Thoughts on the Stele of Jeu While Pulling into My Favorite Pizza Place

The refrain which Mathers set in place in his Bornless Ritual in lieu of the various apotropaic statements in the Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist is a pretty catchy, easy to memorize conjuration.

 

As most people reading this will know, it’s not the way the original is set up. Mathers sets this repetition up over and over, so that each time you go through a series of divine names you reiterate this intention. But it isn’t the way the original is set up.

 

The original has commands like “delivery him from the spirit who restrains him,” “listen to me and turn away this daimon,” or “save the soul.”

 

The Mathers version shits the focus by reiterating over and over the incantation:

 

“Hear me and make all spirits subject unto me so that every spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether, upon the Earth and Under the Earth, On Dry Land and In the Water, of Whirling Air and of Rushing Fire, and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient unto me.”

 

The translation by D.E. Aune provides the text which inspired Mathers’s refrain translated as such:

 

“Subject to me all daimons, so that every daimon whether heavenly or aerial or earthly, or subterranean or terrestrial or aquatic, might be obedient unto me and every enchantment and scourge which is from God.”

 

The two texts are pretty different.

 

I think we usually think about how the repetition of Mathers’s version, and how it doesn’t match the original highlights how the Mathers text is a departure from the source material. I don’t think we talk much about what the differences highlight or what this portion tells us about magic. This is unfortunate, because both the comparison and the text itself tell us some interesting things.

 

The Mathers version repeats the “Hear me” adjuration several times throughout, essentially in conjunction with each series of divine names. It takes the form of a conjuration through the link to these names in the sense that all spirits in all places and all powers and acts of divine force are bound to the will of the magician.

 

When viewed as a prayer or ritual for achieving identification or communion with one’s divine self or the genius appointed over the magician with the understanding that a strong connection with this spiritual faculty or power will result in the ability to command spirits it makes sense that the prayer should focus on this concept as its main goal rather than the apotropaic elements found in the original.

 

Crowley’s use of the invocation as a preliminary to the Goetia of Solomon could make sense in this light. The Ars Goetia does not rely on the magician calling upon God prior to working. Coming from a Golden Dawn background Crowley could have seen this as a way of engaging that standard Solomonic step of the conjuration process.

 

The original presents this in conjunction with a formula to be written on papyrus and made into a paper crown. The magician adorns themselves with the paper crown on which the formula has been written and then says the “Subject to me all daimons (spirits)…” passage.

 

This is presented as a preparation for the ritual rather than something done throughout the ritual.

 

The Stele is used to constrain and remove a vexing spirit. By having spirits of all manners made subject to the magician before he begins he is able to command the vexing spirit since it too would be made subject to him.

 

The main goal of the Stele is the subjugation and removal of the vexing spirit and thus the authority and power to remove the spirit and the imprecation to remove the spirit and provide relief are the elements routinely repeated, though in varied manners, throughout the Stele.

 

The focus is one of the core differences between the two rituals – and in effect and manner that diverge enough that one might view them as two rituals; but again there are differences in wording in this passage as well as similarities which are illustrative.

 

The Mathers version lays out a cosmography or spirit ecology, as does the traditional version. As presented by Mathers we come to understand that the world is divided into certain regions or spaces and spirits reside in each of these.

 

The Firmament is given first as it is the highest of these. It might be interpreted as heavenly, or it might be interpreted as the starry dome between the heavens and the material world. If taking it as the latter this suggests that the spirits of the heavenly spheres, or the starry realms might be subject to the magician but those spirits beyond that space amid the waters beyond the firmament forming the heavenly space of the creator, are not subject to the magician or to this spell.

 

The Ether comes next. Mathers would have understood this likely in terms presented by Levi, and taken the Ether as the Astral Light, or the uniting spiritual space between things and just beyond the perceptible reality.

 

Upon the Earth and Under the Earth divides the world into terrestrial and chthonic spaces and notes that spirits in both spaces are subject to the magician. Elemental spirits, intelligences, earth bound spirits, nature spirits etc. fall within the spirits upon the earth. Under the Earth might include devils, the dead, and a host of other spirits. The Golden Dawn’s treatment of the wide array of spirits was fairly limited and I can only imagine that Mathers’s imagination and grasp of the wide world of spirits is accurately reflected in what spirits the Golden Dawn touched upon.

