by LISA LEE HARP WAUGH

Necromancy has come to be associated more broadly with black magic and demon-summoning in general, sometimes losing its earlier, more specialized meaning. By popular etymology, nekromantia became nigromancy “black arts”, and Johannes Hartlieb (1456) lists demonology in general under the heading. Eliphas Levi, in his book Dogma et Ritual, states that necromancy is the evoking of aerial bodies (aeromancy).

Evocation is the magic of dark spirit summoning from the planes beyond human existence. You can summon spirits into the physical plane, order them to do your bidding. Sorcery is one of the greatest powers so well left to us from the Age of Alchemy.

Early necromancy is likely related to the roots of shamanism, which calls upon spirits such as the ghosts of ancestors. Classical necromancers addressed the dead in “a mixture of high-pitch squeaking and low droning”, comparable to the trance-state mutterings of shamans. This I have practiced at times but calling up ghost to appear as a full body apparition is something that I am honing in on in every ritual I now perform. Many people believe when they or I ‘raise’ the dead, that they can tell one’s future because spirits are not bounded by the same laws of time and space as we are.

The historian Strabo refers to necromancy as the principal form of divination amongst the people of Persia (Strabo, xvi. 2, 39,), and it is believed to also have been widespread amongst the peoples of Chaldea (particularly amongst the Sabians or star-worshipers), Etruria, and Babylonia. The Babylonian necromancers were called Manzazuu or Sha’etemmu, and the spirits they raised were called Etemmu.

Necromancy was widespread in ancient Greece from prehistoric times. In the Odyssey (XI, Nekyia), Odysseus makes a voyage to Hades, the Underworld, and raises the spirits of the dead using spells which he had learnt from Circe (Ruickbie, 2004:24). His intention is to invoke and ask questions of the shade of Tiresias, but he is unable to summon it without the assistance of others.

Necromantic practice is neither the ‘right’ nor the ‘left’ path. It is simply an acute attunement to what many refer to as “death energy”, an affiliation and natural affinity some people have for the current of transition. It is a fact that some people beside myself tha feel more at ease or comfortable among the dead rather than being with the living. Although some cultures may have considered the knowledge of the dead to be unlimited, to the ancient Greeks and Romans, there is an indication that individual shades knew only certain things. The apparent value of their counsel may have been a result of things they had known in life, or of knowledge they acquired after death: Ovid writes of a marketplace in the underworld, where the dead could exchange news and gossip (Metamorphoses 4.444; Tristia 4.10.87–88)

There are also many references to necromancers, called “bone-conjurers”, in the Bible. The Book of Deuteronomy (XVIII 9–12) explicitly warns the Israelites against the Canaanite practice of divination from the dead. This warning was not always heeded: King Saul has the Witch of Endor invoke the shade of Samuel using a magical amulet, for example. Later Christian writers rejected the idea that humans could bring back the spirits of the dead, and interpreted such shades as disguised demons, thus conflating necromancy with demon-summoning.

Proof for the common knowledge of necromancy and belief in its power is also evident in the New Testament. Others in the court believed Jesus to be Elijah, another deceased prophet. This account is written in Christian Canonical Scriptures, mainly the book of Mark, chapter 6:14-16. “King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, ‘John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.’ Others said, ‘He is Elijah.’ And still others claimed, ‘He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.’ But when Herod heard this, he said, ‘John, the man I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”

Lisa Lee Harp Waugh: Photographed with what many say is real ghost energy collecting around her right before a ritual to contact a spirit for a local Lone Star Texas ghost hunter to investigate and document. Lisa says, ” I think in my own life time so far, I have communicted with more ghosts and Spirits then I have living human beings.”

I have had many actual real “Phone Calls From the Dead”. From close to long lost friends and relatives to people I never ever knew. Some people have to me been reporting experiencing paranormal phenomena over the telephone over the years. And it makes me wonder… how long will it be before the first spooky encounters via internet or text messaging or emailing from beyond the grave?

