Clarification about evocation?

[Dannerz]

My first post, I have questions about clarification of certain details:

I would like to know if there is any line between failed and successful evocations of spirits? If there is no line to be drawn between failure and success, then the evocation does not have to produce or accomplish anything at all; so there must be a line to draw.

1
Does the physical manifestation of the spirit show a true success of at least its presence? Isn't manifestation the goal of the evocation into what is supposedto be outer physical appearance? Or is it sufficient that the spirit not manifest at all physically, or outside, and that it just be seen or felt mentally? Would that really be an evocation?

2
I still personally find it impossible to believe that the various magic tools have any power or necessity in and of themselves, that anyone could dress up in exact robe at exact day with exact objects in hand, but that alone would not make him any more a magician and would instead probably make him less of one. - Such inanimate matter means little, and what truly matters is the consciousness, the quality and strength of the magician's mind, the actual active person, the animator of the objects and instigator of events. -- Could this be a failing for me or for anyone else like me who refuses to put any faith in tools and objects? Is it instead necissary for me to make exactly each object and use it exactly as said?

3
Can only a strong magician summon strong spirits?
An example of why I would wonder such a thing:
Any time I have met or heard of persons whom have the particular spirit mannage to manifest as supernatural flux, their personal energy is or must also be to some degree special or strong. The manifestation is temporary, as said, a temporary flux out of the norm. The person whom called the spirit which manifested, is also personally able to do or cause types of manifestations. They facilitate the spirit with some portion of their own energy, either consciously or unconsciously.

• Is anything less than this a sort of failure?
  If I remember right, Bardon said that the magician must first master and perfect their magic and skill in the physical sphere before they can properly and fully preform evocations; to me that suggests the magician evoking spirits which physically manifest, also himself can cause other kinds of physical manifestations, because his skill and strength has been enough to influence the physical sphere.

Also I have never-yet met a person whom could successfully evoke a manifestation whilst at the same time be not personally able to cause some sort of manifestation by themself.

But I have not met enough good people yet, so ofcourse my experience is quite limited.

Those are my first three questions for now.

[Jim Eshelman]

@Dannerz said

"I would like to know if there is any line between failed and successful evocations of spirits? If there is no line to be drawn between failure and success, then the evocation does not have to produce or accomplish anything at all; so there must be a line to draw."

In one sense, there isn't a hard line because there are gradiants of results. For example, it's trivial for someone with the basics in place evoke a specific being to the level where it has direct impact on the magician's psyche, even if there is not any sensory manifestation at all. And, of course, there are much denser levels of accomplishment.

Where you draw the line depends on your immediate goals and, if you're in a training system, on that goals of the training at that stage. For example, the A.'.A.'. criterion for testing the Philosophus 4=7 in evocation is that "the spirit called forth must be at least as visible and tangible as the heaviest vapours." However, this might be too high a standard for testing in other contexts.

"Does the physical manifestation of the spirit show a true success of at least its presence? Isn't manifestation the goal of the evocation into what is supposedto be outer physical appearance? Or is it sufficient that the spirit not manifest at all physically, or outside, and that it just be seen or felt mentally? Would that really be an evocation?"

Manifestation is a goal, though it is a valid question as to what level of manifestation is required (as you discern). Whether the lesser level is sufficient depends on the goal or task of the moment.

"I still personally find it impossible to believe that the various magic tools have any power or necessity in and of themselves,"

Then you're going to have a serious problem getting them to work! Your belief isn't necessary to impower them, but your active disbelief can certainly interfere. You have to suspend disbelief (which isn't the same thing as believing).

"that anyone could dress up in exact robe at exact day with exact objects in hand, but that alone would not make him any more a magician and would instead probably make him less of one."

Definitely not less of one. Whether it would make him more of one depends on what else he brings. You are right that this, alone, isn't sufficient. That doesn't mean, though, that these things fail to enhance the operation - especially an operation such as evocation!

Think about it: The whole operation is one of establishing relationship and communication with a nonmaterial being and bringing it progressively toward (and sometimes into) the material. The basis of the operation, therefore, is an empowering of things material, a making of the material and physical more significant than the immaterial and nonphysical. The circle is of extreme importance and the dividing line between "inside the lines" and "outside the lines," because you're affirming duality and differentiation as a mechanism of manifestation.

