There are six essential techniques that a magician utilizes when doing magic. Although we might come up with a variety of derivatives of these techniques, from my own observations it seems that all derivations ultimately boil down to these six essential techniques. Here is an overview of each technique: Invocation: This is an act that involves drawing an entity or person's consciousness into your own for either partial or full possession. The benefit of doing this can be to obtain information, achieve union with an entity, or as part of an offering ritual to the entity. I've experimented with the process of invoking one's self into an entity or person, because I've found that invocation is a two-way street. Invoking yourself into someone else can used to help that person work through a trauma, though it can also be used for less ethical purposes[1].
Evocation: This is an act which involves evoking the entity (or person) into the environment around you. Evocation can also be used to evoke emotional forces or behaviors so that you can work with them in an external environment. Evocation is typically used when you want to manifest a specific possibility and need help from an entity to accomplish the task.
Divination: If you want to obtain information, divination is technique that can be used. It typically involves using Tarot, runes, ogam, or some other kind of symbol set that is randomly shuffled or mixed before he person draws and then places the cards, runes, ogam, etc into specific patterns. The cards, runes, ogam are read in order to obtain the information that is desired. There are also other techniques of divination, that rely on entheogens or other forms of hyper stimulation in order to create visions the person can then interpret.
Enchantment: An enchantment is an act of magic that is directly done by the magician to bring a specific possibility into reality. The magician directly applies magical force in order to make the possibility into a reality.
Banishing: Banishing is used by the magician to ground and center him/herself, while cleaning the space of any lingering magical energies. Banishing can also be used as part of daily practices to help focus the mind and will of the magician.
Astral projection: Astral projection is where the magician projects his/her spirit or mind into the astral planes. The magician will do this in order to do a magical working on those planes or to access resources that wouldn't be found here. My personal take on the astral planes is that it's partially derived from our imagination and is where we can directly interact with imaginary time in order to find possibilities that we'd like to bring back with us to reality.
Are there any other core techniques you would and if so what?
[1] See Inner Alchemy and Multi-Media Magic for more information on invoking yourself into an entity or person.