Before you set off to put the world to rights and put all the universal ducks in a row, you need to make, develop, and learn how to use specific magical tools that you will need for the job. The tools in this tool kit are a mixed bag of things that you would possibly or most probably need if you were up against a demonic possession or an aggressive angel. Ghosts, parasites, etc, don’t normally need much in the way of tools to get rid of them, but the best tool kit is packed for all possibilities.

You will need a deck of cards specifically designed to focus on looking at a possession situation, and that can identify what beings are involved. This saves a massive amount of wasted time while you stand in front of a frothing teen asking the being who or what it is—you can just look with a shielded deck and see that the spotty youth is possessed by the discarnate spirit of Sid Vicious, a strange and wondrous being that is coaxed out of its host by a pint of lager and lime.

You will need certain resins and herbs—frankincense, osha root, wormwood, and rue—along with charcoal and a holder. (Some beings hate certain smells, I have heard of certain demons running screaming from Gloria Vanderbilt perfume….) You will also need certain sounds, things to draw beings out (demon traps), binding cloths to trap something, a marker pen to draw sigils, two stoles, tobacco, large bag of salt, a three-foot mirror, total change of clothes, ritual sword, frankincense oil, clove oil, pimento berry oil, large block of chocolate and a strong black coffee.

If it is a natural possession then the above will be all the tools you need. If the possession is the result of magic, then you will need to know the family of ‘beings’ that are involved in that stream of magic. For example, most possessions in the U.K. that are the result of magic tend to stem from western magic, so you would need to know about the Semitic, Roman, and Egyptian streams of beings/angels/deities/being.

In the U.S.A. the story is similar but with a heavy dose of African and Caribbean magic thrown in. That is when you need to know your limits. With regards to African magic, I know very little about it. I have come up against it a few times (Ugandan and then Ivory Coast stuff) and have witnessed the moment of possession of someone by a terrible demonic being that was sent as a result of Ugandan magic. It was not something I ever want to go through again.

What I have had to do in such circumstances is try to get in someone who knows what she is doing, or who can guide you. There will be times when you have to walk away and the ability to do that is one of the most important tools of all.

So the last tool to mention before we go into detail is a good library—you need to know the background and history of what you are up against. When you are dealing with parasites and ghosts, pfft—that’s easy, its like doing housework. Intelligent powerful beings are different and you need to know your adversary.

Because of the ‘new age,’ there are tons of useless books out there on angels and magic, etc, and getting a good reference book on certain orders of beings is nearly impossible—you will have to compile your own. My advice, after tearing lumps of my hair out on a regular basis, is to stick with academic books, archaeology, religion, and history. That filters the bullshit and although the writers often don’t understand what it is they are talking about, their ability to describe, collate, and translate information, texts, and images becomes invaluable. Learn your angels—the first most important rule.

The most useless source of all is the Solomon stuff—lots of demon stuff and angel stuff that the author/s copied from older text without understanding, and was then re-introduced to the world by the Golden Dawn and then Crowley. The lesser (and greater) key of Solomon is a virtual dead end and still to this day has people running around like headless chickens drawing that sigil and uttering this name without much useful stuff happening at all. It has to be understood in the context of the Renaissance and what was driving people at the time. If you approach such books in that way, rather than books of ‘truth,’ then you might find the odd snippet, seal, and pattern useful.

It is much more useful to look at Jewish texts, some Mandean artefacts, early Egyptian myths, objects and seals, early heretic gospels, Etruscan, early Roman and Greek mythology, Luristanian, Mesopotamian, and Babylonian texts, myths, and objects. From fragments of these sources you will start to see coherent patterns emerge and find bits of useful information hidden among the texts. Adding all of that to your knowledge of western ritual, visionary magic, and Christian patterning, you will start to gain good background knowledge of the kinds of beings that traverse our worlds and how they operate.

An example of how this can work is as follows (and bear in mind that I learn by the baseball bat around the head method): I was trying to get a demonic being out of a space and every time I got rid of it, another one would come back, often different but from the same order of being. I put said being back in the Abyss where it belonged and sealed up its access point out to humanity, but more kept coming. They were drawn by magic that had happened in the property and the property was sitting on land that was a natural entrance to the otherworlds. So the first task was to stop that magic happening at that spot, but that would take time for any portholes to slowly heal up.

