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✦ The Unwritten Ceremony: What My First Conjure Ritual Actually Looked Like 🕯️

By Seraphine Voss-Elowen ✍️ — Keeper of the Lesser Sigils

Everyone who has ever dabbled in the occult arts — even casually, even skeptically, even with one foot firmly planted in empirical reason and the other hovering over a candle flame — has a mental image of what a conjure ceremony looks like. And for me, that image was borrowed from a dozen novels, three documentaries, two podcasts, and an embarrassing number of aesthetic Pinterest boards. I expected incense smoke curling in perfect spirals. I expected a velvet cloth spread across the floor. I expected my voice to rise into some resonant, otherworldly register, like a woman who had been speaking to spirits since birth rather than a thirty-four-year-old accountant from Portland who finally caved after six months of wanting to "try magic seriously."

I was wrong on all counts. And I mean that in the most liberating way possible.

Let me be clear about what this is not. This is not a tutorial. I am not going to hand you a step-by-step ritual script and say, here, do this, and then you too shall hear the voice of the dead. This is not an argument for or against the efficacy of magic. And it is certainly not a "what I learned from my spiritual awakening" listicle dressed up in gothic font. No. What follows is a documentation — raw, unpolished, occasionally embarrassing — of what actually happened when I sat down on a kitchen floor at eleven-forty-seven p.m. on a Tuesday in October and attempted to conjure the presence of my late grandmother's spirit for the first time in my life.

And it was not at all what I expected. 🕯️

The Preparation Phase: Or, Why You Should Not Trust Pinterest ✨

I had been reading about Western esotericism — specifically, the broader tradition that includes conjuración, folk magic, ceremonial magic, and various New Age adaptations of it — for roughly five months before I decided to actually do something. Five months of reading, note-taking (a physical journal, because I was being "authentic"), and building a supply list that looked more like the inventory for a Renaissance fair than a household altar.

My kitchen table had become a museum of ritual paraphernalia: three different brands of white sage bundles, a wooden athanor I'd bought from an Etsy shop run by someone named Moonpetal_Witch (I will not explain my feelings about that name), four varieties of incense stick, a crystal grid kit I had absolutely no understanding of, a brass censer, two candlesticks of different heights, a bowl for salt water, a bowl for wine, and — because I wanted to be thorough — a small gong.

I also purchased a journal specifically for "ritual documentation," which was a leather-bound book with embossed runes on the cover that I'm fairly certain were decorative rather than functional, but it felt important. The whole setup cost me approximately two hundred and thirty-seven dollars, which I know is not nothing, and which also means I already felt some investment in making the experience mean something.

Here is what I expected:

• A serene, meditative atmosphere

• My voice carrying with quiet authority

• A clear sensory sign — a light, a sound, a smell, a presence

• A feeling of profound connection to my grandmother

• Some sense that I had "opened a door" and could close it again cleanly

Here is what actually happened. And I want you to understand: none of this was dramatic in the cinematic sense. There were no orbs. No doors opening by themselves. No grandmother materializing in a column of golden light, smiling down at me while saying, "Hello, sweetheart." If that's what you're hoping for, I am sorry. But if you want to know what it actually feels like when an untrained person tries to do something sacred with their own two hands and one very wobbly candlestick — read on. 🕯️

The Setup: A Kitchen Floor at 11:47 P.M. 🔥

I chose my kitchen floor for practical reasons that I will not belabor, except to note that it was the only surface in my apartment large enough to lay out the cloth without tripping over a chair leg. I also wanted a hard surface because I had read somewhere — and I cannot remember where; possibly a blog post from 2019 — that "grounding energy" required direct contact with a mineral-rich floor, which I assumed meant tile rather than hardwood. My kitchen has tile. So we went with tile.

The cloth was cream-colored cotton, not the velvet of my Pinterest dreams. I had wanted velvet but the price tag made me reconsider. It smelled like a new garment, which means it smelled like chemical dyes and factory exhaust, which is not exactly the olfactory profile you want when trying to invite ancestral spirits into your kitchen. But I did not know that at the time.

I arranged the items in a rough circle: candles on either side of the cloth, bowls in front, incense stick burning in a small dish I'd repurposed from a candle-holder set I bought for a friend's wedding. The gong sat in the corner like it was judging me. My journal lay open to a blank page, and my pen — a nice fountain pen, because details matter — waited at my right hand.

I had written my intention on a separate sheet of paper: I call upon the spirit of my grandmother, Elspeth Anne Morrow, to come into this space with peace and without burden, so that I may hear her presence and feel her love one more time. I read it aloud once before beginning, to check the wording. It sounded slightly formal in a way that made me feel like I was reciting a legal document rather than speaking to a dead woman. But I kept it.

