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Here is the video of last night's Ritual Night Talk on the Holy Guardian Angel, Part 3. The donation link is here.
I previously have covered Liber Samekh and dedicated two talks to discussion of the Holy Guardian Angel, but I wanted to elaborate on those a bit more based on questions I received and bits of online discussion I encountered over the last week. Also, I wanted to say a little bit more about the HGA in the context of the Auto-Talismanic Ritual that we performed on Monday for the Winter Solstice.
Enjoy!
13 comments:
To be fair, the world does seem pretty apocalyptic these days.
What does a holy guardian angel actually do? What are some good reasons a magician would have to go for it? I always hear the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel being held aloft as the goal of the western esoteric tradition, but not much about why it's worth going for.
Compared to what, though? A couple of years ago? I will grant that some aspects of the pandemic resemble elements from apocalyptic fiction. But if you go back further in history you can find times that were a lot worse than what's going today. my point was more that the whole definition of the word has changed, or at least is being misused by evangelicals.
HGA K&C is held up as a primary goal of the western esoteric tradition by a few authors, especially Crowley. I would go so far as to say that modern folks who interpret it that way are pretty much all influenced by Crowley's take on the subject. Abramelin is one grimoire among many, and is the only one that is centered on the HGA idea. You really don't see anything like the emphasis on it until the late 1800's, and most of the western esoteric tradition predates Crowley and the Golden Dawn.
So you can certainly practice western esotericism without doing anything related to the Abramelin working or to Liber Samekh. Even Crowley - the biggest HGA booster out there - admits that there are other methods besides Abamelin or Samekh, and they don't necessarily involve the HGA concept. Crowley just liked it so much because he found it simpler to explain to students.
As far why you would do it - first and foremost, it's a mystical experience. It expands your consciousness in a particular way outside the bounds of our usual day-to-day existence. If you want to have that experience, you do the practice. But it's entirely possible to be, say, a flat-out sorcerer who just does practical work and dispenses with mystical considerations.
But I am of the opinion that as your level of realization increases, so does your capacity for practical magick. I have seen that as my consciousness expands, the probability shifts I can cause get bigger. Maybe that's not a universal experience - I don't have a decent-sized sample of other practitioners for comparison. Also, in my experience the angel is good at giving practical advice regarding magick and mysticism in general, and can also help with practical spirit work. That is the point of the HGA invocation in Abramelin, after all - once the demon kings are pledged to the HGA, the magician can work with the spirits under their dominions.
Just my two cents. Look at the year 536 AD. My opinion is that 2020 is/was a year for transformation and I believe at least for me that it has helped me have faith and trust in my divine path.
I second what Scott said on the angel boosting one's magical abilities.
There certainly are a number of things that I hope to see transformed after this year of pandemic, I'll give you that. I'm cautiously optimistic that some of that will get done, but we'll have to see how it all plays out.
Yes, I join you in your optimism. When powerful new energy is coming to the earth, I believe we all must find a way to harness and channel it. I have often heard it said that empaths, sensitives, magicians and so forth will have greater shifts in their probability gradients than people who are completely closed to the Etheric planes. Just my opinion and observation.
I suppose I meant on my own microcosmic level, this transformative change started roughly one year ago and I realized that constantly asking the angels and the universe to elevate me to my highest potential does not mean it will be all sweetness and light! Change can be painful.
It seems as if Auriel has been working closely with me and allegedly Melchizedek. I had never heard of him before actually.
I had an odd occurrence. I finished my Jupiter evocation for two numbers of my choice to be drawn in a lottery, and at the time the lottery was being drawn, I suddenly became intensely physically weak, shaky and nauseated. It ramped up from nothing to it's peak in 20 seconds.
This is very far out of the ordinary for me, and it only lasted about ten minutes when it began to subside over the course of the next five minutes.
The evocation was only a partial success, with one number matching. The odds for my first number being drawn was about 18%, but the odds for the second was 2%, which seems to be a probability shift beyond my abilities right now.
It seems like the energy needed for the second probability shift was insufficient, and it backfired on me. I'm fine now, and it's not going to discourage me from practicing. I can't be certain that was even the cause.
I'm curious if this is something you've run into before, or if it's an outlier or unlikely to have been caused by the evocation?
I am a little confused as to why you are casting for just two numbers. The way I always do it, I cast for the win and see how many numbers I get. The more numbers, the bigger the probability shift.
My guess is that you probably need to do some more energy work in your daily practice, since this sort of physical "destabilizing" effect, especially of such short duration, is that your chi isn't flowing as cleanly as you would like.
This has nothing to do with anything "backfiring." Magick doesn't do that. My whole method essentially "fails" every time because I'm casting for the win, even though I'm actually doing it to measure the shift. That doesn't produce anything like what you are describing.
A question - were you only casting for two numbers because you were worried about it "backfiring?" If so, what gave you the idea that was even a thing?
