Throughout the ages human beings have interacted with powers they have called Gods or spirits; they have rendered worship and obedience to the Old Ones; they have learned from them, and even struggled with them. There is much wisdom in the past and in records of humanity's experience of other beings and powers in this weirded wholeness, and much power is needed to trace those old roads, though the only real necessity is that we understand our true relationship with the powers that dwell among us and all over amid the dark and bright spaces of reality. Understanding the truth of our relationship with everything- how things really exist, and thus how we really exist, and how we rely on all other things and they on us- is tantamount to the highest attainment.
So much of Witchcraft and sorcery leans on the human sorcerer's ability to interact with familiar spirits and other great powers that lend their aid to working. We must investigate the nature of these relationships, how they are summoned and why.
The Old Ones don't have to "come" or "go"- as is the nature of spiritual beings, they are always "here"- wherever this "here-ness" of the world may be. It is we who do not see them, and wander far from them in our thinking and perceiving. From our side of the mirror, it seems as though they are the ones who have wandered away from us or have been driven away by one thing or another.
In these wasted times, bereft of much ancient wisdom, where farmers no longer sate the spirits of fields with glad offerings or sweeten their fresh-plowed soil with milk, blood, and honey, and where the spirits of houses are ignored by the lady of the house and hearths sit empty of bowls of offering, it is easy to imagine that the Old Powers and spirits have wandered far from us perceptually, dejected. The forests around us- what few remain- gradually collect rubbish and litter dropped by thoughtless hikers. People place the bodies of their dead in the ground and seldom render them the ongoing offerings, attention, and prayers that the wise of the past did- Christianity, with its focus on the supreme "god", frowns on too much attention being given to other powers. The dead are left in their graves until judgment day, to sleep in un-knowing.
What Gods of old would remain to bless us? We have become numb and blind, and we have treated the world like it was a heap of materials to be manipulated for our benefit, but in so doing we have mistreated the sacred, and abused our own minds and characters, for the world and the mind are entwined. Did the Heathen Gods flee from Christian crosses in disgust, or leave finally after their sacrifices ceased, or did we simply smear the mud of vice and ignorance into our own spiritual eyes? I must go with the latter explanation.
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Many kinds of spirit exist, and while some Old Powers may be the true lordly type whose ancient presences still permeate the Land and the skies, and the forests and fields, others were more akin to mankind, maintaining different models of relationship and different styles of interaction- and folklore reveals that how humans responded to them and acted had everything to do with how they responded and interacted. Folklore reveals their propensity for harm and for help, and the need to treat them with respect. The very existence of these powers- these People of the Hills- and others of the hosts unseen- was and is a gateway to the deepest animistic awareness native to the children of Europe. That awareness can still be awakened, though it is questionable what extraordinary wisdom or memory would be required to find the old paths to the Unseen People's hidden halls and dwellings.
No one knows if they've gone for good, or just fled the land under the mind-numbing and soul-shattering power of the sinister church bells that shattered the peace of the air and frightened the spirits of the ground. Maybe they changed their residence, or withdrew deeper into the earth. Maybe their Fateful time ended, or maybe it still persists. Folklore would reveal that some of these ancients did maintain their twilight existence alongside the mortal world, such as the Faery-clan discovered upon Selena Moor.
Approaching the Unseen World has many practical motivations: if that world exists (which of course it does) and if it is peopled by the hosts of the dead now transformed into countless new orders of existence, and with shape-shifters, ancient spirits once called "Gods", and by the non-ordinary bodies of those things we experience normally as trees, plants, stones, and winds (just to name a few), then our walk to knowledge and wholeness requires that we understand this world and how to successfully interact with it.
But our quest for personal sorcerous transformation and deeper wisdom takes us to the unseen hosts for their aid in attaining the highest seals of ascension. Some among the people of the world are prepared for the full blossoming of life's potential, which is conscious wholeness. On that path, sorcery arises as the unfolding of certain potentials- from the outside perspective, it seems as though one may have become a miracle worker; one seems blessed with extraordinary gifts. This has led to the perception on the parts of many that sorcery is about these powers and experiences, when they are merely side effects of a greater exploration.
When we attain conscious contact with non-human powers and beings, we are again experiencing something of the Weird- not that it "appears" as these beings, for they are as fully individual powers as we are- but moving closer to the non-human sentient world brings us closer to the strange wholeness of things, and to consciousness of its eldritch presence. It is easy to mistake some of the luminous powers of the Unseen as messengers of the Weird, as ministers somehow of the highest reality, but this is only a perception on our part, informed as it is by Christian models of otherworldly experience.
The deep and refreshing (yet odd) joy sometimes felt by those who move into the "otherness" is not a sign of Godly grace, but of the natural joy inherent to consciously existing in our sorcerous and perpetual reality. Joy may exist for natural, simple reasons; how strange to think that we have all become so jaded that our most in-depth and defining "joys" can only come from fulfilling mythical imperatives that we believe will give us perpetual joy in some afterlife or some redemption, or from the most unbalanced depths of physical gratification or augmentation through body-deteriorating substances. When did living quietly on the land, or watching the moon fly her course in the starry sky become insufficient to fill us with rapture? The moment it becomes enough for a man or a woman is the moment the Old Powers return for them.
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People wonder a good deal at the prospect of summoning the Old Ones. It is not so hard as is imagined, though not as easy as many books today make out. On must alter one's perceiving in such a manner that one enters the "spiritual climate" of the power. One may do this with the power of the mind and the natural poetry of the soul, but more direct means are so much the better- the Secret Spirit-King and Protector of wild places and wild creatures is not a caricature to be imagined in a "visualization" of a forest; it is to an actual wild and wooded place one should go, moving on whatever fateful course through the trees and brambles one is sent, to alter the character of the mind and soul’s experience.
