by Marcus Katz
The gates and their guardians in the initiatory path are also found in the Tibetan Bardo Thodol, and the ancient Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by Day; a model of stages of progression, through which an initiate may pass. Each stage has its own obstacles, rewards and perspective. They are usually sequential, but not necessarily so. They are usually attained when one has learnt the lesson of the following stage, but not necessarily so. They are usually passed through only once, but not necessarily so. They are a useful map of the initiatory process that becomes engaged when you start to seek truth and flee falsity.
In the Theosophical Glossary we read about the Moon and the Dweller on the Threshold:
In Tarot tradition, the Moon represents unconscious desires and the fears that accompany the sense of losing control or falling into the unconscious realm of sleep and dreams. However, if one is afraid to enter one’s own astral territory, one can never truly know oneself – and the mystery of initiation is about little more than this. The real confrontation that the Moon represents is the meeting with the ‘Dweller on the Threshold’ of which occult and esoteric teachers speak. This is the giant force of accumulated evil or wrongdoings, the hideous part of the self that a person would rather not look at and would like to pretend doesn’t exist, and which rises up at the point of real psychic growth. This ‘demon’ must not only be looked at, but integrated into the being, in order to establish wholeness.[98]
There are two or three separate considerations here. Firstly, at the point of growth, there has to be energy (for want of a better word) turned inwards in order to affect the change. I have mentioned the chemistry example of water boiling – the slight dip in temperature prior to the ‘boiling point’ which is the heat being used to break the bonds of the atoms, changing state from liquid to gas. This is common in all forms of initiation. I also liken it to a great light approaching us from behind. Whilst this light approaches, all we see is a shadow getting bigger and bigger, until we turn to face the light and step into it, when the shadow simply vanishes.
The Moon represents another process – an alchemical one – which you will encounter if you follow on from the Crucible to later work. This process I won’t discuss as yet. At present, though, from the view-point of Malkuth, the Moon is a cyclical process, returning many times over to show us what we need to learn from what is presently unknown or rejected by us – the Shadow.
The ‘psychic growth’ we encounter is a simple dissolution of the state of consciousness that allows us to remain in avoidance with relationship to universe. Whilst we hold onto this state, we have shadows, dwellers, thresholds, lessons, karma, and all other devices, props and illusions that support our separation. When we are ready to have exhausted these props, we can move on. The initiatory system allows us to formulate a series of stages which challenge these supports and illusions in a relatively efficient manner, although it is always – always – going to be difficult. But the rewards become greater.
Considerations on the Division of the Soul
All cosmologies include some attempts to describe and model the elements that constitute the human experience. Their complexity and lucidity varies from culture to culture, and often models are variations on a theme, or expanded versions of earlier systems. It is useful to study at least one system – like the Tree of Life – for it provides us with a stable comparison to our ongoing experience, and acts as a placeholder for process and pattern.
The simplest model might well be that implied in Descarte’s famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.” His model further includes a dubious proof for the existence of God, thereby composing the most basic dualistic system of Self / God, which may be seen as separate entities, ultimately identical entities, or entities of which one is the enclosure of the other.
The Self is one of the basic experiences of the human psyche, in that it is that to which we constantly refer our experience, both in the environment (e.g. “I am having a cup of tea.”) and in our inner world (e.g. “I am feeling happy.”). It is impossible to define these two worlds as separate except in our mundane experience, in that the so-called external world is in part – if not in totality – an experience equally generated by our own internal world.
In kabbalah, this is indicated by the separation of Tiphareth, ‘Self- consciousness’, to Malkuth by Yesod, the ‘persona’. Our thoughts (Hod) and emotions (Netzach) constantly alter the process of Yesod (ego) in acting as our interpreter of the environment such that what we perceive is in fact our shared vision of the world, not the actual world itself.
The philosopher Kant expressed this in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics:
As the senses never and in no single instance enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, and as these are mere representations ... all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be held to be nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere else than merely in our thought.[99]
The actual world is termed by Kant the Ding-an-sich, the ‘thing-in-itself’. The medieval kabbalists, such as Abraham ibn Ezra, followed on from the Neo-Platonic school of Plotinus in utilising a threefold division of the functions of the psyche. These were:
Nefesh (NPSh, breath, spirit, soul, person, character in drama, tombstone);
Ru’ah (RVCh, wind, spirit, ghost, disposition);
Neshamah (NShMH, breath, soul, life, living creature).
This trinity, as developed by such kabbalists as Rabbi Moses Korduero and Rabbi Yitzchaq Loria, is usually taken to represent:
Nefesh - Animal vitality
Ru’ah - Self-awareness
Neshamah - Transcendent awareness
Eliphas Lévi summarises these elements as the passions, the reason and the higher aspirations, and puts it that “The body is the veil of the Nephesch, the Nephesch is the veil of Ruach, Ruach is the veil of the shroud of Neschemah.”[100]
A further development of these divisions, after the original Zoharic teachings, appended the Chiah (ChIH, soul, life) to the system, thereby making a parallel to the four kabbalistic worlds:
Chiah - Atziluth
Neschamah - Briah
Ru’ah - Yetzirah
Nefesh - Assiah
A final addition to these teachings came with the 13th century occultists, when the concept of a ‘Yechidah’ was added, referring to the ultimate spark of God within the psyche. The word comes from the root IChID, meaning ‘oneness’, and is a similar root to IChID, ‘privacy, union with God’.
