- Joined
- Nov 18, 2024
- Messages
- 768
- Reaction score
- 1,965
- Awards
- 8
The macro-level topic here might be 'Shifting into a Daimonic Universe.' More below.
I'd been meaning to post these excerpts from the early 1990's book Pacts with the Devil (by S. Jason Black & Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph. D., New Falcon Press, 1993) as the evocatory bookend to the simple but effective brujeria / simple conjuring approach I often recommend to folks.
Pacts with the Devil was out very prior to the Grimoire Revival, and probably helps spark some of it. It's a book I can tell pretty much every magician above the age of 40 has read or been influenced by it, but does not talk about.
Kind of like the band Killing Joke, a little known band that is also your favorite band’s favorite band, I strongly suspect Pacts with the Devil serves the same role here in spirit evocation and goetia more specifically.
I copied below the stories from Jason S. Black’s (David P. Wilson) magical journals from the book below. The book has issues, but this stuff is the best part, imho.
I found these very useful when first starting my practice in “filthy medieval demon magic.” back in the 1990s. The rest of the book is very much Boomer edge-lord cringe, so not as useful.
OK, why even?
If you internalize these stories of his experiences, it might do for you what it did more me back in the 1990's and "flip"or "shift" you into a Daimonic quantum reality where demons do things in the world, and not just in the more imaginative mental side of reality. They can produce full on poltergeist phenomenon, odors raps on outside walls , the door. and the ceiling, move objects around, and even" abduct" you in something that looks like a classic Contactee experience.
Right now you might be sitting in a universe similar to the one I was in early on, the boring grey-box room of materialism , sitting next to Richard Dawkins thinking AI is alive but we are not.
That universe has no daimons. It’s boring as fuck. Get out of there.
Also at this time, the conversation around spirit evocation are limited to internalizing and accepting mental magic techniques. All good, but you just might be missing out on some of the fun. This is the fun.
The world is imagination, and imaginative evocation techniques do work. I also couldn't help but notice everyone is just a smidge too quick-on-the-draw to recommend them… and it smells of fear. Out of fear they are erasing the core of the Western Magical tradition, in an effort to shore up their suburbanite’s fear of the paranormal sold inside a popular narrative of convenience and simplicity, and assumed superiority.
I generally recommend bringing thought-beings like demons into the more physical side of the simulation we are in. Yes, the imagination and physical are ultimately the same One Thing. The only real difference is you conjuring experiences is your expectations and personal limitations. The rest can be learned.
That said, physical (seeming) manifestations in our “simulation” are not totally necessary for practical magic, but can indicate how much as a magician you have become a Master of Illusion. (Which mean buy totally into your own bullshit so it become real. “wink” ) I generally recommend having some "anchor" into our physical level of being. It can be a physical seal, tools, and even full trabajos (workings) like in Hoodoo / Brujeria.
See the post below.
wizardforums.com
I’d also like to point out a practical tip from Jason Black that was a huge lightbulb moment for me when I first gleaned it from his notes. Until then, I treated evocation as a one-and-done single experiment.
At that time, like a lot of people I still thought of magic as a form of “energy” so OF COURSE you had to have a D-Cell rather than an A-cell to be effective. So I expended an enormous amount of personal bio-energy working myself into a frenzy in ritual. Letting the working build over a series of successive days was enormously effective.
This has come to be called "magical momentum" by David Rankine, and it’s a brilliant addition to our understanding. I have a few quibbles with his ontology here , but suffice to say I learned this from Jason Black in the 1990’s, and I'm grateful that I did.
All the best,
Morgan Black
(no relation)
So, I recommend spending time with these stories and treating them like a good ghost story. Suspend disbelief, and just take them in.
Turn down the lights.
Put on a little Cryo Chamber, way down low, just inside your awareness (just to override your skeptical mind and left-brain with a little amygdala hijack).
Then spend time reading about Mr. Black’s/Wilson’s (RIP) experiences and internalizing them.
Pretend you are out in the woods or a dark cave far, far from the safety of your home, the internet, your family and friends.
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
Pacts With The Devil
by S. Jason Black & Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph. D., New Falcon Press, 1993
CHAPTER NINE
--------------------------------------
Modern Practices — Personal Testimony
[The material in this section includes more of S. Jason Black’s personal
experiences.]
Crowley and Jung aside, I would like to relate some of my own
experiences regarding the practices described in this book.
I will begin with some of experiences I have had with the art of
evocation, and finish with a pact-working that I performed, though
different from the specific rituals in this book.
About ten years ago I was in the midst of one of my early experiments
in ceremonial magic. I had acquired or made the required ritual
equipment and had created a nine-foot circle that could be folded up and
stored away instead of having to be recreated each time it was needed. As
a result, it was no great trouble to perform rituals on a nightly basis, since
only minimal preparation was needed. I had decided on a planetary
working as most appropriate to my needs, and chose the intelligence of
Venus (Hagiel) as the spirit to call up.
I would perform a basic evocation ritual about an hour before going to
bed each night, beginning and ending with the Golden Dawn banishing
ritual and including the planetary incense and proper color scheme. After
the invocation, I would sit in the circle and attempt to visualize the spirit.
At first, little happened, but with each successive ritual the trance that I
entered became a little deeper, until I was regularly experiencing what I
can only describe as a joyful glow rather like being on a good mood-lifter.
For about two weeks I continued this procedure. Each time I made my
requests to the spirit I had yet to see. Then, one night, I laid out the circle,
lit the candles and prepared for the usual routine when I stopped cold
right in the middle of the pentagram ritual. I had the sensation—and I’m
afraid that I’m helpless to describe it any better—that something
enormous had just come into the room. Please let me emphasize that this
was not a “mood.” It was a physical sensation that, had I not rooted myself
in the circle, would have backed me against the wall.
I literally felt as though an elephant had walked into the room. As I was
standing, the entire front of my body began to buzz from head to foot as
though I was being pressed against a six-foot vibrator; and something
seemed to be forming in the space outside the circle directly in front of me.
This started as a kind of narrowing of the buzzing sensation (again, I
apologize for the obscurity of my description) to a point on the floor in
front of me. I was overcome with a sense of expectancy that amounted
almost to panic. This feeling increased to the point that I was about to run
out of the room when suddenly a pile of record albums that were laid flat
on the floor, and probably weighed about twenty pounds, flipped over
with a loud whump. These albums were not balanced on their spines, but
were levered by an unseen agency, from a point resting on their backs, to
resting on their fronts, something that I would have had to get down on
my knees and use both hands to accomplish myself.
Immediately after this little kinetic demonstration, a blob of light
formed on the floor in front of the circle. It stayed there for about thirty
seconds, then formed into a ball and rose slowly into the air in front of me
to a point about four feet off the ground. It hung there for an additional
twenty seconds or so and then vanished.
(I lived at the time in a small apartment at the back of a building facing
away from the street. Automobile headlights never reached the interior of
my home and if they had they would not have made cohesive balls of light
that hung suspended in the air. In addition, my apartment was equipped
with blackout shades, which were completely opaque and could block out
all light even at noon on a summer day.)
When the light vanished, so did the fear. The presence was still in the
room, however, and I was at a loss as to what to do. In the end, I broke
what most people consider a cardinal rule and requested the spirit to
communicate with me in whatever way it could. I then stepped out of the
circle without banishing and went to bed. When I turned off the light and
lay down, I saw (as clearly as possible under the circumstances) a shifting
shape of blackness floating above me. I was still excited, but not afraid.
Considering my agitation, I didn’t see how I could possibly sleep.
I went instantly to sleep.
I awoke around 3:00 AM, having the distinct and intense recollection of
talking to someone for a very long time about something very important
to my life and well being. Do I even need to say that I couldn’t remember
a word of it? The room was empty of disembodied presences and I
eventually drifted back to sleep.
The day after this event the Venus effect kicked in. Strangers would, it
seemed, come for miles to make my acquaintance. I would be pestered in
bars, restaurants and shopping malls by people who thought (wrongly)
that I was the friendliest, most wholesome person in the state and they
ought to become my friend. One man even came to my door looking for
someone who used to live in my apartment. He decided to tell his troubles
to me for several hours instead and wanted to pursue a further
acquaintance. I politely declined.
The upside to this was that my sex life improved spectacularly, but with
every emotionally needy person within a hundred miles “just happening”
to meet me when they needed someone like me. It wasn’t worth it. I
counted the operation a success, and convinced that ceremonial magic
lived up to its advertising, destroyed the Venus talisman.
