This is the informational handout I gave the participants, most of whom were not very knowledgable on the subject. It is all available on the web in various places, but makes a good primer if you don't know the basics already.
Also, each of the participants and officers painted thier faces beforehand, to symbolize taking on thier shadow self, or demon persona. This is important because of the types of energy we were invoking. I also chose to wear a black mask at the beginning, which served to negate my personality in a sense. I was taking on an archetypal role. To me in that role I was a being of the Abyss, or even a personification of the Abyss.
Now a little clarification of some of the ambiguous stage directions.
The banishing was done by 3 participants, each using an element of purification. The elements were: incense, salt water, fresh water. They were taken around the circle to set and clear the space. Afterwards I did a "dance banishing", which involved dancing in a spiral and spinning. It actually turned out to be quite effective.
I chose this form over a more standard banishing because I didn't want to mix the forces, and I felt that a standard CM type banishing would bring a totally different energy into play and work counter to raising the type of primal energy I wanted.
Before the ritual we had a feast, and it is from this that the blood offering was gained. Before anyone was allowed to eat, some blood was drained from the meat into a chalice. Thus the first taste was given as an offering. This is mostly symbolic, but I felt a blood offering necessary to placate the demonic energies and make them docile. Also given in offering was my own sperm, saved from a sex magic ritual the night before. Thus a million slain children. This was poured around the circle, making another circle of blood.
Once the circle was set, the participants has to be purified as well. I wanted everything within that space to be as pure as possible. I also instructed everyone that once they entered the circle, they could not leave for any reason until the Rite was complete. For to do so would open a breach which could provide entry to the howling demons of the night, which would be accompanying our guests. Also each participant was bound before entering the circle, to represent both the binding of spirit into matter and the binding of our wills to the aim of the Rite.
The purification was done by 4 officers, one crossing the chakras with salt and fresh water, and the other 3 each taking a letter of AUM and projecting it into the appropriate chakra. This also turned out to be very effective. The fresh and salt water refer to the Sumerian creation myth, which had a primordial deep composed of salt and fresh water, personified by two dragon serpents, Apsu and Tiamat.
Also of note is the 4 different names used in invoking Lilith by the 4 officers: Lilith, Naamah, Isheth Zennunim, and Igrat Batmahlat. In ancient Hebrew literature Lilith is spoken of as having 3 sisters, or to my mind different aspects of the same goddess. I wanted to make sure that all were present. Accounts of the names of the sisters vary, but these are the names I felt most comfortable with.
During the invocations of Lilith and Samael by one officer the other participants would be chanting a shorter invocation to the other. This was done to make sure the forces were balanced throughout. I saw the biggest danger to the operation as a loss of balance or focusing more on one deity than the other. I still feel that it is important, but there may be a better way to go about it as I recall it feeling a bit like a tug of war.
The drawing of the sigil on the ground comes from my experiences with voudon. The sigil is drawn in flour, then charged with the invocation, then danced upon and destroyed to release the energy. This build up and release amplifies the power a great deal in my experience.
The marking was done differently for the sexes. Men were marked by a female officer with the name of Lilith, to invoke her as thier own anima, while women were marked by a male with the name of Samael, as their animus. Thus Lilith and Samael were being invoked as subconscious aspects of the self, the not physically expressed and thus (at least somewhat) repressed sex, the shadow self. Thus we were not only uniting 2 godforms, but uniting with our own shadow self, thus the union was internal and external.
The ecstatic union should be self explanatory. While an orgy is not necessary, participants should feel free to express the wild lust they just invoked and consumed. The energy will need to be grounded in some way or another. The energy may or may not manifest in overtly sexual ways for each participant and it is important to neither be inhibited nor force anything. S&M play is another great way to ground the energy. For obvious reasons it is best if the male to female ratio is close to even.
There were a number of items on the altar which helped draw the full power of the forces invoked. These included a previously charged sigil of Baphomet, stained with my own blood, Datura flowers, a black widow spider, the cake to be consumed, which was marked with a combination sigil of both Lilith and Samael, the sacramental wine, a black mirror (to symbolize the Sithra Ahra), other intoxicants to be charged as sacraments, as well as all the working tools to be used, black candles, etc.
