Holy Guardian Angel Resources - 10 Pieces of Free Content on the Sacred Magic

I recently released a class on the Abramelin. You can find that here:

The Why and What of Abramelin

I also did a blog post which explains the class and why it is so affordable and that can be found here:

Accessibility! Or Why Did I Publish Such an Inexpensive Abramelin Class?

 

But those aren't the only Abramelin/HGA/Sacred Magic resources I've released. I have a lot more free material on the subject available out there too.

 

I've decided to aggregate some of those things into a post so I can share that and not JUST share the class when people have HGA/Guardian Angel/Abramelin questions.

 

Here are some options.

 

Videos and Podcasts

 

HGA Panel with BJ Swain, Jason Miller, and Rufus Opus

In The Company of Stars Special #1: A Season with the HolyGuardian Angel featuring Sarah Clark

 

In The Company of Stars Episode #1: Exploring Abramelin and the HGA With Sarah Clark

 

Blog Posts

 

Thoughts on the Stele of Jeu - Not specifically Abramelin/Sacred Magic but many people use Stele of Jeu or Samekh in that process and this addresses that

 Touched By an Angel

The Raccolta and the Holy Guardian Angel

 

Lent, The Holy Guardian Angel, and the Calcination of Failure

 Sex, Your Angel, and Starting the Ritual

Ain't No Holla Back Mystic

A Ritual for the Holy Guardian Angel: The Lamp Upon the Throne

 Hopefully you find this material useful and enjoyable. Please feel free to share this collection. Hopefully if you've enjoyed this you'll also purchase the Abramelin class and direct others who would enjoy it to check it out! You can also check out my Support Page for other ways to show your support for my work. Thanks!

Accessibility! Or - Why did I publish such an inexpensive Abramelin class?

A few friends have pointed out that I have a tendency to under-price things. This is something that comes up in all areas of my life. It often takes me awhile to feel like knowledge and skills are things I should routinely be charging a fair price for rather than simply offering as a free service. I can understand that I'm very good at something, or very knowledgeable or experienced, and still hesitate about recognizing the monetary value of my work. I think a lot of people run into this, and there are also a lot of people who are the opposite of this.

 

For magic and religion in particular, my background was influenced by Wiccan and NeoPagan thinking early on, and A.'.A.'. development in my early adulthood. Both of these positions really stress the idea that teaching is free, and people have pointed out that that has to do with keeping these activities amongst leisure classes.

 

Regardless of all that, that's not why I released an inexpensive Abramelin class. It has nothing to do with any failings I have around monetizing my own value.

 

1. I want Abramelin to be accessible and have spent several years encouraging people, promoting exploring the Sacred Magic, and getting people to realize it isn't insurmountable. So I like the idea of making guidance on that subject available in an affordable way.

 

2. I'm recommending that people give money to charity. I hope people who can afford it recognize that the class should have been released at a higher price. Part of the tradition around Abramelin involves charitable giving and charity is important to me. So I'm hoping people will give a few dollars to a charity of their choice since they're not spending the $25 to $50 that classes like this often cost. I won't be doing this with all the classes I offer as I begin offering more classes, but I think I'll continue it with Abramelin classes.

 

3. A lot of folks try to make Abramelin and grimoire systems seem exclusive and impossible to do correctly and promise to show you how for a bunch of money. I hate that. I think we can make these systems accessible. We can still value our own work and the media we produce to help people, but we don't need to create messages telling people they're failing and our work will save them. If we do that and charge really high prices then that seems even sketchier.

 

That's the crux of it. A few friends got to listen to the class early because of various reasons. Feedback I got from that was really exceptional. When I posted it, I got the feedback that it was too inexpensive and that people might skip it as a result.

 

That is obviously a risk.

 

I hope people take time to check it out and don't assume I'm making it "cheap" because it's "not worth it." I think the class really provides some things to think about that are SUPER important but that are almost never discussed.

 

If you'd like to check out the class, you can get it here:
The Why and What of Abramelin

If you want to support my work in other ways you can do that here:

Support! 

If you're looking for a charity to support:

Toys for Tots

GiveWell's Top Charity Choices

But definitely, if you haven't checked out the class, give a quick read to it's description and then consider purchasing it. I think you will like it.

