Evocations
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
(See Necromancy ). Evolution of Life, acording to theosophists, began when the Logos , in his second aspect, sent forth the second life wave. This life wave descends from above through the various worlds causing an increasing heterogeneity and Exorcism thereafter ascends, causing a return to its original homogeneity. Our present state of knowledge of life in these worlds extends no farther than the mental world . In the higher division of that world it has ensouled the relatively fine matter appropriate thereto-if that matter is atomic it is known as "monadic essence" if non-atomic, as "elemental essence," and this is known as the first elemental kingdom. What we may call the inhabitants of this kingdom are the higher order of angels. The life wave having functioned sufficiently long in the higher mental world, now presses down to the lower level of that world, where it appears as the second elemental kingdom, the inhabitants of which are some of the lower orders of angels, the Form Devas . Again pressing down, the life wave manifests itself in the astral world, forming the third elemental kingdom, the inhabitants of which are the lowest orders of angels, the Passion Devas. It now enters the physical world and, in the fourth elemental kingdom, ensouls the etheric part of minerals with the elementary type of life which these possess. The middle of this kingdom represents the farthest descent of the life wave, and thereafter its course is reversed and it commences to ascend. The next kingdom into which it passes is the fifth elemental kingdom, the vegetable world, whence it passes to the sixth elemental kingdom, the animal world, and lastly to the seventh elemental kingdom, man. During its stay in each kingdom, the life wave progresses gradually from elementary to highly specialised types and when it has attained these latter, it passes to the next kingdom. This, of course, of necessity means that successive currents of this great second life wave have come forth from the Logos, since, if it were otherwise, there would be only one kingdom in existence at a time. In each kingdom, also, the souls of the bodies which inhabit it differ from those of the other kingdoms. Thus, in the seventh kingdom, that of man, each individual has a soul. In the animal kingdom on the contrary, one soul is distributed among different bodies, the number of which varies with the state of evolution. To one soul may be allotted countless bodies of a low type of development, but, as the development increases, the soul comes to have fewer bodies allotted to it until in the kingdom of man there is but one.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The 1920 Encyclopaedia of Occultism sends the reader from "Evocations" to Necromancy, and the text here runs straight on into the neighbouring article on the theosophical "evolution of life" — the descending and ascending life wave, the seven elemental kingdoms, and the claim that animals share a single soul between many bodies. That scheme, drawn from Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, never made any contact with biology, and the Theosophical Society's authority faded after Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star in the East in 1929 and renounced the role prepared for him. Evocation itself, however, has had a livelier century than its 1920 entry suggests: the ritual calling-up of spirits was carried forward from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn through Aleister Crowley, and since the 1950s has been practised widely in modern Wicca, ceremonial magic and chaos magic — now generally framed as psychological or symbolic work rather than as a way to raise the dead.
Written for this edition, 2026.