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If the magician takes into his hands a book on evocation, or if he
has, in his library, several books dealing with this subject, he
will find a certain connection between all the instructions, and
if he takes them all together he will be informed how to call a
being and which formulae have to be used for that purpose etc. In
none of the books, however, will he find the actual pre-conditions
for a successful evocation.
Therefore it is not at all surprising that nearly all attempts go
wrong. From the hermetic point of view any contact with a spirit
being of a certain sphere may be regarded as a sort of evocation,
irrespective of the fact whether spiritistic methods, methods of
necromancy or any other methods are applied for establishing such
a contact. The question of whether the desired being actually
appears on account of the various methods applied remains
unanswered, for only the person who tries them could give a true
statement about it. If sometimes such an attempt made according to
the methods laid down in those books leads to a success, it is
still undecided, whether the results have come out because of the
method, for other practices could also have played a decisive
part. For instance, in the case of spiritistic evocations, success
can be brought about by some quite different factors, even if a
great amount of evidences is available indicating that the success
is the result of the method of evocation suggested. The sub
consciousness of the oral medium may be the cause for the
spiritistic success, if it is a success at all. Furthermore, the
subconscious creation of phantoms, elementals, elementaries, which
the operator's increased attention and power of imagination might
have created during the evocation, can in such a case, not be
attributed to the being but to the operator's own individuality.
This fact is hardly ever acknowledged by the person concerned. I
shall give - from the hermetic point of view - a full description
of everything absolutely necessary for a successful evocation, i.
e. the actual magical connection with beings of any sphere. Above
all, the magician or the person intending to busy himself with
magical evocation should know that without the development of
one's astral senses, especially those of clairvoyance and
clairaudience, a successful evocation cannot be thought of. It
would be the same as if a blind man wanted to follow an unknown
street without a guide. Clairvoyance and clairaudience is the
first condition for consciously getting into contact with a being
by the help of active magic. If the magician does not care for
this condition, or if a person dares to try an evocation without
having his astral senses trained accordingly, he can be sure that
he will, like all other operators, be disappointed and have no
success at all. At the same time he is in danger of being degraded
to a necromancer or sorcerer if, during an exalted state, he
should have any partial success of whatever sort, regardless of
the fact that his plans and intentions rest on good motives.
The magician must, under all conditions, be able to make use of
his astral senses during his operation, because then he is able to
control exactly the whole procedure and is not in danger of being
deceived or of working without success. A magician whose astral
senses are well developed knows at once whether the being involved
is merely a creation of imagination or whether it is the being he
wanted to appear from a certain sphere. An evocation, from the
hermetic point of view, is therefore the conscious getting into
contact with a certain being, not effected by passive intercourse
- as described in "Initiation into Hermetics" in the chapter
dealing with the conscious passive connection with beings - the
magician being used as a medium, but outside of his body.
The being or power of any sphere which is to be evoked outside the
body of the magician, may either be called into the magic
triangle, or the magic mirror, or onto a material impregnated with
a fluid condenser to be condensed there. At the beginning the
magician will not be able to do without the magic implements.
Later, as soon as he has enough experience and as soon as he has a
certain sphere under his complete control, i. e. as soon as the
beings of that sphere are fully under his power, pay him obedience
and loyalty and, by that, acknowledge his magical authority, he
can do without magical aids. The experienced magician then is in
the position to call any being of the sphere he has under his
power and to work with it, without using magical aids.
He can call a being to any place at any time, how and when he
wishes to do so, without the aid of the circle or triangle and
without any special preparations. A beginner, on the other hand,
must necessarily use magic aids, for they are a support for his
consciousness and are therefore necessary for a successful
evocation.
If the magician has complete control over a sphere without having
to use any magical weapons, he advances to the next higher sphere
and again makes use of his magical aids until he also controls
that sphere completely. The magician must always bear three
principles in mind when he wants to bring about a successful
evocation:
1. If he intends to call a spirit being of a certain sphere into
his sphere, no matter whether he calls it into the triangle, the
mirror, or into a fluid condenser, he must bear in mind that the
being is only able to move about in an atmosphere appropriate to
its own sphere. He therefore must artificially create the spheric
atmosphere by accumulating the light, the material of the sphere,
either into the triangle, or preferably into the whole room in
which he is working. If working with a magic mirror it has to be
impregnated or condensed respectively with the according light
material of the sphere.
When operating in the open air, the impregnation must be kept
within such limits that the beings or powers that are to manifest
themselves have sufficient room to move about. The accumulated or
impregnated light must have a colour which is in accordance with
the colour-law of the individual planet. I have already given the
reader and student a detailed information on this question of
impregnating or accumulating light in space in "Initiation into
Hermetics" in the chapter dealing with space-impregnation. If, for
instance, a being of the Moon-sphere is evoked outside oneself,
the light, or rather the material to be accumulated, must be of a
silvery white colour; in the case of a being of Mercury the
light-material must be opalescent; beings from Venus must have a
green, beings from the Sun a golden yellow, from Mars a red, from
Jupiter a blue, from Saturn a violet light, etc.
