Invoking without initiation
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"No later initiation will ever come close to that which you have already experienced."
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
― Mark Twain
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My take on initiations is that they are literally experiences of being initiated into new ways of thinking about reality - new experiences of reality of various qualities.
Invocation of a specific entity can be its own form of initiatory experience, but formal initiations can also serve to help one understand an experience with invocation on a previously unexperienced level.
In a nutshell, that's how I'd say it.
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My take: you don't need to have had any prior initiations to work with the formulas you're looking to work with. You can work with those formulas independent of an initiation.
However, the context of those formulas will be different if and when you get initiated.
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Thanks for the encouraging and very thoughtful replies everyone. I read a book by Lon Milo DuQuette on Kabbalah and he suggested trying to invoke the Divine names etc. I had a try and the only experiences I've had from it are that the higher I go up the tree, the more sick and close to fainting I feel. When I invoke Kether, it's feels very frightening and unpleasant. It feels like Kether is very angry and I'm confused by that and I doubt my impressions.
I really enjoy tarot but I find that often I just don't feel a clear connection especially when I'm reading for myself. When I do feel a good connection, the cards seem very consistent and clear, but when I'm emotional the cards seem very affected by that and come out both very negative and also very positive - they will totally contradict themselves and then I get all worn out. Recently I've had times when the tarot cards have started moving by themselves during a reading and it made me worried. The reading that time was clear but I don't understand why such a thing would happen. I've seen this kind of thing in a haunted house but my cards aren't haunted!
I wondered if initiation helped with this kind of thing. When I vibrate the words well, it often goes well but I wish I was more consistent I guess. I'm encouraged by comments that I can develop without being dependent on initiation. Thanks everyone
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Things get clearer over time. Your own psychological patterns are at play and being reshaped as you go as well.
I did also want to comment that I enjoyed the contrast between my use of the term "entity" and Shariyf's use of the term "formula."
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Out of curiosity (research
), what sort of a method are you using to invoke the Divine Names? -
Hi Gnosomai, I don't do anything special but I'm new to all this so I don't know if I'm doing things the right way. I just vibrate the Divine Name or if I want to be elaborate, I perform the invoking or banishing ritual. I don't have a wand, so I just use my hand. I deliberately take my time and that seems to help.
Liber Theta has methods that I use with tarot and they seem to work well for me and so I get to really know each card. Does this seem like a good way to go about it?
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@Sean White said
"Hi Gnosomai, I don't do anything special but I'm new to all this so I don't know if I'm doing things the right way. I just vibrate the Divine Name or if I want to be elaborate, I perform the invoking or banishing ritual. I don't have a wand, so I just use my hand. I deliberately take my time and that seems to help. "
Hi Sean,
I have a few questions for you:
What resources (books, websites, etc.) are you using to educate yourself on magick and the practice of magick?
What rituals are you performing?
Are you performing invocations for divination purposes?
How long have you been practicing?
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What is your quest?
What is your favorite color?
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@Sean White said
"Hi Gnosomai, I don't do anything special but I'm new to all this so I don't know if I'm doing things the right way.... Does this seem like a good way to go about it?"
From my own perspective (and please only take it as that, suggestive of one particular viewpoint that may or may not be useful to your own work) the best thing you can do at the beginning of the path is to test out various practices and note how they work (or don't work) for you. This isn't to say, try a bunch of things and see what feels good. It's more along the lines of, find a specific set of instructions, follow them to the T, repeat this practice for a sufficient amount of time (a few weeks, a month, several months), and record anything that you notice happening to you, in you, or about you. And then change something about it and see if you note changes in the results.
I would recommend practices that solidify your own vehicle as a preliminary to actual experiments of invocation. Relaxation, 4-fold breath, the Lesser Pentagram rituals, Middle Pillar, Resh and the like. Create a daily routine that integrates these practices into your life as a way to begin to focus and balance your own energies.
In her intro to The Golden Dawn, Cris Monnastre recommends doing just the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram for a year while reading up on things. This seems a bit intimidating but... well... the Work is work.