Description:

 

"This class isn't a step by step guide on doing the Abramelin, although, it will hopefully make you a lot more ready to engage the ritual. We talk a bit about why people might avoid doing Abramelin and what the reality is surrounding the various reasons people might think it's too difficult. We run through the Abramelin's value statement and explore what the ritual gives you, what our experience has been and what people have claimed it does to people. We look at how to consider and evaluate these claims. Ultimately, we focus on what it means to do the Abramelin. You're avoiding things and you're praying, but what are you even doing? What is the point of it all? What is the experience you're developing? These are questions people rarely explore, but they're very important for assessing if you should do the ritual and what it is you're actually doing when you do the ritual. How does what you're doing create the experience of the Angel? This question can play heavily into how you approach the ritual and how you finish the ritual. If you're considering doing the Abramelin, or are in the process of beginning it, this class explores things which will be useful for you to consider. Even if you're not exploring the Abramelin, this class will present a lot of things that are useful to think about while exploring on going rituals, mystical and developmental work, and work with your Guardian Angel even outside of the context of Abramelin. We hope you enjoy it.

The class is approx 2hrs long.

We are charging a reduced price for this class because we are committed to expanding access to Abramelin. The Abramelin recommends donating to charity when taking money for the Sacred Magic, in this case, since we're charging a much lower price than is typical for a class, we hope those who buy it will consider donating a few dollars to a charity of their choice if they enjoyed the class."

If you bought the class and enjoyed it, or if you like the approach we've taken here, please share this post on your favorite social media!

Touched By an Angel

There seem to be more people working towards achieving Knowledge and Conversation of their Holy Guardian Angels these days, and that's great. There also seem to be more people who want to look like they've checked that box on the spiritual authority check list, and that's not so great.

A friend recently noted that we see a lot of people who describe their experience as if it was one super cool moment, and then it was done. Nothing changes after, there is no relationship after, they did it, they have it in their back pocket that they did it, and they don't have much of anything useful to add to the discourse that reflects their experience. They generalize the angel, or reduce its nature to something relatively meaningless, or treat attaining the angel like a badge they get for leveling up and then moving on. The experience is doing the thing, and saying they did the thing, and that's all it is; it's another experiment with another grimoire or another technique and they met the spirit and it was cool and that's it, right?

Nope.

It's a pretty immense fantastic experience when it happens. And to some degree that initial experience is momentary. That momentary experience exists to create a powerful on going relationship. Think of it sort of like a friend. You can call up a friend, hang out, have a good time, and then go your own way, getting together as needed. But say you and that friend have some sort of life changing experience which shapes the both of you, that creates a bond which ties you together and lets you share an intimacy you don't have with others, so there is a connection which is always there. The moment in the oratory where you complete the retreat is like that. It is a moment so full of force and fire that it forges a bond between you and the angel which is unlike that of other spirits with whom you interact.

Now, based on many approaches to understanding the angel, there is already a bond between you and your angel before the retreat. I would question whether or not all of these other descriptions of Guardian Angels and Holy Guardian Angels are necessarily talking about the same thing as what is described in The Sacred Magic, in fact, I would assert that in many cases they aren't. That said, in my experience, yes, your angel is there from the beginning, and you can and should make contact before doing the retreat. The retreat changes the nature of the bond and the contact, probably mostly on our end, but still, there is a perceptible change, which changes us and how the angel interacts with us.

I very rarely reference things Aaron Leitch says, and initially when I saw him compare Knowledge and Conversation to being Crowned by a spirit I mistook his meaning, and I avoided the comparison. But really, it is pretty apt. Knowledge and Conversation is a form of possession.

People tend to think of possession as it appears in The Exorcist, or The Exorcism of Emily Rose, or other cinematic depictions. Both of those examples are based on true stories, to some degree, but they both take cinematic license and make things visually shocking for horror movie audiences. Still, there is a reality to that kind of possession. Possession can refer to a point where a spirit takes over a person, and torments them. Possession can look like madness.

But that's not the only kind of possession, and even in the case of a spiritual assault there are stages to possession. In magic, where we find possession occurring as choice in which the magician has a relationship with the spirit these stages are more clearly understood. Unfortunately most European Magic (as Western is an inaccurate description) no longer contains spirit possession work, so for most people exploring Holy Guardian Angels, spirit possession means spinning heads and pea soup.

So first you should understand that possession occurs in different stages. In Catholicism there is Courting, Obsession, and Possession. When a spirit is courting someone it is exploring weaknesses which would open that person to possession and tempting them into situations to exploit and exacerbate those weaknesses. The spirit might directly influence and inspire the person and attempt to draw them in. When a spirit is obsessing someone the spirit has made contact and presents the person with things they desire and draws them towards desiring a relationship with the spirit or opening up to that spirit's influence. The obsessed person is oppressed by the spirit as the spirit begins to exert some control., often by impacting their well being and weakening the person's resistance to their influence. Possession occurs when the person succumbs to the obsessing spirit and control is relinquished. Finally an integration would occur if the person willingly gives themselves over to the possessing entity.

