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

Evocation

For chapters and chapters, we have discussed states of mind and taking on "forces" outside of the self. In this chapter, we are going to talk about evocation. Evocation means projecting an entity out into a space. A really good evocation can and should have partial physical manifestation. At first this is a daunting challenge, but because of the previous exercises in the adventure, the deck is stacked in your favor for this to happen sooner. Now, when we invoke a spirit or concept, we are trying, often, to make changes to our own perception. Essentially, we are trying to change our internal universe when we invoke. Usually, evocation is done to change the external universe. There is often a very fine line between invocation and evocation. As we go through some opinions on evocation, the line will become even less clear.

In its simplest form, evocation usually contains some sort of protection ritual/gesture for the operator and a focus point, which is often also a containment field in which to invoke the entity. Hoodoo traditions and some schools of sorcery will use a spirit circle for this while using bathing as the cleansing/protection ritual. Ceremonial magic will use a circle with various names of god inscribed around it with a highly charged triangle (which acts to contain whatever you are summoning). You would stand in the circle of protection. The triangle would be in front of and outside of the circle, pointing toward the circle. This is described in more depth later on.

Some traditions will place limits on what should be invoked or evoked, but I myself have violated those rules. For example, there are times when an angelic evocation will be exactly what I need to do, and other times when I have to invoke a demonic entity to make the changes I need to make. When we were talking about projecting emotional (or divinatory) energies over a candle, over a sympathetic link, etc., we were essentially doing a type of evocation.

The Focus Point

We have been training for evocation with many of our games. Different traditions have different methods of setting up where and how to actually evoke a spirit. Palo Monte uses an iron pot. Some folk magic traditions refer to it as a spirit circle. Even a Wiccan altar can be a focus point. To say there are variations would be an understatement.

The focus point, as the name suggests, is the point or constrained area that you are projecting the energy into for the evocation. This small area focuses the energy you are generating. There are a few good reasons to do this. When we channeled energy into a sphere, it was much easier to perceive and work with it as something tangible. This might be just a mental trick, but it is highly effective for most people. Similarly, the constructed space gives the mind a concentrated area to work with. The smaller and contained space might resonate enough with an entity or concept that it can manifest.

In some workings, creating and maintaining a barrier between you and the energy is a good idea. The information and energy is in a constrained, safe space so that you can call forth the entity, and tell it what you need it to do. Goetic work is a system in which this mentality is common. However, I have also used a constrained space, in this case a sheet of paper that had symbolic constraints written around the edges. I created the paper to have a sympathetic link with a person, to do heal ing work by evoking various angels into the paper. The healing work was not for me, it was for someone else, and I did not want the backflow of that person's sickness to affect me in any way. It was also a great place for me to focus.

The focus point for an evocation is usually part of a symbolic universe, or it contains the symbolic universe itself. So, for instance, in ceremonial magic you may have a triangle with the syllables Mi-ChiEl in each corner. Working within a system will give you the symbolic logic within that particular system, but you empower each of the symbols or talismans using the method we used to empower talismans in the last few chapters. Now, clearly you could do this with song, dance, etc., or in the context of our adventure, you could vibrate an energy pattern in yourself and then push that into the symbol or talisman. This is a method of empowering the symbolic universe. It helps at first to make you believe that what happens in the symbolic universe also happens in the material universe. Empowering each component in the symbolic universe helps to empower the focus point to affect the material universe. Just as with any other talisman, the focus point or altar can act as a battery for the magical operation. This is one reason why ritual magic takes such care with creating its own tools (at least if you talk to older magical practitioners, they take such care to make their own tools). By manipulating the symbolic universe, you manipulate the physical universe (which is a major concept in magic).

