Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Invocational Energy Work, Group Work, and Talisman Work

In the last couple of chapters, we covered invocation from a somewhat standard point of view. Before we cover evocations, there are a couple of fun exercises that we can try out, which will help our evocations. Invocation may result in a spiritual entity entering the body and seizing control, but we register that as a state of mind. I draw a distinction between deep invocation and regular invocation, but this line is far less clear in practice. When doing these exercises, however, you have to be in a deep enough trance state to let it happen, but have enough mental composure to stay focused on what you are doing.

Let's think about an entity, spirit, or concept as a principle, and invocation as a shift in the information content of a person's energy. In some ways, this can mean that entities can act like resonance for the magician. It is easier to do this sort of experimentation if you have a relationship with an entity and have mastered the methods of energy manipulation beforehand. As stated before, an entity could be external or internal, but in either case, you should have a connection to the entity before trying these exercises.

The Imaginary Best Friend Approach

One of the easiest ways to create an entity is to simply imagine that it is there. A basic technique is to go into trance and talk to an inanimate object, attributing some skill to it, or visualize and talk to a made-up image in your head. Going into a trance state will help increase the impact of these exercises.

Try this for a couple of months: Buy a statue you believe is attractive. A small statue that doesn't take too much room is perfectly acceptable. Place the statue out in the open. If you have lost something, go into a trance state and thank the statue for coming into your life to find the lost object. You can of course try this game with other simple tasks and other statues, but be consistent in your requests to the statue. If you asked the statue to locate a lost object, thank the statue when the object shows up. What kinds of results do you get?

One way to get better results is to obsessively write down every time you ask your statue to perform the task and then be disciplined enough to write down when the task was completed. Writing down the results like this is a bit difficult, since if you have not been deconditioning your psychic censor, it will work against you. Try not to have feelings either way about the successes or failures of the statue. Think of this merely as a statistic for future reference. Make sure to praise the statue whenever the simple task is completed. Over time, what is the pattern of results?

Ironically, if we treat an statue as something more than merely a statue, the subconscious starts to believe it and empower the statue itself without conscious intervention. (Of course, you could try this exercise with other artifacts such as paintings, pictures, or candle holders. The procedure is the same. For instance, with a picture you have on the wall, you merely walk up to the picture and ask the picture to find the missing object.) After you have tried this for a couple of months, decide on a name for the statue (if you didn't already give it a name much earlier in the process), and hand it to a magically inclined or sensitive friend. Ask your friend what he or she thinks about the statue without any precursory knowledge, and write down the reaction.

In this case, the form of the physical statue probably dictates a lot of the interaction between the magician and the statue itself. Most probably, the subconscious mind was quite adept at filling in the blanks and empowering that statue. The statue might even seem to have developed a personality all on its own (in line with the form of the statue you chose). Of course, you could have fun with this and pick a form that would produce a certain emotional or mental state of mind.

Now, I am sure we all have heard stories that objects can seem to develop a personality in and of themselves. This is especially true with more complex objects like a computer or a car. Based on the preceding experiments, is it a wise idea to always curse out a computer for not working? Try praising the computer for all the times it does work, and keep track of the number of glitches the computer has after it starts getting praised (of course, giving your friendly, overworked IT staff some coffee and being nice to them might help them make sure the computer works more efficiently as well).

Invocation Energy Sphere Games

We have done lot of work with energy spheres and different states of mind. We rubbed our hands together in the flow game and created a flow between our hands. After that, we cupped our hands and visualized one of the hands being closed off to create a sphere of energy. Throughout the adventure, we played with different memories and mental constructs and then checked out how the energy had changed. We are going to do the same thing again with this exercise. It is extremely important to remember to cleanse yourself and banish before and after the exercise. Read through the entire exercise, so you can get a flow of the steps before doing it.

The memory of an invocation is often enough to re-invoke an entity, as long as the entity is thought about hard enough in an altered state of consciousness, and each detail of the original invocation is remembered (across all the senses if possible). In some of the other exercises, if a memory contained dull sensory information and we wanted to experience that state of mind in a more powerful way, we would just heighten, enhance, and empower the sensory data contained in the memory and imagine the memory occurring in the original person in real time. Try to fully relax and clear your mind before remembering an invocation you have done in the past. Now spend a few minutes remembering the invocation, adding sensory data until you feel that you are in the same state of mind that you were in at that time. Allow the memory of the first invocation to fully overwhelm your mind and senses. In your journal, write down your perceptions. Now let the memory of this previous invocation come over you, and repeat it as close as you can to its completion. Describe this invocation. Does it affect you more powerfully?

