The Holy Guardian Angel

There are two major transition phases in the mystical journey which can both be mapped onto the Tree of Life. They are the crossing of the Veil of Paroketh, culminating in the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, and the crossing of the Abyss, culminating in the entry to the City of the Pyramids.

Crowley wrote that “the two crises—the Angel and the Abyss—are necessary features in every [magical] career”. [91]  Both are brought about by taking a magical oath allied with the performance of an intense series of life-changing actions. The oath is not simply stating something, and the actions are not simply doing something; they are deliberately willed dissolutions of identity conducted with controlled aggression above all other priorities over a sustained period in a state of irrevocable resolve.

I deal with both experiences in separate titles to this present book, however it is important to provide a brief overview here for context regarding the deepest purpose of the Thoth Tarot – as an illustration of this initiatory journey. [92]

The attainment of the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the main focus of all magical work:

It should never be forgotten for a single moment that the central and essential work of the Magician is the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. Once he has achieved this he must of course be left entirely in the hands of that Angel, who can be invariably and inevitably relied upon to lead him to the further great step—crossing of the Abyss and the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple. [93]

This experience results from the performance of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, a six-month (or longer) ritual of preparation and increasingly reductive focus. At the culmination of the ritual, should it be successful, the experiential universe is turned inside-out in the awareness of the Adept.

An analogy would be to imagine that our common experience of life is that ‘we’ are on the inside of ‘ourself’, and the world is ‘outside’. We imagine that other people share this experience but can only see them as ‘outside’ ourselves. We also sense, like being inside a balloon, that we project the world onto a sort of screen (the Veil in Kabbalistic terms) and maybe it has some form of reality underneath it, but that feels it belongs to ourselves – inside. We are a solid dot floating around the inside space of the balloon. In spiritual moments or the darkest hours, we might be more aware that there is some sort of space ‘outside’ the balloon, on the ‘other side’ of what we perceive as the world around us – but this usually does not come into our commonplace life.

In the arrival of the Angel, at the end of specific activities to unpack oneself out of the natural perception, not only is a hole punctured in the balloon, but the solid dot is undone. The Angel is a real thing – a presence that is immediately available when particular attachments have been removed and the ‘noise’ generated by dissonance to the real situation has suddenly dropped.

Identity shifts to the outside skin of the balloon, in effect, turning everything inside-out from the prior sense. The ‘self’ – oneself – becomes the screen upon which everything outside the balloon is being projected upon. The inside of the balloon – what was previously accepted as ‘reality’ – now feels more like something artificially constructed by the separation made by the skin of the balloon.

It no longer matters what arises within the construct, as the only thing that matters is removing the remaining balloon skin of separation – which is now the whole self but sensed to be arising from an incongruity of identity and perception like the one already exhausted. Therefore the ‘crises’ of the Angel and the Abyss are critical and share commonality.

The knowledge of this is when we are recognising the new inside-out as more real and the conversation with it is accepting the outside projection upon our self and through that into the inside. Like any mystical experience, it is more straight-forward to experience than talk about.

The knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel corresponds to Tiphareth on the Tree of Life, so all the cards corresponding to the paths connected to Tiphareth have significant interpretation in this regard. The Angel is specially mentioned by Crowley in the Priestess card, that being an illustration of the “thought (or intelligible radiance) of that Angel”. [94]

High Priestess: The connection between spiritual and human consciousness expressed through the self as Knowledge (Da’ath) of the Angel.

Star: The relationship between thought and consciousness as modified through the awareness of the Angel resulting in focus upon individual and unified will.

Lovers: Intuition arising between connected understanding beyond thought in the love of the Angel for its home.

Hermit: The mercy of release in the solitary nature of existence revealed by the Angel.

Adjustment: The truth of thought in recognition of its own paradox, made obsolete by the presence of the Angel.

Devil: The ecstasy of existence between the self and the universe, realised by the Angel.

Art: The synthesis of experience in the ongoing radical Conversation with the Angel.

Death: The awakening to existence made possible by the death of illusion through the call of the Angel.

Note that the Knowledge of the Angel is mapped by the middle pillar connection illustrated by the Priestess, and the Conversation of the Angel by the middle pillar path of Art. This knowledge and conversation is manifest in the Universe, mapped by the lower middle pillar path to Malkuth.

As with all the layers of the Thoth Tarot, it is not necessary to appreciate every level in every reading, however, a wider knowledge and context can sometimes inform interpretations to offer profound insight.