Of course, in some cases, the focus point or altar design is not available, or the knowledge is only available for such a high cost that alternative methods have to be sought out. We have touched on a couple alternate ideas for developing focus points or containment fields for any work we might want to do. Remember when we first dove into our subconscious mind to find a tool for a general area of workings? A second time, we had conversations with entities and asked them for a tool to better work with them. In many ways, the focus point is a tool in itself (and, as I mentioned, it can be configured in many ways). Now we are starting to move forward, as we did with the divination energies, working with a set of symbols and thus a symbolic universe that is entirely unique to the person doing magic. This magic is often quite successful. When you are using a pre-made system, you have to embed the symbols of the system into your mind. It's impossible to tell you what that altar or focus point will look like, because your subconscious mind has to provide the answer. Specific focus points for specific intents often will make the rituals go better. As you do more research, you will find that the subconscious gets better and better at pulling answers that make sense.

As we did in the previous chapter, relax, clear your mind, and banish. If you are trying to evoke within a specific system you know, but you are trying to get a containment or focus point within that system, talk to one of the entities you know within the system (which we also covered) and ask it to give you insights. If you are working relatively blind-in a system you do not know well-sigilize an intent to find a focus point for a specific evocation into a mantra and possibly a sigil, and use those tools as you are generating a trance state. Try to take on a state of mind close to what you think you might need in the ritual by using states that are close to what you are looking for. Use all of your senses, as we have been doing, to try to imagine what the focus point will be while you are in the trance state. Of course, for time and efficacy, it is helpful to get a unique focus point for a whole class of workings, but the exact symbols you decide on might be very different for each working, since every magical working should be different and tailored to the exact situation at hand. As you are coming out of trance, make sure to write down all the details of the focus point you brought to the main part of your mind. This technique, while a little time consuming, does seem to produce very good results for me when I do specific evocations using focus points (or altar setups) that I derive in this manner. Of course, I have read a lot, and a lot of the "ideas" I pull look like personalized versions of more traditional systems, which is perfectly acceptable.

The Protective Bubble and Symbols

There are a couple reasons for the protective circle. As with the containment field, we may not want the energy we are projecting to come back to affect us. The circle, herb rub, or protective invocation keeps the energies we are projecting separate from us. This idea is not just for negative work. In a practical sense, if you are doing any sort of evocation, we want the information contained so the energy used in the evocation is not seeping back to us. Through all the invocational work we did, we know that being exposed to an entity's information stream might help cause an invocation. This is neither good nor bad, but having the entity invoked might not be conducive to the specific working at hand. This is especially true when you might need an entity to do something, but you need not be completely exposed to an entity's information/energy to get it. Anything can be evoked, from concepts, entities in books, and random spirits you find, to comic book characters, etc.

There is a strong argument that, in advanced practices, such protective rituals are not needed. There may be some truth to this argument, and we will go over it a little later. The symbols that produce the protective barrier can be empowered in the same way that we were empowering other symbols. First, you have to know what the symbol means intellectually. Once you know what the symbol means, you can map that understanding to physical sensations such as the memories of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste, in the same way we did for the elemental energy games, the emotional energy games, the divinational energy games, and when we were resonating like an entity. From here, you can produce energy to resonate with the symbol, herb mixture, oil, talisman, etc., thus empowering and strengthening the protective aspects of this side of ritual.

Circle and Triangle: Example Framework

Let's come out of theory land and get some practical tools to work with. A simple method of evocation for spirits is to use a protective circle around yourself and a triangle for the focus point. In Goetic rituals, this is often considered the minimum level of protection. However, the circle and triangle work with almost any magical endeavor.

As with any magical work, you should relax, clear your mind, and banish to start the ceremony. At this point, you should state your intent, which probably will be "Evoke x to do y."

Draw an equilateral triangle in front of yourself, and then a circle around yourself. Usually, the triangle is drawn to the East, but for the way we are working with symbols, this is only relevant if you believe it is. The circle and triangle are usually drawn before the initial banishing. There is an endless amount of variations on this theme. In The Lesser Key of Solomon, the protective circle is inscribed with various Hebrew symbols and the ouroboros. It is quite beautiful, but extremely difficult to draw. This is a very complicated circle. I myself have used a double circle. The outer circle surrounds an inner circle, with some space between them. I will then place concepts or sigils (from my own mind) that I want to use to empower the protective aspects of the circle.

