An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Evocation

One often finds the words ’evocation’ and ’invocation’ used in writings about the occult, as if they both meant more or less the same thing. To a practical occultist, however, this is not so. It is only the lower orders of spirits which can be evoked; the higher spirits and the gods are invoked. One invokes a god to the magical circle; one evokes a spirit into the magical triangle.

This principle holds good both for the craft of the witch and for ceremonial magic of the kind taught by the books of magic called grimoires. Most of the latter give directions for forming the magic circle, protected by sigils of occult potency and by Words of Power; and outside the circle they depict the triangle of evocation, protected in a similar manner and drawn in the place where the spirit is expected to appear.

Sometimes a censer of incense is placed within the triangle, so that the spirit can make itself a body, so to speak, out of the curling and wavering smoke arising from the censer. This process is helped, so magicians aver, by blending with the incense a herb called Dittany of Crete (Origanum dictamnus).

Probably the best description in print of what really happens at a serious attempt at magical evocation, is given in Gerald B. Gardner’s historical novel High Magic’s Aid (Michael Houghton, London, 1949).

The witch, or the white practitioner of the craft at any rate, seldom meddles with evocation of the type described in the grimoires. (By ’white’ in this context, I refer to the type of magic involved, not the colour of the operator’s skin.) The magic of the grimoires, by its own admission, consists of evoking highly dangerous forces, which are controlled and compelled by the Names of Power and by the magical sigils, and made to do one’s bidding. These Names of Power are a strange mixture of Hebrew, Greek and sometimes unknown tongues, and they usually mean some attribute of God, or some Qabalistic formula. AGLA, for instance, means Ateh Gibor Leolam Adonai, “Unto Thee be Power for Ever, O Lord”; TETRAGRAMMATON means the Holy Name of four letters, whose true pronunciation was only known to the High Priest of Israel; and so on.

The evocations described in the grimoires are performed by rites which are within the framework of either Judaism or Christianity, however unofficial those rites may be. In the same way, a Mohammedan magician will use the Holy Names of Allah and recite verses from the Koran, in order to make the spirits obey him. Magic has been practised, and continues to be practised, in a thousand forms, all over the world; but its basic principles remain the same.

On this point, the anonymous author of a very rare and remarkable old book, Art Magic (Progressive Thinker Publishing House, Chicago, Illinois, 1898), had this to say:

Let it be borne in mind . . . that such features of each system are but the exoteric forms in which the esoteric principles are wrapped up. They have no real potency beyond the satisfaction they procure to pious minds, that they are engaged in no ceremonials displeasing to their Gods, or contrary to their forms of worship.

Provided always that the magician is duly prepared by fasting, abstinence, prayer, and contemplation—provided that his magnetism is potent and his will all-powerful—the spirits will obey and answer him, whether he conjures them in the name of Buddha, Osiris, Christ or Mahomet. The true potency resides in the quantity and quality of the Astral fluid, by which the operator furnishes means for the use of the spirits, and the power of the will, by which he compels beings less potent than himself to obey him.

This passage illustrates also the essential difference between evocation and invocation. Evocation seeks to compel a discarnate entity, presumed to be of a lower order, to obey our summons. Invocation calls upon a spiritual being, which we feel to be at least our equal (as in the case of a human spirit) or our superior; and solemnly asks that spirit, angel, or god to grant us the favour we seek.

The endeavour to communicate with spirits of departed human beings is usually a matter of invocation, of providing the necessary conditions and atmosphere and then inviting friendly spirits to communicate. However, attempts at evocation of discarnate humans are sometimes made; for instance, in the case of a malignant haunting, or an unwanted obsession by such a spirit, some magical practitioners would seek to compel the spirit to manifest, and then order it to depart to its proper sphere. In general, however, the spirits summoned by processes of evocation are not human spirits but those of the many orders and types of elementals. (See ASTRAL PLANE, THE.)

We find the belief that:

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth

Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep

is shared by people of all times and all races. Even today, in our world of motor cars, moon-flights, and television, we still get curious and inexplicable tales of poltergeist disturbances, for instance, or of queer things happening when a fairy rath is disturbed in Ireland.

We also have many eye-witness accounts from people who have seen non-human spirits, such as are usually called elementals. These may be beautiful or hideous, friendly or horribly malignant. Furthermore, the belief that such non-human spirits may become the familiars of magicians, and be commanded by them, is also world-wide. We find it among the occultists of the East, as much as among those of the West.

In general, however, the witch avoids the types of evocation which seek to compel spirits to do one’s bidding and seeks the aid only of friendly spirits who willingly lend their assistance.

There is this to be said, nevertheless, about some of the old forms of evocation; namely that they have an extremely potent effect upon the operator. They serve to raise the mind of the magician to a magical fever-pitch, in which the inner eye of the mind may open and things be perceived which were veiled before. The rhythmic chanting of some old form of evocation, by its insistent beat, puts the mind into a receptive state.

This is the reason why there is so much stage superstition about Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Actors, being sensitive people, regard Macbeth with a certain timidity, because they have found that the witches’ incantations in the play have a real effect, even if only to cause a shiver. The intensity with which they are uttered, the strangeness of the words, the cumulative rhythm of the chanted spell, all work upon the suggestibility of the person who says them, in the right atmosphere of shadowy, uncanny, anything-may-happen weirdness.

There is an old magical dictum: “Change not the barbarous names of evocation”; “the long strings of formidable words which roar and moan through so many conjurations”, as Aleister Crowley called them. A basic teaching of witchcraft, as the writer has received it at any rate, is that the real powers of magic are within the magician, and that the purpose of magical ritual with all its adjuncts is to bring them out, to awaken them and set them working. Then things start to happen!

Sometimes, indeed, more starts to happen than the operator is prepared for, or is able to handle. Hence the subject of evocation is one to be approached cautiously and handled with care; as indeed is all practical occultism.