Ever since Samuel Mathers translated the French edition of the Book of Abramelin into English , the system has attracted a huge amount of interest from those within the Golden Dawn. There are a number of stories associated with those Golden Dawn adepts who tried the system and came to grief.
With the recent publication of the German version of Abramelin we start to see that Mathers’ edition had several important flaws and some would say that this is the reason why the Abramelin system was so dangerous. Literalism is the curse of modern occultism and in the Abramelin system this is certainly true. What many fail to see is that who ever wrote the Abramelin system had the idea that it was meant to be adapted to suit the individual. There are also several blinds in the system that require a bit of intelligence to work out. Once these are sorted out then it is possible to adapt the Abramelin system to suit the Golden Dawn.
In Whare Ra the Abramelin system was treated with what some might describe as respect while others would be more cynically say with fear.
An outline of the Abramelin system
What Abramelin describes is a system of regular work which increases in intensity in three stages. During the initial stages this requires a morning and evening prayer and two hours of study of religious texts. This intensifies until the person is required to take two weeks of isolation to commune with his Holy Guardian Angel. Then, for three days, he meets with an army of demons who are required to bend to his will. After this initiation program is completed the magician is given a serious of magical squares which form the backbone of a magical system.
What is important about the system is that it is entirely flexible. Religion is not important so long as those taking part only believe in One God. Prayers are not proscribed but are meant to be designed by the person carrying out the procedure. While many think that the goal of the Abramelin system is “Knowledge and Conversation with your Holy Guardian Angel”, it does not seem to be the case. It is designed to make you a religious and pious man. The Holy Guardian angel is supposed to be guiding you throughout the three stages of work culminating in his instruction in the later stages. There are some things in Abramelin which do not work either magically or for modern people. Despite its tendency towards religious freedom it does lean towards Judaic law over other religions. Rules on touching dead meat and women during menstruation are hang-overs from the Talmud. Oddly the system claims that it can be performed by women. This is quite enlightened for its time, although if the system was followed literally women would ‘fail’ by the fact Abramelin considers them ‘unclean’ once a month.
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| When meeting your HGA for the first time – don’t blink |
In the Middle Ages it was claimed that when a person was born they were given a Holy Guardian Angel and attracted a Demon. The HGA was to guide and protect the person throughout their life and the Demon was supposed to tempt them away from the path. In the Medieval Bulgarian church when a person was baptised they were told “do not listen to your demon and do nothing that will anger your Holy Guardian Angel”.
Clearly then the HGA was not your ‘higher self’ but an Angelic entity which was God’s way of looking after you. It was God’s way of communicating with you on Earth and might, perhaps, be the way of reaching your True Self.
However there is a clue that Abramelin gives fairly early on in the book which suggests that his system is not entirely HGA related. He requires operators to read his book extremely carefully which is often an indication in some esoteric literature that there is a blind being used and you need to engage your brain to get past them.
There are six days used to invoke spirits. The first three days appear to be dedicated to the HGA while the other three days are connected to specifically named spirits. The first four are Kings, then there are eight Dukes and then the lists of servators. We know that the demons are organised as a mockery of the hierarchy of heaven. Thus the four demonic Kings are a mockery of the four Archangels of the Direction, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel and Uriel. The Number 8 is a mockery of the perfection of the divine number 7. Thus we are looking for a seven fold Angelic hierarchy with servitors.
It is possible then that on the first three days of the Abramelin retreat one is supposed to invoke the Archangels of the Quarters, followed by the Archangels of the Sepheroth and their attendant angels. They then call up their dualistic counterparts. The system hints at a seventh day which is not described. This would be the Sabbath day which is the day that traditionally God rested, but is also the holiest day in the cycle when the person is expected to communicate and worship their creator. This moves the person beyond angels to the state of seeing the most High. This would mean that the Abramelin system would have linked the candidate to all four levels of Cabbalistic creation.
Thus it is possible to overlay the system into the Golden Dawn so that it looks like the following:
When you wake up have a shower, face east and perform the cabbalistic cross lesser invoking ritual of the Pentagram. You should then write an invocation to the highest aspect of God that you know and request that it reveal to you its wisdom through its Holy Guardian Angel. You should meditate on what you believe to be God or the highest spiritual aspect. Think of the good qualities you have and use the current of the Pentagram to draw those qualities you want to have toward you.
Before you go to bed perform the cabbalistic cross and the lesser banishing ritual of the Pentagram and repeat your invocation and add that you would request the Holy Guardian Angel protect and teach you while you sleep. Work out how your personality falls short of your abilities and destiny and allow the current of the banishing pentagram to carry these weaknesses from you.
Then you invoke your Holy Guardian Angel to lead you onto the right path of Wisdom and Understanding. You should then meditate on your holy scripture (if you have them), sentences of the Golden Dawn rituals, esoteric books, the angelic forces or just wait upon your HGA to teach you. You should lengthen the amount of time you spend on this.
