Skrying and evocation are a large part of working Enochian in my opinion. Fortunately I have never met, or heard of, anyone who has suffered ill effects from evoking Enochian entities. So relax :) The Enochian entities for the most part are pretty benevolent. The cacodemons are another story altogether. However, I have found the cacodemons even more malevolent and more difficult to work with than the Geotic spirits for example. I do not recommend working with the cacodemons unless you have worked extensively with the Enochian system as well as with goetic spirits. Also, a solid knowledge of your darker aspects is essential when working with this type of entity. A good knowledge of magickal technique, meditation, ritual and the Enochian system is advisable before the practitioner ventures into working with any entities. Once can easily start with the skrying of the letters and symbols to start while they are learning the system. John Dee and Edward Kelly did not use a protective circle and triangle for example, they placed the skrying implement on the table top and recited the various prayers to god.
The Enochian angels tend to appear when called, answer the questions asked of them, and leave when asked. Keep in mind however, when you are skrying, just because you think an entity is gone, doesn�t necessarily mean it is. Make sure that you continue the operation until the end including the necessary banishings and license to depart if these are used in your system. During the skrying session I have found that the EE�s tend to get annoyed or evasive when asked obvious questions that they believe we already know the answers to, or that can be found easily in a book. I have done may skrying sessions where I become at a loss of what to ask, as all my questions suddenly seem stupid or irrelevant. The angels seem to enjoy pointing out the fact that I already know the answer! I have found that the more specific my questions are, the more of an explanation I tend to get. The more vague the question, the more vague the answer. Also, if you ask the EE�s a question that does not correspond to their domain, they may answer it, however it is more likely that they will refer you to the angel that rules over that particular area or ignore you.
Evocation is one of the most important aspects of the system. I believe that skrying can be learned early on with basic practices and a well grounded knowledge. However, when one first starts on the Enochian path, they should keep the skrying practice to once a week at the most as to not over exert themselves and to not over encumber their psyche. If you start to feel drained, overworked, not yourself, fuzzy headed or unstable, you should reduce the frequency of your skrying sessions and concentrate on grounding. Also, when you first start to practice skrying make sure that you perform a banishing or license to depart when you are done. The most important aspect for the beginning mage (first few years) is that in your mind there must be a clear distinction between day to day life and the rituals that you perform. If you find the feeling of the entity still with you after a working, or visions that persist after the working, go back into the temple and banish as well as give the license to depart again, until this no longer occurs. It may seem interesting or enjoyable to have continued Enochian visions, however it is useless in day to day life and can start to interfere if left unchecked. Also, if you start to have obsessive thoughts about a particular Enochian entity that you have worked with, it is time for a good banishing and some inner work to discover where this imbalance within yourself lies. If we are in harmony and balance an entity cannot harm or bother us.
The best way to practice skrying is to skry the Enochian letters first. The Enochian letters can easily be skryed by looking at the letter, building a visual image of it in your mind, then projecting the letter into your skrying device. Sitting in a relaxed receptive state and waiting for impressions or images also works extremely well. This practice should produce different images than the ones that you may have gained from just connecting with and contemplating the letters. In this case you are more likely to see entities, or a landscape, or visual images that represent the character of the letter. These images will also become more intense than the previous exercise.
After you have become comfortable with the whole practice of skrying and have skryed each of the Enochian letters, skrying of the angelic and lesser angels on the tablets can be done. If you are brand new to magick, this should be after at least one year of practice and extensive reading. It is best to start with one entity and work with them for awhile until you become very familiar with them. They will also often give you information on how to enhance your skrying ability. The more that you �get to know� an entity the better you will be able to understand them during skrying, and the more information that they will be willing to give you. I find that entities seldom teach you anything of much value during the first skrying session compared to what they will share after many sessions. However as you build up a connection with any particular entity, as well as show that you are dedicated, you will start to receive more and more information, as well as the quality of the information improving.
When performing Enochian evocation, you can work with a hierarchical structure, for example, if you were to call upon Aaetpio, the senior of Mars on the Earth tablet, you would call upon Aaetpio under the names of Oip Teaa and Pdoce; or you can just call the specific being in question that you wish to work with. Look at the diagram below to see where these names are on the great table.
If you were calling upon Dopa, who is one of the lesser angels in the water quarter on the earth tablet, you would call upon Dopa under the names of: Adopa, Oloag, Noalmr, and Oip, Teaa and Pdoce. In the second example, just the name of Adopa could also be used. This can be done by reciting the corresponding prayer that Dee wrote, or the one that you have written and included in your book.
