Consorting with Spirits: A Guide to Magical Engagement

[Music] salutations listeners and welcome back to glitch bottle the podcast where we

uncork the uncommon in magic mysticism and the generally misunderstood i'm your host alexander f and today we are so

excited to discuss how to consort with spirits with practicing magician author and strategic sorcerer jason miller and

you might be wondering listeners out there what is a spirit what does it mean to have a

relationship with a spirit what are the different models of esoteric engagement when is something like friendly

conjuration called for versus a stronger approach in ritual well jason miller is one of the best people to ask on these

topics and jason's latest home consorting with spirits covers these topics and so much

more in incredible depth and so jason today is returning on the podcast to go deep into magical systems deepening

connections with spirits what a relationship actually means and also jason is answering your amazing glitch

bottle patreon listener questions so thanks to each and every patron of the podcast for asking jason so many awesome

questions jason as i know many listeners know has devoted more than 30 years

to studying magical practice and engagement in so many forms and he's the author of several other tones of magical

insight as well including protection and reversal magic financial sorcery and so many others and so now to

help us uncork the uncommon let's welcome jason miller jason thank you so much for again returning on the

podcast really appreciate your time oh thank you for having me i it's a pleasure thank you so much for having me

on again well i i it the the honor is always mine jason and i i

try not to speak for the listeners but i'm sure they feel the same way uh and your latest tome jason is called

consorting with the spirits um and one of the first things that you stress about this book is

how intentional you are with the title and specifically the use of the word consorting can you can you

share with the listeners about why is that word so important uh regarding this topic

yeah you know um the this is the first time i have ever

insisted on a title uh i i let new page or wiser now generally

pick a title and it probably shouldn't have but you know uh early on i just said you guys handle

that and uh but this time i was really like i want this to be the title because

it's got a dual meaning so first it is the title of a crime that you could have been charged with in england in the

1600s uh you were consorting with spirits if you were doing what we do

and so i just wanted to pay a little nod to the fact that

uh yes a lot of people who were just innocent women and and

and men uh got caught up

in politics and in local scares that maybe had no real esoteric practice at all

but at the same time we also know from recipe books and and manuals that people were consorting with spirits um

at the risk of imprisonment and and their online you know and and deaf

so it was important it it's it's they they took that risk and that's something that

um in this risk-averse world people are are really like well how do i know it's

completely safe nothing is ever completely safe so it's risky uh the other aspect to this is that

consorting implies an ongoing relationship right like like if you meet someone disreputable right like if

you meet tony soprano you're not consorting with the mob you've just you know you've met

a mobster if however you're hanging out at the you know at the italian butcher where the

guys all hang out and you know them all on first name basis because you're there all the time

you're consorting you know and and that's the definitions of consorting in the

dictionary they also add this little bit of you know an ongoing relationship with disreputable people or or beings that

are not well thought of and so it's that idea that hey you're doing

something that society frowns upon and you're not just doing it once you're building

a life around it you're integrating this into who you are and your life and your relationships and those relationships

are really important they're kind of what separate the real witches magician sorcerers from

the folks that are like i'm gonna crack open a book and take a stab at this so thus consorting with spirits and two

jason you know you mentioned that exactly there's this kind of risk aversion that's going on and it's been

going on for years i know you know i went years ago when i first picked up grimoires i was thinking oh

well let me just calculate everything perfectly until i can jump in and just how how detrimental that is and you

mentioned in the book as well that when it comes down to it the best sorcery is local and can you

just talk about that word local and just what that means in this context especially since as you touched on in

today's day and age so many people are obsessed with having kind of universal systems of magic that everything fits

into neat little correspondencies in in some areas yeah you know um

so i think of it this way if you want to get a great

latte who is it better to forge a relationship the the person at the local coffee shop

or the ceo of starbucks right uh or or even the regional manager right

if you want to get your deliveries

on time and not broken is it better for you to know jeff bezos or is it better for you to

have a can you know to occasionally tip your ups fedex guy um so it's local it's you know it's it's

the all sorcery is local in a way because even if you did contact the ceo

it just it has to filter down and it gets carried out by some local guy anyway

so the best of all worlds is to carry the authority that comes with having that connection at the top

but also having a friendly relationship at the bottom too many people are just concerned with

the top with the big names and for the longest time i remember the first time i ever let a spirit feast

