Holy Guardian Angel

[RiverSnake]

I have noticed as of late that in the western tradition a big deal is made out of connecting with ones holy guardian angel? Anyone know why this is considered important?

 

-My 2 cents, Peace

Edited December 28, 2012 by OldGreen

[RiverSnake]

Yep, sorry got the name wrong. Changed it.

Edited December 28, 2012 by OldGreen

[RiverSnake]

Cool stuff. Thanks, very clear.

-My 2 cents, Peace

[GrandmasterP]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_15?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=guardian+angels&sprefix=Guardian+angels%2Caps%2C263

 

HTH

13,000 plus titles vis 'Guardian Angels'

[Cheshire Cat]

Another way to see the HGA is as "the future magical self".

It's like meeting yourself after you become a realized being who transcends space and time.

[RiverSnake]

Thanks for the insights Dao.

 

-I try my hardest not to bite into the new age waffle Grandmaster p. It would be great If there were 13,000 experts on such a topic but I rather doubt it.

 

-My 2 cents, Peace

 

[Apech]

Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel is the goal of the Book of Abramelin the Mage.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Magic-Abramelin-Dover-Occult/dp/0486232115

[Mokona]

This is cool stuff. Drop some knowledge on me, though(please!)

 

The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the reunion of one's physical self with one's "higher self". Part of this process involves the death of the ego. This is a precursor to "crossing the void". From your work with the Qabalah, I am sure you know that between Tiphareth and the Supernal Triangle lies the void. To cross this space without going mad or becoming a Black Brother, one who is lost in darkness, it is necessary to achieve Knowledge and Conversation. The ego is not capable of withstanding the experience of crossing this plane and can cause consciousness to become trapped in Daath. Please let me know if this is clear and answers your question.

Does meeting the Higher self, through physical self have any similarities to doing it with energy and conciousness via chi kung or meditative methods? Why does "part" of the "ego" have to "die"?

What does "crossing the void" mean in laymans terms? Is that like stepping out of your body into the astral and seeing spirits? Or looking out of the third eye? Is a black brother someone who takes energy work/ chi kung/dim mak and uses it to hurt others? What does it mean to achieve "Knowledge and Conversation" as it appears above?

What is Daath?

[Apech]

It claims to be more complete, and translated from more of the original documents, some of which were not available to Mathers. Do you know anything about this edition?


That is true I think ... Mathers worked off a French manuscript which had some parts missing. Good point ... stick to the newer translation from the German. Although I know people who used the Mathers text with some success ... and I think Crowley did although for reasons I forget he didn't finish the whole operation.

[GrandmasterP]

It is in the 8th Aethyr, ZID that you will meet with your Holy Guardian Angel. The Knowledge and Conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel is an important goal of the aspiring adept. It is no less than the magical experience of your encounter with your own inner divinity -- the divine spark at the core of your being. It is fully experienced here in ZID. Up until here, you have achieved various degrees of this Knowledge and Conversation. However, here, in ZID, is where you get to meet and communion with your Guardian Angel in his/her divine form.

 

This Aethyr is a powerful initiation in that you will change forever. Entering this Aethyr means that you and your inner divinity are nearly one and can begin merging into a single unit.

 

When you leave ZID, after a successful initiation, you will be endowed with your life's purpose and your reason for incarnating. You will possess a link to your Guardian Angel that will allow you to bring forth knowledge and wisdom down from the Spiritual Plane and into the lower planes, including the physical plane -- which means it will not be uncommon to just know things about others or to hear your Guardian Angel speak to you in quiet moments. Knowledge and Conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel is nothing less than establishing a direct link to the Divine Source and being able to tap that source at will for inspiration, knowledge, help, and wisdom.

 

Finally by completing ZID you achieve the grade of Magister Templi (Master of the Temple) and you take on the title of NEMO (ZIM) and can go to the Garden of NEMO yourself to help cultivate other candidates on the same quest.

(Tom DeLiso)

[Mokona]

Thanks GP

[GrandmasterP]

Tom DLilo has a website and there are books.

Only read one and I am NO expert but it could be that he is restating to popularise (repackage?) some of the older hermetic literature.

He's very sound on Astral Projection.

[Apech]

Found this:

 

The 1898 translation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, having a reputation for being a sinister grimoires, by Samuel L. M. Mather had a great influence on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In 1904 as a young member of the Golden Dawn Aleister Crowley prepared to carry out the operation. Crowley had roomed with Allan Bennett a Buddhist in poor health suffering terribly from asthma. Drugs were the one thing that relieved his suffering. Crowley learned much from Bennett's tutoring and was impressed by his intelligence. It was with this knowledge that Crowley prepared to perform the Abramelin operation. But Crowley was interrupted in 1907 when having to help Mather with organizational matters of the Golden Dawn.

 

Before interrupting the Operation Crowley wrote that the "demons connected with the Abramelin do not wait to be evoked; the come unsought." During his attempts at the Operation there were strange occurrences. Once, for example, Crowley and another Dawn member observed semi-materialized beings march around the room in almost endless procession. They speculated they were using a powerful magickal practice.