The second example is a bit less spectacular when it comes to
phenomena, but much more successful in the practical sense. It also is far
more typical of the experience with magic than the first story.
INFERNAL ALLY
I had been doing an extended working with the Goetic demon
Marchosias, who appears, according to the Lesser Key of Solomon, as a
great wolf with the wings of a gryphon and is said to be a “strong fighter”
on behalf of the magician.
By this time I had altered my method of working slightly. If I had
decided that the “force” or “spirit” was well disposed toward me (and I
had come to such a conclusion about Marchosias), I would dispense with a
circle and concentrate on the goal of communication rather than
protection. I did this by putting myself into an auto-hypnotic trance before
an altar containing the sigil of the spirit and whatever other material I
thought necessary. This technique resembled the Theurgy of the
Renaissance magicians more than the methodology of the Grimoires. It
also closely resembles Tantrik devotional Yoga.
I had been calling up this particular spirit for some little while with
what I considered satisfactory results: that is, things that I wanted to
happen, happened and information that I needed, I obtained—either
clairvoyantly or through “coincidence.”
I was “secure” in the job I had, but I felt underpaid and dissatisfied. Not
an unusual situation I’m sure. I had been in the habit of rising early and
performing the evocation after I bathed and before going to work. On the
morning in question, I was feeling particularly frustrated about my
financial situation, as well as my emotional and physical condition. I
needed money, I was bored and out of shape. Almost more than the
money, I wanted a membership in one of the well-appointed health clubs
that are common in the Los Angeles area and which, at the time, I could
not afford. This was the subject of my particular bitch to the spirit that
morning.
I went through the usual routine. I recall that the meditation, or trance
portion, was particularly poor that morning. I complained to the spirit
(and I think this is important) verbally, just as though I were talking to a
person in the room with me who knew nothing about my situation. I
spoke in considerable detail. I said, in brief, that I needed a new job that
paid me a decent wage, and especially, I wanted a gym membership so
that I could get myself back into physical shape again. Ordinary requests
to be sure, but ones beyond my power to fulfill at the time. Having
complained at length, I found it was time to go to work, performed a hasty
closing and left.
When I arrived at the office (I was working at a Hollywood talent
agency at the time), I opened up as usual and took the numerous phone
messages from the answering service. When the office officially opened for
business about forty minutes later, I was deeply absorbed in fielding the
hundreds of calls from actors and casting directors when I got a call from
one of our actress clients who wanted to talk to me. She began by asking
me if I was satisfied where I was working. I said that I liked the people but
the money was lousy and I was going nowhere. Well, she said, there was a
close friend of hers who was about to open the new national office of a
broadcasting professional organization and he was looking for someone
with exactly my background and skills. She gave me a number to call,
which I did as soon as I had the time.
I interviewed during lunch the next day and was hired immediately. The
salary was more than four times what I was previously making and the
new office was almost ten miles closer to my home. As I was leaving, he
said, “By the way, there’s a new health club opening a block away from
the office and I’m paying half the membership for any employees
interested.”
The phone call that got me the interview came within two hours of the
evocation ritual. The complete fulfillment of all my requests came within
thirty hours.
In this case there were no floating lights, no spirits talking to me in
dreams, only the straightforward operation and the straightforward result.
This is the way such things usually go. Phenomena sporadically occur, but
the appearance of floating lights or poltergeist phenomena—although
impressive to the practitioner (to put it mildly)—do not presage success in
your goals. Conversely, even though there were no subjective or objective
changes in my environment during the above operation, I operated under
the assumption that there was an alien intelligence present that was well
disposed to me and capable of helping me, and behaved accordingly. The
results were entirely consonant with that assumption, whether valid or
not.
DEMONIC OBSESSION
The last little ghost story I have to tell is a cautionary one. Obviously, I
am not one of those people who constantly warns the interested person
how dangerous occult practice is. I firmly believe that the techniques of
magic, going back into the mists of prehistory, are man’s birthright and his
to use if he has the talent. However, the powers that one calls up, if
successful in one’s operation, are quite real—whatever you choose to
believe they are—and are capable of wreaking havoc in an extremely
persuasive and unpleasant way if hostile.
In this case, the operation began as an experiment. It was done in a “lets
try this” spirit, without any specific need that I can recall. Occult
phenomena was what I wanted and occult phenomena was what I got.
At this time, I was living in Hollywood, sharing an apartment with a girl
I’ll call Susan. She was also involved in magic, but in a rather fluffy sort of
way, being more concerned about justifying her psychotic behavior than
with spiritual development. I came up with the idea of evoking the solar
demon Sorath, identified by Rudolf Steiner among others as the Beast in
the Apocalypse of St. John.
I laid down a circle, as in the first example, with the difference that
Susan was in the circle with me and it was done in broad daylight rather
than at night. I followed the procedure as before, and asked Susan to act
as a “skryer” along with me so that we could compare clairvoyant visions
when the ritual was over.
After I had read the invocation several times, I commanded the spirit to
appear in the triangle before me. At first nothing happened. Then, I began
to feel that tingling along my face and body that I came to associate with
psychic manifestation. It was then that the first interesting thing happened
—the room went cold.
It was the middle of a Sunday afternoon in late August. We were in, and
had been in for some weeks, one of those heat waves that hit Southern
California typically at the end of summer. There was no air-conditioning
in our apartment, and the temperature outside was over one hundred.
In spite of the physical conditions, in a matter of seconds the room
became so cold that the sweat dried on our skins and we became very
uncomfortable. We could both feel a cold breeze blowing over us from the
direction of the triangle. By this time spirit phenomena no longer
frightened me, so I was very pleased by this event.
I addressed the presumed spirit politely, welcoming it and requesting
it’s cooperation. I requested that it link itself with the talisman that I had
prepared, and lend us the benefit of it’s influence. Since it was supposed to
be solar in nature, I supposed this influence to be beneficial.
We then proceeded to the skrying session and afterwards closed the
ceremony after calling upon the spirit to depart.
The visions, when we compared them, weren’t terribly impressive. I saw
a pattern of black and gold and she saw a lion. The one was obscure and
the other stereotyped.
That night, I dreamed of the same swirling pattern of black and gold,
with a deep voice saying something portentous (which I couldn’t
remember). Then I walked down a long street to meet a beautiful man
with golden hair, dressed entirely in black. He led me to a cliff that
overlooked the ocean where I saw a fleet of flying saucers (solar disks)
lifting off the beach into the sky. A good dream, full of nifty symbols
appropriate to the ritual, but hardly supernatural.
The next day my roommate was talking to a friend of hers in New York.
When she hung up the phone she had an odd look on her face and I asked
her what was wrong. She said that her girlfriend had found her pet snake
dead in its terrarium the day before, at about the time we were
performing the evocation.
The snake was named Sorath.
This seems rather more sinister in retrospect than it did at the time. I
simply assumed that it was a piece of synchronicity that meant the
magical operation was working.
I evoked the demon Sorath twice more, with little in the way of
phenomena except increasingly disturbing dreams at night. Then, about a
week after the initial ritual, I had the experience that has given me such
sympathy with St. Anthony.
THE DEMON COMES CALLING
I had just come home from work and Susan was vegged out on pot and
beer, watching Wheel of Fortune on television. It was late and I relaxed in
a recliner and tried to ignore what was on TV. I was in the chair only a
moment when I began to have one of the strongest trance experiences of
my life.
I felt as though I had been injected with some kind of powerful
tranquilizer that gave my body an utterly relaxed, glowing feeling, at the
same time sharpening my senses so that colors were brighter, objects more
“real” than they were a moment before. Since this was hardly a common
occurrence, I knew that I was at last getting positive results from the
Sorath operation.
“Susan,” I said, “I’m going into a trance. Something’s happening.”
“That’s nice,” she said, completely stoned.
I headed toward my bedroom and stopped off at the bathroom first. Still
dizzy from the trance state that continued to increase as I walked, I stood
at the toilet and began to relieve myself.
Blue light began crawling across the walls.
I informed my roommate of this, only to get the same cabbage-like
response.