The room was quiet. My apartment is on a ground floor in an older building, which means you can hear the street occasionally — a car passing, a dog barking, someone's television bleeding through the wall. At 11:47 p.m., though, all of that was muted to a low hum. The candle flames were steady at first.

I took a breath. I closed my eyes. And I began. 🕯️

The Ceremony: What Actually Happened (And It Was Not Peaceful) ✍️

The script I had prepared was derived from three separate sources, which means it was a patchwork of traditions that do not necessarily agree with one another. I drew on elements of a folk-style calling ritual, a basic ceremonial opening, and a meditation practice I'd read in a book about "ancestral connection." The result was something like a cocktail: parts whiskey, parts gin, parts mystery liquor from a gas station, all poured into the same glass.

I lit the candles first — two white beeswax tapers, because I had read that beeswax is "pure" in some way that paraffin is not. I did not question this. I struck a match, held it under each wick in turn, and made a small noise of satisfaction when they caught. The flames were steady. Good sign.

I then spoke the opening words. I have them written down, so let me transcribe:

"In the name of the light that sees all things, and the earth that holds all things, and the fire that transforms all things — this space is opened. This circle is made whole. We are here in truth, in love, and without deception. The gate stands open."

It sounded better in my head than it did aloud. My voice came out slightly thin, a little nasal, because I had been drinking tea for two hours and my sinuses were congested from the October weather. But I kept going. I was committed to being "authoritative" about this, which is a strange goal when you are sitting on a kitchen floor in your underwear and a borrowed cardigan.

Next came the calling. This is where it started to feel real — and also where it started to feel weird.

I placed my hands flat on the cloth, palms down, fingers spread. I closed my eyes again. And I spoke her name: Elspeth Anne Morrow. Then I added a phrase from the folk tradition I'd read: "Come in peace. Come without burden. Be here with me."

And then I waited. 🕯️

This is the part no one tells you about: the waiting. In novels, the spirit appears within seconds of the name being spoken. In documentaries, there is a swell of orchestral music and a shimmer in the air. In my kitchen at 11:53 p.m., there was... nothing. Or rather, there was everything — but not in the way I expected.

What I felt first was heat. Not warmth from the candles — those were at arm's length. This was a gentle radiance on the backs of my hands, as if someone had placed warm towels over them. It lasted about four seconds and then faded. I opened one eye to check that nothing was on fire. The candles were steady. The incense smoke was curling upward in thin ribbons. My tea cup sat untouched. Everything looked normal.

I closed my eyes again and waited longer.

Then: a sound. Not the gong — I had not touched it. A soft, rhythmic tapping, like fingertips on a wooden surface. Three taps. Pause. Three taps. It came from somewhere above me, or perhaps through the floorboards into the tile. I could not tell which. My heart rate increased by approximately forty percent. I did not move my hands off the cloth.

Then: smell. Not incense — though it was mixed with incense. Something else. Faint but distinct. And I need to be precise here because I want you to understand that I am not fabricating this. The smell was lavender, and beneath it, something green and slightly bitter, like crushed stems of a plant I could not name. It lasted perhaps ten seconds and then thinned out into the ambient scent of beeswax and sage.

And then: a feeling in my chest. Not warmth exactly — closer to pressure. Like someone had pressed their palm gently against my sternum from the outside, or like a hand had been placed on my shoulder and I could not see it. It was not heavy. It was not comforting in any obvious way. It was... present. A fullness where there had been emptiness for eleven years.

I opened both eyes. The candle flames had shifted — not flickered, shifted, as if a very light breeze was moving them, but the room was closed and still. The incense smoke was now curling in a shape I could almost trace: a loop, like a cursive letter that hadn't decided which one it wanted to be.

I did not cry. I want to say that for accuracy's sake, because I have read enough first-person accounts of spiritual experience to know that the "tears streaming" moment is overused in this genre. But my eyes were warm and slightly blurry, and my hands had gone a little numb where they rested on the cloth. The tapping came again — three taps, pause, two taps. Then silence.

The pressure in my chest eased. The lavender scent faded. The heat on my hands was gone. I opened my journal and wrote: She was here. Or something that felt like her was here. I cannot say which.

That sentence became the thesis of the whole experience, and it is one I have thought about for months since. 🕯️

The Closing: And Why It Was Not a Clean Ending ✍️

The script called for a closing invocation. Something like: "This space is sealed. The circle is closed. All who came in peace go in peace. We are whole." I spoke it and mean to be honest — my voice cracked on the word "whole." A small thing, but I noted it in the journal because I was trying to document everything.