 

Upon the earth we find the world further divided into dry land, water, whirling air, and rushing fire. Mathers definitely adds poetry which is not present in D. E. Aune’s translation, and which I then assume may not have been in the original. This divide gives the spirits upon the earth into four elemental kingdoms. This might have been viewed in a medieval light, with the elements forming four aires differing in density and altitude, each being inhabited by spirits of a different character. More likely, this was taken in a classical or Paracelsian light with elemental beings who were formed of the particular natures of the elements inhabiting and shaping the physical elements. This would tie to the elemental kings found in the Knowledge Lectures and the Paracelsian elementals which the Golden Dawn took from Levi.

 

Aune’s rendering paints a similar but different picture of spirit ecology.

 

Those spirits which appear in the heavens are not given with any terminology which separates the heavens as a particularly special place distinct from the more natural spaces in which we find spirits. Nor are the heavens given with terminology which divides one heaven from another. We don’t have a distinction between heavens and ether, so there is not an idea of a heavenly realm and then within the world a separate spiritual reality distinct from the material or perceptible reality.

 

The heavens are perhaps more imminent rather than the emanant heaven in Mathers.

 

The elemental spaces and the chthonic spaces are presented together rather than in a separate clause. Again, this suggests a lack of severe distinction. What is below the ground is still part of the world rather than a wholly separate world in this context. This mirrors that the heavens are also presented in the same clause as the elemental spaces and are likely contiguous with the material world rather than distinct therefrom. With this in mind it is plausible that the spirits were seen as imminently real and present rather than remotely present with influence echoed into our world as we often see in later spiritologies.

 

The elemental spaces do not include fire. This lack of fire indicates that these are not elemental spaces but rather the three spaces common to ancient thought. The land, the sea, and the sky, with the space beneath the land and the space beyond the sky included. The character of the spirits considered might change when we do not consider them of a nature or composition related to the elements but rather nymphs and spirits living in the waters, those running through fields and trees, and those inhabiting the winds and clouds.

 

While the purpose of the two rituals differs – Mathers looks to achieve a divine status to command spirits generally, the Hieroglyphist seeks to alleviate affliction caused by a spirit; elements of their operation are similar.

 

“He is the Lord of the Gods, He is the Lord of the inhabited world, He is the one whom the winds fear…” – tr. Aune.

 

“This is the Lord of the Gods: This is the Lord of the Universe: This is He Whom the Winds fear.” – tr. Mathers.

 

Both work by way of calling upon authority of the biggest divine or spiritual force possible to command other spirits. Both use a host of divine names to either suggest the totality of divine authority and therefore the highest authority, or perhaps to use enough names that the secret and powerful true name of this God is likely included amongst them.

To an English speaking reader one might interpret “He is” as speaking objectively, describing this spirit, and “This is” subjectively, and speaking as the spirit. Sometimes pronouns might be translated either as a subjective or a demonstrative pronoun, so I would assume that this is the difference here. Both spells go on to speak as the powerful spirit and claim identification with the spirit so that the magician can act on that spirit’s authority.

 

In that regard, calling on a powerful divine spirit and self-identifying therewith, the two rituals are the same.

 

This is also an example of that method of magic existing in ancient resources. We have examples throughout the PGM where the magician claims a connection to the mythology of the spirit or god as a way of establishing friendship so that the spirit or god acts in the magician’s favor while commanding other spirits (this is common in spells involving Set-Typhon.) In this case the magician utilizes some element of that…he claims to know the secret name, he claims to be the god’s prophet who the God has already given power and secrets to, he claims to be the messenger serving the God. His initial imprecation for the god to listen to him is based on the idea that he holds a particular status and deserves the god’s attention because of that. This then evolves into stoking up the god by describing how powerful he is and chanting his names until the magician is finally ready to pull the big guns out and say “hey, actually, I AM you.”

 

The overall pattern of the ritual is exemplary of this approach to magic, in addition to showing us that it is one of the ways spirit magic was worked historically.

 

It also illustrates that the idea of commanding a spirit because a bigger stronger spirit is on your side is not a late addition to magic.

