Spirit model
It's time to speak about the final of 4 basic paradigms in Magick, the spirit model. The basic belief in this model is that everything is inhabited and governed by spirits. When I say everything, I mean literally everything, the air we breathe, the ground we step on, the juice we drink or cigarettes we smoke, everything has its own spirits. The path of spirit model is the path of prayer and rituals, in this model we do our best to get the attention of spirits, to please them and to gain them for our cause. Because everything is governed by spirits, spirits are who do the work, all we can do here is to make requests. To please the spirits we have to make offerings and to have more probability of our requests being fulfilled and our expectations met, we have to possess a spiritual authority. Spiritual authority is the respect we get from spirits as practitioners, you could say this is the filtering mechanism, just like the psychic censor in psychology paradigm.
What is also interesting about the spirit model is the ritualism. Models we have described and practiced before are more direct based, in this model we need rituals as the means of communication with the divine, in this model we hand over our desires to the external power to handle it. To do so we need a set of key aspects. We need to cleanse our space, to call entities we wish to work with, we need to hand over our requests and we need to close the deal, to finish the communication. We also need to please these entities on a regular basis to gain their favour, that's where offerings come in handy. There are still practitioners performing blood sacrifices, whether using their own blood or blood of sacrificed animals, but this is out of scope of this book so we will focus more on different forms of sacrifices, different forms of offerings. We will also learn how to work with deities, angels, demons, any type of entity you might want to work with and how to create servitors in a purely ceremonial manner.
Offerings
During your time as a spirit worker you will meet a good deal of spirits that will join your cause. It is a good idea to have some form of a general offering for these spirits. Of course if specific spirits require specific offerings made in a specific manner, you should follow the instructions. For the rest it is enough to make a simple tobbacco offering once a week or when the situation asks for it. Speaking of tobbacco, a cigarette is a perfect incense stick and working with it is really simple. Just place the cigarette in your hand, say: "Spirits that are present here, please accept my offering to you", then put the cigarette in your mouth, light it and then place it somewhere, e.g. an edge of the table or an ashtray and let it burn. You can use the time when it is burning to sing some mantras for spirits. Note: Many cigarette brands has a safety measure so after a certain time the cigarette isn't used, it stops burning by itself. This is not a concern with offerings: when spirits want, the cigarette will keep burning, and just as fast as if you were smoking it.
Another general offering you can make is a glass of water, just leave it on the "meeting place" overnight and make sure no one touches it. Next morning just dispose of it. Same thing can be done with pieces of bread, fruits, milk, honey, eggs, etc. While getting rid of the offering, you don't want to touch it directly, so make sure you use some gloves or something like that. If you want to place the offering by burning it, you need a decent bonfire and enough flammable offerings (bread is fine).
We have already spoken about mantras, some entities have their own and some have generic ones. These can be sang during the offering or separately when you have some time to spare. I personally use a Sumerian incantation for it as spirits I usually work with are of Mesopotamean origin. The mantra is as follows:
ZI ANNA KANPA
ZI KIA KANPA
ZI DINGIR ANNA KANPA
ZI DINGIR KIA KANPA
It means:
Spirits of skies, remember
Spirits of earth, remember
Spirit, god of skies, remember
Spirit, god of earth, remember
This mantra is very easy to sing and drags the attention of some mighty spirits. This is something you want to happen in the spirit work. By repeating the mantra often, you will gain the relationship with many spirits and your spiritual authority will grow. As we have already said, spiritual authority is the filtering mechanism in the spirit paradigm.
Sigil charging
This is a book about Sigil Magick, so we should namely focus on sigils. There are various ways how to charge sigils via spirit model The simplest of them goes as follows:
Light 2 white candles and put a piece of paper between them. Say: "O, spirits of talismanic magick, I summon thee. Come to this place and do my will. Act to my bidding and breathe a life into this sigil".
Then exhale 3 times on the sigil, then say: "A sigil, an inanimate object, a lifeless piece of paper. Talismanic spirits are breathing life into you, be living and fulfill my desire."