These stages all take a pretty negative view on the subject because in Catholicism possession is almost always an involuntary and negative act. Catholicism does however provide a lot of the framework for European spirit magic and so an awareness of it can be useful as a way for setting up our thinking.

Another way of looking at it based in Afro-Caribbean traditions would be that in stage one the spirit sits on you or next to you, you can feel the presence of the spirit, it touches you, you can communicate with it, but aside from a more intimate awareness of it, you're still in the driver's seat, and you can break off from the contact. A second stage involves the spirit more intimately connecting with you such that it can influence and take partial control. You're aware of what's happening, mostly, and you can exert some control, but you and the spirit are kind of sharing control of the steering wheel. The third phase is when the spirit is in full control, and you act as the spirit, you may or may not have awareness and it may or may not communicate with you so much as through you in this process. ( To be clear, I am not an initiate of any African Diaspora, or African Traditional Religions. My comments here are based on understandings of Kimbanda from classes, books and discussions with Kimbandieros. I will happily accept correction if I have mischaracterized this comparison.)

Knowledge and Conversation is somewhere between stage one and stage two, which would fit somewhere close to the obsession stage in a Catholic context. But in the case of Knowledge and Conversation it is voluntary on our parts, and so that gives it an integrated element, which makes it like he reception of a Head Spirit, or being Crowned, in which the spirit with whom you work, by whom you are possessed “resides” with you and so there is an on going relationship in which the “stage” or the clarity of contact, moves on a scale as per the context of the particular moment.

That said, unless you've experienced these types of spiritual interaction, this probably doesn't explain the experience too much.

To go back to Hollywood as a means of illustrating...Death Note is a good example. The relationship between Light and his God of Death is a good example. Ryuk is always there, even if he's just sort of in the back of Light's awareness. They communicate, Light gets answers and suggestions from Ryuk. Ryuk isn't in control but his presence impacts how Light is able to approach things and Ryuk is at times able to facilitate things for him. On some level it looks kind of like a relationship with a familiar spirit, except that Ryuk exerts influence just by virtue of his connection to Light as well as directly by what he communicates, rather than a familiar, who generally performs tasks and provides information but without that same influence. The recent Fox TV series version of The Exorcist has also depicted this phase of possession, albeit in a negative context, in season two of the series. Andy, the possessed individual, initially experiences the possessing spirit as a girl who he believes to be one of his foster children. She suggests things to him, influences what he does and how he makes decisions, she isn't always with him but she's always watching and can make suggestions to or influence Andy pretty much whenever she chooses, but still she's not ultimately in control of him.

Recently when talking with the same friend who pointed out that some people treat the Holy Guardian Angel like a One and Done kind of thing I described it like this:

“By possession I mean like first/second stage The spirit is touching you so it knows and understands you and is able to freely talk to you, but it's there like generally. Like not every waking moment but at any given moment it can interact. It's intimately in the space of your being; still identifiably separate though, but it doesn't feel dissociative. It is like a partner who sits in your sphere and kind of comes into your ear when he needs to speak.”

I could go into what talking to it is like, or how this relationship impacts magic and divination and other spirit work...but if I did all that in one blog post it's seriously limit what I'd have to talk about later.

In any case, finishing the Abramelin, or Liber 8, or Samekh, or whatever ritual you intend to use to achieve Knowledge and Conversation is great, and it's important, but it isn't really the goal or the prize. That all comes later, and is the unfolding relationship which completing the ritual catalyzes. It's not just that single moment, but rather the way in which it affects all the later moments.

Speaking of relationships...once again, if you liked this, please share, and please like us, and encourage your friends to like us on that vast and ranging Book of Faces.

Magic is the Bee's Knees, and Mysticism is All the Buzz

Before the days of blogger...er well, actually, well after blogger existed, but before I used it since I'm technologically like a decade behind...I would occasionally do a Facebook note. This one popped up from a memory today. It was kind of a neat moment which has been referenced a bunch of times in recounting my experience working the Abramelin. My recollection was that the incident with the bee happened early on, but I guess it was towards the end based on this date. 

April 13, 2010 at 12:49am

I was in my oratory this morning and had just finished doing my new morning ritual set (the closing from The Ship, a six-fold intonation of the Tifaret Hierarchy, Resh + Adoration, The Headless Invocation, A Solar Salutation, and the Prayer of St. Francis.)

During the headless invocation I heard a whirring and thought I saw a darting but figured it was my imagination as it was early.

Then during a modified solo-version of the Mass a bee began to crawl across my altar down the center of the cross pattern on the middle to the apex of a triangle on which sat my new gold ring, which had arrived Friday as I was heading to Minervals and which I had just consecrated last night.

