Well, it’s been a while since I’ve given any updates on my Spirit Pot operation with Bune of the Goetia, so here’s some more recent information.
When I first put the pot together, I was looking to get rich quick. He was the best-looking prospect of the Goetic entities, because his description says “he giveth riches to a man,” and I wanted $7MUSD and change. Things didn’t quite turn out th
I received a bit of feedback this morning from on the grimoire from one of the recipients. He said some generally kind and praising things, and then said:
"Now the criticism part of the e-mail. I would have liked some more angels in the grimoire or maybe some magical advice or guidance the archangels have themselves given to you. Have you tried lesser angels in this system? If so record what you did and your results so that the readers can experiment for themselves. "
I think this is excellent advice, and would be a worthy addition to future revisions.
Now I’m mentioning this because the guy went on to say, "I hate handing out negative advice I am always afraid someone will take it the wrong way."
I want to tell everyone who got a draft of the grimoire: I write for a living. I have VERY thick skin. Satan is a kind and gentle friend compared to the editors I’ve worked with in the past.
This is NOT negative advice. This is constructive criticism. I need honest feedback to make it the best it can be. I’ll be charging for this thing, and I want it to be worth the money.
I received a bit of feedback this morning from on the grimoire from one of the recipients. He said some generally kind and praising things, and then said:
"Now the criticism part of the e-mail. I would have liked some more angels in the grimoire or maybe some magical advice or guidance the archangels have themselves given to you. Have you tried lesser angels in this system? If so record what you did and your results so that the readers can experiment for themselves. "
I think this is excellent advice, and would be a worthy addition to future revisions.
Now I’m mentioning this because the guy went on to say, "I hate handing out negative advice I am always afraid someone will take it the wrong way."
I want to tell everyone who got a draft of the grimoire: I write for a living. I have VERY thick skin. Satan is a kind and gentle friend compared to the editors I’ve worked with in the past.
This is NOT negative advice. This is constructive criticism. I need honest feedback to make it the best it can be. I’ll be charging for this thing, and I want it to be worth the money.
The Guf is the lowest form of soul in some kabbalistic cosmologies. It consists of the actual body we wrap ourselves in. The word “guf” is the source of the English word “goofy,” so you can get an idea of how this soul is viewed in the cosmology of things.
I was talking to a friend today about the horrifyingly embarrassing moments that crop up in my mind as I’m falling asleep, eliciting an audible groan or whimper. I was relieved to know that I’m not the only one that experiences these things, but that doesn’t really help get rid of the horror that still comes when I remember these kinds of events.
The best example I have is when I went down to the end of a shooting range to hang a paper target, and the drill sergeant guy yelled “CEASE FIRE!!!!” at the top of his considerable lungs to get everyone else (who were still shooting) to take a break so I didn’t get killed. Everyone looked over at me, and I’m standing there like an idiot where about thirty people were shooting. Not a happy moment.
What gets me is that this happened almost a decade ago, and to this day, I groan out loud remembering it. I’ve tried to “reclaim” that part of my brain to get rid of this response. Kraig has a retroactive magick section (I think) in his Modern Magick book, and I tried that. I tried going back and reliving the moment in my mind, trying to replace it with a different memory. I’ve tried rationalizing that I’d never been to a shooting range before, I was at the far end of the shooting range, and everyone else was at the other side, where I had assumed they wouldn’t shoot me… but nothing’s worked. It’s always in that light hypnogoguic state between waking and sleeping that I remember standing there in the crisp autumn wind with a crowd made up of fathers and sons and war vets looking at me like I was Forrest, Forrest Gump.
My friend suggested that we can’t forget this kind of thing for a reason, that it serves some purpose. I can see how it can aid survival to never forget how stupid it is to steal a dinosaur’s egg while you think the thing is sleeping, but this was just embarrassing. Socially embarrassing. Sure, we’re pack animals, and it’s required to not do something stupid in public to not get ostracized… but that’s stretching it a bit.
So on a seemingly unrelated tangent, I was reading through Plotinus’ Fifth Ennead. Not too far in, it says:
“A double discipline must be applied if human beings in this pass are to be reclaimed, and brought back to their origins, lifted once more towards the Supreme and One and First.”
“Reclaimed” jumped out at me. I had literally just been talking about reclaiming, so looking for an answer to this question, I read on…
“There is the method, which we amply exhibit elsewhere, declaring the dishonour of the objects which the Soul holds here in honour; the second teaches or recalls to the soul its race and worth; this latter is the leading truth, and, clearly brought out, is the evidence of the other.”