 

Sometimes we look at anything that might be bullying or aggressive spirit work as something stemming from a Christian worldview. If we look to older Pagan magics we’ll find that you befriended spirits, you worshipped the bosses of the spirits and befriended them, and then used your relationship with those bosses to establish new friendships and get them to trade with you and do business with you.

 

Sure, this is a good way to do magic and sometimes in some cases it works, and we can see some historical modes of working that way both in Pagan and in Christian contexts.

 

We also see threats, escalations, bindings, leveraging authority and power of divine rulers, of enemies of the spirit, or terrifying monsterous spirits throughout ancient magic in various parts of the ancient world.

 

The vexing spirit here isn’t removed because you’re buddies with Ossoronophris, and Ossoronophris is buddies with Orias, and he introduces you to Orias, and you become buddies, and you show Orias that instead of eating the food of or sucking the blood of the chief masons’s son he should just bro-out with you at Chili’s because you’re all friends now. The vexing spirit is removed because the God of the Void is inhabiting you and he rules the entire universe and he commands the spirit out with his divine scourge. This God hates evil, he makes lightning flash, and thunder roll, and his mouth is literally on fire.

This spell is an act of aggression.

 

But it’s a spell which is a reasonable act of aggression. The spirit present is doing something bad.

 

The spell is aggression, but it isn’t violence. There is no chain of the spirits here. We aren’t cursing and burning the vexing spirit, or the spirits being subjected to us.

 

It’s more walk loudly, and also have a big stick, and flex some muscles, and everyone will decide working with you is the way to go.

 

Going back to the differences between Mathers and the Hieroglyphist, there is an element of this authority and potential for violence which differs.

 

The way Mathers renders the translation he says:

 

“Hear me and make all spirits…and every spell and scourge of God…obedient unto me.”

 

God’s ability to work in the world and his ability to project wrath upon any force which disobeys are being subjected to the magician along with the spirits. Essentially, if spirits do no listen, the magician possesses God’s arsenal to use to make spirits listen.

 

Aune presents it as:

 

“every daimon…might be obedient unto me and every enchantment and scourge which is from God.”

 

The way it is rendered here, the enchantments and scourges of God are still in God’s possession, but the spirits will be obedient to them. Those powers are not made obedient to the magician but are highlighted as something present which could force obedience if needed.

 

Since the magician has called upon this god, and even identified therewith, the tools God has to command spirits are on the magician’s side.

 

To me it would seem that in one instance, the divine power to enforce divine authority is taken by the magician as his own weapon, he might use those directly upon his goals or he might command spirits, or he might use them to command spirits.

 

In the other instance, the magician has God in his corner, and if the magician can’t command the spirits God is there to command them and those divine tools for force as present to ensure that the spirits follow the magician’s command.

 

The difference might feel subtle, but I don’t think it is. Particularly if we consider that the Mathers version is intended to be used repeatedly to achieve a maintained state of connection and authority.

 

The question of what the original intention was would have to be seen by looking at the Greek. Unfortunately, when I did my degree in Classics I focused on Latin and Rome so I can’t address the peculiarities of Greek. In Latin, there are certainly ways in which a statement might result in the translator rendering the word order in different ways which could have this kind of change in meaning. The determination would be are “spell and scourge of god” direct objects which are being made subject to the magician or are they indirect objects co-equal to the magician to whom the spirits are made subject.

 

My purpose here isn’t so much to get into whether or not Mathers’s translation is right or wrong, or whether or in what ways Aune’s translation is better. I imagine Mathers took liberties with his translation. He seems to do that consistently, and that would have been the norm at the time in which he was working. On some level, the job of the translator is to render the piece into a way suited to the contemporary reader’s capability and stylistic elements may factor into that.

 

My intention is more to look at how the differences tell us about the magic being worked, and what Aune’s translation suggests about ancient magic working on the presumption that Aune is rendering a fairly accurate translation.

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Smoke and Fire: Tweaking Magical Rituals

This post will talk about ritual tweaks and substitutions in general, but then will present some options for Luminarium.

 

A discussion came up on a Facebook Forum, Ceremonial Magic School, in which someone asked about options to use in magic different from incense. Sometimes people are in places where candles, or incense might not be options. For some people, incense may be an irritant.

