Writing a New Invocation to Bast

Greetings to the readers of The Pagan Mom Blog and to my regular readers. Today, I would like to share a few thoughts I had while writing the invocation to Bast that was used for the 31 Days of Deity.

(The guest post I did, an invocation to Bast, should be live now---but considering that I am pre-scheduling this post to go live while I am still sleeping, I could be wrong.)

I chose to write about Bast for two reasons. One, she is the patron deity of the local Golden Dawn lodge I belong to. Two, she keeps bringing me cats. (Ok, maybe she is not bringing me cats, but you must admit that I have quite a few of them.)

The reason I chose to do an invocation is simple: I rather enjoy performing them.

It is not the first time that I have written ritual scripts to use with Bast. One of my pride and joys is the "Wiccan" quarter calls I wrote a couple of years ago. It probably won't be the last time either.

Now in case you are a newbie to the term, an invocation manifests the spiritual and magical energies invoked inside one's own consciousness; its counterpart, an evocation manifests the energies outside oneself. (Ok, that is not completely true; but I am trying to keep this simple.) In Wiccan terms, an invocation is like a "drawing down," and an evocation is like "calling the quarters."

During the course of doing research for creating this invocation, I must admit that I was rather appalled by the general lack of information. While I consulted many different sources, often the result was the same information (a paragraph or two) that I had seen in all the rest of the sources. At a certain point, I discovered myself shaking my head over the fact that Herodotus is still a major source.

This lack of information is not especially surprising. After all, Bast (or Bastet) was a goddess that was worshipped more by the common people of Ancient Egypt than she was by the ruling class. Because of that, Bast was not mentioned often in the literature that forms the core of our knowledge about Ancient Egyptian mythology.

Even less information was attained when consulting the published documents of Golden Dawn and Egyptian Wicca (the first is not surprising, the second more so). There was some unpublished stuff that influenced what I created. If you can see where the unpublished stuff lays, then you have been taught it (or figured it out on your own). I will openly admit that the IHVH formula for invocations, and the seven layers of godforms played a part in what I created.

While Angela wanted us to provide a list of resources for further research, honestly in this case, I feel it would have been useless list. After all, it was a paragraph here, a line there, and information generally being repeated.

No, the resource for further research and work has already been provided: It is the ritual of invocation itself. Think of it as an instructual tool. The various myths, names and titles of Bast have been condensed into the invocation. Even if one does not want to perform the invocation, one can take it apart line by line to get an idea of how complicated the mythology surrounding Bast was.

And on that note, I must issue an apology. You see, I learn a lot from doing invocations and experiencing various magical forces firsthand. It is how I learn. I realize that it is not everyone's cup of tea; but let's be honest, I was writing the invocation for people like myself.

[As always all complaints about my insensitivity will be read, but not necessarily approved.]

I wonder what type of poison ink letter he gets

Today, I was reading Frater BarrabbasTiresius' blog and found myself wondering what type of poison ink letters he recieves in his hate mail file. His latest entry is a critique and analysis of the book Ceremonial Magic and the Power of Evocation: A System of Personal Power written by Joseph Lisiewski.

I have not actually read Lisiewski's book; but given the book review and my own experiences with book reviewing, Barrabbas must recieve some charming hate mail. Of course, I seem to remember Lisiewski being impressed with a couple of the books that I was not completely supportive of, so the poison ink might end up coming from the exact same people. Next thing, I know I will hear that me and Barrabbas are involved in the same conspiracy.

Then again, given the fact that I view poltergeist activity and strange noises as a sign of inefficiency, smoke and fire as potential hazards, and am only concerned with accomplishing my desired effect, it might not be so wrong to lump the two of us together. Of course, everyone knows how I feel about Golden Dawn, so Lisiewski claiming that Golden Dawn does not work because it was built up from corrupted sources just sets my teeth on edge.

Barrabbas' review makes me want to track down a copy of the book and see if Lisiewski is as insulting as this review makes him out to be. Fortunately (in a sense), I do not have the money or time to do so.

Spirits Have Full Names

There are times when I read something that I have to say "So?!" or "This is news, how?!" The latest was when I was reading David Griffin's book review of Grand Key of Solomon the King the other day. I was sipping a coca-cola at the time (*wink*).

And Griffin wrote:

One thing that amazed me was that even though we are familiar with demons like Amaymon (in Arabic Maymon) and Paimon, according to this Key of Solomon these are actually surnames. This indicates that for a long time evocations performed by European occultists summoned these beings using only their last names, while Arab magicians called them by their full names. Just wow!

Wow?! Huh?! This is a surprise, how?!

Maybe it is just me, but this is old news, right?

I doubt that anyone who is familiar with Norse mythology, Greek mythology, or Egyptian mythology is surprised that spirits have first names. (I am not sure about other mythologies, but a passing study of any one of these three should provide the student the hint that spirits have whole names, and not just last names.)

No one who have worked with any of the angels who have numerous functions should be surprised. You have to use something more than just a single name if (for instance) you are interested in a specific function of (let's say) the angel Micheal.

And no one who is experienced in working with evocation should be surprised either. After all, the first thing you ask a spirit is for its name. A single experience of a spirit giving you a full name should be enourgh to wake you up to the fact that Western grimoires are incomplete.

The fact that Arabic grimoires are more complete should not be a surprise either. The Western world tried to wipe out its mystery traditions for centuries. There are still people today that think we should all be burned at the stake. Recording a first name for a spirit sounds like a sure way to get burned to me.

There is also the Western tradition that the specific ritual modifications that a spirit tells you are "For Your Eyes Only" and are not to be shared (aka written down). This includes differences between the name as they give it to you and the name that you used for initial contact.

Now, I will admit that I must say Wow! to the fact that we now have access to a grimoire that lists this information. I am just not sure if it will justify buying the book; I find that I am not nearly as impressed by the same things as the HOGD/A&O crowd is, so there is always doubt that the book is worth it based on a HOGD/A&O book review.

(In all fairness, I must admit that the HOGD/A&O members loathe my book reviews for the very fact that I find different things useful than their chosen set.)

Now, I am quite sure that Griffin will say that I misunderstood him. It will be interesting to compare the pdf of the original book review to whatever version he creates to prove that I completely misunderstood him, and knew all the stuff that I have already mentioned.

(By the way [bonus for my readers who are also bloggers], if you are interested in getting the most pageviews, you never revise a blog post, you always follow up with a new blog post instead. Remember search engines love blogs that regularly updated; a revision does not show up as an update. It also helps keep you out of the fraud and fakers category---the very appearance of revising your posts is enourgh to get one labeled a fraud when one writes about the occult.)