In the meantime I had to be able to ‘catch’ and contain the demonic beings that were seeping through and creating havoc. Nothing that I tried worked—they got through every level of magical barrier I could think of. So I spent some time researching how things were done in the past. It led me down a very interesting road (which is a whole book in itself) regarding the relationship between demons, humans, and civilisation. I stretched back and found the most interesting patterns emerging as protections around 3000 BC to about 1500 BC after which they faded off and were replaced by more structured and complex methods.

I then looked at the methods I had found from an inner point of view and was shown some really interesting applications that spanned many octaves of consciousness, possession, and balance. So I tried it…and it worked like a dream. Phew.

What I had seen while I was researching was a repeated simple pattern that was being used first in a protective sense around names, entrances, and images. Then it developed over the span of about 1000 years to become a more complex instrument that would trap and hold beings—it was the simple, intricate interweaving swirls and knots that we commonly see in Celtic and Scythian art. It was also used in early Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Semitic seals.

When I looked from an inner point of view, I was shown how a certain class of demonic (and angelic) being was attracted to shiny things and patterns—they could not resist its draw. The glitter caught their attention and their consciousness started to follow the lines of pattern and would get trapped going around and around a pattern that had no end.

Later I was shown how that same pattern could contain and sustain power, a bit like a motor. Inside yourself the pattern of existence can be used consciously to create an energy field, like the earth’s magnetic field, to repel as well as attract a stream of consciousness.

The more I looked at ancient texts, artifacts, seals, and structures, the more I saw this use of patterning as a form of protection. It was eventually developed into demon bowls which used an incantation or text written in a swirl where the angelic name that trapped the being was at the end of the swirl which was painted on the inside of the bowl. The bowl would be placed upside down on the ground, land, or area where the demon was rising from. The outside of the bowl had complex patterns upon it to also trap and seal in anything within it. Very clever!

So it could be used in two ways, one to specifically trap and contain the being, and the other way to distract beings and protect a place or thing. So back to the porthole that was spitting out annoying demons. I narrowed the area of access of the demons in the building down to one corner, which was the most I could achieve. And in that narrow area I placed and hung objects and hangings with complex bright knot work, swirls and loops, making sure there were no depictions of animals or beings in the knot work (which is just begging for trouble). I used a gold ink pen to brighten the patterns and I placed a candle there that was bright.

The demon problem stopped immediately. It was like turning off a light switch. Now, I haven’t got rid of those demons, they are just very very busy amusing themselves to this day while I work on developing enough of a relationship with the larger land beings there to slowly heal the porthole up. Once it begins to heal up, I will take the demons and put them back where they belong and that should be the end of it.

 

So how do you make and use these tools?

Herbs/resins/incense/substances

Smells are very important in this work. They can flatten out minor stuff and prepare your body, a working space, and a tool for action. They can also help clear residue out of a host once a being has left. Certain types of beings are not able to tolerate certain smells or sounds, hence the use of incense in temples and sacred spaces. Other smells and sounds attract certain beings, so you have to be careful about what you use and why (wind chimes attract ghosts for example).

Frankincense cleans a space and tunes it nicely; rue and vervain will clear more nature-based intrusions if they are weak, or can cause an area to become uncomfortable for certain types of beings. St John’s Wort is not liked by the types of beings that mess with people’s minds or emotions.

Wormwood is good to use if you need to talk with the dead in their own realm, it quietens their influence in the physical space so that you can connect with them. It can also be mixed in very small doses into tobacco and smoked. Tobacco is useful to use if you need to talk to a person in the midst of work and not have your communications garbled. It ‘clears’ the air so that truth can be heard.

Pimento berry is very cleansing and protective during an exorcism and osha root is very good at clearing spaces, and can also be used as part of a protective talisman if a bit of root is attached in a pouch to the talisman around a person’s neck.

Resins are best used on a piece of charcoal (the sort designed for incense burning), and oils can be used in tiny drips on the body and around a space.