ritual be published it was in a magazine called out of philadelphia out of the oto in

philly and a couple people said well this sort of

flies in the face of that anti-spiritualist stance that we ceremonial magicians have like you're

just getting anything you know you're you're you're making contact with whatever is around the corner

like isn't that dangerous and i said let's let's unpack this right

like let let's really seriously think about this instead of just repeating the old chestnut over and over

and let's use people as an example i i could have easily called this book it's just like with people because every

example comes back down to how do we do this with people

and so you move into an area what kind of person are you do you want

to get do you get to know your neighbors do you get to know the people in the area or

do you buy a who's who and only ever allow yourself to contact the most important people the most well-known

people um and then you know on the other side of that it turns out that

if you you know crack open the books of the well-known spirits they're not safe like there's nothing

safe about these some of them are quite dangerous and even the angels are not terribly safe

so it's kind of like like what are you afraid of well you could get anything

around the corner that could lie to you anything can lie like any you know you've got there's no

guarantees it's just like with people so that's why i say you know look you want

to get to local to the locals and very often even when people think they're dealing

with a god or or uh you know an angel or spirit they wind up dealing with a local uh it

could be that the choirs of angels under the archangel or the legions of demons under the the well-known you know demon

with a office and a title um or it could be what i call the mall santa phenomenal right which is like a

local being who is more manifest this is really what we're talking about like well-known gods like jupiter

they're they're they're so vast um and and they are powerful but they're

not like you can't point to them in a room you when you invoke them you feel their presence but you really have to

like go to extreme lengths to get them to the point where you can point to them in a room

right it's it's a that's like full forceful evocation and often not comfortable right

so what do they do they have mall samples and and the idea behind the mall stands

is pretty simple like by the time kids are four or five they realize that the guy at the mall

isn't santa he works for santa right like santa's of course real kids so the guy at the mall works for santa

which is why he looks different in every mall and you know they know santa's busy with managing the elves and everything

so they tell they treat him like he's santa they tell him what they want and then at night he delivers the message up

to the big guy i think this was played out really well by macaulay culkin and home alone where

he corners the the santa after the fact is like getting into his car um but yeah that you know sometimes

that's exactly what you're dealing with and this is i would you know when i was writing the

book i was bouncing some ideas around with bj swain and he's like you know this is really actually a

well-documented thing in history too that local beings will speak for the gods and

so on so yeah local it's all local

and that's such a refreshing perspective because it really challenges you to look in your situation and your environment

and in the rituals that you're engaged in and what i love about that too jason in your book consorting with spirits is

against this backdrop of locality and relationship and consorting you frame most most of the rituals in the book as

you say with three main strains if you will three main traditions uh christianity paganism

and luciferianism can you share with the listeners especially someone like yourself who you know you've you've

explored so many traditions in your 30-plus years of experience and esotericism

why these three traditions specifically to frame most of the rituals

well you know they cover um they cover a gambit so

at the at the moment especially when we're talking about conjuring right when we're talking about

evoking and conjuring with circles and and and so on there's a lot of interest

and in in see in my head i presented it as three but in my head it's really two

positions so because i have sort of a christio

diabolic view as you as you know from from looking at some of the cypriotic stuff

um but it matters how you approach it right so let's you know in the book i focus on

the the demons in the ars croatia but it could be you know i i also talk about uh

demons from the the uh grimoire verum but it could also be an angel or something like that

the power that you're drawing the authority from you have to think of it in relation to

the being and then how the whole rest of it works so

there's a lot of people out there they want they want

the demons of the arscoasia because as far as i can tell because the seals look

cool they're they're just [ __ ] they're really awesome kind of the same way that like you know the way the seal

for lucifer in asia has become the seal of lucifer boom why because it

just it looks cooler than the seal of lucifer in europe it's easier to draw it's more geometrical it's a good logo

the other one just kind of sucks so whether you think that lucifer took this and is like actually that's the

real one that i hid in there or if lucifer was like hey i like that one let's go with it you know you you humans

came up with it let's roll with that one or if people were just like it just looks cooler

and so it's now blossomed into the thing but you got to think about how those spirits are in relation

so traditional grimoire work you're approaching it through a christian lens right you're you're

approaching god and you're calling these spirits in the name of god

and the madonna and and the savior and the angels and

so what are you doing you're using the opposing army you're using the antagonistic army the one that's like

