Walking with Spirits:
How to Work with Spirits and Get Consistent Results
Taylor Ellwood
Portland, Oregon
Walking with Spirits: How to Work with Spirits and get Consistent
Results
by Taylor Ellwood
© 2020 first edition
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or
portions thereof, in any form.
The right of Taylor Ellwood to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988.
Cover Art: Mark Reid
Editor: Kat Bailey
ME0019
Magical Experiments Publication
http://www.magicalexperiments.com
Other Non-Fiction Books by Taylor Ellwood
The Process of Magic
Manifesting Wealth
The Magic of Art
How to Troubleshoot your Magic
Magic by Design
The Magic of Writing
Pop Culture Magick
Pop Culture Magic 2.0
Pop Culture Magic Systems
Space/Time Magic Foundations
Space/Time Magic
Magical Identity
Inner Alchemy
Inner Alchemy of Life
A Magical Life
Mystical Journeys
Magical Movements
A Magical Stillness
Walking with Magical Entities
Coming Soon
Inner Alchemy of Emotions
Fiction by Taylor Ellwood
Learning How to Fly
Learning How to be Free
Learning How to be a Hero
The Zombie Apocalypse Call Center
Secret Missions of the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center
Rebels of the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center
Coming Soon
Heroes of the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center
Tales of the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center
Dedication
To all my fans and friends who’ve reached out to me and been
supportive of my during one of the roughest times of my life
Acknowledgements
Special thanks goes out to Bo Jacisin, Brandon Alcantar, Rachel Briggs.
Michelle Gibson, Adrian Addison, Alexander Majewski, Adam Snowflake,
Dennis Asiedu, Robert Nicholas, Ian Cat Vincent, Colleen Chitty, and
Buddie Phipps for submitting questions to the Q and A chapter for this
book. I hope I answered your questions! And to the magical experiments
community for being amazing explorers and experimenters of magic and
helping me challenge what I know to discover what I can learn. To Mark
Reid, for creating an amazing cover. And last, but never least to my dearest
Kat, who grounds me during my weakest moments.
Table of Contents
Introduction
What are Spirits?
Traditional Western Practices for Working with Spirits
Invocation and Evocation Unpacked
Experiential Embodiment and Spirit Work
Respect, Spirits, and Experiential Embodiment
Walking with Ancestral Spirits
Walking with Deities
Walking with Pop Culture Spirits
Q and A
Conclusion
Walking with Plant and Animal Spirits
How to Deal with Hostile Spirits
My Approach to Evocation
Bibliography
About the Author
Bonus
Introduction
Over the last few years (2017-2020), my magical practice has gone through
some significant changes in how I work magic. One of those changes has
been an evolution in how I work with spirits. While the core philosophy of
my work with spirits is the same as it pretty much has been from the
beginnings of my magical practice, the practices themselves have
necessarily changed as I have changed, and this work, and the other books
in the series, is reflective of that change.
In Walking with the Spirits, I am presenting an alternative perspective
and methodology to working with spirits, in contrast to how such practices
are typically portrayed in Western magic. This alternative perspective and
methodology is one rooted in experiential embodiment, which are
techniques I’ve been developing around the body and its ability to sense
and experience magic and other forces. The majority of Western occult
practices, in general, are very cerebral and disconnected from the body, and
this extends to how people connect with the spirits. What I share here is an
approach that holistically integrates the body back into working with the
spirits, and also explores the working with spirits from a narrative that
doesn’t continue the artificial objectification and categorization that occurs
in so much of Western practices, and serves to dilute the effectiveness of
such practices.
I’ve deliberately chosen the phrase walking with because it speaks to a
relational approach to working with spirits, yet that relational approach isn’t
one of coercion or of subservience, but rather a co-equal partnership and I
want to emphasize that as much as anything else in this book, because my
own approach to working with spirits very much centers on this co-equal
partnership instead of the typical approaches that I see in Western
occultism. It’s my hope that exploring this perspective and sharing it with
you will help you in your own relationships with the spirits and how you
choose to work with them.
I also want you to know that as with anything else I write this is meant
to be descriptive, instead of prescriptive. You are the ultimate spiritual
authority of your life and anything I share is meant get you to think about
your journey, but not prescribe what that journey ought to be. This is even
more important with working with spirits, because we are on a highly
personal journey in our work with the spirits. Your journey will not
necessarily be the same as mine, nor should it be.
With all that said, let’s begin our walk with the spirits.
Taylor Ellwood
Portland, OR
August 2020
Chapter 1: What are Spirits?
I’m going to start this book by making a radical claim that goes contrary to
how Western occultism depicts and defines the spirit world. You don’t have
to agree with my claim, but I do ask you to consider it, for the duration of
this book, as a possible alternative that may help you get better results and
have better relationships with your spirits. So, what’s my radical claim?
My radical claim is this: The spirit world is the world we already live in
and the spirits actually have a physical existence here, albeit in a way we
many not fully understand or perceive. And because we do not fully
understand or perceive the spirits in our world, we have accordingly come
up with elaborate and artificial divisions that allow us to categorize and
objectify spirits in a manner that attempts to make the spirits easier to
understand (and control), but also relegates them into a safe, human space
that is convenient for us, but also causes out to miss out on the true magic
and mystery of the spirits.
It doesn’t help that we have a humanocentric need to anthropomorphize
spirits and insist that any interaction occur in a way that is conveniently
comfortable for us and oriented around our needs and wants. The classic
expectation that a spirit will appear before people in a form that they can
relate to and speak in the native tongue of the person calling on the spirit
also contributes to this categorization and objectification of spirits, and to
the loss of connection with them.
At the same time, we also have a problematic focus on the astral plane
and trying to recapture an organic connection with the spirits using astral
travel. The problem with this focus on astral projection is that it lends itself
more to fantasy than anything else and doesn’t necessarily produce a
genuine connection with spirits. An additional problem is the tendency
people have to categorize even the astral plane itself, dividing it up into
multiple levels or planes, as a way of trying to make sense of it in human
terms.
What all this really boils down to is that we consistently try to frame our
experiences of spirits and anything related to spirits in human terms and
concepts while rejecting the experiential connections, because they aren’t
easily understood or experienced. We try to make sense of the spirits using
psychological terminology or by creating rigid systems that mandate how
spirits can be connected with, without questioning whether any of those
things lend themselves toward helping us actually connect with spirits, or if
they just reinforce the divide that has been created by the humanocentric
need to control the connection and experience.
Now, this is a bold claim to make, so if I’m going to make it, I also need
to back it up and ideally propose an alternative solution. For the rest of this
chapter we’re going to explore what spirits are and are not, in order to set
the stage for later chapters where we’re going to explore the traditional
approaches to working with spirits, and then I’ll introduce my approach to
working with spirits, which focuses on connecting with the spirits through
experiential embodiment.
What are Spirits?
Maybe you already know the answer to this question, but if you’ve read
any of my books, you know that I’m big on defining our terminology,
because a defined terminology creates a common ground for us to develop
our magical work. And I think this applies as much to spirits as it does to
any other aspect of magic.
So, what are spirits?
I consider spirits to have an objective existence. That is, they exist
outside of us, but I also consider them to live in symbiosis with us. We see
that because of the fact that they want a relationship with us, and they seem
to benefit from that relationship in some form or manner (Swain 2018). At
the same time, we seem to need them as well, or why else would we work
with them? With all that said, our understanding and depiction of spirits is
mediated through the lens of being human, which brings with it human
assumptions and biases that may cause us to misunderstand the nature of
the spirits we work with.
As I noted above, there is a tendency to anthropomorphize spirits, to
situate them in human context because that’s what is convenient for us, but
we need to remember the following about spirits, “Spirits aren’t all just
functional manifestations that run automatically like computer programs
when the right buttons are pushed. They aren’t anthropomorphized
externalizations of internal mental and emotional concepts. They are
spirits” (Swain 2018 P. 96). The assumptions, biases, emotions, and
definitions we bring to the relationships we have with the spirits need to be
recognized for what they are, a subjective understanding of the spirits that
may impact our relationships with those spirits in ways we don’t fully
understand. The best example of this I can think of is a simple principle,
which is what you bring with you to your meeting with the spirits is what
you often get from them (Andrews 1993a, Stavish 2018). If I bring fear into
the workings I’m doing with the spirits, then the spirits may end up obliging
me accordingly, because they are reading me on more levels than just what I
say or visualize. They recognize what we bring to the relationship and if
they feel we need that validation, they’ll provide it because we are coming
to them with what we need and want from them, on all levels of our being.
An encounter with the spirits is an encounter with the imagination.
Think of kids with imaginary friends; those imaginary friends could be
spirits. As adults we’re told to think of the imagination as something for
children to use, but what we fail to recognize is the imagination is essential
to our identities and our place in the universe, and it is something we use
every day. It is also a medium the spirits use to communicate with us
(Harpur 2002, Ellwood 2018). We tend to divide imagination from material
reality, but imagination is where the seed for material manifestation is
planted, and yet, imagination is also where all things are probable. That
strikes me as similar to spirits, especially when you consider that spirits can
assume different forms and shapes as needed. When a magician asks a spirit
to appear before them in a pleasing form, what they are really asking is for
the spirit to connect with us via imagination and pick out a shape that suits
and that we can relate to through the lens and limitations of our human
awareness. Ted Andrews notes that, “Creative imagination, or imaginative
cognition, is the key to opening the doors to true spiritual awareness,
energies and beings” (Andrews 1993a P. 34). When I look at other treatises
on working with the spirits, what stands out to me is how imagination is
omitted as a necessary element of connecting with spirits. Omitting the
imagination causes us to ignore the very nature of spirits, and, I think,
contributes to the fundamental misunderstanding of them because so much
emphasis is either put on wanting spirits to manifest in a specific way, or in
separating them out from the world we live in. If we instead entertain the
possibility that the imagination is a necessary part of spirit work, then we
can also consider how to use the imagination in that work in order to
establish better relationships with the spirits. We’ll return to this topic in
more depth later in the book.
Exercise
What do you think spirits are? Where are they situated in your personal
cosmology? What role, if any, does imagination play in your interaction
with spirits?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Types of Spirits
Humans love to categorize everything, and this includes spirits. Now,
there can be good reasons to categorize spirits based on patterns of
observation and experiences around spirits, and/or as a way to denote
specific types of relationships, but it’s still worth noting that we’re doing
the categorization, and, that as such the categorization may only be partially
accurate because it’s based around our biases, objectifications, and just
overall need to situate things we don’t understand into conceptual boxes
that give us an illusion of understanding. I say that deliberately because
even when we think we know something, we ought to carefully examine the
assumption of that challenge and be willing to challenge it.
With that said, let’s consider the topic of types of spirits. The typical
categorization of spirits in Western occultism is as follows: ancestors,
magical entities, elementals, faeries, demons, angels, and deities. I’m going
to add pop culture spirits to that list, and I categorize them separately. Let’s
explore each of these in a little more detail below.
Ancestors
Ancestral spirits are the spirits of the deceased who have not fully
passed on who are related to you. Sometimes you can also interact with a
spiritual ancestor, someone from the same spiritual lineage as you, although
a spiritual ancestor may manifest as an inner contact, though not all inner
contacts are ancestors. They can be other types of spirits as well. Some
people work with ancestral spirits and other people don’t. The key thing to
remember about an ancestor is that just because they’ve died doesn’t
necessarily mean they are more enlightened or different from who they
were in life. If anything, an ancestral spirit is bound more to the personality
of who they were because they haven’t fully passed and aren’t necessarily
ready to as of yet. They may have unfinished business, may want to keep an
eye on the family, or may not even realized they’ve passed on. Some
ancestors become ghosts, haunting a site because of the unresolved business
they need to attend to. When that business is resolved or they are ready,
they can pass onto whatever next awaits them. You can work with ancestral
spirits, as we’ll explore in a later chapter of this book.
Magical Entities
Magical Entities, also known as thought forms, tulpas, servitors, and
egregores, are spirits created by a magician for the purpose of achieving
specific results. Magical entities can become independent of the magician,
and there are different schools of thoughts on how to handle that
independence. The reason a magician might create an entity is because they
want to achieve a result and feel that a created entity would get better
results than either a practical magic working, or working with a pre-existing
spirit that may not fully understand the situation and have requirements the
magician doesn’t want to meet. For more information on how to create and
work with magical entities, check out my book Walking with Magical
Entities.
Elementals
Elementals are spirits that mediate the elemental forces of the universe
and can also be considered nature spirits. Traditionally the elements are
limited to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit, but my own approach to
elemental magic incorporates what I consider to be other elements, such as
sound and gravity (among others). Elementals can be worked with
magically and allow you to access those primal energies they mediate. For
more information on how to work with elementals, see my forthcoming
book Walking with Elementals, Faeries, and Nature Spirits.
Nature Spirits
Nature spirits are spirits of the land, the water, and other natural forces.
They aren’t exactly elementals, but they work in conjunction with
elementals. Working with nature spirits can be very helpful for learning
more about the area you are in, as well as learning how to access the deeper
energies of that area. They also help you become more conscious of your
impact on the land (at least for me they have). For more information on how
to work with elementals, see my forthcoming book Walking with
Elementals, Faeries, and Nature Spirits.
Faeries
Some people try to group faeries and elementals together, but faeries
and elementals are not one and the same. Faeries are close to nature, but
they aren’t exactly nature spirits in the same ways as elementals are. It
might be better to think of them as caretakers of sorts, though even that may
not be fully accurate. I associate faeries with the underworld energy of the
earth and if you look at faerie lore you can see the faeries in the mounds
and hills, which indicates a connection with the underworld. For more
information on how to work with elementals, see my forthcoming book
Walking with Elementals, Faeries, and Nature Spirits.
Demons
Demons are spirits of wisdom that have a lot of interest in interacting
with humans. Despite Christian propaganda, and some Western occultism
as well, demons are not evil and aren’t out to get your soul. In my opinion
and experience, the reason some people have negative experiences with
demons is based on how they try to work with them. Imagine someone
calling you, putting a noose around your neck, and compelling you to do
tasks by threatening you with other people. If you don’t find that particular
scenario favorable, then consider that demons don’t either and that there’s a
better way to approach working with them that doesn’t involve coercion
and compulsion. Typically, people work with demons because they want to
achieve specific results or learn specific information, which are tasks that
demons are good at following through with. For more information on my
approach to working with demons see my forthcoming book Walking with
Demons.
Angels
Angels are typically depicted as spirits that serve the Christian God.
However, that isn’t really the case. If anything, what angels serve are the
universe. Angels are function oriented, which means that the function they
perform is the guiding focus of their work. If you get in the way of that
function, then they’ll have problems with them. If, on the other hand,
you’re working with them in relationship to their function, they’ll help you.
Archangels direct angels but are also essentially focused on the function
they perform. For more information on my approach to working with
angels, see my forthcoming book Walking with Angels.
Deities
Deities, i.e. gods and goddesses, are spirits that are typically worshipped
and worked with within a specific cultural context, though in some cases,
they are widespread enough that they are no longer worked with strictly
within the cultural context they originated from. For instance, the Greek,
Norse, and Celtic gods are worked with in reconstructionist circles, but also
have people who aren’t reconstructionists that work with them. As such,
there can be both context cultural specific magic work and more generic
magical workings that can be done with a given deity.
Pop Culture Spirits
This last categorization is not typically included in books on working
with spirits and will likely seem controversial to more conventional
occultists, but enough people practice pop culture magic and work with pop
culture spirits that they merit inclusion in a book on working with spirits.
Pop culture spirits are characters from modern media such as television,
videogames, books, and comic books that can be worked with. All though
these characters are “fictional” they are essentially real and can be worked
with, just as you would with other spirits, as we’ll explore in a later chapter
in this book.
Exercise
What types of spirits have you worked with and why? What types of
spirits haven’t you worked with and why? Are there certain types you find
easier to work with, and, if so, why do you think that is the case?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
The Importance of Keeping a Journal
Ideally you are already keeping a journal of some type for tracking your
magical workings, but this is especially important in working with spirits
because your spirit journal will help you keep track of the spirits you work
with so that you can note behaviors, characteristics, and other specific
information that is helpful in determining the overall effectiveness of your
relationship with your spirits. You also want to use the journal to keep track
of patterns with your spirit work, so you can notice if there are any
irregularities in that work.
One reason I keep a journal for spirit is also to keep track of the
questions that I ask spirits. Both with initial contact and subsequent
contacts, I will ask questions and record answers as a way of noting
patterns, but also as a way of verifying the spirit contact and that the spirit
is who it says it is. This may seem a little paranoid, but there can be
occasions where a spirit shows up and it’s not the spirit you were looking
for. By testing the spirit, you verify that it is the correct spirit. I have never
had a situation where the spirit is offended, so I do recommend doing your
due diligence and making sure that the spirit you’re calling on is really the
one showing up.
You can also do this by paying attention to the physical sensations you
feel when you work with a spirit. You will feel some type of sensation when
you’re working with a spirit because they communicate on an experiential
level with you. If the physical sensations aren’t the same each time, that’s a
clue that you’re working with a different spirit.
Conclusion
We work with spirits because we have a symbiotic relationship with
them. They are part of our existence and we are part of their existence.
When the situation is ideal, both spirits and humans benefit from working
with each other, but the situation isn’t always ideal. Sometimes humans try
to compel and coerce spirits into doing things for them, or alternately put
themselves in a position where the spirit is treated as all powerful. Neither
scenario is healthy.
When I think about why I work with spirits, it is because I want to have
a mutually beneficial relationship with the spirits I work with. I’ve chosen
the phrase walking with spirits purposely to describe that relationship,
because I prefer to work with spirits that operate from a place of equality
and symbiotic mutual benefit, as opposed to what I see as the traditional
narratives around working with spirits that occur in Western occultism. I
prefer to walk with the spirits, in companionship and friendship, as allies.
That is how I have always worked with spirits, and, as a result, I’ve never
had a truly bad experience with a spirit. This book and the rest of this series
is focused on showing how to create and maintain a co-equal relationship
with the spirits you work with.
We work with spirits because they enhance and improve our lives, and
they work with us for the same reason, but if the relationship starts off on
the wrong foot, it doesn’t serve either party. Let’s learn what such a
relationship looks like so we can avoid creating one like it.
Chapter 2: Traditional Western Practices
for Working with Spirits
In this chapter, we’re going to explore the traditional and contemporary
Western approaches for working with spirits in order to situate those
practices in context with what I will share in later in this book. It is useful
and important to understand the foundation of a given approach to working
magic, especially if you seek to change that approach, which I have done
At the same time, we’re going to explore the problematic aspects of
Western thought and practice which creates a false divide between the
spirits and ourselves. Understanding the nature of this divide and why it is
problematic is essential for us, in order to understand why we might want to
change our approach to working with spirits.
The Origins of Western Beliefs about Spirits
The origin of the problems in Western occult thought and theory when it
comes to working with spirits occurs in antiquity, with older cultures
creating categories for spirits for the purpose of determining which spirits
were “good” and “bad”, based on the cultural associations that accompanied
such categories. These associations were also likely based on experiences
with those spirits, and, as we’ll see later, there is some validity for using
categories with spirits, but we should also acknowledge the disadvantages
of categories and how artificial distinctions can cause us to disconnect with
what is being categorized.
We see this problem, as well, in a gradual detachment and disconnection
with the spirits that started longer ago than we think, given the tendency of
people to romanticize the past. For instance, if we look at Plato’s Phaedrus,
Socrates tells Phaedrus the following, “You must forgive me, dear friend.
I’m a lover of learning, and trees and open country won’t teach me
anything, whereas men in the towns do.” (Plato 1982, Line 230d). Implicit
in what Socrates says is a rejection of the natural world and everything in it,
including spirits, in favor of human knowledge and wisdom:
Socrates’ claim that trees have nothing to teach is a vivid
indicator of the extent to which the human senses in Athens had
already withdrawn from direct participation with the natural
landscape. To directly perceive any phenomenon is to enter into
relation with it, to feel oneself in a living interaction with another
being. To define the phenomenon as an inert object, to deny the
ability of a tree to inform and even instruct one’s awareness, is to
have turned one’s senses away from that phenomenon (Abram
1997 P. 117).
The rejection of a tree and what it could teach us may not seem all that
important, but, by extension, consider the real rejection. The real rejection
is of anything that is not human. That means plants, animals, the spirits, and
the world itself. This rejection of anything not human brings with it
assumptions and values that situate humans in a specific hierarchy that is
not favorable to anything else, and privileges human thought, perceptions
and language over any other form of communication.
This disconnect continues with the rise of the Christian religion and the
demonization of many spirits that aren’t based on the Christian religion.
Along with this demonization of spirits, there also occurred a demonization
of the body as sinful and dirty, with a resultant focus of people seeking
salvation in the afterlife, instead of enjoying this life. I note this
demonization of both the spirits and human body because I feel that the
demonization of both spirits and the body created a divide for Western
culture that it has never fully recovered from. In demonizing both the spirits
and the body, what the Christian religion truly accomplished was a
fundamental divorce of human connection with the spirits and the body. We
see this disconnection even today in how issues such as abortion and
women’s rights are addressed politically, but also in the distorted
relationships we have with our bodies and our sexuality, and of course in
the disconnection we have with the spirits.
We can’t make the blanket statement that Christianity demonized all
spirits, because that isn’t true. In some cases, existing spirits were co-opted
into the Christian mythos as saints, even as some Pagan traditions were also
co-opted into Christianity for the purposes of converting the locals to
Christian beliefs (Swain 2018). While this demonization of some spirits
doesn’t necessarily start with Christianity, the continuation of it has led to a
fundamental misunderstanding of the spirits, and the resultant coercive
relationships demonstrate the dysfunctional disconnect that many magicians
have with spirits. And, while it can be true that some spirits are adversarial,
we can’t make assumptions as to why there is an adversarial relationship,
because such assumptions usually carry cultural baggage that may not
accurately portray the reality of that adversarial relationship:
Even in trying to understand spirit ecologies and societies without
treating spirits poorly as a result, we also have to recognize that
most spirits are not human. Their standards and needs will not be
the same as ours. Their expectations will not be the same as ours.
We can’t judge them, or protect them, or make expectations for
them in the same way we do for ourselves. It does both them and
us a disservice (Swain 2018 P. 235).