After a hard working, eat chocolate and drink coffee to ground yourself (they are both power substances that affect the brain at a deep level). And if you need to smokescreen and talk, then use tobacco. You can make it a stronger tool by grinding osha root or a bit or wormwood and adding it into the smoke mix.

 

Cards (see Chapter 13)

A specifically designed tarot deck and layout can be really useful for identifying what being is doing what to whom and can quickly identify when there is mental illness involved. Don’t become too reliant upon the deck—use it along with your common sense, your observations, and the symptomatic presentation. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that a demonic being can reach out to interfere with your readings and perceptions.

Do not for one minute (note the wagging finger here), when dealing with powerful demons, think that their influence is limited to the person that they are possessing—that is a dangerous and stupid mistake. A powerful demon will only be using its host as a plaything and a set of physical senses—once out in the surface world, they can reach through thoughts, magic, dreams, electricity, and life in general to mess with you and to try to stop you from doing your job. They can be physically and psychically dangerous and will stop at nothing to halt you in your tracks.

The host is their access point out into the world and that is the ground zero where you work. But they can reach you once they have made some sort of connection with you—even a phone call asking for help from the host is enough in such circumstances to make a connection. Thankfully these beings are not overly common. Once you have identified that you are dealing with such a power, you have to go into shield mode and stay there day and night until the job is done.

When you first get a call, use the deck to see what it is that you are dealing with. Keep the deck in a box or bag that has salt in it and smoke it often over frankincense. You can also use the deck to figure out what angelic or other type of being would be helpful to call upon for a specific job. You can look at the outcome both short term and long term—this is very important if using divination to look at the results of a job. A certain clearing method might be good in the short term, but counter-productive for a variety of reasons in the long term. So make sure that what you do will have lasting effects.

 

Binding cloth/braid and demon traps

These tools are used when there is a need to contain a being or beings under circumstances where the exorcist is unable for one reason or another to work directly in the Abyss in vision at that time. They are also used to contain the power of a magical tool so that it is not seen by demons until the moment it comes into use.

They were, apparently, used by Solomon to trap demons and make them do his bidding, which is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. If he was supposed to be wise, he had a blind spot with that one! It is most likely a myth, as far as the historical King Solomon is concerned, but it most certainly was and is a practice still used in some cultures to this day, and is not advisable. It is like saying that you can use meth as a power tool and not get affected.

Binding cloths or braids are strips of fabric or thick wool braids that are of bright colour and are woven and knotted together. They can be used in a variety of ways one of which is to ‘lock’ something, i.e., wrapping up a magical tool in a sealing cloth and then tying it with a binding thread to make sure nothing gets in or out. They can also be used to cover over and tie up demon traps.

The second is to ‘trap’ a being into the weave as you braid it up while working in vision to pull it in. This is an old method that was used a lot in SE Europe many years ago: the being would slowly be enticed by song to draw close to the singer who would be weaving. The being then becomes absorbed by the pattern of the weaving and is slowly pulled into the weave and then trapped. When that being is wanted for action, the knots or weaves would be unwoven.

Back to modern day…. If you have an object that needs heavy protection, or its power needs to be heavily contained, then you would use a cloth to wrap it in and a braid to tie it with. The cloth is most affective if you use raw silk (it’s shiny and has an interesting weave), upon it you would use either the primitive but affective swirls, or angelic script, Greek, Latin or paleo Hebrew script (works better than later Hebrew for some bizarre reason). It all really depends on what you are trapping or protecting, where it has come from and what beings are involved.

If you are sealing in the power of a magical instrument, then a script that is connected to the power/line of the implement is best used. If you are trapping a demon that has been accessed via ritual magic, then use the script most associated with that line of magic. If you have no idea what the hell it is or if it is a more natural indigenous demonic being, then use the swirls in as many complex intricate ways as you can.

Paint the text or pattern on the cloth, wrap whatever you have used to trap the being in the cloth with the swirls facing inward, and then bind it with the braid. Finally, put the whole thing in another cloth or a box that has the swirls on the outside and a key that has knots or a knotted rope around it. That should keep the bugger in for a good while until you are ready to take the being in vision and put it back where it belongs.