So there are two disciplines required to accomplish the returning to the Source, God, which sums up Plotinus’ idea of what I think of as the Great Work. The discipline of stating the dishonour of things the Soul holds dear here, and the remembrance of the race and worth of the Soul.
Respect of others is what my Guf-Soul holds dear, so dear that an embarrassing moment haunts me for years, permanently ingrained in my neural paths. Dishonouring the “need for respect from others,” (hmmm, pride, perhaps?) isn’t too difficult. I recognize that the opinions of those rednecks at that moment aren’t really that important.
Teaching the Soul its race and worth though… How does this apply in the context of a mortifying memory? The Soul in the Guf at that moment was of God and was God. The value of that Soul is inestimable. How can teaching the Soul its race and value make the horror of that moment go away?
I don’t have an answer, but I do know that I was particularly Guf-ey that day. I’ll be holding these two things together in my mind as I remember what happened, and see what comes of it. Educating the Guf as to its value and source may indeed be the key to getting rid of that disgusting horror.
Ahh, the Elemental Kings… I’m just going to jump into this with minimal preamble. It’s been a long week already.
In the Second Book of Occult Philosophy, Chapter 7, Agrippa provides a table that presents the Scale of the Number Four. In this Table, the Kings of the elements are listed as the Four Angels ruling over the corners of the world. Under them are the Four Rulers of the Elements, the Four Princes of Spirits, and the Four Princes of “Divels, offensive in the Elements.”
| Fire | Air | Water | Earth | |
| Four Angels ruling over the corners of the world. | Michael | Raphael | Gabriel | Uriel |
| Four rulers of the Elements. | Seraph | Cherub | Tharsis | Ariel |
| Four Princes of divels, offensive in the Elements. | Samael | Azazel | Azael | Mahazael |
| Four Princes of spirits, upon the four angels [angles] of the world. | Oriens | Paymon | Egyn | Amaymon |
Personally, when I work with the Kings of the Elements, I prefer to work with these Angels. I’ve got an angelic connection in general with my Work, and I figure if it’s working as well as it is, why mix things up?
For years, I’ve thought the LBRP got the angels from the Bedtime Sh’Ma, a Jewish version of “now I lay me down to sleep.” I was very pleased to discover they are also considered the angels of the corners of the Earth in Agrippa’s system. The GD got most of their stuff from Francis Barrett’s The Magus anyway, and that was plagiarized from Agrippa almost 100%. Seeing the angels here as the Kings of the Elements has helped me further understand that Angels can share names without sharing their personage. I mean, Michael, King of Fire isn’t going to be the same as Michael Governor of the Sun. There are similitudes, of course, but that doesn’t make them the “same” being. Even if they were the same being, in the office of the King of Fire, Michael will not be behaving as the Governor of the Sun.
One nice thing about discovering these guys are the Kings of the Elements is that I’ve been doing the LBRP in ignorance for years. I’ve managed to build up as decent a relationship with them as can be hoped for, considering the depths of ignorance I was wallowing in.
If you look at the sigils of the ten countenances of God in the Magical Calendar, you’ll see that the names of the angels ruling the planet/sphere are written on one side of the talismans along with the names of their respective Angelic Orders. I believe these are the Orders from which each Angelic King draws their legions of helpers. In working with these spirits, I’m placing the names of the Angels on their talisman along with the name of the Order of Angels presented here.
These spirits represent the malefic aspects of the elements. While Michael might represent a controlled flame, like a candle or a hearth, Samael would represent a burning house. Both are aspects of Fire, and it is important to note that the Princes of Divels are under the authority of the Kings of the Elements.
These four Princes represent the “neutral” spirits of the elements. They are like the worker bees of the elements, in my experience. They, and their assigned legions, are the ones that oversee the manifestation of the elemental manifestations of the directives of the spirits higher up in, uhm, hierarchy.
Now, with the above overview in mind, and remembering the way magicians work with the hierarchies of the spirits, a multitude of possibilites becomes available to the resourceful magician. In terms of the Great Work, we know from the Divine Pymander chapter of the Corpus Hermeticum that the Logos (manifested as the HGA in my interpretation of this system) abides with the righteous and sends an evil Daemon to confound the impious through their sphere of sensation, causing them to be further removed from their memories of their race and value as manifestations of God.
Later in the series, I’ll be getting into more practical work with the Kings that specifically relates to the topic of the four Kings and the eight Princes listed by Agrippa.
