Book Review - Consorting with Spirits, by Jason Miller
I wonder, sometimes, why I read the books I do as part of my spiritwork practice. (Bear with me; this is not some sort of despairing comment about the content of the book I'm reviewing!) Obviously, the reason varies from book to book. Sometimes, there's a specific thing I want to add to my practice. Sometimes I'm looking for frameworks, either regarding pagan theology/metaphysics itself, or regarding broader concerns of philosophy or ecology. And sometimes, it's to be inspired by the panoply of possible practices and beliefs, even when I know I for sure I'm not going to take any of the specifics.
Consorting with Spirits, by Jason Miller, is something I figured would be in the third category. The book focuses on classic, grimoire-derived methods of communicating and contracting with spirits. Needless to say, this is not my usual mode of operation. Miller takes pains to provide perspectives beyond the classical ceremonialist; throughout the book providing interpretation and even ritual from three approaches: Christian, Hekatean, and Luciferian. None of these are anywhere close my path either.
Heck, it's not even my book! A metamour bought this book shortly after it came out, when they were exploring demonology. I'd skimmed it then, definitively understood it wasn't something applicable to my practice, and handed it back. But as I've been diving more deeply into an exploration of direct spirit contact, the book came back to mind, not just because of the name, but because I knew the practices therein were derived from a long tradition, that seems to provide results for a lot of folks, that I knew nothing about apart from superficial pop-culture understanding. So at the least, I hoped the book would provide that sort of inspiration, and broadening of my horizons.
Reading the book, I found a lot of that; there were plenty of prayers I skimmed past, barbarous names I squinted at, and operations that made me think "Why go to all the trouble?" However, in and among all that, Miller's practical perspective on the actual experience of working with spirits was something that resonated with me, validating some of my own observations, and guiding me toward some new places to explore in my own practice.
One of my favorite things about the book is how often, when talking about spirits, Miller goes back to the phrase "just like people." Just like people, not all spirits friendly, but just like people, not all spirits are unfriendly either. Just like people, it's a lot easier to get a spirit to do something if you're willing to do something they want too. Just like people, a spirit acts different in different contexts. This is one of those things that I'm always taking pains to emphasize myself, and I don't think I've ever seen a book push the idea this consistently.
To me this initially felt as if it was in tension with the book's treatment of ceremonial ritual as the ideal way to get in contact with spirits… but "just like people" resolves that cleanly too. There is a kind of person who enjoys that sort of thing, in the corporeal world and presumably the spirit world too. No surprise that the spirit-folk who are into it are also the ones we experience as things like angels and demons. No surprise as well that those aren't the ones I haven't come much in contact with myself, since that's not the kind of work I am inclined to do.
This all really came together for me in the second-to-last chapter of the book, "Relationships and Pacts" which gave examples of how someone might write a pact with a spirit in the terms that spirit would understand. Miller gives examples of petitions of financial success written for two of his alternate lenses. The one talking to Hekate talks in terms of crossing boundaries, and weaves in her purviews and epithets. The pact with Lucifer instead focuses on unbowed freedom and rebellion. Oddly enough, the latter of these resonated more with me and my relationship to my gods; while I wouldn't talk to them in quite the same way, it's a great illustration of the spiritwork applicability of "consider your audience."
That whole chapter was actually one of my favorites in the book; and I was surprised and a bit disappointed to see it so included so late since so much of it felt to me like the real fundamentals of what a spirit relationship is like. Far from talking only about written pacts, most of the chapter is taken up by examples of how many spirit relationships go wrong the same way human relationships do; giving up too much, giving up too little, judging a relationship by if it supports you and helps you grow. None of this was revolutionary, but it was all bolstered by context for how the successes and pitfalls would look in actual spiritual practice. This perhaps is why it is included so late, benefitting from the rest of the book's context on what the simple facts of spirit contact looks like, before addressing what it looks like when it works well.
One thing that read a bit strangely in the book is how it handled forcing and compelling spirits. My initial expectation of the book was that there would be a lot more about this, something I was more than a little concerned about, since that approach to spiritwork never sat well with me. I was pleased to see that Miller seems to feel the same way, not a surprising thing when one of the main theses of the book was "just like people." However, there was one chapter that covered more compulsory or forcible conjurations. The author didn't condone these, and even pointed out the consent issues involves, but in a way, that made it feel even stranger that the methods were covered even lightly. One explanation that Miller gave was that there is a time and a place for forceful approaches, such as when you're already on the outs with a spirit. However, the specifics of those situations, and what to do in them, didn't really seem to come up in how the chapter treated forceful conjurations in general. In a way it felt as if this part of the book was only there because of some sort of obligation. I wish it had been approached from a more holistically consent-first approach, or one more focussed on exorcism and defense.
Still, that was just one part of a bigger work, and the book itself had much more to directly offer me than I expected. Even though the ceremonial approach to spiritwork doesn't suit me or my spirits, it was still a fascinating thing to read about, helping me understand just how and why my path is different. And a lot of the underlying theory and advice for how spirits fit into one's life did feel very applicable and resonant to me, in its own way. That's a topic I'm very happy to read more about, and it's good to know a book like this is there, providing that sort of advice to people who might otherwise treat spirits as vending machines. Everyone needs to learn the lesson that spirits are, in so many ways, "just like people."