 

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/s/sacred_magic_of_abramelin_the_mage.html

[GrandmasterP]

Physical seance?

 

[Apech]

Yes I imagine his daughter's death was more pressing than organising the G.D.

It is not a text which I have spent much time on ... but I think that it is highly valued. And also some things can be gained even if the whole operation is not followed and completed. Is it necessary I wonder to perform lengthy and taxing magical operations to get in touch with your higher self ... which is always present and operational whether we perceive it or no.

[Apech]

I didn't mean short circuit really ... I was just suggesting that with most of us its not possible to go into 18 months retreat ... but that does not mean we should think that we can do nothing. And I'm not sure the spiritual/magickal process is always consists of herculean efforts but rather something more sustained and integrated into daily life. Just some thoughts.

[joeblast]

hm...my experience with this was begun long ago by a sincere prayer and open minded belief, what happened after that was spectacularly unequivocal. never knew what meditation or cultivation was until what, 2 decades later? were my sights a little more open I would have realized more sooner.

[RiverSnake]

Been reading a lot from this blog site on the process of getting in touch with your HGA. Really interesting stuff. I think I may start integrating prayer to my HGA into my kabbalistic practices, It's good to know there's at least one entity on the astral plane that's not gonna try and screw with you.

 

http://www.myoccultcircle.com/the-everyday-path-to-your-hga/

 

http://www.myoccultcircle.com/hga/

 

-My 2 cents, Peace

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Just a quick note to summarize, expand and correct a bit.

The popularity of the concept of Guardian Angel in modern Neo-magic is due to Aleister Crowley. Crowley was dependent on his knowledge from Macregor-Mathers. Crowley's original attempt at the Abramelin operation was in 1900, not 1907 and its interruption was hardly mere organization matters with Mathers. It was in point of fact the "Great Schism" of the Golden Dawn which lead to the founding of the Stella Matutina and the continuance of the Golden Dawn as the Alpha et Omega.

Delilo is using Crowley's The Vision and the Voice as a guide, the vision of the eighth "aethyr", just one of thirty, which is derived from the Golden Dawn's version of the Enochian Magic of John Dee, Edward Kelly and their Spiritual Interlocutors. Part of Crowley's experience with the 30 Aires was in London Circa 1898 and the rest was in the Sahara, circa 1909, where he and Victor Neuberg were doing odd and peculiar things.

The link which provides to the Wikipedia article seems on my cursory examination to be a satisfactory introduction to the matter, however the notion of a Guardian Angel is hardly unique to Abremelin as Agrippa writes on the matter in Book III Chapters XXI and XXII of his Occult Philosophy. In the Grimoire of Armandel, also translated by Mathers, there is mention of a Spirit, Camael, who. "giveth unto you a perfect knowledge of your Genius, who will have the power to grant you everything that you shall demand of him." (P. 42). Seems a little easier than Abramelin's approach.

The topic of Guadian Spirit was also an important one in Platonism, as according to Plato, Socrates professed to have one which guided him. The late middle Platonist Apulius of Madura, best know for his Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, also wrote a work On the God of Socrates examining this in the light of Middle Platonic ideas.

Porphyry in his life of Plotinus recounts the following in relation to an evocation of Plotinus' guardian spirit:

"In fact Plotinus possessed by birth something more than is accorded to other men. An Egyptian priest who had arrived in Rome and, through some friend, had been presented to the philosopher, became desirous of displaying his powers to him, and he offered to evoke a visible manifestation of Plotinus' presiding spirit. Plotinus readily consented and the evocation was made in the Temple of Isis, the only place, they say, which the Egyptian could find pure in Rome.

At the summons a Divinity appeared, not a being of the spirit-ranks, and the Egyptian exclaimed: 'You are singularly graced; the guiding-spirit within you is not of the lower degree but a God.' It was not possible, however, to interrogate or even to contemplate this God any further, for the priest's assistant, who had been holding the birds to prevent them flying away, strangled them, whether through jealousy or in terror. Thus Plotinus had for indwelling spirit a Being of the more divine degree, and he kept his own divine spirit unceasingly intent upon that inner presence. It was this preoccupation that led him to write his treatise upon Our Tutelary Spirit (Enneads Three, Treatise Four, ZYD), an essay in the explanation of the differences among spirit-guides."

I hope these quick notes are helpful.

[RiverSnake]

Interesting stuff Zhongyong. Thanks for the contribution.

 

-My 2 cents, Peace

[RiverSnake]

Yeah, there are some great gems on the site. Enjoy

 

-My 2 cents, Peace

[Zhongyongdaoist]

OldGreen, thank you for your appreciation.

 

Crowley has not been a major object of interest for several decades. He has some interesting things to say, but I came to the conclusion that the best of the Beast was assimilated by Regardie and well used in his works and adaptation of the teachings of the Golden Dawn.