We need to recognize that to better understand the spirits, we need to
engage them on a different level than is available in the majority of Western
magic practices. Otherwise the expectations and assumptions we bring to
those relationships will be loaded with cultural baggage and perspectives. If
a spirit is friendly or adversarial, we owe it to ourselves to discover the
underlying reasons for that friendliness and hostility, instead of
automatically perpetuating it by uncritically taking up existing magical
practices that come loaded with assumptions that should be questioned and
examined critically.
Exercise
Examine the relationship you have with spirits you are working with
currently. What assumptions are you bringing into those relationships, and
where did those assumptions originate from?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits
Cartesian Duality, Psychology, and Spirits
I linked the disconnect with spirits with the disconnect we have with the
human body. This disconnect with the human body isn’t solely due to
Christianity, though Christianity is mostly to blame. This divide of the spirit
from the body continued in the age of enlightenment with Rene Descarte,
who came up with Cartesian Dualism as a way of separating the mind from
the body. He came up with Cartesian Duality because of the politics of the
time, specifically as a way of assuaging the Catholic Church’s fears around
the rise of scientific thinking and rational thought. By arguing that the body
and mind were distinct from each other and that only God could connect
them, what Descartes hoped to demonstrate was that science would not
interfere in the spiritual authority of the church.
The legacy of this divide as it pertains to occult thought and perspective
can be found in the mechanistic models of the human bio computer and
eight circuit brain that many occultists have adopted (though Antero Alli’s
book the Eight-Circuit Brain does a lot to re-integrate the body into the
eight-circuit model.), and also in the attempts to categorize and separate
spirits from the world by portraying spirits as existing in another world or
on alternate planes of existence. For the purposes of this book, we’re
concerned with the latter problem, but we need to acknowledge the former
problem as well, because our bodies play a significant role in how we can
communicate and connect with the spirits.
We see this legacy play out as well in the adoption of psychological
terminology and concepts to describe interactions with spirits. For example,
in reading descriptions of spirit interactions in books by William G. Gray
and Ted Andrews, we see psychological terminology used such as
archetypes, consciousness, and subconsciousness (Andrews 1993a,
Andrews 1993b, Gray 1970, Gray 1980). While not all books on spirits
apply psychological terms to discuss or describe spirit interactions, and
while such terminology can have its uses for describing specific concepts, it
should also be noted how those same terms further reinforce the artificial
divide of spirit from the world and also objectify spirits. We should tread
carefully with the use of psychological terms to describe magic, lest we fall
into the mistake that all too often happens, where we say it’s all in our
heads. Astute readers of my work will note that I have sometimes used
psychological terminology as well. As I said it can be used, but it ought to
be used carefully, with a recognition of what is loaded into that terminology
in terms of meaning and context. This is doubly important when working
with spirits, because when we describe them in psychological terms, we
lose significant context and depth that psychology alone cannot describe or
explain.
Likewise, relying upon artificial divisions between the mind, body, and
spirit is not conducive to truly connecting with spirits. It leads instead to
overly complex and elaborate explanations that attempt to situate spirits
outside of the context of our lived and experienced lives.
Compartmentalizing spirits as something from a different plane of existence
doesn’t allow us to engage and be present with the spirits in the world, we
live in and reduces the effectiveness of our magical work. In contrast, if we
accept that spirits may co-exist alongside us, albeit in ways we may not
fully apprehend, then we can integrate embodiment into our work with the
spirits and discover how to use our experiential awareness to connect more
meaningfully with spirits and with our environment. At the same time, we
can come to a different relationship with the spirits that’s based on the
experiences we have with them, and on the observations, we make around
those experiences.
Exercise
How has dualistic thinking and/or psychological terminology influenced
your understanding/experience of spirits and your work with them?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits
The Subjective Nature of Astral Projection
One of the easiest places to start examining the problematic relationship
Western occultists have with spirits can be found on the overreliance of
working with spirits on the astral plane. I want to note that I’m not
completely rejecting the concept of the astral plane, or that magical work in
the astral plane can be useful. However, I do think there needs to be a
nuanced approach to such work which recognizes what I’m about to share
below.
The astral plane is typically depicted in terms of duality, of good vs. evil
or lower vs. higher planes of existence. It’s not surprising that dualism is
prevalent in how people conceive of the astral plane, when we consider the
cultural beliefs that many people have been raised with. Dualism is found in
many world mythologies and religious paths. The Christian religion has
heaven and hell, while shamanic beliefs have versions of the upper and
lower worlds, and Norse mythology provides Valhalla and Hel. Here’s an
example of dualism applied to the astral plane:
The astral realm is a spiritual reflection of the physical realm.
While much of the realm is identical to the physical realm, the
energy resonance of places is tangible in the astral. The infernal
realm is a distillation of the negativity and more evil or demonic
elements and denizens of reality, many others refer to this realm
as the lower astral. The celestial is a realm of ideals, positive
energy, and is the repository for most of humanities higher
spiritual aspirations. (Seth 2004, p. 19)
This perspective also maintains that the astral plane is a linear spatial
reality, attempting to “place” parts of the astral either lower or higher in
relation to each other. The problem with this assumption is that it’s
primarily based on a cultural perception of what the afterlife might be, with
the astral plane representing the gateway to other planes of existence. The
various levels and sublevels of the astral plane, where different influences
and polarities reside, seem to derive from the cultural imagination as
opposed to actual reality. And if anything, the astral planes seem divorced
from actual reality, a convenient place to dump spirits into, and separate
them out from our world, compartmentalizing our experiences with them
into something that is otherworldly and that we visit when convenient. By
situating spirits in the astral plane instead of recognizing their existence in
our world, we reinforce the false dichotomy of dualistic thinking.
Let us consider an alternate take on the astral plane, which makes it
useful and viable for our spiritual work, but also grounds that work in a way
that makes it productive, instead of fanciful. Perhaps the astral plane isn’t so
much a gateway to other planes of existence as it is to human imagination
and whatever cultural baggage, we bring with us. The various attributes
often associated with the astral plane, including the division of the upper
and lower planes, are good examples of this cultural baggage. Other
examples include the attribution of correspondences to the astral plan. For
instance, the upper plane is connected with guided meditation, lucid
dreaming, the common arrival place, and is perceived as a place of positive
energy, while the lower astral planes are places of negative desires,
vampiric forces, and nightmares (Nema 2003). The attributes that are listed
are ones we apply to the astral plane arbitrarily, much like how we apply
our humanocentric perspective to spirits. However, whether the astral plane
is seven layers or not, and whether it’s good on top and bad on bottom, is
something we need to question critically in order to determine what we can
and can’t get out of working with the astral, and whether working with the
astral really contributes to work with spirits, or detracts from that work.
When I initially experimented with astral projection, I did encounter the
lower and higher planes of the astral realm. But, after a time, I realized that
this was just a convenient paradigm created by humans to explain the astral
plane. The astral plane was expected to have seven layers and to be neatly
divided into realms of good or bad influences, so that’s what I saw. What I
initially didn’t question was whether this depiction of the astral plane was
accurate. I began to wonder how an alien or an animal or someone from a
different culture might experience the same place.
I began to realize that what really shapes a person’s given experience of
the astral plane isn’t just the consciousness and imagination of that persona,
but also the impact of that person’s cultural baggage, which in the case of
the majority of Western occultists is Christian beliefs. We may not be
Christians, but Christianity and its role in shaping Western culture plays a
significant role in how we experience and understand spirits, and anything
we connect to the spirits, such as the astral plane. The need to define the
astral plane and spirits as good and bad is reflective of the dualistic thinking
that we’ve inherited as part of our cultural heritage and baggage.
We can create/shape the astral realm we experience. We don’t have to
rely upon a dualistic model that divvies everything up as good or bad or has
multiple levels for that matter. The astral plane is a very flexible reality that
can, to a degree, be shaped by the consciousness of the practitioner. Other
people who practice astral projection have realized this. Sylvan Muldoon is
one such example. His approach to astral projection was rigorous and
scientific, as opposed to the new age perspective. He found that the astral
plane was different for different people, noting that everything in the astral
plane comes from the mind of the projector (Muldoon 1969). The dualistic
model espoused by so many people is just that—a model. Approaching
dualism as an objective representation simply doesn’t reflect the myriad
experiences that people have had. Rather, it only reflects the experiences
that some people have as a result of applying cultural expectations to the
astral plane, whether consciously or subconsciously. Muldoon aptly points
out,
A few mediums claim to have been projected into various planes
and sub-planes of the astral world, and give specific information
concerning each of the planes and sub-planes. But I have never
had a conscious projection when I was not upon the Earth-as
much so as I am in the flesh, yet intangible to all Earthly things.
Some tell me that I am not ‘developed’ enough; that if I were, I
should not be in such a condition, when projected. To hear some
mediums talk, one would think they were so perfect that, at death,
they would at once awaken on the Twentieth Plane! (1969, p.
288).
Whatever the objective reality of the astral plane is, we experience it
through our own subjective perceptions. We are responsible for creating our
own experience of the astral plane with our thoughts and preconceived
notions about reality in general. We need to examine the models we apply
to understand how our own motivations and fears are projected into our
experience of the astral plane. We also need to recognize that imagination
plays a role in shaping the experience of the astral plane. What you imagine
takes form in the astral, which further reinforces its subjective nature.
Robert Bruce points out:
Astral planes are complex, multilayered, energetically generated
dimensional environments with variable perception-based
aspects...The way the astral planes and their contents are
perceived, experienced, and remembered can be extremely
variable, depending greatly on the projector’s level of energetic
activity at the time of the projection, and on the state of their
belief system, their level of consciousness at the time of
projection, and the state of their base level of consciousness.
(1999, p. 366)
The various paradigms and beliefs created in the astral plane are real for
the people who experience and accept them as real, albeit a subjective
reality based on what those people bring to their astral projection work.
Accordingly, we should question if the astral plane is really made up of
seven planes or twenty, or if the arbitrary determination that one level is
good and another is bad is really viable, or if we’re just bringing all of that
with us when we astral project. We should also question whether we even
need to work with the astral plane in order to work with spirits.
My own experiences with astral projection changed once I started
questioning the overall experience and what I was bringing into it. I’ve
come to conclusion that the astral plane is comprised of imagination and
can be a place to meet spirits but is not essential for doing work with spirits.
I use the astral plane still, but for a very specific work that doesn’t entail
connecting with spirits. I instead prefer to do any spirit work in the material
world, embedding that work into everyday reality as a way of more fully
integrating spirit with the world we live in. But I want to be clear: That’s
my approach. If you want to use astral projection for the purposes of
communicating, you can do that. I just think it’s worthwhile to consider the
subjective aspects that accompany astral work.
Exercise
What role does astral projection play in your work with spirits?
Compare and contrast your spirit work with astral projection versus doing
the same work with your body. Do you notice any differences?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits
The Hierarchical Categorization of Spirits
One aspect of Western culture that is useful in some ways, and in other
ways is problematic, is the tendency to categorize and define things. It’s
useful as a way of trying to understand the world, but it’s problematic
because that same understanding is rooted in a need to control the world.
And this same problem is extended when we recognize how this need to
categorize shows up in our relationships with spirits.
If we look at the root of Western categorization, then we need to
recognize the role of Plato, Aristotle and other Greek rhetoricians. The need
to define is rooted in the Greek rhetoric from antiquity. I’ve covered the
power of definitions in other books (See my books The Magic of Writing
and Magical Identity.), but I mention it here specifically because the
downside of categorization reveals itself in occultism with the tendency to
romanticize older definitions and hierarchies because they’re old and this is
somehow deemed as better than trying to critically explore the validity of
the definitions, categories, and hierarchies we’ve inherited. The best
evidence of that can be seen in how spirits are categorized.
If you look at how spirits are categorized in Western occultism, what do
you see? A false division of spirits and the need to objectify and define
spirits based on how “good” or “evil” those spirits seem to be. The result is
that we have this hierarchy of angels, then planetary spirits, then
elementals, faeries, and nature spirits, and then demons rounding out the
hierarchy, and that same hierarchy denotes how “good” or “evil” these
spirits may be. We need to be wary of the Judeo-Christian influence on
Western magical practices and recognize it for what it is: cultural and
religious baggage that obscures and obfuscates the relationships we could
have with spirits.
Of course, what should also be noted is that these various types of
spirits are also categorized according to the function/purpose that they
fulfill. An elemental spirit, for example, is focused on working within the
specific element it mediates, while a demon or angel will likewise be
focused on their specific sphere of activity. We see the same functional
categorization at work with deities from different cultures, where the main
focus or influence of a given deity is focused on the function that deity
performs. This functional categorization is very useful, in a way, because it
allows us to denote what a given spirit does, what influences it draws on,
and what we can expect from it, if we choose to work with it. For instance,
we “know” that if we work with an angel it’s seemingly going to be focused
on constructive tasks, because of the function around order, whereas a
demon, in contrast, is more chaotic because they’re focused on breaking
things down (Swain 2018).
This categorization of spirits is a sacred cow for Western occultists. It
conveniently provides a way to organize the spirits, but that convenience is
problematic because it causes us to make assumptions about the nature of
the spirits we work with. So, what’s the solution then? Should we recategorize spirits? I don’t think so and here’s why:
Magicians often try to create sweeping classifications which
include spirits from various systems with different cosmologies.
These methods of classification often fail because they don’t
account for things outside a system not being able to fit into that
system, and they ignore that even in related systems the theology
and cosmology changes over time. A lot of the confusion around
hierarchies and the nature of spirits and what they do comes down
to this issue (Swain 2018 P. 184).
Swain makes an excellent point, and we see this mistake made over and
over again in Paganism and in Western occultism, where people will try to
cherry pick the aspects of a given spirit they want to work with without
considering the reality of the spirit. For example, I recall a person who
worked with the goddess Kali, but only in a very specific context, where
she tried to ignore other aspects of Kali. Those other aspects ended up
showing up in that’s person life but were unrecognized because the person
didn’t want to deal with the entirety of Kali.
This cherry picking extends to the tendency to create a mixed, eclectic
pantheon of spirits from different traditions and cultural practices, taking
them out of the original context, and trying to create something new that
usually doesn’t work all that well because it’s not well thought out,
executed, and because the practitioner hasn’t done the necessary research
and due diligence that’s needed if you decide to work with a spirit. The
result is a troubling tendency to bring together spirits that shouldn’t be
worked with together and often results in a lot of chaos for the practitioner.
So, if we shouldn’t come up with our own classifications, and yet the
ones available to us are problematic, what do we do? That’s a good question
to ask and my answer is that we should critically question the classification
of a given spirit and ask ourselves what assumptions are built into that
classification that may not be entirely true. Instead of just pulling out a
dictionary or grimoire of spirits and uncritically going along with what’s
shared in that dictionary or grimoire, we should ask ourselves if what is
shared is really accurate, or if there is cultural and subjective biases at work
that may cause us to make assumptions about the information presented.
And we should question the hierarchical aspects of the categorizations
we’re presented with and any assumptions that go into that hierarchy.
By questioning these categorizations critically, we can go into a
relationship with a spirit with an open perspective that allows us to engage
the spirit based on the actual experiences we have with that spirit. This
doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take pre-cautions or recognize that some or even
all of the information about a given spirit is accurate, but what it does mean
is that we balance the available information on a spirit against the
experiences we have with that spirit, and use the resultant understanding to
form the basis of our relationship with a spirit.
Exercise
How much of a role does categorization play in your workings and
relationships with spirits? What are the advantages and disadvantages of
such categorization?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
The Problem of Humanocentric Anthropomorphism
Another challenge we face with working with spirits is the tendency
humans have to anthropomorphize spirits. In other words, humans seek to
humanize the spirits and their interactions with them so that the
relationships occur on human terms. What does this look like?
Let’s start first with the expectation that the spirit will appear in a form
we can relate to and speak in the native tongue we use. This
anthropomorphization of spirits serves our own interests, because it ensures
that whatever communication occurs happens in way that is convenient and
easy for us but may ignore subtleties of the experience because the
communication is filtered into human terms.
While in fairness it can be said that some spirits are willing to take on a
form that we can relate to and communicate with us in the language of our
choice, the expectation I see in contemporary and older practices around
spirit work is that ALL spirits will do this. Add to this the fact we don’t try
to meet the spirits halfway or discover if there are alternate methods and
means of communicating with spirits, and what we are stuck with is a
paradigm that hasn’t changed much, because we’re content to leave it the
way it is because it’s convenient for us.
Part of this particular problem is that people also want spirits to
physically manifest and communicate with them in order to prove that the
spirits exist and that magic works, and that the person doing the work is a
kickass magician that everyone should bow to in reverence. The amount of
ego wrapped up in having spirits connect and communicate with us in the
way that’s easiest and most convenient to us creates an unequal power
dynamic that is primarily focused around human interests, and echoes the
overall relationship we have with our environment, the physical life we cohabit with, and the world we live (Abram 1997, Abram 2010). We want
everything to be on our terms, and when it isn’t on our terms we try to find
a way to make that happen instead of learning how to let go of our need of
control and learn to trust the relationship that could happen and could
mutually empower everyone.
However, by trying to make the connection with spirits happen on our
terms, we lose something essential in that interaction, and the more we
grasp for it, the further way it becomes because our grasping of that
connection with the spirits is always an attempt to situate spirits in a place
of objectification, either in some otherworldly dimension or in our heads:
For it is likely that the ‘inner world’ of our Western psychological
experience, like the supernatural heaven of Christian belief,
originates in the loss of our ancestral reciprocity with the animate
earth. When the animate powers that surround us are suddenly
construed as having less significance than ourselves, when the
generative earth is abruptly defined as a determinate object
devoid of its own sensations and feelings, then the sense of a wild
and multiplicitous otherness (in relation to which human
existence has always oriented itself) must migrate, either into a
supersensory heaven beyond the natural world, or else into the
human skull itself – the only allowable refuge, in this world, for
what is ineffable and unfathomable. (Abram 1997 P. 10)
The anthropomorphization of spirits is an objectification of them that
causes us to lose awareness of the spirits in our world. We tell ourselves
that they’re in our heads, or place them on some other plane of existence,
all to avoid the reality that the spirits are here and that they are with us,
waiting for us to listen and have a relationship with them that isn’t based on
objectifying them.
Exercise
What expectations do you have around how spirits should show up in
your life? How do those expectations shape your interactions with spirits?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits
The Problem with Traditional Approaches to Spirit Work
The traditional Western approach to working with spirits is one of
coercion. The magician summons a spirit and compels it to achieve results
for them, through a coercive relationship with that spirit. The spirit is
threatened into working for the magician, either in the form of other spirits
being called on to enforce the magician’s authority, or through harming the
spirit (Lisiewski 2004, Swain 2018). The problem with this approach is that
it’s not one built on a model of collaboration and cooperation, but rather
built on imposing our will on the spirit in order to get things we want. This
perpetuates the humanocentric perspective that puts self-gratification and
ego over anything else. However, it is possible to work with spirits and get
results without having to take such an approach. Before we explore that,
let’s dig further into the problems that occur when we take a coercive
approach to working with spirits.
The first question we need to ask is why someone would even take an
approach of coercing spirits. One reason might be because the spirit a
person wants to work with is one that is antithetical to human life, i.e., a
spirit that might be considered because of its nature and function (Gray
1980). In such a case, when dealing with a hostile spirit where you want
something from it, it might seem like a good idea to force to do something
for you. However, the problem that can occur is if that spirit breaks free of
whatever binding and coercion, you’re applying to it, it might take
exception to what you’ve done and attack you. For instance, I’ve heard
several anecdotes where people worked with spirits and compelled them to
take specific actions for them, and then lost control of the spirit and had
problems occur in their lives. Such an approach doesn’t seem wise to take.
For that matter, one might question the sanity of a person working with a
spirit that is hostile.
What needs to be remembered is that a given spirit has specific
functions that it fulfills. A spirit that seems inherently hostile may not
actually be hostile, beyond the fact that you’re interfering with its function.
In such cases, it’s useful to consider that it might better to find different
spirits to work with or find a way to relate to that spirit within its actual
function. For instance, if I were to work with a spirit that has specific
functions around destruction, then I would only work with that spirit in
relationship to that function, and in a way that provided mutual benefit to
both of us. Admittedly, my own tendency with spirits is to steer clear of
working with anything that’s inimical to my life, because it has no interest
in keeping me alive and may at some point turn on me because that it’s
nature.
Let’s look at the actual work that can occur when we take a coercive
approach to working with spirits. BJ Swain shares the following about the
acts of exorcism and conjuration,
Exorcism and conjuration are specifically forms of magic in
which we use a divine power, typically this power is applied
through a name or sign of God, or of some god or angel or spirit
who would command, influence, or power over the spirit being
conjured. So when a spirit is called in a conjuration we use a
name, or series of names, of God to compel the spirit to appear.
Then we use the power of that name and its authority and ability
to enforce an agreement we make with the spirit. This agreement
made under the authority of a name or sign of divine power is the
binding of the spirit. (2018, P. 19).
What is shared here strikes me as very Christian oriented, and this
shouldn’t surprise us because the methods described here are what you
typically find in the Solomonic grimoires for spirits. The problem with this
approach is that you’re essentially compelling and coercing a spirit to
appear before you by using other spirits (typically Angels), and/or the
divine names of God, in order to force those spirits to obey. Swain goes on
to note that if a spirit refuses to appear, that pain can be inflicted on the
spirit by the divine authority you’re drawing upon. As a curious aside, he
also mentions that if the spirit chooses to work with the magician, this work
becomes part of the path of redemption for the spirit (Swain 2018). Frater
Barrabbas notes something similar yet distinctly different enough that it
warrants its own note: “Spirits gain a greater focus by being named and
summoned and that helps them to evolve, which is just like people evolving
when they gain knowledge through experience...This means that the
interaction between human beings and spirits is very important for their
combined growth and benefit. So, spirits, when properly summoned, will
appear and interact with humans because it benefits them” (2017 P. 50). If,
in fact, we are benefitting spirits by working with them, then this can be a
good thing. Certainly, mutual benefit sounds better than redemption,
especially if the spirit is evolving in some form or manner because of the
interaction it is having with humans. But we have to question the
assumption that any spirit is evolving or benefitting as a result of working
for us, especially if we seem to be getting the better end of the bargain. Do
spirits even need to evolve, and what does evolution mean to them? What
are the benefits the spirits are really getting from contact with us, and can
we even hope to understand those benefits when we’re looking at the
arrangement from a humanocentric perspective?
