Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Spirit, & the Emerald Tablet of Alchemy

By Shade Oroboros 817


"There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.”   

-  Magick in Theory & Practice, Aleister Crowley

"What dignifies the yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist God per se; it is the Self, the individual mind that contains immortality and ultimate truth. I think that that true Self, that original Self, that first Self, is a real mensurate thing, tangible and incarnate; and I'm going to find the fucker.”    

      - from the film Altered States

           The secret name of your Angel is the Word that expresses the nature of your being, and the Holy Guardian Angel is the symbol and focus of a process of Self-becoming. As an essential magickal act you begin a Vision Quest to unite with an entity outside of yourself, and with the process of that quest you completely change the way you experience the world around you. Each event becomes charged with deeper meaning, as the universe becomes an oracular, intelligent, communicating awareness. Mysticism of whatever religion is ultimately about the Union with God by whatever Name; where does an intermediary such as an Angel factor in to this equation or occasion? The word ‘Angel’ means ‘Messenger’: this being is a ray of light passing between the individual and the cosmos, a guiding truth upon the way, a link. We can question whether the experience is inner or external, until we realize there is no real difference. Looking at the world’s major religions, so many have had visions of angels hovering around their beginnings; and angels bring revelations. The angel Gabriel announced the birth of Christ to Mary and dictated the Koran to Mohammed, and the angel Moroni allegedly gave the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.

    This ritual process of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the very centerpiece of Crowleyan magical initiation: the discovery of the True Will, the holy and immortal core of being. It is largely based upon the ceremonies of the Book of the Sacred Magick of Abra-Melim the Mage, perhaps the most elegant and coherent of the surviving medieval grimoires, which called for the magus to spend six months in seclusion and ever-increasing invocation resulting in contact with the entity destined as their eternal companion and guide. Only after the bond of this union was sealed by the discovery of the true name of this spirit could the magician proceed to the conjuration of the demonic forces that would accomplish his desires. For his own purposes Crowley employed an ancient Greco-Egyptian text subsequently modified by the Golden Dawn and revised by the Beast himself as Liber Samekh: Theurgia Goetia Summa Congressus cum Daemone sub figura DCCC; it is truly a powerful invocation, and over a period of time builds up a highly charged momentum of consciousness (for my own version, see A New Revision of the Rite of the Bornless One in Silver Star I). In addition to commentaries upon this, his other writings contain constant references to the process, notably this important revision of the Abra-Melim procedure:

