As I ponder a new approach to goetia, I can’t help but consider that which has had the most profound influence on my magical career, the words of Peter J. Carroll from On the Philosophy & Practice of Magick.
“Transcendentalists who dabble in magick usually obtain results as spectacular as they are useless. Quite quickly they find themselves surrounded by demons and spirits, powers and principalities, and notebooks full of outlandish communications. Soon they are alternating between excessive humility and megalomania.”
This is a trap I wish to avoid. But I am quite aware that you get what you put into it, and in order to obtain better results than last time I need to step it up.
My first question must be, “what are goetic spirits?” This is a personal question with a personal answer. I don’t expect any fellow magician to agree with me 100%. This is simply what I believe right now with the information I have.
Are goetic spirits reflections of our shadow-selves? Do they simply represent the dark side of our natures? “Yes,” with a “but.” Yes, they are manifestations of our consciousness. They feed on and thrive when we turn to destructive impulses. However, just like fire is necessary for heat, destruction’s not always bad. In fact, it may be getter to say that goetic spirits simply don’t understand our limits. In fact, they may not understand us much at all, because goetic spirits are also creatures from another dimension.
The more I experience, the more I believe the ancient Egyptians had it right. Our souls have multiple parts for multiple purposes. It is my suspicion that when a magician contacts a goetic spirit, they are actually contacting a being that shares a piece of their soul in another universe. The demonic names in the various grimoires are only channels of contact, not the actual beings themselves. Even though that spirit may be a reflection of you, being from another plane it has a hard time understanding the human condition. The beings contacted using sorcery as opposed to other forms, tend to understand only our base nature. That’s why they may appear as “evil.”
It is my current assumption that goetic spirits can and will fulfill requests because our summoning them benefits them in their dimension. In what way I am not sure.
With all this in mind, I have made the decision to build my own grimoire. Many moons ago, I had posted a series of pictures on my Scroll of Thoth tumblr blog tagged “personal goetia.” They were simply art work depicting beings I found particularly disturbing. For my next round of goetia, I intend to revisit them, give them names and descriptions and perhaps assign them to a demon lord from the Legemeton. I’m not sure how building them (divining them?) will work, but writing is what I’m good at. So many of the skills for creating the regalia of goetia – drawing, metal working, painting, woodworking—are simply not in me. In this part I can at least invest some of my true talent.
I’m not sure how far I will go on the other necessities. I am looking at purchasing wood for a wand from an artisan and then decorating it myself. Since I will be creating my own sigils (using magick squares), I don’t think I will be making brass disks, but some brass painted cardboard could work well. Other successful sorcerers have worked with less.
All this on top of correspondences of time and writing my own incantations should build up well. At least better than I did before. My only questions now is how I will build preliminary gnosis before the ritual. I think it will have to correspond with the spirit I choose.
To avoid the trap of obsessing over the creation of my own hierarchy, I am setting a time limit. I will perform my first evocation before the end of February. So expect to hear more about the project leading up to it, and the results sometime in March.