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Ceremonial Magic & The Power of Evocation
For centuries, the ceremonial evocation of spiritual beings has been Magic's darkest corner. Reputed to fulfil the Magician's material desires, evocation has been the topic of the most famous Grimoires - the Grammars of Magic. From the Sworn Book of Honorius the Magician, to the Greater Key of Solomon and the Goetia; from the Grand Grimoire, to the complete treatise of the Lemegeton, all give direct, yet difficult, directions to the individual desiring to have the 'good life' in the here-and-now. But the simplest of Grimoires, the Heptameron of Peter de Abano, has escaped the attention of modern Ceremonialists. Its simplicity and power in summoning the Aerial Spirits is second to none."Ceremonial Magic" lays bare the operation of the Heptameron. Its Magical Axioms, extensive Commentaries, copious notes, and personal instructions to the reader - all gained from Dr Lisiewski's forty-years of study and practice in Ceremonial Magic - make this a resource that no serious student of Magic can afford to be without. It is all here, as in no other Grimoire. Use its instructions and the world of evocation and personal gratification are well within your grasp!
204 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2004
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About the author
Joseph C. Lisiewski
13 books7 followersJoseph C. Lisiewski, Ph.D. is a noted physicist involved in the study of the Relativistic SpaceTime Continuum, and the new physics that is exploring possibility of physical time travel. A personal friend and student of both Israel Regardie and the famous Alchemist, Frater Albertus for many years, he has published numerous papers and books on both of their teachings, and on his own forty years of practice in both Magic and Alchemy.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 19, 2010
This book has basically three parts. Part one is a history of the grimoires, which I like very much. I enjoy the writer's delicately brutal and extremely opinionated personality, particularly his cold dismissal of the New Age - by which he means Thelema, the Golden Dawn and Wicca, not the alien channellers of Southern California. In this section he's not just providing information, he's weaving his persona as a credible authority figure into your mind to set you up for an odd experience when you read his magical axiomata in the next section. The way he uses language tickles me; the cadence and sentence structure remind me of a fencer deftly looking for weaknesses as a prelude to timing a devastating lunge, such that all your cherished illusions end up skewered and ready for the barbecue.
In the next part, he reveals the horrible truth: you're doin it rong, and the consequences will be terrible. Furthermore, go back to church (and get a haircut, hippie). His requirement that full physical manifestation of the spirit by achieved, his insistence that the grimoire's instructions must be followed to the letter, and his idiosyncratic claim about the risk of the slingshot effect in the event of failure have been complained about elsewhere, so I'll just mention that yes, the dude is a downer. As I was reading this, I was suspicious that he was making the task seem impossible as part of a Catholic plot to discourage n00b necromancers.
However, part three, in which he goes through the Heptameron with plenty of commentary and helpful hints, is great. This seems like a workable system for Catholic magicians of a certain fastidious personality type. I really don't know how I could use it myself, given that my temple wouldn't work for his system (wrong size, no concrete floor, can't be shut away from the rest of the dwelling for a month in case of failure). Furthermore, I was not raised in *any* religion, so my subjective synthesis would be based on a hodgepodge of gleanings and childhood impressions rather than a doctrine the return to which would bring me inner unity. I also think that some of his laws may well pertain to people of his temperament, but may not be universal. He does say that each practitioner will end up creating a personal system, though, and I'm happy with where mine is going, so to me this book is valuable more as an intriguing personal account than as a manual.
I still like this guy, and wish I knew practitioners of his bent rather than 80 billion flavors of Crowley imitation. He's a scientist and it shows; this book strips glamour from the topic even while promising truly Hollywood-worthy results, and the mindset would seem perfectly normal in a book about chemistry - do the experiment perfectly and create a substance with amazing and useful properties, screw it up and get an explosion or a poison gas cloud. I wonder whether his scientific training gave him such a strong unconscious bias that it *had* to work this way for him in order to work at all.
In the next part, he reveals the horrible truth: you're doin it rong, and the consequences will be terrible. Furthermore, go back to church (and get a haircut, hippie). His requirement that full physical manifestation of the spirit by achieved, his insistence that the grimoire's instructions must be followed to the letter, and his idiosyncratic claim about the risk of the slingshot effect in the event of failure have been complained about elsewhere, so I'll just mention that yes, the dude is a downer. As I was reading this, I was suspicious that he was making the task seem impossible as part of a Catholic plot to discourage n00b necromancers.
However, part three, in which he goes through the Heptameron with plenty of commentary and helpful hints, is great. This seems like a workable system for Catholic magicians of a certain fastidious personality type. I really don't know how I could use it myself, given that my temple wouldn't work for his system (wrong size, no concrete floor, can't be shut away from the rest of the dwelling for a month in case of failure). Furthermore, I was not raised in *any* religion, so my subjective synthesis would be based on a hodgepodge of gleanings and childhood impressions rather than a doctrine the return to which would bring me inner unity. I also think that some of his laws may well pertain to people of his temperament, but may not be universal. He does say that each practitioner will end up creating a personal system, though, and I'm happy with where mine is going, so to me this book is valuable more as an intriguing personal account than as a manual.
I still like this guy, and wish I knew practitioners of his bent rather than 80 billion flavors of Crowley imitation. He's a scientist and it shows; this book strips glamour from the topic even while promising truly Hollywood-worthy results, and the mindset would seem perfectly normal in a book about chemistry - do the experiment perfectly and create a substance with amazing and useful properties, screw it up and get an explosion or a poison gas cloud. I wonder whether his scientific training gave him such a strong unconscious bias that it *had* to work this way for him in order to work at all.
June 16, 2025
Recommended
Pretty good practical book. Doesn't paint any flowery pictures for the reader of what evocation is. It to my experience seems pretty accurate as to explaining the different levels of evocation and what those levels involve in terms of both danger and benefit. Not misleading in that regard, which I respect.
Pretty good practical book. Doesn't paint any flowery pictures for the reader of what evocation is. It to my experience seems pretty accurate as to explaining the different levels of evocation and what those levels involve in terms of both danger and benefit. Not misleading in that regard, which I respect.
November 19, 2012
One of the most necessary manuals of Magikal practice. Subjective Synthesis is important not just for Magik, for being a wholesome person overall. I had reached this state through self-examination independently of any Occult Teachings surrounding it and then had the "Black Swan Effectt" of "woah! That's what I did! There's a name for it??!" It really works the way it says it does, although keep in mind, this is Dr. Lisiewski's subjective synthesis. While it is necessary to come to terms with the religion you were raised in and this helps a great deal, it is also the gateway to closure and moving on from that point in your life. You don't need to go to Church once a year, all you need to do is eliminate the hostility towards that past. That's the real problem.
July 27, 2009
Very thorough, step by step review of a legitimate, medieval grimoire. I'm rereading it as I collect the necessary ingredients. :)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews