Spirit of Dieing
Dieing: To experience an agony or suffering suggestive of that of death - Dictionary.com
So we all do silly things when we’re young and new to magick, right? Here’s one of the most least thought-inspired things that I done during that newbie fluffy phase.
You’ll read elsewhere about my attempt to banish death. This is directly related to that experience. I decided that since I was unable to know for sure whether or not the person lived through their experience I would discover this for myself - by attempting to connect with their spirit “if it was out there”.
I was in my early teens and my young logic at the time told me that if they had died then their spirit would be “free”. Therefore I would at least know if they had passed and possibly get to say my goodbyes. Being young and quite short sighted it never occurred that this could be A Really Bad Idea. After all, what could possibly go wrong? I would try to contact a single person and, to protect myself, I would do the typical banish and circle casting at the start… that should cover the bases, right?
As you have no doubt inferred, something definitely went wrong.
I did indeed start out with the proper banishing: the all-important Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. Otherwise known as the LBRP. Feeling secure for doing that, I then proceeded to use a simple technique called The Middle Pillar Ritual to raise energy. In a nut shell it is a series of chants whilest focusing on specific areas (known as chakras) of the body.
There are other things that I should have done, but as I recall, I didn’t. For example, I should have planned out exactly how I was going to go about connecting with the person’s spirit, if it was even out there, but I didn’t. Oh no, I decided to wing it!
See how things were falling apart before I even started? I imagine that my readers who have any experience with spell work are probably shaking their heads right about now.
So, with the “proper banishing” done and the energy raised to go about doing what I was about to do, I began to visualize a circle in front of me. Not a sphere, just a circle. I began to trace both of my hands around this circle, retracing it endlessly as I reinforced the visualization. Within the circle was pure blackness - a void into endlessness. This, to me at the time, symbolized the spirit world. An unknown and endless dimension if you will.
This circle, of course, was my portal. After all I had to reach into the spirit world somehow, right?
With this black circle in the air before me I began to concentrate on the person’s name while building up a mental image of them as best as I could. I only visualized them as they probably would have been while living, and mostly focused on their face.
Then, taking and then altering information that I had read from various books on astral projection, I sent - aka, visualized - a silver cord into the darkness. Here is where I made another bad mistake: The silver cord was attached to me. It was attached to one of the chest chakras though I don’t remember if it was the heart or solar plexus.
This silver, spiritual cord was searching for the person’s spirit, attempting to find them in much the same way that a search hound finds their target. With a “scent” composed of only my best visualization, their name, and whatever emotional bond with the person that I could muster, I sent this spiritual cord into the abyss to search.
All the while I’m redrawing the circle before me. Over and over my hands pass ’round, keeping the portal strong before me in both my subconscious and concious mind, allowing the feeler to be guided by empathy and intuition more than anything else.
…then, after what felt to be a long span of time, it connected with something. Unfortunately it wasn’t anything pleasent. As you’ve no doubt suspected, it was the start of a horrible experience.
Though a number of mistakes were made from the very beginning I am still not sure what prompted this connection. Was the black void before me not the spirit world at all, but another plane? Did I connect with this person’s desperate spirit, or was it someone else’s? Or was it something else entirely? A darker thing that found the glowing silver feeler and latched onto it for its own purposes?
I don’t know. All I know is that suddenly, slowly, steadily a presence began to manifest itself in my room. It was a terrible, nightmarish presence composed of the most frightening emotions that I have felt before and since.
It was a presence of death. Of dieing. Great sorrow and desperation. It was as though “it” was dying and it was passing all of its emotions onto me. I felt as this entity felt helpless beyond expression, as it felt this thing we call “death” approaching and it wanted desperately to flee from but was inexorably paralyzed. I felt the desperation as this spirit wanted to hang onto what we call “life”, and a fear deeper than any we aught feel circled through me. I felt as darkness closed in around this entity, and through our connection, closed in around me. A darkness not compossed of a lack of light but something deeper, more endless, and permanetly definite.
This thing’s sorrow - and through my astral link my sorrow - was a sorrow that only dieing could born.
It was a nightmarish experience and it was growing stronger with no hesitation as this entity’s presence grew in my room. The emotions and experiences that I was feeling were not mine, I knew this, but they were still within me as equally as they were growing in the room around me.
Obviously, I knew immediately that the situation had gone horribly wrong. I knew that this was not something that I wanted to be spiritually connected with.
As soon as the feelings began to manifest I began to once again perform the banishing ritual. Yet these emotions and experiences were flowing into my room as steadily as water and filling my room as though it were a tank. I remember desperately wanting to run. To just leave the room, screaming, and to get as far away from those horrible feelings as I could.
Yet I didn’t. Somewhere in my mind - the part that knew that the feelings were not my own - I maintained some form of solid hold. It was that part of my mind that allowed me to finish the LBRP.
Even with the banishing ritual finished the presence did not vanish. It wasn’t like in the movies where the magician slumps down relieved. The presence - this entity’s influence on the physical world around me - drew away as slowly as it built up. As though the “water” that was the conflagoration of those emotions drained slowly through a hole but half the size of the portal that I had created.
Eventually, of course, the entity and all of its influence vanished from my room. The entire time that it was parting I was indeed slumped on the floor in the center of the circle that I had casted, and ultimately reinforced with the banishing ritual. Quite some time passed before I was able to regain any meaningful composure and was able to leave the protective circle, let alone leave the room.
This was, with very little doubt, the worse experience that I have ever had during any magickal working. Also know that this is a warning to any and all of you who may just be starting to practice some sort of spell or ritual work: Do no foolishly leap into a situation that is so over your head.
Be wise as a magician or witch should be and learn from the mistakes of others! If only I had taken my own advice, hm? Yet then I wouldn’t have had this experience to share.
~Mysk
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Topics: Mystical Experiences |
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