The cake and the wine both contained small doses of herbal poisons. The cake contained mandrake & datura. The wine contained wormwood, datura, and mistletoe berries (I think there may have been some Belladonna in there too). The doses were small enough to be below the threshhold of psychoactivity but still enough to act as a channel for magical energy. For those who wish to follow my footsteps and make a similar poisonous brew, I'll only say this once: This ain't no fucking around poison, this shit is the real deal, and if you don't know what you are doing you WILL fuck yourself up in a big way.
The whole idea came to me rather out of the blue. I didn't know much about Lilith, but I up and decided one day to invoke her and her mate. I feel strongly that I was in fact chosen by her, called to do her work. The more I researched her legends in preparation for the ritual, the stronger the need to do the ritual. It quickly got to where I was spending hours a day researching and writing. For a period of a few months I was completely obssessed with finding out everything I could. She was with me frequently, helping me to write the ritual, guiding me to information about her. She came to me strongly at night, on the cusp of sleep several times, and also in dreams. She told me many things about herself, and my understanding grew beyond what I had read, though I didn't realize it at first. Later I ended up discovering some of the things she had told me and thus realized I had not gleaned that knowledge from a terrestrial source. I thought it was only intuition, but it went beyond intuition.
About the 3rd or 4th week of this a rather large black widow appeared on the ceiling of my bedroom. Here is a quote from my magical journal.
"On the 7th I had a dream about posionous creatures, snakes & scorpions and when I woke up the first thing I saw was a black widow on my ceiling. At first I didn't know it was a black widow and a couple of days later when I took a picture of it, it "presented" itself to me, dropping down on a strand of silk and showing me its belly. I was a little freaked out by it and while thinking about it, I started singing the Fleetwood Mac black widow song to myself. A few minutes later I hopped in the car to pick up ****** [my girlfriend] and noticed the odometer had stopped on 66.6 miles, which shocked me just a bit. Then when I turned on the radio, the song I had just been singing came on."
That is what led me to make the connection with Lilith. My intuition was confirmed as I went to study the behavior of black widows, and I discovered this behavior was extremely out of character. I then realized it was both a sign and a gift, and I made an intuitive connection between the behavior of the spider, hunting and especially mating, and the goddess. I was determined not to be a victim however.
Samael also had a very rich history and I found researching it to be truly rewarding. He is very powerful, yet he never got a hold on me the way she did. He also came to me on a few occasions. I especially needed his help with preparing and mixing the poisons properly. I did smaller private rituals to each of them seperately several times in order to work up to the grand finale and get a good grasp on the energies involved. There was definately an adversarial, satanic aspect to both of them. I felt I was being tested, weakness probed, on many occasions. I have no doubt that had I slipped up, I would have been devoured.
It was quite an experience with these powerful energies being around all the time. Here are some more excerpts from my journal.
"I frequently seemed to see shadows darting away out of the corner of my eye."
"I did some mushrooms. My visuals were very intense and real at first. I kept seeing a woman over and over [every time I closed my eyes] that I believed to be Lilith, the visuals started getting very sexual and I saw the woman was holding something orange in her hand. It looked like a flower at first but as I got closer I saw it was an orange octopus its tentacles spiraling outward in a complex pattern that looked kind of like flower petals. There was an eye in the center and I felt myself being drawn into it and I felt its tentacles wrapping around me at which point I panicked and opened my eyes."
The week surrounding the ritual was rife with astronomical events, which added to the apocalyptic feel. Mars was unusually close to the earth for starters and glared out of the sky like an angry red eye. Coincidentally enough (not!) Mars was clearly visible during the entire ritual through a small break in the trees which perfectly framed it. 2 days before the ritual there was a solar eclipse.