“And thus shall he do who will attain unto the mystery of the knowledge and conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel:
First, let him prepare a chamber, of which the walls and the roof shall be white, and the floor shall be covered with a carpet of black squares and white, and the border thereof shall be blue and gold.
And if it be in a town, the room shall have no window, and if it be in the country, then it is better if the window be in the roof. Or, if it be possible, let this invocation be performed in a temple prepared for the ritual of passing through the Tuat.
From the roof he shall hang a lamp, wherein is a red glass, to burn olive oil. And this lamp shall he cleanse and make ready after the prayer of sunset, and beneath the lamp shall be an altar, foursquare, & the height shall be thrice half of the breadth or double the breadth.
And upon the altar shall be a censor, hemispherical, supported upon three legs, of silver, and within it an hemisphere of copper, and upon the top a grating of gilded silver, and thereupon shall he burn incense made of four parts of olibanum and two parts of stacte, and one part of lignum aloes, or of cedar, or of sandal. And this is enough.
And he shall also keep ready in a flask of crystal within the altar, holy anointing oil made of myrrh and cinnamon and galangal.
And even if he be of higher rank than a Probationer, he shall yet wear the robe of the Probationer, for the star of flame showeth forth Ra Hoor Khuit openly upon the breast, and secretly the blue triangle that descendeth is Nuit, and the red triangle that ascendeth is Hadit. And I am the golden Tau in the midst of their marriage. Also, if he choose, he may instead wear a close-fitting robe of shot silk, purple and green, and upon it a cloak without sleeves, of bright blue, covered with golden sequins, and scarlet within.
And he shall make himself a wand of almond wood or of hazel cut by his own hands at dawn at the Equinox, or at the Solstice, or on the day of Corpus Christi, or on one of the feast-days that are appointed in The Book of the Law.
And he shall engrave with his own hand upon the plate of gold the Holy Sevenfold Table, or the Holy Twelvefold Table, or some particular device.
And it shall be foursquare within a circle, and the circle shall be winged, and he shall attach it about his forehead by a ribbon of blue silk. Moreover, he shall wear a fillet of laurel or rose or ivy or rue, and every day, after the prayer of sunrise, he shall burn it in the fire of the censor.
Now he shall pray thrice daily, about sunset, and at midnight, and at sunrise. And if he be able, he shall pray also four times between sunrise and sunset.
The prayer shall last for the space of an hour, at the least, and he shall seek ever to extend it, and to inflame himself in praying. Thus shall he invoke his Holy Guardian Angel for eleven weeks, and in any case he shall pray seven times daily during the last week of the eleven weeks.
And during all this time he shall have composed an invocation suitable, with such wisdom and understanding as may be given him from the Crown, and this shall he write in letters of gold upon the top of the altar.
For the top of the altar shall be of white wood, well polished, and in the centre thereof he shall have placed a triangle of oak-wood, painted with scarlet, and upon this triangle the three legs of the censor shall stand.
Moreover, he shall copy his invocation upon a sheet of pure white vellum, with Indian ink, and he shall illuminate it according to his fancy and imagination, that shall be informed by beauty.
And on the first day of the twelfth week he shall enter the chamber at sunrise, and he shall make his prayer, having first burnt the conjuration that he had made upon the vellum in the fire of the lamp.
Then, at his prayer, shall the chamber be filled with light insufferable for splendour, and a perfume intolerable for sweetness. And his Holy Guardian Angel shall appear unto him, yea, his Holy Guardian Angel shall appear unto him, so that he shall be wrapt away into the Mystery of Holiness.
All that day shall he remain in the enjoyment of the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
And for three days after he shall remain from sunrise unto sunset in the temple, and he shall obey the counsel that his Angel shall have given unto him, and he shall suffer those things that are appointed.
And for ten days thereafter shall he withdraw himself as shall have been taught unto him from the fullness of that communion, for he must harmonize the world that is within with the world that is without.
And at the end of the ninety-one days he shall return into the world, and there shall he perform that work to which the Angel shall have appointed him.
And more than this it is not necessary to say, for his Angel shall have entreated him kindly, and showed him in what manner he may be most perfectly involved.  And unto him that hath this Master there is nothing else that he needeth, so long as he continue in the knowledge and conversation of the Angel, so that he shall come at last into the City of the Pyramids.
Lo! two and twenty are the paths of the Tree, but one is the Serpent of Wisdom; ten are the ineffable emanations, but one is the Flaming Sword.”
            - from the 8th Aethyr of The Vision & The Voice

Since few of us in these decadent times possess the resources for such an elaborate operation, it is important to form a personal method of carrying out the true spirit of this process. Create an alter or shrine in a fine and private place, adorn it with the symbols that have deep meaning for you, and write and evolve your own invocations, combined with traditional or newly devised practices. Crowley himself performed much of his own Abra-Melim working internally, while riding across China on horseback (after spending a small fortune on actually buying and equipping a house called Boleskeine, in Scotland near Loch Ness). Looking over ancient records of angelic material I am struck by how general or universal it often seems, and I think that one of the most striking elements of Crowley’s thought is the way that he transformed this concept toward an individual, personal, unique angel, instead of the relatively undifferentiated angels of a more collective age. Indeed, by medieval times Christianity had become quite suspicious of angels, although the earliest Gnostic sects were often quite enthused by them and the ancient Coptic Church in Egypt preserved an enormous amount of angelic magick.

    To embark upon this process is perhaps the quintessential initiation of western magick. It hearkens back through time to the shamanic Vision Quest, where the seeker goes alone into the wilderness, fasting and sleepless, and chants until their personal ally or guide appears to them in animal form or otherwise and reveals the pattern and secrets of their life to come. In the later rites of the classical era the arcane initiate would perform a conjuration to invoke a paredros, a semi-divine companion or helper, similar to the daimon or higher genius of Socrates and some other philosopher-sages. Such guides were potent in magick and divination, and in Christian times merged with the concepts of guardian angels or patron saints. A remarkable recent case is that of Carl Jung, whose guide Philemon led him into the Gnostic and alchemical reality that formed the basis for all of his work. Some modern christian fundamentalists have charged that this was in fact an evil devil deluding him; then again, the same source believed that the Dalai Lama, Native Americans, Hollywood’s film industry, the media, and the ecological and women's movements are all parts of a vast satanic communist conspiracy.