I don't have any personal experience to back up this evaluation, but I would suspect that your discomfort as you invoked the divine names of the higher sephiroth might have been connected to trying to climb the tree faster that you were ready to. Until you've attained a high level of skill, none of these things will just "magically" work on a first attempt (and maybe not even then). They all require much repetition and much refinement to get the gears turning together. Slow and steady.
If you are looking for guidance towards a plan of action, have a chat with Al-Shariyf. He's more than a few steps ahead of me on the path and his posts have definitely helped me to sort out a lot of what's what.
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Hi Al-Shariyf - thanks for your reply
"What resources (books, websites, etc.) are you using to educate yourself on magick and the practice of magick?"
I don't trust any websites aside from this one. If you have any recomendations, please let me know. I've found that a lot of articles on Thelema and magick in general seem somewhat unreliable at least to me. The Golden Dawn sites I've looked are pretty angry places and not very useful.
I have a lot of books. I have most of Dion Fortune's books, I've read pretty much everything by Israel Regardie but I'm not a great fan of all of his work, I've read all the Equinoxes besides the commentary on the Holy Books which I've just bought. I read the book of Thoth regularily for many years and I've just bought "The Law is for all". I've read "Magick without tears" and Magick (book 4) too. I have 777 and 776 1/2 and I really like both of those books. I have Visions and Voices by Jim Eshelmann too and that is very good but I find it a bit overwhelming.
I've got a lot of Lon Milo DuQuette's books but aside from his book on the Thoth tarot and his own tarot deck and it's book, I don't really enjoy his books. I read "Initiation in the aeon of the child" and I really didn't like it. I read Kenneth Grant's "Nightside of Eden" and was very disappointed in it and I don't intend to read any more of his work. I've read Frater Achad's QBL and I liked it, but he seemed a bit like Kenneth Grant.
I've read most of the AA first grade reading list but I don't like the I Ching or Taoism. I find Elphias Levi to be frustrating.
I have an interesting book by David Griffin called "The Ritual Magic Manual" and that has all the step by step instructions for all the first order GD material so I refer to this quite a bit. The author fights a lot of people from his website but the book seems good.
"What rituals are you performing?"
Mainly just the qabalastic cross and the lesser banishing of the pentagram.
I've tried invoking and banishing planetary forces and that seemed ok. I have trouble with sephirothic invocations that go above tipareth but I'm ok with Binah. I'm very reluctant to go near Enochian magic as it seems very powerful and I don't understand it. I like Regardie's Middle Pillar exercises. More than anything, I'm always invoking HRU.
"Are you performing invocations for divination purposes?"
Yes, I practice tarot for divination and I always perform the invocation to HRU. I read tarot or meditate on the cards every day and I love tarot. I would like to know how to do better invocation when it comes to tarot but there isn't any serious information available. I suspect I would invoke Tipareth and use HRU's sigil but since I don't really know I haven't tried it. I find that my divination is greatly affected by my emotions especially when it comes to reading for myself.
"How long have you been practicing?"
I've been reading about magick and doing tarot for maybe thirty years but I've only been really trying ritual magick for about a year. I've done decades of Theravadan and Vajrayana Buddhist meditation so I'm pretty good at that but not much more than that.
Although I experience a lot of sensation when I practice, my magickal invocations don't have any results. -
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My quest is I'm not really sure, and favourite colours are purple and orange hehehe
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Thanks for the suggestions Gnosomai,
I've been thinking along the lines of what you suggest. I'm ok with doing the basics for a long while because I'm the kind of person who likes to understand something thoroughly. I guess my big issue with invocation and initiation is knowing how to measure my progress. I mean having a physical sensation or a vision of some sort is one thing, but I don't know how to gauge if Im doing things correctly especially when I guess I don't get the fruit of what I try to invoke.My tarot invocation seems inconsistent when I read for myself especially. I wondered if HRU isn't too interested in me since I'm not connected to any magical current. If I just pick up the cards and make up some stuff then I feel like I'm wasting my time. It's the same with invocation to gain money, success in life etc - I feel power during the invocation but I don't get a result. I wonder also if all this wanting is like being a big spoilt baby but at the same time I don't want to let the vision of my life overwhelm me. I want to make my will shape my world and I want some power too.
