If you’re like me at all, I have a tough time getting the coals to do what I want. I’ll have a nice red-hot coal, throw a little too much incense on it and completely drown it.
For a while I was lighting two or three coals, tilting one up the side of the other or placing all three in a triangle, hoping to get a good screen of incense smoke with only mild success. Once I tried breaking a coal in half (knowing it would go twice as fast) and set the two sides close to each other to get a nice oven effect going. That was also just mildly successful.
I was watching a Poke Runyon video the other day where he revealed a wax “table” he puts his incense under for their invocations. This dispersed the smoke nicely. Something about his setup, however, got just the right juices flowing.
At first I thought I would break three coals in half, and place them in a flower pattern with half-moons spooning the one in front of it with all of their points converging in the center. I eventually decided against this as that it just didn’t feel quite right.
Something about Poke’s video … the table of wax … the way it looked …
Then it hit me. Holy shit, the perfect coal setup. For my evocation, I pulled out two coals. I broke one into four equal quarters and left the other one whole. Already see the table here? heh
I placed the four quarters on the top of the ash in my incense bowl. I didn’t put the coal totally back together, but left about a centimeter / centimeter and a half between them so I had a nice circle with a vivid cross separating the four quarters. I lit each quarter then lit the whole coal and set it on top. A little coal table with four little coal legs. Freakin’ cutest coals you’ll ever see! I was hoping a little devil would sit at the little infernal table with his morning paper and coffee - but nothing happened 
Anyway. Amazing setup. The “crossed” spaces underneath the coal table made for excellent breathing and an insane cultivation of heat. Once the whole thing was going, it went the entire time. I was pouring MOUNDS of incense on top of it. I couldn’t have drowned it if I tried. It was so extremely hot and effective, I had a literal blanket of smoke billowing up in uncanny plumes of rolling incense vapors. Yeah, it was eating through the incense faster than usual, but it was giving me the medium I needed to get into a good vision state with the smoke.
Usually, when I have little wisps and swirls, they get distracting and annoying. With this “coal table” I was getting a constant living, breathing, screen to project into. It was beautiful I tell ya!
Oddly enough, the four quarter coals at the bottom were STILL burning red hot and holding the table up after nearly 30 minutes of good, solid, evocation visions.
I just had to share this with everybody. If you’re anything like me, you’ve had similar frustrations with trying to get your plume of smoke just right. But to be fair - and to give a little warning - this makes TONS of smoke. If that’s not how you like it, then you probably don’t want to try this. But for me, TONS is what I need.
Well, I’m off to bed. Have a great night/morning 
~ Namaste ~