Moderately More Catholic and "Abrahamist" Grimoire Evocation

[MorganBlack]

Hear, hear! Totally agreed too many have a dry intellectual approach probably from being inflicted with an overactive, hyper-categorizing left-hemisphere. If the universe is a quantum reality that reorders itself based on the "story" you tell - which I think it is - then you must treat your own life as a laboratory.

In my Daimonic-Neoplatonic view, these are all stories that take on a quantum reality of their own. It does not mean they are "not true." Read Patrick Harpur and Bernardo Kastrup for more discussions on this front. Harpur’s work on the Anima Mundi (World Soul) suggests, and I also agree, that there is a third space between "Matter" and "Mind." This is the Daimonic Realm, which can also be called the Imaginal, or the Spirit World in indigenous understandings. Stories are not "just in your head," but they aren't "out there" like a rock or a ham sandwich is either.

So pick a good story and the universe will reorder, and the daimons themselves to confirm that for you. They're always half-you. (But not 100%. Sorry, Lon.) So pick a nice one. Choose stories that makes you joyous, happy, creative, forgiving, and kind rather than cramped, nit-picking, bitter, angry, and sullen. The Catholic myths and stories work this way for me, but there are others I like depending on what "layer" of reality I'm interacting with.

But if people need to use their imagination to torture themselves and attack others online for 'wrong-think,' that is a Hell of their own making. I think a lot of what appear as silly internet arguments about trivia are their own intellecual process looking for an escape from their own locked-down brain. They think need to achieve absolute conviction what they say is true, often by negating all other viewpoints. Cowards, basically.

The classic Law of Attraction idea that has filtered into magic through modern paganism and other New Age vectors, gave everyone the idea you have to 100% totally "believe" or the magic won't work. Dammit, folks, that is what ceremony is for! We believe what we DO. The world already IS imagination, in my view. Western magic is "Belief by doing' we believe what we act out and what we say, the stories we tell. There is a lot of hind-brain and instinctual linking-up going on once you get your body involved and moving.

There is not point to having a totalizing worldview up front, one where you solve all the mysteries of the Universe , or what the daimons really really "are" Sketch things out with a cosmo-conception the best you can and expect it to update as more and better information comes it. Repeat.

 

[cormundum]

Hear, hear! Totally agreed too many have a dry intellectual approach probably from being inflicted with an overactive, hyper-categorizing left-hemisphere. If the universe is a quantum reality that reorders itself based on the "story" you tell - which I think it is - then you must treat your own life as a laboratory.

In my Daimonic-Neoplatonic view, these are all stories that take on a quantum reality of their own. It does not mean they are "not true." Read Patrick Harpur and Bernardo Kastrup for more discussions on this front. Harpur’s work on the Anima Mundi (World Soul) suggests, and I also agree, that there is a third space between "Matter" and "Mind." This is the Daimonic Realm, which can also be called the Imaginal, or the Spirit World in indigenous understandings. Stories are not "just in your head," but they aren't "out there" like a rock or a ham sandwich is either.

So pick a good story and the universe will reorder, and the daimons themselves to confirm that for you. They're always half-you. (But not 100%. Sorry, Lon.) So pick a nice one. Choose stories that makes you joyous, happy, creative, forgiving, and kind rather than cramped, nit-picking, bitter, angry, and sullen. The Catholic myths and stories work this way for me, but there are others I like depending on what "layer" of reality I'm interacting with.

But if people need to use their imagination to torture themselves and attack others online for 'wrong-think,' that is a Hell of their own making. I think a lot of what appear as silly internet arguments about trivia are their own intellecual process looking for an escape from their own locked-down brain. They think need to achieve absolute conviction what they say is true, often by negating all other viewpoints. Cowards, basically.

The classic Law of Attraction idea that has filtered into magic through modern paganism and other New Age vectors, gave everyone the idea you have to 100% totally "believe" or the magic won't work. Dammit, folks, that is what ceremony is for! We believe what we DO. The world already IS imagination, in my view. Western magic is "Belief by doing' we believe what we act out and what we say, the stories we tell. There is a lot of hind-brain and instinctual linking-up going on once you get your body involved and moving.

There is not point to having a totalizing worldview up front, one where you solve all the mysteries of the Universe , or what the daimons really really "are" Sketch things out with a cosmo-conception the best you can and expect it to update as more and better information comes it. Repeat.

We seem to be pretty much on the same page. People tell stories that their sub-conscious spins into the world around them, which is then manifest by the spirits that surround us. There is a teaching from Rebbe Nachman of Breslov that whenever one has a thought, his lips move and it is spoken, whether he realizes it or not. This I think serves as a great explanation for how Law of Assumption and Attraction work for people, if you consider what is written in the Book of Abramelin that the spirits do not obey thoughts, but only spoken words. Many of us are speaking/singing all sorts of garbage into our lives and it has nothing to do with anything other than our own thoughts and assumptions.