The reason you cast for the win is because then the stakes are real. If you don't actually win much of anything with two numbers, why does it matter if they came up or not? The best magick engages your emotions - and considering the possibility that you really could win does that. That's why you buy the ticket and go through the whole process, because it just doesn't work as well if you don't.
I cast for two numbers because it's the lowest probability shift needed for a prize, I didn't realize this method worked by casting for the jackpot and measuring the shift by how many numbers match.
I figured casting for only two numbers to match would be more likely to have matching numbers than casting for a jackpot.
I read something somewhere that a spell has a limited amount of energy behind it that's spread evenly through all targets, so you're better off focusing your efforts on the area that can have a positive outcome, rather than letting the spell fall short from being spread too thin on too many targets. It really seemed like that would apply here.
I do the middle pillar ritual in my daily practices for energy work. Could you point me towards any resources with practices that can help my chi flow more cleanly?
I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with what you are doing. As long as there is a prize at that point, there should be the kind of stakes I am talking about. Two numbers just doesn't usually win you anything with lotteries like the Powerball that I'm more used to experimenting with. Feel free to try out your method some more as well as mine, and I would be interested in hearing your results.
On a lottery drawing, which is pure probability without any chaos-theory type processes, it is a lot less clear how what you are talking about works. For example, there's a technique using sigils called "shoaling" that Gordon White writes about in The Chaos Protocols. The idea is to create multiple sigils for each component of what you want to happen. So effectively, how you would apply this to a Powerball lottery is to do one sigil for each of the six numbers.
The raw odds of hitting a Powerball jackpot are over 100 million to 1 against. The downside of doing six operations is that probability shift gets divided up six ways. But check this out - let's say that your "strength" as a magician is 120. That's a shift of 120 to 1 against, or the ability to reliably conjure two numbers out of six on a 1-60 scale - so each number has about a 1 in 60 chance of coming up as independent probabilities.
But because they're independent, the shift can apply to each one. So your 120 probability shifty gets divided by 6 for the six operations, but the resulting 20 is applied to each number. So the probability of each number goes from 1 in 60 to 20 in 60. That leaves you with this:
No shoaling, single spell - 120/60^6. That's still super-high.
Shoaling, six operations - 1/3^6. That's only 1 in 729, which means that if you played about a thousand times you could theoretically win.
Now - that may or may not be correct, but that's one of the things I want to test out. All of these predictions are based on my current model of magical operations, and my guess is that this will work out a little different than the above and I will have to revise. But you never know. I'd play the Powerball a thousand times to win millions of dollars if that's all it winds up taking.
Now that I spent all that time on exposition - for qi flow, you probably want to look into spending more time on circulating the light after your Middle Pillar and/or learn a Qigong set. Here's the easiest one in the world.
1. Place both hands in front of your abdomen, palm up and slightly inward. Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth.
2. Breathe deeply into your abdomen, slowly and evenly. As you do this, bring your hands up so they rise above your head as you breathe in. Visualize energy rising from the base of your spine to the top of your head.
3. Once your hands are above your head, turn the palms downward and inward. As you exhale, slowly and evenly, bring your hands back down to in front of your abdomen. Visualize energy moving down the front of your body from the top of your head all the way down to the perineum as you do this.
4. Turn the palm upward and inward, and repeat this process.
If you can do that for ten minutes a day or so it should help a lot. When its "working," you should be able to feel the tingle of the energy, especially rising up your back.
Some people report good results with fourfold breath. Personally I have asthma so it's a little difficult for me, but the method is breathe in for a count of four, hold the breath in for a count of four, breathe out for a count of four, and hold the lungs empty for a count of four. Keep repeating that process for whatever you set the length of your breathwork session to be. Again, a lot of folks practice it for ten minutes or so.
Also, FYI those numbers are not exact, more like an estimate to show the relative values. To calculate it accurately you use factorials, which require an even more lengthy explanation.
It's all good. The other lottery here is a powerball, and it's tougher - You need four matching numbers to win the smallest prize, and each ball is 1/45. For the jackpot, it's seven matches and two supplementary numbers.
It seemed a bit beyond me as a beginner, and still seems like it, so I think I'll do an evocation for something fun once I've incorporated more energy work, and take a swing after that. In your workings, do you prefer going for the jackpot and measuring the resulting shift, or going for the minimum prize?
Thanks for the energy work. I think that's the microcosmic orbit? If I'm doing the fourfold breath, it comes out to 16 seconds per cycle, so doing it for 40 cycles will be an easy way to keep track of it for a little over 10 minutes. Thanks again, and have a good new year.
I always cast for the win and count how many numbers I get. Because really, what I want most is to win, obviously. Winning a few dollars or whatever won't do much to affect my life.
It's basically the microcosmic orbit combined with the hand motions - which are like a very simple qigong set. The way Chia teaches the orbit you don't do the hand motions, you just sit, but I like to do it standing with the motions. I think it's more effective that way.
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