Differences; Invoking vs Evoking
The short and sweet of it is that invocation is calling something in to you, it’s internal, and evocation is calling something to your environment, it’s external. Internal for invoke, external for evoke. You can invoke and evoke deities, spirits, angels, demons, and other entities and primordial forces.
In some cases, invoking ancient deities, like in the Greek pantheon, involves specifics that must be a part of it, like, continuing the ancient Greek perspective, a divine madness that could include but was not limited to ecstasy, inspiration, or prophecy. This state of divine madness if supposed to require translation from specialists to understand what is said and done. In other cases, invocation simply means inviting the entity into your body to experience whatever offering you’re giving them through your physical senses, or to work their will through you.
Some people claim you can invoke entities the second way even if their traditional method involves complex instructions and guides for how it should go, like in my ancient Greek example. Others believe that unless the traditional instructions are followed, you aren’t experiencing true invocation, but rather a self-generated trance or delusion.
To evoke something means to summon them in the external space around you. This is usually done in a magic circle, and some people go as far as to use binding seals on the sigils of those entities to keep them from leaving the contained area, or they use the magic triangle, which is said to do the same. Those practitioners usually cite safety as the reason why they do this, especially against trickster spirits pretending to be the entity you originally summoned. Other practitioners, like me, use just the sigil of the entity without a binding circle if one is available, or otherwise just casually invite the entity into the space. The driving reason behind this choice seems to be acknowledging the autonomy of the entity and respecting them as a conscious being.
When invoking or evoking, some practitioners claim to hear their chosen entity. Most of the time, they hear the voice of their entity within their own head, comingling with their thoughts, but say they feel the presence is distinctly different. Some say they hear the voice coming from outside of their head. Take heed, though, hearing ‘separate-from-you’ voices in or outside of your head, even in religious or spiritual senses, can sometimes be a sign of something deeper and psychosis or dissociative disorder related that needs mental health help. Or any other plethora of disorders that I don’t know enough about to speak on. You would need to work with a professional to figure out what was going on. And an open-minded one, to boot.
This is why it’s important to distinguish key factors if you begin experiencing these things.
1. Are the voices telling you to do things? If so, what? Are they benign things, like 'I’d like that apple as an offering’, or are they serious things like 'I’d like your blood as an offering’? If something is telling you to hurt yourself, this is a sign not to listen and to talk to a professional.
2. Are the voices scaring you? That’s a sign to speak to a professional.
3. Did they come on suddenly out of nowhere with no prompting, or did you specifically do an invocation or evocation? If they came out of nowhere, especially if you are otherwise in a time of high stress, that’s a sign to seek professional aid.
Some practitioners say they don’t hear anything so much as they feel a vibe, or get an urge to do something they wouldn’t normally do. They’ll take that as a sign that their entity of choice has made contact with them. Others will scry or divine to see if their chosen entity has come, and still others will assume that their entity is there, and act as though they were the entity, regardless of how much they felt their presence, because that’s what the ceremony calls for.
