Discussing tools and techniques in the Hermetic House of Life discord server this month, I’ve been reminded of how much of my work these days – especially the public-facing stuff – is rooted in the art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals (DSIC). In discussing various elements of my practice, I have discovered that I did not leave as clear a trail in my blog as I had thought. Perhaps I was – for once – “Keeping Silent”. Or perhaps what seemed relevant at the time just isn’t what I want to share in retrospect. Either way, now seems as good a time as any to look back on my journey.
The first books I turned to in my study of the Western ceremonial tradition – these were the days of the great Ceremonial Experiment, as I called it – were guided first by Christoper Penczak and then by Donald Michael Craig. Although I have previously praised Penczak’s Temple of Witchcraft series, when he came to volume 4, Temple of High Magic, he dropped the fucking ball. And, to the chagrin of many in the community, I found DM Craig’s Modern Magic to be equally useless. So I turned to the internet. And on some random ass demonolator’s website, I found clear instructions for a barebones summoning circle.
The design I produced therefrom was simple: a triangle in a circle. The sigil of the spirit to be summoned went in the middle. Around the triangle (and, in my case, around the circle) went the statement of intent in clear script. And, falling back on my eclectic neo-Pagan witchcraft background and some vague notions of what a magic circle should look like, I wrote the names of four elementally-aligned gods, and seals and sigils associated with the moon … because that felt right.
For that first conjuration, I summoned my natal genius. I calculated her name using Agrippa’s formula via Frater Acher’s spreadsheet. (Reverend Erik of Arnemancy fame now hosts a widget that is much easier to use.) I derived her sigil using the Rosy Cross. And I wrote out my statement of intent to know her. My records of the ritual, back in 2012 or so, are unfortunately even more vague than my memories, but I got what I needed out of the ritual: confirmation of the name and sigil, a vision of the spirit, and some notes as to her nature. (You can read my original blog post about it here.) I wasn’t entirely satisfied (though, in retrospect, it went great), so I tried again, to similarly frustrating (but in retrospect phenomenal) results. Dissatisfied as I was, it was some months later before I followed the experiment through and attempted to contact my “evil demon” using that same circle, only this time under the auspices of Solar powers.
Shortly after these experiments, I consecrated my first astrological talisman using an election, ritual, and image provided by Christopher Warnock on his yahoo group, as he was in the habit of doing in those days. My notes don’t say what if any triangle I used for that conjuration, or for the Venus and Sun elections that I remember hitting that spring and summer, but I know that I had been exposed to more conventional circles by the time I began the Spirits of Spirits experiments, and used a synthesis of the two (I know that Aradia and I also conjured the spirits of wormwood and Jack Daniels, but right now I can only find a write up for the initial cannabis experiment.
The idea behind the above synthesis was a cosmogram: planetary powers in the outer circle, elemental powers within. I had not yet twigged to the fact that the four angel names were sanitized replacements for demon names from older grimoires, rulers of the four quarters of the world. Based on my background in eclectic Wicca, I thought they were elementally aligned, and placed gods I was comfortable with instead of angels in those quarters: Iris for air, Hephaistos for fire, Dionysos for water, and Rhea for earth. Though my logic was flawed, it worked well enough at the time.
My notes don’t specifically say, but I think that I was still using that circle when Rufus Opus was running his Seven Spheres in Seven Days events in October/November of 2012. Looking back at my notes, it’s no wonder the planetary magic took over my life the way it did. The call was strong. At the end of my first seven days, the powers of Saturn taught me how to better hijack the current of the project, even though I didn’t have access to the full Gates Rites. At the end of my second round of daily conjurations, the powers of Saturn taught me the triangle of conjuration that became the basis for my planetary work going forward. (And at the end of my third consecutive week of planetary conjurations, I fell flat on my face.)
In the center goes my crystal ball, and/or the glyph of any particular spirit I may be calling under the auspices of those greater planetary powers.
I have been using this double-triangle to ever-increasingly potent effect for just short of ten years now. I have transcribed it into my personal grimoire, once for each planetary section, where it sits beside the relevant lamen and Orphic hymn. Unfortunately, the pages don’t quite sit flat enough to use it as intended, so often what I end up doing is standing the book up and setting the candles and brazier in front of the triangle, but I’ve found that always works just as well, and is almost as aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes corner 5 gets a brazier with incense instead of a candle. And, as you can see, a couple other small details morphed over time.
In the years since, I’ve also developed another variation on the traditional circle, mostly for the purposes of art, but which I have used a few times to good effect, and which I would recommend as an option for someone looking for somethign mostly traditional but a little more glam. The out ring is still the Agrippan planetary characters, which I think are just neat, but the angel and god names in the outer ring have been replaced by seals of the four archangels. I use this circle in my official Mundus Occultus branding, so it is absolutely not available for commercial use, but if you want to print it out and call a spirit into it, that’s what it’s here for. Just shoot me an email to tell me how it works out for you.
Writing this post has taken me weeks longer than I originally anticipated, in part because I had to re-read as many of my old notes as I could find, and partly because I had to re-scan and re-censor several of the above images, and mostly because the last six weeks have been just absolutely bonkers.
I’m glad I finally got through it, though. Looking back over that wild year’s work, thinking on how it has shapped my current work, has been pretty educational. In retrospect, I could have asked for a lot more help during those early conjuration experiments. My excuse is that no one I felt comfortable asking for help had fucked with this kind of work, as far as I knew, but also in retrospect, there were absolutely people who could have at least pointed me in clearer directions. Also, somehow, in my memory, many of these events had shifted from late 2012 to early 2014. Why do I remember the conjuration-induced migraine as happening the week of my college graduation?
I’m also glad to finally have this done because it’s reaffirmed my dedication to my chief point of advice for those looking to start or escalate their magical practice: go forth, fuck around, and find out. The information I needed to do these things more traditionally was hidden behind the paywalls of the few people teaching classes on the subject, and the even more insurmountable barrier of 19th century translations so terrible that even as an in-the-weeds Classical Studies student, I couldn’t fucking hack it. But now, people who know more than I did then but less than they’d like to know before they start can look at this and say, “fuck it, if that lunatic can have results that good with that bullshit, anything I do will work great!”.
So make the tools you want to make. Sing the songs you want to sing. Call the spirits down from the heavens and up from the depths of hell. Do it all with style and audacity. Go forth. Fuck around. Find out.
If you want to get my posts a week before everyone else, to see the magical experiments that I don’t share with the public, to get first dibs on my elected talismans and fine art jewelry, or just want to support my work, you can do so through patreon. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, or don’t want to deal with all the non-occult content I post on patreon, I also have a ko-fi.