The build up of the last days and final preparations to the Rite were quite intense, and more than anything else firmly established in my mind that I had embarked upon some serious shit. When I did the formal charging of the sigil of Baphomet, the violently red aura around it was strong enough that it was starting to impinge upon my ordinary sight. And the eyes were as living eyes which followed me about and watched me.
The day of the ritual I did a tarot reading which was awful. I pulled Strife, Ruin, Indolence, and Worry, with only the Aeon, the Magician, Swiftness, Success, Truce, and Ace of Disks to oppose them. Bur all the bad cards were in prominent positions and the good cards in weak positions. It was one of the worst tarot readings I've ever pulled and I almost called off the ritual because of it. There were, however, too many wheel already in motion to stop, the point of no return had already been passed. The reading I think was yet another test by the duo of destruction to see what I was made of.
The invokation itself was one of the most powerful magickal workings I have ever done, and ended (for me) with a near complete possession by the energies invoked.
The officers were people I had worked very closely with magically for a number of years, the participants were all very serious about what we were doing and the protective barriers were very strong. These precautions were likely the only thing keeping the Rite from degenerating into total chaos.
The energy came in waves, spiking up during certain parts, then settling back down. But each wave was more powerful than the last and was definately building up to something. The energy of Samael & Lilith was responding to our own energy, in a sort of cycle, raise & response. It felt like dancing with a partner, you each take turns, and led to a great feeling of not being alone, not merely imagining the entities but really being in contact with something "other".
The formal part of the ritual was broken up with spontaneous periods of drumming and dancing. This was foriegn to most of those present and they were a little hesitant to engage at first. It is easy to self censor because of fear of how silly what you are doing appears because we don't have a cultural context for these activities. But an experienced trance dancer friend and myself broke the ice and before long I was looking around and seeing the others losing themselves in ecstatic trance. Each person was doing thier own personal invocations during these times and making a personal connection with the energies. I feel this was very important and the reason why it was so powerful.
The mantras were very catchy and powerful and we even devised new mantras on the spot, each of us picking up off of and playing off of the others. Destroying the sigil was a great deal of fun also. One of the officers tried to move things on before I was quite ready, by reading the next portion of the invocation. However, when it was time for my line, I waited and went back to dancing and raising energy. Breaking up the invocation among several people worked good that way, allowing each to operate on thier own timing.
Halfway through, things were starting to get pretty wild. There was a great deal of sheer ininhibited chaos, screaming, stomping, chanting, whirling, incoherent babbling. I started using "ki-si-kill-lilake" as a mantra while one of the others was drumming, and our rhythms synced up and spun me off into deep trance. I had several peak experiences like this where I would go off deep into trance for a long while, then come back and see everyone else doing the same thing in different ways.
I was so deep in trace that I was losing myself (not in a bad way) and this is when the possession started to happen. I found myself speaking in tongues spontaneously, but somehow it didn't feel like gibberish. It seemed I was speaking a real language, but not one I am familiar with. In my mind there was a definate meaning to what I was saying, it was a further invocation, but the words came out in this weird language. By that point however, it didn't seem all that unusual however.
When we drew the marks on those present, this served as a focus for the energy. It was grounded physically in this act, but this act also served to further invoke it. This was one of the quieter periods. This was the cycling aspect, there were these really intense periods of wildness, then these slower quieter periods where we had a chance to reflect on things and gather our strength for the next wild cycle. The only part that didn't seem to sit right with me was the Enochian, it felt out of place. Yet at that point, it was like spraying a water gun on a bonfire.
Things really started to come together when I invoked the Beast. All that energy came focused to a point, the energy was yoked and suddenly things were moving. When I drew the Mark of the Beast in the air, I could see something hovering there afterwards. A portal had been opened and through it I could see the Beast. I was operating on pure intuition at this point, the words came bubbling from my lips without effort, as I guided the energy with my mind. When I offered the wine to be blessed, I was on a very deep level, in trance with my eyes closed, speaking to that which I could feel all around me. I was told at this point a moth flew into a candle flame, dove into the wine, then flew out again. The blessing had been granted.