 

The original poster suggested that incense was a representation for fire, and wondered if you can use a candle for fire, and then oil passed through a humidifier to represent water.

 

This starts at a good place. The question addresses the purpose of the item being changed and what else would change along with it. Anytime we’re changing things in a ritual, that’s the first step. One of the better things grimoire purists say is that we can’t change what’s in the grimoire because we don’t know why it’s there. They’re partially right. If we don’t know why a ritual says to do a thing, or at least what that thing is accomplishing in the ritual, then we can’t change the thing. If we change things without understanding we might remove components that are needed without creating something else that does what the component was needed for.

 

We’ve all seen this with the countless bad re-workings of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram that used to flood the internet, and now still sometimes infect some newer books of Ceremonial Magic. People look at the base thing they think the ritual is for and change things based on that, rather than looking at the specific components and their purpose in context to understand how to tweak those.

 

So, can we tweak the grimoires? If we know how the thing we want to change works and why it’s there, then yes, sort of.

 

Can we know why something is there and how it works since the texts don’t explain that?

 

Well, sometimes the texts kind of do if you really read them. The prayers, the consecrations, the description of how things are used, they can begin to inform us. If we spend years studying a text, studying related texts, studying the texts that led to it and the texts that came from it we should over time develop some understanding. If we study the theology and metaphysical ideas that form the context of the grimoires, the liturgical corollaries, the earlier forms of magic that led to them and later forms of magic that grew from them, we should over time develop some understanding. If we learn other parallel traditions of magic and work earnestly and ardently at the traditions described in the grimoires, over time, we should develop some understanding. If we don’t, what are we even doing?

 

Now, if we understand how and why something works, we can address whether or not it’s needed or helpful or superfluous.

 

If it’s needed, we might not be able to change it. If we can change it, we’ll need to change it to something very similar and we definitely can’t omit it.

 

If it’s helpful, we can probably make a change to something that does something similar. We might be able to make a change to something that helps differently and might be better suited to our goal. We might be able to omit it, but it will probably reduce some element of effectiveness or make the work harder for us if we admit it.

 

If it’s superfluous we can omit it, we can keep it if we like it, we can change it if the change doesn’t impede what we’re doing. I would be least inclined to interpret something as superfluous, unless it really clearly is demonstrated as such there is a possibility you’re missing an element if you’re finding things you want to get rid of to be superfluous.

 

While we can analyze things and figure out stuff that can be tweaked and substituted…we need to understand that those tweaks and substitutions will make a change. If you have a chicken tender, you might sweeten and moisten it with barbecue sauce. If the pepper in barbecue sauce irritates you, then you can sweeten and moisten it with honey mustard, or even just honey. All three will do the job, but they’ll all do it differently. They each bring different things to the table. The result will be different, but they’ll each be effective. You might even prefer the changed result.

 

So, in the example posed in the original question, the incense was being used to represent fire. So, if we’re setting up an altar with representations of the elements, we’re probably not looking at grimoire magic. Something influenced by Golden Dawn magic, or some kind of standard NeoPagan ritual magic would generally have a candle to represent fire, a bowl of water for water, incense for air, and a stone or some physical thing to represent earth. The question is probably being asked in that vein. So, if we’re swapping out incense, we’d need something else to represent air. If we’re looking to just represent air, a fan, or a feather might suffice. It we’re looking for something to bring substance, life, and character to the air, then we need something that more closely mimics incense and provides a scent. If we’re looking to provide a substance for the powers we encounter to use, then incense might need to remain our choice.

 

Some of the options that came up involved using oil, and one poster mentioned plans to try Luminarium with oil, and so I thought it might make sense to talk about some options for tweaks in Luminarium, since one of the points of the text is to be adaptable.

 

Incense. In Luminarium, the incense is used partially to tinct the space and bring it into harmony with the nature of the forces being conjured, and in part it is used so that the fire is transmitting substance into the spiritual to give some benefit to the spirit. It harmonizes the nature, pleases the spirit and helps to empower it, and it creates some link between the earthly and the ephemeral.

