‘Conjured Bodies and Angels of the Moon: A Study of Grimoiric Magic and the
Ritual Body’
Damon Zacharias Lycourinos
University of Edinburgh
Religious Studies
Presented at the panel Epistemologies and Esoteric Bodies: The Substance of Practice
(Conveners: Jay Johnston and Damon Zacharias Lycourinos) at EASR/IAHR/NGG
Conference on Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge, University of Groningen, the
Netherlands, 13/05/2014.
Ethnography
Ritual has generally been regarded as the embodied process performing the mental
contents of religious discourse. For this reason many scholars have described ritual as
being ‘thoughtless’ and ‘habitual’. However, some scholars reflecting on the
ethnographic reality of the ritual body have come to consider ritual entirely as a body
technique:
Rituals involve gestures, postures, dances, patterns of movement. If we are to
make sense of rituals, it follows, we need to engage with this corporeality; that
is, we need to make sense of rituals specifically as embodied practices.1
In the attempt to engage in this debate I will employ an ethnographic case study of
mine relating to a dominant paradigm of ritual behaviour belonging to the profoundly
unstable category of ‘magic’. Within this study I have employed the emic perspective
of the body as a transpersonal organism in interaction with the occult aspects of
natural forces and transworldly entities as the methodological framework before
applying my own analysis.
The ethnographic study is referred to as the ‘Ninth Key of Gabriel & Levaniel’,
deriving from a sixteenth century English manual of occult instruction titled Dr
Rudd’s Nine Hyerarches of Angels with Their Invocation to Visible Appearance, and
is described as:
Moving & Calling, forth, to Visible Appearance, the Celestial Hierarchy Of
Angels of the Order of Angels; whose principal governing Angels or Blessed
Intelligences, bearing rule are, Gabriel, & Levaniel; & Residing In the first Orb,
Mansion or Sphere, being the Orb, Heaven, or Sphere, of the planet Called Luna,
2
or the Moon.
The ritual technologies employed by the ritualist, who I shall refer to as the
‘Conjuror’, consisted of:
i. Establishing a designated ritual space and time.
1
Crossley, 2004, 31.
2
Quoted in Rankine and Skinner, 2005, 207.
ii. Preparatory ritual cleansing and adorning himself.
iii. Meditative exercises.
iv. A series of ceremonial gestures.
v. A stationing of the body before a scrying object for the purpose of
communing with the spirit being.
vi. Extensive verbal invocations.
vii. The evocatory request for the visible appearance of the spirit being.
viii. A period of concentrated communication with the spirit being manifested
through the scrying object.
ix. A silent period of reflective contemplation.
x. A license to depart.
The epicenter of the ritual motions can be identified as a set of extensive prayers to
God followed by evocatory spoken formulas requesting Gabriel and Levaniel to
visibly appear into a black obsidian mirror placed upon the altar, and culminating
with the act of communication with the lunar angelic revelation. According to the
author of the primary source:
The sign of their appearance, most seemeth like a Veil or Curtain of some
beautiful Colour, hanging in or about the stone, or Glass, as a bright Cloud or
other pretty kind of Hieroglyphical show, both strange & yet very Delightful to
3
behold.
In response to my inquiries regarding previous experiences with similar paradigms of
ritual magic the Conjuror replied:
Manifestations can either take place in the triangle of evocation or in the scrying
mirror. At times I have seen them just lurking outside the circle, like this one
time this horned-like spirit resembling a satyr was staring at me from the corner
of the room. However, they are mainly revealed through vision, either internally
or with my eyes open as if I am seeing an awakened dream. But I also experience
feelings, especially with angelic workings, of being in awe. When working with
demons I normally experience a sense of apprehension and nervousness.