i'm i'm getting the enemy who i am i you know i am ruling over because i've won the battle

uh and i'm forcing them to appear right like i'm i am i am calling them by these powers

and then you could argue that those seals function within that view like maybe

those seals are the seals of that bind those spirits

under those powers and then once you change those powers out maybe those seals don't work the same or at all

something to consider so now let's flip it around

to the luciferian angle because there's just a lot of luciferians and satanists

and and things like that out there of every shade and

you know sometimes there's i'm not a left-hand path person there's some corners of that world that i really

detest and there's some corners of that world that very fine perfectly nice people um

and solid thinking in in some ways so uh let's take a look at that and then okay well how does it work because now

we're not calling upon that spirit with the opposing army we're talking to the boss like

we're conjuring it under the boss who is friendly on the same side as those demons

so the conjuration has to change a little bit you can't just rip the names out and throw the new names in

now let's remove it from that christian

worldview entirely there is no god there is no devil there's just these spirits and let's conjure them under the power

of hecate and you know as as bj had pointed out in uh living spirits that

you know hecate works her way in to christian demonology certainly a lot of what we know about later hecate and

third year comes from michael selles the byzantine demonologist um

and so hecate is certain and there are talismans with hecate on one side and

solomon on the other like i don't mean new ones i mean you know in antiquity

um so hecate is just sort of like you know here's an important pagan figure uh but

could also model how some other pagan relation figure that you have a relationship might work

so now the whole thing is different maybe the circle is different maybe we're not calling the four kings anymore

and in the book i say let's call the winds and rivers instead because

those four kings aren't don't necessarily respond with hecate at the center in the same way

um and so the whole dynamics change because now you're calling it

from a pagan figure on the outside but people i don't know they seem to have this

attitude like all you really need to do is just rip out the names you don't like and throw in the names you do like

and it's not really that way because there's more to it than that like these are well constructed

rituals that have a consistency and if you switch one part out it changes the whole thing

uh and this is true for everything you know one of the things that that i've i've always been flummoxed by with um

say like the thalemic gnostic church right is like you know yes we can go and we

have the apostolic secession that goes all the way back to to christ like okay

but you don't invoke christ or call upon christ in

your rituals so why do you even care about that like it doesn't matter and do you because you're

not doing it in that name anyway you've got the

you know the person to person but you're no longer operating like that's

like me saying well i'm going to give hecate empowerments because i

have tantric empowerments that go all the way back to pubmed which i do but

that doesn't mean anything in in relationship to hecate so who gives it who cares

right like it's it's irrelevant in that context so um people need to figure out the

relevancy and and you know and and work with it that way

jason that flows directly into this next concept that you touch on in your book because

as you mentioned you have these various tributaries and sometimes people can get tangled by

focusing perhaps a little bit too much on the model of spirits and you tell you know this has been going on for years

the psychological model versus the spirit based model versus the energy model the resonance model and you may

give such an interesting argument in the book you say that the model

quote should not be meta but a mega model can you just define those two terms and and and

really help listeners understand about what is a mega spiritual model yeah so

um it's it's funny because i've been saying this for like over a decade since since back when the

blogosphere was alive with the you know what is america's next top model of

magic um and and people were just hunkered down

into these things and i'm like this is a like this entire conversation is just stupid

so i go back to to um freighter eugene who whose writings i

respect and who wrote a nice little piffy piece uh on the models of magic

and he lays out four and then a quasi-fifth model of how magic works so

he's got spirits as like the old model magic is worked through spirits right and then

somewhere probably around the time that we started messing around with radio and uh and electricity

we started to think oh well maybe energy is how magic works but also if we start to look at

magic in the east that fits a lot better like the

translators were already using energy for a lot of the functions of spirits in eastern models

of magic because you know you're you're i mean visualizing tetrahedrons in your

body that get filled up with a rain of energy it sounds like something drunvalo melchizedek pulled out of his butt but

really it's i mean this is this that practice is a purification ritual from nuguma is over a thousand years old

so then you've got so you've got the energy quote model

and then you've got around again the time of psychoanalysis and and young and whatnot the mind model

well maybe this is all the powers of the mind and this has the benefit of all sounding

much more sciencey than spirits right it's it's much much less superstitious than spirits

um and then as we start to come into the computer age and the information age

we start to think in terms of the information model um

and so we have this idea that well it's maybe it's not your mind it's just that there's

