What to do before I work with a spirit? (Beginner guide)

Spirits, Evocation & Possession
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Before you begin working in the realm of spirits and energy, I believe everyone should undergo a cleansing process in which I call “Ritualistic Abstinence”

The purpose is to cleanse your system of anything that will distract your mind and body from your line of work during practice.

(This was written out of personal experience and the desire to share knowledge which I can see vital in the eyes of a new practicing magician. These methods have personally benefited me but be wary other methods may work better for you!)
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Sexual and Drink Abstinence

The very first thing you should be able to conquer in your practice is your own desires and grab control of your mind in its entirety.
If you aren’t able to control yourself during an encounter with a spirit, then what’s to say they won’t attempt to control you first?

  1. Sexual Retainment
    Rid yourself of self pleasure and dirty thoughts. If you can’t control your sexual desires before approaching Magick work, then your mind can easily be led astray during your practice.
    Imagine your about to form a connection with a spirit who’s said to bring you great fortune… but then you randomly flashback something incredibly dirty
    BAM there goes your focus and connection just like that.

I recommend working on this in baby steps, we’re naturally inclined as humans to be intimate, so this is an understandably difficult process to undergo to a fair amount of people.

To work on this:

  1. Avoid flirting/Cutting off flirtatious peers
  2. Try your absolute hardest to resist any urges
  3. Keep your eyes to yourself and off of others, look at the floor if you need to avoid your gaze to someone you may find attractive
  4. By no means should you attempt to view adult material while on retainment, it’s well known that it’s poisonous to your mind in general. So imagine what it’ll do when you need to focus most?

Going on retainment will not only put your head in a better space, it will also teach you self discipline and maturity over all. So even if your ritual doesn’t go to plan, you still mentally grew as a human.

Regarding Drink:
Alcohol, Coffee, or other drinks that can chemically mess with you, should also be a no no while on abstinence.
Me personally, I find that drinking dark roasted black coffee can help with my anxiety, so I have some issues immediately pulling off of it. But there’s nothing wrong with taking baby steps!

Instead of drinking any of these, including sodas, teas (unless homemade and unsweet), juices, etc etc…
Make sure you prioritize drinking water (or homemade, unsweetened tea) to put your drinking diet back in shape.

If you have an attachment to a drink aforementioned, attempt to include more water in your day to day and slowly convert as needed.
Lucifer will not appreciate if you’re full of Diet Coke when you’re summoning him!
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Dieting and Fasting

Another very important step towards preparing yourself towards spirit work is getting your diet right. A lot of food nowadays can be heavily processed or have very unhealthy additives that can dampen you during your practices.
Another way of saying this is it weighs heavy on your energy and spirit, which is the exact opposite of ritualistic abstinence, whereas we’re trying to make ourselves spiritually stronger in order to make our work more efficient.

A simple dieting guide:

  1. No sugars
  2. No greasy foods
  3. Nothing heavy in fat
  4. No processed foods
  5. Cut meats to a minimum, they’re okay in a pinch, but do your best to avoid them

When I’m dieting, I’ll typically stick to rice that I’ll make myself. The idea is to stick to fresh, good for the body foods that aren’t going to, again, put weight on your energy.
Regarding fasting, I like to eat one meal a day, enough to not be hungry but not enough to fill myself fully, and I sip on water throughout the day.
(Remember homemade tea is perfectly okay too!)
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Meditation and Practice

So now that you’re slowly shifting into a superior mental and spiritual shape, you can begin easing your way into your practice.
I personally work with Goëtic demons (not via salamonic methods) so we’ll say that I wish to work with Buer (Can heal any and all mortal pains)

I’d start by lighting some candles (this is not mandatory, the candles personally help me find myself into meditation sooner) and reciting his enn while sitting down criss crossed or laying down with my eyes closed.
In this case, I’d be saying “Erato On Ca Buer Anon”

You’d want to recite this again and again until you start to feel yourself lulling into what feels like a dream, in which you’ve entered what I call a “Trance state”. During this, you’re beginning to form your first connections with your spirit of choice.
To a beginner, you’ll probably be frightened by feeling a lot of weird sensations throughout your body but this is perfectly okay! Remember that all the abstinence you’ve done before this is helping keep your mind in focus.
(If the feelings become too intense for you, simply stop reciting the enn, flex your hands and feet out to re-ground yourself, thank the spirit for their presence, and gently open your eyes)

When not working with enns

There are probably more spirits that exist that do not have enns or mantras than spirits that do. In this case, you can draw out the sigil or seal of that spirit and gaze upon it. While you gaze, make a little poem in your head that invokes the energy of the spirit.

