The Master Works of Chaos Magick: Practical Techniques For Directing Your Reality - Adam Blackthorne 2016

Contacting Spirits

The foundation of most magick is any process that helps you get the paranormal assistance of a spirit. Spirits of all kinds can be asked, commanded and compelled to help you out. A lot of the time they do help, and if you are canny enough to ask for the right things in the right way, you can do very well with this magick.

By ’the right things’, I mean things that are plausible but unlikely without magick. You don’t contact a spirit and ask for help with things that are probably going to happen without your magickal intervention. You also don’t ask for the ability to fly or for instant, everlasting wealth and good luck. Reach for something that’s just a little out of reach, and choose the right spirit for the job. Ask a spirit to heal your heart, and you may find peace — but not if it’s a spirit of destruction. Ask a spirit to banish your noisy neighbor, and you might get a result — but not if it’s a spirit of love. Choose your spirits like you actually believe in them, whether or not you do.

By ’the right way’ I don’t mean you have to get your magick perfectly right; choose the right magick, do it well with full commitment, and let the magick do its merry business while you do yours.

When you get help from a spirit, your magick goes to a whole new place. You’re no longer relying on your energy, your ideas or thoughts, or your wisdom — you get help. Spirits are good at getting things done, so asking them makes for good magick. They do the heavy lifting, the tedious and the unlikely, to get you what you want.

Angels and demons are the most obvious way to get into spirit contact, but there are many other types of spirits listed in occult literature — from genii to Olympic spirits. When working with Chaos Magick you can work with the lot of them, finding the spirit that’s just right for your current need.

You don’t need to believe in the spirits, but you need to perform the rituals as though the spirits are real. Whatever your belief, it’s your role to act out the magick. You might get a sense of the spirit’s presence, you might go all shivery and goosebumpy, you might hear noises and whispers, or you might just feel a bit empty and weird afterwards, as though you’ve wasted your time. That’s ok. Keep doing magick; it feels less weird as you go, it starts working, and then you don’t mind how daft you would look if somebody walked in on you while you were calling out to the angels.

Non-believers have done angel magick and have obtained what they asked for. It works because the angels respond when the magick is done sincerely. And by sincerely, I mean with feeling. Get the emotions right and the magick all just slides into place. The magick just tends to work. (Some people believe it works because of quantum this-that-the-other and morphic fields, but we’re leaving the theory out of this. I accept that the angels are real. You don’t have to. It works anyway. Magick just does.)

To get help from a spirit, most occult systems suggest something along these lines:

Cleanse or confess and banish evil from the place where you work.

In lots of traditions this is the main part of the magick. Snore. You fast, wash, and keep saying sorry until you feel you might be worthy, and you spend hours sending spirits away to make sure you don’t get hurt by psychic troublemakers. Good news! Modern magick has made this bit super-fast. You don’t even need to have a shower. A bit of mental prep can help, but it can be really simple.

Take on magickal authority.

This can be done by asking for God’s permission, or by some other trick. Saying divine names and getting in the right state of mind is often enough to make a spirit take you seriously.

Get the spirit’s attention.

Say some magick words, or do some magickal actions, to get the spirit to listen. You can use the spirit’s sigil to make contact happen faster and more easily.

Tell the spirt what you want.

Talk clearly and say what you want. Power this up with emotional transmutation, meaning you tell the spirit what you want with your feelings.

Make an offering.

You can offer up some sort of payment at this point. This might be an offering — booze, flowery smoke (incense!), or a bit of food. You can also make a sacrifice or promise. “I’ll give up smoking if you get me the money I ask for.” That kind of sacrifice. No hurting of rabbits is required! Give up an addiction, or a pleasure. Some spirits love that because it actually costs you and shows that you mean what you say. You can also promise to spread the word about their good deeds; demons in particular love popularity. But, if you get to the essence of what I’m pushing in this book, you can keep the offering dead simple. Offer up gratitude, enjoyment, or pleasure with the results. Read any book by The Gallery of Magick and you’ll see that this is all that’s offered up, and it works. You can offer more if you want, but most of the time your feelings will be the key that unlocks the magick. You also offer to do your part of the work. The spirits handle the supernatural, but if you want things to happen you have to do ordinary things as well. If you want a promotion, you’d better work harder!

Get back to normal.

Let the spirit go off and do its stuff. The magick’s working on some other plane now, so you get on with real life and let the spirit do the paranormal reality-mangling for you. You do this by forgetting about the magick, and by having a busy and productive life.

And that works. With those instructions, some intelligence and quite a bit of creativity, I bet you could go out and get some sort of magickal result from some spirits. You’d need to do some research to find out a bit about the spirits first, but that’s not too hard. It can be done. But, rather than talk about all the theories and ideas, I’ll just get straight into an example that you can use: Olympic Chaos Magick.