The bee crawled to one side of the ring, then the other then the front and then curled up inside and rested there throughout the rest of the Mass.

Bees themselves having a certain solar symbolism, I took it at first as a reason for trepidation but then as a sign that the solar presence was made manifest and was further consecrating the ring. I noted, to the bee, upon leaving the oratory that when I returned I would need to take the ring so as to have it engraved and upon my return the bee had vacated to another part of the altar. It reminded me a little of an odd experience I had with a bee about ten years earlier shortly after beginning work with my mentor.

I am thinking I might keep the corpse of the bee (as it of course died during the course of the day, having been unable to escape) and place it on the center piece of the cross on the altar as a talisman of the dying god, whose death gives way to the elevation of the soul of the mystic in his union. Any thoughts? 

The Raccolta and the Holy Guardian Angel

In my post yesterday on Lent I spoke about the unique moments of the Pascal season which provide liturgically significant times for spiritual work involved in connecting to the Holy Guardian Angel, and to The Beloved. The Angel runs parallel to the Prince of the Presence, who in early Jewish mystical systems was the angel charged with functioning as the apparition of God, and also as a guide forward into the higher realms of creation and unto the Palaces of the Divine Throne room. Along this path the angel also taught seals, passwords and invocations which gave access to the heavens and the spirits who resides therein along with their magical secrets.

For Abraham the Jew the function of the Angel was to teach the Sacred Magic and guide the magician in his magical endeavors, as well as to function as both an intermediary and a thwarting angel who singularly brought all demons within the purview of the magician's control.

In modern magic the angel is our guide, our source of power and authority and our connection to divinity.

Often people think of Knowledge and Conversation, or the Abramelin working, or Liber Samekh as the magic the angel relates to, but the angel is a part of our daily life and experience as a magician. Even for those who have not made firm committed contact with their angels, it is advisable to seek routine communion with the angel even from the beginning of one's magical career. If you have this communion already it becomes easier for the angel to guide you in determining if and when and how you should seek to make firmer your connection.

There is a lot of material in both magical and religious tradition which can be used for working with the angel. We've talked about some of it in posts here before, and we'll continue to do so. Since we took a stop into Catholic territory to discuss Lent I figured we could also look at a short simple prayer to the Guardian Angel from the Raccolta.

TheRaccolta is a collection of traditional Roman Catholic prayers which have been granted various “indulgences” by Popes. Essentially these are prayers which have been given added institutional power, a sort of official magic, which is supposed to add to their spiritual effect. Personally I think this is pretty cool. There are a lot of prayers in it which won't be of particular interest or use for the magician, but there are a lot which can be used in work with the Saints, the Dead, and of course the Angel. So for a magician working with these spirits this is a pretty awesome collection to explore because these are prayers which carry weight within the spiritual traditions connected to some of these spirits.

In the future we may explore some additional Catholic angels prayers (haha “may”...we totally will...) but for now here is a simple one we can look at today:

“112. "ANGEL OF GOD," ETC.

While we give thanks to God for having granted to each of us a holy angel for our guardian, we ought ever to bear in mind the respect, devotion, and loving confidence we owe to this blessed spirit; and with these feelings we should often think of him, and implore his constant aid with the following well-known invocation:

Angele Dei, qui custos es mei, me tibi commissum pietate superna, illumina, custodi, rege, et guberna. Amen.

O angel of God, whom God hath appointed to be my guardian, enlighten and protect, direct and govern me.

Or else.

Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom His love commits me here,
Ever this day be at my side,
To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

Pope Pius VI., in order to kindle the fervour of the faithful to have frequent recourse to their holy Angel Guardian, granted, motu proprio, by a Brief of October 2, 1795 -
i. An indulgence of 100 days every time the above-named short prayer is said devoutly and with a contrite heart.
ii. A plenary indulgence to those who have been accustomed to say it morning and evening throughout the year, on the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, October 2; provided that on that day, after Confession and Communion, they visit a church or public oratory and pray for the Sovereign Pontiff.
iii. A plenary indulgence, in articulo mortis, was added by the same Pope, in another Brief of September 2, 1796, to all who had been accustomed during life frequently to say the said prayer. In this Brief also, motu proprio, he confirmed the Indulgences already granted.
His successor, Pius VII., afterwards, by a decree of the S. Congr. of Indulgences, of May 15, 1821, besides confirming afresh the above-named Indulgences, granted -
iv. A plenary indulgence to all the faithful who say at least once a day, for a month together, the said prayer, Angele Dei, &c., on any one day when, after Confession and Communion, they visit a church and pray as above.”