Then in the evening, have another shower or at least wash your hands and face. Perform the Cabbalistic Cross, the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram and then the Greater Banishing ritual of the Pentagram and meditate on those aspects of humanity that are darker, those forces that are unregenerate. See them gradually come into balance or to break them up. You should ask for your HGA to help you in this.
When you wake up, at noon, and before the bedtime session you should wash your hands, feet and face or have a shower.
The morning session should be performed as before only this time you should add the lesser invoking hexagram for the day (ie moon is luna) and the LVX formula. You should then invoke your highest concept of God and ask to be given the honour of the company with the holy angels so they will grant and reveal the hidden Wisdom to reign over the unredeemed spirits and all creatures. Ask that the spirit of God shall come upon you. You should meditate on the energy of the Angel of the day and try to see its energy and power in operation. Think of all the positive aspects of that planet that manifest in you. You might like to consult your chart.
At noon perform the Ritual of the Rose Cross and repeat your prayer.
The evening session should be the same as the morning only this time you should perform banishing rituals. Ask that the spirit of God shall come upon you. You should meditate on the negative aspects of the planets that manifest in you and allow the energy of the banishing pentagrams to carry them out of your sphere of sensation.
Shower, enter your temple barefoot. Perform the Cabbalistic Cross Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram, Another Cabbalistic Greater invoking Ritual of the Pentagam, Purify and consecrate with Water and Fire, as the 0=0, take the oil of Abramelin in your left hand and recite the prayer of Abramelin or write something similar. Here is my version:
Amen.”
You are also expected to write this phrase on the four sides of your altar:
The third day should be dedicated to the ‘servants’ of the Archangels. Again we are guessing here. I have had several suggestions that these should be the Angels assigned to the paths of the tree of life but I think it is better to call upon the Angels of the planets. You could call the Intelligences but not the spirits, who are a little bit too demonic in the GD system.
These three days are supposed to be a communing with the Angels and your Holy Guardian Angel. During this time you should be requesting each Angel support you in your Spiritual journey and give you control of the unredeemed spirits and the forces that the Archangels represent. Like the unredeemed spirits these Angels are supposed to be pledging their support to help you. You are not commanding them, as you do the unredeemed spirits, you are attuning yourself to their energy so that you can access it.
The system of invoking angels should be familiar to GD magicians who are ready to take the Abramelin working and do not need to be rehashed. However it is worth pointing out that I would use a cut down version of what Regardie wrote in the Golden Dawn book. On the first day you will have to call five entities, the next day seven and the day after 14 which is a pretty hairy schedule.
The fourth, five and six days are pretty much by the book. Obviously you cannot call every demon in the Abramelin phone book and you should ask your HGA which ones you should call. These will be the ones that most stuff you up in your life path. While I like the idea of making the demonic spirits appear in a sandbox (it saves the problems of burnt hoof prints in the carpet and is easier to clean as demons are rarely house broken), I would draw a triangle of the art in the sandbox to enclose them. I do not like the idea of demons going anywhere unconstrained.
The seventh day is another part of the equation that was not related in Abramelin but is fairly logical. This is the Sabbath day which after that lot of evocations you will feel knackered and a bit sick. However on this day you call upon all your angels and demons to lift you up to the Most High. This is when you invoke your Higher Self. This will require your Holy Guardian Angel’s help, but instead of invoking into the sandbox you invoke that force inside yourself.
Some of the squares are created by the Angels and others by the unredeemed spirits. Some are a mixture of both. Abramelin gives specific instructions about calling the Dukes. He says you call the lot and then the one who is really in charge will write his servant’s name in the sand for you. You then make the Duke and this servant take an oath to do what you want.
For a number of reasons I am not happy with this approach. It puts the entire magical system in the hands of unredeemed spirits. A magician who leans too much on these, however in tune they are with their Higher Self or HGA is going to end up concentrating too much on the negative.
However it occurred to me that Abramelin was not providing the whole system. We seem to have two contradictory methods of obtaining the names and sigils of the being that is supposed to help us. The first involves our HGA and staring at the square until the sigil is seen and the other involves grilling the Dukes of Hell.
Clearly one is the method of finding out the Angelic names and the other is the method of contacting the Demonic. What is also strange is that all the squares given in the book are controlled by demonic entities. Abramelin can be read so that you ask your HGA for information about some squares and demons for the others, but the problem is that all the squares have some demonic entity connected with them . It seems then that the entireal magical application of the system is about the controlling of unredeemed spirits.
However Abramelin has hinted that these are not the only squares that are meant to be used. It is possible to construct others, find out the name of the good spirit and go from there.
Say, for example, we wanted to create a square that would help bring about peace. We would ask our HGA and he or she would give us the word, Shalom which is Hebrew for peace. We can lay this out in a square thus:
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So our Angel is called Alhom. We draw his name on a piece of paper with his sigil. We know that peace is attributed to the Sephoroth of Chesed so we ask Tzadqiel to send forth Alhom in the name of El to bring about the peace we need.
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