I don’t care if you have it, read it, or just scanned through it. I am asking if anyone here has actually utilized the information contained and performed workings with it.
I haven’t seen much, if anything, about people who actually have used it and their results. So if you’ve used it, How did you approach it? What did you try to get out of it? Was it successful?
It’s a book about alchemy of the spirit.
It costs $2,000+.
All you need to know bro.
I’ve worked through it with a group up in Salt Lake City. It’s a unique, “modern-traditional” work, mainly containing invocations and thoughts on ritual mechanisms, worded in a quasi-middle-english format (thee and thou and ye)… which to me seems a bit pretentious.
Most of the application I’ve seen of the Azoetia is less in utilizing it for practical results, but more in working through it as a LHP mystical experience of uniting with the Primordial Power, etc.
One way that I would look at it is this: when you read a grimoire, there is a LOT of the material that you just skip over because it’s basically “filler” material. All I’m after are the sigils, names, and attributes of the spirits. The rest is either dogma in the name of christ, or poorly written poetry pretending to be incantation. The Azoetia seemed to me to be a book filled with nothing but the useless information.
If it were published by Avon or Weiser, Chumbley’s work would be a footnote. He gives no real practical instruction, nor does he give workable rituals for attaining real-world goals. Only printing a few copies and then having the Cvltvs Sabbati members mention the book, remain tight lipped about its contents drove people nuts trying to figure it out.
The rituals seemed to me to be nothing more than spiritual or ritual masturbation: fun, but in the end unproductive, and largely unsatisfying. So, working through it with a group was a 13 day spiritual circle jerk (metaphorically, of course).
When posting this, I was mainly trying to evoke a response from you, EA. It worked and I am grateful for that.
I got the same feeling from it being useless filler and poetry with no real purpose. I have a really hard time picking up grimoires with lengthy poetry disguised as incantations and far stretched dogma (Mark Alan Smith comes to mind) even if the book is very interesting. Of course, I was wondering if I was missing something as I don’t follow the traditional witchcraft paradigm.
I know someone who has had a conversation with David Schulke. This individual and I were talking about these books and My response to the tight lipped Cvltvs Sabbati Initiation only argument was that by releasing these books, they are in a sense initiating the readers. Apparently, Shulke was asked the same question many times and responded by saying that these books were the excrement of the workings of Cvltvs Sabbati. This looks more like bullshit and ego stroking (I can be wrong and if I am please correct me.)
I am also very skeptical about Shulke’s disdain for people using and Cvltvs Sabbati for their own personal gnosis. i.e. I know he cant stand the band Cultus Sabbati using their name and I heard about him being pissed about some kid reading a passage from Azoetia on a youtube video.
Yeah, Shulke has initiated lawsuits against at least a few magicians and artists that I personally know for using images, incantations, and other devices from Azoetia and Chumbley.
I’ve spoken in depth with another member of Cvltvs Sabbati, and he basically said that the group got together for ritual a few times at most, and then fell into obscurity and non-contact. I’ve had a few groups like this. Start working with a couple people, give yourself a cool sounding name, and then three rituals down the road, concerns for the dayjob and the family and the kids’ recitals outweigh the gnosis.
While may not be as readily practical, I do have alot of the respect for Chumbley’s work. Especially the Qutub, which is one of the most beautiful works of dark spirituality I’ve ever read.
It is an interesting read, for sure. But it’s not even close to being a groundbreaking instructional grimoire, as many say that it is.