The Sylphs

On March 16, 1904, "in an avowedly frivolous attempt to impress his wife", Crowley tried to "shew the Sylphs"[3] to her using the Bornless Ritual. Although she could see nothing, she did seem to enter into a light trance and repeatedly said, "They're waiting for you!" After asking the god Thoth to clarify the matter and getting Rose to identify the source of the message as Horus, Crowley took Rose to the Boulaq Museum and asked her to point out Horus to him.

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Of course any student of Crowley is well versed with the story of how all of this went down. I have a question about a certain aspect of it all. How exactly can you perform the Bornless Ritual to see the Sylphs of the air. Can someone direct me to a description of how to do this. Can anyone give me some clues on this or does the ritual itself have this affect automatically?

This would definitely be something I am interested definitely in attempting one day.

My understanding is the Bornless Ritual was used by Crowley as an opening ritual for all sorts of evocations, it is the first step of aligning yourself with deity, before you start throwing around commands to spirits.

He uses the same formula in Liber Samekh, so if you wanted to use it you could make an adaption from Liber Samekh. I guess just swap the latter part about the HGA for something specific to Sylphs (or whatever else you're wanting to work with). I don't have Crowley's (cough) copy of the Goetia, but suspect he may detail using the Bornless Ritual for evocation in there. It's freely available online, so should be no problem finding it.

Thanks Grigori that was what I needed to know. That is a valuable piece of information. I will research into this. This is definitely a revealation all unto itself with regards to ceremonial magic.

Perhaps you could provide a link to the Goetia used by Crowley.

Any pointers on constructing a ritual using Liber Samekh. I have been studying that ritual very intently in Book 4. It would seem to me that I could make some small changes in the text of the Bornless Ritual and then at the end of the ritual add in a part in which I invoke the Slyphs to appear at my command. Then I would have to banish them as well so I would need a part for that.

Since the Slyphs are in the air itself their would be no point trying to invoke them inside of the magic triangle. This all seems very straight forward and doesnt seem hard to do at all.

Professor X said:

Since the Slyphs are in the air itself their would be no point trying to invoke them inside of the magic triangle.

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Could you explain the reason behind that. My first reaction was O - oh! I think if you dont want to use a triangle then use a different ritual that never had that in it. Dont use one that says you should have a triangle and abandon it ... unless you have a good reason, and feel that its just or 'metaphor' that you dont need.

In any case .... if you do go ahead, tell us the results

Good point. I am still working on writing out a ritual now to invoke them.

I will make sure I keep the triangle involved in the ritual.

I found something in Book 4 that helped me tremendously when it came to writing out a ritual to invoke The Sylphs.

I am very interested to see the results of it all.

I stumbled across this old thread, and wanted to repeat Rif's recommendation. http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=147948&highlight=leitch

I'm reading Leitch as the moment and am engrossed. I think it would address a lot of questions for you too Professor

Thanks for that recommendation. I forgot about that thread I started back then. I guess that I am still gathering information on it all.

My lifes goal is to master all aspects of ceremonial magick.

This is a good starting point for this all.

I have another question in regards to writing a ritual.

Is it neccesary that I memorize what I come up with or can I read off of the paper I write it down with?