 

Three options can help with this. Oil in a diffuser would help tinct the space, although perhaps more slowly and not as potently. It would not have the thick and powerful diffuse presence of smoke, nor would it have the heat to agitate the space. The scent might still be pleasing to the spirit, but the way the incense helps empower the spirit might not be as present here. The link between the earthly and the ephemeral would also be there but maybe not as clearly, you’re not moving something from solid earthy material to smoke by the power of fire.

 

We can offset some of these missing elements. Maybe add a candle for the elements fire would add to the incense. Maybe a shot of alcohol, or an offering of flour to help feed and empower the spirit.

 

Maybe instead of an oil diffuser we use an oil warmer with a candle. The scent might be more powerful, and you’d still have tincting the space. You’d have the warmth of the fire to help agitate the space and bring heat to building the space. The scent would still please the spirit. You might have some of the same empowerment, but you’d still use the substantive nature of the incense smoke, so maybe not as much. The movement between the material and the ephemeral would be more present than with the diffuser, in my opinion, but not as clearly indicated as with the incense.

 

Oil dissolved in alcohol like a cologne might be an option. You could spray some around, but also leave some to evaporate. The alcohol is going to evaporate more readily so the movement between phases of being and the connection to the spirit world that gives might be clearer, alcohol is often used for this purpose in many traditions. The alcohol itself can also be an offering, but something substantive might be good in addition. Adding a candle might still be useful, but obviously, don’t spray alcohol into spaces with flame.

 

Alternative to adding a candle, instead of spraying the alcohol with the oil dissolved in it, some books on witchcraft used to talk about making a blue fire on the altar with cologne. The blue fire being a representation of sacred presence. The fire carries the scent of the cologne. The various benefits of the oil or incense and the benefits of the fire used with the incense would largely be there, but it would lack the smoke and the substance the smoke brings to the ritual.

 

An added element of using a sacred flame would be the option to combine this with the lamp. The light from the fire could be used similarly to the light from the lamp with the Guardian Angel invoked through this flame. If choosing this option, you might want to use your temple incense, or an oil matching your temple incense, to scent this alcohol rather than your planetary scent. You’d still need something for the planetary scent if doing this.

 

We’ve talked previously about using a candle instead of the lamp. This wouldn’t be dissimilar. The only real loss by switching either to the candle or the sacred flame would be the inability to adjust the level of light case by the fire like you can with a hurricane lantern or other adjustable wick lantern.

 

If using this method, using the sacred flame, you might be able to lean into tweaks to make the ritual more pagan. If you’re looking for ways to reduce the Christian components and increase the Greek ones, or even go with some other pagan tradition, or blend Luminarium with Wicca, the fire would more easily fit that structure than the lamp.

 

In some forms of pagan rituals, the sacred flame is the presence of the divine. It is often divine in and of itself, for example, Hestia is embodied in the temple flame and the hearth fire. Some view Bride to similarly reside in the flame in Celtic ritual. The flame in those cases can be viewed as a beacon for the gods as well as the portal through which they interact with us. This is pretty similar to how we use the lamp to interact with the Guardian Angel. The light of the lamp becomes a vessel through which the angel can illuminate us and it is then able to help communicate with us and with the spirit so that we may more clearly see and understand the spirit.  

 

I would still advocate working with your Guardian Angel in a pagan context. The sacred flame can be a vessel for your angel, or you can work with the god of the flame along with your angel for additional sanctification and protection. The god of the flame can also help open the space between the spirit world and our world. This is not dissimilar from the use of flame to provide heat so the spirits can break through the sea between worlds and speak with us. But in this instance the divine power within the flame intentionally opens the space rather than the power of the flame being offered to the spirit to use.

 

Depending upon what spirits you’re attempting to call, this kind of tweak may make a lot of sense. If you’re calling on spirits that remain tied to pagan cultures and beliefs instead of those from Christian, Judaic, and Islamic cultures creating tweaks that lean into the pagan elements present in the ritual may be well suited to your goal. If you’re calling angels it might be less the case.

 

Again, whatever tweaks you make will change elements of how it works. So the flavor will shift a bit. That can be good, or it can be bad, it depends on what you’re doing and what effects you’re looking for.