The forest is not just a place, but an environment of the mind. It does not merely contain trees and animals; it changes the feeling, shape, and orientation of the soul. Poetry- good, strong poetry- is the only thing that suffices to replace the bodies of trees and plants, and the holy force of the forest-Weird. But few today can speak the forest with poetic sorcery; most of us must enter into its precincts.
Poetry is a wonder that can transport us anywhere- the power of words is the oldest and greatest sorcery taught to man by ancient powers. But an even more organic sorcery is simply the act of going to the waters, walking the paths through the forests, going to the graves and mounds, walking to the crossed roads or the forked road, entering the plowed lands or the heath, going to the standing stones, the fields or the mountains, or going to the sea-shore. There, in those places, the mind changes, the mind and spirit reach out- and within- differently. The positions of stars, the moon and the sun, and the corresponding rising and falling of light and heat and cold also change a person, alter perception and transform soul and spirit. Being immersed in water, in the heat of a fire, being amid strong wind- these things alter a person, as well. Seeing the sun rise or set, seeing the moon in its many phases- they alter, they make things possible.
Not just where we are, and when we are, but what we do is the third stake that makes the tripod. All is process. There are activities that summon powers- the lord of sorcery, the ancient spirit of the Sagely Firebringer, the Witch-Father and Master, is called by the mere act of sorcerous operations, though one must be prepared to receive him by knowing this fact. The plowing spirits of field and farm are called precisely through the act of making furrows, however small; the powers of fertility and fruitfulness are called by the acts of love.
The spirit of fire is in the kindling of fire and in seething liquids and cooking on it, or fixing one's gaze into it, feeling its heat suffuse the flesh; the hearth-spirits are there, in the cleaning of the hearth and the lighting of its fires, and in the domestic activities done before it. Poetry and the magic of words also calls to any of them- and both doing and speaking is finally the strongest combination of power. No one knows the spirit of the hunt like a hunter; no one knows the grain-spirits and the plow-spirit like a farmer. No one knows the secret fire like a poet, and no one knows the great power of the word more than a sorcerer.
The symbols of the spirit-powers sought as familiars and as teachers and supporters by sorcerers and witches are another aspect of summoning; to gaze upon their symbols is to change the mind into a new condition. All symbols were born in the appearances of animals and natural phenomenon believed to be connected to these ancient powers- and what was true then is true now. Merely seeing an animal which is mythically or folklorically connected to a spiritual power makes one more capable of summoning it, as well as seeing a representation of the animal, the marks the animal may leave on nature (hoof, talon, or paw-prints, for example) or its bodily remains- and the same is true for natural phenomenon like lightning, thunder, waves, fires, stars, or any others.
This is why entering the forest- going away from civilization and into the wild and untamed wood- and setting up a pole bearing an antlered skull, gazing at it through firelight under the cover of night, will practically summon the power of the Lord of Beasts, the mighty and savage protector of natural places and power, all by itself. The act of traveling into the forest, bearing the skull, making the fire with intention, of being in the darkness- all of these acts are sorcerous acts if one turns their attention to them in such a manner. They are the strongest of summoning magics. Desire, too, is the strongest of summoning magic, for it is a dark or bright desire that begins the call to other powers- and can finish that call, as well.
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I have seen the dull yellow haze of the moon arising behind the dark forms of winter-stripped trees on cold nights, and felt the Weird with such great power that I knew with certainty the ease I would have contacting the unseen world, and manipulating the sorcerous powers that pulse through myself and the world alike. I knew that I would have this ease because I was already in contact- to live in this way makes the sorcerer what he or she is. One need not summon familiars or spirits to aid in sorcery, though doing precisely this is what makes a witch a witch or a sorcerer a sorcerer- but any sufficiently aware person may contact the Weird and conjure directly within the web of powers. Most people will discover what the witch or sorcerer already knows: familiar powers provide strength to working, and provide it with a speed and ease that is nearly impossible to match. A relationship with familiars is worth a high cost.
Nothing special needs to be done; yet, a tapestry of many things creates a spell of summoning. The presence of times, places, things, beasts, symbols, and evocative poetry- it all transforms the mind, makes the mind more receptive to the presence of these living powers. One will know these forces when they enter into the sphere of one's presence and awareness, on many levels. What is more important is the knowledge that they will know you, as well.
When you have summoned, if it was your goal to affect changes through the summoning, or to increase one's own power or insight, it is intention and will that you must join to the summoning, making the spell complete. You combine these substances into the wholeness that they already naturally are, open yourself up to that wholeness: there is the summoner, the summoned power, and the will/intent. The three must become one; the three are one, and with your new awareness of the fact, the spell is perfect and done. Perceptual transformations begin apace.
Understand that every spell is a contract. It is a two way flow of power, and more than that, a multi-directional arising and falling, a great multi-layered breathing of Weird. It affects you and the world in many ways. Sentient spiritual powers of high wisdom and power normally expect recompense- they do not give without expecting the courtesy of repayment- but this is not materialistic hunger on their parts. It is their knowledge that human beings must practice reciprocity if they are to be wise.
Francis Bacon said it best and wisest when he said
“Consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and they seek it not either for pleasure or mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefits and use of life.”
Some "minor" powers are very wild or even destructive and wicked to human perceptions, so their motivations for reciprocation- should they consent to serve you or aid you- may be dark. It is not advised that one conjure the dangerous stories and choppy, chaotic poetry that calls these things into conscious contact and relationship, though many do and have done such things throughout the ages. If you are wise, you will never do such things near one's home or loved ones.
