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Seeking Recommendation The Goetia

Seeking recommendations for books.

AgentProvocateur

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Moved to book discussions
Anybody have any recommendations of source materials for working with the goetia that doesn't involve trying to bind them with "white magic" and angelic beings?
 

TransGothGirl

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Just a small piece of advice: sometimes these entities need to be bound. When I performed my first summoning, I called on Raum and he definitely showed up, but he didn't do what I asked. Instead, he told me to call him again when I can bind him better, and then spent the next few months hanging around teaching me how to do just that. He showed me that the whole idea that the angels and the demons are enemies is false, and that using the divine names and angelic seals and other measures the grimoires say are for protection are more like a contract than a master commanding a slave. The grimoire methods are not cruel to the spirit like so many claim they are.
 

CALLMESNAKE22

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Jake stratton kents work was about building a relationship with the spirits instead of forcing them to do something.
 

Nembra

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Just a small piece of advice: sometimes these entities need to be bound. When I performed my first summoning, I called on Raum and he definitely showed up, but he didn't do what I asked. Instead, he told me to call him again when I can bind him better, and then spent the next few months hanging around teaching me how to do just that. He showed me that the whole idea that the angels and the demons are enemies is false, and that using the divine names and angelic seals and other measures the grimoires say are for protection are more like a contract than a master commanding a slave. The grimoire methods are not cruel to the spirit like so many claim they are.
It does indeed sound like something Raum would tell you.
 

neilwilkes

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Anybody have any recommendations of source materials for working with the goetia that doesn't involve trying to bind them with "white magic" and angelic beings?
You need to be careful, as almost every copy I have seen is missing a lot of the vital material, such as all the proper preliminary invocations & a lot more besides, such as needing to change what is written in your circle according to season, who you are trying to evoke and much more besides.
I would not recommend the Goetia for beginners.
 

Tryp

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Which book of his is good for that?

Especially his True Grimoire, 2nd Ed
Post automatically merged:

...but worth noting that the group of spirits in the TG are not the hierarchy of the "goetia" found in the Lemegeton, even though there are overlaps and some relations and correspondences studied by JSK and other authors.

In the sense of working with chthonic/sublunary/elemental spirits labelled as demons in the solomonic tradition, though, yes - the TG is a solid grimoire to do what OP asks.
 
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neilwilkes

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Especially his True Grimoire, 2nd Ed
You don't build relationships with the Goetia entities. They are not touchy-feely, and don't sing Kumbaya either.
Goetia-Theurgia, maybe some of them but not the Goetia. These entities need the full monty - a correctly configured Circle - this is vital - for the practitioner, the Triangle (in the right compass direction) for them to appear in, a properly crafted Lamen and so on. You also need to know the name of each demon's compelling Angel & understand the correct use of the Brass Vessel. These details are simply not present in most MSS.
It's a multi-part process and it is also detailed in Agrippa's OP, Book 4:
1 - Consecratio Dei (Dedication, prayer & consecration)
2 - Invocatio (Invocation)
3 - Evocatio (Evocation)
4 - Constrictio (Constraint of the Spirit)
5 - Ligatio (Binding the Spirit)
6 - Licentia (Dismissing the Spirit, or License to Depart)
None of these steps should be missed out and all need to be properly performed.
 

Tryp

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You don't build relationships with the Goetia entities. They are not touchy-feely, and don't sing Kumbaya either.
Goetia-Theurgia, maybe some of them but not the Goetia. These entities need the full monty - a correctly configured Circle - this is vital - for the practitioner, the Triangle (in the right compass direction) for them to appear in, a properly crafted Lamen and so on. You also need to know the name of each demon's compelling Angel & understand the correct use of the Brass Vessel. These details are simply not present in most MSS.
It's a multi-part process and it is also detailed in Agrippa's OP, Book 4:
1 - Consecratio Dei (Dedication, prayer & consecration)
2 - Invocatio (Invocation)
3 - Evocatio (Evocation)
4 - Constrictio (Constraint of the Spirit)
5 - Ligatio (Binding the Spirit)
6 - Licentia (Dismissing the Spirit, or License to Depart)
None of these steps should be missed out and all need to be properly performed.
Please see my merged post below, TG does not use the hierarchy from the Lemegeton.
You clearly follow a strict procedure to operate. Just consider there may be other ways to engage with similar spirits based on pacts, in a different framework. I won't engage in a discussion about grimoire genealogy or about "right" or "wrong" methods, though. I just gave a reference that, in my experience, is useful in regards to what OP asked.
 

kvzlx

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Good question, and the thread has already surfaced the key fork. It helps to separate two things: the primary sources (free, and they tell you what the tradition actually prescribed) from the modern reframings (which is usually what people mean by "without binding").

On the primary side, all public domain:

The Ars Goetia itself (Lemegeton, Book I) — the Mathers/Crowley 1904 edition, or the older Sloane MSS.

Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), which prints Weyer's Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577) — the direct literary ancestor of the Goetia's spirit-list, and the earliest widely available source in English.

The pseudo-Agrippa Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy — the six-stage evocation frame neilwilkes listed (consecration → invocation → evocation → constraint → binding → license) comes straight out of that lineage.

The honest catch is the one neilwilkes is pointing at: the Lemegeton Goetia is built around the constraint model — the circle, the triangle, the lamen, the brass vessel, and (in the Rudd variant) a specific constraining angel per spirit. So "Goetia without binding" is mostly a modern reinterpretation, not something the base text supports. Not a judgment — just where the line falls.

If the modern relationship/pact approach is what you're after, the two names already dropped are the right ones. Jake Stratton-Kent's True Grimoire (2nd ed.) — though Tryp is correct that its spirits are the Grimorium Verum hierarchy (Verum's Three Chiefs and their dukes), not the Lemegeton 72, even where they overlap. And S. Connolly is explicitly modern demonolatry, so read it as devotional-modern rather than historical.
 
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