I retired to my bedroom to deal privately with whatever was happening
to me. I turned on the ceiling light and saw the flowing blue light follow
me into the room and solidify into an unchanging shape hanging just
below the ceiling. The ceiling light in that room was very bright, so much
so that I rarely used it, yet it did nothing to dim or affect the brightness or
sharpness of the blue-light-thing. I closed my eyes, I shook my head, I
spun around, I turned the lights off and on. I did everything that I could
think of to see if I was experiencing “spots before my eyes.”
The blue light figure (which looked something like a Chinese ideogram
in a circle) remained absolutely stationary and unchanging, visible
whether the light was on or off. Far from being frightened by what was
happening, I thought it a wonderful chance to communicate with what I
had called up.
I kept the light on, lay down on my bed and waited.
And waited. And waited.
Nothing happened, nothing changed.
Finally, I actually began to read a book. I suppose that it’s possible to
become bored with anything.
Ultimately, an hour and a half after the phenomena began, I addressed
the enigmatic light and said that if it wanted to communicate, it was
welcome to do so. I was at a loss as to what it wanted or how to talk to it.
I turned out the light and went to bed.
I found myself in an enormous subterranean vault. There were fifty-foot
Gothic arches of carved gray stone, the relief worn almost smooth by time.
The arches led into darkness. The central area, where I was standing, was
lit by a dim, evenly distributed sourceless light. In the center of the vault
was an ancient-looking chest or cask carved from stone.
The sight of this cask filled me with greater terror than I have ever felt
in my life. I knew that it was about to open and that I had to stop it or a
disaster would befall. I moved toward it and screamed “stop!” just as the
lid was flung to the floor as though it was made of plastic instead of heavy
stone.
Instantly there appeared before the casket a figure out of an oriental
nightmare. Dressed in a elegant red satin robe embroidered with dragons
done in gold thread was one of the most threatening and ugly things I
have ever seen, dreaming or waking. It was wiry, no taller than I was,
with greenish gray skin and a body made for pure destruction. It’s hands
had sharp, seven-inch claws on each finger and it had a mouth that split
its skull literally from ear to ear, filled with teeth like a shark. It was
completely hairless and had compelling golden eyes (the only beautiful
thing about it) filled with mad intelligence.
And it was radiant.
Even though we were in a dark space and it didn’t glow in any way
having to do with light, I was unable to look at it for more than a second
at a time. My eyes would water and my eyelids squint shut automatically
exactly as though I were looking into a klieg light or the sun.
When this thing appeared, it looked at me and laughed. Its voice was
the most inhuman thing about it. If a giant pipe organ had learned to talk,
that is what it would sound like. It said some things to me in a voice that I
felt more than heard, laughed again and I “woke up.”
It was daylight. I was bathed in sweat and as soon as I became fully
aware I became hysterical. I felt emotionally and physically shattered to a
degree that I can hardly begin to describe. I continued crying for the rest
of the day. I was absolutely unable to recover my composure. Bodily, I felt
as though I had been “worked over.” My limbs hurt, I felt weak and had a
severe headache.
I wasn’t able to function until the following day, when at least I was
able to stop crying. Then I destroyed the talisman and everything to do
with the Sorath operation. I cleansed myself ritually as best I could, but
remained depressed and on the verge of panic and hysteria for another
two weeks.
I did not call up Sorath again.
What happened here? As with so much “occult” or “psychic”
phenomena, ultimately I simply don’t know. This is one of a very few
“attacks” that I have experienced in the course of my occult
experimentation. I include it here because I want the new practitioner to
understand that, whether he believes in “spirits” or not, the legends of
predatory demons and fatal spells come from an experienced reality and
something like the above could occur, as it did with me, just when you
feel most secure.
The intelligences that the magician calls up are often the wild forces of
nature and sometimes have no more morality or gentleness than a tiger.
You are dealing with the primitive world, the forces and beings that
created and operate “nature.” That being the case, the serious practitioner
sometimes encounters more than he bargains for.
The above experiences are examples of the wilder, more sensational side
of magic. It should be obvious though, that spectacular phenomena and
useful practical results don’t always go together.
Two comments before I go on:
First, those who are familiar with the traditions of magic and witchcraft
may say that I invited problems by dealing with the “demon” outside of a
circle. My reply to this is that:
1. The magic circle seems to be a post-classical development. The
majority of magical techniques outside Europe do not use such a device.
2. I assure you that in practice, if a real manifestation occurs and is
hostile, you will wind up having to deal with it outside the protection of a
circle. If you cannot weather such an experience and learn from it, don’t
take up the practice of magic.
I’d like to quote once again the redoubtable Aleister Crowley regarding
what I learn from such events:
“But it does encourage one—it is useless to deny it—to be knocked
down by a demon of whose existence one was not really quite sure.”
A BARGAIN MADE
Since this is a book about pacts as well as about the conjuration of
demons, I also have a personal story regarding the only pact operation
that I have done to date. This took place around eight years ago, during a
period in my life when I was under constant and intense emotional stress.
I won’t bore you with the background, but I was suffering from clinical
depression and having anxiety attacks on a regular basis. These attacks
took a particularly violent and physical form. I would be walking or
driving someplace, and suddenly feel a tightness around my solar plexus
like a vibrating steel band. I would all but cease to be able to breathe, my
vision would start to blur and the muscles around my mouth would lock in
a rictus so that I was unable to talk. Both of my hands would go numb and
usually my feet as well. This experience could last anywhere from ten
minutes to half an hour. The first time that I had the experience I was in a
shopping mall and I thought I was having a heart attack. When a friend
witnessed one of these attacks, he thought I was having a stroke.
Imagine the fun of having such an attack while driving on the freeway.
At any rate, this should give the reader a good idea of my psycho-
physical state at the time. I needed a very large change in my life and
couldn’t see how to make it happen.
This was during the period when I was first experimenting with Goetic
conjuration, and my experiences had been interesting but uneven. I was
desperate enough in my circumstances to try something radical, and like
Goethe’s Faust, felt I had little to lose.
I selected two of the Princes of Hell that I thought would be of benefit in
my situation and drafted two pacts, one for each. These were not of the
soul-selling variety and were highly legalistic, consisting of very small
writing covering nearly both sides of rather large sheets of parchment,
accompanied by the appropriate pantacles and sigils.
I found this activity strangely disturbing. It should have been made
clear to the reader by now that I am no believer in Little Lord Jesus. Even
so, I was preparing for an operation that struck right at the heart of the
psychological and spiritual taboos ground into us by our Judeo-Christian
culture and the fear that was developing in me had nothing to do with my
rational conscious attitudes.
I prepared for the ritual as usual, laying down the circle and triangle,
purifying the work space with water and incense, making sure all the tools
that I needed—which in this case included a small knife to draw blood—
were ready at hand.
When the night came—which appropriately enough was April 30th,
Walpurgis Nacht—I entered the circle and began the conjuration. With
each passing moment, I became more nervous. I trembled. I sweated. I was
reacting like a midwestern Sunday school teacher. All of the superstitious
fears instilled by my Protestant upbringing and the culture that I was born
into rose to the surface.
Despite my nervousness, the ritual was rather uneventful. There were no
bizarre manifestations and the only communication that I had with the
“spirits” was through a pendulum (a device that I have found very useful).
The demon Princes, if they were there at all, signaled (through the
pendulum) that the conditions of the pacts were acceptable, and that I
should consider them signed. I then stuck my finger with the knife, took
up a quill pen and signed my own name on the documents in blood.
Well, nothing much happened.
My life continued on its tedious course and so did my anxiety attacks.
There were no dreams or omens. I was disappointed.
About a week later, I was having lunch with a friend and was discussing
my situation and the conjuration that I had attempted and that I
concluded it was a flat failure. I told him basically that I probably should
not have done it in the first place.
Rather to my surprise, he disagreed. He pointed out to me that demons
are traditionally the embodiment of natural forces and that in many
ancient religious traditions demons, or their equivalent, taught man the
arts of civilization. In effect, cities, science and the arts are the work of
demons and what I tried to do was not only appropriate and traditionally
valid, but the natural thing to do.
The two little blue-haired ladies at the table next to us seemed to find
this conversation distracting.
I agreed with this point of view enthusiastically. I said that I probably
had botched the conjuration because of my hesitancy and would re-
attempt it at my first opportunity.
That, as events were to prove, was the moment that I really signed the
pacts.
I was in my car, driving up the freeway back home when the pain
started. The bones in my legs and arms began to throb in unison and I
developed a splitting headache. My strength began to ebb away and
driving became very nearly torture.