For evocation it is extremely helpful to use the Enochian keys. Whether the keys were to be used with these entities is not known for sure, however, they have been shown to work very effectively in this type of working. I have also found the calls to work quite well when evoking entities from other magickal systems such as the goetia. I have found evocations in both cases to work far better when I implement the Enochian calls. The first and second call are to be always used in every Enochian evocation. These calls are related to the spiritual realm and sort of open the gate in my opinion. The second key must always be used with the first as they compliment each other and complete their energy current. After the first two keys are used, the practitioner can either go on with the corresponding prayer, or use the corresponding Enochian call before the prayer. The call would be chosen by it's elemental correspondences. The 16 remaining calls (after the first 2) easily correspond with the four elements and sub elements. As stated earlier which call is used when is not easily laid out, this can be decided intuitively or logically depending on your preference.
Reciting three calls in Enochian and a prayer may take awhile, however the calls, prayers and rituals work together to set up the energy necessary for the working. I have found that the calls and rituals start to build and put together the temple on a magickal level piece by piece. One analogy that explains this very well for myself as well as others that I have worked with is: Enochian evocation is sort of like flying an airplane, the pilot (main operator) is sitting in the cockpit flicking all of the switches and setting everything just right for takeoff. When each call is said, each conjuration spoken, and each symbol visualized it sets up the area of working just right for that particular operation. At the end of the last call or prayer, there is a sudden feeling as though the last switch has been put into the on position and everything is ready.
John Dee wrote several prayers for evocation of the EE's for use during his 19 day working, or conjurations in general. These prayers are very effective in calling forth the entities desired. John Dee�s prayers can be recited in the original Latin, or in the English translation, or perhaps even translated into Enochian. The English translations of the prayers are not perfectly accurate, but are pretty good. The available sources for the translated versions of these prayers can be found in James� Enochian Evocation, Turner�s Elizabethan Magick, or on the Esoteric Archives CD. The most important part is to do the prayers with feeling, as they say �enflame yourself in prayer�. I have also found that prayers which are written by the magickian themselves are even more effective then those recited from Dee . I have also experimented with using the evocations in the lesser key of Solomon for use with Enochian evocation, and have experienced good results. When using the evocations found in the keys of Solomon I have changed the words so that I am not commanding the spirits as is done with demonic forces. There are also many good evocations listed in the greater key of Solomon that were used with angelic entities that could work quite well. Also, some modern magickians have written out goetic style evocations in Enochian that also work very well with summoning the EE's. The primary example of this being in the back of Crowley �s edition of The Goetia. Concerning prayers with Enochian work, as long as one does not diverge too far from the basics and what has proven to work over the years, success will be obtained. I have found that the EE's, even though very unorthodox in many of their outlooks do tend to prefer proper ritual and prayers or evocations.
The appropriate skrying implements have been mentioned in the last chapter which outlined temple setup. The main rule of thumb is to use the skrying device that works best for you, as well as allows you to open up your inner seeing. The skrying device does not have power within itself; it is a tool that allows the magickian to open up their natural abilities. This skrying device is the object in which the conscious mind focuses upon. It is not within the crystal ball that the magickian sees the spirit, it is more of a tool for the subconscious to see beyond this world. The ball or mirror acts as a portal to allow us to see beyond our day to day �reality�. One mistake that can be made by the magi is to believe that the spirit is actually inside the skrying device. This is not possible, since you would not be using a method that would trap or confine a spirit to the crystal. The device is for the magickian, not the spirit. The entities from other planes, I believe, have much less trouble contacting us, it is us that has difficulty seeing past our physical reality. The temple setup, conjurations and invocations are what brings the spirit, not the magick mirror.
The more practice that is done with evocation and skrying the better one will become. I have found that after many years of practice the results of skrying and evocation can increase substantially as one ascends spiritually and increases their connection with the Enochian system. The skrying experience can start as a mild impression and work up to an experience that is unforgettable. Meditation is a necessary practice to become proficient at skrying. The meditation brings uo beyond this state, and beyond our ego. When we are busy thinking, we are not open to experience new things or other realities. Don't worry if you cannot meditate for a long period of time, as you will still achieve results. Also, as with anything else, the more that you meditate the better you will get at it. The important factor when skrying is to be able to let go, of yourself, everything around you, and your concept of reality for a short period of time. You are to acheive an altered state. If dancing, drumming, sex or hypnosis works for you, then these tools should also be used. When performing an evocation ritual it is important to not have any preconceptions of how it will go or what will happen. Any preconceptions that you bring into the operation will hinder you in seeing properly. Preconceptions can also limit a working, if for example you perceive that the being will talk to you through your thoughts, then you might not here the quiet voice behind you. Another example is if you expect to see an entity in the crystal, you might be limiting the operation to just that, when in fact you might have had a partial physical manifestation. This is yet another reason why meditation is important, you need a blank mind that is not full of constant chatter during the operation. If you are worried about whether it will or will not work, or are thinking about mundane life, this will interfere greatly with anything that you could see.
