On Variations From and In Grimoires

February 21, 2021 By polyphanes in occult Tags: difference, grimoire, innovation, question, variation 4 Comments

A good question from an inquiring reader:

I’m just confused about something I see many occultists do, and that is simply this: deviating from the instructions given in the grimoires. In your wand-making posts, for example, you make substitutions, additions, and combine aspects from multiple sources, and you are not the only one who does this. But this is super confusing to me since the grimoires are all like, “this is the true wisdom of true divinity, so you’d better follow every rule to the letter or oooh there’ll be trouble!” So how is it possible to deviate from the instructions and still work effective operations?

It’s certainly an interesting question to ask, and a good one, too.

Consider the origin of the word “grimoire”, in that it comes from the same word we have as “grammar”. For us, grammar (without the article) is the set of rules we use to compose clauses, phrases, words, sentences, and the like to communicate with other people using language; a grammar (with the article) refers to a book that describes and lays out such rules. If you were to learn Japanese from a Japanese grammar book, it would tell you how to properly and correctly conjugate verbs and adjectives, where to use the subject and topic particles, and the like. It would also indicate to you what would be incorrect language, with the warning that you will not be understood properly if you use it. All grammar books tend to work in similar ways to this: use these rules properly as laid out and you’ll be understood, don’t and you won’t.

But the thing is, people break those rules all the time, and they’re understood all the same. Whether they use a non-standard dialect compared to the “standard” language of the grammar, whether they’re breaking rules ironically (e.g. “cat no like banana” or “I accidentally the thing”), or whether they’re using poetry that intentionally breaks some rules to maintain senses of beauty or aesthetics—the proper rules of grammar are broken all the time, and we still manage to understand people who do so. Sometimes it’s an honest error, like when a native Chinese speaker gets the English pronouns “he” and “she” mixed up (because they don’t historically have a gender distinction for the third person singular pronoun 他 tā); sometimes it’s because people have just adapted how they talk and have formed a “new standard” for themselves even if it’s not “book standard” according to this or that grammar. This is the danger with linguistic or grammatical texts, and why there’s a distinction between “prescriptive” linguistics (which describe language as it “ought to” or “should” be spoken from a top-down authority) and “descriptive” linguistics (which describe language how it’s actually spoken in real life from the bottom up).

It’s much the same with many grimoires and magical texts. What distinguishes a grimoire from a spellbook or Book of Shadows is that a grimoire doesn’t just provide a collection of spells, but a method and methodology—a “grammar”, if you will—of ritual and magic. And grimoires, like grammars, can be traced and investigated to ascertain their origins and development across and through time, culture, and language; we know for a fact that no one grimoire just appeared out of thin air, but comes in a long line of spiritual research and development, and even if it’s an original text (rare, but it happens!), we can still trace its context for clues about what information fed into it. For instance, the Heptameron of Pietro d’Abano and the planetary invocations from the Munich Manual both share a common origin, as does the Elucidarius Magicae, and all of these texts are based on other texts in the Solomonic grimoiric textual tradition, some of which can be traced back to earlier Arabic magical texts like the Shams al-Ma`arif. When we take a broader look at these grimoires in their histories and lineages, we definitely see changes, developments, innovations, and departure from earlier texts all the time; sometimes it’s because a new author-operant of a grimoire found an improvement or simplification to make, sometimes they made a copyist’s error, sometimes they tried to “aesthetically fix” an ugly or messy symbol they found which causes changes in the shapes or appearances of seals and sigils and the like (cf. the pre- and post-Mathers versions of the seals of the 72 demons of the Lemegeton Goetia).

If anyone told me that they had the one and true wisdom and method of magic and that any deviation from it whatsoever would land me in trouble, I’d laugh in their face; that’s obviously just not factual. But what these grimoires give us (in all their variation) as a whole isn’t just the notion that there’s more than one right way to do, write, or chant something; they each give us a baseline of operations. One of the reasons I encourage people who are looking or consulting a grimoire for something to work with one specific grimoire to the letter, at least at first, is because it gives them something to establish themselves with. Either they get results with it and they know what can happen when they follow the text, or they don’t get anything and either need to check themselves for departures from it or find out that maybe that method just isn’t for them. But getting this sort of baseline is important for when you do need to change things or extrapolate from the grimoire to do something new using old methods; after all, the fundamental idea of a grammar isn’t to tell you every possible correct sentence, but how to form correct sentences. Just so does a grimoire not tell you all that can be done, but shows you how to do all things by using its own “grammar” of magic and extending it as necessary. And, when you want to innovate, improve, simplify, adapt, or otherwise depart from the grimoire for whatever reason or need that arises, you know what you can compare against as a baseline because you’ve already done what the grimoire says, and can extrapolate from the grimoire from there. Remember that these grimoires were written by people who lived and breathed that magic in them; they know it works, because that’s what they’ve done and recorded as what works. This is the reason behind the “this is the true wisdom of true divinity”, because it’s gotten them there—it’s just that that’s their truth, and there’s usually more than one way to be true.

It is possible, of course, that deviation from the rules can (and does) land you in trouble; to use a food-based metaphor, there is no safe way to incorporate arsenic as an ingredient into a meal, even if you’d like for that meal to be colored a brilliant green, and there’s no way to use food to perform physical equations in the same way as you would with pen and paper. But if a recipe calls for buttermilk and all you have is Greek yoghurt, you can substitute one for the other and still come out with a great dish, and the recipe will still work. Sometimes it works because the thing you’re substituting and the thing you substituted are similar enough where you got your point across, or where they’re functionally and spiritually identical and it’d work either way; sometimes it works because you have no other choice but to make it work, because perhaps the original thing called for is unavailable or otherwise impossible to get or do anymore; sometimes it works because you make systemic changes that overall achieve the same goal by compensating in one area what you lacked or goofed on in another. What the grimoires often show is an ideal, perfect method of doing something, but the world we live in is hardly ever ideal; we do what we can to make things as ideal as possible, and what we can’t, we make up for in substituting, rearranging, or otherwise putting in elbow grease to make it work the rest of the way. An engineering textbook can give you the principles of building a bridge, and even show how to build a bridge under ideal conditions, but where on Earth is there a place where those ideal conditions actually exist? Living engineers using real engineering must make concessions to reality and work around things that aren’t ideal in order to make a safe and sturdy bridge that fulfills its travel throughput needs—but using the principles of engineering in that textbook, and following whatever governmental, market-based, and other regulations and restrictions they need to along the way (which the engineering textbook itself may not take into account).