I ask these questions because it allows us to critically evaluate the
assumptions we bring into our relationships with the spirits. We should
question those assumptions carefully, because they could be faulty, and
building any relationship on faulty assumptions can’t harm us far more than
we think, because when the truth of that relationship is revealed, what it
demonstrates is how we didn’t do our due diligence and ask the questions
we should’ve asked.
The flipside of classifying and naming spirits is that it gives humans
control over those spirits, “This classifying and naming was also a means
for humans to gain power. It helped establish boundaries and control over
that which had been indeterminate and indefinable” (Andrews 1993b P. 14).
When we take the ineffable and name it, we transform it into something that
is defined and manifested by the words we use. This is powerful magic, and
the benefit it provides humans is that it makes the spirits so classified and
named into something that is defined and delineated in human terms, and
subjective to human biases. In the Magic of Writing, I argue for taking a
different approach to naming spirits for that very reason.
William G. Gray further explains the power built into the act of naming
when he shares, “The purpose behind the principle of naming anyone or
anything is to direct and hold the Energy of Consciousness in some
particular way at some especial point or portion of existence” (1970 P. 48).
Essentially, a name locks a spirit into a specific state of being and identity
from which it cannot change, because of how the name is used to constrain
it to appear in a specific way. The spirit is limited by the name and the
definition associated with that name. This certainly benefits humans, but it
is arguable as to HOW it benefits spirits.
The arrogance of the Solomonic approach to working with spirits
cannot be understated. A magician is forcing a spirit to appear, causing it
pain if it doesn’t, whilst using other spirits and perhaps even supposed
divine authority in order to get something s/he wants. Oh, and if the spirit is
really good, it might even be redeemed! There has to be a better way to
work with a spirit than taking such an approach, because when such an
approach is taken what we are really doing is objectifying the spirit and
harming the connection we have with spirits in general, because we are
demonstrating that we only care about what they can do for us instead of
actually building a truly collaborative and cooperative relationship with
them.
Frater Barrabbas has a different take on what happens, when a spirit is
worked with in this way,
We also need to keep in mind that the actions of constraining,
binding, and releasing are not to be mistaken for any kind of
aggressive hostility or coercion toward the target spirit. These
three steps – constraining, binding, and releasing – represent the
simple fact that the spirit must be formally summoned and
brought to a specific focal point in order for it to manifest. The
spirit is then fixed to a purposeful task (binding) and then released
so that it might perform that task once the evocation rite is
completed (2017, P. 67).
While Frater Barrabbas makes an important point about creating a
specific focal point for the spirit to manifest, the question I’m still left with
is this: Is there a better way to work with spirits that doesn’t involve
constraining and binding them, which is a form of coercion no matter how
you present it? This is just one of the questions this book aims to answer
and it is an important one, because if we can come up with a better
approach to working with a spirit that doesn’t involve some form of
compulsion, I know we can not only get better results, but develop a closer
connection and relationship to the spirits that we work with. And the key
phrase here is, “Work with.” We should not compel spirits to work FOR us.
Rather we should ask if they are willing to work WITH us. And we should
also ask how they really benefit from interacting with us, instead of
assuming we know how they benefit.
Exercise
What is your relationship with the spirits? How have you worked with
them? What are the pros and cons of your approach to working with them?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
I’ve come down hard on traditional approaches to spirit work. The
reason is because as with any other kind of tradition, it is worth critically
looking at the tradition and asking if it can be revised. While some people
will disagree with such a stance, the worst that can happen is that we get
answers that verify why we should stick with a particular practice. The best
that can happen is that we not only change the practice, but also ourselves.
Chapter 3: Invocation and Evocation
Unpacked
In the previous chapter, I’ve laid out what I consider to be problematic
about contemporary approaches to working with spirits. I’ve also shared
some important questions that are worth asking, but we still don’t have
answers for those questions as of yet. In this chapter we’re going to explore
the methodologies of invocation and evocation, because these are the
primary practices magicians use in order to interact with spirits. We need to
understand these practices in depth in order to appreciate how the
performance of them may contribute to the problem outlined above or
provide possible solutions for us.
Invocation Unpacked
Invocation is traditionally treated within magical workings as a process
where you call a god/goddess or other entity into you. Donald Michael
Kraig defines invocation as, “The magickal act wherein you allow your
body to be temporarily shared by another entity” (1997, p. 377). When you
invoke an entity, you invite it into yourself. Depending on how strict you
are with the invocation, the entity can even use your body as a medium or
can simply be in the ritual to share its consciousness with yours. An
invocation allows it to “ride” in your body, though generally not to the point
of being ridden (possessed) in the Voodoo paradigm, or similar cases of
trance possession. Another definition of invocation is William G. Gray’s
definition, where he argues that invocation involves calling inwardly. This
means internalizing the invocatory call to mesh the person’s internal sense
of self with the force they are invoking. In other words, an invocation is
successful when you can align your internal reality with the reality of the
entity you seek to invoke. When that alignment occurs, the connection is
made, and the invocation successfully occurs. Gray expresses this in further
detail when he says, “First MEET them, second MEDITATE them, and
thirdly MEDIATE them. Another way of putting this would be IMPACT,
INTAKE, OUTPUT” (Gray 1980 P. 46). With invocation you meet the
spirits, meditate with them (merging and embodying their identity with your
own), and then mediate them, which expresses this relationship to the world
around you, while simultaneously further impressing the embodiment of the
entity upon yourself. This definition of invocation is one that closely
resonates with how I approach invocation, namely using it as a way of
connecting or strengthening existing connections between myself and
others, be they entities, godforms, or other people.
I also find Bardon’s energy impregnation technique helpful with
invocation. With each inhalation of breath, vital energy is absorbed and then
exhaled and returned (Bardon 2001a). A magician can isolate the particular
frequency of the spirit they are invoking and use that frequency to help
them invoke the spirit, by using the breathing technique to draw in that
specific energy and make it part of themselves. Each breath in and out
strengthens the connection to the spirit and makes the invocation easier to
accomplish. Each spirit has its own identity or energy signature, so you
would do the pore breathing technique, where you’re breathing that energy
into your finger, then your hand, arm, etc., as a way of connecting with the
spirit and embodying it within you.
The ultimate idea of an invocation is to build up a resonance of energy
between yourself and what is invoked so that you not only channel the spirit
you’re calling but embody the identity of that spirit. Invocation is a
synthesis or synchronization of the person and the entity being invoked, so
that the energy created by the connection is a melding of the caller and the
called. Gray notes that in a group situation the invocation not only affects
the invoker but is linked to the other people who are doing the work with
that person. In other words, those people are also drawn into that invocation
and to a lesser degree invoke the entity into themselves in order to relate to
it and the work it’s doing through the invoker (Gray 1980). It’s not just a
single person doing the invocation, but ideally the group of people. A truly
effective invocation creates a synthesis of identity between all the
participants and the entities called. The spoken name of the spirit is pure
vibration and energy, which penetrates through time and space to establish
and strengthen the connection with the spirit and sets up an environment
within the practitioner that makes the practitioner receptive to the spirit
(Gray 1980, Versluis 1986).
When a person is doing an invocation, if they hit the right vibration
(vibrato) they can actually synchronize their mind to the theta wave state of
the brain. This altered state of mind is a liminal zone between waking and
sleeping, and as such is devoid of the censorship the subconscious mind
would exercise over the conscious mind: “The waking dreamer...sometimes
seems to have access to all the wells of memory and creation, perhaps to
some sort of group consciousness” (Leonard 2006, p. 16). This access is
perfect for invocation workings because it’s an optimal opening of the
identity of the magician to the spirit and vice versa. The invocation is a
harmonization of the identity of the magician and the spirit, through the use
of sound and vibration, which creates a sympathetic resonance between the
respective identities of the spirit and the person.
Exercise
What are your experiences with invocation? When you do an invocation
how does accessing the spirit that way feel? What benefits do you get out of
invocation and what benefits do you think the spirit gets?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Traditional and Modern Evocation Unpacked
Evocation is traditionally thought of as a pursuit that involves elaborate
rituals, chalk diagrams and entities summoned from another plane of
existence that can harm you if the appropriate safeguards aren’t taken. It
also involves the outward manifestation of the entity, as opposed to
invocation, bringing the entity into you. Donald Michael Kraig defines
evocation as: “Its purpose [he’s referring to evocation] is to allow you to
communicate with other intelligences, powers, or entities which do not exist
on our physical plane” (1997, p. 376). While communication is one goal of
evocation, there are also other goals. In this section, we’ll explore
traditional and contemporary approaches to evocation as well as the various
uses that evocation is put to.
Traditional Evocation
It’s more accurate to call traditional evocation “medieval evocation”
because the majority of grimoires, and the overall approach, come from the
medieval time period and may or may not be derived from more ancient
practices. Traditional evocation usually involves calling upon daimons and
spirits in order to acquire information, get aid in connecting with spirits,
order them to do tasks, or work with the realm of influence the spirits
happened to represent. Most, if not all, of the entities dealt with have
specific spheres of influence and tasks (or, if you will, specific forms of
media) they could help magicians with. As an example, the goetic daimon
Ronove is skilled in rhetoric and linguistic skills. A magician would evoke
Ronove in order to acquire these skills or improve upon them, or to get
Ronove to influence/persuade people that listen to the magician in favour of
what the magician argued.
To summon a spirit, the magician needs to know the sigil or seal of the
spirit, the name of the spirit and also the appearance of the entity: “In Taoist
magic, as in European, the key is to be familiar with the forms and features,
the characteristics of that daimon, or celestial being, for without that
familiarity, one cannot summon – or visualize it” (Versluis 1986, p. 27).
Sigil, in this context, is a seal or symbol that represents the spirit and can be
used to call it. The magician uses the characteristics and form of the spirit in
conjunction with the sigil/seal and name to summon it. Knowing all of this
information is important in order to determine if the spirit called forth is
really the spirit you want. The main reason you want to know the name of
the spirit is because then it can be called forth, “An unnamed spirit is
forever an unknown spirit; so determining its name is critically important,
for without a name, a spirit cannot be summoned [italics are his]”
(Barrabbas 2017 P. 47). Naming the spirit gives you power over the spirit
because the name calls forth its power.
The sigil/seal of the sigil is equally important. Bardon lists three types
of seals the magician can use for evocation: traditional, universal, and
personal. The traditional seals come from the entities themselves, and the
magician must be able to project himself in their realm in order to get this
seal. The universal seals, found in the grimoire, represent the attributes,
quality, and sphere of activity for the entity summoned and it must react to
the seal. The personal seals are ones made by the magician that must be
accepted by the entities being worked with (Bardon 2001b). I prefer the last
approach for reasons I’ll explain in more detail.
The sigil/seal is placed into the magic triangle, which acts as a gateway
to the home plane of the entity (Bardon 2001b, Barrabbas 2017). The
magician also constructs a magical circle that can be used to protect
themselves from the entity called forth. The protection is needed because
the spirit is being summoned against its will and is usually constrained and
coerced to do as the magician commands. The magician may also call on
other spirits to help compel the spirit into obedience or call on an
intermediary spirit to introduce the magician to other spirits (Swain 2018).
The other detail that needs to be attended to is the creation of a
sustainable atmosphere for the entity. One reason Bardon lists for the
magician to create the atmosphere, as opposed to letting the entity generate
it, is that if the entity generates the atmosphere, it may put the magician
entirely under the spirit’s influence (Bardon 2001b). A second reason is that
most spirits apparently can’t exist in this plane of reality without some
medium to channel them, though as we’ll see later, I’ll argue against this
claim in further depth. Incense is used in the traditional approach because it
can embody the plane of existence the entity is in. The entity uses the
smoke to assume a shape for the magician to interact with. We can think of
the incense smoke as a medium which provides both smell and a material
for forming an appearance.
Traditional evocation involves ceremonial magic, which incorporates
lots of props and tools. The dynamic behind using these tools is best
summed up by Bardon: “When one directs his attention to a particular
instrument, this triggers in the consciousness the particular ability or power
symbolized by that particular instrument. Once a magician takes one or
another magical instrument into his hand during the evocation, he
immediately comes into contact with what this instrument symbolizes”
(Bardon 2001b, p. 20). The ceremonial tools are mainly meant to help the
magician reach a state of mind that allows him/her to successfully work the
magic. As each tool represents a specific trigger in the consciousness, the
activation of each trigger pushes the magician toward the ideal state of
consciousness and empowerment that allows them to do the evocation
(Gray 1980).
Lisiewski adds another important caveat to traditional evocation when
he says, “The most important views of evocation or any magical act are
those internal views held by the practitioner...the unconscious beliefs and
conscious expectations of the practitioner will combine to have a direct
bearing on the extent to which the promises of the Grimoires are fulfilled
[italics are his]” (2004, p.86). In other words, the mindset of the magician,
or the subjective synthesis, as Lisiewski calls it, is a vital factor for the
success of evocations. Without a proper mindset the success of any act of
magic will be sabotaged by the magician, creating a slingshot effect.
Lisiewski’s slingshot effect is a result of an inadequate subjective synthesis.
The achievement of an altered state of mind can leave the practitioner
vulnerable if there is any doubt in the subjective synthesis (Lisiewski 2004).
I fully agree with Lisiewski that the beliefs and expectations of a magician
determine whether or not a given act of magic is successful. The use of
ceremonial tools and other props comes second to the internal reality the
magician is working with, though these tools serve to align and direct the
mind toward the projected goal.
Traditional evocation makes the assumption that the spirit you evoke
will be hostile and that you will have to have a battle of wills where you
subdue the spirit, oftentimes with the help of other spirits that you call on to
enforce your authority (Barrabbas 2017, Lisiewski 2004, Swain 2018).
Because this assumption is written into traditional evocation, it becomes a
reality almost every time you call up a spirit. But is this battle of wills
necessary? Is the assumption we’re making accurate, or are we just creating
a situation that truly doesn’t have to exist? My answer is that such a battle
of wills is only necessary if that’s what you are bringing into the
relationship. There is an approach that doesn’t have to involve coercion and
compulsion to achieve a working relationship with a spirit and get results.
What’s written above is an explanation of the fundamental dynamics of
how traditional evocation works. It provides an essential grounding in the
roots of evocation, though it’s not necessary to use this approach for every
evocation you do. In fact, I rarely use traditional evocation or the
ceremonial tools. I dislike the concept of forcing entities to do my will, as I
think that such constraints can only come back to haunt the magician down
the line. I’ve mainly used this paradigm of evocation to understand the roots
of where evocation came from. Aside from the issue I have with
constraining an entity to do something against its will, I also find that one of
the reasons traditional evocation doesn’t work for me is that it involves
having me be afraid of the entity. Fear is a saboteur, because it raises doubts
in the mind and undermines the working. If you have to compel and coerce
a spirit to do a task, then I think you have to consider there is an element of
fear at work in the use of compulsion and coercion.
Lisiewski argues that any other approach to evocation is New Age and
doesn’t work nearly as well as traditional evocation (if it works at all), but I
disagree with his assessment (2004). I agree with him that the forced
visualizations and artificial emotional states of contemporary ceremonial
magic tend to distract the practitioner from the task of directing the energy
that’s brought about by the actual ritual and the internal reality of the
magician. But I’d extend his argument further and say that the majority of
ceremonial devices and props are unneeded, provided the magician has a
solid understanding of what they are doing and what forces, internal and
external, they are working with. I don’t visualize a rod when I do
evocations, but I can call up the internal presence a rod represents as long as
I know what function that presence has in the working I’m doing (Gray
1980).
An alternate approach you can take, if you want to modernize your
ceremonial props, is to use today’s technology for your toolset. A T.V.
remote control can make for an excellent wand for evocation, particularly if
you choose to use the television as the mirror for summoning the entity.
Unplug the cable (if you have it) and then push the numbers on the remote
that correspond to the entity’s name. Press enter when you’re finished and
summon the entity into a channel on your television. You can also use a
Nintendo Wii for the same purpose. Unlike other video game platforms, the
Wii is built to be more interactive, to the point that people can use it as a
wand, or sword, or to mimic specific actions. If Nintendo ever produces a
way for people to create games using their Wii, it would be an excellent
opportunity to create a ritual space for evocations. Even if that doesn’t
occur, you can still use the Wii as a wand or similar tool for evocation
purposes.
Evocation, like other techniques of magic, is customizable to a person’s
preferences, provided that person isn’t deluding themselves. I’ve used
modern media, non-traditional approaches to evocation very successfully,
right up to evoking a partner into my life (which is as physical a result as
you can get!). I occasionally use traditional tools because they can serve to
aid and guide my consciousness to the state I need to be in to make the
magic work, but I also find that the customization of my techniques firms
up the subjective synthesis I’m working with. Some magicians may find
that traditional evocation works for them. It may mirror the internal reality
and perceptions they have of dealing with entities, and so be needed in
order to deal with the beings they work with. But just because this approach
works for some doesn’t mean it works for everyone. What we bring to the
magical working matters as much as the actual work. If we understand how
a magical act ought to work, then we should be able to get it to work
regardless of whether our technique is traditional or modern.
Exercise
What are your experiences with traditional and modern approaches to
evocation? Which approaches/practices get better results for you and why
do you think that is?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Problems with Psychological Evocation
Psychological evocation argues that the spirits that are worked with are
wholly summoned from the subconscious mind of the magician, “More
modern developments in sorcerous thinking hold that the human personality
is a cluster of spirits more or less under the control of a central column of
awareness and will” (Mace 1996, p. 10). For instance, some magicians
would argue that the goetic daimons are just psychological aspects of the
mind that we’ve given a different figure and form so that we can work with
them. By personifying these aspects as daimons we give them a medium to
communicate with, as well as a way for us to gain power over them. All of
the spirits are related to that central column of awareness and will, i.e. the
ego of the person.
In the psychological paradigm, ceremonial magic might be used, but
there are also other techniques: “The act of writing is a magickal act of
evocation. Evocation is the art and science of summoning spirits; in this
case the spirits are elements arising from the author’s subconscious mind”
(Packwood 2004, p. 48). The writer or artist utilizes the media of writing,
paint, or whatever form of expression is available to provide the
psychological aspect a physical form by which it can be worked with. For
example, the medium of clay could be sculpted to create a statue that
represents an aspect of yourself. You could also write a story and evoke the
character to represent some part of yourself that you want to work with
(Ellwood 2020). However, while these examples may be evocations of an
aspect of yourself, it’s not the same as evoking a spirit and really shouldn’t
be treated as such. A better term for it is aspecting, which has its uses in our
magical work, but not is the same as working with spirits.
Packwood also refers to these entities as memes, thought viruses that
perpetuate themselves in the subconscious mind (Packwood 2004). For a
thorough analysis of my approach to memes and their role in magic see my
book Inner Alchemy. The meme transmits a specific concept to a person and
also seeks to replicate itself as much as possible. Commercials are the most
obvious forms of memes that re-present a company as well as the services
of the company in a concrete form. The problem with the meme is that the
technique relies far too much on other people to sustain its existence. The
meme is only meaningful if people can understand it. Furthermore, the real
power of the meme can only occur when people respond to it and evoke it
into their behavior (for instance going out and buying fast food after seeing
a fast food commercial). We can use a meme as a method of evocation, if
we’re integrating a spirit’s name or sigil into the meme, or if the meme
serves as the housing for a created magical entity, but the meme in and of
itself isn’t so much a spirit as it is a viral idea that is being worked
I don’t agree with the psychological paradigm for evocation. I think that
a magician can work with aspects of themselves and can even do evocations
of those aspects. I also think that arguing that every entity is a psychological
aspect of you is solipsistic and quite problematic because it can lead to
delusions. Many contemporary magicians, when confronted with a
phenomenon that can’t be explained in terms of psychology, get freaked out
because they suddenly realize the universe is much larger than they thought.
A psychological view of magic is unreliable because it attempts to explain
everything in psychological terms that may not be applicable to the
situation and in the process ends up creating a rather cynical perspective of
magic. There’s no mystery when you think you have everything figured out
(at least until the mystery comes along and bites you in the ass). In addition,
the purely psychological approach is concerned more with visualization and
generating artificial states of emotion as a way of demonstrating the effects
of evocation. However, these effects are more or less internal and don’t
adequately represent what evocation is.
I would take up traditional evocation before I utilized psychological
evocation in dealing with spirits. I do use painting and writing and other
artistic mediums for my evocations, but I also know that I’m working with
a spirit that is just as real as I am. See my book The Magic of Art for
examples of art used for evocation purposes. The psychological approach
denies such an existence in favor of making it into either a psychological or
symbolic aspect (i.e. the entity is just a symbolic representation of the
attributes it represents).
Exercise
Have you applied the psychological approach to working with spirits to
your magical practice? If so, what have you noticed about using that
methodology and practice to get results?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
In this chapter and the previous we’ve thoroughly explored the
traditional and modern approaches to working with spirits. Now we’re
going to explore an alternate approach that is based on embodying your
connection with the spirits and on using respect to make the connection
with spirits and deepen the relationship you have with them.
Chapter Four: Experiential Embodiment
and Spirit Work
I’ve shared the traditional Western approaches to working with spirits and
what I find problematic about them. But even if we find such practices
problematic, we are left with a challenge of sorts. How do we discover or
find or create an alternate approach to working with spirits that doesn’t
involve the coercion and compulsion that seems to be rampant through the
traditional Western approaches? For people like myself, this leaves us in a
quandary. What are we to do when we want to build relationships with
spirits, but we don’t want to use the existing methodologies that are
available to us?
We could look outside Western occultism at indigenous practices with
spirits, such as occurs in shamanic practices, but then we run the risk of
cultural appropriation. We are culturally appropriating practices that don’t
belong to us and using them outside of the original context, and without
consent or respect for the indigenous people. As someone who started
practicing magic in the 1990’s (long before cultural appropriation began to
be discussed in depth), I have likely engaged in some form of cultural
appropriation. Since becoming aware of cultural appropriation I’ve
carefully examined my own spiritual practices and asked some hard
questions, because the last thing I want to do is emulate spiritual practices
that don’t belong to me. I have stopped using practices that I used when I
first started practicing, because I now know that doing those practices is a
form of cultural appropriation.