Then exhale 3 times again at the sigil and close your eyes. Meditate for a couple of minutes, feel the power of the moment.
Open your eyes, exhale 3 times on the sigil and say: "O, Sigil, you are now living.".
Put the sigil aside and say: "O, Talismanic spirits, I thank you for your help, return to your places and come back here when I call you. Don't bring any harm to me or those close to my heart, but be at peace".
The last part is called a license to depart, it's a good practice to learn, not as harsh as banishing, you simply ask spirits to leave instead of forcing them with divine names and various other things.
The first method was to ask spirits to charge the sigil for you. Second method is using a spirit to aid you in sigil charging. A good spirit for this purpose is Agaku, one of 50 names of Marduk. You just place Agaku's seal under your sigil, place your palms above your sigil, and charge the sigil as you would do in energy model while chanting Agaku's name and also his word of power. His word of power is MASHGARZANNA. Do so for a couple of minutes, Agaku will aid you in transferring your own energy into the sigil, both in speed and accuracy. Both methods are obviously also good for the creation and charging of talismans, but generally sigil magick is a form of talismanic magick. All methods mentioned in this book can be used for creation of talismans and amulets.
Elemental spirits
Elemental spirits or spirits of elements are also useful in sigil magick. We have already made a simple summary of elements and their associations, to read more about them I recommend to read Condensed Magick 101. Now we should speak mainly of spirits of these elements. Spirits of Fire are called salamanders, they are quite friendly, but have a short attention span and tend to leave the scene quickly. Their domain is anything ranging from courage up to willpower. Spirits of Water are called undines, they are friendly. Their domain are emotions, but also a physical water and rain. Spirits of Air are Sylphs. These creatures are sometimes friendly but more often they are simply neutral. Their domain is the mental plane, they can do anything from improving memory up to boosting the intelligence of the individual. They also rule physical air and together with undines they control the weather, which means both sylphs and undines should be called if we want to manipulate the weather with their help. Last but not least are gnomes, spirits of Earth. They tend to be very friendly towards humans, their domain is wealth, well-being but also physical earth, really anything from dirt up to mountains. They also can be called to make long journeys less exhausting. They are also spirits of physical strength.
If we think a specific sigil is in the domain of specific spirits (e.g. salamanders) then we decorate the sigil with symbolism of their element and then simply take in their element, just like we did with the chaosphere in the energy model, just now we will use their physical element instead of the chaosphere. That means for element of Fire we will use e.g. a candle, for Water glass, etc. Once we have drawn the element into ourselves we can call the elementals and charge the sigil.
For our example let's say we have a desire compatible with Fire and we have used a candle to draw-in its energy. First of all light up 2 white candles, no matter what element we work with, this is the beginning of all of our rituals. Breathe on the sigil for 3 times. Now what we can do is to place our hands above the sigil and while letting the elemental energy to leak from our palms right into the sigil, we can say a following incantation: "Salamanders, spirits of Fire, I call you to this place by the power of your element. By power of Fire I call you here. Appear before me and make this sigil living. Take its desire as your own and fulfill it just like you would do for yourself." After that exhale on the sigil for 3 times again and say: "O Sigil, spirits of Fire breathe a life into you, become a living representation of my desire, become a gate to its fulfillment, a trigger to my happiness, and do my will!"
Then close your eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. After that is done, exhale on the sigil 3 times again and say: "Spirits have made their deed, Sigil, you are alive".
Put the sigil aside and give a license to depart to the spirits. Then extinguish the candles, that's the end of the ritual.