 

Now if you read through this and thought “this is getting really eclectic and is starting to move further outside of the grimoire tradition,” that’s good. These examples are drawing on sources from a few magical strands. It’s good to be aware of that. Depending on what you’re doing you may want to keep things tighter. You might be better off going a bit wider in your influence though. Again, it’s going to depend on the system with which you’re starting and what your end goal is. It’s going to depend on the character of the communication you want, the types of spirits you’re calling, and the type of effect you’re looking to get from working with them. It will also depend upon your needs.

 

Doing things by rote isn’t understanding or mastering them. Changing things needlessly or willy nilly is also problematic and may not be effective. The balance is developing understanding and negotiating reasonable changes when they make sense. Negotiating can be a matter of exploring your needs and desires and making informed choices suited to those. Negotiating can also be approaching the spirits, working with divination, or working through a diviner with a relationship with the spirits, and grasping what changes and substitutions they are willing to accept…as has been done in traditional cultures with traditional magic throughout the world.

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Ritual Drama and Missing the Boat

When I was a teenager I was preparing to run my first group ritual. I was probably 15 or 16, I'd been doing rituals on my own, formally from books for about 4 or 5 years at that point, but being more or less a kid I hadn't had a team to work with. There was no Scooby Gang ala Buffy and unlike Scott McCall I wasn't alpha of a supernatural pack (yet), despite how much TV makes it look like high school is one supernatural group play date after another. 

Around my sophomore year of high school I began expanding my group of Pagan and magic curious friends and we lived in a magical world of hormone soaked epicness complete with our own little magical adventures. We eventually decided to unofficially become "Pagan Youth Group" and have special outings for magic kids only...mostly hanging at the mall and witch shops. And our first official unofficial outing was going to include a Celtic Reconstructionist Bealtain ritual which I was writing. 

Proud of my first attempt at a group ritual I sent the script to Ceisiwr Serith (author of Pagan Family, A Book of Pagan Prayer, and a few other titles) to get his feedback. In that feedback he gave me some really important advice "Remember this isn't a Protestant service, you don't need to give a sermon to try and teach a congregation." Ritual isn't preaching, it isn't Sunday school it doesn't have to be, and shouldn't be just a verbal recounting of a religion's ideals or history or mythos. 

Cei's advice on this (as with many things he taught me) has stuck with me such that here I am 20 years later recalling that first attempt and his guidance. 

On the other end of the spectrum, as an adult I recall one of my early experiences of group ritual magic in which a magician in the local community exclaimed during practice - with an attempt at dramatic gravitas: "remember, this. Is. THEATER!"

I recall being wholly unimpressed. 

Now, as I write this, I've been working in a group for 17 years, I've been an ordained priest for 7 years, I ran the Pagan student Union at my college for 5 years, so I have a lot of experience writing group rituals, doing well established group rituals, and being in or watching people's original group rituals. 

I have seen and been in several clumsy rituals, even a couple of my attempts have been clumsy. Group rituals are tough sometimes because you have to balance having an effective ritual with satisfying the group's desire to enjoy the ritual, to feel like they got to participate, to feel entertained. 

These goals often don't serve each other. 

You get a lot of people who toss in a Eucharist or burning an intention or putting a personal item on the altar as easy ways to include people. Sometimes these elements make sense sometimes they're a little forced but typically they're an attempt to keep the magic there while managing group needs. 

You also get people who essentially produce very overdetermined plays which don't do anything operatively in terms of magic or spirituality...they just present ritualized drama, they engage in theater, they maybe beat you over the head with a message.

Things like that aren't magic, they aren't ritual, and they're in the bargain basement bins in terms of religion. 

If your ritual acts don't do anything, if they are just a show, if they are just communicating an idea, they aren't magic and I'd argue might only barely be ritual if at all. 

Now you can easily cite academic books which equate ritual and drama and look at ritual as psychology. But these books are generally written by secular researchers looking to explain human behavior in a secular context. There is a lot of useful stuff magicians and Pagans can take from the academic press but an ethnographic bias or contextualizing religious practice to fit secular concepts are not elements which help us. 

We can cite the relationship between theater and religion in Greece...clearly with that in mind, ritual plays can be magical religious rituals. Right?

Maybe. 

