Le Dragon Rouge(The Red Dragon) is sometimes called "The Grand Grimoire" despite being a pocket-sized zine that appeared around the time of Napoleon. You can look at this book a number of ways, the main divisions of which are summarized in the title. Either it is the Great Work of Alchemy in which the Red Dragon is the prima materia, or you can recall that the only physical description of Satan in the whole Bible is a Great Red Dragon. So it's either a deeply esoteric alchemical allegory, or it's a way to make diabolical pacts.
I'd like to unpack it here, because where else, right? This book has some wild parts, and while everyone loves the names and seals and general look of the thing, rarely is the method described in detail. Here it is, all laid out step by step, more or less just as one would find it in the IGOS edition but with condensed verbiage:
1. Lunar Quarter begins with a resolution to complete the Great Work
2. Twice Daily Mealtime Prayer
3. Abstain from A) impurity, B) too much sleep, and C) changing clothes often
4. Day Two: buy a bloodstone, keep all the while (so the spirit won't be able to interfere)
5. Choose a solitary location (so people won't be able to interfere)
6. Day Three: buy a young virgin goat
7. Adorn it with a vervain garland on a green ribbon
8. Take it to the appointed place.
9. Make a fire of white wood,
10. Bare your arm to the shoulder, armed with a sharp steel blade.
11. Slay goat, saying First Offering prayer
12. Collect the skin; prepare it with salt, and burn the rest to ashes.
13. Scatter the ashes toward sunrise.
On the eve of the ceremony, search for a wand 19” long with a forked end, virgin wild hazel.
Do not touch, but wait and cut at sunrise with the same bloody knife, and strip the leaves.
Take matched rods (not your real ones) to a smith to be fitted with caps made from the blade.
Heat a lodestone with prayer and magnetize the caps.
Following evening, take 1) rod, 2) skin, 3) bloodstone, 4)two garlands of vervain, 5) two 1-lb. blessed candles, 6) lodestone, 7) two smooth (new) flints, 8) half bottle Strong Spirits, 9) camphor incense, and 10) four coffin nails of a recently deceased child.
Form circle with skin strips nailed down by the coffin nails.
Mark triangle facing sunrise inside circle with bloodstone.
Mark the four letters AGLA outside of the circle.
Mark the name of Jesus in the base angle.
Let disciples enter and stand inside the two base angles of the triangle.
Enter and place candles on sides of the triangle and new vase with new willow coals at the apex.
Light the fire, say presentation prayer.
(Have pure gold or silver coins, wrapped in your pact.)
Components of the Pact, called the Sanctum Regnum
1. Address – the Name and Title of the Spirit
2. Oath – The abstract summary of the pact and its terms
3. Commands – The things you can request the spirit do for you.
4. Peaceably – Terms regarding how the spirit must behave
5. Steadfastness – Terms regarding how the Spirit regards the Pact itself
6. Loyalty – Terms regarding the manner in which the Spirit must look after your interests
7. Protection – The Spirit must pledge to protect you from harm caused by its actions.
Orations announcing the ceremony and its object
Invocations of the Superior Spirit
Grand Conjuration repeated 3 times
I Apparition – the Spirit makes some appearance, signified by a creature shown in its seal
I Reply – the Karcist summarizes the goals of the ceremony
III Response – the Spirit summarizes its capabilities in that regard
IV Query – the specific requests are made to the Spirit
V Rejoinder – the spirit modifies the demands
VI Request – the Karcist adapts his plan to the modified form
VII Approval – the Spirit agrees to do as instructed in the Sanctum Regnum
Release of the Spirit, allowing it to be excused from the Rite
Orders of the Spirit, gaining instruction toward a power or “Treasure” in its keeping
Karcist follows the spirit out of circle to entrance, using the forked rod as a dowser, to find a “gnome.”
Point the rod at the gnome, which may appear as some other creature, and follow it to the Treasure.
Throw the Conjuration over the Treasure and one coin over your shoulder.
Walk backwards to the circle, and recite the “Return to the Circle” prayer.
Render thanks to God.