Experience:Path Ritual
The following is a user's experience with the Path Ritual in which he encounters a shadow person:
"So I've been really into the occult, and when I was fourteen was my very first evocation. I painted a circle on the back of a carpet and rolled it out and got some candles. I bought the Lesser Key of Solomon and that was that. I fucked up. I didn't realize that you needed to follow the grimoires exactly or else it wouldn't be as successful. The key things I were missing were a brass vessel, a robe, and a lions skin belt. I also didn't use the Greater Key of Solomon in conjunction with the ritual in order to consecrate items.
In short, nothing should have happened. But my hand started convulsing and I dropped the book. When the ritual was over and went to bed, I experienced hypnagogic hallucinations of me floating above the circle, my dog running and trying to get in. In the circle below me was a feathery red thing that sung beautiful poetry and chanted incantations. (This is all relevant to my shadow person experience later.) It pointed its staff at me and instantly I was nothing and in nothing, floating in a darkened void. Before me shone a symbol that I knew was wholly and completely a part of me.
So, I got pretty heavily into this stuff and would spend days in my room chanting and praying and I would read for hours about mythology and stuff. Of course, my Christian mom was concerned so she planned a family vacation to Sea Ranch, California. You would never think anything was wrong with the house. It was perfectly normal. Of course I brought my occult stuff too.
My goal was to get a physical manifestation; a visible and affable appearance. This was my second attempt at evocation. The ritual is as follows (it is called Path Ceremony) which was passed down through folklore:
- Find a symbol that accurately depicts your soul via meditation, prayer, dreams, or drug use.
- Clean the designated room completely and put sort everything.
- On a piece of wood, carve your name with the symbol. On the back, carve the seal and name of spirit you wish to summon. Bleed on it.
- Find a preferably empty house, darken and silence the room. If you cannot empty the house, it is also fine but the results may be affected.
- Call out in a rich voice for the spirit saying "Come to me, N. / Come to me those who are to take me."
- Wait a while. Then call out this in a whisper.
- Wait some more. Call out in simply your thoughts. From now on this will be the method of communicating; talking will let them find you. The first ones to come are not who you seek. You must fight them off mentally. You are not to let them take you. Once the right spirit appears, communicate in thought, asking for what you wish.
- Toss the room and make something out of order to end the ritual. Turn on the lights as fast as possible and leave the room saying "It is over, leave with my will," while shutting the door and preferably locking it.
- Do not return to the room for 24 hours. This tenth step is added by me based on my experience:
- Burn the seal.
The phenomena started before I even did the ritual. I was meditating and came across the image of a dark figure strangling my grandmother to death.
My house wasn't empty, but it worked anyway. I started the ritual and quickly something appeared before my bed. It had come out of the closet. I stared at it. It was humanoid and black, darker than dark, and it stared at me. It just stood there. The room was a thin blue color, illuminated by the moonlight, but this creature seemed to darken his area.
I fucking panicked. This was the scariest moment of my life. The thing didn't have any other features or characteristics. I knew it wasn't who I planned to summon, Phenex, since I had seen Phenex before. I knew his presence. This was an impostor. It was a shadow person. He began to step forward to me. He slowly put his palm on his bed and I could feel the pressure. He was trying to get on the bed.
I didn't want to find out what was going to happen next. Then he did something that I don't think a shadow person has done yet: he spoke. Because of the meditation incident, I think our spheres of consciousness can cross like physical objects when we are close to each other. I heard his thoughts. I really can't explain it, but it was like radio static, like I couldn't quite understand him. His mind raced at faster speeds than possible and his intellect almost split my psyche. I had a panic attack.
He then began to think a thought I could make out. It was that I knew he wasn't Phenex. Phenex usually sings when he appears, so that is probably an explanation for the crude imitation that happened next. He started singing in this deep guturral tone. It was rasped and electric, deeper than human, and vibratory. His tone was rigid. It was a truly wicked sound. I asked it to turn the Internet off to stop my distractions.
I couldn't understand him. He climbed higher onto the bed – almost directly above me. He actually then started to hover. He approached me. I threw the blankets off the bed, ran to the lights and flipped them. I denounced the ritual and slammed the door. I came back an hour later and the door was open, the lights were on, and the closet door was open. No one in my family had been home. This continued to happen without explanation.
There was pounding on the windows at night. My brother heard someone call his name from inside the room while the door was closed and someone was in there. I was masturbating on the couch, and the thing appeared and started walking or sort of crawling around quickly singing its disgusting hum. It disappeared before I could get a good look. It was much more animistic this time. It seemed to either pick up on my sexual energy or filled with anger.
The Internet turned off for exactly 24 hours like I asked. The cable repair guy couldn't understand it. I think the seal bound it to my will.
Later that night, I saw it strangling my grandmother while she was sitting in a chair, but it disappeared as I tried to look at it. My grandmother became I'll seconds later and we had to call an ambulance. Turns out she had low oxygen saturation.
I decided to put an end to this. I kindled a fire and tossed the wooden seal into it. If that worked, I wouldn't know because we left the next day. It appeared to be bound to that land. Never going back."