The Rite of Indwelling is a new Tenebrous ritual I’ve developed. Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness offers two rites of communion with the Nekalah. One, the Rite of Descent, entails psychically entering into the acausal realm of the Dark Gods. The other, the Rite of the Threshold, involves meeting with them in a boundary zone between our world and theirs. Both have their applications and limitations. Such limitations recently prompted me to devise a third option. This post will describe my method and initial results.

Introduction

While there are some esoteric practitioners to whom contact with the acausal comes easily and naturally, I am not one. But I by no means see this as an insurmountable obstacle to magickal advancement. Rather, it drives me to innovate to overcome my limitations. And by so doing, I devise methods that may also serve others who are similarly “non-naturals”.

Such innovation can seem needlessly complicated to those for whom acausal contact “just happens”. But for those like me, ritual formality helps access the right mindset, open the nexion, and engage constructively with what follows.

I’ve also seen cases where someone’s much-vaunted receptivity leads them straight into mental instability. This type may then benefit from ritual structures that enable not only contact with, but also withdrawal from Dark influences.

This post is thus not written for those who already experience frictionless contact with acausal forces. Its audience, rather, is those who must work for contact, and who therefore welcome new tools for this purpose.

I’ll first give some background for my book’s take on rites of communion, and where I encountered their limitations. Subsequently, I’ll detail the new rite I devised in response – abbreviated, but aiming for enough description to enable others to attempt it. (Assuming that you already have Nine Keys, that is!)

As is always the case when the Nekalah are involved, a certain amount of risk is inherent in such experiments. I’d therefore recommend this post’s rite more to experienced practitioners than beginners.

Tenebrous approaches to communion

What hasn’t worked vs. what has

The Eighth Key states:

All forms of communion with spirits fundamentally consist of the practitioner entering into a state of altered consciousness in which resistance to the acausal is significantly lowered. Two such methods that are widely known in occult circles are summoning and possession. In the case of the Nekalah, however, conventional attempts at either of these methods tend to present certain difficulties.

This reference to “difficulties” arose from my experiences:

1. Summoning rites I’d encountered used a lot of candles. This made for a brighter ritual area than I found conducive for Nekalah to manifest. Trivial though this may sound, I did initially experience it as a true obstacle.
2. The issue with possession lay both with me (i.e., a “psychic hard-head”) and the entities (i.e., having nasty reputations): it doesn’t come naturally for someone averse to giving up control to give control to such beings. Attempts to induce possession therefore struck me as prone to two outcomes, neither desirable: either a) the entity isn’t enough there to deserve calling it possession, or b) you can tell the entity’s definitely there – because the magician has lost control.

1) suggested that if I wanted the Nekalah “here,” I needed to conceptualize their manifestation environment differently from, say, a Goetic summoning. Hence how we get the concept of “the Shadow” in the Rite of the Threshold.

2) got me thinking, “if there’s an issue with Them coming into me, what if I went into Them?”. It seemed to the Chaos Magician in me that popular media – such as this film (it got trashed by critics, but I always liked it) – offered compelling models for how this might work. And so from this starting point I developed the Rite of Descent.

You can find full details of both rites in Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness.

Limitations to overcome

The difficulty I had to confront recently pertained to the Sun stage of Tenebrous initiation. This culminates in a pact-signing, and I’d stipulated the ritual must take place outdoors. Experimentation had, however, indicated the following shortcomings of my rites for outdoor situations:

• The issue with the Rite of Descent is that it is so reliant upon inward journeying. Triggering the experience itself in whatever environment, and having successful communion through it, were not problems. But I felt it kind of defeated the purpose of being outside. (Note: my personal Sun revelations revolved significantly around the need for more connectivity to things outside myself. It’s therefore worth noting that I may be sensitive to this issue in a way that other Sun initiates won’t experience as equally pressing.)
• The issue with the Rite of the Threshold was tied to the timing of my ritual. It was close to the summer solstice. I, however, am in a part of the world that doesn’t experience true night at that time of year. I don’t want to overstate this point: it does get dark, and does look like night to a casual observer. However, even with a new moon, it’s not dark in the same way that a ritual chamber in black-out conditions is “dark”. As someone who’s done Rite of the Threshold many times, I could make it work if I had to. But insofar as I wanted a “proper” experience for a pact-signing, circumstances seemed to call for something more.

It’s an expectation of the Tenebrous initiation protocol that the initiate be forced to adapt ritual praxis to new circumstances. I was thus undismayed to discover these limitations. It was simply the task at hand to deal with them.

Devising a new rite of communion

Practical considerations regarding ritual props

Once I got to thinking I’d take a different approach, the issue of props came to the forefront.