I extinguished the candles by blowing them out one at a time (not with water; I had read that using water to snuff a candle can "trouble" the flame's spirit, which is a sentence I can neither confirm nor deny). The smoke rose in thin columns and dissipated into the kitchen air.

And then I sat there on the tile floor for approximately twenty minutes, not moving, listening to my own breathing and the low hum of the refrigerator. My hands were still slightly warm where they had been resting on the cloth. My chest felt different — looser, perhaps. As if a small knot that had been tied there since 2014 had been loosened but not fully untied.

I closed my journal. I put the pen down. I looked at the gong in the corner and wondered if it had anything to do with any of this. (It did not, but I have never been able to rule out that possibility.)

What struck me most was how quiet all of it was. No music swelled. No golden light poured through the ceiling tiles. My grandmother did not appear as a translucent figure in her Sunday dress, smiling and saying "How are you, sweetheart?" Instead: warm hands, three taps, lavender, pressure on my chest, a shifted flame, a cursive smoke loop. Small things. Domestic almost. As if she had stepped into the kitchen while I wasn't looking, set a cup down, and stood there for a moment before stepping back out again.

And that is what surprised me most: how ordinary it felt. How much like a small domestic event rather than a supernatural one. And how much that ordinariness made it feel more real to me than any dramatic manifestation could have. Because if she had shown up in a column of light, I would have been watching a production. But this? This felt like a visit. Like someone had come by to check on you and then left. 🕯️

What I Expected Versus What I Got: A Comparison ✍️

Let me lay it out plainly:

What I expected:

• A dramatic, cinematic experience

• A clear visual or auditory sign from the spirit

• An overwhelming emotional release (tears, laughter, a sense of total clarity)

• A feeling of having "completed" something

• A clean ending where I stood up and felt resolved

What I got:

• Warmth on my hands for four seconds

• Three rhythmic taps from an unseen source

• Lavender and green-stem scent lasting ten seconds

• Gentle pressure on my sternum

• Candle flames shifting without wind

• Smoke curling into a cursive shape

• A slight voice crack on the closing word

• Twenty minutes of quiet sitting on kitchen tile

• The unresolved sentence: She was here. Or something that felt like her was here.

None of it was grand. None of it was proof, in any empirical sense. If you are a skeptic reading this — and I respect that position entirely — you can look at this account and say, "That is exactly what you would expect from someone sitting on a kitchen floor with warm hands, a congested nose, and two hundred dollars of ritual supplies." And you would not be wrong to think that. My grandmother did not speak. No one can confirm or deny the warmth I felt on my hands. The lavender scent could have come from a candle I forgot I'd lit (though I checked; it was a plain beeswax, unscented).

And yet. And yet. It felt like her. Not like a stranger's hand. Not like a random pressure in the room. Like Elspeth Anne Morrow, who used to sit at this same kitchen table — well, an earlier version of it, but the same space — and press her thumb into my shoulder blade when I was upset as a child, saying "There, there, sweetheart." The pressure on my chest that evening felt like that. Familiar in a way I could not explain rationally.

And that is what I mean by "not what I expected": I expected a performance and got an encounter. I expected evidence and got presence. I expected the supernatural to announce itself loudly and instead it whispered, or perhaps hummed, or tapped three times on a surface and left. 🕯️

What This Taught Me (Or Rather, What It Left Unresolved) ✍️

I have been thinking about this experience for many months now, and I want to be honest that I do not have a neat conclusion. I am not going to say "and then I understood the nature of consciousness" or "this proved that death is merely a door." I went into the ceremony expecting validation — some confirmation that my grandmother's spirit was real in the way that physical objects are real, that she could come back and touch me and speak. And I got something smaller than that, and it turned out to be more interesting for being smaller.

A few things I've taken away:

1. The ritual is not a machine. You do not insert ingredients (incense, candles, words) into the process and get a guaranteed output (spirit appears). It is closer to cooking — or maybe to conversation. You prepare, you open space, you speak, and then something happens that you did not fully control. You cannot force the other person in a conversation to respond in a specific way. You can only create conditions where response becomes possible. The ritual did not make my grandmother appear. It created a kitchen-floor-sized space in which she could choose to be present or not, and she chose, for four seconds of warmth, three taps, ten seconds of lavender, and one shifted flame, to say: I am here. Or something like me is here. 🕯️

2. Documentation changes the experience. I was writing down what happened as it happened, which meant I was simultaneously participant and observer. That split attention — part of you feeling, part of you transcribing — creates a strange distance that I think actually helped. If I had been fully immersed in emotion, I might have constructed a more dramatic narrative in my head. Because I was writing She was here. Or something that felt like her was here, rather than My grandmother appeared and spoke to me, the ambiguity is preserved. And I prefer it that way. It's more honest. It admits what I can and cannot know.

