Who Chooses Who?

In the relationship between spirits and magicians who is it that does the choosing? Is it entirely the magician or does the spirit have a hand in it as well? Or further still, does the magician have any hand in it at all?

As a preteen child I was doing as much research into the occult and spirit communication as a reclusive 11 year old could in a rural town in the southern United States. I was voracious and read everything I could get my hands on regarding the occult, witchcraft, ghosts, fortune telling, and related subjects. I knew of Urbain Grandier's demonic pact before I hit puberty and I can remember bragging naively to a classmate, at 12 years old, that I knew how to summon demons (not that I had, mind you). As I study more deeply the True Grimoire I am reminded of those days and I am struck by how long these spirits have been a part of my life.

As I've grown and learned, alternately picking up and putting down the practice of magic, I keep coming back to spirit work as the path of my spirituality. They call to me. When I neglect my practices they come knocking and reminding me they are still around. And while I could simply ignore them and move on, I like my life a lot better filled with magic and spirits than not.

Perhaps they have always been around me and it was they who chose me. But this begs the question, why? Why would I be chosen? The answers, I suspect, are tied in with the vocation of being a magician. Working with spirits is a powerful skill that can work for the benefit of myself and my community. Magicians and spirits working together is a relationship of mutual benefit and it is the spirits' best interest to choose someone with whom they can work effectively.

Here again we have an example of a reframing of the classic relationship between the magician and a demon. If the genesis of the relationship is a mutual choosing then there is no place for domination or coercion. It is a spirit positive point of view and a much better place to start than the traditionalist stance of fear and threats.