information there's a mental uh model where patrick dunn encapsulates

this really nicely that that the information model is talking to the universe in a way that the universe

understands and responds so this kind of explains sympathetic magic really nicely right

um and it also explains why some things that are probably not intrinsically true

right like i don't think that kids in india who draw like a hexagram as

part of a yantra are invoking or banishing a planet based on the golden dogs yet

it's also not just what you think about it because i have met people who've done the wrong hexagram and accidentally

invoke that planet so there's there's a there's an information there that is

beyond the personal mind but within the tradition that they're working in so the stream of information

so what what fredo ud says is he's like you know well we've got these four different

models of magic and but they all seem true

because everybody that is able to work magic with them so what we need and uh you know in his mind and in the mind of

the 90s chaos magician right we need a meta model because

chaos magicians and the 90s in general like anything you can do i can do meta that's

that and like they love it and only the only thing you love better than meta is quantum

so it's it's like you know all magic is in a quantum state like trenders cat until you decide on the model and then

that's model that's true and so i'm i you know and then i get to this

and i was like well it's sort of a brilliant breakdown of of four ways that magic works and then when you get to the

meta the whole thing just becomes incredibly stupid in the way that if we get into a car and

i'm like well i believe that the car runs on gasoline and you believe that the car runs on electricity

and bj believes that the car runs purely on mechanics and

you know i don't know just somebody else believes that the car runs on uh you know oil

well then really what's happening is the car runs on that thing based upon who is driving right like that's the meta model

that's dumb right like the car doesn't really give a

crap what you believe the car uses all of these things because they

each have a different purpose and so if you look at these four models of magic and you stop treating

them as models of magic and start treating them as forces of magic or

ways that or or not even not even that magic is one thing

just these are four different ways of causing change that fit under the umbrella of magic

then all of a sudden it becomes much clearer because you can see

that there are spirits which then explains why very often

things spirits behave in ways that are not expected or can do things that clearly are not just part of your mind

and but that very often

what spirits tell people winds up being like okay you know the spirit said to lift my foot and close my left eye to

shift bodily energy or you know when their their hands get hot or when they're focusing

they find that their focus affects a conjuration or a spell um or why is it that sympathetic magic

also works if the spirit model is just all that there is like

you know why do does the venetian textbook exist where you're doing essentially folk magic but with the

demons of the the grimoire verum well because you're taking that spirit from the

grimoire verum and you you who are also a spirit is investing your mind

and your energy and your focus into it and then you're doing some kind of sympathetic magic like dropping coins

with clownx seal on it into a bank that gives then the energy and mind of the spirit

something to latch on to that's material speaks to the information model

so that's the mega model like stop looking at for some clever

single feature for all of magic to work

because or for that matter for even just spirits to work because the the thing is all of our models

in magic in religion they're all too tidy they're they're not tidy enough to

explain the physical world that we live in and all agree upon as real

so they're definitely uh not complex enough to

explain a subtle reality but because

magic doesn't get challenged in the way that physical findings do we just basically decide to believe

something and then defend it and it's like it's a fact when it's not a fact

there's nothing less sciencey than things that are done with the methods of science but the aim of religion like

i've never seen worse science in my life jason you bring up such a fascinating point in terms of of recognizing that

you need to break some of these long-held habits long-held paradigms and one of those things and we've discussed

this before in the past is there are some say ceremonial magicians out there who

might say listen when you evoke a spirit successfully you must have

a manifestation to full visible appearance and i'm taking one side of the spectrum you know just to make a

point but you say in the book that quote simple resonance simple resonance is the most

commonplace manifestation of a spirit's influence in your life it accounts you say for probably 80 of

magic even in some classical grimoires that focus on making spirits appear active resonance is all that is sought

unquote what is magical resonance and what what do you want magicians to keep in mind if

they've been practicing for years or if they're just starting out sure so you know i mean sometimes

um and when i say this i'm actually not talking about any of the authors or the

notables out there uh when i offer this critique they know the books like they know

but i think sometimes the people that are just out there because like they've decided that they're solomonic

or or whatever their grimoire is and they're walking around like musashi to prove that they're the best and

everything else sucks and like they don't they don't even pay attention to the fact that well you know

there's natural magic um that's explained in those very books and sympathetic that magic that's given