Practice this step a few times. After you have done this, try remembering each detail of the invocation, each sense-what you saw, what you heard, what you felt, what you smelled. How does the invocation feel now?

Now that we have a suitably powerful memory of the invoked state, it will be easier to do the exercise. While a partner is not needed for this, it may be helpful to have one for verification purposes. After clearing your heads, relaxing, and banishing, go back to the memory of the invoked entity. Again, bring the memory from the first-person point of view back into the focus of your mind. Try to remember each detail and empower each detail. Remember, we only have our minds to interpret how deep an invocation is, so by enhancing the sensory information of the invocation while keeping it in the present time, we strengthen it.

For this to work, you want the entity invoked, but not fully in possession. Take your hands, rub them together, and start the energy flow between them. Create an energy sphere, and hand that to your partner in crime (if you have one). Your partner should write down his or her impressions. Write down your impressions of the sphere that was in your hands as well.

As you sink deeper and deeper into an invoked state, your energy will resonate more and more closely with the entity in question, un til you are "in sync" with that consciousness. The energy sphere will reflect the change. The problem, however, is that the interpretation of an entity and how it translates into sensory data might be different for each person. This means that you can get different impressions both from invoking the same entity, and from holding a sphere of energy resonating with a specific entity.

Keeping Your Focus

The trick with some of these exercises is to keep that singularity of focus on creating an energy resonance similar to that of the entity. The best possible time to do this is right before the entity has total control but is deeply invoked. Essentially, you want the entity to completely dominate your thinking, except for the will to push out energy while the entity is inside. Depending on the entity and the system you are working with, this can be difficult (such as in the African traditional religions, where the entities want to take possession and it feels so good to let them) or relatively easy (as with many of the angelic forces associated with the Kabala).

For me, it is easier to do this when I have some experience with the entity. Some entities feel like they take possession in a flash when they are invoked, others seem to flow in like a stream. Knowing how it feels when you invoke an entity will assist you in doing this exercise.

Invocational Transference

When you created the spheres of energy that resonated with the information of a particular entity, the spheres themselves probably had a noticeable effect on your partner. Being exposed to energy spheres that are colored by a certain entity is sometimes enough to cause that information to spread through another person, causing an invocation. An entity can be as contagious as the emotions we demonstrated.

These ideas lead to certain interesting experiments that we can try. First, if a sphere of the energy can affect the sensations in another person, it should be possible to cause the energy to shift in another person to be resonant with an entity (thus causing an invocation of an entity he or she may have had no previous connection with). Of course, the other person should be relaxed and open to the experience.

Let's start with both parties in this exercise clearing their heads, relaxing, and banishing. One person should have a good relationship with an entity, while the other person should not have a relationship with the entity. In practical terms, it is helpful for participants to make offerings to the entity involved (at least at first, to help establish a rapport with the entity). As you get better with the technique, this additional step probably will not be needed. I recommend asking the spirit involved before doing this, at least when you are first starting to try this out. Most entities probably will be okay with this if there is a reason to do this type of work (so have a reason for the receiver to have the evocation done). An entity might not want to do this because it would hurt the person who is receiving the transference. That's a fair concern, so do have that conversation first, unless you don't care if you hurt the other person.

The person who has the relationship with the entity should fully invoke the entity. If that person has gotten the memory-to-invocation trick down, those techniques can be used to further empower the invocation. He or she should allow the entity to come as close as possible to possession. This is similar to the sphere exercise earlier in the chapter, but magicians should generally continue until they feel like every single pore in their bodies is the entity and it's a real struggle to avoid complete possession.

At the same time, the second person should just be obtaining a deep trance state via whatever means is deemed appropriate to the working. That person should be attempting an empty-minded trance state where an invocation is possible. Essentially, this will work best if both parties are in a deep trance state.