"Such inanimate matter means little, and what truly matters is the consciousness, the quality and strength of the magician's mind, the actual active person, the animator of the objects and instigator of events."

But see immediately above for the rest of the picture.

"Could this be a failing for me or for anyone else like me who refuses to put any faith in tools and objects? Is it instead necissary for me to make exactly each object and use it exactly as said?"

Your language suggests that you are following one specific method. I assure you that there is no one method that works and precludes all others. But my advice while learning would be to pick some such system and follow it rigorously. One of your nonmaterial magical tools for this operation is a philosophical commitment to the power of physical manifestation of metaphysical things - and the easiest way to affirm that is to place sufficient investment in the making, preparation, and use of the right physical magical tools.

Notice that this doesn't reqire belief. Quite the opposite. It requires suspension of disbelief. And, since disbelief is really just another belief, it is detaching you from either polarity. You need to suspend disbelief in the power of the tools, the reality of the spirits, the efficacy of the methods, etc., and then pour yourself into the method as if you were buying into and affiming its complete reality.

"Can only a strong magician summon strong spirits?"

Precision matters more than strength; but I'd say that only a very experienced and internally well-linked and technically skilled magician should try. Evocation is one of the most advanced operations of magick.

"If I remember right, Bardon said that the magician must first master and perfect their magic and skill in the physical sphere before they can properly and fully preform evocations; to me that suggests the magician evoking spirits which physically manifest, also himself can cause other kinds of physical manifestations, because his skill and strength has been enough to influence the physical sphere."

I wouldn't argue with that, but neither am I sure I would pin myself down to an agreement. I think, broadly speaking, I agree with you. Evocation has a lot in common with a highly efficient manager employing a well-selected and well-trained group of employees to semi-autonomously carry out a number of functions under the manager's overall supervision.

"Also I have never-yet met a person whom could successfully evoke a manifestation whilst at the same time be not personally able to cause some sort of manifestation by themself."

That makes sense to me, and I think it matches my experience. But, then, in my own case there is a reason it would match my experience: Any of the systems in which I'm involved don't teach evocation until one is in a fairly advanced state of training and inner development. People who have gotten there are already much more powerful, loving, and wise than the typical person on the street.

[Dannerz]

Thankyou for your reply.

I believe you have a point in all you have said thus-far: valid.

I'm not operating under a single system, or in a group, I have no teacher or mentor. At best I read from a variety of sources, and do what I can to train myself and test this or that.

But I somehow feel like... Jim Eshelman, like you are respectable and that I want to tell you some personal things.

Allot of the magicians I have met thus-far tend to be people who get up to the level where they can preform basically successful remote viewing, some amount of divination, and interact with + view the astral, semi-accurately. That is about as far as they go, it's as high as they could imagine, and for evocations, they call up an astral spirit of whatever type, interact with it, etc. But it is not strong enough or precise enough to manifest or change much of anything. Its body is often thin and not glowing or very energetic. This I assume would be the lower/lesser astral strata. And it would be different aswel as more difficult to reach a timeless, spaceless, birthless one from the spiritual plane, as such a thing is not easy to comprehend, needs and has no body or form, etc. But at the same time is more capable of manifesting forms?

So, that said, the people I met are limited to lower astral?
That's probably not enough, as these people would love to have physical manifestations and miracles but they never get them, or they get only slight bending of forces.

I wanted to be dedicated and presistant, progressive, but I may have become obsessed aswel, it imbalanced my spheres and just recently I had let go of specific goals, wanting to be balance, instead of wanting to "do things". - My obsession was from thus : I have always had the feeling that my actual self is not from or meant to be in the physical sphere. If in the astral sphere it feels familiar and more natural, and if in the spiritual sphere, or also when in the void, I feel most at home. Now because I so-very want to be home, or want to be where I am meant to be, aswel as wanting to be with family or friends from such a place, whilst simultaniously feeling as though I am locked down into solid abstinant matter, this is disturbing for me. I want the physical to be like the spiritual and the astral instead, and like the void. I want this false home to be the real home, and what feels like the false body to be instead the real body. There are these two things that I may have an imbalanced desire for : I either want these entities to materialize on physical **, or, I want my solid physical body matter to dematerialize all into spirit [so that I can force this abstinant linear solidity back into a fluent freedom of real living].

