Authentically Angelic

on becoming alike to the angelic mind.

A bridge between Holy Daimon Volume 2 and 3.

Images by Jose Gabriel Alegría Sabogal.

© by Frater Acher 2020

Introduction

And mortal man is not worthy for him to see the spiritual angels: because if the soul is polluted in the body, it cannot have tongues with the angel, yet if it was to have tongues, so it ought to be pure like the angels. (...) For this reason this rule is to be regarded as the highest secret and mystery [:] that one desires from their good angel that he may reveal to us and share his good thoughts. Because it is the office of the angels to be supportive of generating both the divine and human mind in man. (Pelagius Eremitae, aka Johannes Trithemius)

The central theme in Johannes Trithemius’s magical program coincides with the high goal of Ancient Western Magic since time immemorial: to instigate a change in the human nature – whether this was considered a process of slow approximation, of sudden alchemical transformation or of reinstatement in the afterlife – which ultimately allowed for man’s return into the sphere of the divine.

In Ancient Egypt such process was considered most elitist by nature and was reserved to the pharaohs alone. Equally originally in Greece it was a privilege of the mythical founding fathers of the nation, the ancient heroes to be elevated to semi-divine status during their life times. Slowly over time in both cultures, however, the process became democratised.

Civic upward assimilation is a powerful force in any society; give it enough time and original elite privileges will erode and become commoditised. Equally in the process they become commercialised: smart middle-man establish themselves as gateways and turn ancient privileges into mass-products, selling them off to the highest bider in promise of a more lasting gratification and recognition than monetary wealth is able to offer alone. Of course, by the time such process has reached the middle class it will have bled most of the mystical numen and integrity that perfused their original versions. What is sold, more than anything, is a memory-link, a romantic portrait of what once was a living reality. When it comes to apotheosis (i.e. deification in its Greek technical term), what the common man was offered was a distant echo at best of what the Greek heroes or Egyptian pharaohs were served. Nevertheless, Prometheus always prevails. And this precisely is the Promethean legacy of Trithemius’s magical works: to restore an authentic Western version of making man maybe not fully divine, but authentically angelic at least. To achieve this he had to do two things before everything else: to restore the path to an uncompromising, i.e. elitist practice again, and to trim back the many magical offshoots and additions that had crept in over time and derailed the practitioner from the one and only goal of real value.

That during our days one does not see the angels anymore as one did long time ago, that stems from the fact that the good and pure angels cannot align themselves any longer to our impure manner and nature. So also our mind is too mean and weak that one cannot come close to the angels and become alike in union. In our weakness we have become separated from the good angels and are not deemed worthy of seeing them. Yet if we loved and feared God and acted according to the holy companionship so they would allow for to be seen by us. (Pelagius Eremitae, aka Johannes Trithemius)

When the modern reader and practitioner steps back and compares the essential premises hidden in Trithemius’s magical works with the pathway to deification laid out by the Ancient Greek, they will discover striking similarities. Maybe that is because Trithemius was such an avid reader of Greek myths and literature. Or maybe it is because spiritual reality doesn’t follow tides and trends, and essentially remained the same over the two millennia that separate Trithemius and Homer.

In the following we will examine four of these essential premises, shared between Trithemius’s work and the implicit logic the Ancient Greek applied to what made (some!) women and men divine. Each of these premises can be read as philosophical historic artefacts – or as living stages on the path towards communion with our own ‘angelic mind’. In this short overview will refrain from examining technical details, instead we aim to shine a spotlight on the patterns that enable successful attempts of assimilation to the divine in the first place. The importance of being able to spot and identify such patterns – both in history as well as in one’s own life – often outweighs many other technicalities. Tuning one’s heart’s compass can go a long way over studying the ancient maps of spiritual ascent.

( I ) Nature Dictates

Fate is a pattern were are woven into by birth; fulfilling it, however, is a choice. None of the Greek heroes get to choose their origin story, instead they find them- selves thrown into it by their very nature. While a hero always remains a mortal, in many cases divinity is bound into their blood by being the direct offspring of a mortal and a deity or a lower spiritual being. Orpheus never got to choose the muse Calliope as his mother or to inherent her magical musical skills. Neither did Heracles choose Zeus as his father and to turn into an icon of masculinity, and Achilles didn’t choose the nereid Thetis as his mother and to inherit her mesmerising beauty. — We could continue this list; it could potentially become very long, and contain every human ever born. Because whether our parents were deities or mortals, the same essential truth is woven into all of us.

