite refined purpose. (The specifics were things like 'how' and 'when', not 'what'.)

Thanks to everyone, I finally performed a version of a banishing ritual where I absorbed the entity and then destroyed it's sigil. So far it seems it worked well.