If, for instance, the magician calls a being of the earth-element,
he must get the element of the earth into the magic triangle or
the magic mirror by the help of his imagination. If he wants to
call to him a being from the Moon, he must create the vibration of
the Moon sphere. No being is able to dwell in a sphere not
appropriate to it. If, in case of citation, this principle is not
adhered to, a being might be forced to come to our physical
sphere, but it would, in such a case, have to create, by itself,
the necessary spheric vibration. The magician would, in this case,
lose his control over the being, and his authority, too, would
suffer from such a failure, for the being would consider the
magician as not perfect and would therefore not pay him respect
and would refuse to obey him. Strictly adhering to and acting
according to this principle is most important when evocations are
carried out, and this must never be forgotten by a true magician.
2. The magician must be able to place himself, with his
consciousness, during the evocation, into the sphere of the being
cited, so that the being will behold him. This transplanting of
one's spirit is done under the laws of the Akasha-principle, i. e.
by the magician's putting himself into a state of trance in which
he does not know any time or space, and it is in this state that
he cites, according to his will, and due to his authority etc. the
being concerned. Without these faculties the magician is not able
to make a being appear.
3. The magician must call forth, by means of his magical
authority, the being's awe and obedience, for otherwise no being -
no matter whether positive or negative - would respect him. The
magical authority or influence of the magician does not work on a
being due to the magician's personality, but because he has
influenced or bound himself with an intelligence superior to the
being or appears as a deity in the aspect authoritative to the
being. It is thus not the magician who makes his influence work on
the being, but the authority of the superior being or of the
highest possible intelligence; of the evoking deity itself.
When practicing evocation, the magician will first influence or
ally himself with the superior intelligence. He will only take on
the shape of the highest quality for his self-assertion as an
authority and show it in obstinate cases in which the being should
try to oppose anyhow.
If the magician were to try to influence the being evoked by his
own personality only, the being could refuse to obey him, or
could, for the worse, deceive him in a most shocking manner. If,
however, the being is actually receiving his orders from a
superior intelligence, or even God in any aspect, not from the
magician himself, then the being must, under any circumstance,
obey the order. The magician has already learned from "Initiation
into Hermetics", the identification with an intelligence or with a
divine aspect where I wrote about the community with the
individual god.
One can see from what has been said above that these three
principles have never been mentioned in any instructions, because
no author has ever had personal experience in the magic of
evocation. They have therefore derived their teaching methods from
other written sources which, in fact, were also incomplete.
Without adhering strictly to the three basic principles no
successful evocation is possible!
Before a magician starts with the evocation of beings he must have
the whole procedure precisely entered into the book of formulae
and should, if possible, know it by heart, so that he is not
delayed during his operations by any looking up. It is possible
that difficulties will arise at the beginning of the magician's
practice, but soon the repeated evocation of beings will increase
his self-confidence. Besides that, he will realize that an
evocation is not just the calling of a being, but a regular
ritual, composed of a whole number of magical operations. The
magician must make sure that no hiatus exists in this rite, for
each hiatus would be a disturbance not only to the magician, but
also to the being evoked.
A faultless operation is that which the Grimoires call the
complete circle. This expression does not refer to the circle that
is drawn by the magician for his protection, and as a symbol of
the microcosm and macrocosm, which is of the relationship to God,
but it refers to the total coherent magical operation. The purpose
of the evocation, too, must be laid down in writing before its
beginning, for during the evocation no additional questions may be
raised.
As one can guess from the whole procedure of preparation, a
cautiously prepared and precisely completed magical evocation
requires much time. If, by repeated intercourse with one and the
same being, the magician has established a good connection, so
that the being pays him absolute obedience and thereby completely
acknowledges his magical authority, the magician may, to save
time, arrange a different way to contact the being either by an
abbreviated individual rite, or even just a word for the evocation
of the being and by getting the being's approval for this, or he
may cause the being to choose an abridged method to which the
being itself and its servants are bound to react at any time.
This abridged method, too, has to be written into the book of
formulae conscientiously, so that during its practical application
no mistakes occur. This is especially important should the
magician have entered into a number of connections with beings.
If the simplified method is offered by a being who, at the same
time requests the magician not to write down the procedure, but
just to remember it well, the magician must respect such a
request. Even if the magician is allowed to make some provisional
notes on this abridged procedure, these notes, like the whole book
of formulae, must never get into the hands of other people, not
even into the hands of a genuine magician, the only exception
being those cases where the being, the originator of the
simplified procedure, agrees to the magician's handing the
procedure over to somebody else, or even asks for this. Otherwise
the magician should never dare to evade a prohibition or even
break it, unless he does not mind his authority being shaken. What
this would mean for a magician need not be further discussed here.