I think about AC when he was old and needing money to get his teeth fixed in dreary cold old England and I worry if magic is just a sporadic and unreliable thing. I've always found my intuition and magick to be a bit inconsistent but still real nonetheless. I guess that's a big fear for me that basically I'll read, study, practice.. And nothing will be behind the veil for me. I see most religions spending most of their time making excuses for their deities and denying themselves, and I don't want to take that path.
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@Sean White said
"I think about AC when he was old and needing money to get his teeth fixed in dreary cold old England and I worry if magic is just a sporadic and unreliable thing. I've always found my intuition and magick to be a bit inconsistent but still real nonetheless. I guess that's a big fear for me that basically I'll read, study, practice.. And nothing will be behind the veil for me. I see most religions spending most of their time making excuses for their deities and denying themselves, and I don't want to take that path."
Are your doubts because he wasn't able to generate the money, or something else?
If it's the money thing, this is actually an example of the extreme consistency of magick, not the opposite. When Crowley was young and naïve, he took a magical oath that, if only he would be allowed to attain, he would give all wealth, all love, etc. He didn't have to take the oath (that is, no external authority required it), it's just what burst out of his then-Christian soul. However, he did take it, and the core truth of a genuine magical oath is that the universe accepts it and, thereafter, it defines the parameters of your existence.
He did attain - more than almost anyone in the history of the world, it seems - and, in exchange (his offer, which the universe automatically accepted) he expended his wealth to the Great Work and then was left without it. He never had a persistent love relationship and barely had anything resembling a persisting friend. And so on.
The magick never stopped working.
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A brief comment, based on what I have read here White:
Keep up with the banishings, pick up some more purifying rituals.
This will clean out the "dirty" feeling when you invoke (over time)
The feinting should also be reduced, though that may require practicing the particular invocation. -
@Sean White said
"I've found that a lot of articles on Thelema and magick in general seem somewhat unreliable at least to me. The Golden Dawn sites I've looked are pretty angry places and not very useful..."
What I find ridiculous is that, when I started searching for a door 15 years ago, the landscape was exactly the same as it is today. This forum (aside from the occasional post on LAShTAL) really is the only place online where I've found people actually engaging in the Work and willing to offer useful, non-dogmatic guidance to others.
"I'm ok with doing the basics for a long while because I'm the kind of person who likes to understand something thoroughly. I guess my big issue with invocation and initiation is knowing how to measure my progress. I mean having a physical sensation or a vision of some sort is one thing, but I don't know how to gauge if Im doing things correctly especially when I guess I don't get the fruit of what I try to invoke."
Get Out Of My Head!!!
But seriously, the thing I've been learning over the past year or so (and no, the learning has not been easy) is that you really just have to trust that it is in you to judge whether you are doing it right or not. Not in your day-to-day self or your personality mask, but in your True Self. Teachers/gurus are a great thing to have and if/when you find your own door to initiation, you might have the fortune to work with a good one. But, ultimately, they can only offer guidance, suggestions, structure. At the end of the day, it is your True Self that is the teacher. And, if you put your trust in that (dare I say, faith?) you will start to notice that It is there to guide you aright.
Or at least, that's what's been happening for me, a guy who, since he was about 9 years old and realized his family were a bunch of idiots for believing that a guy actually walked on water, has balanced on the thin line between agnosticism and atheism. A scientific materialist throughout.
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@Gnosomai Emauton said
"If you are looking for guidance towards a plan of action, have a chat with Al-Shariyf. He's more than a few steps ahead of me on the path and his posts have definitely helped me to sort out a lot of what's what."
Thank you
@Sean White said
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I don't trust any websites aside from this one. If you have any recommendations, please let me know."Thanks for all of your responses Sean. I do not know of any other reputable online communities or websites aside from this one so I wouldn't be able to recommend one to you. That's not to say that they aren't out there, I just haven't found any.
On the other hand, what is valuable for your training and development as a magician is and can only be determined by you. What may occur for you as insignificant, untrustworthy and irrelevant now may, at a later point in time, occur as invaluable and of the utmost importance and that which you hold near and dear now will lose the significance you currently place on it.