Both the circle and the triangle are relatively meaningless in and of themselves. We can write down anything we want to around the circle or triangle, but it is the power that we give the circle and triangle that gives them protective elements and adds to the strength of an evocation. Circles that are very difficult to construct take an extreme amount of dedicated focus on the circle itself. As we have been experimenting throughout the book, if you are thinking hard enough about something while in a trance state, you are indeed empowering it.

Let's look at a simpler way to empower our tools. Start with the circle. Before doing this, make sure to clear your head. Now, each symbol, concept, or entity you are working with for protection can be invoked. If you really want to have a strong circle of protection, you should have at some time invoked each concept or entity you selected to work with. If you have invoked the concept, you have a deeper understanding and a memory of the experience. That memory can be used to empower the circle. In the previous chapter, we worked with invoking an entity and then projecting that entity's resonance into a tool, another person, or an energy sphere. Think of the circle as just another talisman, invoke the protection entity or concept, and project that energy into the circle, just like we did with the talismans before. I personally will vibrate the name of the entity or concept while taking on the mental traits to project out. This acts to further anchor the states of mind with the concept or entity I am working with.

After this, you should empower the triangle using the same idea. The triangle likewise will be empowered with whatever symbolic logic, entities, or concepts you are choosing to work with. Now, again, you should map the entity or concept to sensory data and then project the energy out.

Now Evoke, Evoke

We now have an empowered circle and an empowered triangle. You could, if you so choose, recite the names of god in Enochian and command the spirit into the triangle. That is indeed one way to do evocations, but what are you really doing when you are reciting long incantations in another language? First of all, as you are doing incantations in another (often made-up) language, your mind, which consciously does not understand the language, starts to lose control. Trust me, even if you say the Lord's Prayer a bunch of times in a row, you will slip into a trance. The incantation is made up of information that seems like it should make sense, but it doesn't. In the event that you are using English, the incantation convinces you that you have the authority to do this working. Either technique helps to push the psychic censor out of the way. Second, as you are doing the incantation, you are supposed to be focusing on the triangle and visualizing the entity appearing. So, you are forcing yourself into a trance state, assuming the authority to make the ritual work, and then focusing energy into the focus point, which in this case is a triangle.

Understanding these principles will greatly help you do an actual evocation. Many books merely talk about visualizing an entity in the triangle. Once you have convinced yourself that you can do the working, you are basically using energy to invite an entity into the triangle, and you are using trance to not get in the way of the experience. Of course, there are other explanations that you, the reader, can devise on your own. We have been working on magic throughout this book. If you think you need the long incantations to have the authority to do a working, by all means use them. We have worked with many different methods to achieve a trance state. Use the method that you believe most resonates with an entity. Chanting a mantra sigilized from a simple intent, while obtaining a trance state with one or more of the various methods we discussed, will often be sufficient to evoke a concept or entity. Essentially, in your journal, you already have tremendous information on generating states of consciousness via a myriad of different methods.

We can ask an entity to pop data into our heads using any or all of our senses. This will greatly assist the power of a working. Keep in mind that even thinking hard enough about an entity while in a trance state is probably enough to either attract the entity or resonate in line with the entity. This is a partial invocation again. This partial invocation is often why the protection is there in the first place.

We interact with entities primarily using our minds. We can communicate with entities and establish a connection, even if it is a temporary one. If you explore this idea of the connection further, you may even be able to get direct information from the entity to assist in the evocation or future evocations, or direct information regarding how to do a technique. If this sounds at least partially like invocation, it is. Again, I have to warn you, there are entities you may not want a direct, constant connection with, but the difference between evocation and invocation is a matter of the degree of projection. There is still a link, even if it is a temporary link.

My suggestion is to take an initial evocation of an entity as another form of having a conversation. Even with entities that you generally want to boss around or entities that are subcomponents of your psyche, honey will generally draw more flies than vinegar. Use a tone that is firm and controlled, but fair. Ultimately, you want to be in control, but you really don't want to seem completely unreasonable either. Approached this way, the entity often will be willing to work with you in a much more reasonable manner. This is usually the case, but not always. Sometimes, you'll get additional information regarding how to summon the entity more forcefully and still have to struggle with an entity. Once you do have more information, often from increasing the amount of sensory data you have available to map an entity, you can get more interesting effects from future evocations.