in those books um and that you

in most of those books you go through this long ceremony and you're you are getting this

face-to-face full appearance and what is the first thing that you do you want to set up something easier so

you don't have to do that all the time right so it's like this you know how did we

set up this call right we used facebook messenger um

so the attitude would be like well it's not really talking with andrew or jason unless

we are in the room together and it's like well

no like we can do zoom but then we don't even have to do zoom for some things we

just use messenger for some things right so if you are like this is why you get

you get people doing like three hour ceremonies to do something that like a folk

magician could do in a few minutes or or a route worker could do without you know yeah let's just make this

happen uh or or frankly ordinary people can do with just a little effort um

and you know like a little effort and charm and you know

the the ceremonial magician is like you know no i must evoke oroboss to full appearance

to ask it to you know help me get a promotion at work

it's it's weary it's it's you know the spirits everything we know from historical records the spirits

don't particularly love to be evoked that way um

so why do we think that this is the best like why are we breaking reality for ordinary crap

um and so what is resonance resonance is when you're doing some kind of magic and you attract the power of the spirit

you you've you've attracted maybe not even the full attention of the spirit you've just

set up a resonance with that spirit in a way that brings its power into whatever you're doing

through a song through you know and the thing is the killer is the evocations themselves as acts of

magic i mean the calls of conjuration are themselves done through resonance right like if you are calling

a spirit in the name of saba in the name of an and you know this scene and that scene

they're not being evoked to full appearance right

so you're using that resonance already um you know in in the bible um

christ is is walking and uh a gentile woman who's sick

touches the hem of his garment and he stops

he notices that like he has power has drained from him he didn't

he didn't heal her she just grabbed the hem of his garment and was healed

and he then says go forth in faith but the scripture is very clear he didn't stop and then like i now heal you no it

was all automatic resonance like she just grabbed the hem of his garment so you know if you are

doing a piece of sympathetic magic you don't need to conjure

the archangel into full appearance you can call it through a novena or through

prayers or through evocations or through chanting and get that resonance and then what what

unfortunately what people kind of with that like one trick pony view of evocation see is like oh this idiot

thinks he can just call the name of the archangel and it's the same as my intense ceremonially well no he doesn't

think it's the same you just think that's the only way magic can happen and you're wrong

so it's um yeah so you've got resonance you've got full evocation and you've got other

things in between when people visualize the archangels and then call upon the archangels to

take up resonance in those visualizations that's not an evocation the i don't even think the

archangels are in any way like consciously aware of it happening but your the strength of your

visualization note your power your information your information

the the the power the energy perhaps when when people chant the name and they feel that bodily response of energy it's

like tai chi uh so there's a bodily energy there that that's fed into it and then that

attracts the resonance and so there's all these levels of manifestation that spirits can make

um that all get handled differently and magic can be done at all of them

and and often the most powerful or the most intense is not the most effective for

any given situation i mean certainly the most intense way to contact me is to like walk up to me in the street and say

hi are you jason i you know but if i don't know who you are my answer is no you have the wrong person

like it's happened and just flat no i'm not that guy i i have no idea who you are

unless i'm alone or something like that but but like if i'm out with family or something i'm

like nope and so yeah the most intense is not always

the best the best is the best that's that's wonderful advice and speaking of that jason you mentioned

just broadly speaking that there are two kind of main groups of people out there and many listeners might find themselves

in one group or in another or somewhere in between and you mentioned that there are those who are prone to psychic

experiences after a ritual they report everything during a ritual maybe with scrying and there are those who are not

prone to psychic experiences or those direct feedback experiences during ritual and you mentioned that

both of those groups have work to do uh in various areas so if someone's listening and they might

find themselves in one of those groups what is the work for each group that you'd recommend that they take a look at

yeah so you know i mean the two groups are sort of extreme so

hopefully most people are in the middle somewhere but um

but people do tend to drift towards extremes sometimes and and more and more so these

days but i think what happens especially in online culture

is people they get onto a group and

they have some modest spiritual experiences right like they do a spell and the spell works out and they you

know they felt something or they received a message or they had a dream or

an inspiration or they performed an evocation of a spirit and they saw a face and they

then they felt a response but they didn't have a conversation that was like up to their standards and then they get

online and then you know somebody is like oh well you know i just said

papa legba three times and then papa legba showed up and told me that i am you know his child and that i should go

