The HGA: Can it turn you into a Power?

I've had some things on my mind a great deal lately. I've spoken before about the goal of the magician as long as we are in the flesh. I may have mentioned that the goal of a magician, per the Hermetic texts, is to become a Power. Last night while reading the Greek Magical Papyri, I found this:

"When you die he will embalm your body as befits a god, and taking up your spirit will carry it into the air with himself. For an aerial spirit [such as you have become] having been united with a powerful assistant will not go into Hades." (Papyri graecae magicae I.54)

I've mentioned before that I think the Supernatural Assistant described in the Greek Magical Papyri is the same entity as the HGA. I asked my HGA while reading the description if he could do all the things described, and he confirmed it.*

I just realized I haven't written up (or at least I can't find) my dissertation on the Emerald Tablet here. It explains a lot of basic concepts about the Great Work that I wanted to link to so I didn't have to repeat it yet again, but apparently I haven't written it. I did talk about it. I remember writing it though. Shit; shit shit shit.

Ok, well anyway. The goal of the magician is to ascend to the heavens and return in power to create the universe, according to the Emerald Tablet as I see it. That's a quick summary. We're images of God, God created by emmanating, and that's what we should be doing to, and we do it by going up through the Seven Heavens, getting purified, getting more Power, and returning to the earth. That's the "while we're in the flesh" part.

But in the Corpus Hermeticum, it talks about how we're supposed to also be leaving behind at each sphere some negative aspect of ourselves. I'll get to that expanded post eventually, but I touched on it here. When we have accomplished this, we become a Power.

Now, "Powers" in the time of the writing of the Corpus Hermeticum were sometimes Arial Spirits. In the Corpus, it's pretty clear that they're talking about becoming an Angel like the Angels that help you become an Angel. Of course, you don't become literally an Angel, you become a manifestation of God with more supernatual Powers that you can use to help other people.

Note: Powers, Angels, Spiritual Guides, HGAs, Geniuses, Gods, etc. all have one thing in common: No Body. No flesh suit to flap around in on the earth. So I think it's safe to say we can't become a Power the way the Corpus suggests while we're still flapping meat to wheeze sounds at each other. Most folks** don't get out alive, so there's a death of sorts involved.

The Emerald Tablet covers what to do while you're in the Flesh. It also covers how to get to a point where you're ready to get out of the Flesh and become a Power. It's a roadmap, sort of. It doesn't tell you how to get out of the Flesh and become a Power, but performing the activities described in the Tablet will result in you getting ready for the Eighth and Ninth Spheres where this can occur.

Enter into the picture the Rainbow Body. Jason mentioned it to me in passing, and I totally got sucked into it. We were talking about the East vs. the West in the big miscommunication, and I was trying to get in touch with all the power of my past lives or something. He mentioned the Hermetic work "The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth," which has been extremely interesting and has lead me to Working Iophiel from Agrippa's Scale of the Number Ten. I'm trying to learn the Hymns of Silence now, and they are truly beautiful.

But the Rainbow Body of Dzogchen and becoming a Power in Hermetic practice are similar enough that I think they're different manifestations of the same spiritual "impulse" that Fr. BH calls spirit communications, only received differently in different cultures. I've been working out how to accomplish this Rainbow Body thing at my death. I even told my spouse about it in case I die and all that's left is some hair and fingernails. I wouldn't want her to freak out.

So last night I was going over the Greek Magical Papyri again, and lo and behold, there it was, buried in PGM I.54. This spiritual assistant, this angel in the rite that you get that has all the same characteristics as the "Supernatural Assistant" and the "HGA" is also able to "embalm your body as befits a god." Embalming was the process of preserving the body, but the gods don't. have. bodies. So I'm thinking there's a transformation of the body going on here that is illuminated by the other references we have in the Western mystery traditions in the Corpus Hermeticum. These things were all coming out of the same part of the world at around the same period of time. Lots of overlap.

My understanding of the Rainbow Body is that when you die, your Ruach gets a new body and can basically do all the things that a "Power" as described in the Corpus can do. I believe the Neschemah-eternal part of the soul goes on to reincarnate, but I'm still in the tentative-formation phase of the theory, so that might change, I dunno. Rather than sitting in the Akashic record gathering dust while you wait for the Immortal spark of yourself to finish reincarnating, you get to continue to "live" and "breathe" and "have your being" in a Body of Light. Pretty cool shit, actually. Those Tibetans have stories of people that were reborn as demi-gods and stuff, and we have our Saints in Christianity. Except our Popes and Pastors don't tell us not to propitiate Saints because they cause trouble. Unless they're Protestants and call it idolatry.