-- The Raccolta

I have included in our quotation the indulgence info just as an example.

The prayer itself does not need much updating to fit a less Catholic worldview. It's pretty standard in its connection to the angel. “Rule” might seem out of step for many contemporary magicians but it needn't imply submission to an authority so much as acceptance of a standard of guidance. It could easily be replaced by “inspire” if one dislikes “rule.”

The prayer could easily be said at the outset of the day, or before leaving for some task. It could be incorporated into a sort of rosary or used as a chanted prayer for meditation to connect with the angel. It is short enough to be memorized and could be used as a quick recitation to center oneself on the connection to the angel when the events of the day set you off center.

Adding a lamp or candle consecrated to the angel as a point of focus can be useful when praying such prayers. Anointing with Abramelin oil, or with an ash like that described yesterday can be another good material way to connect with the angel during such a prayer. Novena candles for the Guardian Angel or for the Holy Spirit, possibly combined with prayers on petition papers could draw a more magical focus to either building the connection or connecting the prayer into a magical petition to the angel.

Lent, The Holy Guardian Angel and the Calcination of Failure

I've had a bit of an interruption in my "American Gods" series of posts because of some work deadlines, but will be back to those soon. In the mean time, Lent is a really big deal to me, so I wanted to make an Ash Wednesday post. I would have liked to have made it yesterday...but...time keeps on slipping, into the future. 

Some people might wonder why Lent and Ash Wednesday would be exciting to a magician, but since I've had OTO friends literally suggest that I'm a crypto-Catholic it probably isn't too surprising. I like grimoires, and I like the pre-Reformation grimoires, I like studying Catholic liturgics and Sacraments to deepen my understanding of the grimoire practice as well as my work as a Gnostic Catholic Priest.

But I find this time of year to be one of the most exciting for a deeper reason than the appeal of traditional Catholic aesthetics. It is a time steeped in the Mysteries, in the sacramental theology and a Gnostic soteriology, so deeply that as a mystic, a Priest, and a magician I can't help but be excited by it.

It isn't a time of penitent contrition but one of anticipating Triumph. Which in my thinking is very Thelemic on its own, but when we explore this Triumph it gets even better.

Lent anticipates not just Christ's Triumph over death but our Triumph by way of participation in his death and resurrection. We experience the Mystery of the resurrection and likewise become an initiate who has conquered death. The whole Lenten season is steeped in the act of embodying the Passion within the experience of the people. The connection to the Passion Death and Resurrection is subtly built in the people every time they take the Eucharist - just as ours builds within us the sacred marriage of Earth and Heaven and with it communion with the angel; but Lent steps up the experience by immersing the people in reflection through the Stations of the Cross.

Triumphing over Death. This is central in most contemporary Mystery Traditions. The Wica explore this in the Descent of the Goddess, the Masons in the story of Hiram Abiff, the OTO in...well...I'll just say it's public knowledge that our Master Magicians explore the mysteries of death. This is such an important element of the Mysteries that we see it all throughout Europe and the Near East going back at least 3000 years.

But, we're not just conquering Death, with Life, we're conquering Falsehood with Truth. Liber AL tells us death is a lie. The Mysteries expose for us that we are the same light as the source, and death is not the submission of that light to darkness but rather the revelation of that light as it rejoins eternity. This idea touches both on the sacramental ideal f Ash Wednesday and the Gnostic soteriology of Easter Saturday.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of a sort of alchemy. The ash in a traditional context is made from Palm leaves saved from Palm Sunday. This is often interpreted as wearing the ashes of penance while recalling the impending victory of Palm Sunday and the Triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

But Palm Sunday isn't Victory. It is a Pseudo-Thronosis, or false enthroning - a common act in initiatory passion plays. In these rituals the initiate is elevated and perceives success but the success isn't real. Being caught up in that falsehood we miss the reality of our situation and get caught in the snares and traps of life, but if we dig deep beyond the appearance of darkness and difficulty we can find that truth remains.

At Ash Wednesday we burn the Palms; we burn the falsehood. In alchemy one of the first phases is calcination or burning the material to ash. For the alchemist that which burns away is the dross, the false material that that hides the valued and true components of the material. That which is true survives fire, that which is false can not endure.

From a Gnostic and sacramental perspective this gives us an interesting liturgical moment from which to work. In the RCC Penance is one of the seven Sacraments. Tau Apiryon has said that the EGC equivalent of this is Will. I personally interpret this to mean that rather than seeking forgiveness we assess our shortcomings, our failures...the falsehoods which hold onto us and prevent us from succeeding at knowing truth and expressing that truth by doing our Wills. This flips the idea of penance on its head and instead of finding fault we find strength. We recognize that we aren't just our actions and instead of crapping on ourselves for not being perfect we can recognize our potential, we can seek divine inspiration, we can commit to being awesome.

