Book of Shadows

How to Create Entities

An entity is basically a thoughtform that can operate independently from you. The most simple entities (called "servitors") are created for a particular purpose, and basically function like the energetic version of robots. The most complicated entities have minds of their own and some degree of autonomy. If you practice magic, you should be able to create thoughtforms by pushing intention and energy outside of yourself to manifest. Most spells work that way, so I won't cover that here.

Hands-On Chaos Magic by Andrieh Vitimus, which has become my go-to guide on this kind of thing, has three chapters on entity creation, so this is an attempted distillation of those three chapters into something more digestible.

The easiest way to begin to create an entity is to take an abstract concept, and give it some kind of sensory description. The abstract concept that you work with could be your desire or intention, something you want to bring into your life, something you want to get rid of, or some part of your subconscious mind you want to interact with. Whatever it is, you're going to have to decide what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it smells like, how it behaves. (For example, an entity that is supposed to protect you might look like a ferocious lion while one that's meant to make you happy might look like a fuzzy kitten.) You know the film Inside Out? This film takes concepts as abstract as emotions and gives them unique appearances, personalities, behaviors, and other character traits that define them. What does Joy look like? In the film, Joy is female, yellow, and designed after a star shape. You can draw out what you think the entity looks like, or create a sigil to attach its energy to (functioning like the Goetic seals). The sigil helps to give the entity energy and keep it from dissipating.

Once you have your entity, you evoke it the way you would evoke anything else. You make a containment field (a triangle of candles or something), and use a sigil or a chant or whatever method works for you to "shape" the entity. Visualize it forming in front of you, experiencing all the sensory information that you came up with. You should be in some kind of emotional state that you want the entity to be associated with. There are a lot of variables here, and I won't go into all of them for the sake of brevity. Suffice to say, you can "program" an entity with exceedingly complex modes of behavior, the same way you'd program a robot. You can tell it to respond in different ways depending on the situation. Finally, you can use sympathetic magic to tie the entity to a physical object, like a statue. This helps the entity to last longer, and gives you somewhere to "put" it.

A servitor will be an entity created for a particular purpose, and what it looks like should reflect that purpose. For example, if I wanted an entity to carry a message to another person (i.e. putting an idea in their heads), then I might make it look like an owl because owls carry messages in Harry Potter. I would visualize the bird forming in front of me, and then send it off to a person to pester them until they respond to me or do what I want them to do. A good method is to give the servitor a certain amount of time to accomplish its task (i.e. "within the next hour"). If it fails to accomplish its task within the time frame, you know that something went wrong, and you can analyze the situation to figure out what. If it succeeds, praise it — this is the energetic equivalent of feeding treats to your pet. Once you're done with the entity, you'll need to absorb its energy back into you. There's a possibility that an entity will attempt to feed off of your energy in an attempt to survive, even after it's accomplished its task and is no longer needed.

One of the other things you can do with created entities is to use them to work through or get rid of things that are troubling you. You could personify and speak to a disease, and either tell it to go away, blast it into oblivion, or listen to what it has to say to see if it's there for a particular purpose (i.e. forcing you to rest or to take better care of yourself). You can also do this with parts of your personality for self-improvement — this is where Shadow work comes into play. Say you have anger issues. What does your anger look like? How would it make you feel if it were a separate being? Ask it why it's there, what it's trying to protect you from, and what it wants you to do. Then, what do you do with it? You could re-assimilate it into yourself, with better understanding of why it's there and what it wants. You could get rid of it, but then you'll have to find something to replace it with. You could transmute it into something more positive that will serve you better, by "pushing" positive energy into it. (I'm not saying that's easy.)

Feeding a servitor (or other entity) different kinds of energy with change the nature of the entity. It gives the entity different "programming," so to speak. So, if you want to change a part of yourself, give it energy (emotional feedback) more similar to what you want it to be. It will slowly transmute. For example, if there's a part of you that's afraid of something, personify it into an entity and then tell it that it is loved and safe, feeding it warm and fuzzy energy until it calms down. You can try this with any entity that has a direct relationship with you. If you feed it different kinds of energy, how does its behavior change? Does it feel different, or look different?

You can do this in an even more direct way by invoking the entity. If you invoke it, then all you need to do is feel whatever emotion you want to attach to the entity, and the entity will absorb it. You can also "teach" your entity information this way, for example, teaching it how to feed itself by demonstrating how to draw energy from the earth or the environment, or some other source. You can even invoke a more powerful external entity (like a god), so that it can teach your servitor.

If you evoke or invoke two entities at once, you can even end up with a unique combined whole, sort of like how "Hermes Trismagistus" is both Hermes and Thoth, two gods who are different but very similar. Actually, it's more like fusion gems in Steven Universe – if you combine the energy of a god with an entity you created, you can push the two entities together to create a unique combination of the two! You can also do the opposite – breaking down a powerful entity into smaller and more manageable parts (sort of like how gods and goddesses are smaller, more manageable parts of the great whole of Spirit). You can do this by visualizing some aspect of an entity glowing brightly and breaking off from the original entity, eventually forming a new entity all its own. You can then create a new sigil and a new talisman (physical base) for the new entity. Feeding these two new entitles different information patterns will cause them to behave in different ways.

*whew* Okay, so, assuming you understood all of that, let's use the example of creating an entity to act as a sexual partner, since that seems to be what everyone wants to know. You probably already have a place to start — my advice so far has been to find a reoccurring character in your sexual fantasies. It's very likely that you have a particular made-up person that you can work with. If you don't, you can create an ideal sexual partner from scratch. Then what do you do? You interact with the entity as if it were a person. What's its name? What does it look like? Does it have a realistic-looking body, or a completely exaggerated and unrealistic one? Is it human, or is it a demon or some other nonhuman thing? Does it have unnatural appendages? What's its personality like? What's its sexual orientation? What are its kinks and preferences? How does it feel about you? How does it see you? To it, do you look like yourself, or like a more attractive version of yourself, or the opposite sex? Most importantly, how does it feel to interact with it? What kinds of emotions are exchanged between you and this entity? That's the most important thing because "sex" with this entity is going to consist mostly of energetic exchange — warm fuzzy feelings, raw passion, etc. The more you interact with this entity and "feed" it energy, the more real it is going to feel. I've got a couple of them at this point, and I tend to invoke one of them while interacting with all the other ones. Try invoking your entity, and see how that feels!

I hope this was useful and not too outrageously confusing. Creating entities can be useful and a lot of fun if you get good at it. Just don't get too preoccupied with drama between people who aren't real — I'm speaking from experience, and it's a real drain on my energy.