So, in conclusion, I think (the spirt that we modern magicians call) the HGA might be able to either physically transform you into the Rainbow Body, or at the very least provide the instruction, initiations, and empowerments required to be able to transform into the Rainbow Body at the time of death. Like Yoda and Ben Kenobi did in the Star Wars trilogy. And you know you want that.

*For those who prefer to make their own inferences from more scholarly than the Voices in my head, compare the description of the HGA rites in Mathers' introduction to The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, the descriptions of the Genius in Agrippa's Book 3 of Occult Philosophy (chapters 21, 22, 26, and 27), and the description of the good and evil daimons in the Divine Pymander (verses 22 and 23). Check out the rest of the Greek Magical Papyri over on Al Billing's site, and read the essays there on the spirits. The history of the HGA can be readily traced through these sources.

**Enoch; Elijah. Exceptions. If your name doesn't start with an "E," you're fuct, apparently. Don't tell me Jesus doesn't start with an E, he totally died. And even if you buy that stupid "swoon theory," his name was also Emmanuel, so fuck you, I'm totally right, and you're a lu-hooser. I mean, scholarship demonstrates the lack of foundation to your arguments.

Emerald Tablet.... is MISSING!

Dude....

Unbefuckinglievable. I don't have a dissertation on the Emerald Tablet here. I totally thought I did, but I've checked and rechecked, and either I never have explained in detail the Emerald Tablet as I see it, or I just can't find it in my blog posts. I'm trying to link to it because it's all the stuff I need to talk about in another post, but I never talked about it here, it seems. I talked about it to the folks at Thelesis when I gave the Modern Angelic Grimoire talk, and I think I mentioned it in the neoplatonic basics series, but ... shit. It's got to be here somewhere.

If I can't find it, I will write one up. It's the CORNERSTONE of my practice, my understanding and application of the Work. Or at least the best representation of that that I've found.

I'll get around to it.

The Reincarnation of Gods

At the Doing Magic blog by Fr. POS, I was recently exhorted to comment on a comment to his blog. So there will be something magical posted here today before I go to sleep.

I'm snipping the interesting background of Anonymous, mainly because I'm not a Pagan. I have no insight into the approach or the specifics she mentioned.

I can, however, comment on the following question she posted:

"Does magick allow for continual reincarnation for the sake of change in time, culture and social context?"

First, there is no good reason for putting a "k" in magic. I do it, on occasion, and when I do it's because I usually read the word in Agrippa, and he spells it with a "k." I think. Or it could be that I've been indoctrinated by all the Ckrowley I read in my youth and sometimes I slip.

Second, I totally agree with the Frater's essential message of his post: I unequivocally believe that yes, Magic allows for continual reincarnation for the sake of change in time, culture and social context. To me, Magic is based on understanding how God (the Monad, First Father, the Good) manifests through the different Heavens, the Spirits he emanates to represent aspects of himself, and most importantly, the REVELATION of himself provided by each Spirit you Work with as a magician.

I would rephrase "reincarnation" with "revelation." Magic not only allows for the continual revelation of God, but is the interaction of Man with these continually revealed aspects of himself.

I would quibble with certain parts of Frater BH's post, but I really liked 99% of what he said and how he said it. Terming the communications of the spirits (or gods) as "impulses" that we then interpret is excellent. It encapsulates the basics of how I have experienced communications with the spirits. People ask me if I hear voices, or see visions, or if the spirits appear physically before me all the time. I receive "pulses" of communication from them that may unfold to me as a vision, or as a voice, or something else, like a tactile sensation, or a smell. I have a deep love of words, so I often get words in my communications. Artists like Sucae would likely hear more music or see more visuals.

I do strongly disagree with the idea that one should write off symbolism that doesn't align with the spirits' standard symbolism. A friend conjured Raphael, and ended up with a being that was carrying a sheaf of wheat. He performed the LVX signs, and the spirit wavered and disappeared, and Raphael came forward in a more appropriate form. Fr. POS is more restrained than lots of folks that dabble in magic though, so I think his response to a spirit appearing with whacked out symbolism would be that of an experienced magician: note the differences, challenge the spirit with something like the vibration of the appropriate name of God, or asking it to perform some act (symbolically) to prove it is whom it claims to be representing.

