Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

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Seferoth
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Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Seferoth »

This question came unto mind as i was reading a text explaining the summoning of Goetia demons. Each demon requires several items as offering, you require incenses, colored candles, herbs and sometimes metals like lead or gold. So, what should you do with the items after the ritual? Can/should you re-use the same herbs, metals, etc in the next ritual dedicated to some other demon or should you throw away(or burn) the old ones as they now belong to the one they were offered in the first place? Interested to hear your opinions on this.
Kavi
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Re: Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Kavi »

What is the definition and meaning of a gift or offering if you are still it's owner?
If you offer a thing A in order to get a thing B it means there is sort of pact going on.
If you offer bag of coke for someone in exchange for money but instead sell it for someone else I guess you are not reliable business associative and neither should the other associative have any trust in person with such behavior.
This is at least human logic.
Seferoth
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Re: Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Seferoth »

Kavi wrote: Sun Apr 03, 2022 2:13 pm What is the definition and meaning of a gift or offering if you are still it's owner?
If you offer a thing A in order to get a thing B it means there is sort of pact going on.
If you offer bag of coke for someone in exchange for money but instead sell it for someone else I guess you are not reliable business associative and neither should the other associative have any trust in person with such behavior.
This is at least human logic.
So you would throw them away? Even when after the ritual the said items are still there. I mean if the demon wanted those items he/she would have taken them from our plane of existence to theirs after the summoning...right? Also, what if the summoning fails and the demon does not show up, does those items still belong to him/her or are they still "unclaimed"?
Tariq
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Re: Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Tariq »

I have never summoned demons, but I have given offerings to other gods. Usually my offerings are either food, or crafts, or precious metals. If I give my offerings outside, they usually disappear due to animals eating them, or someone just taking them. I just leave the offerings there (for example on a rock) or I bury them in the ground and leave it there. I tend to avoid the offering spot for a few days if possible, and I would never try to dig the precious metals up to see did the god take them or not. Indoors I usually keep the offerings on the altar for a bit, and then recycle them after a while. I feel that the offering is spent even though the god doesn't physically manifest in my livingroom and eat the bread I baked for her. I feel that it wouldn't be polite to reuse the same offering, even if it would technically be still fine. Like, if I would invite friends over and one of them would take a bite of a sandwich and then put it back on plate. I wouldn't give that same sandwich to another friend, even though it's technically still fairly fine and there's plenty of sandwich left. I'd just recycle it, and offer a fresh one to my other friend. I feel like if I would try to summon a powerful entity, then recycling/losing the offerings I used for it is part of the price I pay for their attention. But this is just my personal and uneducated opinion, I have no higher knowledge about this.

Edit: typo
Seferoth
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Re: Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Seferoth »

Hmm, i have come to the conclusion that either recycling them or storing them would be the safest course of action. I have decided to create a space for the used offerings, i will have a chest meant only for the used offerings, i will keep them safe and stored, not to be used again but as a reminder and a keepsake. This way i can look back and remember all that happened during the rituals and all that has happened ever since. Thank you for your opinions, they have been most helpful.
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Smaragd
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Re: Reusing the summoning items/offerings?

Post by Smaragd »

When talking about summoning the spirits of goetia and making offerings for this process to take place, I wonder if, through time, you could sort of ration the power, which has been sacrified to them in the forms of different matter. The problem with goetic spirits, or demons if you will, is that they lack their own Will. To ground this idea, we could study them by understanding that these spirits are behind our obsessions. Like I am now eating candy and having hard time to stop it, despite it starts to feel a bit disgusting: I'm struggling to use my Will over this one-eyed obsession to fulfill the need of one small voice that wants more although it is not good for the whole (the spirit is not selfish per se, but my interpretation of its need is; it might really want a tasty bread but I keep feeding the need/obsession with candy because I've not stopped to really reflect the voice). Thus, when one sacrifices something to a demon and at the same time, consciously or unconsciously, gives it an impulse of intent (in the example, I pushed the demon to want more candy instead of listened the original impulse it had for wanting a healthy lunch), it will obsessively work that intent without any understanding of ethics. Humans have the power to take ethics in to consideration and thus they have the power to set the intent. This one-eyed obsession is the classical problem working with the spirits of goetia.

So I return to my question: could you ration the power given to these spirits by taking the offering away from the designated area of sacrifice to prevent sacrificing unnecessary form for the demons to work from? For example, if one would have a difficult demon to work with, and choosing to summon this demon to give it a new direction that would serve the whole, could you observe the problem starting to get solved, and only then taking the offering away from the designated offering area so that the demon would not start digging further in to things that your possibly imperfectly set intent would allow. This can not be a safety measure for we can not decide in what order things happen or whether they happen almost in instant in the astral world of impressions, and only having their more concrete manifestations later in time no matter if we would later take the offerings away (following the blueprint impressed on the astral). A question rises if the offering in a goetic summoning is for the initial communication to take place or to give power from which to draw to fulfill the set intention(s). (We can see here how shakey and catastrophic these things get really fast with the setting of the intent. It looks like trying to reach some items from a top self while balancing on two chairs on top of each other.)

If the answer would be yes, then I think reusing the items makes sense. But I don't think these rules can be made in an arbitrary manner, so if one starts using offerings in such a way without thinking these things through in a solemn and honest way, I'm sure one will cause harm to oneself and one's immediate circle.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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