3. The ordinary is where the strange lives. I expected the kitchen floor to become a temple, the tile to shimmer with hidden light. Instead it stayed tile. My cardigan was still borrowed. My tea cup was still warm. The gong was still in the corner. And that ordinariness — the fact that this happened in my kitchen, at my table, on my floor, in a city where the street noise never fully stops — made it feel more real than any cathedral or forest clearing could have. Because this is my life. This is where I live. And if something like her can be present here, then it can be present anywhere I am. That is a different kind of comfort than grandeur provides. 🕯️

4. Ambiguity is not failure. I wanted to know for certain that she was there. I still want that. But I've learned to hold the sentence in both directions: She was here and something that felt like her was here. And I don't think those are contradictory statements. Maybe the spirit of a person is not a fixed object that either exists or doesn't exist, but more like a pattern — a way of being present that can be recognized by someone who knew them. Maybe the warmth on my hands was not her in any metaphysical sense, but it was warm in a way that matched her. And maybe that's enough. Maybe recognition is its own kind of proof.

5. You do not need to be "spiritual" to do this. I am not a witch by training or temperament. I do not believe in crystals (though I bought four varieties). I did not grow up in a religious household. I am, by my own description, a "casually curious person with a journal and two hundred dollars of supplies." And the ceremony worked — if we agree that "worked" means it produced an experience that felt real to me and changed how I think about absence and presence. You don't need authority or lineage or decades of practice. You need willingness, attention, and the courage to sit on a kitchen floor at 11:47 p.m. and say a dead woman's name out loud and wait. 🕯️

A Small Note on Language: "Conjure" ✍️

The word conjure carries connotations of command, of summoning, of calling something into being by force of will or correct formula. And in some traditions — ceremonial magic, for instance — that is precisely what it means. You construct a ritual architecture, you speak the words with precision, and you invoke a specific entity. The ritual is a machine and the spirit is the output.

But in folk traditions — and I think this was closer to what I was actually doing, even if my script borrowed from multiple sources — conjuring is less about command and more about invitation. You set the table. You light the candle. You speak the name. And then you leave room for the other person to come or not come. It's hospitality rather than engineering. You cannot make someone visit by saying so. You can only open the door, keep the light on, and wait.

That reframe — from machine to invitation — is one of the things that made the experience feel less fragile when it didn't produce a grand manifestation. I wasn't operating a broken machine. I was hosting a guest who might or might not show up. And she — or something like her — showed up for about thirty seconds, and then left. And I'm grateful for those thirty seconds. 🕯️

Final Thoughts: The Kitchen Floor Remains ✍️

I have done the ceremony again since that first Tuesday night in October. Three times now, on different occasions — one on my birthday, one during a period of grief over a friend's illness, and one simply because I wanted to try it again with less expectation. Each time was different. The warmth came each time, but in different locations: hands, chest, once along the back of my neck. The tapping pattern changed. Once it was five taps instead of three. The scent varied — lavender twice, something like cedar once, and one evening just plain cold air, as if a window had opened that wasn't open.

I have not become a more "spiritual" person in any measurable way. I still do not believe in crystals or the specific mechanics of energy grids or most of the supply-list items I purchased. My journal is full of small transcriptions: warm hands, three taps, lavender. Warm neck, five taps, cedar. Cold air, no taps, no scent — but I felt her. And the last one made me cry for real this time, because it stripped away all the sensory evidence and left only the feeling.

And maybe that's what a first conjure ceremony is really about: not proving anything to anyone else, but creating a small, honest record of what happened when you opened space and spoke the name of someone you loved and waited on a kitchen floor at 11:47 p.m. with borrowed cardigan and unscented candles and a gong that was probably judging you.

It was not what I expected. It was smaller than I expected. Quieter. More domestic. Less cinematic. And more real for all of those reasons.

And if you are considering doing this yourself — whether you believe in spirits or consciousness or energy fields or none of the above — here is my only advice: write it down as it happens. Do not edit in your head. Do not narrate it as a story with an arc. Just record what you feel, what you smell, what you hear, how many times something taps. And then close the journal and sit quietly for twenty minutes and let the tile floor hold you while the candle smoke curls into whatever shape it wants to be.

You might get a column of golden light. You might get warm hands on a kitchen cloth at 11:47 p.m. in October, three taps from an unseen source, ten seconds of lavender, and a voice that cracks on the word whole.

Either way, you will have done something small and true and irreducible to any tradition or system. And if she — or he — is listening, they'll know it was you. Because you spoke their name out loud in your own kitchen, with your own slightly nasal voice, at 11:47 p.m., and you waited.

And that's not nothing. 🕯️ ✦