Overcoming the Fear of Invocation



OVERCOMING THE FEAR OF INVOCATION.

 

 

                          There are few things that can be more inspiring and/or more soul stirring than an invocation to universal powers in ceremonial magic.  However, growing up in an American, Judeo-Christian home I was taught at an early age that to ask God for some thing or some quality required a lot of due diligence in order to make sure that what I asked for did not pervert the Will of God and therefore a sin.  God the ultimate power and his angels were to be approached with humility and fear.  Because of this childhood background, when I began practicing the art of ritual magic, I found that my invocations were timid and "lack luster".  I could imagine the angelic hosts that I was invoking, sighing in frustration and saying to each other how they couldn't believe that they came all the way to my place for pitiful ramblings or jumbled canned speeches.  Worse, sometimes I could imagine the heavenly hosts actually becoming annoyed and angered by my stumbling and timid address, leaving me to be tormented by the dark forces of Hades which instilled even more paranoia and fear.  I am finding that some magicians beginning the art of ritual are having similar issues and worry tremendously about coming off as stumbling, timid and unsure or they feel that they have to be overly cautious not to appear too forceful, too prideful, or as challenging the authority of God.

 

                      A lot of us that have walked a mostly solitary path of ritual magic know that in time every magician comes to the place where they are comfortable with their invocations even to the point of tossing aside the index cards and addressing Archangels, Planetary and Zodiacal forces as close personal friends that you are calling to come over for a visit.  Coming to this point of comfort in invocations on your own can be a trying process.  But, rather than have other magic artists suffer the chaos of doubt and second guessing it takes to get to that point, I found a piece written by David Griffin, the Imperator of the Alpha Omega, that made a lot of sense to me and may help ease some of the tensions of the beginning magician in the art of invocation.

                    To paraphrase a small part of Griffin's piece, he writes that in ritual a magician should view themselves and their ritual space as a microcosm or small universe corresponding to the large universe.  The large universe's multitude of energies are a kin to physical Sunlight; brilliant, unrestricted, and pure.  While our sphere of sensation and/or microcosm acts as a prism for that light, allowing focused streams of energy of different qualities and colors to stream in. 

 

                   Looking at invocation in this light we can see how the deities and powers we invoke to help "focus the Light through the prism" are like really awesome lab colleagues.  Therefore, when calling on our colleagues the process should be respectful, friendly, tactful, unforced, with a dash of humility and a whole lot of love and adoration.  Rest assured that your "colleagues" are not judgmental or annoyed with your requests.  They, like you, enjoy and love this great and wonderful art of the universe.

 

Hope you found this helpful

In LVX,

LiS