 

Clothing/robes

When you do any type of magical clearing or exorcism, you can guarantee that there is going to be a lot of psychic sludge/dirt involved in the building, on the people, and on yourself. The first step is to get sensitive to this type of inner dirt if you are not already. Then you will learn to feel such sludge on your body, your clothing, and tools.

If you want to get a small example of the feeling, go around charity/thrift shops and junk shops. Handle all sorts of things, try clothes on, etc, and then see how your hands and body ‘feels.’ Then wash your hands in a mix of salt, soap, and water. You will feel the difference immediately. Then take a ritual salt bath so that you are clean, and put on thrift/used clothing that has not been washed and see how they feel. Sit with them on for a little while—see how they affect your emotions and your thoughts. If you are very sensitive, you will feel that the clothing is grimy or greasy.

Building up that level of sensitivity is very important in this type of work. You need to be able to feel sludge straight away and be able to identify where or who it is coming from.

From a working clothing point of view, have a couple of outfits that you use for the work and when you wash them, always throw a little salt in the machine with them. Make sure that the clothing you choose has no images of people or creatures on them—you might find the odd spirit will decide that it can jump into your clothing and it can be freaky to have the image of Jim Morrison that is on your T shirt speaking to you in the middle of the night.

This is one of the uses of robes, but then such use is a minefield of drama and ego—it is often best just to have a couple of pairs of jeans and sweaters that you can use. When you have finished your work, strip off and put the clothing in a plastic bag or bin liner and tie it up. Put on fresh clothing to go home. Never go home in the clothes that you have worked in—you could end up sludging everything around you. Once you have ritually bathed, put on yet another set of fresh clothing and throw all the others in the machine.

If you do opt to use robes, then I would suggest just a simple white cassock to go over your clothing. I have seen some people use very glam intricate robes with all sorts of magical and spiritual symbols on them which is really asking for trouble. The more complexity within the clothing, the more likely it is that something will get attracted to the patterns or faces and decide to hop aboard for a ride.

 

Magical implements

The only magical implement I have used in an exorcism is a ritually consecrated sword with a sharp blade. This is not a good idea if you have a short fuse and a bad temper….

The sword is not used as a sword per say, but as a being in its own right playing its own part. The ritual sword of an exorcist usually has an angelic power flowing through it and its job is to bring that presence to the table. The sword would be unbound and placed in the room (out of arms reach of the host), usually behind the exorcist or to one side or held point down in its cruciform shape. It is an inner tool that can be drawn upon, it is not pointed at anyone and is not used to threaten anyone at any time.

It creates a situation where a bag of power is released in the room for the exorcist to work with or draw upon. It also protects you as you work, holding back certain inner powers so that they cannot interfere with you.

To create a ritual sword of this type, there are two main ways; one is to connect with a raw angelic power without its human framework i.e. not using any names or images, just its function or power. The second is to work with named and identified beings. Both have their ups and downs and limitations. Because you often do not know what you are going to be up against in the role of the exorcist, then I have personally found it better to work with a form of angelic power that is identified purely by its function.

I have used specified angelic beings before, but usually more in a guardian or short-term protective role.

To choose the power of angelic being that you want to work with you have to think very carefully about what powers you are going to be up against and ensure that what you draw upon is going to match that. There are angelic powers of justice, judgement, balance, death, destruction, fire, air, etc, and sometimes a working couple can forge within the sword to give you a powerful working combination—just make sure that they do actually get on and work well in harmony.

To create that form of a sword, you need a blade with no markings upon it and a plain hilt. After the usual preparations, go with the sword into the void and call upon the angel/s that you wish to work with. As they appear in the void, in vision, step into them with the blade and tell them what you are trying to achieve.

The first layer of the sword is put in at this level as they work through your imagination and hands—you will witness them changing and putting things into the sword and they may also tell you about how it works. They will often blow into your mouth, or put things into your body for you to mediate into the sword. When they have finished, you back out of that angel, going back into the void where you stay for a moment in silence. While you are in the void in vision, you place the sword to you mouth or hands and you mediate whatever was put into you into the sword by a ‘laying on’ of hands or by breathing down the blade.

