3rd Grade, Week 2: Eyeless evocation

What is the evocation
Evocation is a practice of summoning spirits to appear outside of you as opposed to invocation which calls spirits inside yourself (more of that later).

Will the spirit be visible
For the spirit to be visible you either have to develop a specific clairvoyant sight or the spirit has to manifest physically (we will learn that later). For now we will have to stick with "feeling the spirit's presence", we will have to stick with eyeless evocation.

What is an eyeless evocation
Eyeless evocation is a ritual performed with a closed eyes. During the ritual you will have feelings of "there is someone in this room with me", actually there will be multiple signals, as we specified before, there are always a lot of lurking spirits around rituals.
This feelings you will have will allow your mind to get to the gnostic state, right frame of the mind to perform Magickal practice. The reason is that the feeling of someone being in your space and you cannot really see him will force your subconsciousness to allow you to access other senses, in return you will be able to feel these spirits even more and freak out even more, it's a recursive cycle. During the first try you will probably hear humming, random words or parts of phrases, you might also see a flash of a figure or something like that.

Warning
I have already told you how the ritual looks like, how to prepare your incantations, you are pretty much ready for the evocation, but there is one thing I want to tell you about the eyeless evocation. Once you close your eyes to perform the ritual, keep them closed till you finish the ritual. No matter what you see, hear or feel, don't open your eyes. You might even hear voices of your relatives standing next to you, chances are these won't be what you think it is. For that reason lock your room or hide in some distance place for the ritual.

What happens if you open your eyes? In better case you will see nothing, your mind will drift back to the normal waking state and you just wasted your time. In the worst case you will see something that will earn you a lifetime in a padded cell but I cannot really say you would be actually able to notice that in such a condition. Well, or you will see just an entity you have evoked, but still, don't risk.

Few improvements for the ritual setup
If you don't believe in yourself, use a blindfold. If you want to at least know where the spirit is, put two chairs in your ritual space facing each other. Sit on one of the chairs and you can expect the spirit you are calling will sit in the other one.

If you want to stand during the ritual, just place a summoning triangle on the floor. Solomon's summoning triangle is pretty easy to find on the internet or you can just draw a triangle within a circle, that's it, no brainer.

Don't use normally lit room (that would be stupid), but don't sit in the darkness either (that would be a very creepy experience), use candles to light the room. Dancing shadows will add to the gnosis, plus candle light is very warm and calming, just make sure no open flame is too close to you so you won't burn yourself accidentally.

Have a bag of salt ready in your pocket. If you really have to quickly interrupt the ritual, take the salt from the bag and throw it around yourself in all four directions.

Don't panic! No matter what you see, hear, feel or fear, don't lose your cool, the other chair might fall back, stuff can fall from the tables, glass can break, something may appear to breathe at your face from the distance of few inches, be ready for that and keep calm. If it is unpleasant either tell the spirit to stop it or you can use license to depart to stop the whole ritual or you can use your emergency salt.

3rd Grade, Week 2: Preparing own incantations

What is an incantation
An incantation or enchantment is a charm or spell created using words. An incantation may take place during a ritual, either a hymnor prayer, and may invoke or praise a deity. In magic, occultism, and witchcraft it is used with the intention of casting a spell on an object or a person and may employ the use ofpharmakeia. The term derives from Latin"incantare" (tr.), meaning "to chant (a magical spell) upon," from in- "into, upon" and cantare"to sing". --Wikipedia

What to expect
This grade is mainly about evocations so that will be our focus here. Sorry there won't be much detail for anything else but readers can hopefully fill these gaps with logic.

Existing incantations
Probably every grimoire has its own incantations, most famou probably being the Bornless ritual from Goetia (most probably Crowley's addition, but I can be mistaken).

Grimoires usually ask you to memorize their incantations, which actually isn't a very good practice. Firstly it makes the incantation a routine, somethig you can do without really thinking about it.  Secondly it kills the creativity and honesty.

Your incantations should always come from your heart and belief, partially scripted and partially created on the fly. You can actually even memorize some passages from well known incantations and use them during yours for the dramatic effect or when words are not exactly coming to you.

Sample incantation
First of all we should specify the type of the operation, in this case it will be an evocation. Secondly we should specify an entity we are going to evoke. I don't want to mention any real entity yet so let's go for a fictional one.

Name: Posmiol
Element: Air
Planet: Venus
Ability: To find long lost friends

Description:
Posmiol is a mighty spirit, commanding 7 legions of familiar spirits. His favorite form is an unicorn and he shows in this form most of the time. He can be commanded by the Magician to take a human form, then he appears as a tall old man with long white beard and his forehead has a symbol of pyramid tattooed on it, this tattoo represents the horn of his unicorn form.
In his human form he is able to speak about your long lost friends and give you the description of their fate. His unicorn form makes him unable to speak but in return his ability becomes more powerful. Posmiol in his basic form is able to bring your friends to your doorsteps or force them to contact you in a very short period of time.