 

Based on my study of Crowley I would say that he never returned to following the original method of Abramelin, but instead chose to employ a version of an ancient invocation taken from the Harris papyrus and first used by him in print as "the preliminary invocation of the Goetia" in his publication of the first book of the Lemegaton in 1903. He subsequently wrote study of it which was titled Liber CCCLXV. On page 226 of Magick in Theory and Practice he describes if as the most potent invocation extant and used "by the Master himself in his attainment". He there refers the reader to the complete text and his analysis of it on page 265. Where it is made clear that the attainment in question was "the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel".

 

Further in the commentary on page 274 in his commentary on Line 5 he makes a reference to the Neophyte ceremony of the Golden Dawn, "...the Hierophant is the perfected Osiris, who brings the candidate, the natural Osiris, to identify with himself.", to which I will return in a moment.

 

Regarding his trip to China I read about it so long ago that I could not comment on it at this time. I might be more interested if I thought Crowley's attempts at Sino-Occidental synthesis was a worthwhile contribution. As it is I find it as sterile as a mule, the unnatural offspring of two otherwise very fruitful systems. The failure of which is made all the more ironic by his failure to recognize the inherent value of Western Geomancy and its applicability as a cross cultural bridge.

 

In terms of traditional sources, no one makes as big a deal of the Guardian Angel as Abramelin, building a whole system around it. This could be because a significant subtext of the work is the notion of Religious conversion and the need to provide a procedure that can be used by any religion. This fact may indicate that the text itself may date from the late 16^th Century when religious conversion was both figuratively and literally a burning issue. Aside from the spirit that I mentioned in my original post, the second section of the third book of the Lemegaton, the Pauline Art, has a procedure for contacting a zodiacal spirit ruling the degree of your rising sign. It can be found online here:

 

http://www.esoterica...mon/paulina.htm

 

The two Chapters that I cite from Agrippa can be found on the same site here:

 

Book III, Chapter XXI: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap21

 

Book III, Chapter XXII: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap22

 

and contain some interesting information. If I have time I may post them and comment on them. The site itself is an excellent online resource.

 

The Agrippa book that I mention both is and is not the one which you reference. The Agrippan text is worthwhile, the editor/commentator was not really up to the task. He comments copiously on irrelevancies such as the Paschal Taper (see note p. 572), but can't explain Occult Virtues, a fundamental and much understood aspect of traditional magic. He vaguely understands the importance of Plato to understanding Agrippa, but is blind to Aristotle. You have to know the material better than he does to know when to attend to or when to ignore his comments, but then you don't need his comments do you?

 

When I was teaching Western Magic I emphasized an approach integrating Natural Magic, Astrological Magic and Ceremonial Magic in the Agrippan tradition. I did not emphasize the "Holy Guardian Angel" at all, though I did think about recommending the spirit Camael from the Grimoire of Armandel to some advanced students if they wanted to work with it. I never pursued the matter and eventually stopped teaching, largely because few people have any real vocation for magic and were wasting their time and mine. If you or anyone else is interested in knowing what approach I would use now you can read my posts here:

 

http://thetaobums.co...gic#entry291148

 

Which begins a long series of posts where you will also learn about Occult Virtues among other interesting things.

 

I would not recommend pursuing work with the "Holy Guardian Angel", for reasons that may be clearer after you read my posts, but if you or anyone else absolutely, positively wants to do that sort of thing I would recommend pursuing rituals of the type described in the Shin subsection of the Shin section of the Z2 documents of the Golden Dawn, the basic text of which can be found on pages 178-181 of Book Four of Regardie's The Golden Dawn. Regardie provides good example rituals on pages 248 to 265, the second one of which is an adaption of Crowley's "Bornless Invocation" in the format of the Golden Dawn Neophyte formula. Regrettable the more recent Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic does not deal with these ideas as well as the earlier work and is inferior in its treatment of one of the aspects of the Golden Dawn system which is, as far as I am concerned, the most interesting and valuable of the Golden Dawn's contributions to Western Esoteric knowledge. This brings us back, as I said I would, to Crowley's reference to the Neophyte Ritual.

 

I hope that all this is helpful to you and anyone else who may read it.

 

Edit: in reading the above for a quote in another post, I have noticed that I wrote ' . . . and much understood aspect of traditional magic . . .', where 'understood' should have been 'misunderstood'.  I have corrected the text accordingly.

[RiverSnake]

I was recently listening to a practitioner and he said communion with ones HGA was basically the result of opening ones heart center? Anyone know if that is true? He said this was because Tiphareth was associated with the heart center.

 

My 2 cents, Peace

[BaguaKicksAss]

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Edited January 12, 2014 by BaguaKicksAss

[Birch]

"also writings such as this often lead folks into thinking all they have to do is meditate for a bit while keeping their same job, their same lifestyle, their same old habits, their same friends, and so forth"

 

Could you speak more to this? Not that it's affecting me personally or anything;-)