Let’s go back to Buer for example and continue in a hypothetical in which he does not have an enn.

  1. Gaze upon the sigil
  2. Make sure to stare AT the sigil and not THROUGH it (focus on the lines of the sigil, not the space between it, or stare at the space in between, and capture the sigil in your full view)
  3. Make up that little saying in your head, in this instance we could say “I invoke President Buer, the powerful healer of all things underneath and above” (pre-written sayings can work, but it means a lot more to the spirit if you come up with it naturally)
  4. Once you feel yourself connecting to the sigil, close your eyes and continue saying your phrase OR you can continue looking at the sigil

GRATITUDE

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO THANK A SPIRIT NO MATTER WHAT!!!
Even if you felt no sign of arrival or weight in the air… THANK THEM ANYWAYS
You never truly know if a spirit has entered the room with you and is simply hiding their presence in order to see how you’ll react.
So no matter what, say thank you and properly ask them to depart.
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FINAL NOTES

Depending on the spirit you wish to come into contact with can vary the length of your abstinence. In my opinion, always set at least a week of sexual retainment, and at least 3 days of fasting in which the final day is a diet consisting of only water. Eating before a ritual can make your movements slow and uncoordinated which is a no no!
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If you made it to the end, I greatly applaud you and hope you found some valuable insight within my personal methods towards ritual preparation!

Have a good day or night friends :slight_smile:

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Most of what you say here is nowhere near my own experience, which shows precisely how there is not one “universal” method. Interesting to read nonetheless, even if internally I really can’t agree. And since I’m always in trouble when questioning things people say, I’ll stop at that :smiley:

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It works without that

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None of this is necessary. While purification has its place in some spiritual traditions such as the Solomonic/grimoire tradition, if is far from mandatory for spirit work. I’ve done rituals while drunk and after sex, for example.

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It’s great that you’ve found what works for you but I wouldn’t assume this is necessary for most new people. Many people come from the direction of witchcraft for example, they hedge ride or do herbal magick, poppet magick, use talismans… go for a walk in the woods and commune with the nature spirits… I find spirits to talk to just doing the gardening, there’s many many ways to get in contact that can be all different.

I would hate to put people off from helping themselves with magick by putting unnecessary obstacles in the way and making it seem harder than it is.

If there was anything indispensable, I’d say you need attention, intention and to be able to listen to that silent voice inside you. You can fit those things in pretty much any tradition or technique.
And of course sexual spirits like succubi require non-abstinence as that’s their mo :slight_smile:

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All true, this was written out of personal experience and is a very helpful process at least for myself.
I find that I’m way less focused and able to practice without something to reset myself a bit, and had more difficulty practicing without learning an abstinence method beforehand.

And also within personal experience, I did meditations with the Agrat Bat Makhlat and had more success after abstaining for a short period.

However it is universal that Magick is really what yourself as the practitioner makes of it, so my small guide here may help some and may not help others :slight_smile:

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This is also a good point and I have experienced this myself.
I just find that undergoing a time period of personal cleansing helps out a ton, so maybe while not completely mandatory to all, I’d recommend it to anyone at least once.

Outside of practice, it also helps out a ton mentally which is a huge bonus to someone like myself with terrible anxiety and overthinking, which is likely why I find it personally mandatory to undergo!

Aforementioned in a reply to mulberry, Magick is what we make of it and is never absolute in the words of one practitioner, so some may benefit and some may not :smiley:

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You’re correct, but some may find some sort of use in it which is why I felt the need to share!

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Btw i like it :smiley:

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I’m glad if this helps! Take some time and review Mulbbery’s and DarkestKnight’s comments too! They make some great comments over this being that this is not at all mandatory, but (in my personal opinion) can be beneficial.

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