Nature dictates the colour of our eyes, the length of the phalanges of our hands, as well as the particular skill within us that carries a divine spark. For some of us – the lucky ones – perfecting this skill naturally lights their heart up in passion; for others it becomes a life-long burden. Either way, none of us get to choose the gift of our nature. And for all of us it is this particular gifted skill that marks our unique pathway to reattach us to the divine. So in the end, the path to becoming god-like begins with an act of letting go. It begins with the cutting back of the abundance of possibilities and choices we feel surrounded by, especially in our youth. Instead it begins with a voluntary subjection to a future version of ourself that nature long ago placed as a seed within us. Such version of ourself is not pre-determined in all its facets and traits, but in the essential art and craft it revolves around.

Orpheus dedicated a lifetime to perfecting the lyre, he didn’t switch half-way through it into classical dance. Hercules overcame the seven trials through persistence and strength; he didn’t give up after the fifth because he chose to be someone else. Nature dictates. The hero stays on its path. Understanding the nature of our own divine gift, and then choosing the life-long path of perfecting its expression is the first step on the path of assimilating ourselves to our divine origins.

( II ) Quality Attracts

Once the Ancient Greek hero had sufficiently refined the expression of their divine gift, the gods became aware of them. And not a moment earlier. What captured the gods’s attention, what hooked them into stepping closer to a particular mortal was not the possible blood relation, and neither a romanticised ideal of ancestry or tribe. It was the spectacle of watching the hero perform their exceptional craft. The Greek gods were connoisseurs, constantly on the lookout for the kick provided by the excellent and exceptional – i.e. the marks that indicated a mortal had broken through the moribund bounds of earthly averageness.

In fact, broadly speaking, there were only four categories of qualities through which a hero could draw the attention of the gods upon them (Dietrich Roloff, Gottähnlichkeit, Vergöttlichung und Erhöhung zu seligem Leben, De Gruyter, 1970, pp. 31). Of course, in rare cases a hero would be exceptionally gifted and perfect several of them. Yet, most of the ancient myths concentrate on a core quality for each hero, while mentioning others in passing:

• Beauty and appearance: they possess bodily beauty and grace of appearance as it would dignify a god. This quality – especially for male warriors – also applied to mightiness and height of their stature.

• Physical strength: a cardinal quality of the hero was their physical strength. While still bound into a mortal body, their prowess begins to converge with the realm of power reserved for the divine.

• Prudence and wisdom: another quality is the hero’s ability to separate right from wrong, to cut through complexity and to always – even under the direst of circumstances – see a path that leads ahead. The hero is more than a leader; they have become almost infallible in their judgement like the gods.

• Magic and sorcery: and some heroes possess the gift of commanding the spirits, of enchanting nature ad performing acts of sorcery – otherwise reserved to non-human spirits and gods.

Obviously such categories are highly artificial and reductive. They emerge from the field of classical studies and the literary evidence we hold of the Ancient Greek myths. Real life doesn’t do bullet points and neither does it necessarily draw hard lines between categories of greatness. Instead, the point we take from studying the old myths is a much more simple one: the road to apotheosis begins with how we show up in the world.

Think of the fauna around you. What attracts a bee is colour. What attracts a rat is scent. All animals follow invisible pathways of sympathy. Not because they choose to, but because they are bound to it. It is what nature dictates. The same principle is true for the spiritual and divine world: Spirits too are bound into laws of sympathy. Just like bees and rats and humans, they follow natural tides and patterns – established by the resonance between their own nature and the surrounding environment. Some places make great hosts to them, others repel them – all happening not by choice, but defined by the resonance of qualities.

This is the second step on our path of becoming authentically angelic: To understand each act in the mortal world as an act of communication with the immortal one. This is what the mysterious messenger Libanus (aka Johannes Trithemius) eludes to when he mentions that most of all what he gained from his master Pelagius was “a kind of natural dignity, which elevates”. Imagine the physical world as the membrane of a drum. The stroke and rhythm with which we touch it – through every word we utter, through every deed we do – sends out a call of most particular nature. It can only be heard and followed by the kind of spirits that stand in sympathy with the vibration of our call.