When I arrived home half an hour later, I parked the car with some
difficulty, and dragged myself into my apartment building. I lived in a
third floor walk-up and for a bad moment didn’t think that I was going to
make it to my apartment. I unlocked the door, went in and was literally
struck down.
My knees buckled and I thought that I was going to lose consciousness. I
crawled to my bedroom, got in bed and remained there for five days.
What I experienced was unlike any illness I have ever had before or
since. There was no fever or nausea, like one would associate with the flu,
just an intense pain in my limbs and an attendant weakness that was so
great that I literally could not get up. I had to crawl to the bathroom to
relieve myself or get water, and for all intents and purposes, didn’t eat
during this entire time. There were times when I thought that I might die,
and just when I was about to call someone to take me to the hospital, the
symptoms would lessen a bit. I was unable to think clearly, as though
there was static in my brain.
Then it stopped.
One day I was helpless, the next, I woke up free of all symptoms and
seven pounds lighter.
This had happened in the springtime, hardly flu season, so I began
asking around to see if anyone else had gotten this peculiar illness. I
described the experience to literally dozens of people and not only had no
one had what I described, but they didn’t know anyone that had. Several
of these people were experienced nurses and even they had no idea what
it might have been. I wrote the experience off as something that I’d never
figure out.
A BARGAIN KEPT
Suddenly, my life began to transform.
Within days of my “illness” my work situation improved drastically. So
did my income. My living situation changed for the better and, while I
was still thanking fate for my recently increased income, I was offered still
another job—and in a city that I had been wanting to move to, but hadn’t
been able to do so.
Most importantly, I found, or rather, was given, the man that cured my
depression and panic attacks.
I had applied to a local counseling center to find some help with these
problems and had been put on a waiting list. Some months went by and I
had all but forgotten that I had done it. Then the phone call came telling
me I had been assigned a therapist. To get to the point, this man, as it
turned out, came from almost exactly my background and had had the
same symptoms himself at one time. Only those of you who have been
forced to get a therapist by the roll of the dice in a “charitable” situation
know what a miracle it was getting the right man under those
circumstances.
The upshot was that my depression was dealt with and the panic
syndrome disappeared, never to return.
You will have to agree that even though there were no obviously
supernatural happenings involved, the cluster of events, taken in order
and as a whole, are rather weird.
STRANGE COINCIDENCE
As I pointed out earlier, magic usually works through “synchronicity,”
or unusual coincidence, rather than the casual breaking of physical laws.
You perform the proper actions—“spells” if you will—and what you want
to happen “just happens.” What I wanted and needed to happen, “just
happened” after the pact-working, things that I could not make happen
before. Of course, the person determined to tear this story apart can do it
with very little trouble, by (magically) invoking “coincidence” and
“selective attention.”
There is no real way I can counter that argument, except to say that if I
were into self-deception, I would still be attending the Presbyterian
Church, and when I put my car key into the ignition the hundredth time
and it starts the hundredth time, coincidence is not relevant.
What about the illness? Again, it could be argued that I “just happened”
to get sick at a time that seemed to be meaningful and if I had continued
inquiring, I would have found out what the illness “really” was. Well,
maybe. But I personally suspect that, considering the emotional state I was
in at the time, there is another possible model.
I think that the pact ritual, which breaks so very many cultural taboos,
released something deep inside me and the psychic poisons—for want of a
better term—were released from their dammed-up state and flooded my
system all at once. I have had similar experiences since, but none so
devastating. When the “sickness” left me, I was suddenly empowered and
everything that I needed (and had requested) “miraculously” occurred.
This, in my opinion, is a good demonstration of the primordial power of
the idea of a pact with a supernatural force. Whether or not there were
demonic intelligences involved, the act itself was so powerful and
disturbing to my system that the whole course of my life took an abrupt
turn. It is this personal empowerment that is threatening to a
monotheistic/authoritarian establishment, hence the taboos and fairy tales
of magicians damned to hell.
As a footnote, the pacts made in the above ritual were not lifelong. They
were ritually dissolved a few years later when my life entered another
phase and they no longer seemed relevant.
Since we have covered (roughly) the historical background of the three
Grimoires and related some personal experiences with this style of magic,
it is time to make some remarks on the personages this material revolves
around: the Devil and his demons.
-----------------------------------------
POST POSTSCIPT
You Get What You Ask For
In a different vein, I (C.S. Hyatt) vacationed on an island “paradise.”
Arriving exhausted I felt ready for bed but was kept awake by a great
sense of foreboding. The next morning I awoke late and had a breakfast
which included four scotches. I still sensed a terrible feeling coming from
the place. I called my travel agent and she informed me that since I had
prepaid the trip I was stuck there for two weeks unless I could get a note
from a Doctor saying I was sick. She added that the illness couldn’t be
preexisting. Except for claiming mental illness I felt hopeless for an excuse
that would pass the medical examiner. So I bit the bullet and tried to
enjoy myself. I thought a good workout might help so I went to the gym.
But before I did I asked Lucifuge to act in my behalf offering him a proper
trade. However, I warned him that the “sign” had to be physical and not
psychological. I left for the gym, exercised for twenty minutes or so and
walked back to my room. On the way I brushed up against a bush which
was sticking out a foot or so on the pathway. I felt a sting under my right
breast and a horrible burning sensation. I thought little of it except that I
had been stung. I looked at the wound put some medication on it and took
a nap. I later awoke, went to dinner, watched some TV and went to sleep.
The next morning the bite had swollen a little but I had expected that.
So I started my day with breakfast, walked a mile or two, swam for a few
hours and rested. It was late in the afternoon so it was my “tea time.” I
went to one bar which was closed so I went to the pool bar and had a
drink. While waiting for my second drink I heard a scream and saw the
bartender running out of the bar. She was crying and pounding the wall.
Being used to craziness I thought little of it as I began to scratch my breast
more vigorously. Wanting a second drink more desperately now I flagged
down the second bartender who was yelling at the first bartender to go
home and cool down. I got my drink sometime later and asked the
bartender what was wrong with his associate. He replied that their “best”
friend had just drowned. I felt a sense of mild shock finished my drink and
went to my room to change for dinner.
I had a wonderful dinner except for the scratching and burning of my
right breast. I finished my meal went to my room took off my shirt and my
breast had expanded sideways by four inches. It was swollen and multi-
colored. Needless to say I became concerned. It was 9:00 PM so I called
the front desk for help. The operator said it was probably a mosquito bite.
I told her that if it was it must have been a foot or so long. She called the
doctor who called me back by 9:30. I told him my symptoms and he said
that he would be right over. He arrived, looked at my bite and said that he
had only seen four such reactions in all of his years of practice. He put me
on antibiotics and other drugs and told me to call him in the morning.
I awoke at 8:00 AM and looked at my breast. I called him immediately.
My breast had swollen another 2 inches. The little bite had now grown to
a 6 inch circle. He told me that I might require intravenous antibiotics but
first I should try some other type orally. I told him I had an allergy to one
of its cousins. He became concerned and so did I. I told him that I would
rather take my chances in Los Angeles where I had my own doctor and
complete insurance coverage. I told him that I would need a letter so I
could get my money back. He agreed immediately on the proviso that I
continue taking two safer, but less effective, types of antibiotics until I saw
my doctor. I quickly agreed, took a cab to his office, picked up the note
and the pills.
Now I had the precious note but no plane reservations. I checked out of
the hotel and then called the airlines. There were seats available on the
next flight out but I couldn’t make it in time unless the “Gods” were with
me. I hired a speed boat which rushed me to the main Island at 30 knots. I
had a cab waiting which got me to the airport with over 40 minutes to
spare.
I arrived in Los Angeles late at night and had an appointment with my
own doctor the next morning. My breast began to get smaller, although it
was greatly discolored and swollen. He drew blood and gave me more
antibiotics and pain pills. He said the weekend would be when I would
know whether hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics and surgery
would be necessary to remove pus pockets. Monday I went back to his
office. The swelling was gone. All that was left was some minor
discoloration and the puncture wound.
Apparently I got my physical manifestation. It is interesting to note in
passing that the bushes where the beast that struck me lay were trimmed
the morning after my bite. If I was one day late I would have never
brushed up against them. The spider or “magical” beast would have had to
find another way to work his will.
I leave it to the reader to explain this away.
Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D.
