The Goetia Workbook by S. Connolly (Book Review)

One of the customs that most working magicians have been taught is the keeping of a magical journal, a record of one's magical experiments and experience. The custom goes back to Dee and Kelley--or at least, that is the point in history that the custom seems to originate from.

 

Most of us, including myself, just buy a blank composition book or a blank journal and proceed from there. A few suggestions on what to record have been published over the years. In my case, I was using a template that Donald Michael Kraig published in his Modern Magick book for a long time. (My template has moved away from his example, and now looks more like Dee's and Crowley's style than it does Kraig's example.)

 

Parts of the magical journals of Dee and Crowley have been published. In the case of Dee, there are large sections that are missing because Dee destroyed a lot of his journals to keep them out of the wrong hands (fortunately, some of the sections that he attempted to destroy survived, including a large hunk of the Enochian sessions). I have watched a couple of other working magicians destroy parts of their own magical journals; and over the years, some of my own records have been lost in various moves from residence to residence (it is what happens you do not move everything personally all by yourself).

 

Given the examples available to us and the cheap option of blank journal books, I never thought that I would ever give a shout-out to any blank magical journal--even a pre-formatted one, considering that the only viable publishing option is the print-on-demand route. (While a traditional publisher could print a pre-formatted blank magical journal cheaper, the truth is that a large part of the print-run would just sit in a warehouse, due to the extremely low demand for such an item...seriously, are there more than a thousand working magicians in the world at any given time?)

 

The Goetia Workbook by S. Connolly is a pre-formatted blank magical journal for those magicians working their way though the contact process with the Four Kings and the seventy-two Goetic Demons (or Daemons as Connolly prefers to call them--yes, they are a demonolator [daemonolator], one of those magicians who view the traditional spirits contained in the grimoires more as helper spirits than evil gone amok).

 

The pre-format is nice, simply for making sure that you remember to include all the important bits in your notes. And I like the fact that it has pages for each of the Four Kings and the seventy-two Goetic spirits (yes, I prefer the term "spirits"...which makes me a ?!?!). There is a space provided for any additional sigils that the spirit gives the magician, and a space to note if blood was offered (I personally use milk mixed with certain herbs as a substitute), et cetera. There is also a brief description of the powers and precautions for each spirit--my favorite being "Sitri is a lust demon and causes men and women to be passionate and get naked around one another."

 

But let's be honest the pre-formatting alone is not enough to justify a shout-out, so why am I suggesting that a working magician might want to consider shelling out money for something that they could do cheaper? The simple fact that you can get it as a paperback from Amazon and a hardcover from Lulu--the latter being what I would prefer. And why would that be important?

 

Quite simply because it has been my experience that the most important and significant encounter that one has with any given spirit is the initial contact. The basis of your entire relationship with a spirit can often be determined (typically with a lot of hindsight) from that first initial working. Therefore, with something like a run though the seventy-two Goetic spirits, one wants to make sure that the record of your working is going to be as permanent as you can get it.  

 

Yes, this shout-out is based simply upon the fact that I think that a working magician needs to ensure that their notes with certain operations, such as the initial contact with the Goetia, is set in as permanent form as one can accomplish. Did you really expect more from me? After all, I am a blogger who uses other people's work as an excuse to talk about things that I consider important (if you did not catch what this review is really about, re-read it again looking for the sole sentence that the entry is built around).

 

[This review is based on a preview file that the author lent to me.]

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.)