I have recently returned from the excellent Occult Conference at Glastonbury where I had the good fortune to be co-presenting with Andrew Phillip Smith (http://www.andrewphillipsmith.com/)  on “Gnosticism in Theory and Practice: Gnosticism as a path of spiritual Free-thinking”. In pursuit of an engaging format, Andrew and I decided that we would pose to each other a series of questions about this theme in the hope that we could provide some interesting and erudite responses. While I will leave the assessment of our success to the audience, one of the most intriguing questions that Andrew asked was whether I had encountered any interesting spiritual beings during my gnostic explorations.

While sadly time did not allow for us to explore this question together during our actual presentation, musing on it did trigger an interesting process of self-reflection and insight. In short my most memorable experiences to date have been with Holy Wisdom (Sophia) and with my future magical self.

I have already written on this blog about my work with Sophia and while I have engaged with a number of god-forms in my magical work, I have been struck by the depth of her impact on me. I had long been acquainted with the personification of Wisdom as female within Biblical literature, but by engaging with her magically via Gnostic myth, I felt as though I have been given a new lens through which to view with the female divine across a number of intersecting traditions. For me this has these have led me to deep waters of Bhakti (devotional) yoga that I have found profoundly helpful. I rarely feel comfortable talking about the deeply personal dimensions of my magical work in that I find language often struggles to capture nuance without risking cliché,  but I would encourage you, dear reader, to explore for yourself the connections between Wisdom and the divine feminine in whichever path you follow.

It is perhaps slightly comical that as a Gnostic explorer I continue to be shocked by the direct challenge that this work poses, but I guess we are all prone to forgetfulness. In exploring the process of my own waking up, I have been aware of my own spark of awareness being embodied by a figure dwelling at the threshold of my consciousness. I have already written about being haunted by my memory of the Jesus I had encountered during my Christian past but this unease has a different quality. Differing schools may seek to describe this as an etheric double or the daemonic aspect of the self, but my own encounter seemed quite strongly connected to my own future self. This sense of personified aspiration or what Assagioli would call the Super-Conscious self might be explored mythically via figures such as the androgynous Adam Kadmon from the Jewish tradition or Balder “the shining one” from Norse lore. Whatever figure we might connect to, perhaps more critical is that we draw inspiration from the sense of becoming or unfolding they represent.

Bright God

For me this is the path of aspiration, guarded futurism and teleological endeavour. Magical work that has no aspiration or no real longing that it is seeking to fulfill is unlikely to sustain focus. Most of us who seek to follow an initiatory or magical path do so because we want more. We aspire to understand our past and who we are today so that we might maximize our being, and pull-in gnosis from our future magical selves.

Nema in her excellent Maat Magick locates such work in the figure of “N’Aton”, an androgynous future Self that holds within it both our individual and collective genius: “In N’Aton’s home line (i.e. the version of the future in which they are most fully realised), we’ve controlled our mutation into a species of double consciousness: the familiar one of individuality and the new telepathic connection amongst us that constitutes N’Aton” (Ma’at Magick pg. 65). Personally I love this perception of awakening as holding both individual and collective dimensions. Each of us will have our own unique challenge in either making more connections or establishing individual ego-strength, but N’Aton reminds us that both must be held in Ma’at’s balancing scales.

Just Goddess

My own ongoing explorations of N’Aton as a concept/being feel fruitful in that such workings can provide rich illustration regarding what we aspire to be, and the challenges that might limit such becoming. Such work can be quite edgy and disorientating (time-travel often can be!) and I would recommend thorough grounding at the conclusion of your ritual working i.e. banish, eat and preferably have contact with others.

In conclusion I will provide a snapshot from a recent invocation to N’Aton that took place as part of a ritual exploring our hopes and longings from the future:

N’Aton:

Deep Self

Future Self

Quicksilver Messenger

Who dwells on the Threshold.

Genius!

Daemon!

Dark-Feather Wind-Dancer.

Holy Guardian Angel,

Speak to us and support us.

Pull us forward

Come dwell with us now!

SD

Some years ago I completed a probationership for Ordo Typhonis which consisted of keeping a  diary documenting magical work of my choice over a 9 month period. I chose my work to consist of making contact with my Holy Guardian Angel (HGA). It was interesting and very hard and also, to some extent, successful. I am not sure that I can claim to have had wonderful unmitigated success but certainly it seemed to be the case that I had some dialogue with the HGA with some very insightful and unexpected experiences. I discovered that some of the best visionary experiences happened during times when I had a very hot bath in a completely dark bathroom: raising the body temperature to fever levels seems to help a great deal. I had dialogues with the HGA superimposed over my body and also quite counter-intuitive experiences where the HGA seemed to appear as a devil-like figure that Jung might have called the Shadow. Other times it would be at work whilst I was doing monotonous tasks.