Also, it is important to note that when you skry, it is not (well for most people) like watching TV or a movie. Many people when they begin skrying expect some spectacular vision that will utterly blow them away. Skrying is much more subtle than that. However, when you are more proficient at it, the visions can come to be more real and vivid than the reality that we are used to! (this being one of the many reasons why it is important to separate ritual from day to day life) Most people, when they skry see the image in their minds eye, or just �know� what the image is, as aposed to actually seeing a landscape in the crystal. Other people will just �hear� the voices of the angels with their inner ear.
There are many times during skrying that my partner or I have experienced an entity so strongly that we have never forgotten it, and have even gone so far as to question the reality in which we perceive when we are not skrying! This is one of the reasons that banishing and grounding are very important! Not all skrying sessions are like the one just explained, however they can be. Don�t get discouraged if your skrying does not come out like this, it took me ten years to reach this point. I started out getting nothing, then after a couple of months I got some impressions. Unfortunately I discounted these impressions because I thought I was supposed to see something with my eyes. After another couple of months my impressions got stronger, and I started to have an idea of what the entities were trying to communicate with me. Most people tend to give up at this point. Fortunately for me I am very persistent and kept skrying. Eventually I got to the point where I was able to perceive beautiful landscapes, beings of all types, as well as clear messages that were being communicated to me by the entities. Unfortunately it took years before I was able to stop doubting every skrying session! I would always wonder if it was �real� or not, if I was accurate or just deluded, and if the entity was just lying to me. There are so many stories on people being duped by entities, or deluded by their own minds, that I was overly cautious about believing my experiences. Unfortunately most of the people I have talked to that are learning to skry have these very same barriers.
Whether your skrying session is just your imagination, if you have called the right spirit, and if the spirit is telling the truth are the most difficult aspects of skrying. (and you thought just seeing the damn spirit was the hard bit!). It is this questioning, doubt and seeing what we want to see that holds most practitioners back. The advice I have been giving to everyone over the years pertaining to skrying is to use my �great magickian rule�. It works nearly every time for nearly every person! This rule goes as follows: when performing an evocation think to yourself �I am a great magickian and my skrying sessions are accurate�. This may seem silly, however someone skrying several times and doubting all their results is just as silly, and amazingly enough most people do it. The �great magickian rule� should be used for the first few months or the first 20 or so times of skrying. If however you have been skrying for years, I recommend that you use this rule for your next 20 skrying sessions. It is extremely important that when you are using this rule to NOT go and take any advice given by the entities until you are more practiced at skrying, or have analyzed the results at the end of the 20 sessions. The rule is to help us trust our intuition, not to blindly follow entities advice. So, when following this rule, know that your skrying session worked out great, and that you should write down every detail of it, no matter how silly it sounds. Oftentimes when we are skrying we view some of the results as silly or made up and don�t write them down, unfortunately that is our ego trying to thwart us, and most often these are the most profound insights when looked at afterwards. You can put the entries in a password protected file if you have to, but record as many details as you can remember. Make sure to make your diary entries during the skrying session or as soon after the working as possible, since important details seem to rapidly fade. I fill out my skrying diary after I have given the spirit the license to depart, but before I end the working. I also sometimes will fill out the entities answers in the middle of the skrying when I feel good at multitasking.
After following this �great magickian rule� for awhile, be sure to check back on your diary notes no sooner than a week or two after the session. This gives you time to become objective about the working. As you look back over your notes, the skrying sessions will tend to come back into your memory quite vividly. At this time, you can usually tell if it was a particularly successful working. I have found that most people who are new to skrying cannot tell if their skrying session was accurate during the skrying session or right afterwards. This also thwarts many experienced practitioners. It seems to take some time for us to step out of the situation to see it objectively. One example of this phenomenon is is to think of a time when all of your friends could clearly see a solution for a certain problem you were having, but you could not. However afterwards when you look back at the situation everything seemed obvious. When we are caught up in something, we have a difficult time seeing around it. With skrying, after we completely trust our impressions for several sessions, we start to get a feel for which ones are successful, and which ones were more of our overactive imagination.
