Rapheal Versus Michael: Battle for the Crown of the Sun

          My new forthcoming book includes conjurations and spells based around work with the planetary angels. The test team who tried out the conjurations had a few questions along the way. Two of them asked why Raphael was listed as the archangel of Sol instead of the archangel of Mercury. It’s a question that comes up routinely. Some magicians do it one way some the other way, and many of them don’t even realize it’s something that’s up for debate. Some magicians think there’s a hard-fast right or wrong on this one. Honestly, as much as I like thinking of stuff as having a right answer this is one where I recognize there’s a basis and reasons for each, and both correspondences work, because the angels are simply bigger than that.

          For magicians who don’t understand that the angels are not themselves the planets, nor are they the same as the gods with whom the planets are associated, this idea that both can be true might be harder. If someone thinks Michael is Sol is Apollo is Tifaret, or Michael is Mercury is Hermes is Hod then they need there to be a single answer because they need these persons to be discreetly one thing so they can support their view that the correspondence is identity. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, those that think that way just don’t get it. So, the angels are left to be bigger than that thinking.

          With that said, here is some of my thinking on the matter.

          Personally, I’m not super invested in the argument, I’m comfortable with Raphael associated with the Sun and Michael associated with Mercury because initially I learned it that way. The Golden Dawn correspondences do it that way. They also recognize that the two play a little switcheroo and so on a different level the Golden Dawn also swaps them.

          First and foremost, Raphael makes sense in the Sun for me because the Sun is to me the main source for healing. Think about the feeling of a warm spring day. It’s therapeutic. The Sun is the chief amongst the planets, it is the perfection – the completion; of the concept of a planet. Healing is not fixing a problem, healing is completing or perfecting a state. Healing is removing deficiencies by restoring balance and order to a system. This concept is related to the Sun and to Tifaret. The Sun does this in our cosmos, the solar nature of Gold is the expression of this in alchemy. In the Kabbalah this is the nature of Tifaret. Tifaret orders the spheres around it, it is the heart, and it transmits the rightness of divine light from the higher into the lower, ordering it into a balanced state. So if we’re talking the divine concept of healing we’re talking the Sun.

          Now some people think that Raphael as a healer belongs in Mercury because Mercury relates to medicine. There is a difference between medicine and healing. Doctors are often associated with Mercury but the patron of doctors was Asclepius, a son of Apollo. The work of healing is solar. Medicine is Mercurial. Apollonian concepts are echoed in the rulership of Mercury. Apollo rules oracles, Mercury rules tools of divination. Mercury introduces himself to the world by stealing his big brother Apollo’s cattle, he is rewarded by taking rulership of those things with which Apollo is finished. This is not to belittle Mercury. Mercury is wonderous. Medicine as a tool of Mercury is his because it is a form of knowledge. It is the knowledge of technology used to facilitate healing. It is not the same as healing itself.

          So why would Michael belong in the sphere of the Sun? Michael is the likeness of God, and the Sun is the cosmic likeness of God. Michael is the general that commands the angels, just as the Sun commands the planets.

          One of the people who asked me suggested that Michael seems Martial rather than Solar or Mercurial. That actually makes a lot of sense. Sometimes I think Gabriel would make sense associated with Mars based on his name, but we associate Gabriel with the Moon. Gabriel is God’s herald or messenger so that would make sense in Mercury. For Michael, Michael is again God’s general. He is the archistrategos, or the high strategist of the divine host. Being a strategist may make sense in Mercury because it has to do with knowledge, analysis, planning, and communicating commands and plans. If we take it simply as an expression of military power then Michael begins to make sense in Mars. If we view Michael as the warrior who casts down the enemy then Michael makes sense for Mercury. If we view Michael in connection with the Maioral and as the scourge and the sun bathed sword who casts back the darkness at the dawn, then he simultaneously is Martial, the force of war and strength that commands away the devils, and Solar, the rising Sun that pushes out the darkness.