A being first appears to a magician in the same manner as it is
accustomed to move about in its own native zone. If the magician
is not pleased with the way in which the being appears, he may, by
means of his magical authority, cause the being to appear in the
shape he approves of. There are no restrictions in this respect,
and it is up to the magician to decide which shape the being
evoked should , by help of his imagination, take on. The sex, too,
is in this case of no consequence. The magician will, however, do
well not to insist, for instance, in a being's appearing in a male
shape, if in its relevant sphere it has been a female creature,
although the being would have to do even this, should the magician
insist upon it. Therefore, beginners in magic operations are
recommended to let a being appear in the shape familiar to its own
zone.
The magician converses with a being in his own familiar language.
Since he is, in any case, in an elevated state, in the state of
trance, his language automatically changes into the spiritual
language, into the so-called metaphorical language and is so
understood by the being. The being, too, who normally uses its own
language, will converse in this spiritual language, which again
will be translated automatically into the language with which the
magician is familiar. Due to this fact the magician will at first
have the feeling that the answers by the being come from his own
subconscious much in the same manner as a person's inner voice is
heard. By and by the magician will get used to this and will
finally realize that the being is actually speaking outside him,
and after repeated work in this field it will appear to him to be
the same as if he were talking to one of his fellow-men.
The unwanted accompanying factors mentioned in the Grimoires, for
instance the vandalism of beings, creaking�s, thunderstorms,
flashes of lightning and other disturbances which are said to
usually accompany evocations are totally unknown to the genuine
magician and may only occur with necromancers and sorcerers who
have undergone no magical training, or with people who have left
the necessary preparatory operations unobserved or who have made
only little preparation for a true evocation.
A genuine magician will not experience any unwanted accompanying
phenomena, and his evocations will run as smoothly as if he were
carrying out any other physical, astral or spiritual actions. In
the beginning a magician will do well not to ask a being too many
questions, but to address it with only a few concrete questions.
They should refer to the sphere from which the being has come. No
questions should be asked that would infringe upon the dignity of
the being. At a later date a being, an intelligence, a head or the
servants set at the magician's disposal, may be asked to play an
active part; they need not be used for the conveyance of knowledge
only. The beings, in general, like to serve a genuine magician and
help him in an unselfish manner as much as lies in their power. A
magician certainly will never be so silly as to ask a spirit being
to bring him treasures or to do for him heavy physical work, since
the effect of the being's display of power in our physical world
depends on the fuel (i. e. the material used for its
materialization) that the magician puts at its disposal.
At first the beings will only be able to do mental work. Later,
when the magician has enough experience, they will do astral and
after some time also physical work for him, though the magician is
recommended not to burden a spirit being with physical jobs, for
it would have to carry out such duties in exactly the same manner
as the magician with his acquired magic faculties. The beings make
use of the same powers that are used by the magician for his
personal operations. This means that to do physical work they need
the fluids of elements, i. e. the electrical or magnetic fluid,
and take into account the Akasha-principle, just as the magician
himself. The beings usually draw the matter or substance and the
power out of the atmosphere of the magician. Therefore a magician
should always bear in mind that every evocation is done at his own
cost. This is reason enough for the magician not to carry out an
evocation for the mere satisfaction of other people's curiosity,
and he will, as already mentioned, practice an evocation first of
all to help his fellow-men, or to increase his power over beings
and elements and so acquire more personal experience.
For the actual evocation of beings no spells or similar nonsense
is necessary. Since, during the whole time of the evocation, the
magician is in an elevated state, in a true relationship with God,
he places himself with his consciousness into the sphere of the
chosen being and, after having called out its name, asks the being
to appear to him. The being hears the magician, at once reacts to
his call, and quite willingly comes near him. A true magician will
never be obliged to threaten a being or do anything of that sort
in order to make the being obedient to his will. This may only
happen with stubborn demons to whom the magician demonstrates the
power of his relationship to God. In the case of a true
relationship to God, hardly any being, no matter what rank it may
have, will ever dare to place itself in opposition to the
divinity, for the divinity is the power by which the being was
created, and therefore it must be respected.
Since, for the magician, the saying is true that the stars
influence, but do not force, it is left to the magician to fix the
time for the evocation according to astrological rules, provided
that he has a fundamental knowledge of astrology and is therefore
able to fix the favourable planetary moments in respect of the
relevant beings.
All the various ways of evocation described in grimoires are not
for magicians but for sorcerers. Therefore, for a true magician,
the instructions given in a grimoire are useless, and consequently
the magician will put them aside. He knows the true path of
initiation, he knows, too, how an evocation is to be carried out,
and he is therefore convinced that he will fully succeed in his
operations.
After the end of the evocation it is the magician's duty to send
the spirit being back to its sphere, i. e. to discharge it. He
accompanies it with his consciousness and, in doing so, he has an
inner feeling of satisfaction and certainty that the being will
return to the sphere from which it has been called and from which
it has come. All the implements used for the evocation are
returned by the magician to their depository and all accumulated
powers are again discharged by his will and imagination. And this
is the end of the evocation.
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