Even before you do the first evocation, though, you can stack the deck in your favor by researching an entity. For any entity you can possibly think of that is generally known or present in books, there are tremendous resources you can find on the web. Pictures are easy to find, but you can also find correspondences to things you might already know. Entities, in their descriptions, might have ties to certain emotional states, or they might be linked to a Persian element. Some people will even post their experiences with entities on the Internet. Although their experience might be different from yours, you can work with it as a gateway for your own evocations. With the previous exercises, you might even have a physical gesture or breathing pattern that can fit the entity. The description will give you clues about the sensory information to project, even in the first evocation, as well as gestures that will possibly help. All of the methods we worked on to generate different trance states apply, just like they do in invocation. Try to see which gestures or breathing styles might help you generate a state more conducive to the entity, so that you are projecting energy more in line with that entity. A fiery elemental spirit will feel right home if you are generating your interpretation of fire energy. You would do this by using your five senses to generate fire energy and project that energy. At the same time, you could chant a mantra until you hyperventilate, which would conclude the summoning. As with the invocation, you already have all the pieces to make the evocation work. Go for physical manifestation or weird physical effects as your measure of "success," in addition to getting real-world results (the two are actually correlated).

To reiterate, you have banished, empowered your rudimentary circle and triangle, and started to project energy out while using all your senses to know that the entity is present. Once you can communicate with the spirit, then the fun begins. Communication might be as simple as feeling the presence of an entity and then telling it what you want done (possibly encapsulated into a mantra or sigil). In a group setting, there may be someone acting as a seer who is doing more of the communication with an entity. You yourself might be willing to converse and get information. Once you are in a sufficient trance state, thoughts, images, voices, and feelings will pop into your head. This is essentially how an entity will communicate. Not all entities will communicate through verbal means, nor can every magician communicate effectively with an entity through verbal means. This is perfectly okay. Just communicate to the entity through words, sigils, pictures, or even feelings what you want them to do for you, but keep clear and absolute focus on what you want.

Occasionally an entity may demand something from you before it will be willing to work on your behalf. In some systems, this is a test to see how much it can milk from you. Entities may make unreasonable demands. Remember, you must stay in control of the ritual, even if the solution is to merely dismiss the spirit and banish. Do not agree to anything you are not comfortable with doing. Be firm, be confident, and tell the spirit you won't do that. In most workings, it is a wise idea to have the maximum amount of concessions you are willing to offer and the time frame that you want results in before you start the ritual. In other systems, you are expected to make sacrifices.

Both the time frame and the results for the time frame are important. Remember, whether or not it is a spirit, more difficult statements of intent will make it tougher for the entity to succeed, but you could demand partial results or a physical sign that it is working on the situation before the complete results are achieved. In other systems, if you don't make an offering, the spirits won't work for you at all. For those systems, make the offering before even talking. Realistically, this is the same fine point we covered in the invocation chapters as well. Do the research on the entity you are invoking and the system. While the methods might be simplified, still understand that these things can affect you, both while you are in ritual and after the ritual. I do wholeheartedly recommend offering something reasonable in exchange for the services after the successful completion of what you asked for.

The caveat of communication with an evoked entity is exactly the same as it was when we started the invocation chapter. Every spirit can lie, so you have to be careful and think about how to react to what you are told. After you are done communicating and have relayed your request, then nicely tell the spirit that it may go and thank it. Finish off by banishing by laughing from the gut like a madman, and in case that doesn't bring everyone back to normal, use one of the banishings you developed earlier, contained in your journal.

Practical Evocation: An Evocation of Mr. Spock

First, relax a bit-this is a fun example. What traits does Mr. Spock have? (Yes, I do mean the Mr. Spock from Star Trek.) The group I was working with generally agreed upon his pointy ears, his complete devotion to logic, his heroic nature ("The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"), and his funky Star Trek uniform. Mr. Spock also displayed empathic and psycho-manipulative abilities beyond those of the normal Vulcans in the series; he was half human, and he struggled with his own emotions on several occasions. Thus, in the mythology that is Star Trek, he understood how emotions can get the best of people, and he also understood the need for logic in relation to those emotional responses.