With some cultures there is cultural sharing. Practices such as Buddhist
meditation, Tibetan meditation and Taoist meditation have been shared with
the rest of the world as a conscious choice on the part of indigenous people
choosing to share those practices. I can explore and integrate their practices
with spirits without engaging in cultural appropriation, but what if those
practices actually don’t have a component that works with spirits? And
even if those practices do have that component, what if that doesn’t feel
right to me either?
These are questions I share, because they are questions I have struggled
with at different times in my magical practice, and it leads us back to the
original question: How do I develop my own practice with spirits that
doesn’t draw on the existing narratives and methods that are typically
available in Western occultism?
In my case, the answer evolved out of the need to create relationships
with spirits that are founded on mutual respect and benefit, instead of on a
relationship of coercion or subservience. While those relationships might
work for other people, they don’t work for me. The relationship that does
work with me is that of working with spirits as equals.
I’m not alone in feeling this way and there are some Western occult
practices that do explore working with spirits as co-equals. Robert Stewart’s
and Stephanie Connolly’s work both come to mind as examples where a coequal relationship with spirits is advocated for and available practices are
shared around doing such work. There are other works out there as well, but
with these various works there is usually a specific context that is specific
to the magic tradition or types of spirits being worked with. If you’re like
me and you work with multiple types of spirits, the challenge you may
discover is whether a tradition specific practice can be used with a spirit
that isn’t part of that tradition.
At this point, it must seem like I’m all doom and gloom here, but there
is a solution that can work which doesn’t involve cultural appropriation or
using practices outside of the context those practices are situated in. There
is a way to work with spirits that allows us to walk with them co-equally,
without having to anthropomorphize them or demand they communicate
with us the way we want them to. There is a way to let go and trust the
relationship and create mutual empowerment for all parties. It is called
experiential embodiment.
What is Experiential Embodiment?
Experiential embodiment is the purposeful embrace of the human body
and recognition that the body can help us communicate and mediate the
world around us, including our relationship with spirits, through what is
experienced sensorially. When I talk about sensorial connection, I’m not
just talking about the typical 5 senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and
touch, though they certainly play a role in the experiences we have. I’m also
talking about the kinesthetic awareness of the body, the sense of intuition,
as well as imagination and identity, all of which can play a role in mediating
the experiences we have with spirits.
For the most part, human beings aren’t truly in touch with their bodies,
and the result is a disconnect from the natural world, which the spirits are
part of. Yet, if we open ourselves to our bodies and re-engage our senses,
we’ll find that our experiences of the spirits will also be engaged on all
levels of our being, because the spirits don’t limit themselves to sight and
sound. They interact with us through all of our senses if we open ourselves
to the experience (Andrews 1993a). The reason we don’t recognize how the
spirits are interacting with us is that we have privileged sight and to a lesser
extent hearing over the other senses. We have to recognize that limitation
we’ve imposed on ourselves, even as we also need to learn how to situate
ourselves in our bodies, instead of in our heads.
For a moment, let’s consider the two reasons why we privilege sight and
sound over other senses when it comes to engaging the spirits (and, for that
matter, living our lives). The first reason is because we’ve been conditioned
to focus on sight and sound as the way of verifying that something is real.
Seeing is believing is the clichéd saying, and it’s a powerful one. As I
mentioned earlier in the book, a lot of occultists are obsessed with seeing
(and hearing) a spirit because they think that by seeing the spirit, they’ll
prove to themselves the spirits are real.
The other reason is because of modern technology. We increasingly live
in a sight focused world where screens pull away our attention from the
other senses. Many people spend all of their days in front of a computer
screen or a phone or TV. Even when they don’t spend all of their day in
front of a screen, the automatic default after getting home from work is to
actually spend time in front of a screen. The result is a disconnect with the
world we live in, which includes a disconnect with the spirits. This
disconnect leads us to privilege sight and sound because those are the
senses, we use the most, and if spirits don’t conveniently fit into those two
senses, they may as well not exist.
Recognizing the privileging of sight and sound allows us to
acknowledge how we might be disconnected from ourselves and the world
around us. It enables us to see why we’re not connecting with spirits as
much as we could be. If we want remedy that situation, we need to make
some changes in how we open ourselves to the world and to the spirits. This
is where experiential embodiment comes into play because we start
focusing on the overall experience and embodying that experience in our
senses. Our experiences are important because of how they enable us to
connect to the deepest parts of ourselves and to the world around us:
Experience is compounded of feeling and thought. Human feeling
is not a succession of discrete sensations; rather memory and
anticipation are able to wield sensory impacts into a shifting
stream of experience so that we may speak of a life of feeling as
we do of a life of thought. It is a common tendency to regard
feeling and thought as opposed, the one registering subjective
states, the other reporting on objective reality. In fact, they both
lie near the two ends of an experiential continuum, and both are
ways of knowing. (Tuan 1977 P. 10).
When we privilege one way of knowing over another, we close
ourselves off from the world and ourselves, as well as the spirits. The result
leads to a numbing disconnect with everything and a dysfunctional
relationship with spirits and the world around us, as well as our bodies.
When I recognized this about myself, I knew I had to make changes, but it
wasn’t clear to me what changes could be made. Gradually, through
meditation practice, qi gong, and other body oriented practices, I came up
with a practice that enabled me to reconnect with my body, the world, and
to develop a much deeper relationship with the spirits.
Experiential embodiment is a practice that uses the body and our
sensorial awareness, psychic and physical, as a way to communicate with
the world around us, and within us. I first developed experiential
embodiment as a result of wanting to develop a closer relationship with the
neurotransmitters, hormones, and microbial life in my body (see Inner
Alchemy of Life for more details.). I recognized that the best way to
develop that relationship was to stop anthropomorphizing what I was
connecting with and instead try to connect with the neurotransmitters,
hormones, and microbial life through the sensations and experiences they
caused my body to feel. Taking this approach proved to be quite helpful,
leading to deeper states of altered consciousness and a closer connection to
my body. It made me wonder if a similar approach could be applied to
working with spirits outside the body.
I began applying experiential embodiment to my work with other spirits
and what I discovered is that it created a deeper connection with them,
because I focused on communicating on their level, instead of trying to
force them to communicate the way I expected them to. I let go of the need
to control the communication and focused instead on being fully present
with the communication they offered through the sensations and
experiences that occurred while in contact with them. And to my surprise, I
sometimes found they still communicated with words, but less often, and
only when it made sense to use words to explain something that a sensation
or experience alone couldn’t convey. Often I found that the medium of
communication happened outside of words in the felt and heard experiences
that my body could make me aware of in a way that is distinct from spoken
language, and yet, nonetheless, is a language in and of itself, “It was a
dimension of expressive meanings that were directly felt by the body, a
realm wherein the body itself speaks – by the tonality and rhythm of its
sounds, by the gestures, even by the expressive potency of its poise” [italics
are his] (Abram 2010 P. 167). Now that sounds great in theory, but you’re
likely wondering how you too can achieve this experience. Let’s try a
simple experiment. I want you to pick a spirit you’ve previously worked
with. Close your eyes, and invoke the spirit, using its name to call it. Just
say the name over and over again. Stop, only when you feel the spirit with
you.
When you feel the spirit, don’t say anything else. Instead simply invite
in the experience and feeling of that spirit. Pay attention to the experience
and the sensations you feel. What you are experiencing is the spirit
communicating with you, but it’s communicating with you in a different
way than what you’re used to. It’s communicating with you in a manner
that is more along the lines of a spiritual transmission or an exchange of
information. This exchange is a purer form of communication for the spirit,
and when we learn to open ourselves to this kind of communication, it
becomes transformative for us because we are truly letting the spirit in and
embodying the communication as a result.
Experiential embodiment can be subtle, but it can also be direct. It can
be a sensation of warmth or cold, of itchiness or a feeling flow. The main
way you differentiate it from the normal experiences that you have is that
you look for consistent experiences that you have when you work with a
spirit. For instance, if you notice that your scalp consistently tingles when
you call a spirit, then that is an indicator the spirit is communicating with
you. If, on the other hand, your scalp tingles occasionally but you haven’t
called the spirit, then you need to use your best judgement and determine if
that’s the spirit calling on you, or if it’s just the sensation of your scalp
tingling: “Spiritual entities often have information, attitudes, and
perspectives that are quite different or distant from human sentiment and
cognition...The Spirits, and any communications purported to be from
Spirits, must be tested. Just as trust, respect, and admiration build up
through time with people in your life, the same is true for the Spirits”
(Dominguez 2008, pp. 16-17). We test this communication with the spirit
by looking for consistent patterns in the experiences we have while working
with the spirit. This is another reason it’s important to integrate experiential
knowledge into our work with spirits, because it provides us another way to
test and verify the veracity of our connection with spirit.
Experiential embodiment teaches you to let go of the need to be in
control of the communication with the spirit and instead give yourself over
to the flow of communication and experience so that you can achieve
deeper communion with the spirits you work with. This can be hard for
people to do because it pushes us outside the conventional methods of
communication we use. Yet we can do it. We have the necessary
experiential awareness built into our physicality and it is through this
physicality that we can learn to be open to the spirits. However, for many
people, the practice of experiential embodiment can be a challenge. Let’s
explore why.
Exercise
What senses do you rely upon the most in your life? How connected do
you feel to your body? How connected do you feel to the spirits, through
your body?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Why We Struggle with Experiential Embodiment
Experiential embodiment can be a challenge because it requires us to be
present in our bodies, which at least in the West is not encouraged because
of the Christian narrative that the body is sinful and dirty. We’ve been
taught to objectify the body and distance ourselves from it as much as
possible, because of the sensations, experiences, and urges we feel. We’ve
been taught to focus on the afterlife, instead of appreciating the miracle of
this life, and the joy and experiences we can have in it. We’ve been taught
that the world around is one that’s been made for our dominion, and that all
other life is subordinate to us, and of less intelligence and value than us,
even as we in turn think of our body as having less value because we still
have a material form (Abram 2010).
Even putting the Christian cultural baggage aside, we also have the
mechanistic, materialistic world to deal with, which simultaneously
devalues the experience of the spirit and the body because of how it
reinforces the artificial divide between the spirit and the body. This is an
artificial world brought about by an emphasis of the value of the mind over
the body, and the privileging of science and technology over other forms of
knowing and discovery (Abram 2010). While there are benefits to science
and technology (like me writing this book on a computer), when we
consistently divide our experience of the world either because of religious
or scientific dogma we are missing out on experiences of the world that
might bring us valuable alternative perspectives that we need:
No technological invention of virtual reality will negate the
body’s centrality as the focus of affective, perceptual experience
through which we perceive and engage the world. Second,
cultivating better skills of body consciousness can provided us
with enhanced powers of concentration to help us overcome
problems of distraction and stress caused by the new media’s
superabundance of information and stimulation (Schusterman
2012 P. 11)
Experiential embodiment grounds us in the experience of the body and
engages us in a way that all the technology in the world simply can’t do. I
say this as someone who plays video games a fair amount and enjoys them
and uses them for magical purposes. There is still something about
grounding yourself in the full sensations of the body that can’t be matched
in a virtual or astral environment, because of how the body is constantly
experiencing and processing the various sensations we take in all the time.
Learning to tune ourselves into that process opens us to the world in a way
that I haven’t found anywhere else.
The reason people sometimes resist being in touch with their bodies also
comes down to the personal experiences we have with our bodies. If you
have been abused in any way, shape, or form (which unfortunately many of
us have), this can create a very real discomfort with the body because our
bodies do hold onto and remember the trauma of the abuse until we find a
way to release that trauma. If you’re doing spiritual work and the body is
part of that work and those traumas haven’t been worked through, they can
rear up and distract you from that work.
In such a case, what I recommend doing is engaging in some type of
internal work in collaboration with therapy to work through the trauma. In
my case, I’ve used water meditation breathing, which has helped me
dissolve internal blockages that have stored the trauma. The subsequent
release of emotions and memories isn’t always easy to deal with and that’s
where therapy can come in handy, because the therapist can provide an
objective perspective to what you’re going through that provides you some
tools for processing it. I cover some of this work in Inner Alchemy and in
my forthcoming book Inner Alchemy of Emotions.
As you learn to become more comfortable with your body, you will find
experiential embodiment to be liberating because it will allow you to access
hidden depths of experience, sensation, and being, all of which are useful
for helping you communicate with spirits.
Exercise
What struggles do you have you with being present in your body? What
steps are you taking to address those struggles?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
The Role of Mediation in Experiential Embodiment
We learn how to connect with spirits through our body via mediation.
What is mediation? It’s a process of channeling and expressing the
experience of a spirit, a state of consciousness, and/or a spiritual
transmission where information is conveyed:
In true mediation, any individual may reach deeply into the states
of consciousness where transhuman entities are met. Such beings
may be aspects of Divinity, or god-forms, or entities who have
transcended human expression and exist solely in the inner
worlds. In mediation, a human acts as a focus or gateway for the
consciousness of such transhuman beings...mediation is not a
matter of passive reception...but of refining and clarifying
personal modes of awareness. When these higher modes are
attuned to the worlds or beings so essential to magical holism,
mediation may arise...A true mediator may be able to translate
certain key images or intuitions of the spiritual realms into words,
but he or she is more likely to act as a channel for a specific
power to flow out into the magical circle, or ultimately into the
world (Stewart 1987 pp. 47-48).
When a person mediates a spirit, a spiritual transmission, or any other
experience, they are opened all of themselves up to that experience and
making it a part of who they are, so that it can then be conveyed to the
world around them and to the people who are receptive. The act of
mediation is an intimate one because it calls on us to truly be present with
the force we are mediating. It also calls on us to change our identity,
because the act of mediation is a negotiation of sorts, from who we were to
who we become, in tandem with what we are mediating. We can’t come out
of those experiences being unchanged in who we are.
When we mediate spirits, we have to expand our perceptions beyond the
everyday filters we use. We do this by using experiential embodiment,
which uses ALL of our senses for connecting with the spirit. We also let go
of the expectation that the spirit will appear before us in a way that is overt.
Instead, we open ourselves to the experience and let that experience speak
to us through the sensations we receive. Such sensations could include
sights and sounds, but could also include smells, kinesthetic sensations,
intuitive pings or other such experiences that inform us that a spirit has
come calling.
Learning to pay attention to these sensations and keeping track of them
will help you recognize that a spirit has connected with you and help you
become more receptive to how it communicates with you, outside of your
expectations. Not all spirits will communicate with you through spoken
word or in a visual form, but you can still feel the transmission of
information or energy from them, which, when embodied within you,
translates into actions, thoughts, and awareness that transforms your life.
Your body literally will take in that experience and process it for you so that
you find yourself suddenly knowing things or having insights, seemingly
from nowhere, but really because your body is processing the experience.
You may even find you have visualizations or words show up, but it will be
because the body has translated the experience into something your
consciousness can relate to. That is what mediation via experiential
embodiment is about.
So how does this mediation occur? It occurs when we bring our whole
selves into the experience of working with the spirit. This happens when we
get rid of the artificial distinctions, categorizations, and need to control the
spirits, and instead engage them directly through a mutual collaboration of
intent and communication that happens through the actions of an approach
to invocation and evocation that involves the embodiment of that
collaboration. We’re going to explore what that looks like in more depth, in
the next chapter.
Exercise:
How, if at all, have you incorporated mediation into your work with
spirits? How has mediation changed your relationship with spirits you work
with?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Exercise 2
Stand up and hold your hands out in front of you parallel to your chest.
Loosen your arms and hands, so there’s as little tension as possible. Start
shaking your hands and arms and continue doing it until you feel your body
shake and you feel a release of tension. What do you notice as a result of
doing that practice?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
Experiential embodiment provides us a way to engage the spirits with
our bodies, and our senses. It moves away from humanocentric values and
biases, as well as the cerebral categorization of spirits and moves us back
toward an organic experience that’s based on being fully immersed in the
experiential connection with the spirit. What the resultant relationship looks
like is what we’re going to explore next, so that we can start to create
practice of walking WITH the spirits, instead of what we find in traditional
western occultism.
Chapter 5: Respect, Spirits and
Experiential Embodiment
If we want to create an embodied relationship with the spirits we work with,
one where we walk with them in companionship and collaboration, we need
to start that relationship with respect. Respect is the secret sauce of a good
relationship with the spirits (or any other relationship). If you have no
respect, then you don’t value the relationship and it becomes disposable.
We’ve already seen enough evidence of that in the previous pages, so I
don’t need to rehash those arguments in depth here, but what we do need to
explore is what respect actually looks like.
The first thing we need to recognize about respect and spirits is that
instead of trying to dictate the terms of the relationship to the spirits, we
need to open ourselves to actually discovering what the relationship could
be. This happens when we change our relationship with the spirits, and our
relationship with the world. The relationship we have with the spirits
mirrors the relationship we have with the world. When we change our
relationship with the spirits to one of respect, with a focus on experiential
embodiment, we also change the relationship we have with the world.
We’re no longer obsessed with categorizing and controlling everything.
Instead we start looking to live in the quiet rhythm of life that flows through
us and everything else. The difference between the western narrative of
control and categorization and a narrative of respect and embodiment can
be expressed in how people relate to the world and to the life that exists in
the world:
While person brought up within literate culture often speak about
the natural world, indigenous, oral peoples sometimes speak
directly to that world, acknowledging certain animals, plants, and
even landforms as expressive subjects with whom they might find
themselves in a conversation. Obviously these other beings do not
speak with a human tongue; they do not speak in words. They
speak in song, like many birds, or in rhythm, like the crickets and
the ocean waves. They may speak a language of movements and
gestures, or articulate themselves in shifting shadows. Among
native peoples such forms of expressive speech are assumed to be
as communicative, in their own way, as the more verbal discourse
of our species...Language, for traditionally oral peoples, is not a
specifically human possession, but is a property of the animate
earth, in which we humans participate (Abram 2010 pp. 10-11).
People who live in harmony and respect with the world make space for
that world and recognize they are part of it, instead of above it. Likewise,
they do not treat the spirits as subordinates, but instead as co-equals they
can connect and communicate with. They don’t coerce spirits, but instead
seek to work with them. So how do we accomplish this?
Creating a respectful relationship with the spirits involves bringing
reciprocity into the equation. A reciprocal relationship is a relationship
where there is actual giving on both sides of the relationship, instead of just
taking from the spirit, which is what we see with traditional Western
occultism. In order to build this reciprocity, we need to recognize something
about the very nature of connection: when you connect with a spirit, you
also allow it to connect to you. To put it a different way, if I touch
something with my hands, I am also touched by that thing on my hand. It’s
a subtle, but important distinction that needs to be recognized, because it
changes our understanding of the power dynamics of involved in
connecting with a spirit.
Traditionally, for example, if I name a spirit, I use the name of that spirit
to have power over it. But if we apply the distinction I made above to that
dynamic, what we discover is that while the act of naming the spirit does
connect the spirit to me, the named spirit also has power,
Names have power, and those who name also have power because
of how the name defines what is named. But what we must also
remember is that what is named also has power. And so we must
amend the classic tenet that argues that if you name something
you have power over it. When you name something you connect
with it, and it connects with you. You embody, invest, and define
what is named with meaning, but what is named also embodies,
invests, and defines you with meaning. We have power WITH
what we name (Ellwood 2020), P. 80).
When we shift our perspective in this way, where what happens is that
when we name a spirit, we enter into a collaborative relationship, it changes
the nature of the work and how the spirit responds. Instead of treating the
name of the spirit as a leash that gives us power over the spirit, we embody
the name within ourselves, and make the experience that allows us to build
a relationship that gets better results with the spirits we work with.
Exercise
How do you incorporate respect and reciprocity into your relationship
with spirits?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
How Experiential Embodiment Shapes our Experiences
To really embody a connection with the spirits we need to take on
different perspectives that are outside of the Western thought process that
we are raised with, in the form of rational thought. While rational thinking
has its place and is useful in the right context, there is something to be said
for taking on alternative ways of discovering and knowing the world, and
for that matter, the spirits:
Science has tried to push past the carnal constraints on our
knowledge by joining deductive reason to the judicious
application of experiment. Traditional, tribal magicians or
medicine persons take a different approach. They seek to augment
the limitations of their specifically human senses by binding their
attention to the ways of another animal. Steadily training his
focus upon the patterned behavior of another creature – observing
it closely in its own terrain, following and interpreting its tracks,
becoming familiar with its call and its styles of stalking and
foraging – the medicine person renders himself vulnerable to
another, non-human form of experience. The more studiously an
apprentice magician watches the other creature from a stance of
humility, learning to mimic its cries and to dance its various
movements, the more thoroughly his nervous system is joined to
another set of senses – thereby gaining a kind of stereoscopic
access to the world, a keener perception of the biosphere’s
manifold depth and dimensionality. (Abram 2010, P. 217).
When we study the spirits from a perspective that focuses on connecting
with them through a felt, embodied experience, we open ourselves to
discovering that the spirits are already with us, in the world around us, and
don’t have to be summoned from some mythic otherworldly realm. They
are as much a part of this existence as we are. They just show up differently,
and when we have to create elaborate rituals to connect with them, it is not
because they aren’t here. It’s because we’ve closed ourselves off from them,
and so in order to open ourselves to their experience we have to get outside
of our heads and into a state of experience that makes us receptive to them.
This same receptivity can be cultivated through our senses, through the
experience we have with the spirits, and by fully integrating our bodies into
the work we do with the spirits.
We treat our bodies as solid objects that we just happen to inhabit, but in
fact, your body is a living universe in its own right, full of life that you
don’t even realize you need to have in order for your body to live. At the
same time, the body is a fine tuned instrument of sensitivity that allows us
to sense a myriad of sensations, which unfortunately we tend to block out.
If we open ourselves to those sensations, we can discover quite a bit. For
instance, you can attune yourself to the energies of the Underworld as well
as the energies of the planets and the stars. You can also connect with the
spirits through your body because they are already interacting with us on
that level. The only reason we don’t recognize that connection is because
we’ve closed ourselves off from it. So how do we change that?
Humor me, and after you read this paragraph put this book down and go
out for a walk. As you walk, I want you to pay attention to what your body
experiences as you’re walking. What sensations do you notice as you walk?