Once the person doing the invocation is at the point where he or she is at the verge of total possession, that individual will want to imagine projecting all that energy into the second person. Do this with physical contact. Sometimes I will use the shoulders, sometimes I will directly touch the third eye, and doing this with a deep kiss is phenomenal, but do what feels natural at the moment. Imagine the sensations, visions, and sensory data having completely filled you up, completely exiting your hands (or other body part) and surging into the other person, as if a lightning bolt were arching out of your body and flooding the other person's body. Use all five of your senses to imagine that bolt. Doing this should leave you somewhat exhausted. At the same time, imagine pulling up energy from the earth (and we worked with earth energies earlier, so use those correspondences), flooding your whole body with the sensation.

This is a lot like creating a high-pressure container of energy and then releasing all the pressure at once. The energy has no other place to go, since you are pulling more energy up through your feet and rapidly pumping it into the other person. See what happens to your partner. My brother, who is also a magician, referred to this as "shotgunning" an entity, and that's an accurate term if you think about shotgunning a beer.

After the other person is affected, you can juice up the ritual by continuing to "evoke" (which we will consider in the next chapter) the entity over the person. Make sure to banish and then write down your experiences in your journal.

I modeled this technique on my own experience of doing this sort of thing when I am told to do it or when there is a need to it. In Silver Star Magazine, Animapurasit detailed the outcome of a ritual we did at the Real Witches Ball (2006). In this ritual, he became fully possessed by Papa Legba. He had no experience with Vodou before that event. After coming out of the edge of my possession with Papa Legba, which I did not remember, I shotgunned all the energy and information directly into his third eye. For those who work with Vodou, yes, I was told to do that as part of the ritual, and it had a profound outcome.

Practical Talismanic Work: Finding a Talisman for an Entity and Charging It

We can find a talisman for an entity to further empower our work with it in the same way we were asking our subconscious mind for tools to work with general trends. If you have had some successful communications with an entity, you can ask it directly for some ideas for tools that will enable you to work with the entity more powerfully. This might not be needed for invocation, but every bit helps. For evocation, you should be able to get some sort of physical manifestation, and the greater the energy, the more possible this will be.

We can condition ourselves to only allow the invocation while the tool is present. We previously covered why this might be a good idea (and why it might be a bad idea). In evocational work, however, the talisman you develop can act as a stored battery of energy to jumpstart the evocation (which we will cover in the next chapter).

In practical terms, invoke the entity fully with the intent to ask it for a tool to empower your workings together. Once you have the idea for the tool, then the fun really begins, since you have to make it. At each step of the physical creation process, we can charge the tool. So clear your head, relax, and banish. Take on the memory of the invoked entity until it overwhelms your conscious mind, and imagine pushing that energy into the tool. Make sure to put the tool down and banish after you are done. This is exactly the same idea as making the energy spheres, except that this time you are pushing the energy into a physical tool. If the talisman requires power tools, knives, or other dangerous objects, charge the talisman after building the tool (don't try to charge a tool while working with power tools, please). Deep trance states and dangerous tools such as power tools probably are not safely compatible.

You can repeat the exercise as many times as you need. As you do this, you may find that the tool becomes much more powerful. Merely touching the tool may even create a partial invocation.

Using the same thinking process, we can easily empower herbs, candles, and other temporary talismans with the energy of an entity that gets released when burned. This is very much in line with the sorcery ideas we discussed earlier. Let's assume you have a particular intent in mind for using the energies of a particular entity to guide the process. Some of the books are confusing, and perhaps you can't figure out what would work right. The entity itself can give you the advice you need regarding what to include, if you talk to it. Try to think out some simple candle-burning rituals that could use the projected energy of an entity. See what you can come up with. Remember, anything can be invoked and worked with in this way, from traditional entities to cartoon characters, porn stars, concepts, and even entities we create for ourselves.

Group Work, Circles of Power

As an aside, before we can go further, I have to talk about some example group exercises. Later on in our adventure, we will discuss group workings in more detail. There has to be some trust between members of the group to really get this to work, but these exercises will demonstrate concepts even in groups that are formed relatively spontaneously.

Let's try an exercise. Everyone should position themselves around the edges of a circle so that all participants are in physical hand-tohand contact with the participants next to them. Everyone should clear their heads, relax, and then banish by their preferred method.

