Free Modern Angelic Grimoire Offer has Ended

The last of the free versions of the Modern Angelic Grimoire went out last night. Thanks for the many responses, and those who received the drafts, I ask that you send any feedback on errors, grammar, content, or usability after you've read it. Any questions about specific aspects, or requests for more detail will likely make it into future revisions.

So far the best editorial critique I've received has come from Fr. Servitor Lucem, a wascawy wabbit who really DOES magick. (Shocking, I know!)

Kathy McDonald (whose outstanding Work has been documented on the Solomonic and Ritual MAgic yahoo groups if you havent' read them) made some excellent comments as well, and that lead to correcting the spelling of the Tzadkiel lamen in the final version (It's a Qoph, not a Kaph).

Their critiques made Version 0.3 the best of the lot. I can't thank them enough.

I'm probably going to work with Moloch and his publishing outfit to get some hard copies available, eventually. For now though, if anyone wants an electronic draft, you can have a PDF emailed to you for a donation (minimum of $7.95, USD).

By the way, I accept donations through paypal at my blog site now for anyone who wants to make me rich. It's that little button on the right up in the corner.

Feel free to give me your tithe. I promise to make sure it goes to the Lord's work. :)

1.2 - The Harmony of the Spheres

Let me just say up front, I really hated writing that last post. There's so much more than I can cram into a blog post, it's unbelievable. There are competing doctrines of creation, details given in the Bible that complement the details given in Trismegistus, and Timaeus, the thing that started it all... Man. There's a lot that was left out.

But that's yesterday. On to the Harmony of the Spheres!

Ok, so there are spheres within spheres that make up the cosmos beneath the realm of God. There's a sphere that has the constellations on it, a sphere for each of the planets, a sphere for each of the elements. That's 12 spheres (hey, just like the number of astrological signs, and the number of tribes of Israel, and the number of apostles, and the hours in a day and in a night, what a freaking coincidence!).

Now, there aren't "really" 12 spheres. The realm of sensate matter is the lower four spheres, the Elemental spheres. This sphere includes all the physical planets, stars, galaxies, universes, etc. that we can and cannot see. Anything that can be sensed exists in the realm of the the elements, below the sphere of the Moon. So the elemental spheres, while separate and harmonious, blend together in to what we see. This is the sphere that can be sensed through our material bodies.

This leaves us with nine spheres.

The uppermost sphere, that of the constellations, can be viewed as an influencing sphere as opposed to a governing sphere. Agrippa talks a bit about this, and I won't get too into details here, but suffice it to say that in my understanding of the NP cosmology, the sphere of the constellations is more like a barrier between the realms of the planetary governors (ending at the horizon of Saturn's Sphere) and the unknowable Realm of God (Light-Divine Darkness-the One). The constellations can be viewed as pinpricks in this barrier through which the infinite light enters the realms of sensation, guiding or feeding as it were, the planetary governors.

Now, what we've done here is divided the infinite universe into three parts. The material realm is composed of the four elemental spheres. The seven spheres of the planetary governors is the second part, ending at the barrier of the Sphere of the constellations. Then there's the infinite realm of God, the third part.

Only the realms of the Planetary Governors and the sphere of matter can be known and interacted with consciously. The higher realms may be experienced, but being before the utterance of the Word, they can't really be put into words.

The realms of the Planetary Governors exist as pure emanations of God. When viewing God they are passive, but when viewing the realm of Matter, they are active. Being pure in their essence, they are in perfect harmony with one another and with God.

Now I'd like to introduce a concept I've used on the blog before (and I don't claim to have created it), the Sphere of the Magician. Every one of us live in a bubble of perception. Lots of us have read various modern and classical interpretations of existence as being only that which can be sensed. Plato would have totally grokked Robert Anton Wilson, God rest his heathen soul. (I doubt Wilson could grok Plato though.)

This bubble of perception is our sphere within the material realm. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, an excellent model of magickal operation on its own, bears the famous inscription "that which is above is like that which is below." Metaphysically speaking, we have a spiritual sphere of sensation as well as the physical sphere of sensation. They aren't really separated, but it's easier to think of them as parts than to try to understand the whole all at once. A seed in an orange doesn't look like an orange, and neither does the peel by itself, but they're still one thing.