Do not be led astray by the Ancient Greek’s obsession with beauty, strength, prudence or sorcery. All of these are mere possible byproducts of a much more essential choice: If you want to call for Neptune, what is the Neptunian stroke of the drum that is this world? If you choose to call for Venus, what is the Venusian touch the skin that is this world? And if you call for the angelic world – where your Holy Daimon resides – which qualities should you perfect so s/he is called towards you, like the bee to the bloom?

It was with this Pelagius that I first realised how much in vain I had struggled in [the art of] magic without a teacher, because in short it is impossible to understand her without a teacher. Because for the one who subjects themselves as Novice to the instructions of magic, it is imperative to acquire a kind of natural dignity, which elevates them, so that they may force the spirits of any kind to obedience. May teacher yet was radiant by means of a threefold virtue: that is of nature [natura], of merit [meritum] and of art [ars]. That is why he held all spirits which he desired at his will and in perfect control. (Libanus, aka Johannes Trithemius)

( III ) Assimilation Enables

Now once the Greek Gods had spotted a human with extraordinary qualities they liked to get up close. Guess where all the semi-divine heroes come from? The stories of the Ancient heroes are stories of close encounters. Here we are dealing with the Greek world before the Platonic turn that transformed all things physical into shadows and mere memory-images of their original ideas. In the world of the heroes before Xenophanes (d. 475 BC), the gods liked to appear in the flesh. And they liked to dwell in it – for as long as it had been sufficiently assimilated to their own.

Unfortunately, this still seems to be one of the most common misunderstandings in modern magic. From the days of Homer to Harry Potter – magic has always been a physical thing. Just because most of our mortal eyes cannot see into the spiritual realm, it does not mean that its forces do not constantly push into our tissue, membranes and cells. Ironically nobody has the problem of understanding this corporal-to-non-corporal relationship when it comes to electro-magnetic forces or nuclear radiation. We get that we cannot see it, but that it exists and powerfully affects the material world – including our bodies if we chose to contact it. Why is it so hard to see the same apply to the realm of the spirits? If the world is the drum you play through your deeds and words and presence, then your body is the drum the spirits play through theirs. Learn to tune it, to listen to it, and you will know how to mend the chain between the human and the divine.

The Ancient Greek culture imaged all human capabilities to be derived from the gods. Interestingly, we find this same idea embedded in the Henochian myth of the fallen angels. Here the Nephilim descended to the mortal realm, and taught humans all crafts and arts. While these angelic gifts remained with the humans even after the Nephilim were gone, the Greek version is different. According to it, not only do all human skills ultimately derive from the gods, but each time they are exercised the actual grace of the particular god is required for the skill’s flawless expression. While in the former myth the angelic-human relationship is an origin story of the ancient past, in the Greek culture it was a constant experience – just as much as a requirement to uphold it. In light of this, according to the Ancient Greek assimilating oneself to the divine was less of mental ascent, and more of physical proximity. In essence, assimilation to the divine referred to a change in (spiritual) location, not in nature (Roloff, p. 141).

If we consider the following words not as an abstract (Platonic) concept, but a living physical reality we might be able to understand more about the nature of apotheosis: While the communion with a particular deity or spirit was the goal of apoetheosis, assimilation was what formed the actual path. The separation of magical acts into evocations versus invocations is an 18th century folly. Standing in the presence of a powerful spirit will permeate our entire being all the way, periphery, surface, centre. In fact, it will permeate our presence and past, step over the threshold of time and intertwine with the path behind us and ahead of us.

Trithemius understood this all too well. We can still find his detailed knowledge of such encounters laid out in the Trithemian manuscripts we examined in Black Abbot · White Magic. Trithemius’s works under the disguise of the magical hermit Pelagius are attempts to assimilate the nature of the neophyte to a divine nobility – one that is not born from the centre of the ritual, but from the meandering path in its periphery. That is also why identifying the precise name of one’s good angel was of minor interest. What mattered immensely was to amend the way the neophyte applied their heart and hand to the world. Once this operation succeeded it would automatically attract the right angelic being to commune with them. Ours is not the act of selecting and choosing with whom we will commune, Trithemius might have said, ours is the act of becoming a single, vibrant cell of noble intent. Once presence shines out into the mundane and spiritual world in such manner – unbiased, undistorted – we do not need to worry which beings will answer our call. We will find ourselves being pulled forward, striding out unconstrained into the world, with our heart close to the throne. Authentically angelic.

