/x/periment #2: Invoking and Capturing a Yokai

First off, sorry I’m late guys. Stomach bug, work deadline, love of my life’s birthday (Hello Sweetie, Happy Birthday) and then I was trying to plan things out for the next few weeks. I found an alternative to the Elevator Ritual, on the lovely Saya’s blog, so the former will be delayed for a week or two until I can ideally try them both out together just need a black rotary phone. As for this and next week to get into the spirit of the Thanksgiving Season I’ll be doing a couple of small food divination games outlined here, here, and here and lumping them into one video. As promised in last week’s poll I’ll be trying out and filming Three Kings sometime this weekend or early this coming week (Doctor Who 50^th, and Hunger Games might fill up my dance card but it’ll get done eventually). For the beginning of December I’m a bit more hard pressed for festive ideas but I’ll be trying out some rituals including: “TheThird, “One Man Chit Chat” “The Creature in Your Mind” and “Summoning a Watcher”. Closer to the holidays the plan is to play the “Storytime” game that was floating around the /x/ board of 4Chan for awhile with “A Christmas Carol” or “The Turn of the Screw” and to burn a Yule Log to divine deaths in the coming year. If anyone has any ideas for festive games, please as always, feel free to contact me or post a comment below. Now to the meat and potatoes:

Invoking and Capturing a Yokai (Performed on 11/19/13)

Introduction

            Like a lot of rituals, I came across this one on 4Chan’s /x/, the paranormal board, but it is the first and only released lesson from the now defunct EsotericAmerican.com that opened in April of this year and was gone by June. No one actually knows why the website, claiming to be run by a European turn American classical occult mystery school, shut down but as you can see their page, while live, has been scrubbed of all content. According to later reports like this thread and this one, their plan was to provide a complete occult education to everyone over 24 online lessons. The first, and only lesson, was supposed to teach that “void is not empty” by having the participant summon and bind a Yokai, otherwise called in their terminology a Q7, who would communicate through their dreams and reveal great personal insight and wisdom. Now I haven’t been able to find anything on the term Q7 but I have found a LOT on Yokai specifically on some classic literature and not all of it fits with their description of the group. The great diversity and the presence only in dreams seems to suggest that Esoteric American lumped multiple spirits from around the world into this category but that they are believed to be weak (very contrary to some Japanese myths) from some scattered writings attributed to the site. The second lesson was supposed to be the banishing of such entities, as well as Q6s (whatever those are), but it was never released much like many of the Yokai that were summoned are still today.

            Before trying this ritual out I wanted a baseline so I recorded my sleeping patterns and dreams for seven nights of which I was able to remember dreams on 5 nights (with no correlation to how long I slept).

How to “Invoke and Capture a Yokai”

This is the image that is downloaded and colored in for this /x/periment. This version lacks the numbers shown on others but it was the most clear I could find. The first portion is the top five symbols from the "tree-like" to but not including the second "tree-like", then the second "tree-like" onwards, and ultimately third the crescent moon and sun.

Step 1: Gather materials include the print out (shown above a bit bleached for lack of red ink), a glass container or bottle with lid/cork, markers, and wax (total cost <$6). As well as a pillow and place to sleep. (NOTE: The brass charm you guys see on the bottle isn't a requirement. It's a Japanese Lion charm that I found when I was making this and I included because it felt right and to keep records - not to mention it makes a ton of noise if the bottle moves)

Step 2: Color the first series of symbols (I chose to use multiple colors because it felt right but the directions do not specify to do this or contrary to it). Place it underneath your pillow and sleep for an hour or more. If you move in your sleep, like I do, I'd recommend you place it in your pillowcase.

Step 3: After sleeping a period of time color the second set of symbols like this and replace the sheet underneath (or in) your pillow and sleep for at least an hour or more again.

Step 4: When you wake up color the remaining central symbols (not depicted) and quickly roll the sheet and stuff it into the sealed bottle as the Yokai is summoned. While not a requirement, the original lesson highly recommends sealing the container with wax, so I melted down two taper candles (and had plenty wax left over) in an improvised double boiler of two pans and water on the stove and then dipped the corked bottle in it repeatedly.

Step 5: Enjoy your newly summoned and bound Yokai in your dreams and keep an eye out for paranormal occurences. If you do this ritual and get anything, please let me know!

After having the Yokai for two nights, and talking to it before bed as suggested, I have not been able to recall any dreams so far even with these steps. I will continue like this for 5 more nights, after which I will crack the wax on the lid and uncork the bottle to release the spirit (something that was strongly warned against in the lesson but something I promised the spirit). After that I may or may not expose the bottle to pets, water, or bury it depending on how things go up to that point but I will keep you posted (also prohibited by the lesson). Because of the highly subjective nature of this experiment, I will only consider it to have worked if a new, and subsequently recurring, anthropomorphized object or animal character with meaning but without external environmental prompting occurs three or more times in a row during the process and is remembered in the morning or if some sort of external phenomenon including the bottle manifests.I’ll update you guys in my weekly blog post if there are any changes.

            Speaking of updates I have had theDevil’s Toybox for nine days and thus far I have not caught any auditory phenomenon but did notice the box moved about 1cm on the plastic cutting board (with grid) I keep it on. Whether this is the result of the legions of undeath coming to destroy my home and family to release the trapped spirits or one of my three cats is yet to be determined but it isn’t positive proof, yet. The box itself seems to have a good amount of friction making it difficult for a cat to move without some intent, or thumbs, and I keep it on my desk where they don’t usually go but it isn’t conclusive so all I can say so far is I’ll keep you all posted. Expect at least one more post from me soon so stay tuned.

            Hope to hear from you /x/philes! All the Best.

            HospitalCowboy