on the reality of evocation/invocation
(snippet from a reply to an email query concerning the real nature of magical evocation) 
 

[Snip intro ... ] 

* I've always been fascinated by ceremonial magic and the invocation/evocation of entities.  I have read extensively regarding it, but I have not ever attempted the operation, as I have not felt that I was duly prepared and ready.  This session really has my interest, and it reminds me of the theory that entities evoked are actually aspects of ourselves and not actual independent entities from another plane.  Still, there is the argument that the entities are indeed real and tangible.  I have read arguments from both schools of thought.  Can you elaborate further on this? *

[Snip...]

The debate about the real nature of these intelligences comes from the fact few magicians who have succeeded in physical evocation understand anything (even the most basic facts) about abnormal psychology, and occltists who know about psychology usually know nothing of value about occultism. So they have diametrically opposed views on the subject.

To understand how evocation works, in modern terms, you need a good understanding of theory and a working knowledge of psychosis. The definition of psychosis is that the psychotic individual is experiencing hallucinations. They see, hear, smell, feel or taste things which convention says do not exist. To have an hallucination of the senses like this is called a psychotic episode. I am not completely up to date with how the mental health community explain how these hallucinations happen (if they have an official explanation at all), but I do know (first hand) how esoteric psychology explains it.

Your (lower) mind basically has two feilds of activity, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. These two feilds are separated by a metaphorical 'wall', and that wall has a metaphorical 'door' in it. So, for example, when you go to sleep at night your awareness shifts deep into the root of the conscious mind until it reaches this wall, and the door. The moment you pass through this door you enter in to the unconscious. As you wake in the morning, if you dream, that dream is the residual effect of the door still being open. Information from the unconscious leaks out, into the 'subconscious'. The subconscious is the area close to the wall, and it is an intermediary area between conscious and unconscious, and shares in them both. (Dreams and imagination occur in the subconscious.)

What happens in the subconscious is that information from the unconscious is translated in to a format that the conscious mind can recognise (even if it doesnt understand it). The raw information in the unconscious can't be grasped by the conscious mind, so the subconscious uses items from your conscious memory as symbols, or representations, of what is going on in the unconscious.

A good analogy of this is found in your computer. If you took your hard drive out of your computer and opened it up, and looked at the magnetic disk that stores the data, you couldn't 'see' the data or understand what it means, even if you could see it. This is what your unconscious is like. It contains information in a format that your conscious mind cannot 'read'. So your computer is a mechanism that takes that raw data from your HDD and converts it in to a format that you can understand and manipulate. This is what we call 'windows' operating system (for example) a graphic user interface (GUI). That GUI is really just a bunch of pictures that symbolise or represent the data on the HDD. Your sub-conscious mind is your personal GUI. A dream is you staring at this GUI, so is imagination (to a degree).

When you wake from your dream you can remember the dream only until the door in the wall closes, then its like you totally forget it ... unless you write it down, or focus on it repeatedly after waking.

This is how a 'healthy' mind operates. But in some people a trauma in their lives punches a hole in the wall. This causes information from the unconscious to leak out continually in to conscious awareness. At first the victim of this situation just has very vivid visions in their mind (their GUI goes wild). But as the hole in the wall gets bigger and we get more concerned about what is coming out, depression, anxiety and eventually paranoia exaggerate the problem. (This comes from the fact that 'stuff' we don't want to remember is stored in the unconscious (along with other stuff), and we tend to experience this nasty stuff first if we experience a psychotic episode). Eventually, if the situation is not treated the victim experiences a psychotic break ... parts of the GUI (subconscious) become 'projected' on to the physical world. I.e. an hallucination occurs. When this happens the event, to the victim, appears completely real. Because the wall has lost its integrity, the victim can no longer 'separate' a distinction of hard reality from unconscious reality.  The projection looks, smells, feels, tastes and sounds entirely like it belongs in the physical world. What is now happening, in effect, is that information from the unconscious is being directly projected out on to the physical world. Extreme events of this kind are known as schizophrenia (full blown psychosis), by the medical profession.

So that is the 'medical' explanation of psychosis. The esoteric explanation of evocation (in to physical appearance) is based on this phenomena.

When we successfully evoke an 'entity' in to physical manifestation, what we are actually doing is practicing a very ancient method of deliberately, and under strict control (hopefully) opening the door in the wall, allowing a specific chunk of information from the unconscious to project itself on to physical existence. A well practiced magician can do this with items from his personal unconscious. An expert magician can tunnel through his personal unconscious in to the collective unconscious, projecting intelligences that exist there on to the physical world.

Medically we would say that evocation is deliberate and controlled psychosis (schizophrenia). The trick to success in this is knowing how to open the event and close it, without any later 'leakage', while at the same time having the skill to pull through only that piece of unconscious information that we require. If leakage occurs, then insanity (loss of control) will follow. There is another key to this technique which is little understood today. If the magician is not 'initiated' (has his higher genius governing his mind), eventually the intelligence that is responsible for maintaining the integrity of the wall and the door will take over his mind, and he will go insane.

Initiation (incarnating the higher genius in to the mind) is the key to safe practice.

I hope that helps.

regards,
rubaphilos.

[sub-text as a later addition for the website. Physical reality, as the adept understands it, using the terminology of the modern psychologist, is smply ... a shared psychotic projection from the collective unconscious ... and because it is a manifestation of the collective it is considered 'healthy'. All is mind as the kybalion insists. If you can get your head around that I'll show you how to prove it. (rubaphilos)]