summaries

goetic intimacy

This chapter seeks to establish goetia as a practice that exists as a deeply individual and sensual experience.

Acher sets his definition of goetia as existing in opposition of the rigid, dogmatic, and intellectual practice of Magical grammer (which he says is typified by authors like israel regardie in the mid century)

Goetia is felt and experienced. Relationship with spirits is unique to each exchange just like a living relationship with any other consciousness.

To have true knowledge, ken, one must participate in the sensual experience of relating to the other

Notes

The grimoire seeks to distil magic into a controllable, intellectual process that can be mastered

What was sought to be captured in the grimoire was the practical essence, the core-design and principles of the operative process of making magic.

After such an engineering approach towards magic, spiritual mysteries became little more than occult codes that had to be deciphered with a keen mind and applied logic. What remained occult about them was mainly the fact that their unravelling required secret knowledge, usually passed on amongst primarily male initiates and under observance of ceremonial obligations of silence. In other words: from such a vantage point the _Veil of Mirmidones_ no longer posed a problem or blockage to the experience of lived magic. Rather, its tapestry of swarming ant thoughts simply had to be governed by an iron will, trained to stay in line, and execute the program determined by _tradition_.

pg. 5

The scientifically minded tradition of western magic over the years became focused on distilling magical practice into a universal language of magic which could be reformed to create ritual of any sort.

This language of magic was one that was spoken through universal symbolism that code be decoded and encoded at will

This modality of magic carries with it the implication that the mundane activities of the mind could be conquered through will power and intellectual strength to produce the precise state of consciousness desired.

Goetia should be a living intimate connection not a precise grammar

If Goetic practice is aiming to offer any effective tools and techniques for fostering such lived encounters, before anything else it has to be responsive and adaptive to the momentary situation. Rigid patterns, an obsession with precision, or the attempt to reverse-engineer spirit kinship from a fixed canon of orthodox performative rules would be a perversion of such craft. Equally, spectators have no place in this work as their outside position easily under- mines the intimacy required between all entities involved. Magic is by no means immune to the erosion of the erotic into pornography. Pg. 9

Attempting to summon a spirit through a practice ritual using a precise grammar of symbols is like pornography in that it is performative rather than actually intimate.

A true intimate connection with spirit is personal, and unique.

Acher argues that we should instead be developing a connection with a spirit that requires us to be present in the exchange. He compares it to a kiss- we cannot simply practice a kiss because each kiss is a unique exchange between two beings.

local spirit contact first

All the daemons that co-inhabit the land We live on will be relatively easy to get to know or even to strike alliances with. Ancient daemons of e.g. the Solomonic or Biblical tradition should remain irrelevant to our work until we have accomplished integration into the living ecosystem of spirits right around us first.

Pg 10

Contact the spirits of the local ecosystem first to integrate ourselves into the environment.

to know or to ken

Kennen is the German word for direct experiential knowledge as opposed to intellectual knowledge. English does not make a distinction between these two types of knowledge

goetic epistemology

to know we must participate

A goetic way of Knowing is about developing knowledge based on lived experience rather than theory

This experience implies participation in a larger existence beyond the self

In rather stark antagonism to the Platonic ideal, a goétic epistemology or way of knowing is not aiming for objective abstraction but for subjective specification: this moment, this body, this encounter, right now. Immanence, embeddedness, and embodiment are the sensual pathways through which lived knowledge is acquired. In reversal, this also means: no body, no knowledge. No communion in time and place and otherness, no identity. Rather than following the Cartesian logic of I think therefore I am, goêtic ways of knowing are unlocked through the imperative I partake there- fore I am. The aspects Pg 13

I partake , therefor I am not i think therefore I am