Low Magick by Lon DuQuette (the reading strategies book TXT) 📕

The reason this kind of low magick has earned such an evil reputation is because we so often hear of the terrible consequences to the life and sanity of the magician who violates this simple upward-flowing formula. I speak specifically of cases where in the course of the operation the spirit convinces the magician to strike some sort of bargain—a quid pro quo, perhaps a gift or sacrifice in exchange for service. “I’ll bring you a nice shiny penny … but you’ve got to kill the vicar!” Ask any Solomonic magician; he or she will most likely tell you the first thing a spirit will attempt to extract from you is a bargain of some kind, or an amendment to your original request. It is also the last thing you should consider doing.

In all fairness to the poor infernal spirit, such haggling is a perfectly understandable characteristic of its unredeemed nature to try to negotiate itself free from your control. After all, it’s been doing that in one way or another your entire life—otherwise you wouldn’t be lacking the specific thing the spirit can provide you!

But what if the formula is breached? What happens if, instead of raising the spirit up to the magician’s level, the magician descends to the demon’s level? Shouldn’t a competent magician be able to handle that?

My answer is yes. A competent magician, a true Solomon, can handle that, but one must question his or her motives for setting out to do so. Is the object of the operation to cause some change to occur in hell? Or is the object of the operation to cause some change to occur in the magician’s life here on earth? If the answer is the latter (and I can’t imagine it being otherwise), then it is probably wisest to bring the demon up to where its work is to be done, rather than casting oneself down to the hell of status quo where the spirit lounges comfortably in your screwed-up life-as-usual. The worker’s daily labor is done on the factory floor, not at the union hall.

A year or two ago, a young man wrote me a letter asking if there was some way for him to use a black mirror or other magical method so that he might actually visit the realm where the Goetic entities dwell. I was in an odd mood, so I wrote him the following response, which I hope he took in the spirit it was intended:

Dear (name withheld),

A partial answer to your question would be another question; that is … “What makes you think you are not already visiting the realm where the Goetic spirits dwell?”

I’m not kidding. If you wish to explore the realm where some of these fragments of consciousness dwell, I suggest that tonight, as an experiment, you go visit the sleaziest saloon in the roughest part of town about an hour before closing. Every untamed manifestation of the denizens of your Nephesh15 (the real spirits of your Goetia) will be poised to appear before your eyes.

Buy them a round of drinks. They will toast you. Join them in their libations. Keep drinking and talking with them until you start to think their crude and bigoted jokes are really funny and you begin to actually agree with their views of politics and religion. Breathe in the infernal incense of the cigarette smoke. Inhale the sacred perfume of body odor, spilled beer, and urinal cakes. Become one with the consciousness of the room. There! You are visiting hell on earth.

Granted, you might have the magician’s presence of mind (Ruach)16 to jot down some names and phone numbers and thus arrange to have one of these beasties meet you tomorrow in the sober light of day so that you might hire him or her to mow your lawn, paint your house, or clean your septic tank. On the other hand, you could surrender your Ruach completely and stumble home with one of your new Goetic friends for the prospect of a vomit-covered stab at intimacy (and then wake up in the morning to find yourself robbed, infected, or worse, looking every bit the demon yourself).

And so my friend, to answer your question specifically and on a practical level, yes, it is possible to visit the realm where the Goetic spirits dwell, and you won’t need an expensive black obsidian mirror to do it. Choose the seal17 of the Goetic spirit you wish to visit. Draw it carefully on a tiny piece of paper. Take it with you to that saloon tonight at midnight and swallow it with your first strong drink.

Bon voyage!

The formal technique of Solomonic magick is simple, almost intuitive. First, I need to have an “object of my operation,” a change I wish to effect in my life, e.g., “I want Mary, the girl next door, to fall in love with me.”

I start by creating a circle of sacred space in a convenient area of my home or garden. I draw out a triangle on the floor before my circle and do whatever I think necessary to contact and invoke the blessing and presence of the Great G in the likeness and character of the deity of my choice. (I will discuss the importance of invocation and the choice of one’s deity in later chapters.) Once I am confident that my motives are in harmony with the divine order and that I am the living representative of the Great G, I use that authority to summon a demon from the “infernal regions” into the magick Triangle. Once the demon appears (either tangibly or in my mind’s eye), I give it its marching orders: “Cause Mary to fall in love with me.” Then I set it loose to do my bidding.

Sounds corny and melodramatic, doesn’t it? It is corny and melodramatic! It’s supposed to be corny and melodramatic. That’s the romance and charm of the Solomonic magick art form. But it is easy