What do you see that you haven’t seen before? What do you hear, smell,
and taste? What sensations outside of the traditional five do you notice? If
you find yourself thinking about this book or the hot date you had or what
you’ll eat for dinner, recognize that you’re not being fully present in your
body or in the environment and try again.
After you’ve spent a bit of time noticing what’s around you as well as
your response to it, I want you to consider whether or not you might also
have received some communication from the environment around you. If
so, what kind of information have you received and what form did it come
in? How did you respond to that communication?
The truth is, that we’re always in communication with the world around
us, as well as what dwells in that world. We just don’t always acknowledge
that communication is happening. Yet the act of perception, on some level,
is an act of communication and connection that is occurring. We may not
recognize the communication because it’s not happening in our preferred
form of communicating, but we shouldn’t assume it isn’t happening,
The ability of each thing or entity to influence the space around it
may be viewed as the expressive power of that being. All things,
in this sense, are potentially expressive; all things have the power
of speech. Most, of course, do not speak in words. But this is also
true of ourselves: our own verbal eloquence is but one form of
human expression among many others. For our body, in its
silence, is already expressive. The body, itself, speaks. (Abram
2010 P. 269).
When we learn to recognize that communication can come in different
forms and that we ourselves are communicating in ways that fall outside of
the usual channels we use, but are nonetheless valid, then we can start to
recognize how the spirits may already be communicating with us. They’re
just communicating in ways we aren’t making ourselves aware of how
because of how we both privilege certain forms of communication over
others and expect everything else to use those forms of communication with
us.
The exercise I had you do is one you should repeat daily for a month,
just to discover what messages you’re missing out on. What it will train you
to do is to start paying better attention to your environment, as well as how
you respond to that environment. It will also help you shift your
consciousness out of the everyday consciousness that inhibits the sensorial
awareness we must cultivate if we are to connect with the spirits, and the
world around us in a different way then what we are used to:
The traditional magician cultivates an ability to shift out of his or
her common state of consciousness precisely in order to make
contact with the other organic forms of sensitivity and awareness
with which human existence is entwined. Only by temporarily
shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his culture can the
sorcerer hope to enter into relation with other species on their
own terms; only by altering the common organization of his
senses will he be able to enter into a rapport with the multiple
nonhuman sensibilities that animate the local landscape (Abram
1997, P. 9).
The cultivation of your experiential awareness brings with it a
fundamental shift in how you connect and communicate with your body and
the world, as well as the spirits. Instead of seeing yourself as a separate
being, distinct from everything else, you may begin to realize that you are
part of a continuum and that your body isn’t a wall that separates you from
everything else, so much as a membrane that is in constant communication
with the environment and everything else in it, “Experience is grounded in
our sensory perceptions and in our internal thoughts, which together govern
how we make sense of the information that comes to us from being in the
world. And when something happens in the world or in our minds, that
something is always situated, in our bodies, in a given time, and in place”
(Goldhagen 2017 P. 45). We make meaning of those experiences in order to
understand them. Often this meaning making occurs through the decision to
translate those experiences into linguistic expressions, but we already know
how limited and limiting words can be. On the one hand, they give us the
power to define our experiences, and on the other hand, they filter out a lot
of important details of those same experiences in favor of what
conveniently makes sense to us. Yet even the meanings and definitions we
associate with the words we use are born out of the sensorial experiences
we have which is why metaphors are such a prevalent part of every
language.
I’m not advocating that we wholly abandon written and spoken
language, but rather that we recognize both the potential and limitations of
language as it pertains to our embodied and lived experiences, and the
relationships we have with the world and with the life that co-habits this
world with us. When we start listening to our bodies and through our bodies
to the world and the spirits themselves, what we discover is the continuum I
mentioned and a different sense of place and relationship that happens in
that continuum. Instead of just trying to dominate everything around us, we
start to consider our place and ask ourselves how we can better show up in
that place and make the resultant space better instead of worse. And in turn
the way we use our spoken and written languages changes because we
recognize there can be an alternate way of communication that doesn’t
involve constraining and coercing everything to fall into line for us, but
instead changes a demand to a request and asks for the help of spirits
instead of expecting the help.
We discover this alternate way of communicating by recognizing that
we are not above the environments we live in, but rather part of the
embodied experience that is this world. Our bodies shape our thinking and
feeling because of the experiences that happen to the body. For instance,
turning a light on in a room can have an effect on how we process
information, because of how the body responds to the stimuli of the light
(Goldhagen 2017). The environment we place ourselves in shapes us as
much, if not more, then how we shape it:
Cognition is the product of a three-way collaboration of mind,
body, and environment. Inherent in the very fact of human
embodiment –lived in a body – rests the notion that the physical
environments that a body inhabits greatly influence human
cognitions. The body is not merely some passive receptacle for
sensations from the environment, which the mind then interprets
in a somewhat orderly fashion. Instead, our minds and bodies –
actively, constantly, and at many levels – engage in active and
interactive, conscious and nonconscious processing of our
internal and external environments [italics are hers] (Goldhagen
2017 P. 47).
If the body is not passive (and we know it’s not) then what is passive?
Our relationship with our bodies and by extension our relationships with the
world and the spirits. We fall into that passivity, but we can change that by
recognizing that your body plays a significant and active role in how you
communicate with everything. Consider this point for a moment: When you
think about something, are you only using your brain? Your initial answer
may be yes, but in reality, when we think about something, we are engaging
the entirety of our being in that thought. Your body is thinking through the
thought and you may not realize this until you consciously pay attention to
how your body responds to what you are thinking about. But when you
notice how the muscles of your body respond to a thought and how your
spatial and temporal awareness (rooted in the body) respond to what you
are thinking about, you may discover that your body plays a much more
significant role in your thinking than you previously acknowledged
(Schusterman 2012, Goldhagen 2017).
I know it seems like I’ve beaten this topic to death, but it’s important to
cover it in this level of detail because in general, people are so detached
from their bodies and privilege a very cerebral way of knowing over other
ways of knowing, that suggesting anything else necessarily must bring with
it a level of attention and detail that opens the perspective of the person to
the possibility that how they think of and experience the world is much
more deeply rooted in the body than they previously recognized. And, for
the purposes of this book, it is also necessary to go into this level of detail
so that we can reconsider our approach to working with spirits from an
embodied perspective.
Exercise
Do the walking exercise I shared earlier in the chapter for one month.
After that month how has your experience of the world around you
changed? How has your relationship with your body changed?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
How to Use Experiential Embodiment to Connect with Spirits
Now that we’ve thoroughly explored what experiential embodiment is,
you can see why it can be useful for changing your relationship with the
spirits. A typical Western approach to working with spirits happens in one
of two ways. In one way you obtain the sigil of the spirit and conjure it up,
smack it around and put it to work. The other way involves visualizing that
same sigil and connecting with the spirit through that visualization. Both
approaches work to some degree, but they are both thoroughly rooted in a
humanocentric approach to working with the spirits.
If we take an experiential embodiment to working with spirits, we
acknowledge the spirits are already around us and communicating with us,
albeit in ways we may not fully recognize. We also understand that we
aren’t trying to compel or coerce spirits into serving us, nor are we blindly
devoting ourselves to worshipping them. Instead, we are working with them
as co-equals, walking with them in our everyday lives because they already
are in our lives. The question then is, how do we take these points and apply
them in a real and practical manner that allows us to work with the spirits
and get results?
I take several different approaches to the process of invocation and
evocation that allow me to apply these principles to connecting with the
spirit. The first thing I do is recognize that when I’m calling a spirit, either
through invocation or evocation, I am not just calling them into the space
around me, but also calling them into my body (Gray 1980). The act of
saying the name of the spirit and visualizing the sigil of the spirit
simultaneously imprints that spirit within me, even as it asks the spirit to
make itself in the environment around me. I am embodying the spirit when
I call it, recognizing that it is, in fact, communicating with me through my
body, and specifically through the sensations and experiences I’m having as
I call the spirit. Those sensations could be a tactile feeling or an intuitive
ping, or it could be spoken words. In my case, it’s often a transmission of
information that is accompanied with some physical sensations. You may
have different experiences. What’s important is that you keep track of ALL
the sensations and experiences that occur when you call on a spirit and note
the consistency, or lack thereof. You want a consistent experience because
that will verify the spirit has connected with you and that it’s the same
spirit.
After I’ve made initial contact with a spirit and then verified that
contact, I start developing correspondences based off the information the
spirit shares with me. I also compare what the spirit shares with me with the
available information that has been written about the spirit. This gives me
another way to verify the spirit contact, but it also allows me to develop a
more nuanced relationship with the spirit because I can take what the spirit
has shared with me and use that to help me develop the relationship with
the spirit, while using the pre-existing information as a base line. What I
find is that as I develop my own correspondences because of the
relationship I’m building with the spirit, those correspondences become
much more significant than what is shared by other practitioners. This is
because the relationship I’m developing with the spirit is a personal one that
specifically speaks to our interactions with each other. It’s a good idea to
develop your own correspondences with a spirit, even if they end up being
similar to what’s already been shared because you don’t want to take a one
size fits all approach to working with spirits. In fact, this is another
weakness of Western magical approaches to spirits, wherein a surface level
relationship is created based off existing correspondences, instead of
developing a more nuanced approach. By doing the work of communicating
with the spirit and learning about it firsthand, you embody and embed those
experiences within yourself and they become part of the ongoing
conversation you have with the spirit.
Once the spirit and I have developed the correspondences that go along
with it, I will create a chant that describes the spirit in relationship to those
correspondences. The chant is an offering and a recognition of the spirit, but
it not a binding or coercive manipulation of the spirit. I memorize the chant,
to further embed and embody the relationship I have with the spirit and then
when I call the spirit, I use the chant. When I say the chant, much like
saying the name of the spirit, I’m embodying that connection further in my
body, because I hear the words and make them part of my being. I am also
expressing them outward to the environment around me, asking the spirit to
come forth and connect with me. It’s already there, and the chant, much like
the spirit’s name simply acknowledges its presence but also asks for its
attention so that the spirit can be worked with directly. All of this is done
with an attitude of respect, but also an awareness that I’m calling out to an
equal. I can do things for the spirit that it needs, even as it can do things I
need. This symbiotic relationship isn’t hierarchical in any way, but instead
is a co-equal relationship where we make an agreement to work with each
other.
One of the other actions I take is that I paint the sigil of the spirit. I will
call the spirit into me and ask it to inspire me as I paint the sigil. I usually
end up creating an impressionistic painting which speaks to the experience
and expression of the spirit, but that painting also serves another function as
an evocation portal, which allows me to evoke the spirit as needed without
elaborate rituals, ceremonial tools, or any of the other things that
accompany such work. I might also create a dedicated altar for the spirit, as
another way of honoring and inviting the spirit into my home.
The evocation portal is permanently open when it hangs on the wall, but
is closed if it’s taken off the wall. This allows me to evoke the spirit, but it
also allows me to “retire” the evocation if it isn’t relevant at the time. I can
always hang the painting back up when I need to, but otherwise it gives the
spirit a break. What I particularly like about the evocation portal is that the
evocation is done once, via the painting, and then turned on and off as
needed. Even when the painting is up on the wall, the spirit doesn’t have to
be present or come into the environment, but what the evocation portal is
open it allows me to connect with the spirit when needed, without having to
do an unnecessary amount of ritual. Best of all, I’m not having to compel or
coerce the spirit to do something. I simply ask, and because I’m doing so
from a place of respect, the spirit can choose whether it will or won’t do
something. I typically don’t get refused and if I do it’s for good reasons that
I can address.
In any interaction I have with a spirit, I don’t expect it to appear before
me and speak English. Sometimes the spirit will say words to me, but more
often than not the experiences I have are ones of transmission of
information and energy, and this transmission is experienced in my body
and spirit, through the entirety of my being. I pay close attention to the
sensations and experiences and work with them. I don’t always get a
specific message right away, but inevitably I get some reveal that ties into
the ongoing work I’m doing. It’s an experience where I feel the spirit
walking with me. The spirits are with me, just waiting to be acknowledged
and perceived. No elaborate rituals needed, and no need to compel and
coerce the spirit into working with me. I’ve taken this approach with
various types of spirits and I haven’t suffered ill effects for approaching the
spirits with respect. Sometimes I’ve determined that the relationship needs
to change or end, but even in that context there’s been no ill will or an
attempt on the part of the spirit to attack me. Instead there is simply a
parting of the ways.
Like any other kind of relationship, what you bring into the relationship
you have with a spirit is what you will get from that relationship. Treat a
spirit with respect and ask for it to help and follow through on your end of
the matter, and you’ll find that you can have a very productive relationship.
Or take the conventional approach and threaten and coerce the spirit. The
difference between one relationship and the other is how you fundamentally
show up and treat the spirit you work with.
Exercise
Try working with a spirit, where you attune yourself to the sensations
and experiences that occur. How does taking an experiential approach differ
from more conventional approaches? Which approach works better for you
and why?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
What I’ve tried to lay out in this chapter and the preceding ones is an
approach to working with spirits that isn’t culturally appropriative, but also
doesn’t perpetuate the problematic approaches found in conventional
Western magic. This is a practice I developed since the beginning of my
magical work, because all along I found that something didn’t feel quite
right about what I encountered in Western magical practices when it came
to working with spirits. As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve never had any of the
negative experiences other occultists have had. I’ll let you do the math on
why that might be the case, but I think working with spirits from a place of
respect gets us much further than a coercive relationship.
In the next few chapters, I’m going to share some examples of how I’ve
worked with some different types of spirits. In later books in the series I’m
going to explore in depth the work I’ve done with Elementals, Demons and
Angels.
Chapter 6: Walking with Ancestral Spirits
My work with ancestral spirits has taken two forms. I’ve worked with a
direct ancestor a couple times, and then I’ve worked with what I would
consider to be spiritual ancestors. I do know people who regularly work
with their blood ancestors, but the one thing I’ve noticed about that work is
that their ancestors in some form or another were actively practicing magic,
and in such cases I would consider those ancestors spiritual as well as blood
ancestors. In my own case, as far as I know my ancestors weren’t actively
engaged in a magical practice, so my engagement with them has been more
focused around helping them pass on or find some measure of resolution.
With that said, it is possible to work with your blood ancestors magically,
but again I think it does depend on whether or not they actually engaged in
some type of spiritual practice.
Whether you are working with a blood ancestor or a spiritual ancestor,
it’s important to remember that the spirit of the person isn’t necessarily
evolved or different from who they were in life. If anything, it might be said
that who they were is amplified because they are still attached to the
personality. They aren’t necessarily ready to move on, and in some cases,
they may be purposely waiting to move on because they still have work to
do here. In other cases, they may not fully realize that they’ve physically
passed. You can try to help them pass on, but you shouldn’t try to force it,
because it really is their choice, not yours. With that said, I’m going to share
a couple of examples with my direct ancestors, and then some examples
with spiritual ancestors.
My Grandfather
When I first started practicing magic, one of my initial experiments
reaching out to contact my grandfather. I had never met him in real life
because he killed himself. I was curious about this person I never met
who’d had such a dramatic impact on my mother, and, in turn, on my
brother and me. So, I thought I would try to connect to him and see if he
would communicate with me. I did an invocation of him and invited him to
communicate with me through automatic writing. Automatic writing is a
process where you let the spirit you’ve invoked take control of your hand
and start writing. It’s a useful tool for communicating with a spirit.
In the case of communicating with Stanley, what he shared wasn’t
terribly interesting. I recall being a little bummed out that he basically
shared how bad he felt about killing himself and that he was stuck in this
limbo because of it. In retrospect, I realize what he needed was the help of
someone who could help him pass on. I eventually learned such skills down
the line and did help him pass on.
My Father
When my dad passed, I hadn’t seen him for about a year. We had parted
amicably, but his health was already going downhill. Right after he died, I
started using the practices from The Mysteries of Dying and Death by RJ
Stewart. These are tradition specific practices for helping people work with
the spirits of the recently departed, and I’ll admit I did these practices as
much for me as I did them for my dad. Doing them helped me connect with
his spirit and allowed me to help him fully transition. Throughout the
process of the work I didn’t try to force him to pass on, but simply did the
magical work so that if he wanted to pass on, he could.
Dad’s spirit did choose to pass on, for the most part. Occasionally, I feel
him visit to check in on me, and I’m certain he’s doing the same with my
other siblings, but this is happening less and less. He was ready to move on
from his life, especially as the last few years were not pleasant due to health
challenges. By working with him in the way I did, I was able to help him
pass on, which brought a measure of peace to me as well.
I do recommend learning some type of practice where you can help
your ancestors pass on, if they are ready to. More often than not, they will
be ready to move on, especially if they are given a helping hand and some
direction. Dying is an act of transformation, and in the majority of cases
people who are dying aren’t ready for it, either because it happens
unexpectedly, or because they haven’t fully accepted that they have died. In
rare cases, it’s because they have unfinished business, and if you can help
them with that business they may pass on as well.
I have contacted the spirits of my grandparents on both sides of my
family. In each of those cases, what’s stood out to me is that often they’re in
a process of moving on. Some are further along than others, and in the case
of my dad’s father, he has been very resistant to moving on, though some
progress has been made since my dad passed. I think it’s because my dad
has moved on that it may have helped him a bit. I had help with this work
from my wife, who is more attuned to ancestral spirits because of her own
experiences working with her ancestors.
Exercise
Have you contacted any of your ancestors? How did you initiate that
contact? What did you learn as a result of connecting with your ancestors?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Walking with Spiritual Ancestors
A spiritual ancestor may or may not be directly related to you, but in
either case a spiritual ancestor may connect with you in order to help you
with your spiritual path. In some cases, I’ve observed that families that have
an ancestral tradition tend to connect with spiritual ancestors that are blood
ancestors. But if your blood ancestors aren’t on the same spiritual path as
you, it doesn’t mean you can’t work with spiritual ancestors. It just means
that those spiritual ancestors are not going to come from the spiritual
tradition or path you’re walking.
In my experience with spiritual ancestors, I have found that they have
presented themselves to me, as opposed to me going and seeking them out.
I don’t know if this is the case for everyone, but since spiritual ancestors
can be considered to be inner contacts, or spirit guides that are there to help
you on your spiritual path, it seems to me that they come to you as and
when needed, instead of you trying to summon them. I’ve never tried to
summon my spiritual ancestors and would find that practice to be abhorrent
because it just seems disrespectful. I’m going to share three examples of
spiritual ancestors who have shown up in my life and how I’ve worked with
them.
Nelson Rehmeyer
I spent my teen years in York, Pa, and as a baby magician I heard about
Rehmeyer’s Hollow or Hex Hollow. I drove out there late at night to do
magical workings and discover if the hollow was really haunted. I
encountered my first spiritual ancestor when I met the spirit of Nelson
Rehmeyer. Nelson was murdered by a few people who thought he’d hexed
them. They hoped that by murdering him that the hex would be lifted, but
given that they ended up in jail, that clearly didn’t work out for him.
The magic I worked in Rehmeyer’s Hollow included some blood magic,
where I gave some of my blood to the land. I think that magical working
got Nelson’s attention, because after that he would appear whenever I
visited the hollow and he’d offer up some advice about how to connect with
the hollow spiritually. It was from him that I learned how to connect with
power spots and identify ley lines.
Nelson has never visited me anywhere else, and from what I can tell he
seems to be restricted to the hollow. The hollow itself has a different
energetic feeling to it than the area around it. The magical energy is thicker,
stronger, and darker. It was a potent place to work magic from, but when I
left York, I cut my connections to the hollow. Nonetheless, anywhere I’ve
moved, I’ve created a similar connection to the power spots and leylines of
the area I’m living in. Learning that valuable skill has given me access to
sources of magical energy that are quite helpful to draw on when doing
extensive magical work. It’s also allowed me to better connect with the
natural energies of the land, and nature spirits.
William S. Burroughs
When I was in college, I was fortunate enough to take a class on
William S. Burroughs writing. Reading his books brought me into contact
with his spirit and introduced me to a curious phenomenon I’ve noticed
with a couple other deceased authors: The spirit of the author lives on in
their books. I didn’t encounter Burroughs’s spirit in his early books, but in
his later books, which included some of his thoughts and practices for
magic, I felt a connection and there he was. I could hear his voice in my
mind, and he started providing instructions on his approach to magic.
William S. Burroughs has played a significant role in my writing and
magic. A lot of the practices I do are informed by his approach to art,
writing, and magic. Anytime I read one of his books I can hear the old man
speak in my mind and connect with his spirit. I don’t know if this is the
same for other of his readers, but in my case, I have encountered something
of him left over in his books.
On the occasions I’ve interacted with him, I’ve promised to carry on his
work and reference his writing, so that people know about his influence on
my work. He’s been happy with that agreement, and on occasion has
continued to offer advice and perspectives that’s been useful for my magical
practice.
William G. Gray
I encountered William G. Gray’s work shortly after I graduated from
college. As with Burroughs, I discovered that when I read William G.
Gray’s books, I encountered something of his spirit and started interacting
with him. In recent years, as I’ve met some of his students and done more
active work with the spiritual tradition his work is part of, I’ve found that
the level of contact has increased. In particular, he’s helped me to connect
with a few archangels and modify a magical working I’m doing by
integrating those archangels into the magical work.
Over the years, since I started reading his books, I’ve always felt his
presence nearby. Sometimes he’ll provide suggestions about magical
experiments I’m working on. As an example, the practices around calling
spirits has played a significant role in helping me develop my experiential
embodiment approach, and while some of that is found in his writing, it is
also found in this spirit connection I have with him. I’ve made a similar
arrangement with him as the one I made with Burroughs. I cite his work and
share how it’s influenced my approach to magic, and he continues to help
me with the work I’m doing.
These aren’t the only spiritual ancestors I work with. There are a few
others I have connected with and work with when it’s appropriate to do so.
In each case, I’m humbly appreciative that they would choose to connect
with me and share their insights and work.
Exercise
Do you work with spiritual ancestors? How did you meet them? How
have they shaped your magical practice?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
How to Deal with Ghosts
Ghosts are spirits of people who haven’t moved on and are bound to a
space because of the unfinished business they have. Some ghosts are
friendly, and some are hostile. In either case, you may not really want to
have the ghost in your space. If you discover that a ghost is haunting your
space, you have a few options.