and and so then people start measuring their

experience by these other people who have these like

fantasmagoric shows every time they close their eyes and i'm one of those people that that

like i you know i do a piece of magic i'll get something right um and that at first when i was younger

that was like a badge of like yeah you know i i can walk away if i'm at an open circle um and then we everyone's sharing

i'm gonna have something to share because i i definitely saw some but here's the thing

you the first thing to do is if you're in that camp of i see stuff easily i feel stuff

easily your work is discernment it's discernment

like realize that every experience you've ever had

even watching this podcast is a mixture of projection and perception like you're perceiving it

accurately to some degree and you're projecting a little bit upon it as well

um and every experience you've ever had is a mix of this the moment that it's passed

you've you've projected all kinds of stuff onto it well subtle experiences not surprising

are even more prone to this kind of thing so your work is to improve that ratio

your work is to cut through those easy to get surface level things where maybe there's a spark of a spirit

contact and then your mind just goes wee i'm gonna you know i'm gonna roll with

this but you know and i think it's good to roll with things when they're happening

but afterwards you should look and say what was actionable like what

was there anything here that's for me to do that's useful and that makes any kind of sense or at least isn't terribly

dangerous is there anything meaningful here that that gives me a context for

uh for framing for use for for for feeling better about something for

even just a thumbs up like your work is going really well um then cool

but if not then just let it go you don't have to judge

it as false it's you don't have to judge it at all because it's irrelevant just let it go

just don't make it a thing it's a thing that happened the most powerful things that a magician can

learn are the phrase is well that happened because you don't have to do anything with it it's just it was a

thing that happened uh and and you don't need to make it a big deal you

don't need to boost your ego you don't need to think that you're great you don't need to think that you're bad it

was just let it go like like something that happens in a meditation

now on the other side of the coin uh people that are that are head blind or they they are trump have trouble with

experiences there's a bunch of different spirit skills in the book and then there's a bunch of different things

in other books of mind and other people's exercises that you can do um

but some of the like some of the best things to do are are two things that you can just integrate into your regular

life one recapture some idle time

because humans need idle time to just not do anything to be bored to

let the mind wander go for a walk without a podcast without any distractions mow the lawn

um these kinds of things don't meditate this isn't about focusing the minds just

about letting the mind be because that's when you build connections right that's when you build

connections in the mind it's when you are open when you can receive things so adding a little bit of that time and

space builds those muscles and unfortunately in 2007 we killed what little idle time we had left with

cell phones with smartphones right like we no longer even are bored waiting in line for something we we've got

something to occupy every moment of every day and it's not good for you and as a as a person who wants to talk to

spirits it's particularly not good for you um

the other thing that i would say is cut yourself a little break and learn to do what the other folks do like

when it's happening just go on the roller coaster ride engage

if you get and i like let's say that you've evoked i don't know you know malphos

and you see like a bird fly off what generally happens is the people who

are headlined think that was just my mind because i know somewhere that malfoss is associated

with birds so i that's just a brain fart i'm going to sit and wait until malthus really shows up

and like grabs me by the nuts in a way that i can't deny well unfortunately that bird might have been malfus going

like hey you know you don't you're oriented to

the physical and i'm trying to get through to you and i got this little bit through and you said [ __ ] off

so don't do that engage in it and yeah it might be a brain fart but

again afterwards review it afterwards with credit with

with with self critique engage in it while it's going um and here's the beauty let's say that

you engage with it while it's going and you get something that is useful

and uh in some way shape or form that that helps you say frame or think differently about an issue that's vexing

or or even an idea for a spell right like a thing to do with malthus's seal for instance

uh for me a lot of the spirits of the ars croatia one of the reasons i love working with them is that

all the time they give me spells related to their seals so

it's like okay you've got this and then people will think well that's probably just me

but again who cares was it actionable does it make sense give it a try

um stop trying it's your it's like you're riding a bike that moment where you're riding and you

say am i am i riding a bike you fall over because you're not engaging it enough to

get any kind of momentum so there are all kinds of other spirit skill tricks and and and tips and

practices both little things you could do in the moment and long practices that build over time

but in the end you know a little bit of idle time and a little bit of

like engaging imaginative play to lead you somewhere and shut down that critic in the moment

really powerful stuff and jason as well you one of the themes that you really

mention in the book that is kind of pervasive is exactly you know allowing yourself

