Compared to most of my friends (but not you, Kalagni), I have a pretty extensive Amazon wishlist filled mostly with books. Every year in early autumn, I start prioritizing the things I want for my birthday and Christmas, and usually get a good haul, even if only by blowing my holiday bonus and Christmas checks on the stuff. (Also, if you ever wanted to get me anything from my list to support my magical endeavors, rest assured I will definitely give you a shoutout and put a good word or eight in for you with the spirits.) This past winter was particularly bountiful, getting something like eighteen new books from my Amazon wishlist, which is pretty awesome. I’m slowly making my way through them all, and one of the more interesting ones was the book Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy by Martin Coleman. It’s basically a beginner’s text on necromancy, or communing and working with the spirits of the dead; though I probably won’t have much opportunity to use the knowledge, I still wanted a good reference for the art to at least know my stuff on it. Plus, it had good reviews on Amazon, which made it appealing to add to my library.
This is the second edition of the text, published in 2005 by Xlibris Press. The 196pp. book is on the better side of standard quality, with a suitably formal and plain cover, spine, and back design. The text quality has a number of errors and could definitely use some better editing (I found too many typographic and punctuation-based errors to track, and some of the pages seem slightly skewed, both of which detract and distract from the content of the text. While the author had a few lucid points here and there, Coleman’s favorite word throughout the book was “must”; the book halfway read like a catechism of dogmatic faith and a rulebook for tabletop RPGs with all its strict delineations of how the world is and must be. At a high level, the book’s method is elegant and simple though not without its fair share of work, but comes across as overly condescending to the spirits, if not outright controlling and forceful. While indicating a very few good techniques and tricks, the book is more distasteful and stunted in reach than it denies.
Coleman begins with defining necromancy as literally “seeing with the dead”, a method of divination or obtaining information through the agency of dead spirits. The book is pretty clear from the start that this is not an introduction to magic: there are no basics on banishing or shielding, breathing or meditating, or any other introductory topics. It assumes a basic faith in magic, non-physical entities a.k.a. spirits, and Divinity, and goes from there. For being a guide to necromancy, this is where the book shines, especially since the method used by Coleman is fairly tradition-independent, able to fit into any paradigm or method of magic or devotional practice. It focuses on the use of three sets of spirits (one’s ancestors, one’s divinatory spirit, and one’s operative spirit) as well as how to begin working with them and how to maintain a relationship with them.
The structure of the book starts with the basics of what magic is and how spirits fit into magic, how to begin working with the spirits of the dead in the form of one’s own ancestors, how to set up and maintain an ancestor altar, how to control and manage effects of the spirits on one’s life, how to obtain and work with a divinatory spirit, how to conjure or summon spirits, how to obtain and work with an operative spirit for work besides intel-gathering, and other methods of working with the dead. The book follows a fairly natural procession from basic necromantic practice to more detailed applications of the art, and Coleman has warnings and injunctions throughout the book indicating that one should not continue to read without having done X months of practice with some type of spirit or other. At the end of most chapters Coleman includes a set of criteria by which one can judge their success or efforts in working with the spirits of the dead, which is helpful to one learning the art.
However, Coleman seems to have several rules that dictate all workings with the spirits:
- Spirits cannot inherently be trusted.
- Spirits are basically children that must be watched and governed strictly.
- Spirits must be trained rigorously like pets (at best) or beasts (at worst) in order to be of any use.
- Spirits will always try to take advantage of the necromancer and, once the necromancer makes a single misstep, will be of no further use to the necromancer.
- Spirits will easily fall into depression and once they fail at a task even once will be of no further use to the necromancer.
- Absolute control of all spirits to the letter must be maintained at all times.
- Everything in the spirit world works exactly one way, which is the way Coleman describes them.
Like I mentioned before, Coleman’s favorite word is “must”, as in how the necromancer-to-be must treat spirits in this manner, must give spirits only so much food to feed them, must know that such-and-such rules apply in all circumstances, and so forth. It gets real old after a while, especially from my point of view, where reality (on all planes and in all worlds) works more-or-less by consensus or by fluctuating rules or models. In other words, Coleman has a fairly rigid worldview that cannot account for experiences that happen outside his dogmatic style of necromancy, and many workable or beneficial things that one can do would be illegal or offensive to him. While I understand the dangers in working with spirits of the dead and why Coleman proposes so much caution in dealing with them via a set of strict guidelines, he comes across as pompous and commanding to the point of ridicule.
Then again, Coleman also has a number of contradictions or flaws in the details. For example, one part of the book mentions that strong alcoholic drinks are never to be given to the spirits of the dead, then that shots of whiskey can be given as favors or rewards in shot glasses, then only if they’re given in bowls, and so forth. Another time, Coleman says that necromancers are, on the whole, unable or unfit for working with divine powers or religious frameworks, but also references and discusses magico-religious traditions and arts that involve both devotion to higher powers and working with lower ones. From my experience in talking with my own psychopomp patron and my other necromancer friends, a lot of what Coleman teaches just doesn’t hold up; for one, I and my friends would consider it a dangerous thing to work with the dead without going through or walking with some divinity or other. Coleman himself even proposes prayers and workings involving the angel Raphael and the Abrahamic God to release or send off the dead, so I’m unsure where he gets some of this stuff from.
One of the biggest issues I had with Coleman’s book was how he treated spirits. Though he initially described building friendships with his ancestors and divinatory/operative spirits, he constantly instructs the reader to never build anything more warm than a business or transactional relationship with their spirits. Even then, Coleman considers spirits to be untrustworthy, and so should be treated like pets or trained servants. He considers the art of necromancy to be a benefit for his spirits, elevating them to higher spiritual states, but keeps them on short leashes and never describes how the work a necromancer does with a spirit is beneficial for the spirits themselves. While working in magic is always going to be dangerous to an extent, it’s almost absurd the degree to which Coleman pushes the reader to never give spirits any slack or independence. It fits in closely with a medieval Christian or Solomonic view of the spirits in that anything that isn’t angelic or divine is inherently evil and untrustworthy, but beyond that, even the Lemegeton and Clavicula Solomonis deals with spirits better and more thoroughly than Coleman does.
While I like the framework for necromantic practice Coleman proposes, as well as some of the details of technique (protective charms, cleansing washes, incense for summoning and working with spirits, etc.), “Communing with the Spirits” read like an extra-dry Dungeons and Dragons book on necromancy. It would fall fairly solidly in the tradition of Solomonic magic, though it claims tradition-independence, due to how it views and treats spirits of the dead as inherently wicked or untrustworthy. The method of practice Coleman proposes is slow, steady, and solid, with the book indicating a two- or three-year practice before all the book’s subject matter can be applied fully, which I like (cf. Draja Mickaharic’s methods). However, while the method is good, the means is disrespectful to the spirits as I read it. The book lacks sources and references, and though the progression of practice is well-structured in the book, Coleman appears to become confused between some of his contradictions and flaws. The number of typos and odd formatting in some places is weird for a second edition, too. Overall, the book isn’t the greatest, and should be taken with a pretty large grain of salt or four if read or applied. It’s a decent introduction to working with the dead at a high level, but otherwise, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