For my part, with my Wand of Art, it’s not so much that I was deviating from a grimoire I was working, since I wasn’t really working from any one grimoire—at least, not intentionally so. But I was taking inspiration from and adapting several sources at once for an all-around all-purpose sort of tool that covers different aspects of wands from several grimoires. For that reason, I wasn’t so much “deviating from the instructions” as I was making new instructions entirely, just based on old ones. Besides, many of the grimoires offer designs and instructions not just as an ideal case, but also sometimes as a minimum requirements standard: so long as you do X, Y, and Z, it doesn’t matter what else you do, whether A, B, or Θ, even if you happen to mix the two. In this case, I read the grimoires in question as giving a minimum set of requirements for my wand to fulfill, and as such, I’m able to work with both. There’s also the matter of interpretation, such as by using Hebrew names of God instead of Latin ones, but since they’re effectively the same thing one way or another, it’s a clean substitution in many ways.

This is probably a bit longer of an answer than they (or you, dear reader) were anticipating, so to offer a summary: it’s possible to deviate from the instructions and still work operations because the instructions themselves are only an example of ideal situations and case-studies, and the fundamental method and methodology of a grimoire allows for making whatever improvements, adjustments, or fixes along the way to account for real-world scenarios—but no more than what’s necessary. Even then, each grimoire is just a snapshot of a particular book-based magical tradition and lineage, and each snapshot we can get shows how varied the real-time, real and living magical tradition can be. There is never “one true way”, but many ways to truth; it’s just up to us to find them and follow them, and sometimes we can take a detour along the way that ends up being better for us but not for others.

Reviewing the Trithemian Conjuration: Recap, Summary, Variations

July 16, 2019 By polyphanes in creative, link, materia, occult Tags: adaptation, ashen chassan, asterion, clavis inferni, design, drawing spirits into crystals, francis barrett, gateways through stone and circle, poke runyon, recap, red work, reviewing the trithemian conjuration, rufus opus, seven spheres, summary, the magus, trithemius, variation, veritable key of solomon 13 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of…well, rather, we finally finished discussing the early modern conjuration ritual The Art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals (DSIC), attributed to the good abbot of Spanheim, Johannes Trithemius, but which was more likely invented or plagiarized from another more recent source by Francis Barrett in his 1801 work The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer. Many who are familiar with it either read it directly from Esoteric Archives, came by it through Fr. Rufus Opus (Fr. RO) in either his Red Work series of courses (RWC) or his book Seven Spheres (SS), or came by it through Fr. Ashen Chassan in his book Gateways Through Stone and Circle (Fr. AC and GTSC, respectively). This whole time, I’ve been reviewing the tools, techniques, and technology of DSIC for my own purposes as well as to ascertain the general use and style used by other magician in the real world today, and earlier today we released the last in this series of posts. The only thing left to do now, I suppose, is to give a summary of what we’ve discussed in these 21 posts that had over 92,000 (!!!) words between them all; for comparison, this series of posts is nearly 63× the length of the actual ritual text of DSIC itself.

First, an index to all the posts in this series for ease of access:

So, what did we learn from this little blog project of mine we started back in May this year? Let’s talk about some of the high points and conclusions we can draw, including some stuff that we didn’t place anywhere else in our earlier discussions:

The ritual text The Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals is attributed to the Christian abbot Johannes Trithemius of Spanheim, but was most certainly not actually authored by him.
DSIC was first realistically published, despite older origins, in Francis Barrett’s 1801 The Magus.
DSIC serves as an implementation of conjuration based on many of the ideas, structure, and designs provided by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim in his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, referencing other entries in his earlier Three Books of Occult Philosophy.
DSIC takes Agrippa-style “good spirit” theurgic communion with spirits and combines it with Solomonic-style conjuration of “evil spirits”, especially from the Heptameron of Pietro d’Abano (which was translated into English and published with Agrippa’s Fourth Book).
Some elements of DSIC seem to be more Solomonic in nature and conflict with the Agrippan/theurgic content, and vice versa.
There are now largely two modern schools of implementing DSIC:
- That of the independently-trained modern Hermetic magician Frater Rufus Opus (Fr. RO) as he taught its use in his Red Work series of courses (RWC) and, later, his Seven Spheres (SS) book, which collectively take a fast-and-loose approach that combines or elides some elements of DSIC in favor of good results fast. Fr. Acher of Theomagica, also an early adopter of DSIC, falls in line with Fr. RO.
- That of the by-the-grimoire Solomonic magician Frater Ashen Chassan (Fr. AC), who takes a stricter approach as he teaches it in his book Gateways Through Stone and Circle (GTSC) to carry out all instructions and designs as close to the letter of DSIC as possible.
Despite the desire of many to perform ritual texts “by the book” or “to the letter”, oftentimes without incorporating other grimoires or literary influence, doing so with DSIC is not possible due to how little is actually specified and how it seems to reference other occult texts.
The sparseness of DSIC has necessarily led to wide divergence and variability—and as numerous discussions and debates—in how magicians apply DSIC, especially with a popular resurgence in occult literature and practice generally, especially from non-Western methods of occult practice that aren’t necessarily Christian or Hermetic in nature, which was the expected milieu of the audience of DSIC.
Based on Google searching and analytics, it honestly seems like there wasn’t any modern interest to speak of (at least, recorded or publicly discussed online) in DSIC up until the end of the first decade in the new millennium. There is at least one reference to this ritual, or something close to it, being performed in the 1800s (based on the description of a similar piece of equipment, the pedestal and crystal, in Frederick Hockley’s Occult Spells: A Nineteenth Century Grimoire), but little other evidence that the DSIC ritual was ever widely used.
It is known that Poke Runyon, aka Fr. Thabion, did bring up DSIC in his Ordo Templi Astarte (OTA) classes at least in the 1990s, but he never went into this text in depth either in the class or in his texts, presenting it merely as an example of crystal-centric conjurations of spirits within a more Ars Almadel-focused approach.
Additionally (hat-tip to the splendid Cole Tucker who told me about this after this post went up originally), Fr. Achad discusses DSIC briefly in chapter IV of his 1923 work Crystal Vision through Crystal Gazing, but only at a high level and in the context of crystallomancy and the use of scrying crystals generally. Though some people have encountered DSIC by this, it’s unclear how many or how often that has happened.
Besides Fr. Achad talking about it and Runyon discussing it, it’s unknown how popular this ritual was in modern Western occult practice (I can’t find anything online about it) until late 2006, when Fr. RO began documenting his use of the ritual online and using it in his RWC and his fundamental angelic conjuration ebook (no longer publicly available), Modern Angelic Grimoire, and its corresponding goetic text (soon to be republished), Modern Goetic Grimoire. Heck, it wasn’t even available on Esoteric Archives until April 21, 1999 (when I was in, like, fifth or sixth grade). This means that, in reality, the modern application (and adaptations) of DSIC was essentially pioneered by Fr. RO, with Fr. AC coming onto the scene later with a refocus on Solomonic grimoire authenticalism/purism/fundamentalism.
As has been shown by Fr. RO and by the actual experiences and implementations of many who came after him, DSIC is a highly flexible ritual, and given how sparse it is in details and specifics, it could well be better considered as a ritual template instead of an actual ritual. This flexibility allows for adaptation, both in terms of tool use, prayer phrasing, and even the general context of spiritual or religious traditions, so long as a basic understanding of a hierarchical cosmology and framework of receiving and applying divine authority to work with spirits is maintained.
DSIC explicitly calls for there to be two people in the ritual, both a magician who conjures the spirit and a scryer who facilitates the communication of the spirit with the magician.
- This is exactly in line with the vast majority of Solomonic rituals going back to Hygromanteia and PGM times, if not earlier, which call for scryers or other assistants for the magician to be present, just in case the spirit appears to someone else besides the magician.
- This further allows the magician to focus strictly on managing the overall ritual and temple space, freeing them up to handle any eventualities should and when they occur, as well as handling other ritual needs such as incense consumption or notetaking.
- However, even though this is a best practice, most modern magicians forego having any assistants or scryers, since we tend to operate independently and alone. Whether you as the magician operate alone or with a scryer is up to you, depending on your own visionary, discernment, perception, and scrying skills.

Then there are a few great points that were brought up in the course of the discussions and comments of these posts:

From Pallas Renatus on the pedestal: if we take the use of the single Hebrew letter Yod as the single-lettered divine name of God per Agrippa and the hexagram as a generalized (solar?) symbol of divinity, then the hexagram with central Yod is a sign of the radiating power and divinity of God into all the cosmos. Placing this symbol upon the pedestal at the top gives it the centermost and highest symbol of divinity in the whole ritual apparatus: God radiating power and light downwards into and through the four archangels so as to empower and elevate, but also constrain and bind, the spirit present within it. It is, in effect, “a bare-bones form of what the Table of Practice tries to accomplish in [grander] form, but extended into the third dimension”.
On Facebook, Erneus from Magia Pragmatica mentioned that the “ten general names” of God from Agrippa (book IV, chapter 6), which are those that form the bulk of the divine names for the lamen, has an earlier origin from St. Jerome in his “De Decem Dei Nominibus” which he lists as El, Eloim, Eloe, Sabaoth, Elion, Ieje aser Ieje (treated as a divine name), Adonai, Ia (dominus), Iao (dominus), and Saddai.
Another great tip from Erneus was that the divine name On (from the wand design) isn’t a Hebrew name, but a Greek one (το Ων); this on its own wasn’t surprising, but he tipped me off that Agrippa himself translates On as Eheieh (אהיה) in book III, chapter 11. This means that, should one use Hebrew for the three divine names on the wand, you’d end up with three four-letter divine names: instead of Agla On Tetragrammaton, you’d have AGLA AHYH YHVH (אגלא אהיה יהוה). Along those lines, if one wanted to use something comparable to “Ego Alpha et Omega” (Revelations 22:13), you could use something like אני ראשון ואני אחרון from Isaiah 44:6 (“I am the first and I am the last”, aniy r’išōn v’aniy ‘aḥarōn). However, given the emphasis on Hebrew godnames (with the exception of “Tetragrammaton”), it’s unclear whether using On itself, either in Roman script or Greek script (ΩΝ) or Hebrew script (ון) really should be replaced by a Hebrew translation or not. This is a variant that I’d leave up to the individual magician to decide on (though I admit I do enjoy the look and feel of having three four-letter names on the wand, at least if Hebrew is used). However, given the DSIC author’s familiarity with Agrippa, it can’t easily be explained why they wouldn’t just use a Hebrew name in this case instead of a Greek, if Agrippa himself equated the two.
In the post about orienting and setting up the conjuration altar, Fuzzy brought up a point about orienting the table (or Table of Practice) separately from the altar; in other words, regardless which direction the altar is oriented, the table (or Table of Practice) would always be oriented towards the East (or North, if you’re Fr. RO in SS). To my mind, this would only really be important if you use the double-ring design of the table (or Table of Practice) that has a separate ring of names for the four directional entities (four kings or four archangels), because in the one-ring design, there’s no directionality to be had on the table (or Table of Practice). It would be weird for me, however, to have the triangle face in any direction besides away from you—especially if you use this method and face West in a conjuration, where the triangle would be pointing right at you, which I consider to be energetically and spatially dangerous. This also does away with the significance of how we arranged the names of the angels on the pedestal plate, which was meant to line up with the four directions when facing away from the magician; however, if we use any orientation of the altar besides East, that would necessarily have to be done away with, unless if we keep the orientation of the pedestal to the table the same. I’m not sure how I feel about not keeping the table (or Table of Practice) unaligned with the altar, but that is another valid variation, I suppose, so long as you’re using a separate piece of equipment for the table (or Table of Practice) instead of it being the surface of the altar furniture itself.
On the same post, Aaron Leitch himself chimed in and suggested another option for orienting the altar of conjuration: orient the altar towards the direction of the planet itself. For this, a skymap, compass, or ephemeris would be used, such that if you were to do a conjuration of the angel of Jupiter, and the planet Jupiter was positioned towards the north-northeast, you’d orient the altar towards the north-northeast. This is basically the system used in other astrological magic texts like the Picatrix. Moreover, Aaron suggests that whether the planet is above or below the horizon would also be significant so as to tap into the ouranic/celestial side of the planet when the planet is above the horizon or its chthonic/subterrestrial side when below the horizon. This would give an excellent refinement when used in conjunction with the planetary hour besides simply using a diurnal or nocturnal hour.