My old man would always say, "If you can or you can't, you're right." That lesson was hammered into my head from my teenaged years and I've held onto it as a principle to live by, especially with the magickal stuff. I'm pretty convinced that most practitioners tell themselves constantly that they can't have such-and-such success because Magick Pope X says you can't, and Frater Fakus Latinus would have done it if it were possible, so it most certainly can't be.

 

[Angelkesfarl]

"Let us pass the ball back to the starting line: we need an evocation text to work on, one we can dissect intellectually and scientifically. I have some fundamental questions: Has anyone truly looked at the lengthy evocations in the Keys of Solomon and the names mentioned within them? Are they accurate? Do they actually work? Have they ever succeeded? In our tradition, we possess conjurations and summonings that are real and carry tangible impact. Is there anything in Western sciences and texts that parallels the 'Berhatiah,' for example?"

 

[Nerone]

Though it may deviate from the thread matter at hand a little bit, there is something I wanted to comment on quickly;

Modern magic tends to frame itself as either highly mechanical (using 'energy') - with a bunch of silly busy work to "Awaken your Jedi super Powers" - (looking at you Franz Bardon) - or as 'pagan' in opposition to Catholicism, whereas I simply see expressions of the One Thing. 'Worship' also is a strange word here. I see it as an approach toward Theosis. The emotion invested allows us to get 'caught up' in the experience and then amazing stuff happens.

I don't think it's entirely fair to throw the good František Bardon under the bus like that. There is certainly a technical element to magical practice which one may categorize under the heading of "Mercurial remediation", or, in simpler terms, a left-brain style of training of tedious refinement. It has nothing to do with the right-brain aspect of divine frenzy, faith and myth immersion - valuable as these may be - and while such a technical training may seem one-sided and limited in it's own right, it does nourish an essential skillset which I think shouldn't be slept on.

I have had the opportunity to be in the private classes of Jason Read, author of "Practical Chinese Magic" and "Fox Magic: Handbook of Chinese Witchcraft and Alchemy in the Fox Tradition", and his position as a navy guy stationed out in China to marry into a family of folk Maoshan practitioners and publish these teachings in English is quite unique. His books deviate significantly from what he teaches in private though, which is quite unfortunate. It's a remnant of the "milk for the babies, meat for the men", "one thing for insiders, another for outsiders" type of mentality.

Maoshan is quite unique in that it combines the technical alchemical "Qi Gong" aspect with the mythological religious aspect of Theurgy. It does place a fairly strong emphasis on the more technical, left-brain aspects of magic, where the efficiency of a given practice is strongly dependent on left-brain fundamentals such as concentration, imagination and voidness of spirit, these being related to an understanding of Qi and how to move and manipulate it by intention - but it does not fail to neglect the right-brain aspect of prayers, faith and myth immersion.

From the perspective of Maoshan, a criticism that you will find is that of the modern Qigong movement - that it has become, after the Cultural Revolution in China, a series of left-brain, technical "Awaken your Jedi super Powers" type of practice, completely neglecting the right-brain aspects of it's Theurgical elements of it's ancestors.

But Theurgy without technicality is just so-and-so methinks.

It reminds me of watching an interview with Billy Sheehan on playing the bass guitar. Even as a skilled world class musician, he would practice the same tedious exercises of plucking the strings. EEEEE. AAAAA. DDDDD. GGGGG. For hours on end. I remember watching it and thinking: "that's the secret?!"

 

[techniquea2z]

I've gained some valuable insights here.

As one who's entry into practice of magick was thrust upon him after an erroneous decision, I've found the divide between total submission to the Monad (in the context of Catholicism) and upsetting the divine hierarchy as structured by God (by evocating and communing with celestial beings) to be a tough decision.

Especially as inaction simply encourages control over one's being to another will -- aside from my own.

Well, they are, but this is a huge topic and is getting into the practical weeds more than I intended here. This post is more about Catholic mysticism that is usually missed completely, probably because the mecantile reality of the Anglophone magical publishing means the kind of people who buy magic books will never buy a book speaking like I am here.

I can just hear them now, "What is this "God" crap? I thought Magic was like on anime. Chi balls, and yelling. If I wanted that I'd still be in Sunday school being bullied"

This was the source of my misguidance, as an avid anime fan. It's occult influence runs deep, whilst it's true affects are dramatized and glamourized -- the depths of it's influence on the human soul and physical body are understated.

In any case, I find this scholarly debate engaging. I'm actually open to learning more on the works of the grimoires of old, that had more Catholic influence (ie. Turiel), or anything that may be locked in the Vatican's archives.