Simple Rites
Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2017 12:43 pm
https://selqetkitty.wordpress.com/2017/ ... ple-rites/
This is my altar for my most recent evocation. What you see is the bare bones of a ritual. The canvas bears the sigil of the demon I am working with. Upon the canvas, I have a candle, in the color he requested, and below that, a plate of offerings. The offerings are gemstones which match his specialty, and an incense mix which he chose. The herbs are cat nip, rose, chamomile, jasmine, lavender, lemon balm, and lobelia. The resin is copal, and the essential oil is an amber blend.
This is also the incense which is burning on the charcoal. The incense serves a dual purpose, in that it is an offering to the Air element, but is also tuned to the intentions which I and the demon are working towards. I have a red candle, which is an offering to the element of Fire, a bowl of purified water as an offering to the Water element, and a bowl of sea salt as an offering to the element of Earth.
Once my altar was set up, I settled on my meditation chair, lit the candles, added the incense to my charcoal, closed my eyes, and began to breathe into trance.
As I drew each breath, I counted down. I drew three deep breaths, and as I breathed out, I chanted in my mind the number three. I then drew three more deep breaths, and as I breathed out, I chanted the number two. I drew three final breaths, chanting the number one. As I counted down, and breathed, I entered a state of holding – of stillness.
Once in that state, I began my evocation. The evocation is simple. I place the first two fingers of my right hand upon the canvas which bears his sigil, resting my fingertips lightly, as I chant, “I call to you, ‘(name of demon goes here). Join me in my sacred space. I seek counsel from you. Come forth, and join in companionship,” three times.
This is a soft evocation. It is an invitation, a request. It is not a demand. It does not use force. It is not reliant on the force of others. It does not require any tools – the items on my altar are not tools, even those which stand as representation of elements of my ritual. They are offerings only, and unnecessary save for politeness.
The key to my ritual is respect. This demon is one I have worked with many times. In the beginning, I did a lot of research about him. When I felt I was ready, I set up my altar of offerings to him, and drew his sigil on three small pieces of paper. That morning, I burned his sigil, while making my request to work with him, and then I meditated, paying attention to the energy that flowed through my sacred space. Throughout the day, I paid attention to the world around me, taking note of any favorable or negative signs. That evening, I burned the second sigil, again making my request, and meditated, feeling out the flows of energy around me. That night, I placed the third sigil under my pillow. The next morning, I noted my dreams of the night. The signs I had received, the energies I felt, and the dreams I had, all indicated to me a positive response.
I took the third sigil out from under my pillow, went to my altar, and burned it, repeating my evocation request. At this time, he arrived, and we sat down to have a serious discussion about why I had called him – what I hope to learn from working with him, hope to gain, and also what requests he had for offerings, specific behaviors he required of me when working with him.
For this demon, he requires a white candle, certain gemstones, and certain oils to be anointed on his offerings when I evoke him. He has requested that we meet at a certain time, and that if we’re not going to be working on a daily basis, that I follow the 24 hour procedure when I do wish to work with him, unless we have an agreed upon schedule. Right now, I am working with him daily, but eventually as this current growth cycle comes to a conclusion, it is likely that I will only be working with him on his weekday, and that may eventually become only a lunar cyclical pattern.
This particular demon and I are doing extensive shadow work within my soulscape. We are working on correcting some long-held negative emotional patterns, and the experiences with him, while they have often been quite difficult and challenging, have been extremely beneficial, and the release of so much repressed emotional baggage has been truly freeing.
When I began working with Angels and demons, my first research was Goety. The Lesser Key rituals were extravagant, and for certain entities, brutal, violent. I felt extremely uncomfortable with the style. It’s not in me to abuse, especially when I understood already that the entities I was working with were deities of ancient pantheons, and only recently demonized by the newest religion. As I’m not a practitioner of that religion, I felt that to approach Goetic angels or demons in this fashion would be disingenuous of my own true nature and path.
Because I had already had a strong grounding in the fundamentals of magick, because I understood that most of the trappings of ritual are tools for the developing magician and not truly necessary once a practitioner reaches a certain stage in their practice, I decided to look for other practitioners and their ways of doing things, and I decided to experiment.
In my journey, I found a book on Demonolatry, where the goetic entities are evoked in a similar formal manner, but without the egoic posturing of the magician, and without the abuse of those entities. I also found even simpler rituals of evocation in the works of Frater U∴D∴, which I truly felt most in tune with my own mindset, and which eventually became the backbone of my own evocation practices. Finally, I met a demonolatry priestess, whose written invitations, with minor editing, became my own.
I feel that it is important for each practitioner who wishes to begin evocation of entities to study many sources of evocation practices, and to eventually build their own rituals, rites, and practices from those studies, in accordance to their own nature, their own will, their own ethical and moral perspectives. It is also important for each practitioner to continue to develop those perspectives and practices even after they have codified them. We can always learn something new – and isn’t that mostly why we practice evocation in the first place?