But, even after we’ve discussed so much, there are still a few lingering questions that could still be answered by others better than me in the future, perhaps after more research or experimentation:

Who is the true author of DSIC? I consider Barrett himself to be the most likely and obvious possibility, but it’s unclear whether he plagiarized this himself from another source or offered it as an original contribution under attribution to Trithemius.
Was DSIC written more as a distillation/simplification of the Heptameron taking influence from Agrippa’s Fourth Book, or was it the reverse, that it was written as an implementation of a combined “good spirit”/”bad spirit” approach from Agrippa, and filling in the gaps with the Heptameron?
What were the specific Solomonic influences that led to DSIC? The Heptameron is a clear influence, but were there others? How wide and how far back can we trace the Solomonic roots of DSIC?
What did the original author of DSIC have in mind for the design of the table, notably left out of the DSIC illustration?
How widely was DSIC used after its publishing in Barrett’s The Magus, especially when compared with other forms of conjuration used in Western occulture?
What would a full, detailed implementation of DSIC look like in a Iamblichean (or otherwise generally Hellenic) Neoplatonic adaptation? A PGM adaptation? An Islamic adaptation?
What would a non-Hermetic, non-Solomonic adaptation of DSIC look like? Would such an adaptation even be possible without relying on a common hierarchical monistic/monolatric/monotheistic divine structure?
What would a full, detailed implementation of Agrippa’s theurgic communion with “good spirits” look like? His ecstatic communion with “good spirits”? His conjuration of “evil spirits” to a circle? What other grimoires would most closely resemble Agrippa’s description of such methods?
What is the specific Hebrew letter inside the hexagram present on the gold plate, pedestal, and wand? Fr. RO interprets it as a Yod, Fr. AC interprets it as a Daleth, and Jake Stratton-Kent interprets it either as a Daleth or Resh. I’m in the Fr. RO camp of interpreting it as a Yod, which seems to be the most sensible choice, but we all know that Western grimoire authors and illustrators weren’t always the best at accurately writing the shapes of Hebrew letters.
Regardless of the specific letter used, what is the role of the hexagram with central letter on the plate, pedestal, and wand in the DSIC illustration? What does the original author of DSIC mean to signify by it?
More generally, what is the original, specific role of the three symbols on the pedestal, that of the hexgram with central letter, pentagram, and cross? Where did these symbols come from?
I’ve never been satisfied with a simple or high-level answer regarding the role of the four kings, nor why they would be mixed up in these ritual tools if it’s not a purely Solomonic approach; after all, Agrippa says nothing about them, even in his Solomonic approach, nor are these kings used in the Heptameron, so their inclusion suggests another source or influence entirely. What is their specific role as far as DSIC is concerned? How does that role compare to the four archangels? What is the nature of this role at all?

Now, it’s clear that DSIC, beloved (or not) as it is by many modern magicians and conjurers, isn’t exactly the most clear, unambiguous, or detailed of texts, and that has led to a number of variations in how DSIC can be implemented—on top of the normal adaptations magicians make, anyway, due to laziness, convenience, availability of supplies, or differences in cosmological framework. So, what about a summary of some of the more reasonable variants that we’ve either encountered or thought up in our endeavor? We can’t account for every possible variation, but there are a number that even a strict reading of the sparse text in DSIC allows either due to vagueness or ambiguity in the text, or merely because it simply doesn’t say:

Using a quartz as the material for the crystal or using a beryl instead, or some other kind of crystal appropriate to the working (especially for the planet of the spirit to be conjured, e.g. citrine or orange calcite for the Sun)
Using a crystal that’s clear-colored or colored otherwise (probably a light tinge of red, especially if beryl is used)
Arranging the three symbols of the hexagram with central Yod, pentagram, and cross with the divine name “Tetragrammaton” in different orders on the gold plate or in the triangle on the Table of Practice
Using the hexagram with a central Yod on just the side of the angels on the pedestal or on both sides, replacing it with a cross, or using no holy symbol at all
Using a double circle for the table (or Table of Practice) with one ring of names, or using a triple circle with two rings of names
Using any of the following in any order for the planets on the table (or Table of Practice): name, glyph, characters (either Agrippa or Ars Paulina), number square seal
Using either one or both of the following for the planetary angels on the table (or Table of Practice): name, seal (usually from Heptameron)
Writing the names of the angels in Latin script or Hebrew for the table (or Table of Practice), as well as the specific spellings used in either language based on the source you’re working from (Agrippa, Heptameron, etc.)
The order in which the planets/planetary angels are arranged on the table (or Table of Practice) in the ring of names
Writing the table (or Table of Practice) design permanently (e.g. engraving, woodburning, paint), or just temporarily (e.g. chalk, coal)
Making the table (or Table of Practice) on a small, portable disc, or actually putting it onto/into an actual table surface for permanent altar use
Using only one set of divine names used on the lamen based on the DSIC illustration, or varying the names in accordance with the general/specific names based on Agrippa
The specific number of pentagrams used on the lamen if only one spirit is to be called
Putting the name and seal of the planetary angel in the center hexagram on the lamen, or putting the name and seal of the planet in the central hexagram with the name and seal of the planetary angel in one of the pentagrams
Making the lamens always circular in shape, or shaping the overall form of the lamens in a shape concordant with its corresponding planet (e.g. triangular for Saturn)
Using the simple hexagram style of ring, or using the Lemegeton style of ring
Using just the lamen for the spirit to be conjurated, or using such a lamen in addition to a separate pentacle (i.e. pentacle of Solomon) in addition to the lamen
If a separate pentacle is called for, then either wearing the pentacle affixed to the reverse the lamen or wearing/concealing it separately
If a separate pentacle of Solomon is to be worn instead of a lamen, then either wearing the lamen for the spirit, or putting it under the crystal
Making the lamens in different materials (silver generally, wax, paper or parchment, in metals appropriate for the planet)
Using an actual spike-/stake-like brazier or using a tripod brazier for incense
Using a properly consecrated Liber Spirituum, or just a generic notebook for writing down information from conjurations
Having a permanently-drawn magic circle (tarp, tiles, etc.), or just drawing one out in chalk or coal per conjuration
Writing the three divine names in the magic circle in different typefaces and facing different ways, or making them all face the same way in the same typeface
Orienting the magic circle to align the four hexagrams with the four directions, or orienting the magic circle such that the quadrant with the spirit’s seal faces the direction of the altar of conjuration
Wearing special ritual attire or spirit-specific costume for the ritual, or not
Engaging in preliminary preparatory practices involving fasting, abluting, purification, prayer, &c., or not
Placing the altar of conjuration outside the magic circle, or placing it inside the circle
Placing the altar of conjuration against a wall or in the middle of a room
Orienting the altar to face east always, or to face specific directions according to the planet of the spirit being conjured, or any direction at all that’s convenient
If using a table (or Table of Practice) separate from the altar of conjuration itself, always keeping the table (or Table of Practice) aligned to the four directions (if such alignment is meaningful based on the design) or orienting it in the same direction as the altar of conjuration
Keeping the altar of conjuration sparse (having only the table and pedestal/Table of Practice, crystal, and candles), or decorating it with other elements (e.g. tablecloth, more candles, talismans)
What time to begin the conjuration, i.e. starting the first prayer within the desired planetary hour or marking the start of the conjuration itself with the prayer of conjuration
Interpreting the three parts of the prayer of conjuration to be a single unit of prayer to be said at once, or each to be said separately in case earlier prayers did not bring the spirit to the conjuration and we need to spur them on faster

And then there are the variations that would or have already been made to account for individual magician’s divergent approaches to DSIC to account for material availability, personal inspiration, incorporation of ideas from other texts, a desire to be lazy or convenient, adapting the ritual for one’s own needs, erroneous understandings of the text carried on as workable practice, etc.:

Using a crystal, or using another form of scrying medium (mirror, water vessel, etc.)
Using a crystal shaped like a sphere or in another shape
Using a crystal that’s entirely clear or has inclusions in it
Using a gold plate to suspend the crystal, or using gold-like metal e.g. brass
Using a gold plate in the pedestal, or merely gilding or painting in gold the two sides of the pedestal
Using ebony or ivory for the pedestal, or using another material entirely for it
Making the pedestal in the church-shape (as in DSIC) or the sunburst-shape (as in Hockley’s Occult Spells)
Incorporating a hexagram with a central Yod on the pedestal, a cross, both, or neither
Using a gold band around the crystal instead of a gold plate suspending the crystal
Using a pedestal to support the crystal on top of the table, or using a Table of Practice that combines the design elements of the pedestal and table upon which the crystal is placed
For the Table of Practice specifically when not using a separate table and pedestal: using the four kings (Oriens, Amaymon, Paimon, Egyn) or using the four archangels (Michael, Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel), or even both
Incorporating extra elements onto the table (or Table of Practice), e.g. signs and/or angels of the Zodiac
Writing the name of the spirit being conjured outside the hexagram/pentagram on the lamen, or omitting it entirely
Using ebony for the wand, or using another material entirely for it
Writing the characters for the wand in gold, or using another material entirely for it
Using both “Agla ✡ On 🔯 Tetragrammaton ✠” as well as “Ego Alpha et Omega” on the wand, or just the former
Using a hexagram plus a hexagram-with-central-Yod plus a cross on the wand, or replacing the empty hexagram with an empty pentagram to match the three signs on the pedestal
Using a ring of Solomon following the Lemegeton model, the Barrett Heptameron model, or another ring entirely, such as the Agla Ring of John Dee
Using two candles for the conjuration, or one, or some other number
Using candles for the conjuration, or using oil lamps instead
Consecrating the candles (or lamps) before use, or not consecrating them
Using an actual brazier for the incense vessel, or using whatever is most convenient
Using loose incense that would be used on charcoals or in flames, or using self-igniting incense
Using the magic circle design in DSIC, or using another magical circle design e.g. the one from the Heptameron
Using a physical magic circle at all, or just tracing one out with the wand instead
Incorporating other design elements into the magic circle besides just what’s already there in DSIC
Consecrating the various elements and implements used in DSIC beforehand, or not
Operating with a scryer, or operating alone
Operating with non-scryer assistants, or not
Using lamens with multiple spirits on them to bring them all at once to the conjuration, or using chained summoning to bring them after a primary spirit has been brought to the conjuration
Using just the one prayer of conjuration from DSIC for all spirits of all kinds, or using varying kinds of prayers for specific spirits or specific kinds of spirits for the prayer of conjuration
Using the Christian-language prayers of the DSIC text itself, or using alternative adaptations to allow for non-Christian prayers
Including preliminary calls to one’s holy guardian angel, agathodaimōn, or supernatural assistant