I did a ritual the other day with the Four Kings that has shed a lot of light on the subject in general in my personal Work, and I’ll be posting about it separately.
I’ve recently started monitoring my blog stats, and there are hits coming in from all over the world, but not one from Africa. My favorite country in Africa is Ethiopia, and I’d damned well better start seeing some traffic from Addis. Ethiopians from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would make ideal Neo-Platonic magicians, their history has perfectly attuned them for it. Plus they have a sense of humor that is sadly lacking in the modern Western Mystery Tradition.
With that in mind, I’m writing this blog post as a magickal act. 🙂
Agrippa places Ethiopia under the influence of Saturn. Therefore:
Thou Spirits of I conjure thee, in the name of Jehovah Elohim, by the Powers of the Thrones, to send forth in overwhelming flame thy Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits to bring to this blog my brothers from Addis.
Tzaphkiel, I conjure thee by Jehovah Elohim. My simple request is more Ethiopians, please.
Amen.
I’ve recently started monitoring my blog stats, and there are hits coming in from all over the world, but not one from Africa. My favorite country in Africa is Ethiopia, and I’d damned well better start seeing some traffic from Addis. Ethiopians from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would make ideal Neo-Platonic magicians, their history has perfectly attuned them for it. Plus they have a sense of humor that is sadly lacking in the modern Western Mystery Tradition.
With that in mind, I’m writing this blog post as a magickal act. 🙂
Agrippa places Ethiopia under the influence of Saturn. Therefore:
Thou Spirits of I conjure thee, in the name of Jehovah Elohim, by the Powers of the Thrones, to send forth in overwhelming flame thy Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits to bring to this blog my brothers from Addis.
Tzaphkiel, I conjure thee by Jehovah Elohim. My simple request is more Ethiopians, please.
Amen.
I’ve recently started monitoring my blog stats, and there are hits coming in from all over the world, but not one from Africa. My favorite country in Africa is Ethiopia, and I’d damned well better start seeing some traffic from Addis. Ethiopians from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would make ideal Neo-Platonic magicians, their history has perfectly attuned them for it. Plus they have a sense of humor that is sadly lacking in the modern Western Mystery Tradition.
With that in mind, I’m writing this blog post as a magickal act. 🙂
Agrippa places Ethiopia under the influence of Saturn. Therefore:
Thou Spirits of I conjure thee, in the name of Jehovah Elohim, by the Powers of the Thrones, to send forth in overwhelming flame thy Angels, Intelligences, and Spirits to bring to this blog my brothers from Addis.
Tzaphkiel, I conjure thee by Jehovah Elohim. My simple request is more Ethiopians, please.
Amen.
To get anything of benefit from the hierarchical representations of God’s servants or ministers, we must first understand the foundational premise behind the formulation of a hierarchy in the first place, and also what an “angel” or minister of God is.
The Premise of Hierarchies in the Western Magickal Tradition
To the neo-platonists and their Christian successors, God was One. It’s a simple concept. Orpheus says:
Pluto and Jupiter, and Phebus, are one;
But why do we speak twice? Gods one alone. (From Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Book 3, chapter x)
The sh’ma of Judaism puts it this way:
“Hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
The One God is beyond understanding, and is described in terms of what it is not due to our lack of ability to comprehend the awesome unity of God. “Ineffable,” “Invisible,” and “Infinite” are terms that do not tell us what God is, but what it is not. The mystic (by virtue of their calling to be a mystic) understands inherently that God is super-essential.
This super-essential Deity is constantly providing a stream of grace (or what we would likely call “energy” today) from itself into all that it created, in order that all of creation might participate with and know God intimately. This stream is called Providence by the Christian mystics, and is understood to be the mechanism by which Grace is delivered. When you see a mystic of neo-platonic christian heritage say that an event was “Providence,” they mean that a person achieved “a closer and fuller understanding of God” (or Grace) through a series of events that might not have seemed to be Grace bearing in the moment.
Ok, so we have One super-essential God, sending Grace to creation by Providence. Since man is not capable of comprehending all of God at once in our standard mode, when God interacts with us directly, we interpret the aspect of God that we interact with as an entity, a messenger from God, or a representation of Deity, or a god in and of itself. The Goddess Venus, for instance, is that part of the One super-essential deity that represents the human understanding of “Love.” In other cultures, this aspect of God is interpreted as Haniel, the archangel of the sephiroth Netzach.