The ritual time coincided with the hour of the moon and the space was defined by the
Conjuror priestly appearance in a white linen robe and wearing a Solomonic lamen;
magic circles of protection comprised of divine names of power and other arcane
symbols, such as pentagrams and hexagrams; candles at the northeast, southeast, and
so on; an altar upon which was a pentacle of attraction placed beneath the obsidian
scrying mirror, burning incense, two large candles, and the Seal of Gabriel to “attract
Gabriel by using the sign he recognises.” Due to the length of the rite and the limited
time available for this presentation I will only share my own impressions as a
participant observer:
The form of the Conjuror cast its shadow across the circle as he sat in meditative
silence gazing into the Seal of Gabriel, as if entranced. Inhaling deeply, he began
with the incantation of the ‘Ninth Key of Gabriel & Levaniel’. The ritual intent
began to formulate with the Conjuror declaring in a soft yet commanding voice,
3
Quoted in Rankine and Skinner, 2005, 124.
“Do call upon you, & humbly Request, & Entreat you, & move you to Visible
appearance.”
Throughout the rite the Conjuror remained motionless, staring into the obsidian
mirror whist reciting the ‘Ninth Key of Gabriel & Levaniel’. Feeling that he was
not receiving a distinct vision he commenced with the 9th Replication, which is
essentially a shorter yet more precise version of the initial evocation. At this
point I began to immerse myself in the reflection of the solemn stillness of the
atmosphere and motions, the tone of his voice, which resonated as a soft and
rapid monotonous utterance of theologic verses beseeching the visible
appearance of the angelic beings, and a sense of uneasy anticipation, as if
unconsciously responding to a gradual entry of an otherworldly presence. The
ritual invitation ended abruptly with silence wavering in the ritual space as the
Conjuror began to intensely gaze into the obsidian mirror, a state which he
desribed to as “the scrying trance,” rearing his head slightly from time to time as
if trying to identify any presence in the depths of the darkness before him. He
remained there for some time, entranced and whispering briefly, as if in
conversation with something other than us.
The Conjuror’s distinct pattern of ritualisation reflected a symbolic and experiential
dialogical relationship with both the cosmological and technological components of
the primary source instructing and legitimising his praxis. The primary source that my
ethnographic subject shared with me was essentially a ‘grimoire’, which I refer to as
an instructional ritual manuals with references to contextualised cosmological
discourse and personal commentary presented in a pragmatic theosophic fashion.
However, it must be noted that this knowledge is conveyed by an author, whether real
or imitated, through the imaginative dimensions of historical memory responsible for
the composition of the edition of the primary source referred to by the ritualist within
a specific ethnographic framework.
Through reception, enactment, and further reflection the grimoire was incarnated as a
self-conscious exploration of the Conjuror’s subjectivity seeking initiation into the
proposed ritual reality through the construction of an alternative self. This may further
be interpreted as forming a dialogical relationship between the ritualist and primary
source conceived as the entextualisation of the ritual body in representational and
formational methods. The Conjuror employed his grimoire to construct a ritual
habitus for the purpose of establishing communication with a conjured transworldly
entity in a phenomenal field reflecting the habitual conditions set out by the grimoire.
This formed the core of the dialogical relationship between designated primary source
and the Conjuror’s ritual behaviour, manifested through external representations and
subjective dimensions of experience. This manner of reading and enactment I render
as the Conjuror initially being the notional reader intended by the author of the
primary source, and then becoming the author himself. This is achieved through the
process of a synchronic adjustment of both the historical reality, mythopoeic
atmosphere, and subjectivity of the grimoire actualised through distinct patterns of
ritualisation.
Having established that the relationship between the Conjuror and his grimoire is
essentially a channel for the transformation of the self in correlation with the
phenomenal field, one may suggest that the orientation of the dynamics of this
ritualised relationship are,
Directed to those aspects of ritual practice that may establish not only the
perceptual ground for the organization of cognition but… as a structuration of
perception and of cognition in which particular human potentialities both of
experience and of meaningful construction may be formed.4
The mythic and symbolic infrastructures of this ritual case study could be described as
constituting a participatory reality of embodiment suitable for the reception,
enactment, and experience of the ritual reality derived from the primary sources.