Alright, that sums it up for this blog project. But, before we call it quits, there is one last thing I wanted to share. One of the variations we offered earlier in the post is a variation on the table that uses a proper “double circle” with but a single ring of names. It’s something I wanted to return to, but there wasn’t much of an opportunity to fit in it anywhere else in our discussion. Since I think this is the proper interpretation of the DSIC instructions, I wanted to give a better-designed version of that that contains the proper design elements of the planets and the four kings, all written in the Latin script. Thus, this is what I would recommend for use as a table, plus the front (three symbols and Tetragrammaton) and back (four archangels) of the pedestal inscriptions:

And a secondary variation that could be used as a Table of Practice, based on some of the variations we discussed earlier as well, that I think best combines the design elements of the table and the pedestal into a single piece of equipment, again in the Latin script:

And also, a set of lamens for use with the seven planetary angels, using Latin script for the names, the names taken from the Heptameron, and using a custom set of divine names on the outer ring, both general and specific according to Agrippa:

And notes on the foregoing designs:

I standardized the spelling of all names to use the Latin letter I to render I, J, and Y (thus “Iehovah”, “Iah”, and “Iod” instead of “Jehovah”, “Yah”, or “Yod”), and likewise the Latin letter V to render U, V, and W (thus “Vriel” instead of “Uriel”).
I moved the divine name Tetragrammaton, split as it was before, but inside the triangle, under the three symbols and above the four archangels. This way, all of the design elements of the pedestal are now within the triangle entirely, which makes more sense, instead of some being inside and some being outside.
I used the seals of the Four Kings from the Clavis Inferni, specifically based on those of the wonderful mage-artist Asterion of Practical Solomonic Magic from his February 2014 post. I used the names of the Four Kings from the Clavis Inferni, too, which agrees more with Agrippa’s spellings from book III, chapter 24 rather than the spellings in the Scale of Four from book II, chapter 7, though I keep the directional (and thus elemental) associations from Agrippa rather than the Clavis Inferni. “Maimon” here is used instead of “Amaymon” because Maimon is better attested in older texts and cuts down on crucial space usage.
I included two glyphs for each entity in the outer ring on the table/Table of Practice. For the planetary angels, these are the planetary glyph itself as well as the Heptameron seal for the angels; for the four kings, these are the elemental glyph associated with their directions as well as their seal from the Clavis Inferni. This satisfies the requirements of the design of the table without sacrificing clarity for the sake of space management, interpreting “seals or characters” for the planetary elements to refer to just the seal of the angels. Although the DSIC spec only says to include the names of the four kings, I added in the elemental glyphs and seals for them to make the design consistent between the planetary angels and the kings.
I changed the direction of the planetary angels and kings on the one ring to start at the bottom and go clockwise in the proper descending order, starting with Cassiel of Saturn and going clockwise from there. This actually makes it descending instead of technically ascending as in the earlier post.
Though I used the Magical Calendar for the seals for most of the angels, I pulled the seals for Sachiel of Jupiter and Cassiel of Saturn from the Heptameron of Pietro d’Abano due to their relative clarity and, in the case of Cassiel, completeness.
Starting the ring of names at the bottom makes a sort of “gate”, with the most subtle spiritual force (Saturn) on the left hand and the most dense material force (Earth presided over by Maimon) on the right hand. This organization, read clockwise, helps not only to draw spirits into manifestation under all the seven spheres and four corners of the world, but as we gaze into the triangle from the “bottom”, we can picture our sight “entering in” from the bottom, swirling around clockwise, and exiting once it makes a full cycle back out to us to bring into ourselves a manifest vision of the spirit being conjured.

As for me and my own practice, with any recommendations I might make of my own to implementing DSIC?

Ebony, ivory, and gold are fantastic if you can get them, but if you can’t, there are always workarounds. Their presence certainly helps, but their absence does not impede. Specifically, while ebony for the wand is ideal, I don’t think the material for the pedestal is at all that significant (as the text itself gives you a choice between ebony and ivory); the important part is the gold plate itself. Plus, there are ethical issues involved in either material, with ivory often being illegally taken and harvested, and ebony increasingly becoming endangered.
Likewise, no, you don’t need a temple room if you don’t have the space or allowance for one. It’s great if you can, and definitely something to aim for, but not having a dedicated temple space is not going to stop you from doing great magic.
The only reason to use a Table of Practice, in which you (according to the usual interpretations) pick either the four kings or the four archangels but not both, is to avoid using the pedestal. Even if you can’t go all-out on a full ebony pedestal with solid gold plate, Fr. FC’s idea of using a simple painted band around the crystal is sufficient. The design here matters more than the materials, I’d argue, and the design of the conjuration apparatus as a whole requires both the four kings and four archangels. However, if you still wanted to forego the pedestal, you could still reasonably argue for using either set of names.
The most proper construction of the pedestal for the crystal, as I read and consider it, is to have the crystal exposed on the front side (with the three symbols and the divine name “Tetragrammaton”), but gilded or covered with smooth gold on the reverse (the side of the four names of the angels); this would explain the dark coloration of the crystal orb in the DSIC illustration that’s not distinct from the color of the plate itself. The two candles should be placed on either side of the table, pedestal, and crystal and brought forward just a bit, not directly to the side, so that the light of the two candleflames can enter into the crystal ball, illuminating and reflecting it as a spherical mirror. This is the most ideal setup; barring that, with the crystal exposed on the rear of the pedestal, one should have a third candle positioned directly behind the crystal, in addition to the two burning on the sides (which should still be positioned a little forward). This latter setup would form a triangle around the crystal, and would provide light into it evenly from all three directions.
Make your tools large enough to be useful but not too large so as to sacrifice portability and flexibility, as always. The specifics are up to you and your comfort.
Even though DSIC prescribes a specific kind of magic circle (a much-simplified form of the one used for the Heptameron), I don’t think it fundamentally matters, so long as a circle is used, even if just one traced on the ground. Using a circle custom for the spirit to be conjured, however, can be beneficial in both forging a stronger link to the spirit as well as protecting against said spirit.
Use a pentacle of Solomon (I’m most in love with the one from the Veritable Clavicles of Solomon). It shouldn’t be necessary, but it can always be useful, especially if things go sideways. This pentacle should be worn on the body of the magician; if the lamen of the spirit is worn, the pentacle should be on the reverse, but otherwise, the lamen should be placed underneath the pedestal (sized appropriately to fit within the triangle of the table) or under the crystal (sized appropriately to fit within the triangle of the Table of Practice).
No need for a scryer if you don’t want one, but it can definitely help. Ditto for assistants.
Over my own practice, I developed certain prayers for putting on the ring and also anointing oneself with oil before major works like this that I like using.
I cannot recommend enough the Prayer of Joseph the Visionary to use before scrying sessions, the prayer of which was shared once upon a time on Jason Miller’s old blog.
Likewise, a brief invocation of one’s holy guardian angel, supernatural assistant, agathodaimōn, etc. is extremely worth your time, no matter what kind of spirit you’re using. Any such invocation would work, whether a traditional Catholic prayer, one from the Ars Paulina, or the one that Fr. RO uses adapted from the Headless Rite.
Take the preliminary preparation period seriously; don’t skimp on your daily prayers, purification, ablution, abstinence, and the like.
Build up on prior conjurations, especially if you want to take Fr. RO’s extreme methods of his one-week cycle of “Seven Spheres in Seven Days”, his five-week cycle of going through the planets in descending order, or a two-week cycle of going through the planets in ascending order. Avoid heavy banishings done in the temple space beyond asperging with holy water so as to keep the resonance of previous works around.