Los Angeles
July, 1992
I'd been meaning to post these excerpts from the early 1990's book Pacts with the Devil (by S. Jason Black & Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph. D., New Falcon Press, 1993) as the evocatory bookend to the simple but effective brujeria / simple conjuring approach I often recommend to folks.
Pacts with the Devil was out very prior to the Grimoire Revival, and probably helps spark some of it. It's a book I can tell pretty much every magician above the age of 40 has read or been influenced by it, but does not talk about.
Kind of like the band Killing Joke, a little known band that is also your favorite band’s favorite band, I strongly suspect Pacts with the Devil serves the same role here in spirit evocation and goetia more specifically.
I copied below the stories from Jason S. Black’s (David P. Wilson) magical journals from the book below. The book has issues, but this stuff is the best part, imho.
I found these very useful when first starting my practice in “filthy medieval demon magic.” back in the 1990s. The rest of the book is very much Boomer edge-lord cringe, so not as useful.
OK, why even?
If you internalize these stories of his experiences, it might do for you what it did more me back in the 1990's and "flip"or "shift" you into a Daimonic quantum reality where demons do things in the world, and not just in the more imaginative mental side of reality. They can produce full on poltergeist phenomenon, odors raps on outside walls , the door. and the ceiling, move objects around, and even" abduct" you in something that looks like a classic Contactee experience.
Right now you might be sitting in a universe similar to the one I was in early on, the boring grey-box room of materialism , sitting next to Richard Dawkins thinking AI is alive but we are not.
That universe has no daimons. It’s boring as fuck. Get out of there.
Also at this time, the conversation around spirit evocation are limited to internalizing and accepting mental magic techniques. All good, but you just might be missing out on some of the fun. This is the fun.
The world is imagination, and imaginative evocation techniques do work. I also couldn't help but notice everyone is just a smidge too quick-on-the-draw to recommend them… and it smells of fear. Out of fear they are erasing the core of the Western Magical tradition, in an effort to shore up their suburbanite’s fear of the paranormal sold inside a popular narrative of convenience and simplicity, and assumed superiority.
I generally recommend bringing thought-beings like demons into the more physical side of the simulation we are in. Yes, the imagination and physical are ultimately the same One Thing. The only real difference is you conjuring experiences is your expectations and personal limitations. The rest can be learned.
That said, physical (seeming) manifestations in our “simulation” are not totally necessary for practical magic, but can indicate how much as a magician you have become a Master of Illusion. (Which mean buy totally into your own bullshit so it become real. “wink” ) I generally recommend having some "anchor" into our physical level of being. It can be a physical seal, tools, and even full trabajos (workings) like in Hoodoo / Brujeria.
See the post below.
JSK Verum: Conjureman Ali - 'Verum Hoodoo Results' (2011)
I'm glad people are interested in the Grimorium Verum again. I was not aware it was on anyone's radar much. I hope this unedited Yahoo Groups post from Conjureman Ali (albertgreat27 ) from 2011 will be useful to those starting to explore the Verum “system” as JSK would sometimes phrase it...
wizardforums.com
I’d also like to point out a practical tip from Jason Black that was a huge lightbulb moment for me when I first gleaned it from his notes. Until then, I treated evocation as a one-and-done single experiment.
At that time, like a lot of people I still thought of magic as a form of “energy” so OF COURSE you had to have a D-Cell rather than an A-cell to be effective. So I expended an enormous amount of personal bio-energy working myself into a frenzy in ritual. Letting the working build over a series of successive days was enormously effective.
This has come to be called "magical momentum" by David Rankine, and it’s a brilliant addition to our understanding. I have a few quibbles with his ontology here , but suffice to say I learned this from Jason Black in the 1990’s, and I'm grateful that I did.
All the best,
Morgan Black
(no relation)
So, I recommend spending time with these stories and treating them like a good ghost story. Suspend disbelief, and just take them in.
Turn down the lights.
Put on a little Cryo Chamber, way down low, just inside your awareness (just to override your skeptical mind and left-brain with a little amygdala hijack).
Then spend time reading about Mr. Black’s/Wilson’s (RIP) experiences and internalizing them.
Pretend you are out in the woods or a dark cave far, far from the safety of your home, the internet, your family and friends.
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
Pacts With The Devil
by S. Jason Black & Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph. D., New Falcon Press, 1993
CHAPTER NINE
--------------------------------------
Modern Practices — Personal Testimony
[The material in this section includes more of S. Jason Black’s personal
experiences.]
Crowley and Jung aside, I would like to relate some of my own
experiences regarding the practices described in this book.
I will begin with some of experiences I have had with the art of
evocation, and finish with a pact-working that I performed, though
different from the specific rituals in this book.
About ten years ago I was in the midst of one of my early experiments
in ceremonial magic. I had acquired or made the required ritual
equipment and had created a nine-foot circle that could be folded up and
stored away instead of having to be recreated each time it was needed. As
a result, it was no great trouble to perform rituals on a nightly basis, since
only minimal preparation was needed. I had decided on a planetary
working as most appropriate to my needs, and chose the intelligence of
Venus (Hagiel) as the spirit to call up.
I would perform a basic evocation ritual about an hour before going to
bed each night, beginning and ending with the Golden Dawn banishing
ritual and including the planetary incense and proper color scheme. After
the invocation, I would sit in the circle and attempt to visualize the spirit.
At first, little happened, but with each successive ritual the trance that I
entered became a little deeper, until I was regularly experiencing what I
can only describe as a joyful glow rather like being on a good mood-lifter.
For about two weeks I continued this procedure. Each time I made my
requests to the spirit I had yet to see. Then, one night, I laid out the circle,
lit the candles and prepared for the usual routine when I stopped cold
right in the middle of the pentagram ritual. I had the sensation—and I’m
afraid that I’m helpless to describe it any better—that something
enormous had just come into the room. Please let me emphasize that this
was not a “mood.” It was a physical sensation that, had I not rooted myself
in the circle, would have backed me against the wall.
I literally felt as though an elephant had walked into the room. As I was
standing, the entire front of my body began to buzz from head to foot as
though I was being pressed against a six-foot vibrator; and something
seemed to be forming in the space outside the circle directly in front of me.
This started as a kind of narrowing of the buzzing sensation (again, I
apologize for the obscurity of my description) to a point on the floor in
front of me. I was overcome with a sense of expectancy that amounted
almost to panic. This feeling increased to the point that I was about to run
out of the room when suddenly a pile of record albums that were laid flat
on the floor, and probably weighed about twenty pounds, flipped over
with a loud whump. These albums were not balanced on their spines, but
were levered by an unseen agency, from a point resting on their backs, to
resting on their fronts, something that I would have had to get down on
my knees and use both hands to accomplish myself.
Immediately after this little kinetic demonstration, a blob of light
formed on the floor in front of the circle. It stayed there for about thirty
seconds, then formed into a ball and rose slowly into the air in front of me
to a point about four feet off the ground. It hung there for an additional
twenty seconds or so and then vanished.
(I lived at the time in a small apartment at the back of a building facing
away from the street. Automobile headlights never reached the interior of
my home and if they had they would not have made cohesive balls of light
that hung suspended in the air. In addition, my apartment was equipped
with blackout shades, which were completely opaque and could block out
all light even at noon on a summer day.)
When the light vanished, so did the fear. The presence was still in the
room, however, and I was at a loss as to what to do. In the end, I broke
what most people consider a cardinal rule and requested the spirit to
communicate with me in whatever way it could. I then stepped out of the
circle without banishing and went to bed. When I turned off the light and
lay down, I saw (as clearly as possible under the circumstances) a shifting
shape of blackness floating above me. I was still excited, but not afraid.
Considering my agitation, I didn’t see how I could possibly sleep.
I went instantly to sleep.
I awoke around 3:00 AM, having the distinct and intense recollection of
talking to someone for a very long time about something very important
to my life and well being. Do I even need to say that I couldn’t remember
a word of it? The room was empty of disembodied presences and I
eventually drifted back to sleep.
The day after this event the Venus effect kicked in. Strangers would, it
seemed, come for miles to make my acquaintance. I would be pestered in
bars, restaurants and shopping malls by people who thought (wrongly)
that I was the friendliest, most wholesome person in the state and they
ought to become my friend. One man even came to my door looking for
someone who used to live in my apartment. He decided to tell his troubles
to me for several hours instead and wanted to pursue a further
acquaintance. I politely declined.