The first option is to befriend the ghost. In some cases, a ghost may be
neutral or friendly and open to interacting with you. You might try to come
to an accommodation with the ghost. For example, a couple friends of mine
have the former owner of the house they bought still haunting the place.
They’ve set up a small shrine space for the ghost, but also set up some clear
boundaries. The ghost honors those boundaries and has been harmless once
they made contact and came to an agreement with the ghost. However, not
all ghosts are friendly. What if you have a hostile ghost or one that’s creepy
and violates the boundaries?
In that case, you’ll need to take an approach where you clear that space
of the ghost. You might do some protection and warding magic to help you
clear the space of the ghost. For instance, one practice I do is the Sphere of
Art, which allows me to work with the elemental archangels to create a
space that clears out anything which doesn’t belong. To learn more about
the Sphere of Art check out RJ Stewart’s site http://rjstewart.net and his
books on the topic. I use the Sphere of Art daily in my magical space to
determine what belongs and what doesn’t belong in that space, and that
includes ghosts. You can use similar protection magic for your space and,
ideally, you’re making that magic part of your work every day.
The other approach I like to take is to help the ghost move on, forcibly,
by doing an anti-magic working where I essentially clear the space of any
magic, including the connection the ghost has, which causes it to move on
because the space is no longer supporting the ghost. With an anti-magic
working, what you do is strip the magic away from the space, unraveling
any magical energy or connection to that space. Before you do that
working, you may want to remove any magical objects or things of value
that you don’t want effected. What I do when I create that kind of space is
set it up so that the color gradually drains out of everything until the
environment doesn’t have any more energy. At the same time, I set up a
shield that keeps anything in, and uses alternating frequencies so that if
something is trying to break out of what I’m doing, it’s going to take more
time than it has to escape.
Exercise
How do you deal with ghosts?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
Whether you connect with blood ancestors or spiritual ancestors (or
your blood ancestors ARE your spiritual ancestors), it’s important to treat
your ancestors with respect, but also recognize their limitations. Even in the
case of the spiritual ancestors, I’ve still found that they bring with them the
same flaws they had in life. I’m open to their advice and perspective, but I
also recognize the value of tempering with the awareness of who these
people were and who their spirits are.
Chapter 7: Walking with Deities
My approach to working with deities (gods and goddesses) is different from
how most people work with them. I work with deities the way I work with
other spirits, as co-equals, whereas most people seem to work with them
from a place of a devotional practice, where the deity is worshipped. I
remember once telling a Celtic Reconstructionist my approach to working
with deities and being firmly rebuked for holding such blasphemous views
and practices, but from what I’ve observed gods and goddesses aren’t all
that different from other spirits. They want something from humans
(worship, attention, and belief), and they’re willing to do things in return for
what they want. Also, it seems to me that the gods and goddesses, the world
over are made in the image of humans, with all the human failings that
come along with being human.
If you look at the mythology of a given culture, what you see are deities
that are very fallible and inclined to make human mistakes. They lust, love,
get angry, make mistakes and just happen to have some powers humans
don’t have. I know it seems like I’m oversimplifying deities, but if you read
the mythology of a given deity, you will see these all too human traits in the
mythology. For instance, in the Bible, Jehovah strikes as me as being a very
insecure and jealous deity. In Greek mythology, Zeus can’t keep his dick in
his pants, and in Norse mythology, Loki is constantly angling to get an
advantage over his fellow deities. If you read what I’ve just written and you
have a knee jerk reaction, ask yourself why you are having that reaction.
Nothing I’ve shared here is untrue. Open a book of myths, read them, and
you’re going to see gods and goddesses that very humanocentric in their
behavior.
Once we recognize just how human the gods and goddesses are, we
must examine the relationship with them carefully and ask ourselves if we
should automatically worship a given deity. I want to be clear here and say
it’s not wrong to worship a deity. If that’s what you feel called to do, so be
it, but it’s worth considering while you feel the need to worship the deity.
On the other hand, we shouldn’t ignore the simple fact that gods and
goddesses do have power and that they are worthy of our respect. The
difference though, is that I can show a deity respect without necessarily
having to worship it, in order to work with it.
I recognize that statement may upset some people, who feel that taking
an approach to a god or goddess that isn’t devotional is blasphemous.
However, in all the time I’ve practiced magic and worked with gods and
goddesses I’ve never had an experience occur where they got upset because
I refused to worship them, and ended up treating them way I treat any spirit
I work with. And while someone who practices a devotional practice could
say that I’m insulting the gods because of how I’m approaching them, isn’t
it really up to the gods I’m working with to decide if they feel insulted or
not?
In my experience, it seems like the gods are open to having different
types of relationships. If you want to worship them in a devotional capacity,
they’ll certainly welcome that relationship, but if you want to work with
them as a co-equal, they’ll welcome that type of relationship as well. If
anything, who I notice gets offended by the views I have are the actual
worshippers of the gods, because they’ll argue that the gods are much more
powerful than a mere human, and that to approach them for a co-equal
partnership is disrespectful. However, in response to that claim, I come
back to the simple fact that the gods may have power, but that power is at
least, in part, derived from human attention, worship, and belief, and if that
element is taken out of the equation it seems that at least a substantial part
of a given god’s power goes bye bye with that lack of attention. It’s in their
interest to be in our lives and they don’t seem so particular about how that
relationship ought to manifest, so maybe we should consider being less
particular with each other about the given relationship a person with the
deities they choose to work with.
Exercise
If you work with deities, what is your relationship with them like? What
is the basis of that relationship and how does that relationship impact your
life?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
How to Work with Gods and Goddesses
So, if you take my approach to working with spirits, how do you work
with a god or goddess? First and foremost, show respect. If you’re going to
invoke a deity or do a pathworking or some type of evocation, be respectful
when you work with the deity. When I work with a god or goddess, I’ll do a
pathworking or an invocation of the god or goddess in order to establish
initial contact. Once that contact is made, I’ll explain why I’m choosing to
connect with them and what I’m looking for. My approach usually involves
working with a deity because that deity has access to specific information
or can teach me something. For instance, I might work with Hades if I want
to learn more about necromancy or I might work with Zeus if I want to
learn about weather magic. I might also work with them because I’d want to
see if they’re willing to exert their influence and power for me on a specific
situation, but that’s a rare ask on my part, because the more you ask, the
more they will want in return(in my experience).
You want to be very specific about what you’re asking for and what
you’re willing to do in return for what is asked for. You don’t want to welch
on the gods, because it doesn’t look good. Remember the mythology where
a stranger visits a household and the people treat that stranger well, and
then the stranger is revealed to be a god? That’s how you want to act when
you’re working with a god. For that matter, it’s how you want to act in
general.
When I choose to work with a god, what I do is make sure I set up a
dedicated space for that god. For instance, one of the gods I work with is
Guan Yu, who is the god of just wars (among other things). I work with him
because of his warrior spirit and because I want to be able to draw on his
sage advice. I have a wall scroll that depicts him, which hangs on the wall,
and is his dedicated space. If I need to work with him, I’ll go to that space
and ask him for his advice and make some type of offering that is
appropriate to him (plum wine for example). I’m not worshipping Guan Yu,
but I do honor him with a dedicated space and an appropriate offering. If I
ask for something in return he comes through.
Another god I’ve worked with in the past is Euronymous, who is a deity
of the dead. My work with him involved work with death and necromantic
magic. He helped me create the death rebirth ritual I share in my book
Space/Time Magic. When I worked with him, I had a small shrine to him
and, just as with Guan Yu, I would make an offering to him when I had a
request or just to honor him. I eventually stopped working with him, not
because of anything he did or I did, but because I didn’t feel a need to
continue doing work around death, having gotten what I needed from the
situation. Even so, I still am thankful for the time I worked with him.
Exercise
Do you have gods and/or goddesses you work with? What does that
work look like and how do you honor them? How do they help you?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
This is a short chapter, because I don’t work with gods often. My
approach is atypical of how most people work with gods, and you may or
may not opt to take that approach. I’ve shared it here, because it is useful to
explore different angles on how you might work with a given type of spirit.
Chapter 8: Walking with Pop Culture
Spirits
While I’ve written three books on pop culture magic, which have included
recommended practices for working with pop culture spirits, I thought I
would include a chapter in this book as well, to discuss some further
thoughts on the topic. See my pop culture magic series to learn more. Pop
culture magic continues to evolve and so does how people work with pop
culture spirits. What I share here is just my thoughts on the topic, but I
encourage you to also check out the different pop culture magic and pagan
online communities where other people are also sharing their own thoughts
and practices on the topic of pop culture magic.
With that said, I recommend working with pop culture spirits similar to
the way you’d work with any other type of spirit: be respectful and work
with them as co-equals. Some occultists and pagans don’t think pop culture
spirits are real because they’re derived from fiction work, but I disagree
with that perspective. We could make a similar argument about ancient
mythology, which is, after all, the stories (pop culture) of older cultures.
My thought is that even though a pop culture spirit originates from
fiction; it takes on a life of its own because of how people interact with that
fiction. When you read a really good story, you’re investing some belief in
that story and the characters. We shouldn’t be surprised then when that
belief gives them more substance and form because it’s a form of energy
that vitalizes spirits. Just because a pop culture spirit doesn’t originate from
an older culture, doesn’t mean it’s not a spirit or that it’s not real.
The best evidence to that isn’t my word on the matter though. The best
evidence is the multiple practitioners that work regularly work with pop
culture spirits and have meaningful interactions that transform their lives
and get them results. These are no different than the experiences and results
people get with other types of spirits, although I sometimes see efforts to
devalue the results and transformative work that happens with pop culture
spirits. This devaluation occurs because people feel threatened by the fact
that work with pop culture spirits can be as efficacious as the work they do
with their spirits. We should ignore such people instead of getting into
debates with them, because their insecurity is really a reflection of their
relationship with their spirits, as opposed to anything to do with our
practices.
With that said, let’s consider how we can work with pop culture spirits.
The advice I’m going to give is basically that you want to work with pop
culture spirits the way you’d work with any other spirits. You treat them
with respect, you do your research about them, and when you work with
them verify details and then build a relationship with them.
Much as with other types of spirits, not all pop culture spirits are
necessarily friendly or want to work with you, so you always want to take
appropriate precautions. For example, I wouldn’t work with Voldemort,
because Voldemort is only out for himself. Likewise, I wouldn’t work with
Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 (or the remake), because Sephiroth’s goals
aren’t aligned with mine. Another example of a more tricksterish persuasion
would be John Constantine, who can help you, but will usually try to angle
for a deal that’s favorable to him and not so much to you. The point I’m
making is that just because you’re working with a pop culture spirit doesn’t
mean you shouldn’t still take appropriate precautions with that spirit. Even
when you work with a specific version of that spirit such as a version of
Batman, you don’t get to cherry pick the aspects you want to work with and
ignore the rest. You still have to deal with the reality of that spirit, both its
positive and negative aspects.
When it comes to actually working with the pop culture spirit, as you
develop a relationship with the pop culture spirit, you’ll also end up
developing the appropriate correspondences that fit that spirit. This comes
about because you work with the spirit. I don’t recommend applying a one
size fits all approach to correspondences with spirits in general because the
work you do with spirits is personalized, and so your correspondences
should be personalized. This applies as much to pop culture spirits as it
does to other spirits.
As an example, when I started working with Sam Bridges Porter from
Death Stranding, even though I was playing the game, I didn’t
automatically assume that the correspondences that could be associated
with Sam from the game automatically applied. Instead, as I worked with
him through the medium of the game, I also entered into a dialogue with
him where we discussed what correspondences really applied. I discovered
that the correspondences that fit Sam was more of a tactical planning based
on finding the best possible route to reach your desired goal, as well as the
ability to navigate a given space and pick out the best possible tools to
make it through that space. Other people might work with Sam in different
ways than I do, and their correspondences could equally be valid for them,
but not necessarily for me.
Your work with a given pop culture spirit should naturally evolve as you
develop the relationship with that spirit. The one thing to keep in mind is
that how you work with a pop culture spirit may differ from how you would
work with a traditional spirit. When I make an offering to Sam, it comes in
the form of me either playing Death Stranding or listening to music from
Death Stranding. At the same time, when I’m playing the game, I’m also
working with Sam, because as I play I share the problems I’m encountering
in my life or the projects I’m working on and start getting ideas from him.
Some of those ideas may not come into full consciousness until I’m
working on them, but when they bloom, I know he’s played a role in
helping me work the project or the problem, to the point that I’ve come up
with a plan to realize the solution.
With your pop culture spirits, you’ll want to find a way to honor them
and work with them that’s appropriate to them and allows you to engage
them. For instance, if you work with Batman, you could read the comics as
an offering, but also as a means of invoking Batman so you could commune
with him. When I work with Grand Admiral Thrawn, from Star Wars, I will
commune with him through the books that have been written from his
perspective, because that’s an easy way to connect with him. My point is
that you have to find the best way to work with a pop culture spirit, and that
will be determined by how you interact with that spirit, much like how you
would interact with any other spirit.
You can make traditional offerings to a pop culture spirit if you want to
and that’s what it wants. For instance, you might offer Jelly Beans to a
character from Harry Potter, or something else along those lines.
Alternately, you might end up making an offering of your talents. In my
case, I sometimes write about pop culture spirits or I might do an artistic
piece for the spirit if that’s what it wanted. I find that with spirits in general,
if you ask them what they want, the answer may vary depending on what
you can offer. There’s no hard and fast rule here. If you want to know what
a spirit wants, pop culture or otherwise, ask it what it wants from you and
determine if you’re willing to give it.
The altar or shrine for a pop culture spirit can be similar to the shrine or
altar you would create for another type of spirit, but typically you’ll include
pop culture items that are relevant to the spirit. For instance, I have a
Batman shrine composed of the Batman: The Animated Series dvds, as well
as Batman graphic novels, which are on my bookshelf. It’s a perfect place
for the shrine, and I can leave any physical offerings there or come up with
some other approved appropriate gesture for when I work with Batman.
You can take a similar approach in coming up with your own pop
culture spirit shrine. Use the pop culture artifacts you have, as well as any
material offerings to create the shrine/altar, and then take appropriate
actions as needed and desired.
One of the reasons I like to work with pop culture spirits is that
sometimes they are better suited to help accomplish desired results than a
more traditional spirit would be. I’m currently working with Thrawn and
Sam Bridges Porter because Thrawn provides strategic perspectives and has
a way of catching details that would be missed otherwise, while Sam is
really good at tactical awareness and figuring out the best path forward.
They are helping me grow my businesses and strengthen my relationship
with the communities I serve because they see things I don’t and make me
aware of them. In return, I find ways to honor them for the work they do
with me. The results speak for themselves, as at the time of this writing I’ve
managed to go back to being fully self-employed, while also starting to
build another business. This has happened, in part, because of how I’ve
worked with Thrawn and Sam Bridges Porter.
Exercise
How do you work with your pop culture spirits? What correspondences
have you developed and why? What kind of altar/offerings do you make
your pop culture spirits?
Share your answers in the Magical Experiments Facebook group
#walkingwithspirits.
Conclusion
What I’ve shared here about working with pop culture spirits has
purposely been written from a general perspective, because while I could
say do this specific thing or that specific action, I find that it’s better to
encourage people to develop their own practices around the pop culture
spirits they work with. If you ask your pop culture spirit what it wants, it
will tell you. Trust the relationship you build, with appropriate precautions
taken. You are the best authority for your spiritual work, and if you do the
work, the relationship will develop and help you develop your pop culture
magic work.
Chapter 9: Q and A
Welcome to the Q and A chapter. Below are questions that members of the
Magical Experiments community asked. Even if the answers are elsewhere
in the book, I like to answer these questions separately, because then you
have a distinct for that question and answer. So, without further ado, let’s
answer some questions.
How do you build confidence in working with spirits?
First and foremost, you just have to do the work. If you only work with
a spirit occasionally, it’s hard to build up a relationship with that spirit and
get the resultant confidence. Beyond doing the work, I recommend testing
the spirit. In other words, if you want to be sure the spirit is who it says it is
and you want to be sure it can do what you ask of it, then you want to
devise a way to test the spirit.
One way you test the spirit is to ask questions and see how the spirit
responds. Are the answers consistent? You also pay attention to the
experiences and sensations you have with the spirit. If the experiences and
sensations differ each time, that can be an indicator that you’re not
necessarily dealing with the same spirit. Paying attention to all of this can
help you build confidence in the spirit you’re working with.
At the same time, you must consider that the spirit also necessarily need
to build confidence in you. Relationships go both ways, and the spirit may
want to know that you’re consistent as well. You may find yourself tested,
and, if so, you should expect that it comes with the territory.
If you’re coercing the spirit to work for you, then you’ll always be
second guessing what it shares with you, as well you should, because
you’re forcing the spirit to do something for you and not really giving it
anything in return. At some point, in whatever it way it can, the spirit will
test you because of the situation you’ve put it in.
How do you use solid protection spells/barriers in regard to spirits?
What kind of banishing work should someone do with spirits?
To be honest, when I work with spirits, I don’t use protection spells, nor
do I banish, but that’s because I work in a space that is cleansed every day. I
know that runs counter to conventional wisdom when it comes to spirits,
but I’ve never had any of the issues that other people have with spirits. In
other words, I don’t compel or coerce them. Instead, when I approach
working with a spirit, I ask if they want to work with me, and if they don’t,
I respect their answer. If they do, we come up with a mutually agreeable
arrangement and it works. I’ve never had a spirit turn on me.
But sometimes you will deal with hostile spirits that have been sent to
attack you by other people. Or, if you’re the sort of person to force a spirit
to work for you, at some point that spirit may try to attack you. In such
situations, you may want to employ certain protections to help you. What I
recommend doing is doing daily magic protection work where you shield
your space. For instance, I do the Sphere of Art working every day, where I
call the archangels into my space and in that process create a specific space
where only specific spiritual influences are allowed in. I also create wards
and have guardian spirits I work with that help protect me from magical
attack.
In terms of banishing, a good house cleaning (yes literally cleaning your
house) can also banish unwanted spirits and energies. The process of
cleaning the house can also be used to strengthen your existing protection
magic.
I recommend checking out my class on combat and protection magic,
which is available through Magical Experiments University. Also see
Appendix 2 of this book where I explore the topic of how to deal with
hostile spirits in more depth.
What was one of the most successful experiences you've had with
working with spirits? What was the least successful experience? What
do you think the difference was?
My least successful experience with a spirit involved working with a
Goetic Demon Eligos. Initially, the work was quite promising, but I found
that as I continued working with him he ended up amplifying issues around
my identity that I was in the process of working through. On the one hand,
you could argue that he was calling attention to those issues so that I could
work through them, but on the other hand, what really seemed to happen
was that those issues became unmanageable. I ended up going through a
radical change in my identity that I didn’t want, going from being selfemployed to working at a job.
To be clear though, those issues were mine, and what Eligos did was
call attention to them. I just didn’t like the way it happened, and I tried to
control the process, fighting it, which just made the whole situation worse. I
eventually came to the conclusion that it was time to stop working with
him. We had a conversation and I destroyed the evocation portal, and that
ended the relationship. I didn’t have any other blow back from the situation,
and I’ve since reversed my fortunes, but with a humbler and better approach
to life.
My most successful experience has been the work I’ve been doing for
the last 3 three years with the archangels associated with the sephiroth in
the Tree of Life. I’ve been doing this work through the Sphere of Art ritual,
which is written about by RJ Stewart. I’ve made a few modifications and
taken the work further than what he shares in his books, but this work has
been transformative for my life and magical practice. It’s introduced me to
an approach to magic that is focused on the experience and specifically
working with the experience, instead of just focusing on getting a result.
I have had many other successful workings with spirits and I have a
specific group of spirits I work with, but the reason I think of my Sphere of
Art work as being the most successful is because this has been a very
immersive process for me that has allowed me to construct a very specific
space that I work the rest of my magic in and has also applied to the other
areas of my life, allowing me to go back to being self-employed within a
few years because of how I’ve used the work with those spirits to transform
my approach to magic and everything else I do.
I would say the difference between the work with the archangels and the
work I did with Eligos, is that my work with the Sphere of Art has been
very intentional from the beginning, and part of my daily work, whereas
when I worked with Eligos the work wasn’t daily and wasn’t as intentional
as it could have been. What I’ve learned since is that if I’m going to work
with spirits, I really need to find a way to make that work part of my life
each and every day and also give myself over to the work, instead of trying
to control it. By giving myself over to the experience and working with it,
instead of trying to control the experience, I’ve learned to embrace the
moment, while also steering for the result I want, and I’ve gotten better
results because of that change in how I approach magic and how I work
with spirits.
I recognize that how I’m talking about working with spirits (and magic
for that matter) is different from what you find in most books on Western
occultism, but I think taking a less forceful approach to working with spirits
and magic is actually better. I’ve never compelled or coerced spirits in all
the time I’ve worked with them, but learning to surrender to the experience
and work with it has led to deeper and more intimate relationships with both
the magic and the spirits I work with. I’m still getting results and, if
anything, the results are easier to get because I’m learning to work with and
accept the journey instead of trying to control it.
How can you tell if they are lying?
This is an interesting question. I would ask in response to it, why do you
think they would lie to you? I don’t know what the person would answer to
that, but if we go back to the question of how you build confidence with a
spirit, it really comes down to a specific principle that we should consider:
What you bring into the relationship with a spirit is what that spirit will give
you. In other words, you need to get really clear on what assumptions,
expectations and biases you’re bringing with you when you work with a
spirit. If you expect a spirit to lie to you, then that will play a role in the
relationship you have with the spirit.
On the other hand, it’s worthwhile to ask why a spirit might choose to
lie to you or pretend to be something it isn’t. This happens if the spirit is
hostile or if it’s a trickster spirits that wants to test you.
You can test a spirit. You can ask it questions and then verify the
answers independently to determine if it is lying to you. You can have it do
specific tasks and verify that those tasks have been done. I think it’s a good
idea to do these things, so that you determine if the spirit is trustworthy.