After everyone is in a relaxed state of mind, each person in the group should clasp hands, forming a circle. Agree in advance as to a direction the energy should flow between participants. Let the energy completely "flow through you," in one hand and out the other, in the designated direction through the entire group. You have to actively imagine the energy coming in one hand and then going out the other. If you relax and focus, the group will help each other get the energy flowing.

Now, let the flow go for a couple minutes and keep relaxing. Two hands touching is a physical link for the energy to flow. Try to relax and focus on the sensations of the energy flowing between the people. Try to increase the amount of energy you believe is flowing through you by increasing and adding sensory details. If adding certain details reduces the strength of your sensation, add the sort of details that make the sensation the strongest. When doing this part of the exercise, have each person in sequence try to augment the perceived energy flow by adding sensory data to the experience in real time. This is very similar to the other exercises we have done. Add visual components and see the energy flow from the person before you and observe the energy exiting you. Add verbal data such as a whooshing sound, and let the feelings completely overtake you. Swaying (in the direction of the energy flow) often helps people let more energy flow. For the purposes of this exercise, pay attention to the links before and after you in the chain. Each person should note what happens down the chain when one person enhances the link in each direction.

Once you have done this precursory exercise, there are a couple of variations that demonstrate underlying principles of group work. First, pick a facilitator for the group. Everyone should do the preceding exercise again. This time, once the energy is cycling around the group at a nice rate, the facilitator should imagine being a brick wall that no energy can go through. Earlier in our adventure, we had a great "no" exercise that will work wonders with this. Energerically, one way the facilitator could be like a brick wall is to silently concentrate on the word no and visualize a wall of force. A second way to do this is to go opposite to the flow of the group. So, in the middle of the group work, a person would push energy with the hand that was supposed to be receiving energy. What effects do you feel when this happens?

After everyone has discussed what they felt, they should try the group flow again. This time, the facilitator should not completely shut off the energy flow, but should reduce the amount of sensory data that he or she perceives while doing the energy flow. So, for example, a person might take away the visual data and the verbal data and "tone down" any kinetic data by making the sensations duller. They might switch the kinetic data to more visual data and then make all the visualizations dull and boring. What impacts do the participants experience when the facilitator does this? Take some time to write down your impressions. Make sure to banish after each time you break the energy flow or the circuit is broken.

In most cases, the strength of the circuit is determined in part by each participant. This is relatively difficult to measure quantitatively, since a psychic energy detector has not been invented yet. However, when you are next to different people who have been doing this sort of thing for varying amounts of time, what differences do you notice in the experience? If there is a break in the circuit, the entire circuit stops. Now, in ritual, there is rarely just one interconnection like this in a chain. A better metaphor is that everyone is interconnected (but even that may not be true). One individual person may not cause a break in the chain-because the energy can flow between people-but the energy does have to flow around that blockage. We will discuss this more a little later in our adventure, but if you are doing group work, consider the implications if one person is not with the program.

Group Elemental, Emotional Circuit

That first simple exercise opens up so many possibilities. Again pick a facilitator. This time, we are going to repeat the same flow exercise, but we are going to add some variations that we are already familiar with. It is important to banish before and after the practice.

Let's repeat the last exercise. Get a good energy flow between all participants in the chosen direction. In the last variant, we had one person reduce the flow in and out of himself or herself. For this version, the facilitator should go back into his or her journal and remember the personal correspondences for an elemental energy. One element should be chosen but not disclosed until the end of the practice session. After the circuit has really gotten going for participants, the facilitator should take on all the aspects of the elemental energy they are resonating and fully perceive that element. This is the same process we used when we were creating elemental energy spheres. This is a little more complex, since there is flow of information and energy between participants. The facilitator should try to imagine that the energy going out from his or her broadcasting hand matches the details of the chosen elements. All the participants should continue to just let the flow cycle through. Now, how does adding an elemental component change the experience for each participant in the chain? Try the exercise again, this time with two people broadcasting the same elemental energy and then continuing the chain. Try the same experiment with two different elemental energies. How does that affect the experience? In each case, everyone else should continue to just cycle the energy.