The upside to this was that my sex life improved spectacularly, but with
every emotionally needy person within a hundred miles “just happening”
to meet me when they needed someone like me. It wasn’t worth it. I
counted the operation a success, and convinced that ceremonial magic
lived up to its advertising, destroyed the Venus talisman.
The second example is a bit less spectacular when it comes to
phenomena, but much more successful in the practical sense. It also is far
more typical of the experience with magic than the first story.
INFERNAL ALLY
I had been doing an extended working with the Goetic demon
Marchosias, who appears, according to the Lesser Key of Solomon, as a
great wolf with the wings of a gryphon and is said to be a “strong fighter”
on behalf of the magician.
By this time I had altered my method of working slightly. If I had
decided that the “force” or “spirit” was well disposed toward me (and I
had come to such a conclusion about Marchosias), I would dispense with a
circle and concentrate on the goal of communication rather than
protection. I did this by putting myself into an auto-hypnotic trance before
an altar containing the sigil of the spirit and whatever other material I
thought necessary. This technique resembled the Theurgy of the
Renaissance magicians more than the methodology of the Grimoires. It
also closely resembles Tantrik devotional Yoga.
I had been calling up this particular spirit for some little while with
what I considered satisfactory results: that is, things that I wanted to
happen, happened and information that I needed, I obtained—either
clairvoyantly or through “coincidence.”
I was “secure” in the job I had, but I felt underpaid and dissatisfied. Not
an unusual situation I’m sure. I had been in the habit of rising early and
performing the evocation after I bathed and before going to work. On the
morning in question, I was feeling particularly frustrated about my
financial situation, as well as my emotional and physical condition. I
needed money, I was bored and out of shape. Almost more than the
money, I wanted a membership in one of the well-appointed health clubs
that are common in the Los Angeles area and which, at the time, I could
not afford. This was the subject of my particular bitch to the spirit that
morning.
I went through the usual routine. I recall that the meditation, or trance
portion, was particularly poor that morning. I complained to the spirit
(and I think this is important) verbally, just as though I were talking to a
person in the room with me who knew nothing about my situation. I
spoke in considerable detail. I said, in brief, that I needed a new job that
paid me a decent wage, and especially, I wanted a gym membership so
that I could get myself back into physical shape again. Ordinary requests
to be sure, but ones beyond my power to fulfill at the time. Having
complained at length, I found it was time to go to work, performed a hasty
closing and left.
When I arrived at the office (I was working at a Hollywood talent
agency at the time), I opened up as usual and took the numerous phone
messages from the answering service. When the office officially opened for
business about forty minutes later, I was deeply absorbed in fielding the
hundreds of calls from actors and casting directors when I got a call from
one of our actress clients who wanted to talk to me. She began by asking
me if I was satisfied where I was working. I said that I liked the people but
the money was lousy and I was going nowhere. Well, she said, there was a
close friend of hers who was about to open the new national office of a
broadcasting professional organization and he was looking for someone
with exactly my background and skills. She gave me a number to call,
which I did as soon as I had the time.
I interviewed during lunch the next day and was hired immediately. The
salary was more than four times what I was previously making and the
new office was almost ten miles closer to my home. As I was leaving, he
said, “By the way, there’s a new health club opening a block away from
the office and I’m paying half the membership for any employees
interested.”
The phone call that got me the interview came within two hours of the
evocation ritual. The complete fulfillment of all my requests came within
thirty hours.
In this case there were no floating lights, no spirits talking to me in
dreams, only the straightforward operation and the straightforward result.
This is the way such things usually go. Phenomena sporadically occur, but
the appearance of floating lights or poltergeist phenomena—although
impressive to the practitioner (to put it mildly)—do not presage success in
your goals. Conversely, even though there were no subjective or objective
changes in my environment during the above operation, I operated under
the assumption that there was an alien intelligence present that was well
disposed to me and capable of helping me, and behaved accordingly. The
results were entirely consonant with that assumption, whether valid or
not.
DEMONIC OBSESSION
The last little ghost story I have to tell is a cautionary one. Obviously, I
am not one of those people who constantly warns the interested person
how dangerous occult practice is. I firmly believe that the techniques of
magic, going back into the mists of prehistory, are man’s birthright and his
to use if he has the talent. However, the powers that one calls up, if
successful in one’s operation, are quite real—whatever you choose to
believe they are—and are capable of wreaking havoc in an extremely
persuasive and unpleasant way if hostile.
In this case, the operation began as an experiment. It was done in a “lets
try this” spirit, without any specific need that I can recall. Occult
phenomena was what I wanted and occult phenomena was what I got.
At this time, I was living in Hollywood, sharing an apartment with a girl
I’ll call Susan. She was also involved in magic, but in a rather fluffy sort of
way, being more concerned about justifying her psychotic behavior than
with spiritual development. I came up with the idea of evoking the solar
demon Sorath, identified by Rudolf Steiner among others as the Beast in
the Apocalypse of St. John.
I laid down a circle, as in the first example, with the difference that
Susan was in the circle with me and it was done in broad daylight rather
than at night. I followed the procedure as before, and asked Susan to act
as a “skryer” along with me so that we could compare clairvoyant visions
when the ritual was over.
After I had read the invocation several times, I commanded the spirit to
appear in the triangle before me. At first nothing happened. Then, I began
to feel that tingling along my face and body that I came to associate with
psychic manifestation. It was then that the first interesting thing happened
—the room went cold.
It was the middle of a Sunday afternoon in late August. We were in, and
had been in for some weeks, one of those heat waves that hit Southern
California typically at the end of summer. There was no air-conditioning
in our apartment, and the temperature outside was over one hundred.
In spite of the physical conditions, in a matter of seconds the room
became so cold that the sweat dried on our skins and we became very
uncomfortable. We could both feel a cold breeze blowing over us from the
direction of the triangle. By this time spirit phenomena no longer
frightened me, so I was very pleased by this event.
I addressed the presumed spirit politely, welcoming it and requesting
it’s cooperation. I requested that it link itself with the talisman that I had
prepared, and lend us the benefit of it’s influence. Since it was supposed to
be solar in nature, I supposed this influence to be beneficial.
We then proceeded to the skrying session and afterwards closed the
ceremony after calling upon the spirit to depart.
The visions, when we compared them, weren’t terribly impressive. I saw
a pattern of black and gold and she saw a lion. The one was obscure and
the other stereotyped.
That night, I dreamed of the same swirling pattern of black and gold,
with a deep voice saying something portentous (which I couldn’t
remember). Then I walked down a long street to meet a beautiful man
with golden hair, dressed entirely in black. He led me to a cliff that
overlooked the ocean where I saw a fleet of flying saucers (solar disks)
lifting off the beach into the sky. A good dream, full of nifty symbols
appropriate to the ritual, but hardly supernatural.
The next day my roommate was talking to a friend of hers in New York.
When she hung up the phone she had an odd look on her face and I asked
her what was wrong. She said that her girlfriend had found her pet snake
dead in its terrarium the day before, at about the time we were
performing the evocation.
The snake was named Sorath.
This seems rather more sinister in retrospect than it did at the time. I
simply assumed that it was a piece of synchronicity that meant the
magical operation was working.
I evoked the demon Sorath twice more, with little in the way of
phenomena except increasingly disturbing dreams at night. Then, about a
week after the initial ritual, I had the experience that has given me such
sympathy with St. Anthony.
THE DEMON COMES CALLING
I had just come home from work and Susan was vegged out on pot and
beer, watching Wheel of Fortune on television. It was late and I relaxed in
a recliner and tried to ignore what was on TV. I was in the chair only a
moment when I began to have one of the strongest trance experiences of
my life.
I felt as though I had been injected with some kind of powerful
tranquilizer that gave my body an utterly relaxed, glowing feeling, at the
same time sharpening my senses so that colors were brighter, objects more
“real” than they were a moment before. Since this was hardly a common
occurrence, I knew that I was at last getting positive results from the
Sorath operation.
“Susan,” I said, “I’m going into a trance. Something’s happening.”
“That’s nice,” she said, completely stoned.
I headed toward my bedroom and stopped off at the bathroom first. Still
dizzy from the trance state that continued to increase as I walked, I stood
at the toilet and began to relieve myself.
Blue light began crawling across the walls.
I informed my roommate of this, only to get the same cabbage-like
response.
