In a lot of the reading and researching I’ve been doing, many authors discuss drawing down the moon into the body of the Goddess.  I’ve been practicing for a while, so this concept is not new to me.  However, as my curiosity has grown with time, I have not been able to find a good description of the preparation for such a process, how one knows when it is time to try it, etc.  My previous teacher seemed to have a different view and approach to this than the more standard “the Goddess enters the Priest/ess’s body and speaks through her” idea.  I suppose what I’m trying to ask for, in my own roundabout way, is information about learning to Draw Down and Aspect, with more than a description of what it is.  Things like practice, exercises, preparation… something.  Thank you very much for your time.  ~K.B.

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I’ll begin by saying that learning to Draw Down The Moon is not beginner level work.  Men, you can read what I have written below and make the necessary gender changes and apply it to your own work with the God as well.  I was taught how to do this with a male student of equal rank and skill.  We were led through the process first learning to embody the energy ourselves, and then, we learned the invocational aspect of Drawing Down into each other.  There are a few definitions we need to get out here because they directly relate to not only semantical understanding but also skill level understanding.  Some people may use these words differently, however, this is how I use them.

DISTINCTIONS IN LEVELS OF ONENESS

The first term:  EMBODY.  Everyone can embody.  I was just at a SciFi Con tonight and saw plenty of people embodying fairies, characters from movies, pirates.  To embody something is to give an idea or abstraction a bodily form.  If you are attracted to a thing and you choose to dress up or act like that thing, you are giving the abstract idea of it a physical shape.  When we play a part in a Sacred Drama (but do not have a Deity drawn down into our form), we are embodying that part whether it be a Deity, an Animal, or some other.  I learned to embody in my Theatre Arts classes.  Was I channeling the Goddess?  No.  Was I fully present and consciously willing the manifestation of my character?  Yes.  I was in control, and I was projecting the abstract.  This is very important stipulation and easy to remember:  EMbody means that the “body” in control is “ME” (‘em’ spelled backwards).

The second and third terms will get you debate.  Both terms, when consulting Webster’s dictionary share a core definition:  to conjure.  In other words, the focus on the act is no longer active projection (which is what you do when you embody).  Now the focus is on passive reception through command or supplication.  Additionally, the realm from which you summon is different in each case.

When you evoke, you call forth… you draw out.  In other words, that which you are calling lies within you, is part of you.  You can tap its presence and draw it forth.  It’s not like embodying where you put on garb.  An evocation transforms you from the inside out, beyond any mere clothing facade.  When you invoke, you also call forth, but the emphasis is on requesting from a higher power, something outside you.  These are two different sides of the same coin.  For if the Divinity within is the same as and part of the Divinity without, then do evocation and invocation achieve the same ends?  Yes and no.

When I learned Drawing Down in my training, I was first taught to evoke my Goddess.  I did this by going inside my Center and finding the Goddess I wanted to evoke (at that point in my training, I was working with Bride).  I did this through a quick visualization of finding the Goddess waiting for me in my Center, taking Her hand, stepping “into” Her, and then allowing our Oneness to expand again until it pushed out and to the edges of my own body and energy field.  I was still there, but She was “with” me.  This is a different experience than embodying.  In embodying, remember, you are in control.  In evoking, you share the helm:  you did the summoning and She is One with you.  Evoking the Goddess empowers you, yokes your personal spiritual energy to that of a Deity form.

Invoking is different.  Invoking is done by pulling that energy “down” from outside you.  Where evoking conjures from within (ie. “draws out”), invoking conjures from outside of you (ie. “draws down”).  When you are evoking, you set the limits for that deity with your own mind, your own visualization, your own surrender to shared physical space.  When you are having the Goddess INVOKED down into you, what is being drawn down is larger than the limits of your perspective.  It’s as though you got the panoramic full-circle shot instead of the Polaroid picture.  Since you aren’t confining the Deity through your own visualization, the Deity has the opportunity to manifest in whatever way is needed.  Your job is no longer to find Deity, to embrace and expand Deity into the furthest reaches of your being.  No, your job now is to get out of the way (while staying in your body, that is).

PREPARATION FOR EACH STAGE

These three levels of Deity work graduate one from another.  Embodying is the simplest, involving our minds controlling and our bodies expressing what we think we want to express.  When we embody, we have full control.  Evoking is the middle level step, tapping into what is already within us and drawing it out to assist us by sharing control and sharing the empowerment of the state.  When we evoke, we share our space and our control, allowing the Deity to empower the work we do.  Invoking is the furthest step, drawing down something beyond our own visualizations, beyond our perspectives.  When Deity is invoked and asked to descend into us, we surrender and step aside, relinquishing our control and also (very important here!!) relinquishing our mental limitations — after all, the Gods have no limitations.