But at the same time, I agree with what he was saying about being open to a spirit presenting symbolism that is within the spirit's purview, even if it doesn't match what you think you know about the spirit. They know more than we do. He's just experienced enough to understand what to do if a spirit looks off somehow. Maybe I'm used to dealing with newer magicians than he is, I dunno.

But getting back to the point, I work in a lot of traditional ways, but the spirits I conjure are not stuck in the 15th century. They are alive and well in the 21st century, and they are not ignorant of the changes that have occurred in the last 600 years. I draw from the older traditions because they aren't as muddied as the post-1899 occult sources are. They don't include a bunch of "scientific" theories that have been discredited, rephrased, and discredited again in their language the way Bardon and Chaos Magic do. They don't try to appeal to modern institutions for validity the way so many modern texts do. It's true that they appeal to the institutions of their time, including Catholicism or Protestantism, depending on which religion was being implemented by the State where they were written, but I can identify with that, and it resonates well with my own beliefs and experiences. We're so far removed from when these institutions had to be appealed to in secular America that the texts can be weighed and evaluated on the success or failure of their rites alone.

It's vitally important that we remember that the word "Kabbalah" in Hebrew means "revelation" though. It's not a static thing. Emanationist theories from Persia and Greece that form the foundation of my Work and beliefs more than the Kabbalah were also considered to be constantly revealed. The words we use for spirits, be it angels, daimons, or malakim originally meant "messengers," and let's remember that's what they still are: bearers of messages, revealers and representatives of specific aspects of God.

So if you use gods of the Pagan myths to interact with the Monad in his various incarnations, don't expect them to be stuck in the forms and thoughts of their myths from 2500 years back. They will reveal what they represent, and we will interpret their pulses of communication as best as we are able to. In 2000 years, it will be different, and yet the same.

Weird Wide web

Nothing Magical today of note.So far anyway.

But I found this image in my ongoing battles with workplace stress and boredom:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suecae_sounds/2271579673/

A nice tribute to his daughter? A horrifying image that will haunt my nightmares? I can't tell.

Maybe it's the curve of the arm?

I really love the photos Suecae takes of nature stuff, and mad props to his blog.

But that face on that arm... And when they're old, and the skin cells have regenerated a few hundred times, and the detail is gone, and the image has that old tattoo look... I just... no. Never mind.

Hermetic Course Outline

Before I LOSE all my work, I'm posting the high-level outline. There are additional specific tasks under the following bullets that are detailed assignments and instruction.

This will be a paid course. One of the sessions will include the Modern Angelic Grimoire, specifically rewritten for this course. I'm charging for it because:

• I'm investing a lot of time into the development of this course
• I will also be grading the work from my students, providing insight and direction as necessary
• Most importantly, people who don't pay for stuff don't do the Work. It saves me a lot of wasted time.

Now, there's this idiot friend of mine that got all stoned and said that I should NEVER charge for spiritual teachings because if it was RIGHTEOUS, then the UNIVERSE would support me.

For all you people that expect the UNIVERSE to pay my mortgage for teaching you, please feel free to go directly to the UNIVERSE for your education (i.e., fuck off).

There are three basic levels I'm working on:

The "Novice" Level

Covers the core basics of Hermetic Magic.

• The Elemental, Planetary, Celestial, and Trans-Celestial Spheres
• The Goal and Role of a Magician
• Finding and Using Occult Resources
• Holy Guardian Angels, Geniuses, and Agathos-Daimons
• Spirit Conjuration Basics
• Practical Magic for Every Day Activities

The "Adept" Level

Covers The Great Work in Practice.

• Attaining Knowledge and Conversation with the HGA
• Practical Planetary Magic (Modern Angelic Grimoire)
• Introduction to Hermetic Merkavah
• Practical Sub-Lunar Magic

The "Magister" Level

Covers the "PHD" level of Hermetic esoteric practices that don't even get really interesting until you've done the preparatory work of the initial levels.

• Hermetic Alchemical Transformation of the Body, Mind, and Soul
• The Eighth and Ninth Spheres
• On Becoming a "Power"
• The Final Transformation

This is all pretty formative, and as I provide the sessions to my test crew, we'll see how it works out. I'm still working on the cost per session. I expect to be running these in parallel, so at any given time any of you could be taking any level of the classes, assuming you have finished something of the previous levels. In plain English, that means they won't cost too terribly much.

If you're already sure you're past the Novice stage, I'll take an essay explaining some basic stuff in lieu of the first course, but the things I'm teaching build on the previous Work, and it won't do a lot of good if you haven't done some basic initiatory stuff I'll be covering in the Novice sessions.