The trinity of Yechidah, Chiah and Neschamah were all bound up under the title of the Neschamah, and attributed to Kether, Chockmah and Binah. The Ru’ah was attributed to the sephiroth of Chesed to Yesod, and the Nefesh to Malkuth.
Crowley, in Little Essays Towards Truth, describes the elements finally arrived at:
Yechidah - Point, quintessential principle of soul
Chiah - Creative impulse (Will) of Yechidah
Ruach - Mind, spirit
Nephesch - Animal soul
Crowley noted that the Ruach, centred in Tiphareth, reaches its culmination in Da’ath, the union of Chockmah and Binah, and positioned at the Abyss. Thus the ultimate transcendence of the Self is brought about by this divine knowledge.[101]
Kabbalists saw their work as ultimately bringing about the descent of the Neschamah by the holy union of the King (Melekh) and Queen (Matronita), which refer to Tiphareth and Malkuth. As the Ramak stated in Pardes Rimonim:
The Nefesh (Lower soul) can motivate the Ruach (Middle Spirit) and the Ruach in turn motivates the Neshamah (Upper soul). The Neschamah then ascends from one essence to the next, until it reaches its source.
The kabbalah is only one of many cosmologies which attempt to describe the functions of human experience. The Ancient Egyptians developed a complex system of souls inhabiting the individual, and as these may be contrasted against the kabbalistic divisions, I will mention them here briefly.
The Egyptian model used by many occultists fr
om the late 19th century into the early 20th century was usually based upon the works of Sir E.A. Wallis Budge. As knowledge of the subject expanded, many of the phrases they may have used have been significantly updated and in some cases replaced. For example, the ‘Khu’ is referred to by Keith Perkins in Egyptian Life and the Tree of Life and rendered as ‘intelligence of divinity’ attributed to Kether.[102] However, ‘Khu’ is actually the now discredited reading of the word ‘Akh’, and is one of the spirit forms released at death, with the root meaning of ‘to be bright’ (the ‘Akhu’ are the spirits of the dead). Thus it is not applicable to divinity or Kether in the way that Perkins sees it, as it would rather be allocated to Yesod in terms of the sephiroth or the Nefesh in terms of the divisions of the soul.
Egyptian Name – Glyph - Qualities
Khat (Kat, Xat, Kab) – Fish - Body
Sahu - Mummy and seal – Spiritual body
Ka (Kai) - Upraised hands - Image, double
Ba (Baie) - Various birds - Spirit-soul
Khaibt - Fan Shadow - aura
Akh (Khu, Khou, Yekh) - Bennu bird - Bright spirit
Sekhem – Owl - Vital power
Ren - Kneeling man - Name
Hati – Lion - Whole heart
Ab – Jar - Will
Tet (Zet) - Upright snake - Soul
Hammemit - Radiating Sun - Unborn soul
Florence Farr, in her book Egyptian Magic,[103] saw these divisions acting through magical practice by influencing the Ka and the Ba in the Ab. This representation is a mirror image, she said, of the Ka reaching up to provide a resting place for the Ba, symbolised by the hawk. This latter is an emanation of the Hammemmit, and signified the sacrifice of the lower Self to the Higher Self.
In ritual, she explained the process of magic in terms of the above as follows:
a. The symbolism of the ritual is fully recognised;
b. The imagination is extended to encompass this symbolism;
c. The Will is concentrated firmly and repeatedly;
d. The Ka (ego) is thus put into tension, and acts on its counterpart in the heart (Ab), which is the vessel of conscious desire;
e. This in turn reacts on the Hati (unconscious executant);
f. The whole psyche thus in a state of theurgic excitation, the Ba (divine link) descended, and the whole body becomes a Khu (shining one or Augoides);
g. This new being is established in the midst of the Sahu (elemental body), and by its radiation can awaken corresponding potencies in Nature. The Sahu could hence be seen in modern terms as a morphogenetic field;
h. For this purpose, the Khaibt is used as the link between the ego and non-ego, and the Tet (spiritual body) is established.
We will see how this model can be applied to the structure and mechanism of ritual – and the whole of magic – in the next volume of The Magister.
Other models for the psyche include Gurdjieff’s ‘octaves’ scheme, and two other eight-fold systems, being the psychosynthesis construct of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and the ‘circuit grid’ model developed by Dr. Timothy Leary and expounded upon by Robert Anton Wilson. The psychosynthesis model has been compared to its kabbalistic counterpart in Hardy’s A Psychology With A Soul,[104] and it is heartening to find that she states kabbalah has a more effective model in this instance. The circuit system has been matched to a kabbalah scheme of YHVH and the tarot by R. A. Wilson in his unique workbook Prometheus Rising.