To understand where this part of God “fits” in the whole process we interpret as Providence, we create models and hierarchies of correspondences so that we can present-progressively interact with that particular part of God as we perform our mundane activities. This touches on the practical purpose behind having a hierarchy in the first place.
The Purpose of Hierarchies
Having a model of Providence allows us to work towards obtaining unity with God. (Note: By unity I mean consciously working with God to accomplish God’s purpose, not the idea that we can somehow consciously become GOD.) When one understands the aspects of God that are functioning at various points in Providence, one can begin to consciously integrate these processes into their daily activities. For instance, knowing that Cherubim means the fullness of divine knowledge, and that the function of this manifestation of God is to illuminate the soul of a man with the divine knowledge of the immanence of deity in all things, one would begin to work with the Cherubim when one is seeking to understand how a situation is supposed to integrate with God’s plan.
This is the Great Work of the Western Mystery Tradition, to be in union with God in all things while in the flesh.
Having crudely put forth the foundational premise and purpose of hierarchies, we can look at what the various hierarchies are. For a better description, see The Celestial Hierarchies, by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopogate, from which the above was distilled.
Some Traditional Hierarchies
The angelic orders of the “cabalists” are associated with the ten sephiroth. Following the lightning path, they are:
Kether – Haioth Hacadosch
Hochma – Ophanim
Prina – Aralim
Hesed – Hasmalim
Geburach – Seraphim
Tiphereth – Malachim
Nezah – Elohim
Hod – Ben Elohim
Iesod – Cherubim
Malchuth – Issim
That’s straight from Agrippa, the original spelling from the English translation by “J.F.” in 1651 intact. If you look in Book 3, Chapter x, you’ll find much more additional information on these orders, such as the particular angel in charge, the planets associated with them, and the biblical personages and the angels that were assigned to them that correspond.
The terms Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels were used by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagate, a Christian mystic who was not a cabalist. Agrippa also uses these, and relates them to the sephiroth, but makes it clear in the text that they are not the names of the hierarchies used by the Hebrews.
Bill Heidrick has a couple of tables that present the names, correspondences to the sephiroth, and the descriptions and functions of these orders in his Magical Correspondences . Know going into it that Bill is the product of traditional Golden Dawn and Ordo Templi Orientis teachings. While his research and facts have been proven to be as accurate as possible, his interpretations are nevertheless influenced by the teaching he received.
Practical Application
To effectively utilize these hierarchies, the mystic or magician must first identify which order is appropriate to their need. Then one would research the names of some of the members of this order, and then contact the entity and request a personal representative from that order to work with for the duration of the operation.
Understanding the premise behind a hierarchy, the procedures of the magickal operations of the Western Mystery Tradition make a lot more sense. Abramelin’s Sacred Magick is an excellent example, with the Holy Guardian Angel being a member of the Order of Powers assigned to you at birth, who “aids the human mind to break free of the forces that draw man to earthly thoughts.” The Goetia can be better understood when it is recognized as a hierarchy of spirits that are closest to the manifest realm, a sub-hierarchy that doesn’t quite extend beyond the realms of Earth, Water, and Air in the platonic model.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to thank Richard Ryan for his Lamed towards presenting something of value and substance rather than simply critiquing someone else’s presentation. Putting this into words has helped me to better understand some of the issues I’ve been struggling with behind the scenes lately regarding cabalism vs. neo-platonic christian interpretations of the Great Work.
The last of the free versions of the Modern Angelic Grimoire went out last night. Thanks for the many responses, and those who received the drafts, I ask that you send any feedback on errors, grammar, content, or usability after you've read it. Any questions about specific aspects, or requests for more detail will likely make it into future revisions.
So far the best editorial critique I've received has come from Fr. Servitor Lucem, a wascawy wabbit who really DOES magick. (Shocking, I know!)
Kathy McDonald (whose outstanding Work has been documented on the Solomonic and Ritual MAgic yahoo groups if you havent' read them) made some excellent comments as well, and that lead to correcting the spelling of the Tzadkiel lamen in the final version (It's a Qoph, not a Kaph).
Their critiques made Version 0.3 the best of the lot. I can't thank them enough.
I'm probably going to work with Moloch and his publishing outfit to get some hard copies available, eventually. For now though, if anyone wants an electronic draft, you can have a PDF emailed to you for a donation (minimum of $7.95, USD).
By the way, I accept donations through paypal at my blog site now for anyone who wants to make me rich. It's that little button on the right up in the corner.
Feel free to give me your tithe. I promise to make sure it goes to the Lord's work. 🙂