@Sean White said
"I've found that a lot of articles on Thelema and magick in general seem somewhat unreliable at least to me. The Golden Dawn sites I've looked are pretty angry places and not very useful.
I have a lot of books. I have most of Dion Fortune's books, I've read pretty much everything by Israel Regardie but I'm not a great fan of all of his work, I've read all the Equinoxes besides the commentary on the Holy Books which I've just bought. I read the book of Thoth regularily for many years and I've just bought "The Law is for all". I've read "Magick without tears" and Magick (book 4) too. I have 777 and 776 1/2 and I really like both of those books. I have Visions and Voices by Jim Eshelmann too and that is very good but I find it a bit overwhelming.
I've got a lot of Lon Milo DuQuette's books but aside from his book on the Thoth tarot and his own tarot deck and it's book, I don't really enjoy his books. I read "Initiation in the aeon of the child" and I really didn't like it. I read Kenneth Grant's "Nightside of Eden" and was very disappointed in it and I don't intend to read any more of his work. I've read Frater Achad's QBL and I liked it, but he seemed a bit like Kenneth Grant.
I've read most of the AA first grade reading list but I don't like the I Ching or Taoism. I find Elphias Levi to be frustrating.
I have an interesting book by David Griffin called "The Ritual Magic Manual" and that has all the step by step instructions for all the first order GD material so I refer to this quite a bit. The author fights a lot of people from his website but the book seems good."
Pearls of Wisdom has an excellent primer on the Thelema and a kick ass chapter that thoroughly outlines a certain Frater's successful completion of the Abramelin Operation. You'll want to add that book to your collection.
I also recommend heading over to thelema.org/publications/index.html and reading the issues of Black Pearl and In The Continuum.
I could recommend many many more things to read and so can everyone else here but reading will only get you so far. There are things you will learn from direct experience and there are things you will learn from sharing your experiences with the community here that you won't be able to find in any book.
"What rituals are you performing?"
@Sean White said
"Mainly just the qabalastic cross and the lesser banishing of the pentagram.
I've tried invoking and banishing planetary forces and that seemed ok. I have trouble with sephirothic invocations that go above tipareth but I'm ok with Binah. I'm very reluctant to go near Enochian magic as it seems very powerful and I don't understand it. I like Regardie's Middle Pillar exercises. More than anything, I'm always invoking HRU."
A thought passed through my mind yesterday while I was pondering on my own magical regimen. It was: "For every invocation, there must be a banishing. If there is a banishing, there must be an invocation". The idea of balance and equilibrium has been on my mind ever since. I'm not ashamed to admit that my current regimen needs to be taken apart and re-assembled so I can re-ground myself in the fundamentals and operate consistent with that inner instruction. I'm leaving it here for you as a contribution to your own regimen.
Enochian magick, Planetary magick, Sephorithic magick all have their places in the grand scheme of your Great Work. But, if I were you, I would concentrate on the basics. Pentagram rituals (invoking and banishing), Middle Pillars and basic meditation practices.
They'll teach you things like patience, consistency, balance, resilience, focus, concentration and a slew of other non-sexy things that'll fortify you so that you can accomplish the Great Work.
"Are you performing invocations for divination purposes?"
@Sean White said
"Yes, I practice tarot for divination and I always perform the invocation to HRU. I read tarot or meditate on the cards every day and I love tarot. I would like to know how to do better invocation when it comes to tarot but there isn't any serious information available. I suspect I would invoke Tipareth and use HRU's sigil but since I don't really know I haven't tried it. I find that my divination is greatly affected by my emotions especially when it comes to reading for myself."
That last piece is a good thing to notice. Record it. Record everything. Even those little things that you may not think are important to record. When you look back you'll be like "holy shit, I'm glad I caught that"
"How long have you been practicing?"
@Sean White said
"I've been reading about magick and doing tarot for maybe thirty years but I've only been really trying ritual magick for about a year. I've done decades of Theravadan and Vajrayana Buddhist meditation so I'm pretty good at that but not much more than that.
