OF FAMILIARS

Of Familiars

To the adept who has established his balance in the sixfold star, and partaken of the nature of understanding, the service of familiars may be entertaining, instructive and even evaluable towards the attainment of the great work. I quote from a certain secret document pertaining to the subject.
“The Threefold work of the adept is a probation and preparation for illumination, and also for its own sake, and the permanent and practical value of its effects, is as follows:

1. Devotion to the highest intensified on all planes until it culminates in conjugal unions (as shown in Chapt. VII). And the soul is to beget itself as a child for a new incarnation upon the body of the great goddess, as it is written. “O thou that hast formulated thy father and made fertile thy mother”.

2. Acceptance of the devotion of a lower and partial being, such as a nymph or elemental in such wise that it is thereby redeemed and made a perfect soul through the death which it must pay as the price of union with man.

3. The deliberate and will considered creation of new Orders of Being.

Of the second matter let the adept consider of the following. All races in all ages have legends of magical beings, nymphs, satyrs, fauns, undines, oreads, fairies and such like, also rumors of commerce between these beings and mortals, as of Ben Elohim with the daughters of men, of the fairy Melusine, Thomas the Rhymer, the wife of Du Gueshlin, the origin of Merlin and the familiars of the Magi. Also it is told how one dreaming erotic dreams, how his substance inadvertently escapes from him and the incubus materializes there from (for on all planes matter and energy are never lost, but only transformed.) Also it is told how in the Sabbath of the Witchcraft each took a companion that was not human. Also the matter is discussed with great wisdom in the Books of Paracelsus, and in the Comte de Gabalis.

Now this matter, the invocation of familiars, is one of the easiest matters of magick, and most dangerous. It is easy for the reason further given and dangerous because the adept (who is not truly adept) may be obsessed and overthrown through his weakness in dealing with these beings.
Nonetheless, if he will to risk this danger, these spirits, or even the demons, may be called the methods of the Clavicle of Solomon or of the Goetia, utilizing the same means as those applied to the applied to the elemental tablets. But it is not advised.

There are other means of obtaining familiars, mostly pertaining to witchcraft. One such means is to slay an elemental (animal or other lower being) within a magical circle, thereby appropriating the magical force. Another method is to establish a material connection with the elemental, thereby affirming a magical link. But if the magician be not wary, such links can draw him down to hell. It has been my observation that most marriages are of this nature.

“DE MODO OPERANDI NUPTIAS AMORES”
Amen. This matter is easy, for the souls of the elements desire constantly this salvation. But let the adept beware;

1) That he chooses a wisely reasonable soul, docile, apt, beautiful and in all ways worthy of love.

2) That he fall not away from love of the Great Goddess into love of an inferior, but give only as a master and of his mercy, knowing that this also is service to his high lady above.

3) That of such familiar spirits he have but four, and let him regulate their services appointing hours for each.

4) That he treat them with kindness and firmness, being on his guard against their tricks.

That being said it is enough, for to have them is but the pains to call them forth from their homes, and the sprits of the Elemental Tablets given by Dr Dee and Edward Kelly are the best, being very perfect in their nature and faithful, affecting the human race. And if not so powerful as they are less dangerous than the planetary spirits, for these are more boisterous, and by the disastrous stars easily perturbed and afflicted.

Call them therefore by the calls of Enoch as is written in the Book ye know of, and let there by after the calls an evocation by the wand, and let the marrow of the wand be preserved within the Pyramids of the letters that make up the home of the spirit.

Now unless ye be well skilled in the art of magick ye will not dare call forth the three Great Gods of the whole tablet, or the King Serpent thereof, or the six Seniors majestical, or even the Gods of the Calvary Crosses in the lesser angles.

But the cherubic rulers, yea verily and amen, those are your mates, and ye may yet more safely summon the lesser assistant angels. And those that are in this art novices shall wisely call forth only the Trigramata of the Sub-elements.
And well may I testify to the truth of this matter, for by this means I got an elemental mate (namely his wife Cameron Parsons. See the record of the working which survives. T) and attained the Grade of Accursed Adept, and the vision of BABALON, even as it is written. (See the Babalon Working, which survives. T).

(Remainders of the book, which survives – though incomplete – in typescript in the possession of Karl Germer, not copied.)