( IV ) Communion Elevates

In the Greek myths all forms of communion with a deity are temporary in nature. There is no such thing as a constant state of being united with a spirit or god – instead the spiritual bond requires constant rebinding, expressed e.g. through divine service, adoration or hymns.

Nature has a tendency to drift, to permeate and shape-shift. That is how evolution is kept alive. Nature is constantly drawn towards the unexplored, it breeds new forms and faces – by pulling away from and pulling apart what it had assembled just a minute ago. Nature thrives on carcasses; only they can offer the nourishing humidity for its new seeds to germinate and sprout. And once these have fully flourished, it will pull them back into the ground as well.

Cultivating a human-spirit relationship requires as much attention, skill and care as any human-to-human relationship does. And even in its best case, man will always remain a mortal. Believing one could forever turn oneself into a deity was a story of folly even amongst the Ancient Greek. The flight of Icarus might be the most beautiful expression of such hubris. Already amongst the old heroes apotheosis constituted a heresy, if it was understood as the human attempt of becoming a god for good (Vergöttlichung). Instead, what was an honoured mystical pathway was the pursuit of becoming god-like in a particular quality (Gottähnlichkeit) and thus garnering the favour and companionship of a particular deity.

Achieving communion with a particular spirit in most cases will form the pinnacle of decades of training and turning ourselves alike. Thus divine communion is a single moment in time. A moment that will quickly be followed by others, much more mundane ones. There is no standing still in the river of time. The same effort that is placed into mastering the art of creating divine proximity, should placed into mastering the art of becoming fully human again.

Every time I depart from the place and presence of my HolyDaimon is a moment of sadness. It is a moment that reminds me of the kindness of death, and the constant struggle that is our lives. Because there is no such kind of healing and peace as within my HolyDaimon. And yet just like Icarus it is not for me to stay too close to the sun for too long. — Once I had achieved communion with my HolyDaimon, learning how to come down from it was the hardest thing. After working for two decades to achieve this state of encountering Thou-I-Thou, why could it only last a few minutes at a time? Of course I can sense my HolyDaimon around me even when not in communion. It is as simple as calling out to her/him. And yet, nothing compares to the experience of stepping inside of her/his body in complete silence.

By definition all successful magical rites constitute peak experiences. And wherever there is a peak, there is a slope to both sides of it. If we want to learn to become authentically angelic, we better also become masters of being human. In fact, this is what I learned from my own conscious journey with my HolyDaimon over the last ten years: Once we had achieved communion s/he asked me to cease all practical magic. The door was open now, no more fiddling with the locks. All s/ he wanted was for me to entirely apply myself to the mundane world around me... We have to understand: Much more than our holy daimon being an asset to us, really, we are an asset to them.

My own return into the world of Malkuth – since we encountered each other in physical close proximity – has become a journey of bringing her/his light through in everything I do. Today this is no longer a conscious effort. S/he is pushing through my skin, through the hollow of my mouth, the tip of my fingers wherever I walk or stand. I am no longer sure if I could stop this process? But I certainly have learned how to live with it in peace. And an essential part of this process is learning to step into communion with my HolyDaimon only sparingly.

Imagine you are Hercules and you have mastered the seven trials. Maybe your biggest challenge for the rest of your life remains not to apply all your strength to random things? To learn to drink from a glass without breaking it. To learn to lift a sword without going to war. To learn to approach the unknown, and not to consider it a demon in disguise.

Communion elevates. And with departure we descend. Both of it are stages in the process we have to master in order to become authentically angelic. We move on from communion to companionship (from Latin: com = together and panis = bread). From the moment where we are one, to the moment we stand side by side again. Only then can we look each other in the eye, and break the bread of friendship.

You holy dear angel of God, for you are appointed over me to help and protect me and to shelter me, I laud, praise and honour you, I hold that God granted you to me as a companion and I delight in your amiableness and your service, for throughout my life you have protected me from much misfortune until this present day and hour. You dear, holy angel, I cannot repay you with any goods or deeds. You holy angel N.N., you blessed servant of God, for you behold God's face and take delight in standing in front of the face of God; I command myself to you […]. (Pelagius Eremitae, aka Johannes Trithemius)