Once you have repeated the exercise a few times with an elemental force, repeat it with an emotion. Do this with a positive emotion, and remember to banish after doing the exercise. The participants on either side of the facilitator should just cycle the energy around, with the facilitator projecting an unknown but positive emotion.

This exercise can become difficult when there is a group of people who all know what they are doing. When people shift their energy in a fashion like this, each person in the chain will react to the shifting energy and resist. A metaphor for this would be giving someone a Skittles candy, which that person thinks is an M&M candy. Less experienced practitioners might not be familiar with either type of candy, so they have the beautiful beginner mind and will merely run with whatever happens. It's important for each member to relax, keep the flow going, and not "judge" what is happening. In some groups, for these exercises to work, it may be necessary to combine the flow with a meaningless mantra to cause people to go into greater levels of trance where there is no need to judge the experience.

As a final part to this, try the group circle with both the emotional and elemental energies, with each participant knowing what the emotion is and mapping the state of mind to that energy type. What is the effect on the exercise?

Practical Group Invocation: An Example of Group Contagion

There is a lot of group theory encapsulated in the previous exercises. You can learn the metaphysical theories and concepts more intuitively by doing the exercises-this is true for many of the exercises in our adventure. Every time I have done these exercises with a group of people who can sufficiently relax (and trust me enough not to react), there clearly is a difference in the group while we are practicing the exercises. The informational content associated with those energies is often contagious in the same way emotion is contagious. If the participants don't consciously (or subconsciously) resist, the information in the energy seems to replicate across all of the people. The information attached to the energy flow was generated by remembering the sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells that the magician associated with that particular energy. As an aside, this contagion factor is another practical reason why we banish, clear our minds, and center before doing group work.

The invocation methods that we have covered in our adventure basically involve using sensory data to resonate as the entity in question. This, like the elemental and emotional exercises, is a state of mind in the same way that an emotion-or even expressing an elemental energy-is a state of mind. Does this mean that if one person had invoked an entity in the context of this exercise, the other people start to mimic the energy and thus start the invocation process?

Everyone should clear their minds, relax, and banish. The facilitator should invoke a benign entity (the definition of "benign" differs greatly from group to group) while everyone else starts getting the flow going. Ideally, for the practice experience, the entity should be one that the rest of the participants have not had that much experience with. The chosen entity should not be announced ahead of time. Yes, this takes a measure of trust. The reason that the entity is not announced ahead of time is to avoid the expectation effect. The participants will learn more by experiencing and not expecting any certain result. (This is so they can't tailor the experience to suit their preconceived notions.)

After all the participants have the flow going at a good clip around the circle and are in a trance state, the facilitator (who at this point should be near possession or at least should be strongly resonating with the entity) will enter the circle and just let the energy flow while continuing to focus on staying in an invoked state of mind.

In practical terms, the facilitator is doing a full invocation and then shotgunning and continually generating the vibe of the entity. It's the same technique we mentioned earlier in the chapter.

How does the energy of an entity being injected into the flow of the group change the experience for each participant? What impressions do the people in the chain get when one person is pushing that informationally tinged energy out into the group? Try this with a couple of different entities if you want to have fun with the group.

After you have done the exercise with no knowledge of what the entity is, redo the exercise with everyone knowing what the entity is and having had experience working with the chosen entity (this could be achieved by doing the exercise a couple of times until everyone has an idea of what the entity is about). For this, do have a group intent in mind. Create a mantra to chant while doing this exercise using the sigil techniques, relax, remember a past invocation, and get down to business as a group. If the participants are able, physically break the chain and continue the invocation individually just to feel the difference once the invocation has been started.

How does this experience feel different from the previous exercises? Was the group invocation done in this fashion perceived differently than the individual invocations? In a practical sense, I have often used this when introducing new members of a group to the group egregore or patron deity of a coven. This idea can also be used to cast group sigils. Usually this can be achieved simply by increasing the flow between participants until it is more like a typhoon than a trickle.

These exercises reiterate that any state of mind, including an invoked state, could be contagious. For receptive participants, this effect can be quite powerful. Even if people are not totally open to it-if they are in public places, for instance-the information/energy can enter through the subconscious and bubble up, causing a powerful effect. This can be used for a "good" or "bad" effect, depending on your personal moral code.