Ritually I've applied this idea by writing a confession, not of sins but of ways I haven't committed to the Work and to my success. I've then burned the confession. Once the confession is burned I make prayers to my angel and reconstitute the "salt" or the ash of the confession with the "sulfur" or "soul" using Abramelin Oil. So my ash doesn't just have ash, but like Chrism it has fire. 

This confession first played out for me while doing the Abramelin Working, which contains a confession and wearing of ash. This idea of confessing to falling short of the Work seemed a fitting way to work on committing to it. From there, reflections on Ash Wednesday and Lent led to this association between the act and the season. It is of course something you can do at any time, and I personally keep my "angel ash" around as a means to connect with my angel through material imposition. It is a very refreshing meditative and spiritual practice. 

This connection to the angel brings me to my last part, the Gnostic soteriology. Soteriology is a theology or doctrine of salvation. In traditional Christianity Christ replaces the sacrifice and becomes the scapegoat. He takes on our sins and as a result, unlike the goat who is taken by the spirits of the wilderness, he descends to Hell weighed down by our sins, but he conquers Satan and Death and rises again so that our sin no longer has the power of death, since sin is what lead to death originally in Eden. He transforms the game by being awesome for us so that we can ride along and get into heaven based on his awesomeness. There are some interesting ideas at play here, but I don't want to get into most of them. 

From a Gnostic perspective it works a little differently. 

Jesus said these things:

"(13) Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like." 

Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"

Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.""

"(108) Jesus said, "He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.""

"(50) Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'""

(The Gospel of Thomas)

Jesus compares his teachings to a bubbling stream of which his followers may drink and become drunk thereof if they truly understand, as does Thomas. He elaborates that there is no difference between himself and the one who carries his spirit by becoming drunk on his teachings. He further elaborates that the Father is the Light that established itself of its own volition, that man is a child of this light and as a child has the light in him and that this presence of the light is what makes man living. This presence of the light is likewise the basis of the teachings of the Word. 

Jesus stresses in many other instances understanding the living and the dead, and the relationship between the living and the dead and that one should not focus simply on the dead but appreciate the living Word which is before them, and which is the message they take in in order to become living themselves. A steady theme is the overlapping equation of Jesus, his message, life, and the Father. Each part in some way relates to another. But ultimately salvation for the Gnostic is not being saved by the act of another, salvation is recognizing death, seeking life through that recognition, and coming alive by embodying the Word and therefore becoming the same as the Word and therefore an expression of the Father. 

Salvation is the knowledge that we may uncover Truth and conquer death. 

In modern magic a key component of this is developing a relationship with the Holy Guardian Angel. In some ways Jesus's experience in the desert, like Moses's experience on Mt. Horeb, has a lot of similarity to encountering one's Holy Guardian Angel. Jesus continues this exploration further in the Pascal narrative with the Gethsemane. Jesus slowly uncovers and accepts his Will even if there are moments which are blinding flashes, not unlike the experience of a mystic or magician. Much of Lent suits itself to communing with the Holy Guardian Angel, which would reflect the Pentacostal imagery of initiation and the reception of the Holy Spirit, it is similarly hinted at in Christ's baptism, and of course his struggles in the desert and at Gethsemane to understand and accept who he is and what his calling is. But outside of the mythos, the ritual narrative plays this out for us as well. 

We burn away what we aren't as we seek to commit to what we are. This is the commitment we make when we seek the angel ardently for the purpose of making a firm commitment to on going communion. The angel speaks to us, and pours out the bubbling stream which changes and anoints us. The angel leads us through our Gethsemane moments, to Triumph through our own Golgatha and understand the light within ourselves. 

Ultimately this is the crowning moment of Lent. Not the joy of the resurrection, but the dark moment in which man can lose himself to distraction and terror or in which he can know that he is a child of the Light and that the light resides within him and is with him even in those moments in which we are most alone. As Jesus dies the veil of the Holy of Holies is torn asunder. The imagery calls to mind the leader of the Sanhedrin tearing his garments in protest as if God angrily shakes his temple and tears apart a symbol of His sacred presence in protest of his son's death. 

But this isn't what's happening at all. 

The veil kept people away from the adytum. The people couldn't directly experience God. But God became a man. In fact, God became man so hard that he died, an excruciating death, full of embarrassment, shame, fear, pain, and sin...so...much...sin, that you couldn't ever imagine having the weight of guilt, anxiety, self doubt, and confusion that God experienced. In that moment of death God is so infinitely human that the entirety of the experience of God is held within the experience of Man. God is ultimately alone in the darkness in a way which is the opposite of his infinite nature (which is likewise alone in the darkness), Which is what we are by virtue of being human. But here we see the divinity in that experience because here, for a moment, God is drawn into the lowest expression of our existence and therefore is closer to us than any other time. 