          So how is Michael Mercurial? Again, Mercury takes on attributes related to Apollo. Michael is God’s likeness, so he takes on attributes like unto God. Michael is one of the many angels who is a Prince of the Presence. These angels appear to mankind and represent God or speak on God’s behalf because mankind can’t receive God directly. They are messengers of the highest order. Again, as the high strategist, he plans, he communicates plans, he analyzes threats, all of these being intellectual elements. The Princes of the Presence are, in some cases, associated with writing the decrees of Heaven, and thus again this is a Mercurial function. Michael defeats Satan, this is Martial right? Well…are we talking Christianity or Judaism? In Christianity sure, it’s Martial. In Judaism it’s different. Satan is not a person, Satan is a title which refers to a group of angels, the Satanim, who at time, but not always are led by Sataniel. These are not the evil angels, those are led by Shemyaza and Mastema, although Mastema is also one of the Satanim. Of the Satanim, Samael, who at times is linked to Mars and other times to Saturn, is often considered to be the equivalent of the Christian Satan, the chief opposer. Samael is the Prince of Rome and with Rome as a special enemy of Israel Samael’s job is to present the evils of Israel in the divine court and call for their persecution. Michael is the Prince of Israel and his job is to speak of Israel’s righteousness and glory and counter the message of Samael, so much so that all the evil deeds Samael calls to be written of Israel are burned while Michael’s proclamations are written. This is a very Mercurial way of defeating Satan. In fact, it’s not just speaking and writing, it’s legalistic. Michael is the defense attorney for Israel acting in the divine court on their behalf. While law and legalism and court victories are associated with Venus, lawyers are associated with Mercury.

          Michael is abundantly Mercurial. So, what about Raphael? What’s Mercurial about Raphael? Well honestly, not much. Again, Raphael relates to healing, which is Solar, not to medicine, which is Mercurial. If we equate healing and medicine then sure we can associate Raphael with Mercury, but there isn’t much other reason. Mercury has a vast array of rulerships and elements, but Raphael only really shows up in a story about healing someone.

          Again, different books present it differently. Different magicians approach it differently. You can probably learn different things about the Sun and different things about Mercury calling each angel for each. The big thing though is people aren’t correspondences. You and I each relate to many, many different things and have a whole depth to the complex of elements which form our characters. Non-human persons are often like this too, particularly the lofty complex and powerful ones. Gods, angels, and demons aren’t simply a row within a column in 777. They are bigger and deeper. We have to approach them as such and learn from them their vastness.

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Ain't No Holla Back Mystic

Last week for the Feast of the Annunciation Fr. James Martin, SJ, wrote an interesting reflection on having a profound divine experience...and then the facilitator of that experience, in the case of Mary the Archangel Gabriel, ends up leaving. And you have to go back to normal and you have to go back to day to day life. From Fr. James's point of view “and then the angel left,” the words which powerfully but subtly describe the singular nature of the moment which Mary experienced, are the words which are most important for Catholics trying to relate to this passage, or this event in scripture.

And then the angel left.

This describes the fact that moments of peak religious experience end, and then like Mary, you have to go back to dealing with your day to day life.

Fr. James's point about the Annunciation is a pretty interesting one. Especially, perhaps, from the perspective of a magician. We engage in some pretty amazing experiences. We do some epic stuff on a mundane level, like cool rituals or initiations, or traveling to interesting places to discover unusual things, or reading interesting forgotten histories and stories, and various things like that which most other people just don't think about. On a more directly magical level, we experience stuff like visions and revelations, foreknowledge of the future, awareness of things we shouldn't be aware of, conversations with angels, demons and other spirits, and moments where we mold our world to our will, or where we experience the coalescence of the divine. All of these things can pepper our lives with amazement.

But then the angel left.

We go back to school, or work, or taking care of the kids. We vacuum the rug and sweep the floor, make dinner and do the dishes, pay the bills, and find time to make it to bed at night to get just enough sleep to survive. All that other amazing stuff happened but it's just that, it's something that happened, in the past, and it was cool...but, what about the rest of the time?