Our intent was to evoke Mr. Spock to help us have logical and reasoned responses to situations that had strongly negative connotations and to situations in the future in which those emotional reactions would not achieve the desired goal. We drew out a triangle like the following on a piece of paper:

We didn't have a Mr. Spock image, but everyone in the class knew what Mr. Spock looked like.

Each of the descriptions of Mr. Spock was translated into states of mind, images, and other sensory information. Given that Mr. Spock is a fictional character in a two-dimensional moving picture, we decided to color some of the edges of the triangle as green (since Mr. Spock has green blood), and we lit some frankincense to add some sensory smells to the ritual. Then we banished and centered.

Mr. Spock is generally thought of as a logical and noble hero, so when we tried to evoke him, we determined that a fully drawn circle was unnecessary. However, all of the participants enflamed their auric shells with protective blue flames in addition to the banishing. This can be accomplished merely by using the techniques we covered in the energy part of our adventure and then using all five senses to know that the protective barrier around you is a completely safe bubble of blue flame. Had we decided that a formal circle was needed, all of the participants would have stood in the circle and then the triangle would have been outside the circle. The circle could be made with herbs (corresponding to a particular protection state) or more likely just drawn with chalk, and it might be empowered with states of mind conducive to protection like love, light, names of god, concepts, or anything else you feel is protective. We were pushing energy into the circle in the same way we did with the herbs in the resonance section and the talisman section of chapter 20, and with many of the energy manipulation games.

The triangle was empowered by repeating the words on each side of the triangle several times and using the flow game to push energy into the edges of the triangle. This was not meant as a binding of the triangle (we like Mr. Spock), but it was meant to contain the energy so something could happen.

Since we had thought about what Mr. Spock's attributes meant, we were ready to go. We chanted 10 Spock," which is loosely translated as "Hail Spock," while progressively using our understanding of the mental states associated with Mr. Spock to project energy into the triangle. We kept going until near hyperventilation, and all the parties were standing around the triangle. Most of the people at the ritual could completely sense that something was in the triangle. Some people could "see" Mr. Spock, some people could "hear" him, and some people "felt" him. Having done this a couple times, I had the fortune of hearing him, and he promptly told me that the ritual was "illogical" the first time we had done it. However, I mentally told him that using human imagination to achieve changes in perception and improve our internal mental states was an extremely logical thing for humans to do, and surely he could understand the power of imagination, being half human. He told me that was indeed logical, and it made sense for us to approach him in this way, given that explanation. When I told him what we needed and were asking of him, he more than graciously agreed to help.

From here, we thanked Mr. Spock profusely and then gave him the sign (fingers separated in a V) and exclaimed, "Live long and prosper!" This phrase of course is Mr. Spock's way of saying goodbye (essentially we gave him his license to depart).

A few weeks after I did this ritual in a group for the first time, most of the participants told me a situation had arisen that probably should have caused an extreme, negative mental state, but the minute the news came to them, they became entirely calm, collected, and most of all logical in finding a way to reason through the situation. I myself, having experienced some bad news, started to slip into a depression, but then I became extremely logical about why depression was completely illogical. Sounds like how a famous Star Trek character might argue the point.

What Can Be Evoked?

Now, although we were talking about evoking an entity or spirit, it is possible to evoke anything, as the preceding example shows. Evocation is essentially a projection of energy that has information. In the previous example, we chose spirits. I have evoked Mr. Spock, but also various Pokemon, Darth Vader, Harry Potter, Dr. Quantum, Goku, Tetsuo, Akira, Paris Hilton, Pinhead, Doctor Who, and a host of other pop culture icons. Don't feel like you have to limit yourself to "traditional" entities. In addition, I have evoked the concept of love, planetary essences, neurochemicals, intellectual concepts, etc.... As long as you, personally, can attach sensory data to a concept, you can evoke that concept in the same way we have been doing.

The same is obviously true for invocation. When we talk about making our own entities, anything you can give a form to can be evoked or invoked. We will talk a lot more about evoking constructed entities a little later.