At the same time, you need to build your relationship with the spirit
with the understanding that you need to follow through on whatever you
promise to the spirit. Just as you don’t want to be lied to, you don’t want to
lie to a spirit either. I’ve always followed through on my end of the
agreement I make with spirits and as a result I’ve never had to worry about
any truly negative effects.
How do you know if they're an external reality as distinct from say
an imaginary character from fiction that you're having an internal
dialogue with?
First, keep in mind that I also think pop culture spirits (i.e. fictional
characters) are real. So, I think your question really comes down to this:
How do you know the spirits aren’t just psychological aspects in your head?
The answer to that question is severalfold.
Historically speaking, the notion that spirits are an aspect in our heads
originates in Jung’s work and Aleister Crowley’s approach to working with
spirits. While I think Jung has some useful ideas for doing psychological
work, I wouldn’t apply psychology to spirits. As for Crowley’s approach, I
think the results speak for themselves as to how well that worked out for
him.
I have never approached spirits as a psychological phenomenon, and I
find that occultists who take such a tack tend to have a diluted approach to
magic in general that doesn’t seem very effective. You either believe magic
and spirits are real, or you don’t and the accompanying results speak
volumes.
How I know the spirits are real is through the results I have achieved
with them. When I call a spirit and we agree to work together, results come
in shortly thereafter. I work the process and I trust it, and that’s what it
really comes down to. I know the spirits are real because I see how my life
has changed because of working with them.
It can be hard to trust and believe in something seemingly ephemeral,
but if you apply my experiential embodiment approach, you won’t just
dialogue with the spirits in your head. You’ll feel them through your entire
being and know them through the experiences you have.
What have you found to be the most effective techniques to develop
clairaudience/clairvoyance?
I’ve found that the best techniques for developing your senses (all of
them) are rooted in learning how to connect with your body. One of the
challenges that Western occultists face is the challenge of disconnection
from the body and the subtle senses of the body. So much of Western magic
is treated as a cerebral experience, which we see in the focus on trying to
get out of the body. The key to developing such skills though is learning to
engage the body and work with it in order to appreciate how it already tunes
you into a myriad of subtle sensations and signals that are often blocked out
in everyday consciousness.
So, how do we work with our bodies to develop these skills? First and
foremost, I recommend taking up a breathing practice. Learning to breathe
properly allows you to tune into the more subtle sensations of your body. It
also allows you to cultivate your internal energy and apply it toward your
senses to help you enhance your awareness. I’d also recommend some type
of moving practice that allows you to experience not just the movement of
the body, but also the space the body moves in. As you do the movement
work, keep your awareness on all of your senses, but allow those senses to
soften. For instance, keep your eyes open as you do the practice, but don’t
focus your sight on any one thing. Simply take in what’s around you and let
it pervade your being. Do the same with sounds, touch, etc. What you will
discover is that doing this seemingly basic work will open your awareness
up to your environment in a way that visualizations and other such practices
simply don’t enable. By integrating your awareness into your body, you free
yourself from the cerebral approach that all too often is used in Western
magic. It’s beyond the scope of this book to explore this topic further, but in
a future Inner Alchemy book I will dive into this topic in much more depth.
How do you overcome fear of something you can't see? Especially
when you can't tell if you are dealing with an ambitious spirit who has
his own ideas.
What you bring with you is what you will get from the spirits you work
with. If you bring fear and concern about ambition that will take on its own
life and the relationship you have with the spirit. The point we have to keep
in mind when it comes to spirits, is that the humanocentric perspectives we
bring into the relationship is a projection of what we assume we know about
spirits. The real question, the hard question, is what do we really know
about a given spirit and what it wants? We can discover this by observation
and by asking the spirit what it wants. If we bring in certain assumptions to
that observation, then we color the interactions we have with the spirit in
ways that may stop us from actually being present to the real experience
and resultant relationship that could happen.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take some precautions when you work
with spirits, but that’s where test and verifying comes into play. If you test
the spirit and things don’t seem right, it’s a good idea to stop working with
that spirit. If, on the other hand, you find there’s consistency in your
interactions, then that’s a good indicator that the spirit is on the level with
you. When you test and interact with the spirit, set appropriate boundaries
to address any concerns you have about the ambition of the spirit. For
instance, I might tell the spirit that I want it to do a very specific thing for
me, and nothing else, which serves to focus the spirit on that task. If you
provide broad instructions and you’re concerned about how the spirit will
interpret those instructions, then that’s where you need to get very specific.
You should also employ some protective measures if you’re concerned
that the spirit is hostile (though if that’s the case, why are you trying to
work with that spirit?). Not all spirits want to work with people and in some
cases, they may go on the attack because you’re either easy prey or you’re
inimical to their function. Doing some type of protection magic before
working with a spirit is a good idea. For instance, even with how I work
with spirits, I still do daily protection magic which kicks in when I’m
working with anything. So, I would recommend doing whatever protection
magic you normally do when working with a spirit until you’ve determined
its intentions and actions are friendly.
In terms of dealing with your fear, I recommend doing some internal
work around that fear. What’s the underlying narrative that informs that
fear? What can you do to address that fear? I include these questions, not to
invalidate whatever fear you feel, but rather because I think it’s useful to
explore that fear and understand it, so that it doesn’t control you and doesn’t
become part of the interaction you have with the spirit.
I know this is really broad but I'm on the left handed path and a
huge fan of your work. What I find troubling is how to work with gods
without diving into worship of them? I know the answer may sound
easy but it’s something I've personally struggled with.
The answer isn’t necessarily easy, especially when you consider that
many people will take exception to someone working with a god as a coequal instead of in a devotional capacity. I would suggest reading chapter 7,
which addresses the issue. As with any other spirit, how you approach a
deity matters, and the relationship you set up with a given deity is your
business and no one else’s. With that said, I don’t recommend advertising
that you’re working with deities in a different manner than how most people
do. You’ll definitely catch some flak for it, as I have in the past.
What precedents have been set for the creation of homunculistic
sigil in-dwelling servitors who eventually may reach the status of a
"hypertulpa" which can aid the magician by acting as a catalyst for
both evocative and invocatory purposes? I know these types of
occurrences CAN happen, but I'd like to know of those areas of interest
where they HAVE happened and how the work was done.
I think what you’re referring to here is creating a magical entity or
working with an Egregore. See my book Walking with Magical Entities if
that’s the case.
How do you get the most of your interactions when spirits are
evoked? Hollywood depicts it as an involved conversation like you'd
have with another human. I don't think that's the case.
In my experience, the Hollywood version of spirits manifesting
physically and speaking out loud to you doesn’t happen. Instead, when I
have interacted with spirits, it’s either been through a telepathic stream of
information that’s sent to me, and/or through the physical sensations that
occur when the spirit is interacting with me, which can include kinesthetic
and smell and even sound, but not sound in the form of spoken words.
How I get the most out of my interactions with spirits involves not
expecting them to appear or act a certain way. Instead I focus on the actual
experience I’m having with the spirit and work with it in that context. I pay
attention to the subtleties of the experience, because those subtle sensations
may end up being central to the communication you’re having with the
spirit.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t expect the spirit to
interact with you 24/7 when you’ve evoked it. You’ve asked it to come help
you with something, so tell it what you need, and then let it do its work. If
that work involves some kind of instruction from the spirit, then pay
attention to what you’re inspired to learn, because that’s how that
information will likely come to you. Alternately it may come to you in the
form of a vision of the spirit instructing you. Either way, pay attention and
learn, and then do something with what you’ve learned.
Conclusion
I first started working with spirits when I first started learning magic, at the
tender age of 16. What I’ve tried to share in this book is a distillation of my
own journey in spirit work. I started out with ceremonial magic and
shamanic vision work, and gradually changed my practices to what I do
now. Undoubtedly, my spiritual practices will continue to change. A book,
like a picture, is a snapshot of a person’s work. Yet I hope what this book
provides you is a different perspective on how to engage and work with
spirits.
It may seem like I always take a different path than the well-worn one
that so many other practitioners have wandered down, but, in fact, I have
trod that same well-worn path before coming to the one I’m on. Innovations
in any discipline don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen because you
recognize the opportunity for change based on what you’ve already done in
the existing systems and processes you have access to.
Magical experimentation of any type draws on a foundation of what
came before, and this is why it’s important to ground yourself in a wide
variety of perspectives and approaches to magic (or any other discipline)
while you seek to arrive at your own conclusions. I would encourage you to
check out the differing perspectives on spirit work I’ve contrasted my own
work to, as well as others not included. Certainly, the works I’ve referenced
are good works and I respect the authors for their perspectives and work.
This series will continue in Walking with Elementals, Faeries, and
Nature Spirits, where I share some of my work and experiences with the
aforementioned spirits. I’ve opted to write multiple volumes for this series
in order to keep each book tightly focused on the subject matter at hand,
and, in some cases, so I can extensively explore a given topic. I find that
this approach to my writing, which is a fairly recent one, has been quite
useful for focusing my work while also providing the reader a similar focus
on the topic at hand.
In the meantime, I’ve provided you a lot of exercises in this book, so
work this book and see what you discover when you walk with spirits.
Taylor Ellwood
Portland, OR
August 2020
Appendix 1: Walking with Plant and
Animal Spirits
I didn’t include a chapter on this topic, because I haven’t done a lot of work
with animal spirits. I have done no work with plant spirits, but I know it is
possible to work with the spirits of plants, as there are books on that very
topic. I want to acknowledge that this is the case and speak to the work I
have done with several animal spirits, and that’s why I’ve included this
appendix.
One of the animal spirits I have worked with is the spirit of Elephant. I
hesitate to use the label totem to describe my relationship with Elephant,
but I have had a life-long fascination with elephants and always been drawn
to them spiritually. I admire the beauty of their forms, the intelligence and
playfulness they display, and how they move and experience the world.
I have worked with Elephant magically in several different ways.
Elephant has helped me develop my system of space/time magic, providing
me insights on memory and navigation of space through vibration. Reading
books on elephants and their behaviors has confirmed and validated what
Elephant has shared with me.
I’ve also worked with Elephant to protect me and remove obstacles for
me. When I worked at the customer support job, I had a statue of Elephant
in the office and asked his aid to help protect me from customers with anger
issues, and also to help me remove obstacles for those customers. At the
same time, I also asked Elephant’s aide in removing obstacles for me as I
worked to transition back to full time self-employment. What I noticed is
that when I’ve worked with Elephant, obstacles do get cleared out of the
way.
To honor Elephant, I have a dedicated altar space, and my wife and I
contribute to an Elephant conservation which takes care of orphans.
I’ve also worked with Spider, again in relationship to space/time magic.
I first got turned on to working with Spider as a result of reading Time,
Fate, and Spider Magic by Oryelle Defenstrate-Bascule. In that book he
shared his own work with spiders, and it got me curious, so I decided to
connect with Spider. Just as with Elephant, Spider taught me a different
approach to time magic that I’ve continued to work with. I created a
painting to honor Spider and worked on moving spiders out of my home
with care, instead of just killing them as I had previously done. To learn
more about my work with Elephant and Spider check out my book Magical
Identity.
As I mentioned above there are some good books already available on
the topics of working with plant and animal spirits. I recommend checking
them out if you want to learn more about each topic.
Appendix 2: How to Deal with Hostile
Spirits
Not all spirits have your best interests at heart. Sometimes you’ll encounter
hostile spirits, and in such a situation you need to figure out what to do
about the hostile spirit because if you don’t do anything, it’s going to make
your life miserable. So how do you handle a hostile spirit?
Let’s first consider the reasons a spirit might be hostile. The first reason
could be because the spirit is inimical to life. Its function is about
destruction and breaking things down and you happen to be in the way. It’s
nothing personal. It just doesn’t want anything to do with you, and you
happen to be in the way of its function.
The second reason could be because someone decided to call a spirit
and send it after you. It’s been put on the attack, and in any other situation it
might not attack you, or at least be less likely to attack you. However, it’s
being compelled to attack you and you’ve got to figure out what to do about
the attack and stopping it from continuing to attack you.
The third reason could be because you called a spirit up and tried to
coerce into doing something for you, and even if you succeeded in the
moment, the spirit may have found a loophole and is trying to attack you
because like any other being, including yourself, it doesn’t want to be
forced to do something.
The fourth reason could be because you’ve encroached on the spirit’s
territory and done something without considering what you were doing. For
example, maybe you cut a tree branch without asking permission of the
tree, and, as a result, the nature spirits have taken action against you
because of what you did.
There could be other reasons a spirit could be hostile toward you, but
these are the typical reasons you’ll encounter a hostile spirit. Now that we
have those reasons laid out, let’s look at the solution for resolving each
situation.
In situation 1, the spirit is hostile to you because you are the antithesis
of it and its function is to destroy you. As I said above, it’s nothing
personal. Basically, you’re dealing with an abyssal spirit. It’s not
necessarily evil. It’s just not on your side or remotely interested in being on
your side. So how you do deal with a spirit like that? First and foremost, get
out of its way! If you can’t do that, then it’s time to call up some spirits that
are friendly to you can help you drive that spirit off. You should also do
whatever flavor of protection magic you normally do. And when it’s all
done, ask yourself how you got yourself in that situation in the first place,
so you never do it again.
In situation 2, you have a spirit being sent after you. The approach I
take with such a spirit is to release it from its compulsion. More than likely,
the person sending it after you has coerced it into attacking you, and if you
get rid of the coercion and have a conversation with it, the spirit will end up
not attacking you and might even go on to attack the person who sent it
after you (bonus!). You might also ask the spirit if it’s part of a hierarchy
and go up the chain to talk with the spirit above it and negate any future
attacks.
In situation 3, you called a spirit up, threatened it to make it do
something for you, and you didn’t factor into account a loophole, and now
the spirit is after you. I recommend banishing the spirit. More importantly, I
recommend taking a different approach to your work with spirits. Instead of
taking the grimoire conjuration approach and trying to force the spirit to do
things for you, why not just ask the spirit for what you want and offer
something in return?
In situation 4, if you’ve done something like cut a tree without
permission, acknowledge the mistake and make offerings. Expect that it
will take a while for the spirits to trust you again and make sure from now
on, that you ask permission before you do something. Even if the tree is
technically on your land, it’s worthwhile to remember that we live in the
world, not above it, and how we interact with the land speaks a lot to the
spirits that are part of it and don’t have a human’s perspective on
ownership.
Some spirits are going to be hostile, but even if that is the case, it’s
worth figuring out why and what your role in that hostility might be. That
way you can address your role and make changes for the future, while also
dealing with the immediate situation.
Appendix 3: My Approach to Evocation
This excerpt was originally included in my book Multi-Media Magic. I’ve
shared it here to show how my process of working with spirits has evolved
over the years. I wrote Multi-Media Magic in 2008.
My approach to evocation as it applies to spirits is one that’s based on
the following principle: “Sorcery works on the assumption that each
definably distinct bit of psychic energy is a separate, self-aware ‘spirit’, an
individual entity with whom the sorcerer enters a personal relationship”
(Mace 1996, p. 9). This approach could be called animistic, in that for me
spirits can be in anything. For example, I personify my car, give it a name,
and in doing so, interact with the spiritual energy within it. Is that car now a
spirit? Some magicians will say yes, while others will say no. I fall into the
yes camp. I think that anything can have a spirit, and that it’s very important
to treat the spirits with respect and honor. The personal relationships I
create are ones focused on working with the entities toward goals that are
beneficial to all. I’ve found that this approach has been the most successful
one for me. The entities I work with respond much more favorably if
respected than if I try to force them to do something.
However, this doesn’t mean I worship them. I do daily work with some
spirits, but the majority of relationships I have aren’t based on devotion or
worship. Instead, they’re based on an acknowledgement of equality and a
desire to work toward mutual ends. I also create entities when I can’t find
an entity that suits my needs or just want to make one to deal with a very
specific situation. See my book Walking with Magical Entities for more
information. One of the benefits of creating an entity is that you can give it
a physical residence to live in while you work with it. That residence could
be as simple as the programming symbol you created for it, or it could be
more complex. I put some of my entities into statues. My speed limit entity
actually resides in a little medallion hung over the rear view mirror. The
benefit of housing such entities is that they are given a permanent residence
and, as such, don’t need to be evoked every time you work with them.
Because you program an entity when you create it, you also create the
parameters by which it’s activated, so it’s never released in a situation
where it’s not appropriate for it to be there. Remember that you do need to
feed an entity you’ve created. However, that detail isn’t really different
from evoking an entity, as usually to evoke it you have to provide the means
for it to exist here. Feeding works on the same principle. Give the entity a
means to sustain its existence so you can work with it.
My overall approach with any spirit is to work with it in an equal
partnership. Even with the entities I create I focus on creating a relationship
where they get just as much out of the relationship as I do. I work with
spirits for several different reasons and in several different ways. The first
reason is that sometimes I’m too emotionally invested in a situation to
resolve it personally using magic. By creating or evoking an entity, I can
allow it to handle the situation for me, without my personal biases
interfering. I’ve used this approach in job hunting. By having an entity
work on generating potential job opportunities for me, I can focus more on
the applications, resumes, and interviews when they occur. The entity
pushes potential job opportunities to my awareness, and then I apply for
them. I also created my car entity to help me improve my driving and keep
me from going over the speed limit. Again, I chose to use an entity because
I was too emotionally attached to the results and would have sabotaged my
working if I had tried to attend to it personally.
One of the reasons I either create a magical entity or evoke spirits is to
learn something new. Because spirits embody specific characteristics and
attributes, they are ideal for teaching specific skills related to those
qualities. I created a financial entity in 2006, after I realized I didn’t know
much about finances. Though I could manage money day to day, I didn’t
have a long term plan of action. The financial entity began to teach me
about money, steering me toward buying particular books on finances,
lecturing me about my attitude regarding money, helping to generate
interest in my products at vending events (which thus brought in more
money), and pushing me to write about my experiences, partially to educate
others, but also to educate myself. It’s fair to say that this entity was my
teacher in the sense that it motivated me to learn more about finances and
where I wanted to be in life. In another case, to learn more about divination
and hone my divination skills, I worked with a pop culture spirit, Miss
Cleo. While the real Miss Cleo might have been a fake, the persona, or
entity of Miss Cleo, was a being who could tap into all the energy being put
toward it and so had some knowledge and power. By choosing to work with
her I learned how to improve my skills, and eventually was even pushed
toward learning a lot more about space/time magic. See my Space/Time
magic series for more information.
Another spirit I’ve worked with is the Goetic demon Purson, who is a
potent space/time spirit, having knowledge of the future and past. I decided
to evoke him after I did a group ritual where he was worked with me to help
some friends of mine. My first solo working with him occurred on New
Year’s Eve, 2006-7. I wanted to get a feeling for him and determine if he
was an entity I should consider working with, while researching and writing
one of my books on space/time magic. What I found out was that Purson
would be an excellent teacher and inspiration for one of my later books.
Since that initial working, he’s continued to be a source of inspiration,
pointing me in the direction of various resources and helping me explore
and experiment with the principles of space/time magic.
A final reason to work with entities and spirits has to do with the fact
that they have different perceptions than I have. They can provide intuitive
flashes of information to help steer me in a specific direction that I might’ve
missed otherwise. One of the first entities I created was a space/time entity
called Cerontis, whose sole role is to make me aware of opportunities I
might miss. He doesn’t make those opportunities manifest—I do that. But
he helps expand my awareness of opportunities. I have to admit I’ve found
a lot more opportunities as a result of creating that entity, because I know
he’s always looking for them. In fact, when I programmed him, I
incorporated his method of feeding into what he did for me. Every
opportunity he presents to me also gives him energy to continue finding
more opportunities. It creates a domino effect, one opportunity chaining
into another, with him feeding from the opportunities, but also feeding
them.
Evocation is a powerful technique. I think the reason my evocations
have been successful is because I treat the entities I work with respect and
equality. I’ve never had to command an entity or use the various levels of
protection that other magicians feel they need to use. If anything, by
choosing to treat an entity with respect, my relationship with it has
produced far more in the way of results than forcing it to comply with my
desires. Remember that the mentality of traditional/medieval evocation
came out of Christian fear of dealing with beings that didn’t fit into the
Christian metaphysical universe. If that mentality fits you, use it, but if it
doesn’t, take a different approach. I have, and as of yet in my dealings have
not had any harm visited upon me.
What Makes a Successful Evocation
One key component of a successful evocation (according to several
authors) is the use of incense as a way of creating a substance the entity
could use to give itself form. (Bardon 2001b, Lisiewski 2004). Although
I’ve done a fair amount of ceremonial magic, I’m not really a fan of getting
lots of ingredients together to do a ritual. While in Seattle, I lived in a small
cramped house and there wasn’t a lot of room to put down a traditional
circle, break out all the tools, and light the incense. And while I’d have
loved to do a ritual in my backyard somehow, I don’t think the neighbors
would have appreciated it. For that matter, I wouldn’t really have
appreciated explaining what I was doing, if the authorities had been called
in to investigate.
At the same time, as I read these books, I’m told by at least one author
that any evocation I do that isn’t by the book is inauthentic and not a real
evocation (Lisiewski 2004). So, I’m left in a quandary. I want to evoke, but
I don’t have the physical space or materials and it’s not authentic if I don’t
follow the instructions. And if I want to do an evocation to get help finding
a better ritual space and proper materials, I’m kind of stuck. There’s no
allowance for experimentation here, is there? The answer to that question
depends on the perception you cultivate about the magic you practice.
As it turns out, there is room for experimentation and your evocations
can be effective, even if you don’t pursue the traditional route. The symbol
does not make the reality, it just denotes it. If that’s the case, and from my
experiences it has been, then it’s possible that it’s not so much the particular
act in and of itself that works, as it is what the act is supposed to do for all
parties involved. If evocation is about creating a link and a space for an
entity to use so that it can interact with this reality safely, then tools and the
rest of a ceremonial ritual compose only one method among many that can
be used to accomplish that task.
The tesser-act board is a good example of a nontraditional, but effective
evocation tool. To create the tesser-act, I took an Ouija board and put the
flower of Kairos (which is the programming symbol for the tesser-act) onto
the board. (A drawing of the flower of Kairos can be found at
http://www.chaoscurrent.com.) Since Ouija boards are treated as gateways
to other planes of existence, I felt that characteristic would enhance the
workings I did with the tesser-act. The one difference is that the planchette
isn’t moved around. Instead it’s placed in the center of the Kairos symbol.