Embodying and Evoking you can do yourself with relatively little trouble.  Learning to Embody is learning to act, to play a part, to transform yourself into that Other.  Costuming, theatre classes, improvisational acting, dancing… anything that helps you generate that abstraction is good preparation.  Remember, you control Embodiments.

Learning to Evoke is learning to do your work with another voice inside your head — a very INSISTENT voice, at that.  One of the best ways I’ve found to do this is through a mental exercise called What Would Goddess Do? I perform my evocation as listed above, and then I listen for Her voice as I work through the problem at hand.  Her voice is unmistakable when you are Evoking.  I allow her to speak through me and my work, and I ask myself “What Would You Have Me Do, Lady?” each day.  The conscious control by the person handling the God/dess energy is what divorces it from the Invoking.

In Invoking, you must learn to surrender control.  This is the hardest part of the process.  There are ways to work on it, but first you have to admit you have a control problem (and in this society, I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t have a control problem of some sort).  Learning to deal with your control issues can be fun, and develops six necessary inner skills related to holding the open state needed in Drawing Down:

• LET GO OF MICROMANAGING. Ask a family member to plan a dinner or date  for you without ANY contributions or suggestions on your part.  When it’s time to participate, go along for the ride.  No criticisms are allowed.  FLOW with it.   For a more advanced version of this exercise, give over the planning and direction and execution of something you want to see done to another person (the more important to you the task, the more difficult it will be, so you can gauge your own level of readiness to learn “releasing” and pick tasks of graduated importance in order to learn to let go).  Again, they’re in charge.  Flow.  No judging.  This is a bitch, I’ll warn you now, but it works to develop this area.  Part of improving your openness is relinquishing your own tendency to order and direct the things in which you participate.

• LET GO OF BLOCKS. When things occur in your life, feel what you need to feel situationally and then let go.  See your cares floating down the river away from you.  Or down the toilet if that seems more suitable.  Part of improving your openness is ensuring you can let go of things that are blocking the invocation, such as daily stressors.

• LET GO OF THE DESTINATION/OUTCOME. On a day you don’t have to be anywhere at a particular time, go for a drive in a car without a map and somewhere you’ve never been.  Make sure your cell phone is charged, that you have gas in the car and cash in the wallet for emergencies, and have a map in the glove compartment (just vow not to use it for the duration of the exercise).  Get yourself lost.  Turn yourself around.  Allow yourself to just go with the flow and see where you end up and what you find.  For this exercise, have a dedicated friend on standby.  For safety reasons, call them when you leave, tell them the direction you are headed.  Have them call you at specific times so you can give them updates about your whereabouts (at the very least, the cell phone call records your last location based on call origin).  Aside from being my favorite way to discover amazing things, this also allows you to be “led” and to experience lack of control in a way that improves your receptivity.  Part of improving your receptivity is lessening the sense of panic that sets in when things are unfamiliar to you.

• LET GO OF CONTROLLED EXPRESSION. As part of a coven activity or party, play a version of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? or some other improvisational game.  These games force you to act/think/respond quickly.  People who are truly good at this kind of game are not just quick on the draw mentally — they are wide open for information and inspiration to bubble up and through with no filter.  It is difficult to play any kind of improv game using the tactic of “overthinking”.  It stalls it out, makes it stilted.  Another good way to practice this is to “filk” songs on the radio — in other words, change the lyrics of the song on the fly.  Let an idea and words and phrasings bubble up and totally rewrite the song off the cuff.  This is another method of improv that’s easy to do and needs no partners to practice.  Part of improving your clarity involves improving your ability to let the generative (and oft chaotic) force of creativity have more input and expression than your logical and ordered mind.

• LET GO OF BEING THE ONE WHO KNOWS SO YOU CAN OPEN TO THE ONE WHO DOES. If you have not already, begin working with a divination tool (such as Tarot) that allows you to practice being open and letting information flow through you without conscious mental effort.  Part of improving your ability to channel is repeated opportunities to develop the skill for yourself and others.