When we partook of the wine and cake, the experience is beyond words. It was unimaginably powerful. The wine goblet being used was small, but even so it only got passed around the circle twice (7 people!). We had to stop because no one could take any more. I was practically falling down drunk after only a couple sips. It all hit at once. Obviously there was more than wine and a few herbs at work. Despite all the wormwood, etc, it actually tasted quite good.
I partook of another sacrament which had been charged on the altar at this time also, 2 hits of acid. There seemed to be some general confusion at this point though. I get the feeling that some didn't quite know what to do with the energy, and some weren't ready to really let go. I knew what to do though and let it flow, coursing through my veins. One of my friends felt the spirit move her, ordered me to my knees (so forceful was her command, another dropped to his knees also <g>)and delivered to me the beating of a lifetime. In that ecstasy of torment I reached a point where I could no longer differentiate myself from the thrashing, snarling Beast within me. It was a moment of sublime transcendance where I looked upon the Beast face to face. The intense physical sensation provided a potent grounding rod for the energy.
I'm not actually sure what the others were doing during this period. I was only liminally conscious for a long time after. I don't think any actual sex happened, though other beatings were administered and other love play ensued. One of the officers decided to end the rite, with the ritual closing and from my mouth erupted a word which no one understood, least of all myself. I'm not even sure what it was because it wasn't recorded until the next day.
After speaking with the others it became clear that everyone had a wildly different experience. Some chose to internalize the energy, while I and others externalized it. One reported to me seeing vivid open eye visions throughout the ritual (no one took any intoxicants until the end). I think everyone was overwhelmed by the energy to a certain extent, some more than others. Some were clearly not ready for it and withdrew as soon as things got serious, not fully engaging. This acted somewhat as a damper, or energy drain.
In retrospect, everything flowed very well, between the participants and from one stage of ritual to the next. Nothing that could have gone wrong did: no demonic attacks, nobody freaked out, no wild beasts invaded the circle (yes this was really a concern of mine beforehand due to certain other events that had occured involving various poison bearing wildlife). There was a certain element of imbalance in that I and some of the males were focusing our invocations on Lilith too much, though this worked itself out in the end. I think the ritual was cut short before it peaked, but I don't think any of us were ready to take it to the next level at that time.
The really interesting thing is that the altered state I was in and the energy totally dissipated when we went back to my house. I literally went from stone cold drunk to sober when I stepped through the door. Not even the acid was having any effect at all, but when I went back outside hours later, it kicked right back up again. I went back to the spot where we did the ritual and had a very personal experience with what I can only describe as a force of nature.
Though the energy had been grounded and released, it was far from over. I had several initiatic dreams involving Lilith. At one point she took me into a temple and actually initiated me, there was a magical symbol I have never seen on the floor and Greek words I don't know around it. (Greek scholars contact me!) She also instructed me further about her nature, which has been worked into the revision. Another participant reported being visited several times also and even being obsessed. Going back to the site of the Rite a month later, I found it covered in tiny, delicate purple flowers. A year later I discovered the bone of a large animal (cow?) there.
The energy did seem to manifest in very physical ways for most, involving an improved life situation, though at least one had a bad reaction. I personally went from a pretty bad situation into one enjoying a much greater level of success and happiness. Needless to say this working had a profound effect on me and my outlook on life, and I am in fact still reaping the benefits from some of the changes I made internally based on things I learned that night. Our every request was answered. I for one would love to do it again but a number of obstacles have presented themselves which I have yet to resolve.
If any of you who read this ever do this ritual or another based on it, I would ask that you share the results with me. I feel this is a universal and ancient energy that is being awakened again after a long sleep, and I'm interested to know who else is working this current and what thier experiences are.
In the years gone by I have re-evaluated my beliefs regarding the energies invoked. I no longer feel them to be demonic, though they will present themselves in that way if that is how they are approached and can be dangerous. I think my expectations shaped in large part the results and manifestations. I connected with the darker aspect of the gods, but I also feel they have light(er) aspects as well. Much in the same way as many Hindu gods have both benevolent and wrathful aspects. The line between Asura and Deva is a fine one.