Although I experience a lot of sensation when I practice, my magical invocations don't have any results."In Magick Without Tears, there's a chapter about the obstacles of the path in which Crowley talks about the obstacles that occur on all four of the planes. I read it this week and I felt like a thousand light bulbs went off in my head.
I, like you, tend to question the efficacy of my work a lot. I've been practicing for about 7 years. I don't think the "am I doing this right" self-questioning ever goes away.
Sometimes my test for the efficacy of my practices is the way my body is feeling afterward. It never occurs to me to look at what's happening in my thoughts, or my feelings or my will-to-do. Perhaps your invocations are working brilliantly but you are looking at the wrong plane for the results.
Sounds like your test for the effectiveness of your invocations is the way your body feels (the world of disks). Start paying attention to the things that occupy your mind(the worlds of swords), and your emotional states (the world of cups) and then the things you find yourself wanting to accomplish in the world (the world of wands).
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"Sounds like your test for the effectiveness of your invocations is the way your body feels (the world of disks). Start paying attention to the things that occupy your mind(the worlds of swords), and your emotional states (the world of cups) and then the things you find yourself wanting to accomplish in the world (the world of wands)."
Great way to look at it. I like this a lot.
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"Are your doubts because he wasn't able to generate the money, or something else?"
I think about AC's story in the Equinox often, the story about the man who made spectacles that allowed one to see the world as it really is. I think the story itself is a kind of magickal arrow aimed at my heart and it pains me deeply. My doubts are really about myself and my ability, but I strongly fear that the gods are indifferent and cold. I've put myself on trial, and I'm afraid of my verdict. I think I'm cursed with these spectacles. The story of Icarus spring to mind.
I look at my world and it disgusts me. I hate all the gods but I'm too afraid to speak against them. I'm bound to this awful world, where a beautiful old dying poet-magician can't get his teeth fixed and worries about the cold. Everywhere I look I see mindless idiots caught in trivia, and I'm frightened that there's nothing else in this world. I call the names of the gods, and they won't reply. I'm powerless and it's unbearable, but I'll just go out and buy another book on magic and my accumulation of knowledge has no result.
My magic is impotent and if it's all not true at least for me, then I have nowhere else to turn. I'm afraid that the wheel of fortune is just a torture wheel.
"If it's the money thing, this is actually an example of the extreme consistency of magick, not the opposite. When Crowley was young and naïve, he took a magical oath that, if only he would be allowed to attain, he would give all wealth, all love, etc. He didn't have to take the oath (that is, no external authority required it), it's just what burst out of his then-Christian soul. However, he did take it, and the core truth of a genuine magical oath is that the universe accepts it and, thereafter, it defines the parameters of your existence."
All the gods should be ashamed. I feel he deserved much better and it makes me sick that his life was so full of noble sacrifice when he was heralding an age that was it's exact opposite.
"He did attain - more than almost anyone in the history of the world, it seems - and, in exchange (his offer, which the universe automatically accepted) he expended his wealth to the Great Work and then was left without it. He never had a persistent love relationship and barely had anything resembling a persisting friend. And so on."
It seems to me that people who claimed to be his friend at some time like Israel Regardie were thoroughly despicable, and yet they get added to the list of saints and it makes me sick. That man slandered AC as skilfully and innocently as he was able to, and then went on to make a career of poorly emulating him. He easily spoke of AC having homosexual sex, and yet I'd eat my hat if Regardie wasn't gay himself, and likely an ex-lover of AC in any case. I read people like Kenneth Grant and Frater Achad, and it seems to me that they ended up with personality disorders like so many more of them. Mathers was likely even worse. It all reads to me as a Greek tragedy. AC didn't even have his ashes treated with due respect.
I wonder if I'm just a wounded bird, drawn to an illusory promise of power. I fear that I'm already at the point where I 'm making trite excuses for my invocations not working. I don't doubt that magick exists, but it has never been reliable for me... and I blame myself for not being able to just lie to myself, and I blame myself too for not being able to succeed in magick. I insist on seeing the truth and I despise it because the truth seems to have no escape.