Also I have had this happen within moments of a persons death, or within 24 hours from time of death. Some real ghosts that have talked and carried on long indepth conversations with me, only to find out later that the person had passed away. I have even used a dead battery - less cell phone in a ritual on several occasions iin recent months and had it ring . In answering it, the spirit on the other end oftens is long winded. Glad I’m not paying that Cell Phone bill. And calls sometimes very short, and the low voice of the caller or just sounding to losy or distant, often it rings then the line wil just l cut off. I think some spirits come and observe for weeks to learn to be able to communicate so they are always around me.

Caesarius of Arles (Kors and Peters, 48) entreats his audience to put no stock in any demons, or “Gods” other than the Christian God, even if the working of spells appears to provide benefit. He states that demons only act with divine permission, and permitted by God to test Christian people. Caesarius does not condemn man here; he only states that the art of necromancy exists, although it is prohibited by the bible.

In modern time necromancy is used as a more general term to describe the art (or manipulation) of death, and generally implies a magical connotation. Modern séances, channeling and Spiritualism verge on necromancy when the invoked spirits are asked to reveal future events. Necromancy may also be dressed up as sciomancy, a branch of theurgic magic.

Necromancy is extensively practiced in Quimbanda and is sometimes seen in other African traditions such as voodoo and in santeria, though once a person is possessed by a spirit in the yoruba tradition he cannot rise to a higher spiritual position such as that of a babalawo, but this should not be regarded as a modern tradition, in fact it predates most necromantic practices.

The Enochian script was said to have been revealed to John Dee by the angels who were conjured by Kelley. John Dee became obsessed with the occult and spent most of his later life in search of its secrets. Dee, who numbers Astrology among his many talents, does some work for Princess Elizabeth by casting her horoscope and those of the Queen and her husband. Dee’s enemies use this as an excuse to lay false charges of Treason and conjuring evil spirits. Dee successfully defends himself before the Star Chamber and subsequent interrogation by the Bishop of London. Dee is eventually released 3 months after being arrested, but the slur of being a conjurer of spirits will haunt him for the rest of his life .

According to Charlotte Fell Smith, this actual portrait was painted when Dee was 67. It belonged to his grandson Rowland Dee and later to Elias Ashmole, who left it to Oxford University.

John Aubrey gives the following description of Dee: “He was tall and slender. He wore a gown like an artist’s gown, with hanging sleeves, and a slit…. A very fair, clear sanguine complexion… a long beard as white as milk. A very handsome man.”

Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his time, he had lectured at the University of Paris when still in his early twenties. John was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England’s voyages of discovery (he coined the term “British Empire”).

At the same time, he immersed himself in magic and Hermetic philosophy, devoting the last third of his life almost exclusively to these pursuits.

In 1564, Dee wrote the Hermetic work Monas Hieroglyphica (”The Hieroglyphic Monad”), an exhaustive Cabalistic interpretation of a glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation. This work was highly valued by many of Dee’s contemporaries, but the loss of the secret oral tradition of Dee’s milieu makes the work difficult to interpret today.

By the early 1580s, Dee was growing dissatisfied with his progress in learning the secrets of nature and with his own lack of influence and recognition. He began to turn towards the supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. Specifically, he sought to contact angels through the use of a “scryer” or crystal-gazer, who would act as an intermediary between Dee and the angels.

Dee’s first attempts were not satisfactory, but, in 1582, he met Edward Kelley (then going under the name of Edward Talbot), who impressed him greatly with his abilities. Dee took Kelley into his service and began to devote all his energies to his supernatural pursuits. These “spiritual conferences” or “actions” were conducted with an air of intense Christian piety, always after periods of purification, prayer and fasting. Dee was convinced of the benefits they could bring to mankind. (The character of Kelley is harder to assess: some have concluded that he acted with complete cynicism, but delusion or self-deception are not out of the question. Kelley’s “output” is remarkable for its sheer mass, its intricacy and its vividness.) Dee maintained that the angels laboriously dictated several books to him this way, some in a special angelic or Enochian language.

