Thursday, September 21, 2006
ABRAMELIN AND OTHER HOLY GUARDIAN ANGELS
Here is a good explanation of the reason I constantly advise caution when approaching the teachings of a seer, and why I believe that the approval of the Church is necessary before the teachings of any seer can be embraced.
Here is the rendering of this idea of contacting your guardian angel presented from a Gnostic point of view, by O.T.O. researcher P. R. Koenig.
First notice that the dove, representative of the Holy Spirit, has a prominent place in the website. The very first sentence sets the stage: "Angels are heathen beings the belief in which predates Christendom." The essay moves on from there. From the website:
The mysterious Arab Abramelin transmitted to the equally mysterious Abraham of Worms, a nebulous recipe for the compilation of personal rituals that are to lead to a communication/communion with the personal Holy Guardian Angel. By these means one becomes firstly befriended with the Angel and secondly, the master of the demons. The process seems to be reciprocal: Human and Angel become One and together forge a bridge to the divine.
The rainbow bridge? Alice Bailey's bridge to Antakahrana? Whether it is or not, there is little doubt that this Human and Angel becoming One is the alchemical wedding of occult lore. It is part and parcel of the Ordo Templi Orientis Phenomenon, as Koenig states:
The Abramelin-Text forms the trigger for many Occultists to engage with the Holy Guardian Angel. In the context of the O.T.O. phenomenon we are interested amongst other things in the history of the influence this text has had on Aleister Crowley and his imitators. The attainment of communication with the Holy Gurdian Angel (here abbreviated to HGA) appears in the IX deg. of Crowley's O.T.O.-system. And if one regards the identification of Self with Phallus as a communication with the Angel, then it can also be said to appear in the VIII deg. of that system. The HGA is also a central theme of the Argentum Astrum (A:.A:.), founded by Crowley in 1907, as a "new, improved" version of the Golden Dawn. Since the O.T.O. is seen by Thelemites as a vehicle for the teachings of AA, it is surprising the Abramelin-Text receives so little attention in the O.T.O.-groups.
Which angels would a man, self-styled "The Beast" and "666" be likely to contact?
Koenig discusses the Roman Catholic concept of angels and the cosmology of fall and redemption. According to him
In the Orthodox churches the worship of Angels was more pronounced than in the Roman-Catholic church; the Angel cult was judged as idolatrous as early as 372 by the Synod of Laodicea. The Reformation later exterminated the worship and conjuration of Angels.
Certainly the Orthodox do not "worship" angels. Perhaps Justin, if he is checking in here, could comment on the amount of devotion devoted to the angels by the Orthodox. From the Roman Catholic point of view, while a strong emphasis on angels has not been present within memory, the guardian angel is very much a facet of Roman Catholic doctrine.
Koenig moves on to discuss the Jewish concept of angels. Here we get the "seven spirits of God" that came up in my recent exchange with Rev. Campbell of the Home Temple Movement:
Another judaic Angelogy (sic) speaks of seven highest Angels that God created first. A further tradition designates a sort of disposable Angel; the possibility of a daily passing-into-the-beyond of these Angels, once they have sung a song unto God.
Two footnotes are of particular interest--No. 8 and No. 25.
8. The central grade of 5 deg. = 6 deg. represents the Knowledge and Conversation with one's own HGA. In the language of the Cabbalists the Human is the final He in the Tetragrammaton of IHVH, the HGA being the Vau. So the HGA becomes the Prince, who awakens the sleeping Princess (the Soul) and raises her to the status of the Mother; she then unifies herself with the Father (God) and together this Union absorbs the Crown.
"The status of the Mother", isn't that the very choice of designation applied to the Opus Angelorum's seer Mother Bitterlich? In Roman Catholicism we do not have a designation "Mother" apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary. Are we to see Bitterlich as the equal of the Mother of God? The very idea is blasphemous!
Returning to Koenig's text:
For instance, Pierre-Eugene-Michael Vintras (1807-1875) revealed to his followers all the names of Holy Guardian Angels that end in "ael" (in accord with the manichaistic example). He and his followers believe that they have personal sexual intercourse with Death itself.
Vintras continues to turn up where the worship of a fallen angel lurks.
Footnote 32 tells us: "Vintras, who uses bleeding Hosts as a propaganda method, teaches the Lucifer is not irrevocably damned, which was contradicted in 1843 by Gregorius XVI." In footnote 39 we are told: "Many followers of Crowley see the HGA also as a demon."
In Part Two of the same essay we learn that:
...a conjuration of the Holy Guardian Angel exposes and delivers the magician to the forces of Evil.
The final section of the essay explains the dangers involved in these practices:
Crowley can call certain demons, but he cannot bring them under control. Oriens, Paimon, Ariton, Amaaion and hundreds more, as well as eleven servents escaped from the hut, got into the house and unleashed a chaos: his coachman, strictly abstinent until that very moment, fell victim to delerium tremens; a seeress he had brought with him from London, returned to the capital and became a prostitute; his housekeeper "who could not bear the unwholesome atmosphere of the house" disappeared without trace; a worker engaged on the estate attempted to murder Crowley in a fit of madness. Even the village butcher was influences (sic) by the names of two demons Elerion and Mabakiel, ("Laughter" and "Wailing") that Crowley had absentmindly (sic) scribbles (sic) on an invoice. When read together these two words mean "unwanted suffering, that suddenly darkens joy". Only too true, as the butcher was cutting a roast for a customer, he accidentally severed his femoral artery and bled to death. Nevertheless the House in Boleskine was declared to be "Holy" and to this day, in all Crowley's Gnostic Masses, the Altar with the Stele upon it, must be oriented towards Boleskine.
In August 1900, after the conflict for the Golden Dawn Crowley travelled to Mexico, where he visited the first two of a total of 30 Aethyrs, that is to say extra-terrestrial dimensions, using a crystal ball. At the base of his magical concept we find "The Enochian Calls" of ca. 1659 by John Dee and his assistant Edward Kelly, texts Crowley studied first in the Golden Dawn and later in the manuscript departments of the British Museum and Ashmoler Museum in Oxford.
Dee and Kelly, another seer and seer's advocate, not unlike Bitterlich and her promoters in Opus Angelorum.
Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF acted rightly in reigning in a group of priests who were pursuing this path. The fact that it took nine years to convince the priests that they must stop using Cabbalistic practices indicates a strong commitment to very dangerous dubious beliefs on the part of the priests. This may all be in the past for Opus Angelorum, but the fact that the seer is still within the present on their website tells me that they must be approached with a great deal of caution.
