I started out thinking I was going to do another 7 spirits in 7 days sort of thing were we follow marathon evocations night after night on the hour and day of the spirit and was going to mix it up and do Mercury every night. I figured it would help my wife study and be a positive influence.
At some point I started feeling fruity and instead of just putting down luna colors and mercury kit, I decided to use this semi transparent cloth to give the table a shimmery look. It was cute. Also, not one to pass up obvious magical provisions, while we were at walmart grabbing some kids clothes, I saw a black incense tower which almost matched my wifes white incense tower.
I wish the room looked like that, but it doesn’t. The pillars aren’t unique to the OTO, Masons, Golden Dawn, Temple of Solomon, etc. The point is they evoke a very specific effect. However with two incense towers, they create a wonderful “screen” in the smoke. I had been running some incense earlier just to sort of figure out how I wanted to position them and they made smoke low on the altar over the triangle. I felt this effect was reasonably authentic – the two candles on the altar in the Lesser Key, for instance, would have been required to be made from natural wax. They might have even been dipped a significant amount of times (72), but they also would have smoked.
Now we just need a scrying medium. I had previously placed a candle in the middle and would scry into the fire, and I loved it, but my wife has problems getting into the groove. For whatever stupid reason I switched it up to a bowl of saltwater and said a quick prayer over it (“I exorcise thee oh creature of water…”). I was going to float a colored candle on it but the tea light didn’t want to float. I decided to try a lit coal in a tealight tin and figured we could get natural incense to spark up and make a neat effect on the surface along with more smoke, but the coal promptly bailed out into the water. Oops. Rather than being a disaster, the water now had a film on the surface and was a deep black color. I couldn’t have made ad-hoc scrying water any quicker if I had tried. I’ll take it.
Now, the next part I’m a bit hazy on. Somehow we got from using Denning and Philips book to using Peterson’s Goetia. I think at some point my wife said she detected a presence in the room, which is possible since I was basically going through the motions to figure out how things would look. On the other hand I was less than happy that we had visitors since I felt it broke the protocol. Being psychic as a brick, I didn’t quite know what to make of it aside of “I think something creepy is already in the room”. I took about 10 minutes to meditate and figured out it might be Agares.
Turns out that was a pretty good guess because my wife produces a seal she had been keeping around. Now, lesson learned, the seals tend to keep the spirits around. The seals should be made of metal and kept in an appropriate box. Metal is expensive, so we use bits of paper. Unfortunately bits of paper tend to be left around and anyone can draw the seal. This doesn’t lead to a particularly good situation where the spirits stick around because the seals stick around. On the other hand, it seems like the seals get really powerful the longer they persist, which wasn’t something which previously crossed my mind. It would be worth it to properly build the seals from metal, but that’s a project for a time when we get a good portion of metal disks. Lead is easy enough to work with, but I haven’t seen a cheap source for gold or silver.
Opened by LIRP, LIRH, QC. The Archangels produced a really interesting effect where Uriel showed up in the white pillar and sort of bumped Agares out of the triangle and into the black pillar. As I’m reading the conjuration, the black pillars smoke played over the book. This eventually turned into a theme, whichever spirit wanted to speak for various modes of divination would get the smoke to thicken up and offer up some traditional shapes. Agares would stick to the normal forms of dromedaries and crocodiles, Uriel opted for more swirling shapes sort of like birds or water. For whatever reason Angels tend to co-opt shapes while providing a presentation on the mental level while Goetic spirits in my experience tend to co-ops consistent shapes on the physical level. Your mileage may vary.
First order of business was to ask about getting D’s $60 back. I completely forgot to do it (sorry man) so it has to wait. Second order of business was that another magician who’s sort of getting his sea-legs wanted more wiz-bang and more control over the goetic effects. This is something that I think comes in time and I really strongly advise people to stick to the books for the first few before trying crazy mid-level stuff like I try to blog about. Hacks are great once people get the brass tacks down, but dear lord have the basics mastered, please. Anyway, since Agares was my first successful crapped-my-pants evocation I sent him along to DS (a different D) to try to get DS some ideas. Delegation also works. After that we did some tarot. I threw some runes around.
We queried the spirits and gave them very specific charges. Agares wanted to go out in a bowl of honey, which was not quite what I expected but certainly within the realm of doable. Uriel didn’t really want anything but I’ve been told I should have a Holy Sword at this point. Uriel was pretty prominently displaying it during the evocation in my mind’s eye and I think the message was clear that its time to get crafting. I have a crappy little dirk I keep, but a sword would be awesome. Dismissed the spirits.
As I was cleaning up the scrying bowl, the sink decided to clog up with the silt. I try to respect the stuff I use – because the material is certainly going to have residual power in ritual or outside of ritual. In this case, the silt on the bottom on the first wash didn’t look particularly interesting. On the second wash the creepy factor went up enough I grabbed my phone for a quick snapshot.
Yup, it looks like a figure kneeling in front of two pillars to me.