Gabriel, the Aeon, and the Shamanic Death Trip

It took a full day to receive it all, to experience it in full, and to reach understanding.

It began in the morning, as I sat enjoying coffee and breakfast with Harper. We were talking about what we wanted to do today. We had been planing an evening conjuration of our favorite entity from the Theurgia Goetia for days. The temple space was already adorned in red roses, a seal embroidered, and an offering made. The lights flickered throughout the house, a now-familiar indication that this spirit was present and ready to interact with us.

And then it came to me, that prickling at the edges of my sphere. "I also want to do a Lunar rite today, something with Gabriel," I found myself saying. It was Monday, after all, and there was something I needed from the Moon. No clue what it was. Just a feeling.

Harper smiled*, and we talked a bit about it, and the conversation turned. Soon it was time for her to go to work, and we each drew a tarot card of the day, as we are wont to do. I drew the Aeon of the Thoth deck, formerly Judgment. You remember the Judgement card, the one with Gabriel blowing his horn, raising the dead to their resurrection bodies, calling us to our Judgment Day, and beginning our new eternal life? That one. That one with Gabriel on it.

His vibe was upon me, and I laughed.

The day passed. I turned the remains of a rotisserie chicken into soup. We had started boiling the carcass the night before for stock, thinking of cooking lentils in it, or something. Sliced carrots and onion moved on thermal currents among the bones and skin and fat as it bubbled on the stove. Before she had left, Harper and I had decided it would not do as stock, but must become soup. I strained the stock, separating the bones from the meat and veggies, Harper's familiar assisting me in the task as a good feline co-chef should. To the fridge went I, and scavenged more veg to toss in. Fresh spinach leaves, and leftover cauliflower from the night before. Sliced mushrooms. Some long grain black rice, a handful of quinoa. Salt, of course, and coarse ground black pepper. Rosemary and ever so little oregano, ground in the palm of my hand.

Harper came home for lunch, and we ate the soup that had turned out so well. I was surprised how delicious it was. At how a well-picked pile of bones could be transformed into something so wonderful. The essence of the old transmuted into something new, something even better than it was before. The rotisserie chicken was good, don't get me wrong. But the soup was so much better.

I had a conference call in the Lunar hour in the afternoon, and so I couldn't conjure Gabriel when I wanted. Harper and I chatted online about conjuring him out of hour, and I was about to do so at the close of the business day, when client needs took precedence over my own. I ended up spending a couple hours performing a Hermetic Diagnosis in the temple instead. Harper returned home, and we worked in parallel on the things we needed to do into the evening. We broke for dinner and a bit of a movie, before returning to the Temple to conjure the spirit of the Theurgia Goetia. She took the role of seer, and we received the information we needed to receive.

And it was time to ground out and go to bed, but I felt it again, at the edges of my sphere. I checked the time before we left the temple, and it was still within the third hour of the Moon. I conjured him, Gabriel, and we received the vision, heard the voice. It wasn't any more strange and wonderful than any other conjuration we performed. Images in the crystal. A statement received, "this dream is real," a reference to something that had happened on the weekend. No further communion that I recall now, beyond that silent hymning that goes on when Magicians and Spirits spend time together.

And we went to bed, and we slept.

And the dreams came.

"This is how you must explain the quality to others," he said, showing me an aluminum or steel block being machined into a piece or a part. "You cannot see the finished piece by looking at the block of metal. It is shaped in phases. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated."

And I woke. And again, I slept.

And again, the dreams came.

"You are remade. You are reborn. The trumpet has sounded, and you are raised from your graves. Your flesh is transformed. Your bones taken, and you are recreated into a new thing. You were dead. You were decayed. Your corpse was picked clean. But now you are made anew. The old you remains within the new, but transformed. You are given a new body, an eternal body. You are Judged, and rewarded. You receive the power and responsibility of the Saints of New Jerusalem."

And as he spoke, I saw it was so. I experienced it in the dream. I had lived a life, and I had died. I was bones. A clarion call woke me, and I rose, shaking the dust from my bones. And I was made anew, given a new life in which to accomplish Joy.

"The 'old Aeon' has passed, that life is over. You are dead to those things that came before. You have died, and you are being remade. What you are now is not the end. You cannot see the finished function of the form if you look at it before it is complete. It happens in phases. And there are two of you, and the process must be aligned, coordinated."

And I awoke again, the vision complete, understanding received, and transmitted over coffee from a bed shared with my lover.

* Something happens when she smiles. It's not just me. Other people see it too.