High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row - Damien Echols 2018
Bare-Bones Invocation
Additional Practices
My grandfather used to say, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat!” I think most of you are familiar with the phrase, or at least an axiom with a similar message. It’s a curious way to remind ourselves that there’s more than one path to a particular destination, and I’m bringing it up here because the truth of the saying is highly relevant to magick.
Learn the basics before you throw out the recipe.
Throughout this book, I’ve encouraged you to learn the techniques I’ve outlined for you, but I’ve also stressed the need for your own exploration and personalization of the practices. In the end, magick depends on what you bring to it, and that can be confusing to some people who are accustomed to living in a world that’s sharply divided between right and wrong, especially when it comes to ways of practicing something that’s been passed down for ages. That’s understandable. But to be clear, what I hope to promote in this book is a kind of authentic dedication to magick: you respect the teachings, you learn the lessons inside and out, and then you truly find out on your own how the techniques apply to your life specifically.
Don’t jump right into doing it your own way. To use another analogy, there’s no way you can prepare a decent three-course meal until you know the basics of cookery, how ingredients bring out certain qualities in different foods, the fundamentals of temperature control, how to select among the variety of implements and use them, and so on. So learn the basics before you throw out the recipe. And I invite you to read as many books on magick and different approaches to these practices as you can. There could easily be other explanations that will work better for you, and I encourage you to go out and find them. But don’t just move on to another version of a technique when the shine wears off. Like most things worth doing, magick inherently means going through ups and downs, so dedicate yourself to the unfolding process and ride the waves. If you do all of this, then you’ll eventually arrive on your own unique, but authentic, path.
There’s a reason I’m circling back to this point so emphatically. Unless you skipped ahead, you just learned how to enact the philosopher’s stone of ceremonial magick, and that’s a big deal. You’ve already practiced a detailed version of the LBRP — hopefully until you’ve become thoroughly familiar with it — and you’ve experienced the charging power involved in the Lesser Invoking Ritual. What follows next depends on you having done so, so if that’s not the case, please go back and ground yourself in the LBRP before moving on.
There are lots of ways to narrow the focus of the magick you set in motion, but the following practice is my favorite. It’s incredibly straightforward and effective, and I almost always feel it start to work immediately. I’m not going to give you a whole new outline — just follow the directions for the LBRP, except draw invoking (as opposed to banishing) pentagrams in the cardinal directions. Just as I described in chapter 14, this technique signifies that you’re drawing in energy. Feel free to add the circumambulation step if you find that you need to add more power to the ritual.
If you haven’t found out already, you’ll soon discover that some things you wish to accomplish take a lot more energy than others do. That’s the reason I’m offering this form of basic invocation. Some things are going to require you to call on all four elements and archangels, but others won’t. Sometimes you only need one. If that’s the case, just charge all four pentagrams with the divine word of power associated with that element. For example, let’s say that you want to charge your aura with protective energy using the fire element. Just vibrate the mantra ADNI, the acronym for Adonai (ah-don-eye) — the Hebrew name for Lord, for each one. And when you arrive at the angel-evoking part of the LBRP, just call on the archangel of that particular element (in this case, Michael) in every direction:
Before me, Michael
Behind me, Michael
On my right hand, Michael
On my left hand, Michael
Above me, Michael
Below me, Michael
And then you would envision the flaming-red archangel completely encasing you in every direction. That energy surrounds and protects you so that nothing harmful can penetrate your aura from anywhere. Not only that, but Michael’s angelic energy will also steer you toward choices that will promote your goal (in this example, protection). This is what happens when you magnetize your aura with a specific intention.
For other goals, review the archangel introduction in the LBRP section. For example, if you want to draw a loving relationship into your life, I suggest using the divine name associated with water and invoking the archangel Gabriel all around you. For financial prosperity, use AGLA to charge your pentagrams and call upon Uriel. This form of the ritual can be used for nearly any purpose, so once you’re familiar with the long version of the LBRP, try it out. And don’t worry about getting it wrong. At this point, I think you can rely on the fact that magick itself will guide you.
As I indicated before, the subject of angels — specifically, of calling upon them for help — is troublesome to a lot of people. All I can say is try it out for yourself and see what happens. That’s the only thing that worked for me. And try not to get too hung up about the nature of these beings — some people assert that they are actual entities who live on a different plane than us, and some argue that through these practices we are merely charging particular aspects of our own unconscious or subconscious psyches. I’ve heard far too many arguments on the topic. Find out for yourself: Does the practice work? And maybe in that kind of embodied exploration you’ll come to discover that the dividing lines between the inner planes of reality and the outer planes of reality are not as distinct as some might think.
Magick doesn’t have to be formal or complicated. If you need an answer to a particular issue right in this very moment and you don’t have the time or place to engage a full round of the LBRP, just call in an angel and see what happens. Any question you are struggling with can be helped with magick: Should I leave my unsupportive partner or keep trying to make this relationship work? Should I switch jobs? I want to make my magick stronger — what’s a sigil that will help? How can I become a better person? Ask with focus and intention, and you’ll probably receive an answer quite soon in one form or the other — if you’re open to hearing it, that is. People have been using some form of magick for the purposes of divination for as long as our species has walked the earth.
Magick is everywhere. Sometimes it speaks to us directly and sometimes through seeming coincidence — for instance, a playing card you come across in an alley, a snippet of a stranger’s conversation as you pass them, a curious animal that you’ve never seen before. We live in a world where gods, angels, elementals, and spirits of every imaginable variety cross our paths continuously: in pubs, laundromats, Chinese temples, homeless camps, Roman Catholic cathedrals, supermarkets, subways, sidewalks, and even prisons. They are everywhere, and there’s no place where magick is not. All you have to do is learn how to see.