Here is a subject I throw up for your consideration.
After listening to some of EAs comments on the Mastering Divination video, I now view visualization as a creative, creative thought ACT and one that I control. It is a creation that I manifest by that individual thought…
Before, I/you were not really experiencing the real element of creation until we really get into the thought creation. I had always been passive when I associated with visualization and connected thoughts in a very passive way…more or less letting them do their own thing. Then I found there is the process in it all of being active instead of passive in creating that thought.
My question to all of you is…
When I call for that particular spirit being to come or to manifest…Is it I/you that enable that being to manifest by using the elements that I/you create…Or is that spirit being using his own powers to come over into the area where it can be experienced or communicated with…because sometimes you have heard of spirits being seen when you/I did nothing to aid it…and that spirit vibrates down into this physical world for I/you to work together on a task?
Just curious how you see our creative process connecting with it all?
these two statements that I was reading really got me thinking about this…they are…
The creative power of visualization depends, on the one hand, on the energy with which we integrate ourselves mentally in the scenes we visualize; and, on the other hand, on our ability to live them emotionally.
At a given moment of our visualization we must be totally part of the scene we have imagined, so much so that we forget that it is in fact a mental creation.
I feel like there are a few elements of creativity that need to be teased out, because they are distinct and don’t all apply in all situations.
creativity, as in, the ability to create something from nothing
creativity, as in, the ability to imagine something from nothing
creativity, as in, not being locked in or constrained by what you “know”
visualization, the ability to allow the imagination to create scenes
visualization, the ability to create and view scenes using the mind
visualization, the ability to allow the minds of others to create scenes for viewing (whether it be spoken word, written word, telepathy, etc.)
The reason I think it is worth showing the variations, is because it may be able to clue us in on what is happening. For instance, most of my evocation experience occurs in my mind’s-eye. My eyes are open and viewing the room, and other things are happening in my mind’s-eye. I take this to be a use of creative visualization in the sense that my mind is prepared and able to see these things. However, I don’t feel like I am “creating” them myself, though my creativity allows me to be receptive to them - I experience it passively, like you described your experiences prior to your new insight from the divination course. Similarly, I am visualizing since I can describe the scene in terms of “seeing”, but again, these are not creations of my mind, but apparently that of another. There is no conscious control of the scenes/imagery/dialogue, and oftentimes what I am experiencing is brand-new, not something that I feel like I knew already or made up on the spot. Perhaps a close analogue are the mind’s-eye visuals one experiences when taking certain drugs - though the mood can influence the visuals, you feel more like you’re taking a ride rather than directing a scene. However, unlike drugs, these visuals are much more orderly and meaningful, rather than just interesting “noise” and “flash”.
And to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with your assessment, Maxx. Just adding to it my understanding of the process, as related to my personal evocation experiences. My primary strength as a magician lies in lucid dreaming, so my visualization and free-form creation abilities are things I am pretty comfortable with. When I perform evocation, I feel like they are primarily perceptive capabilities for receiving new information, rather than primarily generative capabilities.
So, to answer this directly, I feel like the prepared creative/visualization capacity is giving the spirit something to work with. I don’t feel like I’m generating the content or the experience, I feel like I’m receiving new information.
An analogy connecting how I view the magickal imagination in this context works like this: in mundane communication, you can get quite a bit of information across with Morse-code via telegraph. You can get more in and more quickly using email. But you can do much much more with video-conferencing. Of course person to person is probably the most solid, but also the most intense. They are all forms of communication, but each level adds new details that are much harder to replicate in the coarser form.
Applying this to the magickal imagination - the more refine this ability, the better the tools you give the spirit to communicate with you. Yes, you can certainly speak through a pendulum, a ouija board, or tarot cards - and sometimes (like the email mentioned above), these might fit your needs quite well. However, if you can manifest a demon using your mind’s eye, you can learn more. And if you can achieve a full physical manifestation, you can learn much much more and more quickly - though the experience is much more intense.
So this is how I understand the magickal imagination and visualization to apply to evocation - the refinement of the medium of communication.
As far as the “creation” goes, I really don’t have an answer. I don’t know if it is I who create the spirit with my own power, whether I provide a space for the spirit to manifest, or whether the spirit merely heeds my call and manifests with its own power.
Using Evoking Eternity as the basis, the evocation ritual starts by making yourself omnipotent, so that you cause the universe to bring the entity before you - implying at least some personal power in the operation. As you’re also asking/demanding that the spirit appear, it seems that they also have some power in the situation. So perhaps it’s a situation where the power of both the evoker and the evoked are tapped into. In sigil magick, by my understanding, one taps into an entity’s power through their sigil. This seems to give further credence to the idea of power on both ends - the magician has power and so does the spirit.