People often ask “what's it like for the hero of the movie after the movie is over and his life goes back to normal?” In a way, that can be what our lives are like when we do magic. We have our spiritual adventure and then we're back to the grind, knowing that we get to do amazing stuff and be amazing...but just not right now. Right now we get to be humdrum.

That shift can be ok, depending on what our life is like; but it can also be miserable. Because it's fun getting sweet talked by a good looking angel...

Until the point where the angel left.

I think some of what we see online, or even in offline occult communities, is explained in part by this. Sometimes people get into magic because they feel small, but they want to feel epic. Sometimes they get to experience a moment that lets them know that epicness is there...but it's fleeting, or it might even be scary and so pursuing more epic moments might not feel comfortable. It's a lot easier to go online and be a mystical magical bad ass in your spare time, and that way your magical adventure movie is part of daily life.

But there are better ways to avoid that awkward feeling of waiting for the angel to call you back after what you thought was a great time.

Maybe, just don't be humdrum. Maybe you can be epic as a magician, and you can also fill your life with other epic things. Not to brag, but as a financial adviser I have multi-millionaires who ask me what to do with their money, and the bulk of my non-work non-magic time is filled with teaching people to use swords. In conjunction with that last part, this past summer I watched the Olympics, with an Olympian, who has complimented me several times on how well I train people in her sport. To me this seems not quite humdrum. My life has some cool stuff but that said I might not always feel epic, and I might totally hang out in the valleys of mental and emotional experience sometimes, but I keep my life pretty interesting even when I'm not talking to angels and seeking visions of the whirling potentials at the beginning of the cosmos. I think we all have that potential to live our lives in ways that are cool. So staying legendary is one option for diminishing that sense of banality.

The other option is to be a proper mystic. Because...when I had my most vivid experience of an angel, and it made its annunciations to me of those things it had to announce, the angel didn't leave. We have knowledge of one another that allows us to converse as needed. Your angel is there with you. You just have to build the relationship where you can keep in communion with it and where you can learn to rely on its contact and inspiration.

So yeah, in a lot of religious contexts, there are peak experiences and then the rest of life is the doldrums. But not so for adepts. The Sacred Magic is all about the angel showing up and not leaving.

Now, you won't always be in a place where you're grooving on mystical consciousness, but that's fine. There will be times in life where your angel might seem further away because you're in a place where you just can't do whatever it is you're called to do, and you can't do the magic, and you can't look to your angel, because, sometimes life is just like that. It may even feel like you're cut off. But, once you claw out of that place, and you reach out to your angel, and you show you're ready to get back to your work, your angel will be there ready to jump right into it with you.

So even when you're not riding high on spiritual experience, it's not because the angel left. The angel is still there with you, waiting for you to be ready again. To me that's a lot better. I'd rather know my angel is still there for me than know that after he's said his message he's going to bounce, and he may or may not ever be back.

I guess part of this difference is because we're choosing to be mystics, we're choosing to be magicians, we're actively seeking to create a relationship with the angel rather than going about our days until some flash of brilliance appears for a fleeting moment.

With that in mind, the practical piece of this is that we have to do the work to meet our angels. That doesn't mean we all have to dive into the Abramelin working. But being mindful when we engage in our developmental magical exercises how they might engage our angel is a start towards forming that connection.

Find prayers and rituals that connect to your angel. For instance I really like the Anthem from the Gnostic Mass for that purpose. With the Mass in mind, reflect on how the Eucharist connects you to your angel. Dive into that connection as your feel it.

Maybe set an altar for your angel and do devotional work with it. Come up with some prayers to use for the purpose of communion or opening lines of communication. Consecrate a candle or lamp to your angel and light it when you talk with the angel. Get some Abramelin or temple incense, or at the least frankincense, to offer to the angel while you're working at the altar.

There's lots of options short of the retreat. The PGM has several useful prayers that can help with this or be an inspiration towards it. Find what suits you and do it. And when your angel helps you determine it's time for the retreat you'll be all the more prepared.