As you can see in the ritual above, we have already stated a simple form for our rituals, lighting two candles for the beginning and license to depart and putting off the fire for the end. We can go even further and spice up our ritual a little more. Let's say that before you begin you say HEKAS, HEKAS, ESTE BEBELOI!, which means "away with all mundane", then you can sound a bell 3 times to all 4 cardinal directions to cleanse the space. If you don't have a bell, it's ok to use a cup and a spoon for simulating the bell sound. After you are done you can draw a circle around yourself with a chalk or you can lay around a piece of thread to represent the circle. The thread is usually good in-doors, on street you want to use a chalk and in nature you want some form of dagger to engrave the circle into the ground. You can off course be creative and build the circle from dead branches, stones, etc. Once that is done walk around the circle in a clockwise fashion for 3 times, during that you can repeat: "O, spirits of Chaos, come to this place and be present at my ritual". Then stand/sit at the center of the circle and continue as usually, light up the candles, etc.
Regarding candles, if you use a long candles, you can anoint them with vegetable oil while repeating: "Power of Chaos comes with you" just to give a little more kick into our ritual. Just remember to do it beforehand, when the candles are still new. There are many ways how to modify the ritual and create the right atmosphere, don't be scared to make your research and experiment. Write down what you do and act according to the results.
What we have done with elemental spirits can be done with many more types of servitors. We can easily adapt this working for planetary spirits, primordial entities, pagan deities, spirits of a day or any other correspondence set one can think of. All you have to do is to modify the incantations a little bit so instead of spirits of elements it speak e.g. about planetary spirits and you are good to go. Just before we continue further it is good to mention that spirits can be greedy. A rule of a thumb is to choose 10 or so entities and work mainly with them instead of always choosing a different entity for same type of work. You will be considered as a more loyal "costumer" and treated accordingly, needless to say that such practice truly helps to synchronize with chosen spirits and make the communication easier. Being treated as a loyal spirit worker will make the spirits to work more closely with you. Results will be faster, more frequent and more apparent. Spirits will also very likely grant you familiars for protection and other reasons. Familiars are also very likely to independently help you with your everyday lives, moving obstacles from your path. In a summary, loyalty truly does pay off.
Banishing
Spirit model contains both helping spirits and malevolent ones and time by time we attract the malevolent kind and then we need to banish. Signs of malevolent spirits are usually obvious, we will start having troubles sleeping, we will be waking up tired, items will start falling from tables or shelves or getting transported to other locations (that is usually more obvious when you are living alone and there is no sign of another person entering your home) and your life situation will turn to worse. There are many available banishing methods, the most well known being the Lesser Banishing Pentagram Ritual. What I like during my workings is a simplicity, for that reason I will share a very simple Sumerian banishing ritual. For that purpose we will be calling Asaruludu, the weilder of the flaming sword. Asaruludu is an amazing deity when it comes to protection, it is also one of 50 names of Marduk and mentions about him can be found in Enua Elish, Babylonian version of "Genesis". The ritual goes as follows:
Vibrate a formula:
ZI ANNA KANPA
ZI KIA KANPA
ZI DINGIR ANNA KANPA
ZI DINGIR KIA KANPA
Then vibrate BANMASKIM to all 4 cardinal directions, it is common to start at north and then turn clockwise, but whatever suits you more. BANMASKIM is the word of power of Asaruludu. You can also improve this ritual a little bit and after each vibration of the word of power sound a bell 3 times just like you do in the cleansing ritual.
Servitor creation in spirit model
It's time to speak about how to create your very own servitor in the spirit model. This method resembles the one outlined in the psychology model, that means we will need a name, sigil, description, mantra and a form of our servitor ready. We will need one paper where there is everything, the name, the seal, description, everything. Then we will need a separate pieces for each part.
Start your ritual as usually, then say: "O, mighty spirit Agaku, I call you with your word of power MASHGARZANNA, accept my request and appear before me, aid me in the creation of the serving spirit". Close your eyes and feel power of the moment. Then open your eyes again and place a piece of paper with the name of your new servitor right in the front of you and say: "By the powers of Agaku, I give you the name (name of the servitor)". Then place another piece of paper with servitor's mantra on the top of the previous one and say: "By the powers of Agaku, this is your activation mantra". Continue with the separate pieces, stacking them one by one on each other. Then bind these pieces together by wrapping them around with a piece of thread, during that say: "O, mighty Agaku, bind these together with your power, aid me in the creation by the word MASHGARZANNA". After that burn these bound pieces on a clean ashtray. Close your eyes and meditate till the whole thing burns into ashes and ashes are cold. Now comes the last part, flip over the paper containing all the information and "sprinkle" the backside of the paper with the ash, while saying: "(spirit name), by the power of Agaku, you are now living. By the power of MASHGARZANNA you now breathe, by the power of mighty spirits you now do my will. (Spirit's sigil mantra) is now your calling. (Spirit's description) is now your doing. This is now your new home". With that being said and done, your ritual is finished and you can close it as usually. Don't forget to thank to Agaku and give him the license to depart.
