An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Invocations

The words ’invocation’ and ’evocation’ are commonly regarded as meaning the same thing. This, however, is an error from the magical point of view. One invokes a God into the magic circle; one evokes a spirit into the magic triangle, which is drawn outside the circle. The circle is the symbol of infinity and eternity; the triangle is the symbol of manifestation.

The true secret of invocation, according to Aleister Crowley, can be summed up in four words, taken from that mysterious manuscript, The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. These four words are “Enflame thyself in praying”. The actual words of the invocation have little importance, so long as they have this effect upon the operator.

Crowley’s own “Hymn to Pan” (in Magick in Theory and Practice, privately printed, London, 1929) has often been used by students of magic. So have the beautiful invocations of the goddess of the moon, contained in Dion Fortune’s occult novel, The Sea Priestess (Aquarian Press, London, 1957.) These are in verse, and therefore easier to remember, poetry being a magical thing in itself. There are, however, many fine examples of invocation couched in prose. One such is the Invocation of Isis, from The Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius, which has been translated into English by William Adlington and by Robert Graves.

The object of invocation is a heightening of the consciousness of the operator. We do not so much call down a god or a goddess, as raise ourselves up, to a spiritual condition in which we are capable of working magic.

Many practising magicians find that the most potent invocations are those which are framed in the sonorous words of some ancient language. The invocations contained in magical books often involve strings of almost unintelligible ’words of power’; usually the worn-down remnants of Greek, Latin, or Hebrew titles of God. An interesting example of this is the famous Magical Papyrus, preserved in the British Museum, which was translated and edited in 1852 for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

This papyrus came from Alexandria, and dates from about A.D. 200. Its author may have been a priest of Isis. It gives a tremendous succession of magical words, deriving from Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Coptic and possibly Ancient Egyptian sources. It tells the magician to recite these to the North, uttering them as an invocation, with the words: “Make all the spirits subject to me, so that every spirit of heaven and of the air, upon the earth and under the earth, on dry land and in the water, and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient to me.”

Another ancient invocation is that which is preserved in a thirteenth-century play, Le Miracle de Théophile, written by a famous trouvère or troubadour called Ruteboeuf (quoted in A Pictorial Anthology of Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy, by Grillot de Givry, translated by J. Courtenay Locke, University Books, New York, 1958). The trouvères or ’finders’, were so called because they were poets who travelled the countryside of France in search of time-honoured lore and legend, which they incorporated into their works. They were often suspected of heresy and paganism.

This play by Ruteboeuf has a scene which involves ’conjuring the Devil’, and it contains this extraordinary invocation, which is in no known language:

Bagabi laca bachabe

Lamac cahi achababe

Karrelyos

Lamac lamec Bachalyas

Cabahagy sabalyos

Baryolos

Lagoz atha cabyolas

Samahac et famyolas

Harrahya.

The triumphant “Harrahya!” at the end is reminiscent of the cries of the witches’ Sabbat. In the thirteenth century, ’conjuring the Devil’ and ’invoking the Old Gods’ would have been synonymous. So this may well be a genuine specimen of an invocation used at the Sabbat, discovered by a trouvère and perpetuated by him under the orthodox guise of being part of a miracle play.

I wished to include here a sample of a present-day witches’ invocation. However, I found it difficult to do this without giving offence to friends who preferred not to have their rituals published. So I am compelled to present an invocation I wrote myself, to the goddess of the moon and witchcraft:

Our Lady of the Moon, enchantment’s queen,

And of midnight the potent sorceress,

O goddess from the darkest deep of time,

Diana, Isis, Tanith, Artemis,

Your power we invoke to aid us here!

Your moon a magic mirror hangs in space,

Reflecting mystic light upon the earth,

And every month your threefold image shines.

Mistress of magic, ruler of the tides

Both seen and unseen; spinner of the threads

Of birth and death and fate; O ancient one,

Nearest to us of heaven’s lights, upon

Whose shoulders nature is exalted, vast

And shadowy, to farthest realms unknown,

Your power we invoke to aid us here!

O goddess of the silver light, that shines

In magic rays through deepest woodland glade,

And over sacred and enchanted hills

At still midnight, when witches cast their spells,

When spirits walk, and strange things are abroad;

By the dark cauldron of your inspiration,

Goddess three fold, upon you thrice we call;

Your power we invoke to aid us here!