The basic intent of the magician is to get their "sphere" into harmony with the other spheres. Neo-platonic philosophers had various ways of achieving this. Plotinus taught that you could instantly "get it" by realizing your race and value. He talks about denigrating the things of matter and exalting the things of spirit. He, and Porphyry, his student and biographer, believed that the way to reclaim your race and value was through Philosophy, and various forms of Asceticism. Later, some Gnostics and others would take the idea to the extreme. They believed that because matter distracted you from your goal of reuniting with God, then all matter must be inherently evil. Some went so far as to claim that the God that created Matter must have been evil.

Poppycock.

Plotinus had another student that helped us out immensely as magicians who would rather do something more active than philosophize all day, and who wanted to participate in the matter-manifestation process in a more hands-on way. This guy was Iamblichus. He taught that theurgy, magickal arts and working with spirits were viable means of reuniting with the One, God. That's the core of this system I'm presenting here. There are various other branches of neo-Platonism, and lots to discuss and argue about, but as magicians working with the NP magickal system, the point is to harmonize our sphere with the spheres above, and through this harmony to join with God, accomplishing what later became known as the Great Work.

1.1 - Neo-Platonic Cosmology: How it all started

The best encapsulation of the neo-platonic creation story that I've found is in the second book of The Divine Pymander by Hermes Trismegistus. (Check wikipedia for his story.) It's simple and to the point. Christians like myself can identify enough parallels to feel at ease in it, and pagans can find enough other gods that they feel at home too. It's a good little catch-all, and that makes sense when you study its history. Which I won't get into here. Lots of debate around that, and I'd rather get to the point.

My understanding of the Creation is summarized below. There's a lot I'm omitting for the sake of brevity, but I'm trying to include the required pieces to to lay the foundation.

In the beginning was essential God-the-Progenitor, dwelling in perfect darkness. In that perfect darkness, God still and always resides. By its nature, it radiates infinite pure light. In The Divine Pymander, Hermes Trismegistus is given a vision of the creation of the material realm. Within the infinite light appeared a great darkness, smoking as if it were on fire. Out of the infinite Light leaped a "certain holy Word" and that Word joined itself to the dark mass of Matter that came into being. When this holy Word entered the darkness, it separated into four realms. Fire leaped up highest to be closest to the infinite light, followed by Air, which seemed to hang between the Fire and Earth-Water below.

Next, God created a Workman. This guy created seven governors, each with their own sphere, surrounding the realm of Matter. When he did, the Word leaped up and cohabited with the Workman. This being then set the spheres in motion, and the natural world began creating animals and plants.

Meanwhile, God made Man in Its image. Man was the honored and beloved "brother" of the family. Eventually, after a lot went down (!), Man entered the physical realm, containing a spark of infinite God within, and yet also loving and being loved by Nature. We're of two natures, mortal and immortal.

The Spark of the Divine within is what gives us "authority" overt the elements, and the seven governors. We're coworkers though, not masters and slaves.

Ptolemy laid out the basic cosmology of the NP system. the center sphere is the sphere of Earth, surrounded by the sphere of Water, then Air, then Fire. Then there are the seven Spheres of the Governors. Each of these spheres is associated with one of the seven planets of classical astrology, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Around these are the "fixt stars," whose influence is primarily felt through the planetary governors. Beyond the stars is the realm of eternal light, and sitting in eternal divine darkness, radiating the light outwards and willing existence is the Primum Mobile, God.

The following image displays the basic cosmology of the NP system:

As you can see, there's a hierarchy involved. Each successive sphere heading "outward" brings you further from the realm of matter and closer to the realm of God. This is the structure brought to Creation by Logos, the "holy Word" created or uttered by God-the-Progenitor.

Neo-Platonic Basics

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I've been Working with this syncretic Judeo-Christian/Neo-Platonic system for a while now, based almost entirely on the the Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa. I've been reading Plato's Timaeus, Plotinus' Enneads, and Hermes Trismegistus' s The Divine Pymander, and it's all been percolating into a pretty strong brew within my sphere. When I hit the epiphany the other day, I was convinced it was a Universal Truth. I still think it is, but the general responses I'm getting are telling me that it's not making the kind of impact it had on me. In general, I've gotten a "yeah, ok" response, when this is the Key to Everything! Well, at least I think it is. For me, definitely, and I don't see anything that would indicate it wouldn't be the Key to Life, the Universe and Everything in a much more more meaningful way than "42."