Finally, you step back out of the void, open your eyes, and raise the sword to the flame or altar and outwardly ask that the angel of (name of whatever you are working with) to complete and seal in the power of the sword to make it whole. You then leave the sword by the flame to be worked on while you go out and leave the room. You will feel when it is finished and you can go back in to blow out the candle.

If you chose to work with a specific named angel, then the inner method is more or less the same but when it is finished, you would engrave the name of the angel in its original script on the blade. So if it is a Hebrew name, then you would use Hebrew script.

There is a version of the work where you would go in vision to the Abyss and connect with the angelic consciousness there, but I would not really recommend it. The further into the inner worlds you go, the less grounded the contact will be in the sword. If you want an inner consciousness to work with you through a physical object, then it is better to bring them as close as possible to your world.

A most extreme version of that is to bring the angelic being out of the void and into your realm and have the angel work on the sword through your body. That can be very powerful indeed, but it can also have a massive physical impact on your body.

When you have finished your sword, make a sheath for it that is covered in patterning that will stop things getting into it and also down its power when needed. Sometimes they need to be ‘on’ with you at home, and sometimes you will need them to be quiet. At that time, wrap them or sheath them but be aware that their vigilance is not working when they are bound up.

When you first start to work with the sword, use your deck to see exactly what you have put into the sword as opposed to what you wanted in the sword, and use the deck to track how it would assist you in certain situations.

 

Sigils and seals

Signs and sigils are used for all sorts of things from binding cloths to stoles, altar cloths, door seals, etc. The sigil of an angelic being is a doorway that its power can connect through—it is a fragment of that being that you can use as if the angelic being was working with you. Learn a small vocabulary of angelic sigils and what they do—there are plenty of references out in the world to John Dee’s angelic script and the angelic sigils. Just don’t fall into the badly researched new age ‘expert’ book trap.

When you are faced by a very serious possession and nothing you have tried works, the drawing upon the forehead, heart, and hands of the victim who is possessed will often either severely weaken the hold the demon has upon the person, or it will get it out all together. This is an extreme method that uses force and although it works, it is better to be more in control and able to put the being back where it came from.

If you are ready for it, and you are quick in vision and are very focussed, you can pull out the being while drawing the sigil upon the person. You need to be able to do two things at once in difficult circumstances.

The sigils are very useful to employ immediately after the demonic being is pulled out, to seal up the person and protect them.

It would also be a very good idea to have already-consecrated water and salt handy with you as a part of your tool kit, and have plenty of extra salt to consecrate if you need it. The water cleans and the salt absorbs—use them separated in bowls around the room where you are working. Also have some combined and ready to use on someone if they need it.

Stoles for use on the host would also be a very good thing to have in your bag of tricks. Have a consecrated stole with angelic sigils on the ends and the back neck piece, and magically create it as a silencer—the angelic being connected to the stole needs to be one that will protect the human rather than battle the demon. Putting the stole around the neck of an out of control rabid host should quieten things down so that work can begin.

 

Summary

The most important thing that you could have in your tool box is common sense and grounding. Know your beings, know your inner sigils and be able to be calm and focussed in the centre of chaos. The other skill to really develop is a good bullshit meter, and the ability to not lose your temper in the face of ignorance and stupidity. I once got called out in the middle of the night to attend to a possessed Christian teen. I drove for 2 hours at 4am and when I got there I found a distressed teen who just didn’t want to go to boot camp because she had been found smoking weed.

Be ready to work without your tool kit. Don’t get dependant on anything in this work—you need to be able to work with nothing if confronted with a surprise situation. If anything, salt would be the only thing I would really want handy in an unexpected situation and it is something that can be easily obtained. I used to waitress in a greasy spoon and used the salt pots many times to ‘clear’ something out of the café when a heavily parasited customer left. I found covert ways of doing things while wiping down tables, washing dishes, and slapping food down in front of someone while conducting a rite of cleansing over the crawling customers—they just thought I had a salt fetish.