As for the rest, follow instructions from the psychology model, visualize your servitor by your side during the day, et, use his/her mantra on the regulae basis to "feed" him, give him tasks, etc. As for giving your servitor some tasks, you can choose whatever format you wish, whether you do a ritual or not is strictly up to you and your tastes. Once servitor's deed is done and you want to get rid of him, simply do another ritual with Agaku. Start your ritual as usually, call Agaku with his name and word of power, say: "O, mighty Agaku, by the power of your word listen to my request and appear before me, aid me in deconstruction of my servitor (spirit's name). Then close your eyes for a minute and feel the power of the moment. After take the paper with all the information, bind it to another paper with your name and while burning it in the ashtray say: "(Spirit's name), I release you by the power of Agaku and MASHGARZANNA, return back to my own life force. (Spirit's name), you are being called, return to your creator". After that being said and done, your ritual is complete, thank Agaku and give him the license to depart.
Conclusion of this chapter
So, we have done our best to explain the mentality needed for the spirit work. We have learned what is the filtering mechanism in the spirit paradigm, we have described rituals for sigil charging, servitor creation and disposal and we have also described the basic mechanics of banishings. We have also explained the differences between the banishing and the license to depart and we also learned about how to cast a very basic circle in an easy and effective manner. Now, if you decide that the spirit work is your chosen path, it is up to you to come up with your own rituals, to expand the Magick circle and to create a decent list of serving spirits for your very own grimoire, for your personal spellbook. Study, make your research, practice, try, fail and learn from your mistakes. That is the path of Magick in all its paradigms. Is is also the path of life in general. Practise safely and have fun.
Meta model
We have already described 4 basic models of Magick, the psychology model, information model, energetic model and spirit model. All we now have to do is to describe the final fifth paradigm in Magick, the Meta model. Meta means beyond and as we have already said earlier, in the Meta paradigm the source or mechanics of Magick are unknown. The meta model came to the existence after comparison of 4 basic paradigms. The reason for this comparison was to find the similarities between the system, something that could help us to understand what Magick really is and how it really works, but results were shocking. There is always some filtering mechanism, something to make a distinct border between us and the divine, but except that? These models are mutually exclusive, they differ both in philosophy and in approaches, a beliefs needed to operate with these are also very different. And even when these models were completely different, they all yielded results. So there was some interesting outcome after all, the Meta paradigm.
Meta paradigm basically says there is another layer we don't see, the internal mechanics and the source we cannot directly comprehend as a species, a layer that governs the real Magick, a layer that is beyond our reach in terms of understanding. Yet, practitioners of different paradigms were still able to do the work that yields the results, which means they still had to tap into this unknown layer, simply through their own practice. That being said the Meta model has become the uniting paradigm of all previous models, not through similarities, but as the gate between these models and Magick, as the final crossroad where all paths lead to the Rome.
Advantages of the Meta model
We have already said there is a great disadvantage of the Meta model in that we cannot understand the real mechanics. But is there any advantage? Yes, there is, we know for sure that all 4 systems work, therefore we are not tied to a specific mindset and choose any of the paradigms knowing that it will work. We also know that we can switch between the paradigms (paradigm shifting) as we see fit because we will always use the same internal mechanics. It also means that by practicing one paradigm, we will get better in others, too. It basically means that a person being able to quickly get into the inhibitory gnosis will be good with spirits, too or it also means that a very skilled energy worker will be much more lucky with the psychology paradigm than the person freshly starting with the same paradigm. The reason is the real improvement lies in the internal mechanics and the way of operating them rather than in paradigms themselves.