• LET GO OF THE FEAR AND THE NEED TO BE IN MOTION. Practice, practice, practice the art of meditation.  Practice the kind of meditation where you let slip away from your mind any distraction.  Good examples are imagining each thought as drop of water in a pool, then allowing the thought to ripple out and return the pool to stillness.  Or that thoughts appear as writing on a blackboard, which you erase into blackness again.  The point is to teach your ego and your mental chatter to become “still”, leaving a blank slate/calm pool of readiness and immediate awareness.   The other kind of meditation to practice is journeying.  Practice going into meditation in which you go to your sacred center.  Visualize a door being there or a portal through which you can step.  As you step through, begin walking and let the meditation take you where you need to go.  The point is not to control this with your conscious mind (as in, I’m going to go through this door and into the temple of Isis).  It is fine to set the “scene” or to hold an intention in your heart of what it is you are seeking, but ONLY if you can hold it lightly in your mind.  I think about the description of using the aleithiometer in The Golden Compass.  You can’t strangle the thought without strangling the outcome of the thought also.  Learning to journey and “be led” in your meditations opens the door to being able to “go with the flow” when the Goddess is invoked to descend into you.   Part of improving your ability to hold on to the invocation is your ability to maintain the blank slate/calm pool resting state so that the Deity comes through clearly and your conscious self remains “at peace”.

LEARNING HOW TO BE A CUP

Drawing Down the Moon is an act of complete receptivity.  Controlling this experience is a sure way to get your ego (your “little Goddess”) back involved and this can, and often does, overpower and outshout the presence and voice of the “Big Goddess” trying to come through.

Imagine a cup of water.  The cup holds the water based on the preparation of its shape.  If the cup is shallow, it won’t hold much.  If the sides are thick or it’s filled with something else on the bottom, it won’t hold much.  You are like that cup.  If the cup is all sides-and-bottom and doesn’t contain a natural open space, then there’s no place to hold anything — the cup is all filled with just being itself.  I guess you can still call it “cup-SHAPED”, but it ceases to be able to do the work of a cup if it can’t hold anything.  Lesson:  Prepare yourself to be receptive (see exercises above).

The cup also holds water based on its orientation.  If the cup is flipped on its side, upside down, or any other direction than upright, the contents will spill out.  Likewise, if you are not grounded and open to your Higher Self (upward), the contents of an invocation can spill right out and leave others with just you, potentially empty or partially full of what is desired for the working. Lesson:  Be grounded and open to the Higher vibrations and influences for the work.

The cup also holds water based on its integrity.  Cracks allow the water (in this case, the energy flowing into you) to leak.  This can sometimes causes the cup to break.  Thus my warning:  DO NOT ATTEMPT DRAWING DOWN IF YOU ARE NOT IN A MENTALLY STABLE PLACE.  There may be occasions where a Drawing Down can assist in healing the body of the vessel, however, it puts stress on the vessel.  Lesson:  Ensure your mental, emotional, and vibrational integrity is healthy as part of pre-Invocation preparation.

Finally, the cup isn’t trying to be a cup.  It simply is a cup.  This is the hardest part of this metaphor as it is paradoxical on the surface.  Part of learning any new skill is the act of trying to learn the new skill.  When we learn a new skill, we are attaching our expectations to what we perceive would represent a successful outcome.  And thus, the cup worries about whether or not it can successfully be a cup, whether it can hold all that’s given, whether it will topple over, whether or not anyone will like what it offers.  CUPS DO NOT DO THESE THINGS!!!  Neither should you.  Practice with the intent of achieving a desired result is going to involve your mind teaching yourself to learn a new skill.  However, remember that as you tighten down on the skills, the goal is actually letting go.  At some point, you will reach a point via practice that you will care less about whether or not you’re a good “cup” and will feel less self-conscious about the worries and woes of “cup-ness”.  Until you reach the point where you simply ARE the cup and you’re doing what cups do, you still have practice to do.  Sadly, I cannot explain this better… it is a realization that comes with practice.  One day, after you’ve tried this many times, you will realize that this last time you “forgot” to be concerned with your cup duties and you just “did it”.  When that happens, smile, pat yourself on the back, and then try to remember everything you did that helped you get to that point.  You might realize that you hadn’t eaten since breakfast that day — well, for some people, abstaining from food for 12 hours makes Drawing Down much easier.  This was one of the tricks I was taught to use when I was learning the skill.  The plus side is you are less “weighted” in the physical world and thus far more open on other vibrational levels, plus your mind is somewhat slower from the lack of recent glucose in your system.  The down side is that your mind has less control, which can be scary for you, and when you release the contents of your cup (the Deity invoked), you will very likely eat anything that isn’t nailed down.  But this process of trial and error can show you what physical steps or mental preps worked for you to achieve “ultimate cup-ness”.  It won’t be the same for everyone.  Lesson:  Learn how to let go of the ego as connected with the role — simply be.

Continue on to Part 2 of this article…

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).