METHODS AND DIFFERENCES

There is a difference between performing an invocation upon yourself and having another person of the opposite sex perform the invocation.  I will say that in my personal practice, I use all three of the above levels of energetic connection.

I embody when I am poking fun at things, when I am being deliberately irreverent, or when I am acting for casual performances.

I evoke most often when I am doing personal work, when I am seeing my own living self as One and the Same with the Goddess and thus the power of the All extends through my hands and my words and my heart.  This imbues my work with a higher level of sacredness.  I strive ever more dilgently to live in this evoked state, remembering that I am an Avatar of the Gods I serve in this world, that my hands are Their hands, my voice is Their voice.  My personal lower self (ego) still gets in the way because I’m imperfect, however evocation helps me move beyond my human limits.  When I evoke, I become timeless.  Because the Goddess is one with me, I am more in the Now because the Now is all that the Goddess knows.  Time is nothing to Her.

I invoke (a) when I am having to do something that I do not know how to do but still have to do it, or (b) when I must do something that involves some kind of risk of harm to my person but would not harm Goddess, or (c) when I mentally feel I am unequal to the task due to my humanity (ie. when the evoked state doesn’t feel powerful enough for the working).

For example, I can heal on the physical level, however it is not one of my forefront talents.  One of the Goddesses to whom I am vowed is Sekhmet.  There are several ways that Sekhmet heals ailments, and one is through devouring that which is causing the illness.  When I have to do physical healing, I will invoke Sekhmet for the protection She gives to me and my physical form while I work the healing and also because She was traditionally the patroness of doctors.  She was the defender and restorer of Ma’at, the order of things, and thus rights all imbalances, whether those be societal (things that cause wars) or physical (things that cause illness).  When I invoke Sekhmet, I call to Her energy, literally envision Her above me coalescing and becoming that solid “flow” of what will fill my cup.  I draw Her down, and “watch” my face change to the head of a lioness.  I can feel the intense heat of the corona of my crown chakra and the uraeus serpent merging the earthly with the divine realm.  I find that I can then “smell” the illness.  It is a very strange sensation and from that moment on, I can really take no credit for the work being done.  I’m just a cup, and no one ever remarks how good the cup is — the focus is on what’s inside (in this case, Sekhmet).  To Sekhmet be the honor!

I will say upfront that learning to Draw Down for one’s self is difficult.  A good bit of the time, you’re going to end up with an Evocation instead of an Invocation.  Why?  Because it is damn hard to be the receptive cup and the pitcher pouring at the same time.  That’s where partners come in — our Priests.  It is far easier to just be a cup.  You can be both at once — after all, you are male and female in one — it just takes a lot of work to divide out the Shiva and the Devi and assign them to two different tasks without feeling like you have given yourself split personalities.  Before you try Drawing Down on yourself, you need to spend some serious time working with your Male Self, known as your animus (for men, work with your Female Self, known as your anima). Part of the vital training of a Priest or Priestess of the Craft is encountering, embracing and integrating this “opposite” half.  This is the inner Great Rite that we must all experience.  Until you have that down, being the cup and the pitcher at the same time is going to be extremely difficult.  You will still be able to experience some of the effects — after all, I suppose technically, a pitcher could start pouring and morph into a cup while the liquid is in mid-air.  You’ll get some of the experience, but what you can draw will be immediately limited because of how long you were able to spend pouring before you had to switch gears and become the cup.

NOTE:  This self-invoking catch-22 is an automatic limiter for people learning this Mystery.  It takes WORK to separately use one’s Male and Female halves, and those looking for the “quick power result” don’t tend to spend the time necessary to get to the point of achieving squat.  Even once you get to the point of being able to be the pitcher and the cup at once, there is a built-in limit on how much you can really draw at a time.  And the only way to increase your ability to draw is to practice and learn how to manipulate the moment and space between being the pitcher and being the cup.  We are fortunate that our faith shelters our Mysteries — it prevents harm from occurring.  As with anything in the Craft, remember that if it’s worth having, it’s worth working for, and immediate results “the way you want them” might be more than you can mentally and energetically and ethically handle.

When you have a partner assisting, the results (in my experience) are much better, much greater, and there is a power to it unlike self-generated invocations.  For one, it’s sexual.  When a Priest calls to the Goddess, it is though he is calling to a Lover, his DIVINE lover to be precise.  There is an energetic polarity that begs to be answered.  The magnetic force of a Priest’s call to the Goddess is an incredible thing to watch and witness (and vice verse when a Priestess calls to the God).  I know that when I Draw Down upon a Priest and I reach out to the God, I am extremely aware of my own Female-ness.  I am aware of my body, my receptivity, that I am created differently from a Male and for what purpose I was created differently.  There is a sexual current that zips through my body and my call to the God is one of Desire.  When Desire powers an invocation, Desire ANSWERS an invocation.  The God comes to me as one Desirous of me.  My call is that of a Lover to my Beloved.  That is the force that descends into the body of my Priest.  It is also why, when the Goddess is drawn down upon me, as I experience the presence of the Goddess within me from my receptive state, I can feel Desire thrum through my body for the Priest who performed the invocation.  It has nothing to do with the social mores of being unfaithful or not, of intending to have sex or not… it is simply that the Goddess heard the call of her Other Half — of Her animus — and She comes.  Sometimes, literally.  I have had orgasm as a side effect of a strong Drawing Down.  I have had Priests tell me that an erection is often a side effect for them.