loosen the grip on your day-to-day reality be open be receptive and really it's about paying attention

one of the themes that you talk about and to that point jason we have many listener questions for you and one

of them is from uh patron alex brock art who is asking how prevalent jason or how often are

things like intuition feelings emotion or even ideas influenced by spirits and if so how can

one start to parse out what's in one's own mind versus the influence of the spirit is

there a reason jason most of society does not perceive spirits so we don't perceive so first of all we

are spirits we're organized around physical bodies so

you perceive spirits every day that are organized in physical bodies human animal trees everything else

but i get what you mean you mean why are we not perceiving

ghosts and and nymphs and and so on and the reason is that they're organized not around physical bodies so they're

oriented our perception is oriented towards the physical their perception is oriented towards etheric or astral or

even uh vast mental spaces that that aren't spatial in the

way that we think of them so um

you know i i i was just having a conversation where somebody said you know it's funny that you make that you

reject platonism because you do have this sort of layered like under this is that and

under this is that and i'm like yes but i don't believe that one rules the other i don't believe that there's like a

perfection and then everything else is like degrees of suckage um so i don't like i just like i don't

think my bones are inherently better than my skin it's you know they're just they're layers

so um you know i believe in layers i just don't think that there's any kind of

divine betterness about one layer over another but um so but we are oriented to these

different layers and of course a lot of cultures think that ideas do come from spirits or

that ideas are spirits you know the the the genius the idea of the genius is the idea of a spirit

um and this is not particularly a cult i think one of the the

best modern explanations of it was from the book big magic by uh pray love elizabeth gilbert

she writes about how she had like this very very specific idea and then another writer had very

very specific idea at more or less the same time and there's no way they could have overlapped

um the movie 28 days later what this was written at around the same time that the comic book the grateful

the grateful ted the walking dead was written both of them start out with somebody waking up from a coma in a

zombie apocalypse they didn't know each other this was not an idea that was passed around

it was an idea that was just out there in the information in the in the free-floating so

you know there is a level to which because we are not

islands that our ideas may not be our own but when it comes to

say summoning a spirit and sometimes a spirit will filter very close to the

physical and you'll hear it like a physical voice and that's that's cool when it happens

and it's great um but other times spirits will speak in

uh ideas and sometimes spirits will speak in sort

of a twisted symbolic language depends on the type of spirit and your ability to

communicate the best way to separate is to meditate uh now this is not the

idle time this is actually sitting focusing on breath or or some other single pointed focus

and then you become distracted and you return to it

why is that the best training because it's not that meditation

will open you up to some clarity and and higher level of of thinking although it

can and does if you continue with it but when people what i'm talking about is the stuff that

makes people think that they're bad at meditation i sit down and i just get distracted

yeah that's meditation like sitting down and then

like focusing on the breath for about three seconds before you think about porn

is is meditation and then recognizing that you're thinking about porn and returning

to the breath is re recognizing the texture of your own mind and taking control over it and going

back to it so once you get that and you get a feel for

what the fabric of your own thoughts is like it's actually very easy to start recognizing when something comes in

that's not that doesn't have that texture that doesn't feel that way

um so that's sort of the best thing to do that is such great wisdom i i definitely

hope that the listeners appreciate that as much as i do because i know that was one of the things i struggled with early

on and that allowing yourself that forgiveness it's okay it's supposed to happen you're supposed to get distracted

you're supposed to learn about that and i think jason that meditation is one of the many

foundational aspects that you touch on in your book consorting with spirits that i think people you know will really

enjoy and to that point we actually have another foundational aspect that you

discuss and we have a listener question for you from patron tom mcarthur and tom is saying and asking

in the book jason you mentioned confession as an effective form of purification

but you don't spend much time on it and suggest that it's okay to skip if need be on the other hand tom says jake

stratton kent and others stress it as an essential step of conjuration do you jason think an oath and confession

should ideally be a part of every ritual is another form of purification just as good and

what's your experience jason of conjuring with versus without confession as part of a ritual

uh yeah so i'm not enormously into confession uh as a purification method

so here's the thing about purification so when we purify

we sublimate right we become more sublime we become closer to

uh the spirit and we become less burdened by

some of the physical things um in a in sort of a classical christian context where we might be setting up a

battle with a demon then of course you know if we know that we are you know our soul is clean then

