Spirits Egregores and Godforms Oh MY!

[Fra.Morelia]

Okay, a not-so-simple easy question here.
Firstly, in what capacity do you believe in spirits/gods, etc? Nature spirits, spirits beyond the rule of nature, animist forces? Or even some of them being formed from man's desire and belief?
Second, in what matter do you interact with them? Ritual, trance, ecstatic dance, sopoforic delirium, drug induced haze? Sacrificial leavings, even?
Is this the method you were taught, that you read about, or that you devised on your own?
Has anyone here ever SEEN a spirit/egregore/angel/etc..? Did it require a few cups of coffee or a shot of whisky afterwards? My one time cost me a pack of cigs, and half a bottle of captain morgan. Frankly I was more than slightly fearing for my sanity, which is amusing as it was the culmination of successful ritual devotion, i.e. what I sought after.
As a Chaos Magician I am usually seeking to broaden my field of knowledge and experience, and input from all quarters is welcome.

 

[Master Vigil]

I was transformed into a spirit wolf on my 16th birthday, which happened to be the full moon. I then began my life of mystical endeavors with the spirits of the world. From my experience there are spirits that have no physical form and can only be sensed through emotions, or abmornal sensory perception (in my case my nose). And there are the nature spirits which are all the things in the universe with life. I was taught this by my 7 spirit guides (wolves), and since then I have become sort of a detective in the spirit world. Most of the time I live in a happy balance between the physical and spiritual worlds, but on full moons I am mostly in the spirit world. I have only seen my spirit guides, but I only smell and feel the other spirits. But I've gotten so used to it that it has become just like seeing them.

 

[painted wolf]

Depends on the spirit...

my totem and guides speak through dreams and signs mostly.

I have seen some nice spirits and some very un-nice ones.

most of the time it just happins, I dont seek them out.

wa:do

 

[Fra.Morelia]

Interesting, thanks for the info, folks

 

[Runt]

My spirit guides (or my subconscious... I am an open-minded skeptic and I don't care WHAT I call them as long as they WORK!) communicate with my through dreams, and I thought I may have encountered one or two while waking (once while meditating, and once during a Samhain ritual). They seem to appear in three forms: hawks (most often), random children--occassionally faery children (and in some of these dreams I am ONE of them... which is enough for me to write it off as potential "mind at play" rather than "interaction with other entities"... though again, you never know) , and my grandfather (least often).

 

[Fra.Morelia]

The skeptic 'as long as it works' approach is positively Chaoist in scope, Runt. That is how we treat it. I assume, out of respect, that all of the things I deal with are not a buried part of my subcoscious, etc but a real entity. If it turns out to be a real entity and I am bossing it around like I own it.... that isn't going to go well at all.

 

[Runt]

I understand. Along the same note, that is why prayer, meditation, and spellworking seem so positive to me... whether or not there is a "God" listening or anything is actually happening other than within our mind, prayer, meditation, and spellworking DO effect positive results. Perhaps it is just that by concentrating on an issue (even while thinking you are "talking to God" or "communicating with my spirit guides") you actually work out the problem on your own; and even modern science acknowledges that mind over body works... so someone praying for help in recovering from an illness may be doing it all by his or herself. And our unconscious/subconscious mind works things out with symbols; therefore, working with magic in many cases just seems to me like psychological exercises of working with the symbols that your own mind uses to understand and apply meaning to the world. Hence my spirit guides: even if I do not know what exactly hawks, children, elven children, and my grandfather mean in the symbolic language of my unconscious mind, IT DOES, and can work with those images regardless of whether or not they are "real" other than in my mind.