Invocation

We walk the old paths with awe, in hallowed space, in trance, enthralled.
We circle 'round the central fire, asking fate shine on our just desires.
Through veil of night our will is sent, and the stars, silent, witness our intent. 

The Empress Copyright
at www.ann-gb.deviantart.com

   Invocation, from the latin 'invocare' meaning "to call on, to give" Which may be in the form of a supplication or prayer, a spell, conjuration, or possession.
   This is different from evocation, which is the conjuration and communication with an entity through a medium such as the voice / mind of the conjurer, or a containing object like a totem. With invocation you invite an entity into your own body for a union. This is seen in Wicca in the Charge of the Goddess which begins describing the words of the goddess, "For hers is the ecstasy of the spirit," and moves to speaking as the mouth of the goddess, "Hear now the words of the Star Goddess." Finally by the final passages the speaker is one with the goddess herself, saying "I who am the beauty of the green earth."  Doreen Valiente, adapted by Starhawk.
   To invite an entity into my own body, I had to first investigate and identify my core beliefs. There is no grander feat in spiritual matters, than to attempt to define the divine. God, spirit, soul, a sense of awe. The eternal grail quest, the wide circle around one self. I believe that divinity is a personal experience, unique to every person who reaches for it.
 
   "Each god brings its own madness. To know the god - to be accepted by it - to feel its mysteries, well you have to let that madness wash over you, and through you."... "We forge bonds with the gods we choose and with the gods which choose us." Phil Hine
   What I discovered is this; be someone that the gods would approve of and wish to commune with. The key to invocation is to find the feeling within you that you wish bestowed by this entity. It hardly matters if there is truly a being somewhere in the cosmos called Ares and he is a god of war, and all battle is under his watchful eye. When people cry out and run at each other, weapon in hand. When they are locked in battle the spirit, the presence, of war is with them. When you need to work a spell to defeat an enemy you take your dagger or beat a drum, cry out, bleed, whatever it takes to invoke that presence of war within you, within your space. These and ten thousand other moments like it are the same, the feelings are reached for are the same; an understood concept. Beyond being a concept, existing of itself in every place and time. There will be war long after anyone, any culture, gives it a name and a mythology.

"...I saw Her worship as being collected together from the minds of men and women, the very best of ideas of which men and women were capable. That was the function for which the Goddess existed; that was the spirit from which she drew her vitality. The trick was not to reject a certain image of her, but to realize what her image meant. To extract from that image the very best in my own soul." Anne Rice, Pandora