This operation is a core element of modern ceremonial magical practice: the training and skills of the sorcerer are entirely focused upon this essential act of union with the guiding force or entity that fully epitomizes their nature and their personal mission. It is the deliberate manifestation of the True Self, combined in a very dramatic and transforming union with its complementary opposite as the Other, and opening the psyche to a more complete understanding of the universe. Through this process every aspect of being is united in the alchemical Great Work of personal exploration, analysis, and discovery. Crowley somewhere states that he retained the disconcertingly archaic terminology of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel because of its apparent absurdity. At the same time it is also a rather sublime conception, demanding from the cosmos a clear declaration that there is more to our existence than mere consumerism and reproduction. With this alien contact, the sorcerer steps fully into the separate reality; as I said before, the very word 'Angel' means 'Messenger'. Crowley also considered the existence of a pair of such entities for each individual: the agathodaemon or good spirit, and the kakodaemon or evil one. His notion was that one should first invoke for whichever side of the personality most needed strengthening.

"...each human being 'possesses' - or, to be more precise, 'is composed of' - two Angels. On his right stands the Angel spirit; guardian, guide and companion. On the left is the guided spirit, the receptive soul. Thus the total self is composed of a reunion of a celestial Angel with a 'fallen' Angel; they are the two wings of the soul."              - Angels, Peter Lamborn Wilson

For me this helps reconcile the internal and external elements of the HGA, as I tend to view the Universe as subsumed in the Self. In terms of Liber AL this informing angel might be seen as Ra-Hoor-Khuit and the receptive soul as Hoor-par-kraat, reconciled in the human form of the prophet Ankh-f-n-Khonsu depicted on the Stele of Revealing. A brief side-thought on the notion of Thelema as it relates to Tantra: if we see Shiva as Hadit and Kali/Shakti as Nuit/Babalon, then their sons would be the lotus-throned and elephant-headed deity Ganesh as Hoor-par-kraat, and the warrior child-god Skanda who rides upon a peacock bearing a spear as Ra-Hoor Khuit. In Hindu tantras, the Atman (or Self) is identical with the Brahman (or God). The question of whether a true self really exists is a subject of much debate in Asian traditions. Hinduism does accept the soul-spark of the Atman as a seed passing through many cycles of existence, while Buddhism ultimately sees this as a false sense of self, a limited ego which eventually must dissolve along with the rest of the illusory universe. The magical view may reconcile the two, utilizing the Self or even multiple selves as vehicles for as long as it is useful and artistically fulfilling, and then finally surrendering all beliefs with the crossing of the Abyss. If in the paradigm of Chaos we are again merely a brief constellation of identities without an ultimate center (a notion I still have some reservations about) then the operation of invoking the Holy Guardian Spirit may still serve to coalesce the various levels of the mind around a central core or axis of being, which is a pretty useful concept for a magician. Gurdjieff believed that the creation of the soul was a conscious and deliberate process that few humans have attempted, let alone accomplished. As an unfolding series of insights this illumination involves stripping away the veils of rigid belief that conceal the nature of the Original Self or True Will. A central concept of Maatian magick is N’Aton, the collective and universal consciousness of future humanity, which we are eventually to awaken; and for me this is one more way of understanding the unity of the personal or individual self and the complete and universal Self. The Atman and the Brahman are one, the Self is the seed or spark of God.

    One central key to this process may be the ritual of the Eucharist: the invocation of a spiritual force into a cup of consecrated wine or water and its consumption. To call an outside power and then absorb it into one’s Self is among the most instinctively powerful actions devised by humans, and its applications are infinitely flexible. Shamans often regard eating or drinking as a way of absorbing a force, and Egyptian sorcerers carried magick in their bellies. Other rites and techniques that I have used include almost every aspect of ritual practice. I open all ceremonies by invoking the Guardian Spirit, and employ candle-flames as a centering point for invocation, because a dancing fire is to me the living presence of the Light. We may note in passing that the candle unites all four elements, as a solid magical wand that liquefies and becomes a gas to feed the flame. Genuine beeswax is recommended. At all meals I bless my food, and charge all drinks as a sacrament. Mirrors and reflections are also gateways, because the experience of seeing myself as another breaks down any limited conceptions of what I am. One of the earliest ways I envisioned this Angel was as my own DNA in female rather than male form, a perfect opposite or twin with which to unite, to celebrate the sacred marriage. Any sexual act can be an invocation of the Angel, as Jung’s concept of the Anima or Animus who appears in myth or dream seems often to be a veiling of the personal angel. Yogic breathing meditation calms the mind and makes the process accelerate. In addition to fire and reflections, other symbols of the HGA are the Sun as the center of radiance in our solar system, and the Heart as the center of life in a human: the blood as light and heartbeat as the drum-rhythm of creation. Opening to Love is an element of this practice, and for years I have tried my best to practice a Sufi heart meditation: “Turning one heart to all faces, seeing one face in all hearts.” Castaneda located the ‘assemblage point’ between the shoulder blades, obviously related to the heart chakra as well. Above all, as Crowley says, “Invoke Often”, changing the song as your understanding evolves.