In a Liturgical sense the Roman Catholic Church recognizes this as the death of the Church. It is often explained that since Jesus is dead, and the Church exists as his Bride than she has no existence in that time that he is in Hell. But more than the Bride of Christ, the Church is an intermediary between Man and Christ, between Man and God. The intermediary dies because God is so deep in the muck with us that there is nothing to mediate anymore. We're there together alone in the darkness, and we just have to open up and realize the Light. 

We have to burn the Palms.

Sex, Your Angel, and Starting the Ritual

A lot of my work lately has been focused on helping people who are maybe ready to look at reaching out to their Holy Guardian Angel and seeking Knowledge and Conversation bridge the gap between maybe being ready and going ahead and going for it. I try to make resources available and try to help answer questions. One question which has come up a couple times in the last month or so is “Do I really have to be chaste? I'm not sure my wife will like that.” It's something that's reasonably at the forefront of a lot of people's minds when they consider a big ritual like that, and is easily a bit of a turn off for people. Some people might say if someone isn't willing to go through that effort then they don't deserve the benefits. I don't think that's the right answer.

In general, to a lot of people, the Abramelin working looks big and daunting and inaccessible. In reality, Abraham of Worms talks about a whole lot of things in his long story of his journey and his exposition of his ideas, many of which magicians who have done the Abramelin don't carry into their work once they've done the ritual, even if they argue for kind of an Abramelin purism. But in terms of the ritual itself, at least in the German version, a lot of it is kind of left to your own devices.

Your angel should be guiding you on a lot of specifics of what to do and how to do it. This is true too on the question of chastity. But, a lot of people want some human advice as well, so let's look at the question and why I don't think it's a deal breaker.

In general there are benefits to ritual chastity even outside of the grimoires and the Abramelin. Making a choice to be chaste for a time presents a feeling of self sacrifice and a test of being able to focus and execute your will despite other drives and desires. This feeling can be useful in creating a sense of capability in a ritual setting. Fasting can create the same kind of mental benefit. Piggy backing off of that idea, many of us also tend to associate asceticism with spirituality, even if our own spiritual practices don't call for it, because it's just a common cultural association. So these purifications can help us feel more spiritual because of those associations.

They can do more than this though.

Ritual chastity and fasting change our biological states, and so they create alterations in our mood and, depending upon the extremity, our awareness. These changes can be positive or negative depending upon how they affect us as individuals.

Along with these biological changes, refusing a bodily impulse can create an added focus, desire, and increased drive, but not necessarily for the thing we are denying. We can eliminate indulgence in sex and in pleasurable foods and focus the need for satisfaction on our spiritual desires. The energy that we would focus on fulfilling our bodily desires becomes focused on our angel, the tension we experience from desiring becomes a tension surrounding the desire for our angel. We become one pointed by eliminating those things which could otherwise distract us from our one pointedness.

Or at least, maybe we do.

For some people it might create a preoccupation with fulfilling the denied desire. Or they might become fixated on their success at denying themselves to the point that the exercise becomes more about self-restriction and less about orientation towards the goal. Fulfilling healthy human needs can keep us on track when doing things that are difficult because we alleviate a natural biological distraction. Most people can probably think back to adolescence and how much easier homework was if you took a few minutes of “me time” when focusing became otherwise impossible.

So yeah, there is potential utility and potential detriment in both choices, depending largely upon you as an individual.

The big thing, regardless of whether you end up being chaste or not chaste, is to not let physical sexuality and other physical desires subvert your focus and commitment to the ritual. It goes a little beyond that though...and because it goes a little beyond that, yeah, some of you might need to be chaste.

The Abramelin doesn't tell you to give up things just because they might become distracting. A lot of the rules regarding abstinence are pretty clearly modeled on ritual purity rules that occurred in other forms of magic. There is a significant overlap in my view between the Abramelin and the early Jewish mystical traditions associated with the Merkavah.

In the Merkavah tradition we find descriptions of Rabbis being pulled from visions of heaven by having a rag which touched a menstruating woman being brought into contact with them, because even that indirect disruption of their ritual purity was enough to make them no longer pure enough for angelic contact. In the associated apocryphal scriptures angels refer to man as smelling like a “white drop” or semen, suggesting that the angelic hatred of mankind stems from the offensive nature of our physicality and how filthy they perceive it to be. Angels are presented as being pretty anti-human in a lot of cases and this perception seems to creep into some elements of medieval and renaissance magic.