I either want a spirit friend to be able to materialize to the solid, or want myself's solids to dematerialize into spirit. But my particular spirit family and friends are not advanced enough to do this by themself, my personal material self is not advanced enough to do this, and it seems my friends on physical are all not advanced enough either. It feels like home is too far away, unable to touch this heavy weighted half-living.

If I could ever have a spirit materialize, I would at once ask him to stay with me, and then I would ask him to help me learn how to dematerialize myself. That is the reason I would want him or her to be here, so that he could possably help me to leave, or, being theoretically closer inside of the sphere, be able to help this solidity of myself to change more.

I want some kind of fantastic transmutation:
To turn dead heavy matter
Into pure mobile consciousness.

This is my problem, and I am not like others who want the spirit to preform some kind of work for money or sexuality. Instead I want to be alive again, and be real again.

One of the friends I have met in the passed told me that he had evoked spirits to the point where they became materialized and solid. He described the materializations as semi-random, spuratic, and that the body of the spirit did not feel like normal matter, to the touch. The spirit(s) stayed for a certian amount of time, and then left. Also he personally said he could do things such as draining the energy out of the leaf of a plant so that it withered up within a few seconds, or used another sort of energy to poke holes in clouds, etc. So in that context, though he was able to evoke a spirit which made manifestations, he could also personally make manifestations by his own force already.

Soon it was that I wanted to see or experience some of his forces and contacts aswel. There was some efforts, but, when it came to this, there was no spirit able to manifest near me, and also his own supposed powers were not exactly able to do any visible manifestation near myself. He concluded that the elemental energies all around the area that I live at to-day are/were locked down, and because of them being locked up, manifestation was prevented, entities could not reach the area or bend the space.

I had a cautious belief in both. In that he could have manifestations himself at his space, but also that things were locked up near me.

I believe because I have seen and had happen, some degree of the supernatural, when I was at my dad's house. I usedto live there in the haunted place. The problem was that the spirits there were all bad : incomprehensibly vast numbers of larvae, distorted and crazy spirits which cannot be talked to or dealt with sociably. So though I got to see first hand that such things are possible, it was not of or from myself, it was based on a particular area of space which was conditioned in that way, and in a bad way.

As far as I have seen or learned, these particular kinds of spirits which infest the fatherly line of this... material "family", aswel as that false "home", are of a high mass of literal energy. Their bodies are in some cases even more energetically undeniable than solid matter, as in a kind of spirit which is even harder to influence than it is hard to physically influence a block of iron by magic. I am not sure how long these spirits have been alive and working away at their... path, but I believe they have been alive for quite some time. A favorite way of doing things that these ones have, is to drain away energy from as many realms as they can, to complete their ever-hungry dietary plan. This includes the consuming of fractions of physical matter, so that in their bodies is an altered version of materials from the physical and other planes aswel.

• That is my present interpretation at least.

Now, as far as my damaged memory permits, I was somehow a part of their food, but not eaten 100%. Partially eaten, partially destroyed, once existing in a different plane, but defeated by hoards of a greater and at that time unstoppable density of energy. Because they killed much of me? By way of their solid forcefulness, I assume that to survive or recover, I will need to reach such solidity myself. I need, need, NEED materialization. I want to survive and live, I do not want to be eaten by such things. Though I have got some distance away, and developed a degree of personal skills... I feel it is just tiny compared to that.

That is why I would want it so much, obsession, for me it is the same as the will to live; and I have a that feeling, as far as my sense of reason can reach, that it is truly necissary for myself to attain materialization or anything equally strong as it, just so that I could have a will, a life, a future.

On the other hand much of my first body was eaten, too much... I'm probably less than 1% of what I was. I know how far away from completion or true strength I am, at least partially I know this, and I am not proud of it. I am not ashamed either, at best I feel realistically endangered. But I've also made allot of changes, I want to learn every lesson fully.

I do not just want materialization as a temporary fluxuation, either. I want perminent materialization. I want to have, in a stable and real way, enough energy and mass, under my will and consciousness, that I could form some kind of material with it. Being defeated by worms and bacterial things, aswel as having much of home destroyed by them, simply on the account of them being so undeniably heavy and forceful, whilst them also being basically mindless, heartless, hungry diseases, this was a vast embarassment and an emense trauma for me. Pain-full.

I want to treat the disease, to become stronger than it, to rectify, to live again, repair, overcome. I want to be healthy, correct and complete. I want to be able to destroy these things at will, at any time I will or intend, I would want to be able to kill a physical worm or its relative in a frequency just above this physical spacial limit.

Now that is a basic explanation of the problem, and the will. Basic partial explanation. But also because I've been so destroyed and weakened, I'm very far away from that level. Hopefully my obvious imperfection will not offend or be too misjudged by the unknown readers who visit this and that thread. It many ways it was not by choice that I am here to-day.

I can suspend disbelief to some degree, but then there is the deeper subconscious impulse that I do not have enough density in my will to reach : for example if my hand was cut I could not make the pain instantly disappear, because the automatic impulse of this body's mechanics are still of a greater density than my own conscious force. In this body are all kinds of hidden bias, belief and disbelief, often repulsive and counter-productive, forcing itself and me to remain as animal and man, as it always has, as life's impulse is forceful... that embarassing forcefulness overpowering my conscious intentions.

Let's talk more about the initiations.
Philosophus 4=7 ?
I'd like to read through that; there's lots of reading to be done. So many preliminaries and prerequisites to get to a higher level of capacity. If you have any recommended reading, please tell.

Also I am looking for more better friends...
The psychic friends I have found, we can relate, but there is not very much for me to look up to in my life. In magic texts so often is described the magic ideal, of some totally enlightened, mighty and perfect kind of person. I have not met anyone like that yet. But I still like to be sociable and have cooperation with sharing. So if there is anyone else here who wants to increase the density of the energy that their conscious will controls, up to the point of it reaching a greater physical manifestation, well then I think we would have those intentions in common. I would like to meet people like that, and at least converse a little bit.

Thanks for your patience.

[Dannerz]

Isn' it ironic that I'd want highest attainment whilst being at such a low level of development?

I forgot to mention this, but I must say it now.

I have heard of accidental evocations which made manifest, and also manifestations from evocations done in an unorthadox way by a beginner which had no initiations...

For example the supernatural happening around someone even by him reading an enochian text, not even reading it outloud?

Then some other guy who probably hasn't gotten any kind of initiation, just chants for a little while overtop of one of the goetic seals, [no circle, no banishing, no wand, no dagger] and within a little while some spirit comes to him which effects the scent of the air and makes visible distortions in the air, like heatwaves almost, the presence being so physically strong that it is almost unbarable.

These people I believe could not do things of their own power and besides that they were relatively unmasterful beginners. Despite all that, it happened. Why?

I thought to myself : it must have been fate. Or perhaps it was that in one area of the earth's energetic fields and conditions, the astral and certain offices of spirits have a greater governing [much like different kinds of kings owning different areas of land, but in this case spirit offices and authorities from another plane controlling the direct physical forces]. From above it looked this way to me, that dimensionally, internally and energetically, different regions of the earth are altered or unaltered in quite a variety of ways. For example orbs of light could be seen regularily at one graveyard, and never ever seen at another graveyard. They are still both on the surface equally mere graveyards, but at a deeper actual level, the continueum of nature has far different containents in similar yet different spaces.

So I wonder if I am not at the correct area of the planet earth, aswel?

[Jim Eshelman]

@Dannerz said

"Then some other guy who probably hasn't gotten any kind of initiation, just chants for a little while overtop of one of the goetic seals, [no circle, no banishing, no wand, no dagger] and within a little while some spirit comes to him which effects the scent of the air and makes visible distortions in the air, like heatwaves almost, the presence being so physically strong that it is almost unbarable.

These people I believe could not do things of their own power and besides that they were relatively unmasterful beginners. Despite all that, it happened. Why?"

It's not so big a deal to get a result with evocation. It's a much bigger deal to control the result you get!