I've definitely done rituals which involve elements of drama and theater, but the point is always to create a real magical impact. Spiritual forces are engaged and applied to accomplish something. There is a goal beyond a message. Theatrical elements can be tools used by a magician, but they must be used towards a magical purpose. Your actions and words, your costume, your space, these can contribute to theater and to magic even simultaneously. But the theater shouldn't replace the magic. 

If we're doing mystery plays we're not doing a play with a clever twist to reflect upon, we're confronting spiritual powers that change us through directly experiencing them.

I was thinking about all this as I was showering this morning. I was thinking about rituals and communities. It made me think of a ritual I read recently by a pretty secular Thelemic author. Putting aside culturally insensitivity problems in it the ritual is basically a series of quasi-history speeches. Nothing really happens. It is literally a pageant. 

To me that's sad. Killing the experience of the mysteries, deadening the fires at the core of magical practice in favor of a sort of psychological Protestantism is the work of "The Great Sorcery" the aim of the Black Brotherhood. It moves us to a complacent and distracted place where we get mired like a fool with our "one one one". 

So remember, ritual isn't Sunday school, magic isn't Protestantism.

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.

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

A lot of people look at work with the Holy Guardian Angel as something specifically connected to seeking Knowledge and Conversation. Knowledge and Conversation is a particular sort of relationship one can enter into with the Holy Guardian Angel, but it is not the only interaction which exists. Work with the Holy Guardian Angel can be as simple as an acknowledgement, or reference at the beginning of a ritual to connect with it, or a prayer for its assistance, or presence, or guidance. Or it can be a full on conjuration for the purpose of asking it questions, communing, or asking for assistance. It's useful to make the angel a part of your magic early on whatever approach to connecting with it you're using.

The ritual presented here is one I've been working with for about 9 or 10 years. It utilizes elements of the Golden Dawn tradition, Roman Catholicism, and of course, the Merkavah. In my view the Sar HaAnpin, or the Prince of the Face/Prince of the Presence, and the related SarHaTorah, the Prince of the Torah, serve in roles similar to the HGA, and there are ritual elements which overlap between the Abramelin and the Merkavah work with these angels...although these elements show up in lots of spirit magic, the Abramelin claims to be a separate tradition of Jewish magic outside of the Kabbalah, so Merkavah derived grimoire work could relate to the origins of the Abramelin. This would also fit well with the probable time, location, and author of the Abramelin.

In any case, this ritual can be done individually, or its parts can be divided for a group. It is used to conjure the Holy Guardian Angel by use of a Conjuration of the Metatron. I hope you enjoy it, I'd love to hear about any response folks have to working with it.

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The Lamp Upon the Throne

VH

Participants enter.

The Doorkeeper anoints them with water and oil individually as they enter. In response to being anointed each participant says

"Sprinkle me with hyssop, Oh Lord, and I shall be clean, wash me and 1 shall be whiter than snow."

The participants continue to the center of the temple and are seated around the central altar.

One of the participants takes the sword goes to the east and proceeds through the quarters tracing and vibrating the appropriate god names.

East: AL

South: YH

West: AGLA

North: ADNI

He returns to the center and says:

"By the holy names AL, YH, AGLA, and ADNI, by which the prophets wrought miracles and by which the world is bound together and then is set to trembling and shaking, which form the foundations of the Heavens, I banish this temple."

He proceeds to the East and then through the quarters tracing the rose cross in each, he returns to the center when he is finished and says:

"By the light of the cross I seal this temple against the unholy and the profane."

He returns to the center and returns the sword to the Karcist.

The Karcist kneels before the altar bearing the bread and wine and raises his arms

"My beloved is white and ruddy, pre-eminent above ten thousand.

His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are curled, and black as a raven.

His eyes are like doves beside the water-brooks; washed with milk, and fitly set.

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as banks of sweet herbs; his lips are as lilies,

dropping with flowing myrrh.

His hands are as rods of gold set with beryl; his body is as polished ivory overlaid with

sapphires.

His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold; his aspect is like

Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.

His mouth is most sweet; yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend"

The Karcist rises, and makes crosses over the bread and wine:

"Beloved, bless + and consecrate + this vessel of bread and wine by the power of your right hand and the mercy of your left; and grant, through the merits of St. John, the Gnostic, that all who drink of it may find wisdom and understanding through splendor. As the blessed John drank the poisoned potion without any ill effects, so may all who today drink the blessed wine in honor of the Beloved be delivered from the poison of corruption.