In the end, it is up to the individual to utilise whichever scheme they find their experience best falls into. A combination of schemes may not necessarily be contradictory, but may illuminate different facets of the infinitely faceted gemstone that is the human being.
Vignette: The Goddess of Sais
Never let it be said that the deities do not have a sense of humour. When working with the goddess Neith for a working of Liber Astarte, Frater Ash found himself visited by her on two very real occasions. As he had originally planned to work with the goddess Diana, he had been sent a dream the night before the six-month working was planned, in which he was to open a door on which was written ‘The Goddess of Sais’. On looking that up in the morning, he discovered the goddess to be Neith, about whom he knew little, unlike Diana, for whom the altar and workings had been prepared. So scrapping that, Frater Ash learnt that Neith was the goddess of mummy binding and bandages, the wrappings and shrouds of the dead. He began to work with this lesser known deity.
One day, several weeks into this intense dedicatory practice, whilst at work in the accounts department of an engineering company, he was left alone and the door chime sounded. He went downstairs to open the door and find a rough looking woman with a basket. She looked at him and asked if the company was interested in buying from her? When he looked askance at her, she pulled a blanket back from the basket, and there were tens of rolls of white bandage. Without thinking, Frater Ash hurried the woman away, saying how busy he was and telling her not to come back. It was only when he returned to his chair that the chill started down his spine, and he realised that he had turned away a real life avatar of his own goddess, exactly as might be written in any folk tale.
Several years later, on a Nile cruise, he found himself involved in a party game, which unexpectedly turned into a game in which his wife had to run around him wrapping him with rolls of tissue paper as a mummy. Again, it was only the following day that he thought to check where the boat had been sailing that night. It was – of course – what used to be called in ancient Egypt, the town of Sais.
Whatever else may be said about Neith, she has a long memory and a good sense of humour.
The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel
We now turn to arguably one of the most important element of the Western esoteric tradition – the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.[105] There has been more misleading material written about this most profound experience and state than any other aspect of the tradition. This is, in part, inevitable given that the language is based in the Christian heritage from which many Western practitioners seek to distance themselves. It is also ironic that Western practitioners will enthusiastically embrace the most complex doctrines of other religious systems – notably karma, chakras, and reincarnation – and yet remain confused and ambivalent with regard to the Western cultural milieu in which we are already positioned.
Order of 15, A Christian Occult Group
We will begin to discuss the nature of the Holy Guardian Angel, the Self, the Higher Self, and the True Will. Of these things, we may actually speak little but practice much – for angels weary of talk and are most evident on the battlefield, in labour, strife, and struggle. They are also to be found in the quiet groves, the silence of the shoreline, and in-between the aisles of both church and supermarket.
We will here learn how the concept has entered into the popular imagination of the Western esoteric tradition, how the experience may be contextualised in our initiatory schema, and how it may eventually be gained.
The Sacred Magic of Abramelin
The main introduction of the Holy Guardian Angel into Western esotericism is through the book known as the Sacred Magic of Abramelin.[106] Although there are rarer and lesser known examples of the Holy Guardian Angel being spoken of in Western magic – and more commonly understood examples such as the Genius or Daimon of the Neo-Platonists – it is through this magical text that the idea found its root in contemporary magic. The book was first translated from a French version held in Paris, by MacGregor Mathers, one of the three founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It acquired notoriety in the later work of Aleister Crowley, who – it must be said – developed the concept in various and contradictory ways throughout his life.[107]
In essence, the work is in three parts: a biographical account of the supposed author and his encounters with teachers across the world; a second part containing the instructions for a six month reclusion culminating in the ‘knowledge and conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Ange
l’ and subsequent three days of calling forth and commanding the demons; and a third part, considered an appendix, listing so-called ‘magical squares’ to be activated under the guidance of the angel and the subservience of the demons.
Many have approached this book as a magical grimoire and simply worked rituals to activate the magical squares. Many view it as a dated and outmoded relic of superstitious magic. Some view it as dangerous and others are repelled by the requirements to humble oneself repeatedly to a Christian conception of God. Later criticisms have pointed out the psychological impact of performing the constant practices as advocated in the instructions, claiming that this could lead to delusions, psychological imbalance and obsession.
However, very few have read the book in detail – as is repeatedly suggested within the text itself – and very, very few have attempted the ritual exactly as prescribed within the text (although the text allows for some modifications). And only one or two of those have claimed to have accomplished the working and attained its result. One of those who made this claim was William Bloom, who wrote of his experience with the ritual when he performed it over a six-month period in retreat outside Marrakech in 1972 – this was published originally as The Sacred Magician under the pseudonym Georges Chevalier.[108]
There are a few other written accounts of the complete working - perhaps four or five. I have a private publication of a diary written by an Australian theosophist who conducted the working, and there are a couple of accounts online, although their veracity is uncertain. Similarly, there is an Abramelin newsgroup where at least three people claim to have performed the operation to its conclusion.