I am not of the mindset that props are “bad” – e.g., to me, it’s no sign of an inferior magician to need a physical representation of a sigil, an actual crystal, etc. To the contrary, when people are too eager to dispense with all such things, it feels to me as if they’re insufficiently willing to engage with the aesthetic of the tradition, and may be harboring delusions about whether they are actually doing magick or are just daydreaming about doing magick.

However, insofar as the ritual I was undertaking required a remote outdoor location, such considerations arose as:

• Quantity/weight of stuff to have to haul to the location.
• Fire-related practicalities: “everything is wet” and “everything is dry” are each their own potential issues.
• It’s sure to be dark, but aesthetically-undesirable to be over-reliant upon artificial light (such as a headlamp).
• Potential for valuables to get lost/dropped/broken/etc. in the dark.

With such things in mind, I designed the ritual I would perform to require only the following:

• A quartz crystal in the form of a large pendant.
• A small flask of mead as an offering.
• My initiatory contract, a pen for writing any necessary amendments, and diabetic lancets for signing the contract (they are tiny and easy to lose, so I brought extras).
• A headlamp used only for interacting with the contract (reading/writing).

Anything else brought with me was for “doing a short hike at night” -type purposes, not for the ritual itself.

Dealing with the lack of a dagger

Doubtlessly, the first thing many readers will notice about the preceding list is that it omits a dagger. As this is unusual for us Satanic types, it’s worth explaining what I used instead and why.

The reason I didn’t want a dagger with me was because I planned on incorporating a “spiral dance” (i.e., like Dervish whirling) into the ritual. I therefore didn’t want to be spinning and falling with a sharp object and/or fussing around with a safe place to put it.

I did envision this ritual requiring the sort of direction of energy a dagger is often used for, though. So I opted to use the following hand gesture as a substitute:

Now, this admittedly resembles a gesture found in paintings of a certain guy we Satanists stereotypically don’t like. 😉

Those able to overcome the associated distaste may find the symbolism interesting. While exact explanations vary, recurring themes seem to include i) claiming agency as an orator and ii) the conjoining of divine and human natures. Consider in connection that the Tenebrous invocation does make a claim of agency: “I am a seeker of wisdom and power, fearless and proud in my pursuit of divinity”.

But for those unable to overcome the Abrahamic ick, I instead draw your attention to this gesture being a closer match to what the East calls the pran mudra. It’s said to stimulate the root chakra for a grounding and balancing effect, as well as to grant clear vision. This strikes me as appropriate for a magician bridging the causal and acausal. I’ve also used it before, e.g. in the Tenebrous Imbolc ritual (though I didn’t get a chance to mention it in that post).

I’ll refer to this hand gesture as “the sign of the dagger” for the rest of this post.

The Rite of Indwelling

Concept behind the Rite of Indwelling

“Indwelling,” “overshadowing,” and “demonic oppression” can be used to mean roughly the same thing: a “lite” version of possession.

This construal is unfortunate insofar as the dominant tendency of Order of Nine Angles (ONA/O9A) types is instant contempt for anything “lite”.

As someone who’s O9A-adjacent partly out of exasperation with less “serious” forms of Satanism, I’m not unsympathetic to this urge. I think though what we have here is a case of “sometimes a sledgehammer’s just not the tool you want”. As alluded-to above, there are practitioners and situations where possession’s balance of effort vs. payoff seems unwieldy. The Rite of Indwelling accordingly seeks to offer a more favorable risk vs. reward ratio. That does not mean it entails no risks.

If Descent entails “going to” the Nekalah, and Threshold meets them “between” our world and theirs, what of Indwelling? The idea is that through spiritual work prior to the ritual – e.g., meditation upon the entity’s sigil or other proceedings that have built resonance between you and it – you have intentionally prepared a specific space for it to inhabit within you. Performing the Rite of Indwelling enables the entity to actually enter this prepared space. But its opportunity to do this is not indefinite; rather, it explicitly persists only so long as the magician is in the naos state (i.e., during the ritual). The thought here is that if a guest becomes unruly, they can only wreak havoc in the area you’ve given them access to rather than having the run of your house.

A foundation of this practice is a relationship of mutual respect between you and the invited entity. I therefore don’t recommend attempting this rite with any entity you aren’t familiar with or lack strong ties to.

Preparation and opening of the Rite of Indwelling

Important: Prior to undertaking the rite, use a pen to draw the sigil of the entity on the palm of your receptive hand (as per topmost image in this post). In my experience, regular ball-point pen ink stays on well without smearing if allowed to dry, and can be easily removed later with isopropyl alcohol.

Since I had the sigil on my hand, the quartz crystal on a long chain around my neck, and everything else in my pockets, I didn’t require an altar in what follows.