Hence, the argument could prevail that the primary sources become internalised and
subjectivity entextualised, with the Conjuror becoming a particularised ritual body
and the grimoire the reality of the ritual itself. For the purpose of this study the
hypothesis of ritual being a voluntary assembly of mediating body techniques may
infer that ritualisation can be conceptualised as ways through which the Conjuror
discovered the knowledge necessary for employing his body within a particular space
and time, as defined by the selection of the primary source, ritual objectives, and
personal experience.
From a phenomenological perspective the ‘Ninth Key of Gabriel & Levaniel’ is an
active configuration of designated space and time manipulated by the Conjuror to
assume a subjective ritual self through a symbolic and experiential participation with
the proposed and intended ritual reality of the grimoire. This ritual participation
defines the existential and experiential state of being, alongside the definition of being
interpreted by the epistemological framework of the ritual itself. Furthermore, this
process is both discursive and experiential seeking to integrate the Conjuror with the
grimoire generating a meaningful reality defined by ritually generated perceptions,
affections, and reflections accessed through words, gestures, images, space, and time.
Hermeneutics
Due to the fact that this ethnographic case study was distinctly defined by somatic
modes of attention, the very notion of participation must be examined in relation to
the Conjuror’s experiential movement from readership to authorship as attentive acts
to the ritual phenomenon through embodiment and consciousness. According to
Merleau-Ponty, the experience of the body is an embodied experience of the world as
a living human body existing in a historical and meaningful world.5 This implies that
the body should be acknowledged as a permanent condition of experience and a
constituent of the perceptual openness to the world. From such a phenomenological
perspective the perceptual is always integral to the field of perception, and this state
of consciousness of the world gives rise to a consciousness of the body and “the idea
of an organic thought through which the relation of the ‘psychic’ to the
‘physiological’ becomes conceivable.”6
Developing further a phenomenology of embodiment one may begin to delve deeper
into how this may structure consciousness and affect experience. Merleau-Ponty
conceived of the body as a spatial-temporal source, for “there would be no space at all
4
Kapferer, 2005, 38-39.
5
Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 146.
6
Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 77.
for me if I had no body.”7 Central to this are both the ‘body image’ and the ‘body
schema’, with the former being the conscious idea or mental representation of one’s
body, 8 and the latter a subpersonal process governing posture and movement. 9
However, although the body schema may not have the status of a conscious
representation it does affect embodied cognitive experience. 10 The body image
operates as a defined appearance in consciousness, at times divorced from the
phenomenal field, whereas the body schema can be functionally integrated into the
environment. The body schema though must also be recognised as a product of this
field of action, as it is “built up as a function of the individual’s experience, i.e., it
owes its existence to the individual’s capacity and opportunity to learn.” 11 This
indicates that awareness of the constituents of the phenomenal field come after the
awareness of one’s body, which could be interpreted as construed through the body
schema achieving a sense of equilibrium between the subject and the object.
According to Gallagher and Cole, in instances where one experiences an
underdeveloped body schema, as in the case of acute sensory neuropathy, the subject
may come to depend on the body image to rebuild a body schema necessary to
operate in one’s environment by acquiring new learned motor habits.12 Regarding the
methods for ritualising his body the Conjuror relayed to me that he intentionally
becomes self-aware of himself being the ritualist proposed by the grimoire both in
pragmatic and mythopoeic terms. This I contextualised as the Conjuror constructing
an alternative body image imagined into conscious existence through distinct ritual
gestures, aesthetics, and objectives to establish the foundation for participating in the
grander cosmological vision of Dr Rudd’s Nine Hyerarches of Angels with Their
Invocation to Visible Appearance. Furthermore, this can be interpreted as a central
bodily practice developing an alternative body image rendered as the cultivation of a
required body schema to attune to the ritual setting to bring about effects on
consciousness and define how the Conjuror would come to experience the proposed
reality of the grimoire. Upon further observation, reviewing the attainability of this
ritual study as a participatory model I propose the following analysis:
i. The Conjuror imagined himself as becoming both the active subject of the
grimoire through initial reception, the alternative author through
individualised enactment, and then the witness of the grander
cosmological vision of Dr Rudd’s Nine Hyerarches of Angels with Their
Invocation to Visible Appearance by participating in its dynamics through
ritual. This required depending on an alternative body image as the
conscious representation of himself as the Conjuror.