But this isn't always the case. In Liber Juratus angels don't hate humans, humans can do magic with angels because they share in their love for the creator. In Hermetic and Neo-Platonic worldviews it is again the human ability to reconnect to the divine or to mirror the divine image that drives our work with spirits. Even in Jewish magic it can be argued that God is the God of magic, and as that is the case humans do magic based upon God desiring it to be so, and so angels aid in that magic because it is in harmony with the divine will that man experience magic. Taking any of these view points, the idea that spooge disgusts angels so much that they need us to be chaste for 6 to 18 months in order to talk with us makes a lot less sense. In fact, if that were the case, everyone who achieves knowledge and conversation would have to maintain that level of purity, and that certainly isn't the case.

So why would you need to, or not need to be chaste?

In my experience, angels don't hate humans the way they do in stories. Rather angels hate the stupid shit humans do that gets in the way of humans being awesome. They hate when we are lazy, they hate when greed or lust for things distracts us from what we are supposed to be doing.

It would stand to reason that the real problem is when we try to fill our God sized holes with sensory indulgences so we can ignore the beauty and harmony of the cosmos despite the fact that engaging the cosmos would fill the hole.

Angels want us to be awesome. When they're accused of being dicks it's because they force us to work on ourselves in ways that can be difficult. People like working with demons because when you want something they say "sure, easy" but if you sit and have a chat with an angel, even if they'll help you out, a lot of the time they want to lead you to improve yourself or work in some way that will be beneficial to you from a big picture perspective rather than just looking at the specific instance you want help with.

Angels want you to be awesome.

When they look at you they see their creator, and they love their creator. When you aren't embodying who you are and who you can be it obscures the reflection of God in you. When you think on your own life, if you care about someone and see potential in them and they aren't working towards that potential, you want to help them get there, you want to push them a little, give them advice, maybe even be hard on them if it will help them. You want to see their success and all the glorious sense of completion that that success conveys. Same thing here.

The Holy Guardian Angel operates in this way even more so than other angels. Its job is wholly to get you to that point of awesomeness.

So again, in my experience, the angel directs you to fix stuff that you need to fix. In my presentations on preparing for the Abramelin I talk about getting your life in order, something which apparently a lot of people don't address when talking about this ritual. If you don't have stuff together in your life you'll have a lot of trouble committing to the work you need to do once your angel begins guiding you more fully. The more distracted you are by random problems the less focused you are on the work at hand. So part of preparing is really exploring yourself and seeing what work you need to do on you, but also looking at your life and seeing what fires you should put out or things you should situate in a more stable and balanced fashion. As you're prepping for the ritual you may find the angel even helps you with this.

As you get closer to the ritual the angel will also make it clear what things you should be giving up or what things you might need to add to your life in order to help straighten yourself out for him to connect with you. Personally, I used chastity as I described it above, as a means of focus and reorienting my drive and desire, but I only used it in the penitent days at the beginning of the ritual, and when preparing for and during the final phases of it, the stuff I had to change had more to do with healthy living. I have one friend who did the ritual and their angel was very clear that they needed to be chaste. A reduce in interest in sex followed the ritual for this individual, and so I would guess the angel felt that was something particular to that individual's needs. Another friend had to reduce consumption of meat, but not fully eliminate it, and had to get rid of alcohol, and their angel took measures during the working when this person stepped outside of those instructions to reign them back in. Once the ritual was done this person recognized that while consuming meat and alcohol was again ok, there was probably a need for a change in behavior from what it was prior to the ritual. I know a handful of well known magicians who successfully used Liber Samekh or variations thereon in lieu of doing the retreat based on either the French or German manuals, I doubt that they were all chaste during it.

In the end, trust your angel. If sex is a problem for you, your angel might inspire you towards a period of chastity...but it will probably be good for you and help you not just with your working but with other elements of life. If sex isn't a problem your angel probably won't be pressed about it so long as it isn't disrupting the ritual, and you consider points in the ritual where either chastity or sexual activity might be beneficial from a magical perspective, you can go ahead and keep having sex. If your problem is junk food, or meat, or alcohol, or gambling, or shoe shopping, or whatever, your angel will let you know, and the need to be chaste regarding that problem will be pretty clear. But it's between you and your angel. So if your angel hasn't told you sex isn't ok, it's probably ok, but like all things, in moderation.

So, one thing that you can skip the moderation on, is this blog. We're going to be running a special series of posts starting this week. So like and follow us on Facebook, and please share with your friends, so everyone can enjoy the special series. And if you have questions about seeking your HGA feel free to leave a comment.