In the last blog post, The Unknown Angel, we discussed how Aleister Crowley invented the term “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA)” to open the doors of thought. He meant to let metaphysics fly away and make room for the transmission of True Will. Will cannot flow through a prison of dead ideas. Thus Crowley intended to create a dogma-free system–Thelema.
Still, he intended for us to work with the HGA on the Qabalistic Tree of Life, and that does impose some structure.
Another Adept shared his Qabalistic ideas about the Holy Guardian Angel and the Daemon with me, continuing the conversation.
Angel Above
The other Adept wrote to me, “I quite liked the Unknown Angel piece. Great painting I hadn’t seen before. This is the conception I have. Curious on your take.”
He began with the Angel Above the Abyss:
“Above [the Abyss]: Not, God, Spirit, Universal Border: Angel [in] Da’ath. (Angel is in Kether in some sense but this is all as seen through Daath because there is no difference above.)”
Why not? Our mutual teacher Jerry Cornelius used to locate the Angel in Chokmah-2, also Above the Abyss. He of course acknowledged that all three spheres above the Abyss are really One. Our lower mind, being dualistic, identified Chokmah with Motion, as pure “Going” of the Will, the masculine Divine.
If we, with this Adept, correlate the Angel with Kether-1, we’re focusing on the balance between the Angel’s Going (Chokmah-2) and Its Potential for Form (Binah-3).
In line with this conception, Aleister Crowley says:
“THE AUGOEIDES. Lytton calls him Adonai in ‘Zanoni,’ and I often use this name in the note-books. Abramelin calls him Holy Guardian Angel. … So that while he is the Holy Guardian Angel, He is also Hua [The supreme and secret title of Kether] and the Tao. For since Intra Nobis Regnum deI [I.N.R.I.)] all things are in Ourself, and all Spiritual Experience is a more of less complete Revelation of Him…”
—Equinox Vol. I, No. 1, “Temple of Solomon the King”, pp. 159-160
The Daemon Below the Abyss
The Upper Ruach and the Personal, Reincarnating Soul
The other Adept wrote, “Upper Lovers: A Unique Reincarnating Personal Soul”. I’m open to hearing more.
I view the reincarnating personal soul as a rare achievement that involves, not just the Qabalistic spheres of the upper Ruach (“Mind” / “Breath”) but the entire Ruach.
Confession: I constantly tell astrology clients that the Angel is the one who repeatedly incarnates with a specific intent each time. This statement is not false, but it is misleading. It’s something aspirants should adopt heuristically, but then they have to achieve it.
Realistically, we reincarnate purposefully only if the Angel Above the Abyss is bound by strong connections (“wires”) to a mind (Ruach) made lasting and substantial. Only then does the personal reincarnating Soul become actual. Before that, it’s just a nice idea.
Arguably, the A.’.A.’. exists to help aspirants grow souls—to become Western Boddhisatvas, saints who reincarnate intentionally and repeatedly in order to guide humanity forward.
Crowley discusses this rare achievement of creating a personally reincarnating soul. He claims it is the entire Ruach together, both upper and lower: Chesed-4 through (in this case) Yesod-9:
“The theory is that the Supernal Triad constitutes (or, rather, is an image of) the ‘eternal’ Essence of a man; that is, it is the positive expression of that ultimate ‘Point of View’ which is and is not and neither is nor is not etc. Quite indestructible.
Now when a man spends his life (a) building up and developing the six Sephiroth of the Ruach so that they cohere closely in proper balance and relation, (b) in forging, developing and maintaining a link of steel between this solid Ruach and that Triad, Death merely means the dropping off of the Nephesch (Malkuth) so that the man takes over his instrument of Mind (Ruach) with him to his next suitably chosen vehicle. The tendency of the Ruach is of course to disintegrate more or less rapidly under the impact of its new experiences of after-death conditions. …
It is therefore of the very first importance to train the mind in every possible way, and to bind it to the Higher Principles by steady, by constant, by flaming Aspiration, fortified by the sternest discipline, and by continuously reformulated Oaths.
Such a man will be fully occupied after his death with the unremitting search for his new instrument; he will brush aside—as he has made a habit of doing during life—the innumerable lures of ‘Reward’ and the like. … So then we have a man not only very well prepared to reincarnate at once—this means about six months after his death, for his vehicle will be a foetus about three months old, but to extirpate more deliberately all impressions that may assail its integrity.”
–Magick Without Tears, Chapter XXXVII: Death—Fear—“Magical Memory”
The Helper Daemon
The Daemon is generally defined as the elemental helper we are given when we take incarnation to help us remember our True Will. The Angel cannot come below the Abyss and remain what it is. So something capable of change and communication must help: the Daemon.
The other Adept began by equating the Daemon with the lower Ruach: “Lower Lovers: What is often called the Daemon as lower than Angel and a ‘this incarnation’ twin made by our body existing.”
I agree that the Daemon is the Angel’s twin–the manifested twin.
My take is that Daemon correlates to the spheres below the Abyss especially Chesed-4 through Yesod-9, what Crowley was calling the Ruach. (I class Yesod-9 as part of Nefesh, but semantics doesn’t matter much here.)
Since the Daemon is the messenger between the human below the Abyss and the Angel Above, it has to work through the upper Ruach too. Without such a connection, how could the Angel guide our consciousness (the lower Ruach) or our actions (Yesod / Malkuth)?
The Daemonic medium of communication is the Kundalini force that flows through all these spheres. Kundalini’s seat is in Yesod-9 / Muladhara, the astral double of the purely physical / elemental sphere Malkuth-10.
The Angel's Potential Influence on Malkuth Through the Daemon
On that note, the other Adept went on to say, “Going all the way around top to bottom then it can be all seen as Daemon because of Kether being in Malkuth.”
People mean many things by “Kether is in Malkuth.” Here, I’ll use it to affirm that our ideal is to do the True Will Above the Abyss on Malkuth. The Daemon can assist us if we retrain It properly.
Once an Adept has lain a proper foundation–typically taking many years, he or she may retrain the Daemon with some type of Inner Adept ritual.