"Taming" Spirits

Greetings, dear readers.

After some conversations with one of my clients, he urged me to post some information about how I gp about working with and taming spirits that can be a bit dangerous or unpleasant to work with.  One such example that's been of interest to me over the past couple of years is some work I've been doing with a ghul who is, at this point, something of a familiar spirit.

Having said as much, I feel that it is important to first clarify what a ghul is, as its a term that can lead to a great deal of confusion.  In this instance, the spirit I am referring to is a djinn from the Middle East who, up until recently, consumed the energies of the spirits of the dead, taking in their essence, shapeshifting, and working to survive.  I've had dealings with many of them, and they are typically manipulative, cunning, and very willing to tear you limb from limb if given cause.  I've had them cause me to have health problems, they've hurt family members, killed car batteries, fried my alternator, and a bunch of other such things - they are not slouches, and they aren't something that someone who prefers working with a magical cookbook should be playing or interacting with. They will, if given cause and a chance, screw your world up 15 ways from Sunday by Monday afternoon.

Clarification provided, we're able to get to the meat of this post.  As indicated above, ghuls naturally feed on the essence of he dead.  The dead are, by and large, a pretty messed up bunch.  Some are hunky dory, but most have unfinished business and really aren't up to chatting.  Instead, they are angry, vengeful, frustrated, and desperate to survive in the spirit world.  It is for this reason that they are food to ghuls, as they require sustenance in the form of the less-than-pleasant emotional energies that are prevalent around corpses.  Sadness, pain, despair, rage, jealousy, and other such unpleasant things are the perfect meal for a ghul, so of course they naturally work to make more of it.

That being the case, this particular ghul who revealed himself to me created havoc by stirring crap up on a regular basis.  He'd cause me to fight with the people I cared about, cause more frustrations at work, and so on and so forth. When he finally possessed my girlfriend during one of her trances, that's when I stepped in and started upon the task at hand.

My first task involved binding him to/in her body so that he could not go anywhere, as spirits, when they manifest in such a way, hemorrhage energy like you wouldn't believe!  Its a practice that drains all involved parties, and, as an aside, its actually pretty fun to feed off of if you happen to be vampirically-inclined.  That being the case, once he was bound to her in such a way, he began to understand the gravity of the situation, as he could not leave, and anything that happened to her happened to him, so from that point I forced him to swear to Allah that he would follow my instructions, refrain from harming either myself or my girl, and he would not seek to cause trouble in my life from that point forward.  He agreed and made the associated oath, knowing full well that if he broke the oath, he would be turned into a crispy djinn of sorts.

That step out of the way, my next task was to force him to recognize me as having the sovereignty of his father and creator, Iblis (call it UPG - it worked).  He, again, agreed and swore loyalty.

From that point forward, I've spent a great deal of time pushing various energies at him and had him work to transmute and metabolize the energy appropriately, as well as taught him to take energy "off the top", so to speak, so that he doesn't hurt anyone without intending to.  Now that he's been doing this for quite some time, I've noticed that he's a great deal stronger than he once was, and he has become an invaluable ally.

My hope is that this post helps you by giving