Paradigm shifting is the heart and blood of the Meta model. There are times when we are out of time to do ceremonies with spirits or we feel that an excitatory gnosis won't do the trick for us today. During these times we don't need to horribly alter our schedule to do the ritual or we don't need to talk us into drawing sigils for hours trying to find that one design that really clicks in. We can simply shift the paradigm, we can simply use one that feels appropriate at the time. It happens with time that the Magick will become a routine, something we have to force us into doing instead of enjoying what we do. This is when the paradigm shift comes in handy. By substituing our practices and playing around a little bit we can gather back our joy of doing Magick, or more importantly, we are even able to never lose it again as we can switch our routine whenever we need or want to do so. The great thing is that we won't lose our spiritual authority or ability of controlling the energy by doing so, we will simply convert one into other and then freely back as we shift the models we work with. This conversion isn't very obvious at first, as it is usually not so easy to convert at first, meaning by shifting the paradigm we will feel naked, as we have started from zero. But by following the other paradigm for some time, we will be able to achieve something a dedicated newcomer to that very path would need much more time to achieve, and as we continue to switch between these models, easier the switch will get, which takes me to the final part of this chapter, the combined routine.
Combined routine
We have already said that by working in one paradigm we improve in other paradigms, too and by learning to shift the paradigms we manage to shift faster each time and more easy for us is to become pro-efficient on this or that path. What we have yet to mention is there is a simple method to learn how to shift between the paradigms with ease and how to improve at all of them at the same time. This super simple method is a combined routine.
During the course of this book I have outlined various practices in different models. We have spoken about gnosis and avoiding the Psychic censor in the psychology model. We have also described exercises to gather, store and control energy in the energy model. In information model we have spoken about the channels and means of using just one main channel and how to reduce the noise that pollutes the final information we wish to transfer. In the spirit model we have spoken about offerings. These all are healthy practices allowing us to get better within the paradigm we are working at, and despite the fact that these cannot be combined into one giant exercises, these still can be practiced as a separate exercises during the day. You could e.g. start your day with a simple energy exercises to start your body, then you could take a meditation from the information paradigm to clear your focus and get ready for your day. In the afternoon you could take a moment aside for some meditation from the Psychology model and before going to sleep a nice little offering to the nearby and familiar spirits just to keep them interested. You can of course split and distribute this routine throughout the day as needed. Other method you could do is to start with an offering during the morning coffee, then focus fully on your present moment during brushing your teeth (information paradigm method), then during the lunch break do some energy work and in the evening use the exercises from the Psychology method to clean your mind and gain a much better sleep.
Once you create your combined routine, you should of course stick with a specific timeline to build some habit. Sticking to the schedule also helps to build some willpower. But if you get annoyed by the repetitiveness of the routine, simply change. Either modify the times or turn the whole routine completely upside down, avoid one paradigm for some time or focus strictly on one paradigm, do what pleases you. Time by the time when I am bored, I stick e.g. with Franz Bardon's IIH, I always gain some new insight from such "retreats", plus I keep my Magick alive and kicking, this is one of the advantages of the Meta model, it is much harder to get bored and slip down into the mood where you just have to force yourself and you rather do million other things than practicing the occult. It is also good to mention that this doesn't apply only to the occultism but to the life in general, switch between your hobbies and also ways of doing things, this way you will always keep yourself interested, but you will also learn a lot of new things during the process. Bored playing guitar? Learn how to cook. Annoyed by the endless study of philosophy, buy some wood and tools and learn to craft statues. Carving figures out of wood being too annoying now? Switch wood with clay. Keep the Magick within alive and rocking, whether through occult or other means, and learn a lot of new things in the process. Also, if you are not careful enough, there is a big chance of having some fun in the process. Practice safely and remember, Nothing is true, Everything is permitted, with these words I conclude this book.