So, with that in mind, I'm going to be posting a series of NP basics so the foundation of the system I'm working with is documented somewhere. I see another book in my future. Distant future. :)

So here's the planned outline:

1.0 - Overview Sections:

• 1.1 - NP Cosmology: How it all started
• 1.2 - The Harmony of the Spheres
• 1.3 - Spirits: Why we Work with 'em, How we Work with 'em
  
• 1.4 - Why we're here: The Great Work in a NP Magical System
• 1.5 - While we're here: The Great Work in Action

2.0 - Practical Sections:

• 2.1 - The Lamp
• 2.2 - About those Planets...
• 2.3 - The Joys of Making Talismen
• 2.4 - Elemental Kings
• 2.5 - Spirit Pots
• 2.6 - Them pesky demons are at it again...
• 2.7 - The Genius and the Evil Daimon

3.0 - The Glyph

• 3.1 - Putting it all Together: The Altar Layout Revisited
  
• 3.2 - Using the Glyph in Practice

That should cover everything. Along the way, I'll probably have other posts to make about some pet projects. I've started making my Genius/Evil Daimon... thing. Yeah, I'll get to details on that later.

Holistic Wholeness and Perfect Goodness

Good news, everyone, I got it! I mean, I got it. I really got it.

I had an epiphany last night and early this morning. I'll try not to
wax all mystical and ecstatic on it, but it was beautiful. It made
sense of everything. Literally, everything. Birth, life,m death, struggles, woe, time, death, eternity, bliss, joy, it all wrapped up together around 4:30 a.m. in the following. The glyph is the key, ultimately.

I'm not getting into the boring details at the moment, I'm just going to summarize. I posted this to Ritual Magick, so if you've been there, you'll be wasting your time unless you want to hear me talk more about it. You should be working on this shit. I'll be coming down with a minor messiah complex for a few days, but I DID do some conjuring in the name of Messiah at daybreak, so hey, what can you expect?

Anyway, the result of my moment is the following layout for the altar:

In the center, you place four sealed vessels that have the spirits
of the Four Kings of the elements bound within, each in their
appropriate quadrant:

• South - Mahazael, sealed with the name Uriel
• North - Azael, sealed with the name Gabriel
• West - Azazel, sealed with the name Raphael
• East - Samael, sealed with the name Michael

Make sure you seal these demons in using something that you can let
them out if you need them later in your existence, but you want them
sealed unless they are actively performing something you've told them
to do.

Around these four sealed vessels, you place the following talismen
in their appropriate quadrant:

• South - Uriel~Ariel Talisman
• North - Gabriel~Tharsis Talisman
• West - Raphael~Cherub Talisman
• East - Michael~Seraph Talisman

These talismen should NOT use the seals of the angels as attributed
in other grimoires. These are the four elemental Kings, not the
Archangels of the planetary spheres that share the same names. To
get the appropriate seal, conjure each of the Elemental Kings
separately.

Beside each of the Elemental Kings' talismen, place the appropriate
elemental weapon. The wand in the East, the Cup in the North, the
Knife in the West, and in the South your own personal seal.

You now have two circles on your altar, the infernal circle in the
center, and the elemental circle around that. These two spheres
*are* the material realm, and at the exact same time they *are* your
personal Sphere as a magician.

Starting in the South, place 7 planetary Talisman in the following
order clockwise, 51.429 degrees apart (give or take a hundredth of a
degree):

• Moon
• Venus
• Jupiter
• Mercury
• Saturn
• Sun
• Mars

These are the seven spheres that surround the magician's sphere.
These create the table of practice.

That's the physical manifestation of the Key. The Lamp should be
placed outside this circle to the east. The Divine Darkness that
Dionysius the Areopogate is outside the light.

The altar is now complete.

This is what mine looks like:

As you can see, I'm using the four elemental kings of the Tarot as temporary placeholders for Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel.