Evocation without Sniffles

by Phil Hine

The term evocation means 'to call forth' and it is used to describe all magical techniques which serve to bring forth some kind of entity into a defined space, such as a bottle, crystal, triangle, or simply a visualised form which has shape and character. The practice of evocation has generally come to be associated with the so-called 'demons' of grimoires such as the Keys of Solomon, and has, in some quarters, acquired a dubious reputation. When you evoke a spirit, it is usually to get it to perform some kind of 'task' for you. Such pragmatism is seen as 'unspiritual' and therefore an act of 'lesser magic.' In other quarters, evocation is similarly frowned on, as it is felt that magicians should not 'order' spirits about. Neither arguments are convincing, and evocation is a very useful magical technique which, once the basic elements of it has been grasped, has numerous applications.
 

One the consequences of this approach to working with Spirits is that it is easy to adopt the belief that 'spirits are everywhere.' There is a common tendency for magicians to fall into the trap of thinking that the various spirits Gods, Demons, Allies, Faeries etc can only be contacted in strict magical situations and not at other times, and also, that they are there solely for our convenience and have no existence other than in our own heads. So what other forms and circumstances might have spirits associated with them? Again, in response to situations developing, I have begun to view some behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs, as Spirits in the sense of memes - ideas that take on an independent existence of those who carry them, and in some senses, behave like viruses - propagating themselves through human hosts. I have, for example, considered 'Addiction' to be a Spirit, and have in one or two cases 'barred' the Spirit of heroin addiction from certain houses.

Another development of this approach has been to look at Tarot Cards as a structure for defining Spirits. I've often noted how two people can own the same deck of Tarot cards, yet each pack is subtly different from the other. When you get a new pack, it very much has a 'virgin' feel to it, and needs to be broken in. I've started to look recently at well-used Tarot Packs as a collection of Spirits that arise from the user interacting with the cards. If you can adopt the belief that a Tarot card has a spirit attached, then by extrapolation, it follows that all copies of that card in existence have some kind of spirit attached to them, and that you call 'summon' these spirits using your card.

Another point in relation to Spirits is that we are magically conditioned into thinking of Spirits in terms of the 4 classical elements - Fire, Water, Earth and Air. But what of the 'new' elements - petrol, electricity, nuclear power? What Spirits arise from these processes, and can we interact with them?

SERVITORS

A Servitor is an entity consciously created or generated, using evocatory techniques, to perform a task or service. In the Western Esoteric Tradition, such entities are sometimes referred to as 'Thought-Forms', whilst in Tibetan magic, for example, they are known as 'Tulpas'. Servitors can be usefully deployed to perform a wide range of tasks or functions on your behalf.

Servitors can be created to work with one particular situation or event or, alternatively, Servitors can be created which have a general provenance in one area, such as healing.

There are a number of advantages to using more generalised Servitors. Firstly, they can be regarded as 'expert' systems which learn from being given a task to execute - as if the more healing tasks you give a servitor, the better it seems to become at healing. Secondly, continued use of the Servitor, with successful results, builds up "confidence" in it's activity on the part of those who use it. With a more generalised Servitor, anyone who knows its activation sequence (such as a mantra, sigil, or visualisation sequence) can employ it to work at a given task. One example of this form of Servitor is the entity ICANDOO. ICANDOO ("I-can-do") was created at an open group workshop in Servitor creation. The name of the Servitor was also its mantra for summoning it, and it's general brief was to assist those who used it for overcoming any obstacles that crossed them. ICANDOO was created by a group of 12 people, and all of them used the Servitor throughout the day, to assist them with problems of one sort or another. In the design sequence, the Servitor was given the ability to divide itself holographically, so that each segment contained the powers and abilities of the original entity.

On a still further level of generalisation, you can create Servitors who have no specific function or provenance, saving that they serve to increase the success of one's own magics. Such servitors can be used in both major and minor acts of magic, and are particularly useful in acts of enchantment, divination, or illumination. An example of such a Servitor is GoHu, which was given the appearance of a black, slightly concave, mirror. Activated by visualisation and mantra, GoHu was used as a receptacle into which were projected sigilised desires & other enchantments. By changing the angle of orientation to it's surface, it could be visualised as though it were a bowl, out of which ideas and images floated, and I often mentally activated it prior to using divinatory systems.

Servitor Dependency

It is generally held that each usage of a Servitor serves to 'feed' it, and that each result which is rated as a success, serves to enhance it's power. It is also a good idea to get into the habit of attributing any occurrences within the sphere of activity of that Servitor, to it's work. This can lead to problems, though. In 1992 I created a Servitor called "Eureka." It's given sphere of activity was that of Illumination - inspiration, new ideas, the boosting of creativity and brainstorming in general. Initially, the Servitor exceeded all my expectations of it's performance. I used it to stimulate new ideas for writing, lecturing and facilitating seminars & workshops. With a colleague, it became a focus for brainstorming - acting as a Third Mind arising from conversation. Each time we made a creative leap, or an idea formed became something workable in practice, the power of the Servitor was boosted. In 1993, the activity of Eureka was linked with the Neptune-Uranus conjunction with the result that, on April 22nd, as Neptune & Uranus began to retrograde, Eureka went "off-line."

The immediate result of this was that I suddenly found it much harder to get into a flow of creative thinking. It seemed that Eureka had become such a dominant element in the dynamics of my own creative process that, once it was removed, I found it much harder to get into the appropriate frame of mind. I had become dependent upon the Servitor. Eventually, the Servitor was recalled and disassembled in such a way that a 'splinter' of it's original power survived as a focus for illumination. Having been made wiser by this experience, I only occasionally use this fragment of the original servitor as a focus for creativity.
 

Viral Servitors

It is possible to instruct Servitors to replicate or reproduce themselves. Approaches to this include instructing the Servitor to replicate itself as a form of cell-division, replication which follows cybernetic or viral parameters, or to create a servitor which 'gives birth' according to particular parameters, such as time-units, astrological transits, or each time the target of the Servitor carries out a particular behaviour. An early test of this concept was that of a Servitor despatched to assist in the recovery of property being withheld from it's owner. Once a set deadline had been passed, the Servitor began to generate a field of 'confusion' - lost keys, electrical blowouts & other minor but annoying problems. After a second set deadline, the Servitor began to replicate itself, so that the confusion field generated was intensified. As soon as the recipient of the Servitor returned the property he had been withholding from it's owner, the Servitors ceased to function. Evidence of the Servitors' action - the intensification of minor problems escalating into strange poltergeist-type phenomenon, was gathered by talking to associates of the target.

Viral Servitors are particularly appropriate for long-term enchantments, such as increasing the probability of one's magic being successful, or being used in healing & general protection workings.
 

SERVITOR DESIGN SEQUENCE

1. Define General Intent

The first step in designing a Servitor is to decide the general sphere of influence into which your intention falls, such as healing, protection, binding, harmony, luck, divination, mood enhancement, success in ...., and so forth.

Defining your general intent will assist you if you wish to use symbols & magical correspondences in creating your servitor. For example, if you were interested in creating a servitor to act within the sphere of Healing, then you could assemble any associations, symbols, emotions, memories, etc which you relate to the concept of Healing. By consulting a book of magical correspondences such as '777', you could build up chains of correspondences - planetary figures, scents, colours, planetary hours etc. How far you go in this direction is very much a matter of personal choice.
 

2. Defining Specific Intent

Here, you are creating the core of the Servitor's purpose the Statement of Intent which is analogous to the Servitor's aetheric DNA. Formulating the Servitor's Statement of Intent may necessitate a good deal of self-analysis into your motivations, desires, realistic projections of goals, etc. As in all sorcery operations, it is appropriate to ask advice from your preferred form of divination. To continue the example of a Healing Servitor, an appropriate Statement of Intent might be:

"To promote rapid recovery and health in ...(name)..."

Once you have determined the appropriate Intent to form the basis of your Servitor, then the Statement can be rendered into a sigil, or glyph..
 

3. What Symbols Are Appropriate to the Servitor's Task?

There is a wealth of magical & mythic symbols which you can draw upon when creating a servitor, which can be used to represent different qualities, abilities and attributes. There is also the symbolism of colour, smell, sound & other sensory media to draw upon. In order to refine the 'program' which forms the basis for your servitor further, you could embellish the sigil by adding other symbols.
 

The above illustration shows the 'program' of a Healing Servitor. Its core sigil has been placed within a hexagram, and the number 7 has been added to it. Here, the hexagram represents balance, health, life enhancement and Solar qualities, also forming the elemental symbols of Fire (representing healing fire, the burning up of fever) and the elemental symbol for Water (representing expulsion of toxins through sweat, calming influences). The number 7 represents the idea of harmony, and also represents the duration of the Servitor's operation.

The entire figure forms the 'instructions' for the Servitor which will be visualised as forming a part of it, during it's launch phase.
 

4. Is there a Time Factor to Consider?

Here, you should consider the duration of the Servitor's operation. In other words, do you want the Servitor to be 'working' continuously, or only at specific periods? Here, you may wish to take into account phases of the moon, astrological conjunctions or planetary hours, for example, which could be added into the Servitor's symbolic instructions. The Healing Servitor above for example, was instructed to be active for a period of seven days, affecting it's target recipient for seven minutes, at seven hour intervals. This instruction serves to reinforce the number symbolism & association with harmony.

It is also at this point that you should consider what happens after the Servitor has performed its task. It is generally held to be preferable that when a Servitor has completed its task, the Servitor should be disassembled by its creator. There are two approaches to doing this. Firstly, one can encode a "self-destruct" instruction into the Servitor at the time of it's creation, where the duration of its existence is defined in terms of the duration of its task, or the fulfilment of a specific condition.

For example, the Healing Servitor could be defined so that it's sigilised Statement of Intent is:

"To promote rapid recovery and health in ...(name)...working at 7/7/7 intervals, the sum of which is the spell of your life."
 

The other approach to disassembly is to perform a ritual 'reabsorption' of the Servitor, mentally drawing it back from it's task, taking it apart by visualization, taking back the original desire which sparked it's creation, and taking apart or destroying any material base which you have created for it. Whilst classical occult theory has it that if you do not look after your thought-forms, they will wander around the astral plane annoying people, there is good psychological sense for terminating the 'life' of Servitors which have completed their assigned task - that you are reclaiming responsibility for that desire-complex which you used to create the Servitor.
 

5. Is A Name Required?

The Servitor can be given a name which can be used, in addition to its sigil, for creating, powering, or controlling it. A name also acts to further create a Servitor's persona. A name can reflect the Servitor's task, or be formed from a mantric sigil of it's Statement of Intent. The example Healing Servitor was given the name TUMMYHUM, a rather whimsical reference to its function.
 

6. Is a Material Base Required?

The Material base is some physical focus for the Servitor's existence. This can help to define the Servitor as an individual entity, and can be used if you need to recall the Servitor for any reason. Examples of a material base include bottles, rings, crystals, small figurines as used in fantasy role-playing or figures crafted from modelling compounds. Bodily fluids can be applied to the material base to increase the perceived link between creator and entity. This is very much a matter of personal taste. Alternatively, the Servitor can remain freely mobile as an aetheric entity. I tend to find that one-shot, task-specific servitors can be left as aetheric entities, whilst for entities which have more of along-term use, a material base is often helpful. For others, it might be possible to link their use to a specific, identifiable, state of consciousness, which forms part of the core associations which one builds up for a Servitor.

It is also possible to link a Servitor to a specific smell, such as a perfume or essential oil, so that each time the oil is applied, the Servitor is activated. This can be particularly useful when creating Servitors for general Healing, Protection, or enhancement of a particular mood. A dab of the perfume can be put onto the Servitor's material base, and the perfume should be inhaled during the launch of the entity.
 

7. Is a Specific Shape Required?

Servitors can be created to have any desired shape, from tiny homunculi to morphic spheres capable of extruding any required appendage. The shape you choose to identify with this particular thought-form can add another level of representational identity to the entity. A common practice though, is to visualize the Servitor as a featureless sphere, pulsing with energy, glowing with appropriately chosen colours, into which has been impressed, it's sigilised instructions.
 

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Leaving aside sub-quantum speculations, mathematics and dribble about cosmic archetypes, it does seem to me that one of the 'keys' to evocation is the process of identifying a desire-complex and giving it shape, form, a seperate identity and a job to perform. This is not to suggest that such Spirits are entirely subjective events or externalised obsessions. Some of the contributing factors in Human/Spirit interactions are:
 

1. An Altered State of Consciousness

This can range from anything between a momentary suspension of thinking, to extreme stress, to the action of psychotropics.
 

2. Contextual Coherence

I use this term to examine the broad context within which the Human/Spirit interaction occurs. There does seem to be a link between the historical 'life' of a Spirit and the degree of seeming independence it manifests as possessing. We can, for example, identify short-life Spirits (such as Servitors) which are assembled from the identification of desire/purpose with a set of references such as a sigil, name, mantra and material base. Longer-life Spirits would be any entity identified within the context of a mythological belief-system, or any entity associated with (either directly or tangentially) a particular locality or geographical feature. Deities who have been around for thousands of years often come across as 'old' compared with their operators, whilst the spirits of rock strata are truly ancient!
 

3. A Referential Framework for Interpretation

This relates to point 2, but focuses on the human ability to interpret an experience as one thing or another. The magician generally has a great advantage over other people in that we have, through experience, evolved referential frameworks for interpreting Spirit interactions. Thus, when we deal with a Servitor for example, we 'know' what we are working with, and therefore contain the experience within a particular set of limitations. Expectations do play an important role in what we actually experience. A colleague of mine, when a UFO researcher, had several encounters with 'alien' phenomena. After shifting his frame of reference to encompass the "Earth-lights" hypothesis, he reported that his experiences began to conform to that belief - he no longer saw 'aliens,' but instead, manifestations of Earth Lights.
 

What should also be considered in this regard is the anthropomorphic tendency - an important factor in human/Spirit contacts is the degree of 'Personality' that spirits are allowed, or perceived, to have. Whilst some classes of Spirits are associated with a high degree of human personality traits - their own desire/will complex, for instance - others, like Servitors, may be construed to be no more than Artificial Intelligence systems - sentient, but not particularly intelligent. All Spirits can be said to have some degree of sentience, which at a basic level, may be no more than the 'desire' to maintain system coherence. Steven Hawkings has recently stated that self-propagating computer viruses may be considered as 'living' systems.

Where does this Spirit persona arise from? In an earlier examination of this subject, I posited "the Neuromancer Effect," noting that an AI in William Gibson's "Neuromancer" needed to create human personalities for itself in order to 'talk' to humans. This, I feel, is apposite to Spirit-human interactions. The degree of interaction does seem to relate to our ability to regard the Spirit as a separate personality. This factor may go some way towards accounting for the communications which Spirits make to us - particularly as there does seem to be an overlap, in many cases, between the human ego and the nature of the communication.
 

4. Intentionality

Magicians generally work with Spirits under will, as it were. However, it would be narrow thinking indeed to construct theories of Spirit interaction which do not cover unintentional encounters, which the vast majority of human-spirit interactions seem to be. This could range from encounters with Ghosts, UFOnauts, wandering spirits, etc.
 

5. Affinity

The degree of affinity that one has with a Spirit is also important. One area where this can easily be discerned is in our relationship with Deities - which tends to be highly personal and often, difficult to explain to outsiders. Alternatively, we might only regard a Servitor as little more than a mobile AI or TSR-type computer program, and thus have little emotional investment in it. Affinity relates not only to Ego-attachment but also the unique experiences which we have in relation to a particular spirit. Whilst the desire to launch a demon may well stem from an ego-attachment, we do not usually feel an affinity for demons in the same way that we might regard a Spirit Guide or Familiar.