Do you get nervous invoking gods?

Sometimes I had always thought people would need a whole bunch of protection just to protect themselves from outside influences but as I look more into it usually such things are not required for generally invoking or calling within. And Wiccans and Druids invoke but generally do not evoke which is more rare, complicated and requires more protection and is generally more dangerous.

And of course as mention it has a lot to do with my brother who made mistakes when doing it but he followed a much more dominating and aggressive path and I approached things differently. More concerned about being more passive, and caring more about working with nature and spirits instead of dominating and commanding them. So I may be worried for no real reason. I have books on the subject that talk about this and never involve evoking and generally spells are custom meaning you do not always have to follow things to the letter.

you shouldnt be nervous when working with the gods/spirits.that tends to tense the energies that you are working with. if you have to meditate before use. that always helped me before a rite. casting a circle helps but its for outside forces. do what you FEEL is natural. books are a great reference material but not set in stone.its all about you and what you are working.

Yabuturtle wrote: Sometimes I had always thought people would need a whole bunch of protection just to protect themselves from outside influences but as I look more into it usually such things are not required for generally invoking or calling within. And Wiccans and Druids invoke but generally do not evoke which is more rare, complicated and requires more protection and is generally more dangerous

This statement really speaks to your novice level. You have this exactly backwards. What would ever be less dangerous about calling a spirit within your body, a form of voluntary possession, vs just working with that spirit externally? In fact Wiccans commonly evoke spirits but rarely invoke them. In the first place you have no ability to "Command" any spirit. In the second place invoking a spirit within your body in voluntary possession is a much more intimate and complicated act than just evoking a spirit to the circle. None of this work is about commanding, it is about personal will.

The spirits, if you even have the ability to get their attention with your pre-written scripts and rote actions, are not the enactors of your will. They are only a ceremonial device used to focus your will. You must then enact that yourself. And if you are a believer in The Force, as this place tends to be, that force is already within you so what need would you ever have to invoke or evoke that? It is sufficient alone for whatever you want to do. That is if you have the discipline, experience and self control to utilize it to its fullest ability. If you are absent those you will never achieve anything no matter how many spirits you poetically produce.

Actually no I don't have it backwards

When your calling in something it doesn't hurt to meditate to take extra precautions anyway even if it involves evoking

I spoke to a lot of wiccans and druids and read other books and hardly do they mention "Evoking" Lots of invocations though but probably because you get confused because many use them interchangeably when in fact they are different.

Yabuturtle wrote: Actually no I don't have it backwards

When your calling in something it doesn't hurt to meditate to take extra precautions anyway even if it involves evoking

I spoke to a lot of wiccans and druids and read other books and hardly do they mention "Evoking" Lots of invocations though but probably because you get confused because many use them interchangeably when in fact they are different.

I do not have them backwards and yes, they are very different and they are not used interchangeably except by those that are uninformed about their nature. I dare say those you spoke to have read a few llewellen books or are self taught eclectic practitioners and really have little idea what they are doing.

Invocation: is a process in which a person, acting as a single individual, allows an aspect of divinity that is called as a god-form to enter her or his body. To call upon a higher power for assistance, to appeal to, petition, to call for earnestly, solicit, to summon with incantations, conjure, or to cite in support or justification for ones cause.

Evocation: is a process in which a person or group invites an aspect of divinity, such as an Elemental or directional guardian, or a specific God-form, into the working space as defined commonly by ritual.

There's a young adult fantasy series called The Bartimaeus Trilogy. In it, the magicians are extremely paranoid and afraid of demons. As such, their summoning spells come with safe guards. And, the slightest wrongly uttered word or smeared chalk circle could lead to the death of a magician.

The demons all want to kill the magicians. Why wouldn't they? Humans are mortal and weak.

How would this be any different in our lives? If we call upon the supernatural (which I don't believe in so I used a fictional example), then shouldn't we realize how much stronger they are?

Yeah, if I were in the habit of asking gods to do stuff, I would be scared out of my skin. In fact, I feel like if it were real, you'd have to be like the magicians in Stroud's Bartimaeus Trilogy: years of training, a healthy dose of fear, and a lot of precaution.

I know some get it confused with invoking and evoking and when they are evoking something they are actually invoking it and vice versa so it gets confusing. If you invite something within your self it seems like it takes less effort than to actually conjure it from wherever it came from. I've seen many rituals about it and usually evoking is more elaborate and complicated and there's a lot of things you need to do before doing it.

I'm getting into it but it also depends on what you're bringing in? A being that is known to be benevolent and forgiving or a being that is known to be hostile. There have been some that try to dominate whatever spirit they get and sometimes they succeed but it's like the equivalent of trying to restrain a tiger. You may be able to but might get attacked to because your making it do something against it's will.

I tend to follow these things by the letter when doing something and in order even if it isn't fully necessary just in case. Don't want to make the same mistake my brother did.

The fluid nature of our language can trip us up here.

Merriam-Webster assigns the definition "to call forth" to both the word "Invoke" and "evoke". Since most of us here probably interact with the world at large - where these words are interchangeable - and members of the pagan community where they have distinct meanings, we have insure we are expressing ourselves properly and do not get mired in our own confusing syntax.

I studied casually for a time with a shaman whose training was traceable back to indigenous shamans of Peru. In each ceremony I witnesses, the spirits of the four directions were called, and the appeal "please be with us" was spoken. I never saw a hint of a request to "please be in us". I do think the former is safer, if we are relative newbies and on what for us is untrodden ground.

In terms of nervousness or fear, I keep thinking of electricity as a metaphor. A licensed electrician who's wired many homes probably isn't too nervous about dealing with electricity. An apprentice s/he is training might be slightly nervous, but not overly so because of being under the watchful eye of someone more experienced. It makes sense for just about anyone else to be more nervous, as the consequences of a misstep and the likelihood of one occurring are both high.

It's understandable to deal with forces such as this and be a little nervous until you master it. Even though the books I read usually don't involve drastic consequences should one fail. You just may not get the results you want. It's simple but effective and would like a teacher but the likely hood of me encountering someone who teaches something like this is not likely. Of course there's online teaching but with these things it's much better to be with them in person and I know some may charge for services but I haven't the luck to befriend anyone who'd teach me and the only one who was willing to teach me was my brother who unfortunately followed a darker more hostile path, a path I rejected as I wanted nothing to do with it.

I wanted something that involved something more natural and less hostile and allowed me to work with beings and not command them.

The thing is that you are not in fact dealing with "such forces" of any kind at all. What you are dealing, and struggling, with, is - pardon the expression - your own demons. That's why vigilance is so important, because otherwise one can delude oneself into unfounded fears like this. It's one of the consequences of uncritically going with what ever one's own or anyone else's gut tells one, and then decide that no reason shall ever move one off that position arrived at through no reason, because one thinks just that much of those intuitions.