ii. Depending on this reimagined body image the Conjuror was able to
rebuild a body schema as the operational dimension of his ritual body
attune to and experience the grimoiric environment.
7
Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 102.
8
See Adame et al., 1991.
9
See Head, 1920.
10
Gallagher and Cole, 1998, 132.
11
Simmel, 1958, 499.
12
Gallagher and Cole, 1998, 135, 137.
iii. This body schema is therefore shaped by a required behavioural
constitution and as an experiential product of the phenomenal field of
action.
iv. As Merleau-Ponty argues, “I have an image (a perception) of my bodily
movement, but because of the coordinated functioning of a body schema.
In such movements a body schema contributes to and supports intentional
action.”13 This confirms how the body schema comes to further define the
body image by allowing the Conjuror to participate in the reality proposed
by the grimoire. This is achieved through imitation defined as the
application of the body schema through gesture as a form of expressive
action creating the narrative space as both intersubjective (communicative)
and intrasubjective (cognitive), and emerging as a sophisticated movement
of the body.
v. The body is the defining spatial-temporal source for “there would be no
space at all for me if I had no body.”14 Central to this are the cooperating
dynamics of the body image and body schema in a dialectic relationship
with the primary source casting both the viability to operate the ritual
technology and insure an experiential confirmation either through success
or failure.
From this analysis it is my ethnographic opinion that this case study demonstrates the
ritualist establishing a claim of continuity with the original authorship of the primary
source through distinct patterns of ritual embodiment. This is achieved through an
initiatory transgression from readership to authorship initially as:
i. A form of self-mythopoesis articulated through the inherent dynamics of
the body image and body schema.
ii. The pragmatics of imitation.
iii. The subjective experience of immersion into phenomenal field of
ritualisation.
To evaluate further, this process is essentially the reception of the objectives of the
‘Ninth Key of Gabriel & Levaniel’, the enactment of the technological requirements
of the rite, and the experiential response to these two phases of ritualisation. With the
Conjuror firmly stationed as the focal point of interaction with all elements presented
in the grimoire and made available through his conjurations, one may propose that
from the Conjuror’s perspective this may affirm a return to the original source of the
rite. From my observations this entails an experiential construction of a body
receptive to the ritual environment and its effects, and a contemporary manifestation
of the Conjuror’s embodied experience of a meaningful world. Adopting a more
philosophical perspective regarding how this may indeed affect one’s phenomenal
field, one may argue as Johnston does that to explore the ‘in-between’ space between
the I and Other is to recognise an alteration in subjectivity through a distinct mode of
perception. This implies creating a space and time specific for such a phenomenal
field where the physical and the metaphysical merge in the embodied experience
mediating between the I and the Other.15
13
Gallagher, 2005, 26-27.
14
Merleau-Ponty, 1962, 102.
15
Johnston, 2008, p. 89-90.
To conclude, my impression of the very essence of the ‘Ninth Key of Gabriel &
Levaniel’ was a journey from readership to authorship embodied through the structure
and operation of ritual to experience ordinarily unperceived modes of interaction and
existence. Within the magic circles and with the sacrifice of burning incense,
recitations of prayers and conjurations, and finally the angelic revelation the Conjuror
immersed himself into induced phenomenal field of himself reimagined and his
grimoire incarnated, unveiling a world realistic in terms of this journey.
