Invocation & Evocation
When we lool at invocation it is in respect to drawing down of the Goddess for the feminine aspects and the God for Masculine aspects.
Some may also call this a form akin to possession.
In some religious traditions including Paganism, Shamanism and Wicca, "invocation" means to draw a spirit or Spirit force into ones own body and is differentiated from "evocation", which involves asking a spirit or force to become present at a given location. Again, Crowley states that
To "invoke" is to "call in", just as to "evoke" is to "call forth". This is the essential difference between the two branches of Magick. In invocation, the macrocosm floods the consciousness. In evocation, the magician, having become the macrocosm, creates a microcosm.
Possessive invocation may be attempted singly or, as is often the case in Wicca, in pairs - with one person doing the invocation (reciting the liturgy or prayers and acting as anchor), and the other person being invoked (allowing themselves to become a vessel for the spirit or deity). The person successfully invoked may be moved to speak or act in non-characteristic ways, acting as the deity or spirit; and they may lose all or some self-awareness while doing so. A communication might also be given via imagery (a religious vision). They may also be led to recite a text in the manner of that deity, in which case the invocation is more akin to ritual drama. The Wiccan Charge of the Goddess is an example of such a pre-established recitation also Drawing Down the Moon.
We invoke beings higher than us on the spriritual ladder and in actuality that is all we should concern our selfs with in respect to basic wicca.
Evocation is the bringing forth of beings lower than us on the spiritual ladder and generally would not be done in basic wicca, however this would be common in certain High Magick Ceremonies and Rituals.
Command & Conjuration
In the book Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches during the Conjuration of Diana, where the Goddess Diana is invoked into a piece of bread:
I do not bake the bread, nor with it salt, Nor do I cook the honey with the wine, I bake the body and the blood and soul, The soul of (great) Diana, that she shall Know neither rest nor peace, and ever be In cruel suffering till she will grant What I request, what I do most desire, I beg it of her from my very heart! And if the grace be granted, O Diana! In honour of thee I will hold this feast, Feast and drain the goblet deep, We, will dance and wildly leap, And if thou grant'st the grace which I require, Then when the dance is wildest, all the lamps Shall be extinguished and we'll freely love!
Identification with certain spirits
Invocation can refer to taking on the qualities of the being invoked, such as the allure of Aphrodite or the ferocity of Kali. In this instance the being is literally called up from within oneself (as an archetype) or into oneself (as an external force), depending on the personal belief system of the invoker. The main difference between this type of invocation and the possessive category described above is that the former may appear more controlled, with self-identification and deity-identification mixed together. In practise, invocation may manifest as a mix of many of these categories, for example prayer leading to possession leading to self-identification; see for example this traditional Hymn to Astarte:
Mother inexhaustible and incorruptible, creatures, born the first, engendered by thyself and by thyself conceived, issue of thyself alone and seeking joy within thyself, Astarte! Oh! Perpetually fertilized, virgin and nurse of all that is, chaste and lascivious, pure and revelling, ineffable, nocturnal, sweet, breather of fire, foam of the sea! Thou who accordest grace in secret, thou who unitest, thou who lovest, thou who seizest with furious desire the multiplied races of savage beasts and couplest the sexes in the wood. Oh, irrisistable Astarte! hear me, take me, possess me, oh, Moon! and thirteen times each year draw from my womb the sweet libation of my blood!
Evocation is the act of calling or summoning a spirit, demon, god or other supernatural agent, in the Western mystery tradition. Comparable practices exist in many religions and magical traditions.
The first use of the term evocation was for the religious/magical practice of calling the tutelary deities of a city out of it so attackers could succeed in their conquest. The deity in question was promised worship by the attackers in the future.
The calling forth of spirits was a relatively common practice in Neoplatonism, theurgy and other esoteric systems of antiquity. In contemporary western esotericism, the magic of the grimoires is frequently seen as the classical example of this idea. Manuals such as the Greater Key of Solomon the King, The Lesser Key of Solomon (or Lemegeton), the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage and many others provided instructions that combined intense devotion to the divine with the summoning of a personal cadre of spiritual advisers and familiars.
The grimoires provided a variety of methods of evocation. The Spirits are, in every case, commanded in the name of God - most commonly using cabalistic and Hellenic 'barbarous names' added together to form long litanies. The magician used wands, staves, incense and fire, daggers and complex diagrams drawn on parchment or upon the ground. In Enochian magic, spirits are evoked into a crystal ball or mirror, in which a human volunteer (a 'seer') is expected to be able to see the spirit and hear its voice, passing the words on to the evoker. Sometimes such a seer might be an actual medium, speaking as the spirit, not just for it. In other cases the spirit might be 'housed' in a symbolic image, or conjuring into a diagram from which it cannot escape without the magician's permission.
While many later, corrupt and commercialised grimoires include elements of 'diabolism' and one (The Grand Grimoire) even offers a method for making a pact with the devil, in general the art of evocation of spirits is said to be done entirely under the power of the divine. The magician is thought to gain authority among the spirits only by purity, worship and personal devotion and study.
In more recent usage, evocation refers to the calling out of lesser spirits (beneath the deific or archangelic level), sometimes conceived of as arising from the self. This sort of evocation is contrasted with invocation, in which spiritual powers are called into the self from a divine source.
Important contributors to the concept of evocation include Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Francis Barrett, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, Franz Bardon and Kenneth Grant. The work of all of these authors can be seen as attempts to systematize and modernize the grimoiric procedure of evocation. Only more modern authors, such as Peter Carroll, have attempted to describe evocation in a way independent enough from the grimoiric tradition to fit similar methods of interaction with alleged supernatural agents in other traditions.
In a wider sense, evocation is the magical art of calling forth spirits, angels or demons to bring spiritual inspiration, do the bidding of the magician or provide information. Methods for the attainment of this exist in most or all cultures that feature a belief in spirits, such as the shamanic traditions. Daoism, Shintoism, Spiritism and the Afro-American religions (Santeria, Umbanda etc.) have particularly sophisticated systems of evocation. Even the various forms of Christian and Islamic exorcism can be considered evocations in this sense, albeit relatively simple ones.
Religions that use this type of ritual are often judged and criticized by monotheists as potentially Satanic. However, this is not true from the viewpoint of study of religion. Evocation is a practice held sacred by societies such as the American Indian Tribes, most ancient religions and even the Jews in biblical times. This rite is not a "secret" in the society. It is common, practiced openly and frequently not distinguishable from prayer.
