In The Hour of The Sun, On The Night of Belzebuth, the Moon Full:

When I got home I set Artie's bowl in the guest bedroom and closed the door behind her. I took a deep breath, downed another mug of coffee, and spent the hours from when I returned from work deliberating on all I needed to do and in what order.

Before I had begun the cycle in earnest I had already calculated tonight to be the perfect moment to conduct the ceremony. The ritual cycle in which the tools of the operation were to be gathered and fashioned during a waxing moon implied that the evocation was to be conducted when the moon was full. The Verum seemed to reiterate that Tuesday was the day of Frimost, and that the optimal hours of his conjuration were in the evening hours from nine to ten.

The star chart I consulted revealed the hour to be opportune to the powers of Jupiter and to Mercury, although a strong presence of Saturn loomed over the working. My cursory internet searches assured me that the saturnine influence would be negated by Jupiter's prominence, but the inconsistency still nagged at me. Really, I wasn't sure how seriously to take the elements or the planets or whatever, but over time I'd learned it was hard to remove the hermetic astrological cosmology from any old working like this.

In front of me I skimmed over all the lines of the ritual I would be reciting and all the stage direction I was to perform. Magick is intrinsically theatrical in many ways, a performance of cosmic forces being made real in the doing. As above, so below, and all of that. Some of the greatest magick practitioners in history had arranged their entire societies and economies around the stagecraft of ritual performance, like the shaman-kings of the Classic Maya or the brahmans of the Khmer Empire.

All the words and the intricate sequence of events tied to the ceremony were intimidating, but to overwhelm the magician was part of the intent. I had never been much of a dramatist, never extroverse enough, but I knew how to act as though you meant something and that's what was important. Magick is all about taking an authentic expression of your mind and will and projecting it out into the world. For much of the ritual there would be no harm in glancing at a printed script, and aside from the few clusters of 'barbarous names' the Verum compelled I utter, there would be no harm in some improvisation here and there so long I spoke with clear intent.

After a few minutes of pondering I stretched up and arranged the ritual space, moving my father's towering bookshelves like cutting down timber and clearing the space where I set down my mat on the floor, onto which I had painted the circle and triangle of practice and placed the altar table in its center, all facing East, as with all such rituals which approached the power of Lucifer.

On the altar table I laid down and lit a thick wax candle, which I would use to habitually strike the coals I would place within my censer to burn the mace, aloe wood, and frankincense. I put out the elderwood wand to the right, the hazelwood wand to the left, and between them I placed the great bowl in which floated the aspergillium salve, the ritual knife, the lancet, the inkwell and quill, and dead center I set down the parchment with the signed seals and my contract.

Behind those things I placed the black skrying mirror. I had made the mirror a month ago from a circular picture frame I had painted black in the back, so that the well-polished glass gave the impression of a dark-tinted reflection. I placed this at the best angle I could on the altar to reflect the light of the flame and my face. It was said that the demons were unlikely to appear in the flesh on such a routine visit, but preferred to take shape in dim reflection to communicate with the witch.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I set down the ritual script I had printed out at the foot of the circle encompassed by the triangle on the ground, and took my place, walking barefoot into the center of the circle wearing my favorite black woolen coat as my ritual cloak.

I began with the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, which I no longer practiced with any regularity, but had committed thoroughly to memory as a teenager on my first attempts at witchery. You stand tall facing east and hold your eyes closed, raising your knife to the ceiling and slowly drawing it to your breast, gathering energy from on high. Then you outstretch the ritual knife and turn around the circle clockwise, miming the proper unicursal banishing pentagram- Air in the East, Earth in the South, Water in the West, and Fire in the North, focusing your will to disperse any imbalanced elemental influences from the space for the sake of good energetic hygiene. Yadda yadda yadda.

I again turned round to the four corners of the circle, this time in invocation, calling forth the four kings of the cardinal directions described in the Verum-

I stood before the altar and drew forth the elderwood wand. "I call forth and adjure thee, O King Magoa of the East! Bring forth your host of spirits, Masseyel, Asiel, Satiel, Arduel, Acorib, and bless the circle of this holy rite!"

I turned right and held forth the wand. "I call forth and adjure thee, O King Egym of the South! Bring forth your stalwart knights, Fadal and Nostrachel, and bless the circle of this holy rite!"

I turned right and held forth the wand. "I call forth and adjure thee, O King Bayemon of the West! Bring forth your daring paladin, Passiel Rosusr and his bannermen, and bless the circle of this holy rite!"

I turned right and held forth the knife. "I call forth and adjure thee, O Emperor Amaymon of the South! You whose secret name is Sechiel! You whose secret name is Barachiel! Send forth your wise ministers, Madael, Laaval, Bamulhac, Belem, and Ramat, and bless the circle of this holy rite!"

I returned to face the altar, and now I stood upon the axis mundi. The space of the ceremony was now consecrated.

The next step was to call down the deities and higher powers who would offer me their authority in the working, an invocation central to all great works of magick since the days of Kemet and Sumer. I was of course eschewing the heavy Christian prostrations of the grimoires, and instead appealing to the sympathies of the cthonic Greco-Egyptian deities, whose grace and strangeness had captivated me since I was a little girl.

The speech to channel the right energy for the evocation I'd appropriated from Crowley's Pyramidos rite, which I'd been ambivalent about from the jump. It invoked the full pantheon and cosmology with which I wished to call upon, but It was overwrought, overly dramatic, and overly florid, to the detriment of its utility, as with everything Crowley ever touched. I did my best to paraphrase the opening in a way that felt authentic:

"The pyramid stirs and shakes,

Set and Horus tumble in the wastes,

The heart in conflict Inpu takes,

The spice of the soul Djehuti tastes

Nuit reclines, Hadit unbound,

Thoth the ape, Anubis the hound,

Isis, widow, bears hope in her womb,

Osiris, whole, steps forth his tomb!

Apollo whispers in morning light

O Pan, my inhibitions ache!

Artemis stalks moon-soaked night

O Dionysus, my mad desires slake!

Hades united, Persephone all alone,

O Hekate, Maiden, Mother, and Crone

Venus in lust, Cybele's love profound,

Splay open the secrets of this mound!"