In 1583, Dee met the visiting Polish nobleman Albert Laski, who invited Dee to accompany him on his return to Poland. With some prompting by the angels, Dee was persuaded to go. Dee, Kelley, and their families left for the Continent in September 1583, but Laski proved to be bankrupt and out of favour in his own country Dee and Kelley began a nomadic life in Central Europe, but they continued their spiritual conferences, which Dee recorded meticulously. He had audiences with Emperor Rudolf II and King Stephen of Poland in which he chided them for their ungodliness and attempted to convince them of the importance of his angelic communications. He was not taken up by either monarch.

During a spiritual conference in Bohemia, in 1587, Kelley told Dee that the angel Uriel had ordered that the two men should share their wives. Kelley, who by that time was becoming a prominent alchemist and was much more sought-after than Dee, may have wished to use this as a way to end the spiritual conferences. The order caused Dee great anguish, but he did not doubt its genuineness and apparently allowed it to go forward, but broke off the conferences immediately afterwards and did not see Kelley again. Dee returned to England in 1589.

The British Museum holds several items once owned by Dee and associated with the spiritual conferences:

Dee’s Speculum or Mirror (an obsidian Aztec cult object in the shape of a hand-mirror, brought to Europe in the late 1520s), which was once owned by Horace Walpole.

The small wax seals used to support the legs of Dee’s “table of practice” (the table at which the scrying was performed). The large, elaborately-decorated wax “Seal of God”, used to support the “shew-stone”, the crystal ball used for scrying.

A gold amulet engraved with a representation of one of Kelley’s visions.
A crystal globe, six centimeters in diameter. This item remained unnoticed for many years in the mineral collection; possibly the one owned by Dee, but the provenance of this object is less certain than that of the others.
In December 2004, both a shew stone (a stone used for scrying) formerly belonging to Dee and a mid-1600s explanation of its use written by Nicholas Culpeper were stolen from the Science Museum in London; they were recovered shortly afterwards.

Necromancy - Rituals to contact the Spirits

Often I personally enjoy a simple method conjuring the Spirit of somone dead to question into a Crystal Ball or a cellphone with no battery in it, that is placed in the middle of the magical Triangle or using a Black Mirror in the middle of the conjuoring Triangle. With this method you do Conjures the Spirits, but one must be able to Skry or see onto the Astral Plane where then Spirit is. The Mirror or Crystal Ball only acts as a focal point. And sometimes during the ritual to call the dead the cellphone will ring.

I set up the Triangle circle on a small round table that was given to me by the high witch queen Onieda Toups from New Orleans before she died. Then I place a Crystal Ball a very old one from victorian times, or my hand held 200 year old mirror that was said to have belonged to Marie Laveau the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Once in the middle of the magic Triangle, or circle. I Gaze into the Black mirror or ball reflection. Or focus on the cellphone ringing.

I often would during my time in Galveston, Texas be standing outdoors from my shop as the Ghostman Dash Beardsley would past with his haunted Galveston Ghost Tour. Often many would photograph me and the building and always their was some type of spirit phenomena going on in the photo. I know the building where my Candle shop was was very haunted for the full story you’d have to question Dash. THE OFFICIAL GHOST TOURS OF GALVESTON ISLAND HOME PAGE

Now a days I do much of my Spirit invoking for Ghost hunters also. I do use magical circles and triangles for protection, candles, swords, chalices, magic staff, wand, pentacle and atheme and fumigations and wear my long white robes. All this is part of the invoking process. I do enjoy being the part of someone investigations into the otherworldly aspects. It pushes me to go further and to be more objective to what happens during these many documented rituals. Solely I am a Necromancer not a witch.

When I lived in Galveston Ghosts followed me everywhere I was never sure unless I turned around if it was a living or dead person speaking to me. I don’t consider my self to be a real clairaudient just a fortunate person who can sometimes hear the dead speak to me.

Spirits and ghost have related to me describes being able to see thier temporary earthbound condition then help other lost sould in transition to the etheric sphere. They also tell me of some answers to practical questions such as the spiritual body and clothes. And the need of the world to understand the reality ofa souls survival. Or even asking me questions like how find a medium to communicate through. Or nobody notices us even though I bang on the walls or hit and bite or scratch them.

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