Thank you all for sticking with me over these past number of weeks, and I hope you all enjoyed and learned from what we’ve discovered, discussed, and dreamt up!

And, finally, one last thing: despite the length and detail I went into regarding DSIC, and despite the repeated exhortations of many of my friends, colleagues, and family to do so, I have no intentions (at least at the present time) of writing an actual book about this topic. Given that there’s already enough hard-published literature about DSIC courtesy of Fr. RO and Fr. AC, and between all the supplies and tools needed for implementing DSIC—even if one takes a bare-bones magic-on-a-budget approach—I figure that people have probably spent enough money on this ritual as it is, and my writing this and sharing it publicly on my website is as much for my benefit as it is for my readers. If you need to, just bookmark this post, share it with your friends, and save it for ease of access to the rest of the posts in this series, or print out the individual posts and stuff them in a binder for your personal use. However, if you found this series of posts helpful, thought-provoking, or entertaining and wished you could throw money at me anyway, consider throwing a few bucks my way through Ko-fi!

It’s certainly not necessary or expected to do so, but it would help me continue my research, experimentation, and web-hosting, and any and every donation for what I share for free on my website is always deeply and sincerely appreciated from the bottom of my heart. Alternatively, consider checking out what ebooks and services I have for sale, both on my website and on my Etsy! That’s also a great way to support the things I do, stuff I make, and posts I write. But, even if you don’t, your reading my blog and hopefully getting something of use out of it is honestly payment enough for me, and I thank you merely for being my reader and companion on this fun little Hermetic path we walk together.

On the One True Geomancy (or Astrology, Alchemy, Etc.)

September 20, 2018 By polyphanes in geomancy, philosophy, whining Tags: difference, different, history, monolithic, research, study, tradition, variation 4 Comments

Within reason, of course, I enjoy fielding questions from my readers through social media, whether it’s through @s on Twitter or messages on Facebook. I do my best to answer them as they come, and I generally have an answer, though it might take me a bit to compile it in full. Sometimes, the answer just can’t be made simple enough for a quick message, and we need to engage in a proper conversation to flesh everything out. However, on occasion, some of those questions or the discussions we have over them raise something up in my mind that I think needs to be explored more, and this is just one such an occasion.

One of my friends on Facebook—introduced to me by a mutual friend over (what else?) geomancy—had some questions and problems with reading over some of my posts, specifically where I catalog an assortment of geomantic texts’ attributions of elements to the figures. Basically, in that post, I go over how there’s a lot of talk in books modern and classical about how to reckon the elemental rulerships of each of the figures, and there are a surprising number of variations about how to go about just that. Modern confusion can arise from John Michael Greer’s use of a dual system of outer and inner elements of the figures, outer elements based on Zodiacal attributions and inner elements based on structural concerns, and I’m sure that I haven’t much improved on that with my own system of primary and secondary elements (though I find it increasingly useful). My friend was happy to scrap the outer element system of JMG, but after reading my post, things only got more confused and muddled for her. She vented a bit to me about some of her frustrations in learning geomancy from my blog:

I think I am a bit disheartened. According to your work even the planetary rulerships vary from Agrippa to the Golden Dawn. When I found geomancy, I was excited because it was based on numbers and my study of sacred geometry, and it made me hope that this system was at root based upon the same principles. After reading a lot of your work. I am left with “everyone does it different, good luck!”

You know what? That’s completely fair, and it’s easy for me to have lost sight of that. I appreciate her bringing me back down to earth a bit by sharing her feelings with me on this.

As you may have noticed, dear reader, the Digital Ambler is my blog. Yes, it’s a website where I advertise my services and ebooks and share my research and rituals and make myself available for a variety of consultations and readings, but first and foremost, the Digital Ambler is my blog. I write about what I want on my blog at the rate I want with the focuses I want in the way I want; it is, after all, my blog. However, I write my blog for the public to read not just to keep track of my own notes, experiments, projects, ideas, and studies, but also to help others in the occult, Hermetic, and geomantic communities as well. Over the years, my blog has become something of a resource for many, and I take a bit of pride and satisfaction and fulfillment that I’m able to help at least a few people through my writing.

One of the ways I think I help is that I share my research and notes, and when it comes to geomancy, there’s a lot to research—about a thousand years, to be precise, across Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. Even with my limited resources, I have access to texts by John Case, Robert Fludd, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Christopher Cattan, John Heydon, Bartholommeo della Parma, Gerard of Cremona, and Pietro d’Abano, to say nothing of more modern authors ranging from Franz Hartmann to Stephen Skinner and JMG himself. As time goes on, I hope to get access to even more obscure materials that exist in undigitized, microfiche, or manuscript form. And, I expect, as I get access to more such resources, I’ll learn more about how geomancy was practiced by a variety of practitioners across the millennium it’s been in use.