It's possible that many of you will actually try this and Posmiol will start his existence, but he doesn't really need to exist for now.

Let's start
So, we have our fictional spirit, now we can finally prepare the incantation to call him, because we didn't see our friend Suz for quite some time and we would like to get in touch again. The prepared incantation could look as follows:

Posmiol, I call you in the name of everything divine and pure, I call you in the name of everything that is black and dirty, I call you in the name of Chaos, appear before me and grant my wish. Appear before me in your favorite form of the unicorn, I call you by the name of all the Sylphs, elementals of the Air element, your base element. Show yourself in the mirror/water/dream. I command you by the forces of Venus, don't make me wait. I command you in the name of Haniel, mighty spirit, grant my wish and find my friend Suz, make him/her to contact me within next 3 days. Posmiol, grant my wish and bring no harm to me or those close to my heart.

When the incantation is ready, read it a couple of times, maybe modify it a bit, let your creativity to lead you. When you think you are ready, toss your notes away and do the incantation. If some words are forgotten, just replace them during the process, improvise, that's what makes you part of the ritual, part of the incantation.

3rd Grade, Week 2: Magickal prayer

What is a Magickal prayer
According to Papus the Magickal prayer is the most pure and divine version of Magick ceremony, as such it shouldn't be done regularly but only during special occassions so it doesn't become a mindless and boring habit, but always stems from the heart.

How to perform the Magickal prayer
First of all, I am going to present my modified version here, if any of you want to learn the original, you should study Papus' amazing work.

First of all, the prayer is a ritual, check for the basic format of rituals as described in previous section regarding preparation and finishing of the ritual (centering, grounding, casting the circle, etc), as for the content of the ritual, you stand facing a direction of East, or North, or black mirror, or a chair and you pray to the force you believe in (God, deities, spirits, Chaos, life current, whatever...).

I understand this might look too simple, but it really isn't. Your words should come directly from your heart, which at first goes really slowly as you don't really know what you can talk about. Can you cuss? Can you beg for something? Can you ask for cursing of your enemies? Can you ask for anything at all?

The prayer should come from your heart so there really isn't any limit of what you can say or how, I should just warn you about few things. First of all, praying people tend to have moral limitations. They think they shouldn't ask about anything specific because that would be selfish. So they usually ask for a "more opportunity to grow". I would say that the force you pray to have a very specific form of humor and you often get what you ask for. Well, how "opportunity for growth" be translated? Sometimes you get some crazy illness no doctor knows how to cure, sometimes your house burns down and sometimes you lose your job and become a homeless. Considering that you originally wanted a new ferrari this fate is far away from your desires.

Secondly don't do the prayer because you have to, it must be a "want", not a "need", you must have a correct mood for it else don't do it at all.

Don't try to be too formal. After all we speak about forces that know about all your masturbations, cussing and drug abuse even sooner than you do (that's a bit creepy, isn't it?). But don't be too informal, a little bit of respect won't hurt you. After your prayer is done, close the ritual as you are used to.

3rd Grade, Week 2: Charging the black mirror

Now it's time to charge our mirror. The mirror, just like any Magickal tool, must be "yours", it must become a part of your Self. First part of this process is hidden in the creation of the mirror, tools you craft with your own hands have a much bigger sentimental value then things you simply buy and more time you spend with crafting and decorating your items, more valuable these items will be for you.

Put your mirror in the front of yourself, you can be sitting, standing, the mirror can be on the table, floor, simply anywhere. My personal approach is to sit down and place the mirror on my lap, that makes me more sentimental for me.

Now it's time to let your mirror absorb your magnetic and electromagnetic fluids. Place your right hand just closely above the mirror, waving over the mirror as if you were petting its surface (don't touch the surface, have your hand just above it). Don't make the movement regular, use different patterns, speed, play with it as if you were touching your lover, be kind and gentle.

Do the "mirror petting procedure" for about 5 minutes, then switch your hands and repeat the process for another 5 minutes with your left hand. After you are finished you can put the mirror away, wrap it in clothes or whatever method of storing the mirror that you have chosen.

This procedure should be repeated every day for at least a week before you use the mirror for the first time. Also remember, more often you charge the mirror, more powerful tool it becomes.

Some of you might find it a bit problematic to hold your hand above the surface for 5 minutes, if your mirror has a thick frame, you can use it to support your hand to ease the pain, but this shouldn't be the concern as you are still supposed to do your daily physical exercises as presented in the first grade of this curriculum and therefore your physical body should already be much stronger than before.