When people don�t trust themselves and their impressions, when they first start skrying, they tend not to write down important details that seem incorrect or even silly, or even worse, not make a diary entry at all. For example what seemed irrelevant to me in some of my early skrying sessions became amazing years later when I learned about Gematria! There are always the warnings about deluded magickians, spirits lying, overactive imagination as well as the wrong spirit appearing to trick the magickian. I have seen far more cases of magickians not believing in their skrying ability than any instance of the above! There are many reasons that we doubt our skrying abilities. The primary reason for this is the fact that in our society, magick and skrying aren�t real. We are taught that only �insane� people see spirits. We are also taught that these practices are evil. It takes the magickian some time to get over the societal conditioning that we are brought up with since childhood. Also, we don�t have much to compare our experiences with to deem if they are accurate or not. Every individual will have a slightly different vision of the same Enochian aethyre for example. When we are in school and are learning math, the teacher will come along and correct our paper, and we have a solid bases on how to grade ourselves and where to improve. In magick however, most of us, do not have a teacher who can watch our skrying process and offer advice and corrections. Also, if I corrected you on your vision because it differed greatly from mine, that would be ridiculous since your psyche puts different images onto perceptions than mine does. When we don�t have feedback during a learning process we often tend to get discouraged and think we are not doing it right. This is the reason that I have offered the �great magickian� rule. This allows the practitioner to have at least 20 unaltered experiences that they can use as a reference base to compare their skrying sessions with.
Alongside trusting your visions, you should also keep records. When someone skrys on a regular basis, it should not be overdone. In my opinion skrying should not be done more than a couple of times per week when asking for information, unless you have been doing it for many years successfully, and in this case no more than once per month when sending an entity out on a task. This advice is for new skryers. When you have gained a little more experience you will be able to judge for yourself what you, and your psyche will be able to handle. If you do decide to send the Enochian entities out on specific tasks for yourself, be sure not to have more than you can handle out at one time. If you have done five different workings in the last few months, and they are still in the works, your energy very well might get depleted due to the overtaxing of keeping up with the entities. Also, our magick is split when we have several things going at once. It is true that the entity is making the magick happen, but it is us who is subconsciously guiding the entity and the magick.
One quality that I have noticed when skrying is that you naturally become more spiritually connected, and become more spiritually heightened as side effects. If this is done too quickly the magickian can suffer, therefore keep in mind that there is no rush and to take your work slowly. When skrying on a regular basis, it is important to draw a very clear line between the skrying experiences and our everyday reality. As we live in this reality, it is important to be able to maintain it to survive. The difference between an insane person and a Shaman is the fact that the Shaman is able to control when the visions come. If you start to see the visions and entities coming into your everyday life when not invited or expected it is either time to banish more, or to slow down a little! In Dee 's prayers, it specifically states that the spirits will be obedient unto you, come when called, and also importantly will leave when required.
The most difficult, yet most rewarding aspect of skrying is the information that can be gathered from the EE's. For example one can be given rituals for specific spiritual development, for something that is desired in life, or perhaps information about alchemy or science. Since many of us today do a lot of solitary work and do not have teachers, skrying is an excellent way to get magickal teaching. Keep in mind when working with these spirits, that every teacher in not infallible, and we all have our issues and biases, this includes the EE�s even. The EE�s may have a greater understanding than a human teacher, however they may also lack an understanding of the world that we have to live in. When asking for teachings from the EE�s (or any spirit for that matter) be sure to use common sense when analyzing what information you have been given. Just because an angel of god tells me to jump off a bridge does not mean that it is any more reasonable of a request than if another human told me.
However, to obtain this information, the right questions must be asked. One good rule is to not ask something just to see if it works, or something that you already know. You would not believe how many times we have had spirits say "you already know the answer to that". Also, when calling upon the EE's, or any spirit for that matter, it is good to test all information given. Just because they are apparently more evolved than us, does not mean they are on the same path, or infallible. Also, they do have a difficult time comprehending our world. Do not take any advice that seems dangerous or ridiculous. However, be ready to step out of your paradigm about how things work. These entities have been around far longer than we have, and can have great insights if we are willing to listen. Quite often we get to stuck up in our way, or our favorite authors way of doing things, and miss a lot of important or enlightening information because we are too stuck to listen.