Ritualistic Resonance Components: Stacking Invocations

As this is the last section in this part of the practice exercises on invocation, I should mention again that it is possible to stack invocations. This is a relatively common technique. First, from an energy point of view, you could "bring to the surface" the energy of a divination component and then invoke an entity. In fact, fully taking on an emotional state before doing an entity invocation would be a way of stacking invocations. The possibilities are endless with the states of consciousness you could stack.

There are a lot of reasons for doing this type of stacking, depending on what your intent is. One example is to temper the character of one of the entities involved in the operation. For example, you might invoke a hunter god with a deeply sexual being (or wealth-oriented entity). In another example, you might invoke an entity to protect you and restrict the invocational effects of another entity. Say you needed to destroy an ill-adapted part of your personality but didn't want to destroy your entire personality. This allows the one entity to "destroy" the problem areas, while the other being is containing the destruction of the problem areas. A third entity might be invoked to build replacements for the parts that are being destroyed.

In any case, stacking invocations will push a person deep into trance. As more presences bombard the conscious mind, the conscious mind will no longer be able to stay in control, allowing real magic to occur.

Practical Example: Michael/Leviathan Vortex of Self-Love

We will cover evocation in the next chapter; however, the evocation in this ritual is merely a step to ease the final invocation. In essence, this ritual attempts to create an internal vortex in a person, which destroys addictions and other parts of the personality that prevent fluidity and maximum personality adaptation, using opposite archetypal entities. In this case, the two entities are the archangel Michael and Leviathan. Michael represents fire, light, the highest heights, and the searing heat, while Leviathan represents the dark, wet, and cold depths. In addition, in Christian mythology these two will fight each other, and it is Michael who keeps Leviathan in check. So putting them into the same space definitely is "interesting"

Statement of Intent: I destroy the addictions that limit self-fluidity and feed self-hate, and replace them with self-love.

Procedure:

Banish by your preferred method.

Evoke Venus into the space. (For men, Pan, a strong god of masculinity, would also work. I have done it both ways, being somewhat mentally hermaphroditic.) This is done by a long, spontaneous benefaction to the goddess of love over a visualized chaos sphere while sprinkling rose petals on the floor. Concentrate on the core elements to construct the benefaction (what love is, what lust is, what beauty is, etc.).

Invoke the archangel Michael while slowly spinning in a clockwise manner. Visualize the angel coming down into you. Michael has a large flaming sword, he is usually pictured as being quite beautiful, he embodies light and heat, and he is considered almost the finest of the angels. He is also known as "the Sword of Justice." While spinning, visualize an internal vortex beginning in a clockwise manner. (I concentrate on the core ideas and sensory links I have to the angel and spontaneously create a benefaction.)

Start spinning faster.

Invoke Leviathan while spinning in a clockwise manner. Leviathan is the serpent (dragon) that will devour the earth if left unchecked. Leviathan is the monster at the darkest and coldest depths of the ocean, the embodiment of darkness, and one of the last monsters to be killed in Armageddon. Since we have mapped Leviathan to states of mind, we can then summon Leviathan into ourselves.

Spin faster and faster...

Scream out, "I am Leviathan, I am Michael! I am Leviathan, I am Michael! I am Leviathan, I am Michael!" Keep doing this while spinning.

Spin faster till you fall to the floor, unable to stand up. While spinning, visualize an internal vortex destroying tethers that limit selffluidity and self-hatred, the vortex correspondingly burning and freezing parts of the self that will not become fluid.

After entities have conjoined into you via the vortex, invoke Venus into yourself (which should be a little easier, since the first step was an evocation into the space). At this point for me, it is pretty well impossible to do anything but scream out "Venus, come into me!" over and over ... until Venus (or Pan) is inside of you. Visualize yourself with the flowing green robes of luminescence (or simply as a half-goat faun). Focus on replacing the parts that need replacing with intense self love. After you invoke Venus, repeat "I love me" with increasing intensity until you hyperventilate. At hyperventilation, breathe deeply for a while, allowing the complete self to fill every pore of your body. Banish with laughter. You can substitute other god forms and opposing archetypes in this ritual to extend its usefulness as you see fit. Play and have fun.