High T, Low E

Invocation is the bringing in or identifying with a particular deity or spirit. Crowley wrote of two keys to success in this arena: to "inflame thyself in praying"[14] and to "invoke often". For Crowley, the single most important invocation, or any act of Magick for that matter, was the invocation of one's Holy Guardian Angel, or "secret self", which allows the adept to know his or her True Will. Crowley describes the experience of invocation: The mind must be exalted until it loses consciousness of self. The Magician must be carried forward blindly by a force which, though in him and of him, is by no means that which he in his normal state of consciousness calls I. Just as the poet, the lover, the artist, is carried out of himself in a creative frenzy, so must it be for the Magician.[14] Crowley (Magick, Book 4) discusses three main categories of invocation, although "in the great essentials these three methods are one. In each case the magician identifies himself with the Deity invoked."[15] Devotion—where "identity with the God is attained by love and by surrender, by giving up or suppressing all irrelevant (and illusionary) parts of yourself." Calling forth—where "identity is attained by paying special attention to the desired part of yourself." Drama—where "identity is attained by sympathy. It is very difficult for the ordinary man to lose himself completely in the subject of a play or of a novel; but for those who can do so, this method is unquestionably the best." Another invocatory technique that the magician can employ is called the assumption of godforms—where with "concentrated imagination of oneself in the symbolic shape of any God, one should be able to identify oneself with the idea which [the god] represents."[16] A general method involves positioning the body in a position that is typical for a given god, imagining that the image of the god is coinciding with or enveloping the body, accompanied by the practice of "vibration" of the appropriate god-name(s).