The context of this process is also important. There are still circles of magicians in this world, and in our most active period my friends and I existed in a whirlwind of wide ranging study of a number of esoteric traditions, and regularly met for frequent rituals as well as doing solitary work in our own ways. Working in groups increases magical power and accelerates synchronicity. All of us were actively invoking our angels, most often with the ancient practice known as the Ritual of the Bornless One, which Crowley rewrote as the above-mentioned Liber Samekh. Eventually I reached a point where I was singing the strange names it contains like mantras in daily life. As a renewal at various points I did take magickal oaths to achieve this union, and such formal vows are very useful tools to open a momentum leading to success. I eventually did a very intense period of sixty formal workings of this rite with an ever-increasing intensity and frequency, attempting to earth each in Art. Sixty is the number of Samekh, ascribed to the angelic Art card of the Tarot and the vertical path linking Moon & Sun on the central pillar of the tree of life, and suggesting their marriage in the symbol of an eclipse. At the same time some very extreme events were taking place amid the circle of my friends as well (among them the founding of the Horus/Maat Lodge), and I think that the energy which group ritual incites, combined with my own will, led finally to an climactic all-night session where the whole of my experiences were synthesized into a new understanding of angelic contact. I recorded this as my own holy book, which is a text I still grapple with (Liber Ipsemet: The Book of the True Self in Silver Star V). A further result of this event was a fairly long aftermath of inner silence; the constant babble of inner dialog actually stopped, and I lived in this world in a very different way for a period of some weeks, and can upon occasion return to this state at will.

I believe one of the secrets of this process is that uniting with the Angel in a sense implies becoming that Angel, participating in an awakening, a genuine transformation or enlightenment. Union with the HGA is a working to perfect the Self, and the world would perhaps be a better place if we were all our own angels rather than our devils. While living in this state everything becomes sacred, music a communion and color a sacrament. What I have always sought in my life and in my magick is this peak experience, the moment of vivid intensity that lifts everyday experience out of its limits and charges the instant with genuine meaning. We all go through our routines in daily life, and much of what we do is so automatic and unaware that we are virtually asleep. The angel of revelation blows the trumpet that awakens, which resurrects us from death into joy, from nightmare into dream. I suppose what I am trying to say here is that I like to think that I have become a better person because I have devoted time to fully exploring myself, to shining some light into my darkness. I certainly will not claim to be perfect, but I have a pretty good sense of what my strengths and weaknesses are. I know myself better, try my best to do the right thing, maintain compassion for all without losing my rage against injustice. I am more complete and more creative. This is again what Jung termed individuation, and it is a ceaselessly unfolding process.

How does this cosmic spirit maintain communication? With synchronicities, coincidences, flashes of insight; the book or tool or quotation that appears unexpectedly at the perfect time, the word from a friend or teacher that makes all seem clear. Connections made in unexpected ways, that let one grasp for a moment the cosmic joke. And of course there are my ‘transmitted manuscripts’; how do I address that here? I’ve always thought of myself as a writer, deeply appreciating words and books; my talents did not seem to lie in music or other arts beyond the occasional burst of drawing, or some play with photography and collages. In the course of these operations of using the Ritual of the Bornless One to achieve union I would have frequent flashes of symbolism, mythic imagery, or even sensations of elemental presences glimpsed in the corner of the eye. Not necessarily vast fiery visions or spirit voices in general, just a sort of unfolding understanding that I tried to earth in writing after each rite, which in the best events would flow freely and spontaneously through me; often these pieces do actively bring the same state of consciousness back. There were a few remarkable exceptions to my ‘no voices’ comment: once while I was dreaming a very loud voice did indeed intone the name on an Angel so loudly that it woke me from sleep with the vivid conviction that this was The Name. I felt that this was a major result, and always try to remember and analyze my dreams as best I can, considering them as messages.

    So how else can your HGA communicate? Via a constant flow of new insights. On a good day, I create a work of art. When I return to it later, I find new meanings in it, and realize that my younger self reflects my older self, that time exists only to convey meaning, experience only to confer joy. The same holds true for decoding the artworks of others; art is the immortality of the undying Spirit that passes through the changing world of the human body. Mythology, books, painting, music, fashion, cooking, technology, children, all the ways we imprint ourselves into history form the tapestry woven by a unity split into multiplicity for the purpose of play. Imaginative use of cultural codes like the Tarot, Runes, or the I Ching help convince one that the reflecting mirror of reality, what the alchemists called reading the Book of the World, will never cease to amaze. And on a more immediate level every living being you meet can speak with that same voice, if you listen very carefully. Truth can come from the most unlikely sources, sometimes.

"According to a very interesting legend, the thrones left vacant by the fallen Angels are reserved for the elect among men; St. Francis of Assisi is supposed to have been awarded the throne of Lucifer himself."        - Angels, Peter Lamborn Wilson

    Magick in its higher modes ultimately aims towards this integration and transformation of the Self, the full exploration and utilization of the potentials of one's own being. Whether or not we see this process as a purely internal series of projections within the overactive imagination, it still serves as a vehicle for the achievement of higher states of consciousness or esoteric trances. In alchemical thought the process of transforming base matter into gold was always paralleled by the corresponding purification and rebirth of the alchemists themselves, a metaphor for the evolution of the soul or the immortal body of light. In these permutations of the psyche we touch upon the central concepts of alchemy, and the ancient codex known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus encodes many formulas of such operations. This mysterious text appears to come from a 12th century Latin rendition of a 10th century Arabic translation of a 4th century Greek text which may be based on an even earlier original. I include it in full here, as a summary of the transformations engaged in the Great Work:

"True, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above is as that which is below, and that which is below is as that which is above, for the accomplishment of the miracles of the One Thing.
Just as all things proceed from One alone by the mediation of One alone, so also they have their birth from this One thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother, The Wind carries it in its belly, and its nurse is the Earth.
This is the Child of all perfection, or consummation of the whole world.
Its power is perfect and integrating, if it be converted into earth.
Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, softly, and with great ingenuity and prudence.
It rises from earth to heaven, and descends again from heaven to earth, and receives the power of the superiors above and the inferiors below.
So thou hast the glory of the whole world, and all darkness and obscurity flee before you.
This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing.
So the little world is created according to the prototype of the great world.
From this and in this way, marvelous applications and adaptations are made, of which this is the manner.
For this reason am I called Hermes Trismegistus, for I possess the wisdom of the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.
Perfect is what I have said concerning the Operation of the Sun."   

                                     - Tabula Smaragdina

    This text speaks of the union of the microcosm and the macrocosm, the mutations of the elements, and the great magical power of the invisible fire in the furnace or Alkahest which heats the vessel or Egg or Athanor containing the chaotic Primal Matter of the Great Work, which is in turn identical with the unperfected state of the alchemist. The secret fire is also the light of the Holy Guardian Spirit. Traditionally these progressive levels of the alchemical process are revealed by a changing sequence of colors, beginning with blackening of decay and dissolution called the Nigredo (death's black raven, the Body). The occult substance is purified and refined to the silvery universal medicine of Albedo (the white swan, the Soul) and then kindled to the fiery gold of the Rubedo (the red phoenix or Spirit) that is the Philosopher's infamous Stone. These three states are also known as the salt/mercury/sulfur of alchemical art, or the tamas/sattvas/rajas of the tantrik gunas. They reflect the major developmental stages in the endless transformations of individual consciousness: the darkness of inward-turning depression and despair, the brightening process of awakening to full awareness, and the glorious red-gold of fully illuminated Being. They are also seen as the changing colors of the holy Nile River as various shades of soil wash through it in the yearly cycle of the flooding or inundation that once brought fertility to Egypt. There are many other colors recorded in this mysterious work, notably the transitional stage of iridescence termed the Peacock’s Tail. Alchemy like Magick or Astrology speaks in a complex and evocative code of symbols whose meaning unfolds through study and practice, paralleled in the east by what the tantriks call Twilight Language, which both conceals and reveals the process of initiation. I have only touched lightly upon alchemical symbolism here, as it is often obscure to the point of surrealism; yet it remains one of the true foundations of the western mystery tradition.