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"The Heart Girt with a Serpent" is My Name!
Come Thou forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the
Firmament, and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry land, or in the Water: of
whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto me!
Iao: Sabao:
Such are the Words!'
This general opening should be followed by a specific invocation to the god, during which the
wording should alter imperceptibly from an address to the god to a speaking as the god. As the
invocation makes this transition, the magician should assume the godform. This is accomplished by
visualizing the traditional representation of the god build up around you. Previously you should have
studied as many pictures of the god as possible prior to embarking on the invocation. When the details
of the god's shape are firmly established imagine yourself growing taller till you coincide with the
form.
As you do so feel the first inrush of power: automatically you will begin to be conscious of standing
in a slightly different stance if your assumption has been successful. Strengthen this impression by
feeling that the invocation increases in richness, imperativeness and command.
As the assumption of the godform is one of the keys to successful invocation you should practice it
assiduously before the actual invocation, making sure that every detail of robe, symbols (be it crown,
spear, crux ansata or whatever) and stance are so clear that stepping into the form is as natural to you
as the visualizations of the Lesser Banishing Ritual should be by now.
The second key to successful invocation is to 'inflame yourself with prayers' that is, allow the words
to flow freely, neither fearing that you will be unable to remember them, nor fearing that you will say
'the wrong thing' for as the ritual reaches its peak you should begin to spontaneously invoke with little
if any conscious effort. Again this will be proportionate to the amount of preparatory study and
meditation done beforehand.
To aid this release of inhibition you should pay most attention to feeling the approach, assumption and
reality of the god - if you let the intellectual side of the invocation proceed of its own accord once you
have started it, relying on the background of rehearsal and memorization, then you can concentrate on
the essence of the invocation, which relies for its success on the fervour of the magician, not on his
formal correctness.
An example of such a specific invocation is the following modified invocation to Thoth, which was
used on one occasion as the preliminary invocation before an evocation of the Spirit Taphthartharath
by some members of the Golden Dawn late last century.
The Invocation of Thoth
'1. Procul, O procul este profani.
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