The sigil or symbol of the entity is placed underneath the planchette. When
the magician wants to evoke the entity, the fingers of both hands are placed
on the planchette, and then the entity is evoked.
I used this method of evocation to work with Ronove, the daimon of
rhetoric. I evoked Ronove to help me improve my writing and speaking
skills. I kept a pad of paper and pen beside me to write down impressions.
When I did the evocation, I felt Ronove’s presence and saw an image of
him with glasses on his face and a feather pen in one hand, and in the other
a piece of paper. He showed me a personalized symbol I could use to work
with him more closely. He also offered advice on my writing and speaking,
providing some suggestions on how it could be changed to meet difference
audience expectations. I wrote all my impressions and his advice down and
followed the advice so I could start improving my skills. The entire time the
evocation was done I felt as if my head was being stroked by a current of
electricity. When I took both of my hands off the planchette the feeling
faded away. I’ve since used the tesser-act for other evocation workings and
each time it’s been successful in establishing contact with the entity and
evoking it so it can accomplish the working.
I’ve also used my own derivation of the tesser-act, which is a space/time
memory box. The memory box is an old wooden chest I have had for a
number of years. The inside of the chest is painted with a silver web that
has a similar appearance to the Kairos symbol, but has a different function.
The reason for the difference is that the memory box doesn’t function as a
container removed from our conventional reality. Instead the space/time
memory box acts as an interconnected web. The magician uses the web to
access other space/time moments or nodes, which can include working with
an entity, but most often has involved working with other versions of the
self. It can also involve evoking a memory to live through again. More
information on the memory box is available in Magical Identity.
As an example, I’ve used the memory box to create a space/time
reference point in Portland for me. I did a ritual to Purson, the Goetic
demon of time, and put the sigils he gave me into the box. The sigils were
placed there to gather up the necessary time energy needed to help me shift
from Seattle to Portland in a quick manner. I also put some of my hair in the
box as an offering to Purson. When the time was right, late in March, I
opened the box, burned the sigils and hair as an offering to Purson, and
proceeded from there to pursue my plans to manifest myself in Portland. By
the end of April, I landed a job and successfully moved into a larger home
in a better neighborhood in Portland.
Another evocation method involves taking several principles from
Bardon’s work and applying it toward creating a gateway that allows the
practitioner to evoke the entity, while at the same time keeping the entity
safe so that it can interact with the magician. Bardon uses an approach
called impregnation, where he puts into an object a specific meaning/energy
that can then be evoked from that object. In the case of working with an
entity, the magician would carve or put the seal/sigil (i.e. the symbol) of the
entity on the object in question and use that symbol as a focus. The focus on
the symbol impregnates the meaning, and access to the entity, into the
talisman. Then the magician evokes the entity, shows it the talisman, and
get it’s to agree to using the talisman as a portal. After that the magician can
use the talisman to evoke the entity whenever they please (Bardon 2001a,
Bardon 2001b). The second principle involves Bardon’s technique of using
a magic mirror. The mirror is painted with the symbol of the entity, and then
impregnated with the particular vibration or energy the entity identifies
with. The mirror can then be used to evoke the entity, with it appearing in
the mirror (Bardon 2001b).
Something which is important to note for this technique involves
Bardon’s definition of entities,
The beings and principals which he will perceive there are not
personified beings. Instead, they are powers and vibrations which
are analogous to the names and attributes. Should a
magician...decide to materialize one of these powers, or if he
were to give this power a form that is accessible to his receptivity,
then his power would appear to him in the form which
corresponds to his symbolic abilities of perception (2001b, p. 96).
While I treat entities as real beings that exist in their own right, I also
agree with Bardon’s idea that the appearance of them is likely only a
symbolic
embodiment
created
to
represent
the
particular
power/vibration/concept being worked with. In other words, the entities are
real, but they know that to effectively work with someone they need to
interact with that person in a way that makes sense and yet still
accomplishes the goal at hand.
Along with Bardon’s approaches I also use personalized symbols (based
on the principle of Spare’s alphabet of desire) with entities, to work with
them (Mace 1984). I previously mentioned that Bardon had discussed three
types of symbols that could be used to evoke an entity. A personalized
symbol system emphasizes a personal relationship with the entity being
evoked. It embodies and explores the growth of relationships and is more
effective to use in evocation than using more universal symbols. Universal
symbols are used by many magicians, which dilute the power and
connection of those symbols. While it’s true that attention and energy can
invest a symbol with power, if many magicians use that symbol they are
spreading that attention and energy out, diluting the power and taking away
from the efficacy of the workings. A personalized symbol is one that only
the magician who created it knows. The power and connection of the
symbol isn’t diluted, because while other people may see it, only the
magician can access the meaning that is within it. Additionally, the
relationship between the magician and entity works because it’s based off
the magician’s personal parameters (as set in the symbol) as opposed to
someone else’s parameters.
My particular approach to evocation is a synthesis of Bardon’s
impregnation/mirror techniques and Spare’s artistic work. I use water color
paints to create a gateway/portal/mirror to the particular entity I want to
work with. The landscape of the painting represents both the native
environment and the particular vibration or energy of the entity. I paint the
personalized symbol that represents that entity, incorporating it into a
representation of the body of the entity I’m working with. This serves as a
key to activate the gateway.
To actually get the personalized symbol, I’ll set up my paints and the
canvas and then invoke the entity. I let the entity guide my hands in creating
the painting and the symbol that is used to contact it. The benefit of the
invocation is that the painting is also being impregnated with the entity’s
energy. Although the entity guides my hands, we share consciousness
equally, entering into a dialogue that allows for a mutual agreement to be
formed about the nature of the painting and the symbol that’s created.
Bibliography
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language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage
Books.
Abram, David. (2010). Becoming human: An earthly cosmology.
New York: Vintage Books.
Alexander, Christopher. (2002). The nature of order: An essay on
the art of building and the nature of the universe. Berkeley: The
Center for Environmental Structure.
Andrews, Ted. (1993a). How to meet and work with spirit guides.
St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.
Andrews, Ted. (1993b). Enchantments of the faerie realm:
Communicate with nature spirits and elementals. St. Paul:
Llewellyn Publications.
Bardon, Franz. (2001a). Initiation into hermetics. Salt Lake City:
Merkur Publishing, Inc.
Bardon, Franz. (2001b). The practice of magical evocation. Salt
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Barrabbas, Frater. (2017). Spirit conjuring for witches: Magical
evocation simplified. Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications.
Bruce, Robert. (1999). Astral dynamics: A new approach to outof-body experiences. Charlottesville: Hampton Roads Publishing
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Dominguez Jr, Ivo. (2008). Spirit speak: Knowing and
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Ellwood, Taylor. (2018). Magical identity: The practical magic of
space, time, neuroscience, and identity. Portland: Magical
Experiments Publications.
Ellwood, Taylor. (2019). Inner alchemy of life: Practical magic
for bio-hacking your body. Portland: Magical Experiments
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Ellwood, Taylor. (2020). The magic of writing: How to use
writing and practical magic to get consistent results. Portland:
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Publishers.
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Weiser Books.
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the imagination. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Kraig, Donald Michael. (1997). Modern magick: Eleven lessons
in the high magickal arts. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.
Leonard, George. (2006). The silent pulse: A search for the
perfect rhythm that exists in each of us. Salt Lake City: Gibbs
Smith, Publisher.
Lisiewski, Joseph C. (2004). Ceremonial magic & the power of
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Lupa (2007). Totems and transformation. In Taylor Ellwood (ed.)
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(pp. 274-280). Stafford: Immanion Press.
Mace, Stephen. (1984). Stealing the fire from heaven. Milford:
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Mace, Stephen. (1996). Addressing power: Sixteen essays on
magick and the politics it implies. Milford: Self-published.
Muldoon, Sylvan & Carrington, Hereward. (1969). The projection
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Nema. (2003). The way of mystery: Magick, mysticism & selftranscendence. St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications.
Packwood, Kirk R. (2004). Memetic magic: Manipulation of the
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Arkana Paperbacks.
Want to do more with working with spirits?
If your answer is yes, then you’ll want to check out my How to Work with
Spirits course, which is available at Magical Experiments University. In that
course, I offer additional exercises that can help you take your spirit work to
the next level.
Visit magical-experiments.teachable.com to sign up for the class.
You finished Book 2 of the Walking With Spirits series and there’s
more on the way
I’m currently working on the next book in the Walking with Spirits
series. If you’d like to be notified when that book is available, please visit
the magical experiments site and pick up a free e-book on magic, and get
placed on my e-list so you can get notified when the next book is out.
Also check out the bonus chapter in this book, which is the first chapter
of Inner Alchemy of Emotions.
About the Author
Taylor Ellwood is the author of numerous books on magic including Pop
Culture Magick, Space/Time Magic, and Inner Alchemy. He is also the
author of the Zombie Apocalypse Call Center, a hilarious adventure about a
customer representative that has to save his customers from the zombie
apocalypse. When he isn’t working on his latest magical experiment or
writing a book he can be found enjoying games, books, and life and the
company of his amazing wife. For more information about his latest nonfiction projects, check visit the magical experiments website.
Learn How Magic Works!
Free E-books available on my website Magicalexperiments.com
Whether you want a learn a simple 4 step process for creating a magical
working, or discover how take your fandom and turn it into a spiritual
practice, or learn simple breath meditations that enhance your life, or
discover how to turn probabilities I have free e-books available for you that
will teach you how magic works and how to get consistent results with it.
Visit magicalexperiments.com/free-books and download your free e-book
today!
Did you know I also write Fiction?
At Imagine Your Reality, I invite you to explore my fantastical worlds
of fiction and make them part of your reality. Whether you’re following the
adventures of a superhero who’s learning how to fly or rooting for a support
analyst as he fights off zombies, my hope is that my stories will entertain
you and take you to a fantastical place. I write fiction with a twist, because I
like to surprise my readers and that’s exactly what you’ll get with my
writing.
That’s what Imagine Your Reality is about and I invite you to take a
glimpse of the fantastic and read my free novella The Zombie Apocalypse
Convenience Store, which explores what happens when a convenience store
clerk has to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Visit Imagineyourreality.com to get the free story and get notifications
when I publish my fiction.
Bonus: Chapter 1: Learning to be in your
body
Take a deep breath in through your nose or mouth. Let yourself really feel
that breath in your body. How does it feel? How does your body feel?
Exhale. Take another breath and really sit with your body. How does it feel?
How do you feel about what you feel? Are you comfortable, or do you feel
tension? Is there a part of your body that feels numb or out of sync with the
rest of your body, or do you feel in touch with your body and with the
emotions you feel?
Many people aren’t comfortable with their bodies. They do everything
they can to minimize being in their bodies. Sometimes they turn to drugs or
alcohol or sometimes they turn to spirituality. They can have many reasons,
including a feel of dysphoria with the body, or traumatic memories that
have shaped how they experience their lives. Regardless of what the reason
is, the disconnect they feel stops them from being fully present in their
bodies and denies them an opportunity to work through the very disconnect
they feel. What they don’t realize is that the human body is one of the most
sensitive and aware communicators about what is really going on with a
given person.
A significant part of the disconnect that people have with their bodies
starts with their emotions. At least in the U.S. we have not been taught how
to feel our emotions or how to work with them. Instead the result I’ve both
experienced in myself and observed in others is that we talk a lot about our
emotions, but we don’t know how to be in them, to feel them, and work
with them.
We end up categorizing emotions. Anger is bad or negative, while love
is good or positive, but in fact these categorizations aren’t true. The
emotions we experience are neither good nor bad. Rather it is our actions,
our expressions of those emotions that dictate our experience and our
categorization of them. Sometimes an emotion can be a positive experience
and other times it can be a negative experience, and the only people who
can truly determine that is the person experiencing the emotion and the
person/people on the receiving end of that emotion. When we learn to own
the experience of our emotions, then we begin to work with those emotions,
but owning that experience is easier said than done.
I’ll use myself as an example. At the time of the writing, I’m 43 years
old. You would think I would have a solid grasp of my emotions, a solid
ownership of them and sometimes, most times, I do, but there are still
occasions where I don’t, where I’m trying my best to figure out what I’m
feeling and how I’m expressing and experiencing it. If you look at my
history with emotions, you see a person who repressed his emotions to the
point that he didn’t really know how to feel them. This happened until I was
2. Then I did a working to change the electrochemistry of my brain and how
it processed serotonin, because I didn’t want to be depressed because of a
chemical imbalance. And suddenly I could feel emotions in ways I really
hadn’t felt them before. It was overwhelming and it took me years to begin
to figure out what I was actually feeling as well as learn how to express it.
When I got turned onto internal work in 2004 and started doing Taoist
dissolving meditation that’s when I turned a corner with my emotions and
my body. I began using the meditation practice to help me work through the
internal tensions and blockages I encountered in my body and as I did this
work I discovered that it also helped me starting experiencing my emotions
as an embodied reality instead of as an intellectual construct. Instead of just
labeling an emotion and trying to come up with a tactic for experiencing it,
I actually began to allow myself to feel the emotion and everything
associated with it.
When you can tune into your body, you can work with that awareness
and resolve your internal tensions. But doing so means that you necessarily
have to face the emotional and mental traumas that can contribute to the
tension and inability to be fully present in your body and with your
emotions. Our bodies carry our experiences and are defined by them.
Likewise, our relationship with the body is also defined by those
experiences, and this extends to the emotions we feel through our bodies.
Often I find that people take a top down approach to relating to their
body. They treat the body as an object and try and impose their will on it,
often with disastrous mid to long term effects. While you might override
what your body is signaling to you in the short term, eventually what you're
overriding will come back and make itself heard. This applies to emotions,
but also to your physical health. In the next book in this series we’ll explore
this work with the physical body. If we want to change our relationships
with our bodies, we need to first learn how to work with the emotional and
internal tensions that are in our bodies. As we learn to work with the
emotions and internal tensions, we begin to release them, which frees up the
internal energy of our body, and in turn has an effect that allows us to begin
to know and listen to the body. The best place to start this work is with the
breath.
How to use Breath and your body to go deep with yourself and discover
your truth
Your body has its own consciousness and its own connection to the
events that happen in your life and the experiences that shape your
everyday consciousness. In general people treat their bodies as objects,
things that enable to experience life, while ignoring the reality that your
body is actually part of the experience and holds onto the experiences that
shape you, long after you've put those experiences out of your conscious
mind.
One of the struggles that many a magician and witch has with magic is
actually based in the inability to be fully present with the body. This
inability to be fully present shows up in the emotional and mental tensions
they feel, and in the inability to fully focus when doing magical work (of
for that matter life in general).
This is sometimes called the monkey mind and there's not a person I
know, myself included, who hasn't experienced it at one time or another. In
my experience the reason monkey mind shows up is because a person hasn't
addressed the underlying tensions in their lives. And to be clear these
tensions don't have to be long repressed memories of traumatic events
(although they can be). These tensions could be a result of a bad day at
work or something recent which happened in your life. Sometimes the
monkey mind happens because of something wonderful, like meeting
someone new that you really like. But regardless it becomes a distraction
because your mind is occupied by the resultant tensions that come with the
monkey mind. Regardless of what the cause of the tension is, if it isn't
addressed in your body, it won't be addressed in your mind either. And the
result is that inability to focus.
The question is how do we address that tension?
We start with the breath. Your breath in the gateway to your body, the
key to unlocking the door and releasing the tensions, as well achieving a
deeper connection with your body that allows you to optimize your health
and focus your magical work. At the same time the breath is just the
beginning of this work, the first step to move forward into learning to be
fully embodied.
Before you do these exercises, please get a journal and pen so you can
take note of what you experience during this work.
Ideally you are sitting right now. Please take a moment and plant your
feet solidly on the ground. Rest your hands in your lap, perhaps linking one
hand to the other, so they form a cup. Touch the tip of your tongue to the
roof of your mouth, lightly. Let your eyes rest, going out of focus and just
being, without necessarily focusing on anything. Take a breath in through
your nose, if possible, or through your mouth if not.
Pay attention to how it feels to breath. Where does your breath go?
Does it go to your lungs, or your diaphragm? Is it a deep breath or is it
shallow? What emotions or thoughts, if any come up?
Now I want you to take a deep breath, whether you did last time or not.
Let your breath fully go into your body, into your diaphragm and pay
attention to how your body responds and what goes through you mentally
and emotionally. Don't judge it, just observe it.
This very simple exercise can help you tune into yourself on all levels
of your being and become fully present with your body and mind. It's the
first step toward learning how to connect with the consciousness of your
body and turn it into an ally that helps you fully liberate yourself.
Flowing into your Tension
Once you're comfortable breathing, I want you to start paying attention
to your tension in your body. We normally ignore the tension in our bodies,
until it gets to a point where we can't ignore it, such as when we get sick, or
get into an accident where we're constantly feeling pain. Even then we may
try to tune out all that noise with some painkillers, but what’re doing in the
process is also stopping us from connecting with what our bodies may be
trying to tell us.
We ignore tension because of the discomfort we feel with our bodies.
But tension, pain, and stress are symptoms that we actually want to turn into
allies because they point to deeper issues and narratives within ourselves
that must be worked through and resolved if we don't want them to define
us. And they do define us when we don't work through them.
Admittedly, facing our traumas is not easy. It calls up a lot of
unpleasantness that many of us would prefer to avoid or ignore. What I've
discovered is that even if you mentally think you've resolved a trauma, it
doesn't mean your body has let it go. And if your body hasn't let it go,
chances are you've haven't emotionally worked through it either.
Conceptualizing our traumas and mentally thinking through them doesn't
fix them or really work through them. It just provides you the illusion of
progress.
So how do we work through our tensions, stresses, and traumas?
Through breath and through understanding something pivotal about the
meaning can be derived from any experience. The meaning we derive from
an experience is the meaning we choose to associate with that experience. If
an experience has trauma for us, we need to question why we associate that
meaning with the experience and then ask ourselves if we want to continue
to associate that meaning with the experience.
At the same time we need to recognize that a meaning is an intellectual
construct, and as such it can just be a band aid that we’re using to give
ourselves a sense of control of the experience. I know that sounds
contradictory and there’s a reason I’m including that here. It can be very
easy to convince yourself that you understand an experience through the
meaning you associate with it, but you can be missing out on a lot because
that understanding is based on a conceptual grasp of the experience, instead
of actually being in the experience.
We'll return to this point in later chapters, but for now let’s focus on
using breath as a tool for helping us flow into and dissolve our tensions.
When we breathe into our tensions we invite ourselves in to genuinely
feel them. And yes it can be uncomfortable, but what we can do with our
breath is dissolve those tensions and release them. The way to do this
involves using a breathing technique called the water meditation technique.
This is a Taoist technique that can be used to help you direct your internal
energy toward dissolving tension and actually help you cultivate that
energy.
To do this breathing technique, touch the tip of your tongue to the roof
of your mouth. This completes the circuit of your internal energy. Breathe
in and out through your nose.
Take a deep breath in and follow the breath to your diaphragm. Then
breathe out. Do this a few times and focus initially on just following the
breath.
After you've done that a few times, the next time you breathe in, focus
your awareness on the top of your head and allow it to slowly go down the
entirety of your body until you find a place where there is a feeling of
tension. That feeling of tension needs to be released, but if you try to force
it to release you’ll either cause it to tighten up or you’ll break the tension
apart, but into smaller blockages. The better approach to take is to simply
rest your consciousness on the tension, allowing it to flow around and into
the blockage, gradually dissolving it and releasing the emotions, memories
and energy that is contained in the tension.
Continue breathing in and out. Each time you breathe in draw your
awareness to the tension that you’re working on, allowing your awareness
to flow into it and gradually dissolve it, much like ice melting in water. As
you continually dissolve your tension, you'll discover that you may feel
emotions come up, or thoughts arise. Allow yourself to feel the emotions
and acknowledge the thoughts, without engaging them, unless its
productive to do so. For example, I might have a dialogue with myself
about the emotions I’m feeling as I’m doing the dissolving work, but the
one thing to keep in mind is that the dialogue itself maybe a distraction
from the actual feeling. As best as possible, recognize when the dialogue
becomes a distraction and keep yourself focused on dissolving the actual
tension.
You'll find that if you do this dissolving work regularly it will help you
not only achieve clarity, but also free up a lot of energy that has otherwise
been taken up with what's stressing you or making you feel tense.
The rest of this book is going to explore specific emotions and how you
can apply this technique toward working with those emotions. Our goal for
this work is to come to a better relationship with our emotions, so that we
don’t let them rule us, but we also don’t suppress them. Instead we learn to
be present with them, learn from them, and incorporate them into our lives
in a way that is transformative and healthy.
Learn How Magic Works
In the How Magic Works series, you’ll learn my process of magic system,
which explains how and why magic works in easy to understand language
and helps you get consistent results that transforms your life. The entire
series is designed to walk you from the basics of magic all the way up to
designing your own systems of magic, as well as showing you how to apply
creative mediums to your magical practice.
Available
in
print
and
e-book.
Visit
https://www.magicalexperiments.com/how-magic-works-series to get your
copies today!
Learn how Pop Culture Magic Works
Magick for geeks! The how Pop Culture Magic Works series I explain what
pop culture magic is and share how and why it works. I also show you how
to create your own system of pop culture magic based on the pop culture
that speaks to you. You’ll also learn how to work with pop culture spirits
and how to create your own pop culture magic workings.
Available in print and on any digital e-book format. Visit
https://www.magicalexperiments.com/pop-culture-magic-series/ to get your
copies today!
Learn how Space/Time Magic works
In the How Space/Time Magic Works series, you’ll learn how to work with
the elements of space, time, imagination and memory and learn how to use
them to turn probabilities into reality. I walk you through advanced
techniques for altering your identity and rewriting your present and future.
Available
in
print
and
e-book
format
at
https://www.magicalexperiments.com/space-time-magic-series
Learn how Inner Alchemy Works
In the How Inner Alchemy Works series, you’ll learn how Inner Alchemy
works and how you can internal work to transform your life. I’ll show you
how to make allies of your neurotransmitters and create a relationship with
your body that helps you lie a healthier and happier life.
Available
in
print
and
e-book
format
at
https://www.magicalexperiments.com/inner-alchemy-series