the demon can't have anything over us or anything like that which um

you know i just i don't know like look around at catholics that go to

confession regularly do they seem unburdened by sin not to me

um so what's the practical effect like i know what it's supposed to be

but look around like that's always my thing like yeah i know that this is supposed to create

adepts who are like better than ordinary people but look around like does this seem like

better than ordinary people or does this seem like you might be better off having like

you know random people from the local church watcher kids like so it's it's it's that kind of thing

like i'm always like look around at what it really does in practice not what it's supposed to do

um that said you know confession is is also uh

uh is recognize the world over and purification is but then there are energetic purifications so for instance

in uh in tantra and i'm i'm you know i'm guilty of taking a lot of things that i've learned in

tantra and applying them to the wider world of magic i don't even like the term western magic

because i'm always like like are we really just making this line between turkey and greece and pretending that

the entire world somehow is different on the other side i think it's stupid so

but i am guilty of taking concepts that work that are just that

that are functional um and applying them to other magic which is functional because i'm more

concerned with authenticity of function than i am authenticity of tradition or history right like those are fine if

those are your concerns but i'm more interested in authenticity of functions so

uh within tantra there are rituals that where you would confess and and you would you know you would list things

that that that you know are are val breakages and so on but then there are also rituals that

veer closer to inner tantra and and zhongchen one of my favorite is you know the

characteristics of confession and what must be confessed are liberated within their own place

and thus you know the mantle of confession is naturally

and spontaneously accomplished ah and you sound the syllable ah because

it's the natural sound of of the you don't make it it's said to be the natural state

because if you just vibrate your vocal chords without making any other sounds with your mouth you get ah

and so you're just recognizing that everything that you do uh

is a manifestation of your attachments and therefore something that you could confess but

really you know underneath uh then there's energetic confessions

where they visualize a deity above their heads and then they even more sublime deities above them and then they filter

down and then you literally see your body as you chant a hundred syllable mantra get

filled up and you see the blackness pour out and and so on so there are energetic practices i do to sublimate uh and and

and um and purify um so i'm not that big into confession i

just it feels to me like kind of fake um

and i i'm not big into the fakes i always feel like more of a like a spirit would call me out on being

a big faker than than anything else i'd rather just be okay with things that i do

um i remember once this is a weird thing to relate to

confession but but seriously i remember once i get this like email with like an old password from like that

i hadn't used in 10 years and it was like one of those extortion emails like this is your password we have videos of

you doing nasty things in front of your computer you know the idea being that you know i'm like

and i looked at it and i was like like me you and everybody else buddy like

knock yourself out like uh and and it was just like

okay so how does this relate to confession because

if a demon is like i know the evil thoughts that you have yeah me too like

sure absolutely thoughts about you know like like just horrible things

yeah absolutely sure

but you know i try not to do them and when i you know if i do have acted on them and paid the price and

you know sat with it and dealt with it and you know i'm good

like that to me is confession i don't need um

having someone else say that i'm forgiven has never helped me

really be okay with any of that whereas

dealing with it does and i think we have i think we have better tools even in

modern day common life not magical spiritual life just common

life i think we have better tools than than the people who wrote the grimoires

had and i think not using those tools because they didn't exist when the

grimoire was written is silly and jason to that point in terms of

revisiting those you know quote unquote more traditional tools we do have a listener question for you from patron

lucid thiems who is asking a quote fasting and purification are noted to be necessary for large

operations like an evocation but for general offering rituals do you think any sort of purity is needed

so it's you know for general offering rituals no

because you're you're well so first of all i shouldn't say no because

what the way that i teach magic is that people will develop a regular practice

and that regular practice will contain purification elements and so in a way you are constantly in a

state of purifying so the whole model of magic of like hey i'm an ordinary guy doing ordinary

stuff and now i want to talk to this demon so i better get holy

like it's lent isn't something that i'm that i

am interested in like you're a magician you're a witch or you're not there's like i don't teach part-time magic

um but i think within that context sure yeah absolutely you know if you've just

been living it up and not doing any kind of spiritual practice and now suddenly you

want to do some advanced spiritual work probably good to to purify and fast and

all that uh fasting absolutely has a sublimating effect as well literally makes you like

um you know and and a wonderful spiritual tool um also has

you know it also can have negative effects it can it can make you

uh a little weaker uh either physically or mentally when going in if you're not used to it so