By the name YHVH ELOAH VA-DAAT+, bless this creature of grain and vine, so that it may be a life-giving medicine to all who use it; and grant by your grace that all who taste of it may enjoy bodily and spiritual health in calling on your holy name; in their search for their own highest light."

The Karcist steps away. A participant rises, makes a Yod over the bread and wine.

"The spark of life and motion "

He then intones the names YHVH TZVOT, HANIEL, HANIEL, HAGIEL, KEDEMEL,

charging the bread and wine as he does so

He sits, another participant rises and traces a Heh over the bread and wine.

"The shape of light and joy"

He then intones the names ELHM TZVOT, MICHAEL, RAPHAEL, TIRIEL,

TAPHARTHARATH charging the bread and wine as he does so

He sits, another participant rises and traces a Vav over the bread and wine

"The form of purpose and direction"

He then intones the names SHADDAI EL CHAI, GAVRIEL, GAVRIEL, MALKAH BE TARSHISIM VE-AD RUACHOTH SCHECHALIM, SCHAD BARSCHEMOTH

charging the bread and wine as he does so

He sits, another participant rises and traces a Heh over the bread and wine

"The body of man upon earth"

He then intones the names ADNI HA-ARETZ, SANDAPHALON, MICHAEL, KERUB,

PHORLAKH charging the bread and wine as he does so

He sits, the Karcist returns to the alter, he traces Shin above the bread and wine, he raises it saying

"May this spark the lamp which is the light of the world, by the names, YHVH ELOAH VA-DAAT, RAPHAEL, MICHAEL, NAKHIEL, SORATH"

He replaces the bread and wine, breaks a piece of the bread and eats it, drinks the wine, and passes the bread on. Each participant breaks a piece of the bread and eats it and takes a goblet of wine and drinks it.

A participant goes to the South and traces Yod and intones the name MICHAEL, he proceeds to the West traces Heh and intones the name GAVRIEL, he crosses to the East traces Vav and intones the name RAPHAEL, and then ends in the North traces a Heh and intones the name URIEL. He returns to his seat.

The Karcist rises, faces the East, all sit in meditation, the Karcist says the invocation:

"I conjure you, angels of dread, fear, and shaking,

who are appointed to hurt those who are not pure

and clean and desire the services of my heavenly

servants — I conjure you in the name of YHVH

ELOAH VA-DAAT, who is mighty over all, and

rules over all, and everything is in His hands, that

you do not hurt us, nor terrify us, nor frighten us;

verily, in the name of the powerful one."

"Eternal, Mighty, Holy El, God only-supreme

You who are the Self-originated, the

Beginningless One Incorruptible,

Spotless, Uncreated, Immaculate, Immortal, Self-

complete, Self-illuminating,

Without father, without mother, unbegotten,

Exalted, Fiery One! Lover of men, Benevolent

One, Bountiful One,

Jealous over me, and very compassionate, Eli, My

God,

Eternal, Jehovah Zebaioth, Very Glorious El, El,

El, El, Jah El!

You are the One whom my soul has loved!

Eternal Protector, Shining like Fire, Whose voice

is like the thunder, Whose look is like the

lightning,

You are the All-seeing One, Who receives the

prayers of all such as honour You,

And turn away the requests of those who

embarrass You with their provocations

Who dissolves the confusions of the world

which arise from the ungodly and the righteous

mixed up in the confusion of the corruptible age,

And renewing the age of the righteous,

Shine O Lord, shine as a light, even as that light

with which you clothed Yourself on the first day of

Creation,

Shine as the Light of the Morning on Your

creatures

And let it be Day upon Earth,

For in these heavenly dwelling places there is no

need of any other light

Than the unspeakable splendour from the light of

Your Countenance,

O answer my prayer, O be well-pleased with it,

O accept my sacrifice which You have prepared

for me to offer,

Accept me favourably, and show me, teach me, all

that You have promised!"

All meditate in the light of the beloved until they feel that they are finished at which point they leave the temple silently.