-Raven
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This is my altar for my most recent evocation. What you see is the bare bones of a ritual. The canvas bears the sigil of the demon I am working with. Upon the canvas, I have a candle, in the color he requested, and below that, a plate of offerings. The offerings are gemstones which match his specialty, and an incense mix which he chose. The herbs are cat nip, rose, chamomile, jasmine, lavender, lemon balm, and lobelia. The resin is copal, and the essential oil is an amber blend.
This is also the incense which is burning on the charcoal. The incense serves a dual purpose, in that it is an offering to the Air element, but is also tuned to the intentions which I and the demon are working towards. I have a red candle, which is an offering to the element of Fire, a bowl of purified water as an offering to the Water element, and a bowl of sea salt as an offering to the element of Earth.
Once my altar was set up, I settled on my meditation chair, lit the candles, added the incense to my charcoal, closed my eyes, and began to breathe into trance.
As I drew each breath, I counted down. I drew three deep breaths, and as I breathed out, I chanted in my mind the number three. I then drew three more deep breaths, and as I breathed out, I chanted the number two. I drew three final breaths, chanting the number one. As I counted down, and breathed, I entered a state of holding – of stillness.
Once in that state, I began my evocation. The evocation is simple. I place the first two fingers of my right hand upon the canvas which bears his sigil, resting my fingertips lightly, as I chant, “I call to you, ‘(name of demon goes here). Join me in my sacred space. I seek counsel from you. Come forth, and join in companionship,” three times.
This is a soft evocation. It is an invitation, a request. It is not a demand. It does not use force. It is not reliant on the force of others. It does not require any tools – the items on my altar are not tools, even those which stand as representation of elements of my ritual. They are offerings only, and unnecessary save for politeness.
The key to my ritual is respect. This demon is one I have worked with many times. In the beginning, I did a lot of research about him. When I felt I was ready, I set up my altar of offerings to him, and drew his sigil on three small pieces of paper. That morning, I burned his sigil, while making my request to work with him, and then I meditated, paying attention to the energy that flowed through my sacred space. Throughout the day, I paid attention to the world around me, taking note of any favorable or negative signs. That evening, I burned the second sigil, again making my request, and meditated, feeling out the flows of energy around me. That night, I placed the third sigil under my pillow. The next morning, I noted my dreams of the night. The signs I had received, the energies I felt, and the dreams I had, all indicated to me a positive response.
I took the third sigil out from under my pillow, went to my altar, and burned it, repeating my evocation request. At this time, he arrived, and we sat down to have a serious discussion about why I had called him – what I hope to learn from working with him, hope to gain, and also what requests he had for offerings, specific behaviors he required of me when working with him.
For this demon, he requires a white candle, certain gemstones, and certain oils to be anointed on his offerings when I evoke him. He has requested that we meet at a certain time, and that if we’re not going to be working on a daily basis, that I follow the 24 hour procedure when I do wish to work with him, unless we have an agreed upon schedule. Right now, I am working with him daily, but eventually as this current growth cycle comes to a conclusion, it is likely that I will only be working with him on his weekday, and that may eventually become only a lunar cyclical pattern.
This particular demon and I are doing extensive shadow work within my soulscape. We are working on correcting some long-held negative emotional patterns, and the experiences with him, while they have often been quite difficult and challenging, have been extremely beneficial, and the release of so much repressed emotional baggage has been truly freeing.
When I began working with Angels and demons, my first research was Goety. The Lesser Key rituals were extravagant, and for certain entities, brutal, violent. I felt extremely uncomfortable with the style. It’s not in me to abuse, especially when I understood already that the entities I was working with were deities of ancient pantheons, and only recently demonized by the newest religion. As I’m not a practitioner of that religion, I felt that to approach Goetic angels or demons in this fashion would be disingenuous of my own true nature and path.
Because I had already had a strong grounding in the fundamentals of magick, because I understood that most of the trappings of ritual are tools for the developing magician and not truly necessary once a practitioner reaches a certain stage in their practice, I decided to look for other practitioners and their ways of doing things, and I decided to experiment.
In my journey, I found a book on Demonolatry, where the goetic entities are evoked in a similar formal manner, but without the egoic posturing of the magician, and without the abuse of those entities. I also found even simpler rituals of evocation in the works of Frater U∴D∴, which I truly felt most in tune with my own mindset, and which eventually became the backbone of my own evocation practices. Finally, I met a demonolatry priestess, whose written invitations, with minor editing, became my own.
I feel that it is important for each practitioner who wishes to begin evocation of entities to study many sources of evocation practices, and to eventually build their own rituals, rites, and practices from those studies, in accordance to their own nature, their own will, their own ethical and moral perspectives. It is also important for each practitioner to continue to develop those perspectives and practices even after they have codified them. We can always learn something new – and isn’t that mostly why we practice evocation in the first place?
-Raven