If you want to attempt Drawing Down The Moon with a partner, it needs to be someone you trust or it won’t work.  Remember everything I said above about “letting go” and being receptive?  You can’t fill a cup if you have a force field of mistrust lying over the opening to the cup like a piece of Saran Wrap.  It’s an extremely intimate experience to participate in this with a Priest.  There is an energy blending that is intoxicating.  If you aren’t stable and grounded, experiencing it can lead to mundane problems such as infatuation on one end and outright infidelity and obsession on the other (seen it happen, not pretty).

FINAL THOUGHTS AND ADVICE

The final warning on Drawing Down that I will give you is about effects of the rite and what you need to do in follow-up.  It is not uncommon to find yourself unable to remember things you did and said during a time of being filled by the Goddess.  You will have people come up to you, sometimes years later, and tell you that what you said to them in a moment of “cup-ness” was exactly what they needed to hear at the time.  You won’t remember it.  You’ll be amazed that anything that came out of your mouth could be so wise.  It’s okay… this happens.  Go with the flow and remember to give credit to the Goddess because it wasn’t YOU.  This last thing is very important in preventing your ego from latching on to the experience like a drug.  If you get too tangled up in this ego-aspect, you will start “performing” during the Drawing Down, and you will have ceased to be a cup.  You will be a cheap, imitation knock-off of a cup… one that says “Made in” some foreign place and that has “Not safe for food consumption” written on it.  Take that to heart:  when you start performing, your ego has taken over, and anything you say isn’t safe for anyone to swallow.

Be sure when you’re done with the ritual that you ground and center and get something to eat soon afterwards.  It takes energy to maintain the focus necessary to just “be a cup” when you have the power of the Universe singing through your limbs and tissues.  It also can make you feel a little depressed to let go of that energy when you’re done.  Eating something can restore chemical balance to your system and boost your energy.  It also makes your mind more alert, more here-and-now focused due to the rush of glucose to the brain.  These things are all important.

If for some reason you need to hold on to the Deity energy for a long period of time (say, for a vigil or an all evening event), please do the advance preparation of appointing a person to be your Guardian for the night.  Have them check in on you regularly and monitor your state.  They don’t have to bother you… they just need to make sure the cup isn’t leaking, so to speak.  Make them also responsible for knowing exactly when you want to release the energy so they’re sure to hunt you down and feed you when you’re done.  The longer the energies are held, the more tiring it can be.  The worst part is, as the cup, you won’t really recognize it while you’re holding the Goddess inside you.  You will actually feel extremely good, powerful, energetic more often than not.  The Goddess may not have limits, but your body does.  Allow someone who loves you tend to you.  The Oracles at Delphi had preparatory help and after-care when doing their work.  You need it, too.

I suggest keeping a journal of your Drawing Down experiences.  It’s helpful for creating your own practice for readying yourself.  It is also a wonderful place for recording the things you learn from being filled with Deity.  It can create profound shifts in insight for you.  Don’t let these moments pass by without noting them.  They are priceless.

One Final and ABSOLUTELY MUST HEED Warning:

DO NOT INVOKE A DEITY THAT YOU HAVE NOT RESEARCHED WELL UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES.

Goddesses have their own energy, their own vibration, and their own interests/alignments.  I have seen Drawing Down moments in ritual where someone invoked a Goddess deeply aligned with sexual Mysteries and fertility into someone who, I later discover, had very little sexual experience.  The person was ill-prepared, there was bleed-over after the Goddess was “released” (meaning, a good bit of the energy stuck around because the Priestess “liked it” and wanted to ride around on the high).  For the remainder of the evening, she certainly acted like a sex Goddess, morphing from a fairly reserved, straight, young woman to running around in the nude and being more than a little — shall we say — inviting to the other men (and women!) of the gathering.  Know who is going to be “in your house” before you give them the key, I say.

I know this has been a long answer to your question.  However, hopefully it covers all the bases you wanted covered as well as the preparatory and experiential bases you might not have known were even there.  Again, if you are Priest, these things apply to you as well.  I will say, dear Priests, that you have the additional challenge of learning a energy pattern not usually associated with your gender.  Males are naturally more PROJECTIVE instead of RECEPTIVE, so you’ll have to focus very hard on learning that opposite-gender skill.  Priestesses, don’t think that means you’re better at this naturally just because you have a vagina.  Females are receptive by nature to most everything, which means our main stumbling block comes in the form of walls we build and controls we establish in reaction to issues of receptivity in our pasts (such as heartbreak, subjugation, abuse, molestation, rape, etc).  I have seen more than a few cases where Priestesses had more work to do than the Priests of a group just to restore their ability to naturally receive from a place devoid of Fear and Mistrust.

From here, learning to Draw Down is a process of doing.  There is a reason it is said that we “practice a Craft”.  Practice, practice, practice… success is in your hands.

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).