When you are trying to come up with questions for an EE, keep in mind their natural correspondences, powers and correlations. It would not make sense for example to ask a water entity questions that involve using fire in magick. The closer that you stick with the entities knowledge base, the more information that you will be able to attain. To come up with questions, think about what is it that you have always wanted to know about magick, science, the universe, etc. and cannot find in a book. There is only a small portion of magickal teaching that can be found in books. Most of the advanced techniques in my opinion are more personalized, and are not something that can be written. However, skrying of the EE's can give you this kind of information. Most of the entities are more than happy to teach humans, and wish to help us evolve. (they seem to find us kind of slow). When asking a question of them, ask with respect. There is no reason to treat them badly or boss them around. Also, you tend to piss them off less, and have them more amiable when you treat them well, as with any person.
The more specific the question, the more specific of an answer you will receive. Also, think about what you are asking, how would you answer it? For example I have asked questions such as �what are the basics of alchemy�. Well it seemed like a good question at the time, until the entity asked me how long I planned to stay and listen to the answer, then told me to go read some books! If I had asked what does alchemical lead correspond to I might have received an actual answer since this is a more direct question. Some of the questions that have worked well for me are: What are some exercises that I can do to improve my psychic ability? What are some better methods for evocation or skrying that would make you appear stronger? What are your correspondences and what do you rule over? What are some future advances in science? How do you view science? How can one merge science and magick? What is the most effective method for traveling the 30 aethyres? and so on. Be sure to look back over your notes every few months as the answers are easily forgotten, even when they seem extremely vivid and unforgettable.
When you call upon an EE, they can be tested in the same ways as other entities. Especially when you first start, all the entities that you evoke should be tested to make sure they are really who you have called up. It is possible that another spirit could appear posing as the entity that you have called. There are several ways to test the entity. You can ask who rules over them, you can ask them their powers and attributes, you can ask them for their numerological correspondences, or you can go by their appearance. The best method, of course, is to work with an entity for a long time and build a relationship and recognition with them. I have also noticed that the longer that you work with one particular entity, the more information that they are willing to give you.
Many of the grimoires available today have a complete description of what each spirit looks like. For the most part Enochian is missing this aspect. One reason for this is that each person perceives the EE's quite differently. The attributes, such as the elements and correspondences are perceived the same, however each person will put a different face to the entities attributions. Quite often seers will perceive the EE's as Dee and Kelly saw them, however there are only descriptions for a very few of the EE's. Also, Dee and Kelly lived in a different time period than we do today where people dressed quite differently. The visions that Kelly had of the EE's reflected the dress of this time period. Due to this it is possible that people today would see the Entities clothed in more modern wear. Also, the EE's are manifestations of the divine, and therefore do not really have a specific form. It is our subconscious that puts a figure to the energy form that we are perceiving from another realm. We do this to help comprehend these divine beings. If we just related to them as different forms of energy we would not be able to relate to them as well, describe them to others, or correlate them with our own experiences.
Incense is important in evocation. Incense is used to help bring about a change in consciousness. Incense triggers altered states for several reasons, one of them being the fact that it is part of the elaborate setup for the operation and therefore our brain associates the smell of incense with that of a magickal operation. The other reason is that certain smells trigger our psyche on a subconscious level correlating with different elements or planets. When we use incense in our rituals we usually tend to use the appropriate blend that corresponds with the rite to be performed. For example if we are doing a lunar rite, we might burn some jasmine, which will effect our subconscious and open us up more readily to the lunar forces that are necessary for the working. Incense can also be used to attract the spirit to the area of working. A corresponding incense can be used to help replicate the entities own world, or Dittany of Crete can be used as a thick billowing incense for the entity to manifest into. Also, we carry manifestation incense in particular that I have found to really help with evocation.
Evocation step by step
1. Decide on the EE to be called
2. Decide on the questions to be asked
2.5 Construct the appropriate sigil for the entity to be called
3. Set up the temple with tools, incense and materials that correspond with the entity called
4. Decide on the opening rituals and prayers for the ceremony
5. Take a ritual bath or shower
6. Light the candles and set up the sigil dei aemeth with the skrying device
7. Meditate or do the four fold breath
8. Do your opening ritual
9. Do a planetary invocation
10. Do a planetary invocation if relevant
11. Do the appropriate calls
12. Do the appropriate prayers
13. Place the sigil of the entity around your neck or the neck of the skryer if two people are present
14. Gaze into the skrying device
15. Wait for any images or impressions to come about.
16. Perform your closing ritual.