When I passed as Neophyte I adopted the magical name ‘Frater Ixomaxip’ which means ‘Let Her be known’ in Enochian. I used an Enochian ‘bornless ritual’ to contact the HGA. ‘Let Her be Known’ was my formula for ‘crossing the Abyss’, the Goddess in Binah on the Tree of Life becoming my lode-star: Babalon in effect ‘tempting’ me across the Abyss. On the 6th November (my birthday) 2015 our magical group performed a ritual to open Aethyr 6, ‘Maz’. In this context the Aethyr known as ‘The Urn’ became symbolic of the Abyss or sacred birth-canal. From that day on my life got turned upside down! On 7th November morning I could see a planetary alignment clearly in the sky, it felt like my heart was being pierced: Venus, Mars, Luna and Jupiter were aligned.

It seemed that I had a Jack Parsons moment as it appeared that Her avatar came into my life and opened Tiphereth (The Heart) for me opening the (6th) path of ‘The Lovers’ from Tiphereth to Binah. This person seemed to epitomise what Babalon stands for and I fell for her, which was a big mistake as she belongs to no-one! She had the qualities you would expect in her personality and appearance: charismatic, independent and flirtatious. As I got to know her and her complex character she revealed a deep love of animals and an almost pathological hatred for the human race: very much resonant with the Call of the 30 Aethyrs that I intone daily. She did not want to just drink the blood of saints, I think that she would have quite happily feasted on the rest of humanity as well, given the chance (or that is what she led me to believe anyway). Her radiant and lovely persona concealed a very troubled soul and I adored every aspect of it deeply: I could have kissed the ground she walked on.

Although she has no faith in magic now  (though she was a practitioner) she did randomly say: ‘I have come to set you free!’. I left my life and family behind and visited her in Thailand during her Asian travels: this was a big adventure for me and a massive upheaval! It also caused a lot of chaos at home-as you would expect! Would I be able to return to my old life? Would I even be able to open my front door when I got back?!

All this played out against the backdrop of other very serious problems in my life. Someone very close to me was suffering from depression and was making multiple suicide attempts and I was not getting the emotional support that I needed except from my special friend who seemed like a ray of sunlight in an otherwise dark existence. I was so deeply grateful and even happy coping  with anything that life was throwing at me.

Before leaving on my journey our group performed a ‘Babalon Working’ in March: around the time that Jack Parsons did his all those years ago, opening the 7th Aethyr Deo (note the numbers!), I designated this Aethyr as meaning ‘God is Love’ (Deus Caritas). This was the Aethyr that Jack called in order to conjure Babalon.

Numbers and dates lined up in uncanny fashion. I left for Thailand on 6th May and arrived on the 7th bearing in mind that our ritual took place on the 6th and 7th of November, 6 months from Samhain to Beltane: this was very significant. The path from Tiphereth to Binah is also the 6th path from the 6th Sephirah: without wanting to bore you too much. It was also the order that we opened the Aethyrs in.

Chart of Hell

My life would never be the same again. A great many synchronicities occurred during this period and I went through an emotional rollercoaster ride. My family were actually amazingly supportive and patient. I chose to be honest and open about what I was doing against the advice of most people. This also caused me trouble but in the long-run it seemed to be the correct way to behave.

I would say that ‘crossing the abyss’ is like most other things in magic: the most natural process in the world with magic serving as a catalyst, the difference being that it is a volitional act in this case. Any major life-crisis where you are forced to give up the way you define yourself, any ego-shattering experience where you manage to re-assemble yourself and move forward, in one sense is an abyss-crossing. I would say it is a process of maturation with some special features that come from the magical perspective. The sense of subject/object dissolves: the trauma of the sense of self being shattered leaves you unable to purely identify with what you would normally call self, it is a defence mechanism: you expand the limits of your range. When you are ‘everything’ then ‘nothing can hurt you’ anymore.

In my particular case this experience centred around the thing that I feared and loathed the most, the thing that was the greatest enigma for me: love and romance. I assumed the lesson to be: ’love without attachment’ but the trauma around the last year or two was more fundamental than that and the lesson is still not complete: will it ever be? As long as you breathe there are lessons to be learnt.

ER