I retired to my bedroom to deal privately with whatever was happening
to me. I turned on the ceiling light and saw the flowing blue light follow
me into the room and solidify into an unchanging shape hanging just
below the ceiling. The ceiling light in that room was very bright, so much
so that I rarely used it, yet it did nothing to dim or affect the brightness or
sharpness of the blue-light-thing. I closed my eyes, I shook my head, I
spun around, I turned the lights off and on. I did everything that I could
think of to see if I was experiencing “spots before my eyes.”
The blue light figure (which looked something like a Chinese ideogram
in a circle) remained absolutely stationary and unchanging, visible
whether the light was on or off. Far from being frightened by what was
happening, I thought it a wonderful chance to communicate with what I
had called up.
I kept the light on, lay down on my bed and waited.
And waited. And waited.
Nothing happened, nothing changed.
Finally, I actually began to read a book. I suppose that it’s possible to
become bored with anything.
Ultimately, an hour and a half after the phenomena began, I addressed
the enigmatic light and said that if it wanted to communicate, it was
welcome to do so. I was at a loss as to what it wanted or how to talk to it.
I turned out the light and went to bed.
I found myself in an enormous subterranean vault. There were fifty-foot
Gothic arches of carved gray stone, the relief worn almost smooth by time.
The arches led into darkness. The central area, where I was standing, was
lit by a dim, evenly distributed sourceless light. In the center of the vault
was an ancient-looking chest or cask carved from stone.
The sight of this cask filled me with greater terror than I have ever felt
in my life. I knew that it was about to open and that I had to stop it or a
disaster would befall. I moved toward it and screamed “stop!” just as the
lid was flung to the floor as though it was made of plastic instead of heavy
stone.
Instantly there appeared before the casket a figure out of an oriental
nightmare. Dressed in a elegant red satin robe embroidered with dragons
done in gold thread was one of the most threatening and ugly things I
have ever seen, dreaming or waking. It was wiry, no taller than I was,
with greenish gray skin and a body made for pure destruction. It’s hands
had sharp, seven-inch claws on each finger and it had a mouth that split
its skull literally from ear to ear, filled with teeth like a shark. It was
completely hairless and had compelling golden eyes (the only beautiful
thing about it) filled with mad intelligence.
And it was radiant.
Even though we were in a dark space and it didn’t glow in any way
having to do with light, I was unable to look at it for more than a second
at a time. My eyes would water and my eyelids squint shut automatically
exactly as though I were looking into a klieg light or the sun.
When this thing appeared, it looked at me and laughed. Its voice was
the most inhuman thing about it. If a giant pipe organ had learned to talk,
that is what it would sound like. It said some things to me in a voice that I
felt more than heard, laughed again and I “woke up.”
It was daylight. I was bathed in sweat and as soon as I became fully
aware I became hysterical. I felt emotionally and physically shattered to a
degree that I can hardly begin to describe. I continued crying for the rest
of the day. I was absolutely unable to recover my composure. Bodily, I felt
as though I had been “worked over.” My limbs hurt, I felt weak and had a
severe headache.
I wasn’t able to function until the following day, when at least I was
able to stop crying. Then I destroyed the talisman and everything to do
with the Sorath operation. I cleansed myself ritually as best I could, but
remained depressed and on the verge of panic and hysteria for another
two weeks.
I did not call up Sorath again.
What happened here? As with so much “occult” or “psychic”
phenomena, ultimately I simply don’t know. This is one of a very few
“attacks” that I have experienced in the course of my occult
experimentation. I include it here because I want the new practitioner to
understand that, whether he believes in “spirits” or not, the legends of
predatory demons and fatal spells come from an experienced reality and
something like the above could occur, as it did with me, just when you
feel most secure.
The intelligences that the magician calls up are often the wild forces of
nature and sometimes have no more morality or gentleness than a tiger.
You are dealing with the primitive world, the forces and beings that
created and operate “nature.” That being the case, the serious practitioner
sometimes encounters more than he bargains for.
The above experiences are examples of the wilder, more sensational side
of magic. It should be obvious though, that spectacular phenomena and
useful practical results don’t always go together.
Two comments before I go on:
First, those who are familiar with the traditions of magic and witchcraft
may say that I invited problems by dealing with the “demon” outside of a
circle. My reply to this is that:
1. The magic circle seems to be a post-classical development. The
majority of magical techniques outside Europe do not use such a device.
2. I assure you that in practice, if a real manifestation occurs and is
hostile, you will wind up having to deal with it outside the protection of a
circle. If you cannot weather such an experience and learn from it, don’t
take up the practice of magic.
I’d like to quote once again the redoubtable Aleister Crowley regarding
what I learn from such events:
“But it does encourage one—it is useless to deny it—to be knocked
down by a demon of whose existence one was not really quite sure.”
A BARGAIN MADE
Since this is a book about pacts as well as about the conjuration of
demons, I also have a personal story regarding the only pact operation
that I have done to date. This took place around eight years ago, during a
period in my life when I was under constant and intense emotional stress.
I won’t bore you with the background, but I was suffering from clinical
depression and having anxiety attacks on a regular basis. These attacks
took a particularly violent and physical form. I would be walking or
driving someplace, and suddenly feel a tightness around my solar plexus
like a vibrating steel band. I would all but cease to be able to breathe, my
vision would start to blur and the muscles around my mouth would lock in
a rictus so that I was unable to talk. Both of my hands would go numb and
usually my feet as well. This experience could last anywhere from ten
minutes to half an hour. The first time that I had the experience I was in a
shopping mall and I thought I was having a heart attack. When a friend
witnessed one of these attacks, he thought I was having a stroke.
Imagine the fun of having such an attack while driving on the freeway.
At any rate, this should give the reader a good idea of my psycho-
physical state at the time. I needed a very large change in my life and
couldn’t see how to make it happen.
This was during the period when I was first experimenting with Goetic
conjuration, and my experiences had been interesting but uneven. I was
desperate enough in my circumstances to try something radical, and like
Goethe’s Faust, felt I had little to lose.
I selected two of the Princes of Hell that I thought would be of benefit in
my situation and drafted two pacts, one for each. These were not of the
soul-selling variety and were highly legalistic, consisting of very small
writing covering nearly both sides of rather large sheets of parchment,
accompanied by the appropriate pantacles and sigils.
I found this activity strangely disturbing. It should have been made
clear to the reader by now that I am no believer in Little Lord Jesus. Even
so, I was preparing for an operation that struck right at the heart of the
psychological and spiritual taboos ground into us by our Judeo-Christian
culture and the fear that was developing in me had nothing to do with my
rational conscious attitudes.
I prepared for the ritual as usual, laying down the circle and triangle,
purifying the work space with water and incense, making sure all the tools
that I needed—which in this case included a small knife to draw blood—
were ready at hand.
When the night came—which appropriately enough was April 30th,
Walpurgis Nacht—I entered the circle and began the conjuration. With
each passing moment, I became more nervous. I trembled. I sweated. I was
reacting like a midwestern Sunday school teacher. All of the superstitious
fears instilled by my Protestant upbringing and the culture that I was born
into rose to the surface.
Despite my nervousness, the ritual was rather uneventful. There were no
bizarre manifestations and the only communication that I had with the
“spirits” was through a pendulum (a device that I have found very useful).
The demon Princes, if they were there at all, signaled (through the
pendulum) that the conditions of the pacts were acceptable, and that I
should consider them signed. I then stuck my finger with the knife, took
up a quill pen and signed my own name on the documents in blood.
Well, nothing much happened.
My life continued on its tedious course and so did my anxiety attacks.
There were no dreams or omens. I was disappointed.
About a week later, I was having lunch with a friend and was discussing
my situation and the conjuration that I had attempted and that I
concluded it was a flat failure. I told him basically that I probably should
not have done it in the first place.
Rather to my surprise, he disagreed. He pointed out to me that demons
are traditionally the embodiment of natural forces and that in many
ancient religious traditions demons, or their equivalent, taught man the
arts of civilization. In effect, cities, science and the arts are the work of
demons and what I tried to do was not only appropriate and traditionally
valid, but the natural thing to do.
The two little blue-haired ladies at the table next to us seemed to find
this conversation distracting.
I agreed with this point of view enthusiastically. I said that I probably
had botched the conjuration because of my hesitancy and would re-
attempt it at my first opportunity.
That, as events were to prove, was the moment that I really signed the
pacts.
I was in my car, driving up the freeway back home when the pain
started. The bones in my legs and arms began to throb in unison and I
developed a splitting headache. My strength began to ebb away and
driving became very nearly torture.
When I arrived home half an hour later, I parked the car with some
difficulty, and dragged myself into my apartment building. I lived in a
third floor walk-up and for a bad moment didn’t think that I was going to
make it to my apartment. I unlocked the door, went in and was literally
struck down.
My knees buckled and I thought that I was going to lose consciousness. I
crawled to my bedroom, got in bed and remained there for five days.
What I experienced was unlike any illness I have ever had before or
since. There was no fever or nausea, like one would associate with the flu,
just an intense pain in my limbs and an attendant weakness that was so
great that I literally could not get up. I had to crawl to the bathroom to
relieve myself or get water, and for all intents and purposes, didn’t eat
during this entire time. There were times when I thought that I might die,
and just when I was about to call someone to take me to the hospital, the
symptoms would lessen a bit. I was unable to think clearly, as though
there was static in my brain.
Then it stopped.
One day I was helpless, the next, I woke up free of all symptoms and
seven pounds lighter.
This had happened in the springtime, hardly flu season, so I began
asking around to see if anyone else had gotten this peculiar illness. I
described the experience to literally dozens of people and not only had no
one had what I described, but they didn’t know anyone that had. Several
of these people were experienced nurses and even they had no idea what
it might have been. I wrote the experience off as something that I’d never
figure out.
A BARGAIN KEPT
Suddenly, my life began to transform.
Within days of my “illness” my work situation improved drastically. So
did my income. My living situation changed for the better and, while I
was still thanking fate for my recently increased income, I was offered still
another job—and in a city that I had been wanting to move to, but hadn’t
been able to do so.
Most importantly, I found, or rather, was given, the man that cured my
depression and panic attacks.
I had applied to a local counseling center to find some help with these
problems and had been put on a waiting list. Some months went by and I
had all but forgotten that I had done it. Then the phone call came telling
me I had been assigned a therapist. To get to the point, this man, as it
turned out, came from almost exactly my background and had had the
same symptoms himself at one time. Only those of you who have been
forced to get a therapist by the roll of the dice in a “charitable” situation
know what a miracle it was getting the right man under those
circumstances.
The upshot was that my depression was dealt with and the panic
syndrome disappeared, never to return.
You will have to agree that even though there were no obviously
supernatural happenings involved, the cluster of events, taken in order
and as a whole, are rather weird.
STRANGE COINCIDENCE
As I pointed out earlier, magic usually works through “synchronicity,”
or unusual coincidence, rather than the casual breaking of physical laws.
You perform the proper actions—“spells” if you will—and what you want
to happen “just happens.” What I wanted and needed to happen, “just
happened” after the pact-working, things that I could not make happen
before. Of course, the person determined to tear this story apart can do it
with very little trouble, by (magically) invoking “coincidence” and
“selective attention.”
There is no real way I can counter that argument, except to say that if I
were into self-deception, I would still be attending the Presbyterian
Church, and when I put my car key into the ignition the hundredth time
and it starts the hundredth time, coincidence is not relevant.
What about the illness? Again, it could be argued that I “just happened”
to get sick at a time that seemed to be meaningful and if I had continued
inquiring, I would have found out what the illness “really” was. Well,
maybe. But I personally suspect that, considering the emotional state I was
in at the time, there is another possible model.
I think that the pact ritual, which breaks so very many cultural taboos,
released something deep inside me and the psychic poisons—for want of a
better term—were released from their dammed-up state and flooded my
system all at once. I have had similar experiences since, but none so
devastating. When the “sickness” left me, I was suddenly empowered and
everything that I needed (and had requested) “miraculously” occurred.
This, in my opinion, is a good demonstration of the primordial power of
the idea of a pact with a supernatural force. Whether or not there were
demonic intelligences involved, the act itself was so powerful and
disturbing to my system that the whole course of my life took an abrupt
turn. It is this personal empowerment that is threatening to a
monotheistic/authoritarian establishment, hence the taboos and fairy tales
of magicians damned to hell.
As a footnote, the pacts made in the above ritual were not lifelong. They
were ritually dissolved a few years later when my life entered another
phase and they no longer seemed relevant.
Since we have covered (roughly) the historical background of the three
Grimoires and related some personal experiences with this style of magic,
it is time to make some remarks on the personages this material revolves
around: the Devil and his demons.
-----------------------------------------
POST POSTSCIPT
You Get What You Ask For
In a different vein, I (C.S. Hyatt) vacationed on an island “paradise.”
Arriving exhausted I felt ready for bed but was kept awake by a great
sense of foreboding. The next morning I awoke late and had a breakfast
which included four scotches. I still sensed a terrible feeling coming from
the place. I called my travel agent and she informed me that since I had
prepaid the trip I was stuck there for two weeks unless I could get a note
from a Doctor saying I was sick. She added that the illness couldn’t be
preexisting. Except for claiming mental illness I felt hopeless for an excuse
that would pass the medical examiner. So I bit the bullet and tried to
enjoy myself. I thought a good workout might help so I went to the gym.
But before I did I asked Lucifuge to act in my behalf offering him a proper
trade. However, I warned him that the “sign” had to be physical and not
psychological. I left for the gym, exercised for twenty minutes or so and
walked back to my room. On the way I brushed up against a bush which
was sticking out a foot or so on the pathway. I felt a sting under my right
breast and a horrible burning sensation. I thought little of it except that I
had been stung. I looked at the wound put some medication on it and took
a nap. I later awoke, went to dinner, watched some TV and went to sleep.
The next morning the bite had swollen a little but I had expected that.
So I started my day with breakfast, walked a mile or two, swam for a few
hours and rested. It was late in the afternoon so it was my “tea time.” I
went to one bar which was closed so I went to the pool bar and had a
drink. While waiting for my second drink I heard a scream and saw the
bartender running out of the bar. She was crying and pounding the wall.
Being used to craziness I thought little of it as I began to scratch my breast
more vigorously. Wanting a second drink more desperately now I flagged
down the second bartender who was yelling at the first bartender to go
home and cool down. I got my drink sometime later and asked the
bartender what was wrong with his associate. He replied that their “best”
friend had just drowned. I felt a sense of mild shock finished my drink and
went to my room to change for dinner.
I had a wonderful dinner except for the scratching and burning of my
right breast. I finished my meal went to my room took off my shirt and my
breast had expanded sideways by four inches. It was swollen and multi-
colored. Needless to say I became concerned. It was 9:00 PM so I called
the front desk for help. The operator said it was probably a mosquito bite.
I told her that if it was it must have been a foot or so long. She called the
doctor who called me back by 9:30. I told him my symptoms and he said
that he would be right over. He arrived, looked at my bite and said that he
had only seen four such reactions in all of his years of practice. He put me
on antibiotics and other drugs and told me to call him in the morning.
I awoke at 8:00 AM and looked at my breast. I called him immediately.
My breast had swollen another 2 inches. The little bite had now grown to
a 6 inch circle. He told me that I might require intravenous antibiotics but
first I should try some other type orally. I told him I had an allergy to one
of its cousins. He became concerned and so did I. I told him that I would
rather take my chances in Los Angeles where I had my own doctor and
complete insurance coverage. I told him that I would need a letter so I
could get my money back. He agreed immediately on the proviso that I
continue taking two safer, but less effective, types of antibiotics until I saw
my doctor. I quickly agreed, took a cab to his office, picked up the note
and the pills.
Now I had the precious note but no plane reservations. I checked out of
the hotel and then called the airlines. There were seats available on the
next flight out but I couldn’t make it in time unless the “Gods” were with
me. I hired a speed boat which rushed me to the main Island at 30 knots. I
had a cab waiting which got me to the airport with over 40 minutes to
spare.
I arrived in Los Angeles late at night and had an appointment with my
own doctor the next morning. My breast began to get smaller, although it
was greatly discolored and swollen. He drew blood and gave me more
antibiotics and pain pills. He said the weekend would be when I would
know whether hospitalization for intravenous antibiotics and surgery
would be necessary to remove pus pockets. Monday I went back to his
office. The swelling was gone. All that was left was some minor
discoloration and the puncture wound.
Apparently I got my physical manifestation. It is interesting to note in
passing that the bushes where the beast that struck me lay were trimmed
the morning after my bite. If I was one day late I would have never
brushed up against them. The spider or “magical” beast would have had to
find another way to work his will.
I leave it to the reader to explain this away.
Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D.
Los Angeles
July, 1992