As a researcher, it’s evident and plain to me that geomancy is not a single, fixed subject. Yes, even from its inception and introduction into Europe, there have been many things fixed and stable about the art: the basic meanings of the figures, the basic use of the Court and Shield Chart, how to use the House Chart, what planets the figures refer to, and so forth. However, there are a great many things that vary between one author and the next: whether this technique or that is more useful, how many variations on a single technique there might be, how to assign the zodiac signs to the figures, how to assign the elements to the figures, how to do this or that and…well, as can be seen across many of the posts on my blog where I document classical techniques, there’s a fair amount of variation in geomantic practice. For me to introduce that into my blog is part and parcel of my research: I research to document what was done, no matter how it was done, so I can figure out what was kept back then and why, as well as what I might keep that works and how to make what works work even better.

Why is there so much variation in what was done? Simply put, it’s because geomancy is not a monolithic tradition: there is no canon, no centralization, no governing authority that says “this is proper geomantic practice” and “that is not proper geomantic practice”. We in our modern age are used to such centralized authorities certifying what’s in and what’s out or what’s good and what’s bad to the point where we take it for granted, and we expect to see that such centralization would be present in previous eras. It’s simply not the case. Sure, there were commonly-available resources and texts, especially after the invention of the printing press and the beginning of mass-produced books, but it still was nothing like the scale of today’s “Art and Practice of Geomancy” or “Geomancy for Beginners” or “Geomancy in Theory and Practice”. What was available were texts produced on a much smaller scale available to a smaller percentage of wealthier people who could afford books within a much more localized region; besides those, there were actual, living, breathing geomancers who not only practiced, but taught as well. Though I’m sure some students of geomancy kept in touch with others, each geomancer was likely to be left to their own devices, see what works, and see what doesn’t, then develop and refine their own practice on their own. Couple a few decades of that with books that may not always be 100% correct or vetted for typos and clarity, and minor variations are bound to result.

The commonalities between different geomancers and texts vastly outweigh the differences between them, to be sure, but many of us who like to investigate the details and ply those for whatever we can might be foiled by encountering so many different ways to assign figures to elements or what have you. As my friend said, it can often come across that, when I present my notes on how geomancers of the past practiced this art, it might just come across as “everyone does it different, good luck”. To an extent…yeah, actually. Everyone did do it different. Heck, everyone still does it different; I don’t do the same exact geomancy that Stephen Skinner or JMG or Al Cummins or Eric Purdue might do. We all understand the basics of geomancy, and the commonalities of our practices far outweigh our differences, but there are definitely differences to be had.

To be fair, though, this isn’t just a thing with geomancy. Astrology has the same variations across its many thousands of years of practice and development based on era, land, language, and author. Today, you’ll still find arguments about which house system is best, how to allot certain things to certain houses, whether the modern planets have any purpose in horary astrology, and so forth. You’ll find the same thing in general Hermetic magic (Golden Dawn or Thelema? Lemegeton or Grimoirum Verum? Heptameron or Trithemius?), in ancient Greek religion (Hesiod or Homer? Attic or Doric? Delphi or Dodona?), and really in any ancient tradition. No tradition is ever truly monolithic unless it was designed that way, and even then, if it’s at all taught and carried on by successive generations of students, there are bound to be variations. That’s how we ended up with Theravada and Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism from a single teacher, and within each vehicle of Buddhism all the different sects and schools thereof. That’s how we ended up with Catholic and Orthodox and Protestant Christianities, and all their own sects and denominations. Spiritual traditions, sciences, and lineages are inherently messy in their development; as I said to my friend, “if it’s confusing, it’s because there are a lot of different voices shouting different things under the same big tent”.

So what do we do about it? Is it really as simple (and confusing) as “everyone did it different, good luck”? Well…yes, actually. In my research-related posts on this blog, I don’t often just document what was done, but I also give my thoughts on what makes the most logical sense or what has the strongest justification, as well as share my own thoughts, experiences, and preferences on the variations on technique. I do my best to show my own practices and why I do things the way I do and where I get the things I do from, but at the end of the day, it’s a combination of study and experimentation that informs my practice: study the things that are common and fixed in the tradition, experimentation to see which variations work best. The way I teach geomancy is going to be different from other geomancers past and present because it’s going to be informed by my own practices, experiences, and experiments; consider that I find (much as Robert Fludd himself did) that the techniques to predict letters and numbers are crap. Heck, even among geomancers today, what I consider vital and important to the art (as far as details go, at least), Al Cummins may find ridiculous or nonsense, and vice versa. That’s fine! We each have our own opinions informed by our own studies, and that’s great! It’s not going to be as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 where there’s only one right answer, but it’s going to be “which art movement is better to understand the 19th century occult movements, Pre-Raphaelite or Art Nouveau?”.

If you’re looking for the One True Geomancy (or One True Astrology, or One True Solomonic Grimoire, or One True Alchemy, etc.) with all and only the right techniques, well, you might be disappointed. There’s really no objective, centralized, certified Manual of Geomantic (or Astrological, Solomonic, Alchemical, etc.) Practice out there, nor will there ever be. The best you can do is find a single teacher and study what that one teacher teaches, and even then, they might change their views over time, just like you will. In the meantime, though it might be a rough road to follow, learning what was done and seeing all the variants out there of a given technique is helpful because it informs you of what was done before to give you an idea of what works and what options you have when working your own practices. In doing so, you have guides that point in useful directions (maybe not always the right directions) to show you where you should focus your practice or steer your practice towards or away from. Experimentation is a must in this and every kind of occult art, but you can and should listen to your peers and colleagues and teachers to see what was done before so you don’t invent the wheel all over again and again and again.

The Digital Ambler

Always Forward Between Heaven and Earth

Tag Archives: variation

On Variations From and In Grimoires

Reviewing the Trithemian Conjuration: Recap, Summary, Variations

On the One True Geomancy (or Astrology, Alchemy, Etc.)