The ritual opening proceeds:

1. Facing west, recite the General Evocation (see Nine Keys of Abyssal Darkness). Any time instructions call for a two-handed grip on the dagger, make the sign of the dagger with your dominant hand, and cup your receptive hand over your dominant hand’s thumb.
2. Turn south and proceed in turn with each of the Directional Evocations. Use the sign of the dagger to draw the pentacle etc., and hold the pendant in the same manner as you would any other quartz crystal. (Make sure the chain it’s on is long enough.)
3. Upon returning to the west, speak the Conclusion of Evocations.

Intensification for the Rite of Indwelling

Elaboration

4. Making the two-handed version of the sign of the dagger, issue a Statement of Intent along the following lines: “Dark Gods, I, [magician’s name], call you forth from the Abyss to fulfill my request: open wide the Black Gate of the Void, and come forth to touch me with your presence; [Nekalah’s name], enter unto me as your vessel, so that we may [describe purpose for communion here – to discuss the Sun initiation pact etc.]. Do as I command and I will testify to your greatness!”
5. Proceed with the Statement of Coordination: “Darkness, come forth in all your forms to make my will manifest!” If currently standing in the center of an area (e.g. a grove), you may want to take a few steps back and toward your left before continuing with the next step.
6. Hold up the crystal and say, “[Nekalah’s name], behold the Key to the Dark Pool beneath the Moon!” (note: I would normally do this with my left hand, but found it more convenient to use my right in this context, due to what happens in the next step.)
7. Display your palm with the sigil and declare, “[Nekalah’s name], behold the sign by which you are known to me! Hear then my voice, as I open the nexion that invites you to dwell within me, in the place I have prepared for you!”
8. Walk the Black Gate, as described in Nine Keys. You may want to multiply steps in proportion to being in a larger space – e.g. instead of 4, 4, 2, 7, 2, 4, 4, use 8, 8, 4, 14, 4, 8, 8.
9. Upon concluding, state “Thus do I open the Black Gate! [Nekalah’s name], come forth into your vessel!”

Intensification method

Direct your awareness toward the sigil on your hand, and begin to do a “spiral dance” – i.e., move with a counter-clockwise whirling motion. Start slow in large circles, accelerating into smaller, faster ones. Continue until you are compelled to fall to the ground. Pay attention to sensations of energy in your inscribed palm, bodily sensations of sinking or being washed away, etc.

My experience was that when you “come to” after this, there will be a sense that “something is different” and you aren’t alone in your mind. The important thing in that moment is to be receptive to whatever happens next. How things may escalate from there depends both on you and the Nekalah. Communing with Nemicu, the experience I had was of the nature of “walk where I tell you to, observe impassively, and you will come to understand later”. This kind of subtle command I found to be on-brand with my past experiences of this entity. Vs. I’d expect an entity with a more volatile personality to impose itself more aggressively.

I thus experienced several hours during which my normal ruminations were effortlessly suspended; I was like a recording device with no internal narrative to compete with what I was recording. Thus, though little of this experience manifested as a conversation in words, certainly I would characterize it as a transmission, distinct from normal consciousness. I suspect a more receptive and thoroughly-prepared person could have got even more. But the key point for this post’s purposes is that a competent magician should experience an altered state of consciousness during this part of the ritual.

Closing of the Rite of Indwelling

10. When the time comes, separate yourself from your “guest” with these words: “[Nekalah’s name], I thank you for the honor of your presence. The time has come though for our ways to part, as I close the nexion, dividing us into separate beings once more.”
11. Face east and vibrate “Karu Samsu!” seven times, as per Nine Keys. On impulse, I chose to change my direction with each vibration, moving clockwise (contra normal ritual direction). Hence, east, south, west, north, east, south, conveniently ending in the west. But whether you use this version or my book’s, conclude this step with: “Thus do I reclaim my sovereignty, shutting the Black Gate behind me!”
12. If performing this rite as part of the Tenebrous Sun initiation, now is the time to sort out the contract. If your experience with the Nekalah suggested the need for amendments, alter your prepared text as necessary. Sign in blood (e.g., a runic abbreviation of your name); sign only if you have the entity’s clear assent. This should be the only part of the ritual where you may need the headlamp.
13. Proceed with the Offering, Acknowledgments, and Parting. For outdoor rituals, I add a drop of my blood to the alcohol, then pour out a little in each direction. Upon completing the Parting, I make a point of holding both palms to the earth for several minutes to ensure grounding.

Concluding thoughts

I regret that I can’t get more into all that I experienced during my initiation within the length confines of this particular post. I found it fascinating though how when I analyzed the indwelling experience afterward, I saw that many small details of the at-the-time-random-seeming walk reflected the arc of realizations I’d had during my initiation as a whole, and thereby meaningfully reinforced lessons-learned.

Much more could be said about this… especially insofar as Nemicu is doubtlessly not who many readers probably expected would turn out to be my patron.

But the core thing this post is highlighting is that I now have a third communion method to recommend to my fellow Tenebrous Satanists.

Needless to say, if anyone in the audience attempts what I describe here, I would be eager to hear more from you.