Holy Guardian Angels, Demons and Dwellers on the Threshold

IF YOU have read anything on occultism you might find yourself facing terms such as Holy Guardian Angel and sometimes, more rarely, Guardian Demon and the Dweller on the Threshold. These terms have been confused over the years so will try and explain them. In a system of 16^th century magic called Abramelin the first part of the work was to get in touch with your Holy Guardian Angel and it was through it that you learnt the names of Angels and Demons that controlled the universe using magic squares. Protestant commentat ors on the system did not really know what the Holy Guardian Angel was, and some of them, such as Alistair Crowley, who had a psychological bent, thought it was the same as your Higher Self.

However in the pre-reformation Church it was believed that when a human was born they were overshadowed by an Angel and a Demon. It is the role of both to oversee their work in each life and to act as a messenger between heaven and earth. The Angel is a protector and a guide, the Demon is the force that works against the Divine forces to keep the human from returning to God.

Of the two the Demon was the weakest, yet you would know it not by the havoc it creates. Left to its own devices, the Demon will shut the ears of the soul to the guidance of the Angel and encourage the soul to carry on with its mundane life and give no thought to God. Yet if the Guardian Angel was evoked, the balance between Angel and Demon is restored. As the Priests say on the occasion of your baptism. Anger not your Guardian Angel, for it is that which will lead you to the understanding of the True Christ. The idea of a Guardian Angel or Demon has fallen from fashion although they sometimes appear in Disney cartoons as warring forces of a person's conscious. The Guardian Angel certainly is not your Higher Self.

The term Dweller on the Threshold comes from a Victorian book called Zanoni which was written by an occultist called Lord Bulwer-Lytton. It appears to be a demonic force which appears if someone begins the path of magic before they are ready. It is supposed to scare the willies off them until they decide to stick to a normal life. It is a guardian which stood between the mysteries and the mundane world to prevent those who should not be walking in the immeasurable regions from going there.

Over the years it has come to mean something else depending on which path of magic you use. Alice Bailey in her Esoteric Astrology claimed that it was the sum total of all instincts, and wrong thinking which has built over countless lifetimes. Other occultists describe it as your shadow which must be overcome before you can carry on your esoteric work.

But one thing I have noticed is that while a few people claim they have encountered the Dweller on the Threshold they are the sorts of people who see the world divided into humans and lizard people. They are often the times who say they braved a conversation with the feared dweller and in the same breath tell you that Elvis Presley was a grand adept of their magical order.

If a Dweller on the Threshold existed the way that Bulwer-Lytton described, none of these vegetables would ever get their hands on an esoteric book, let alone find a magical group, or do any exercises. But that does not mean that it does not exist. Like a lot of things in occultism, Bulwer Lytton was not being literal.

It is not, as some commentators have tried to say a magician's Lower Self, although there are some similarities and it uses the same tools. It is that force which keeps people from succeeding in the Magical Path. It leads them on a merry dance through different groups, it might even give them magical experiences, but Real Magic is something that they never really experience. Unconsciously they make all the choices that prevent them being Real Magicians. Tragically this does not stop such types being experts on magic or even ruling their own esoteric groups or orders. A teacher might have all the students in the world who pay a fortune to attend his lectures, but be no closer to the goal of being a real magician. They are stopped by the Dweller on the Threshold and do not know how to pass. It is not the sum total of their animal instincts, but that which protects magic from being misused.

Butler-Lytton says something very odd about the Dweller. After saying that it is the ugliest thing that anyone has ever seen, and yet it says that it contains the wisdom of “countless ages”. In otherwords the path of being a real magician is not all sweetness, light and crystal dolphins. When you step into the Immeasurable Region real magic is protected by your own fears, your own lack of self-belief. Your own fear turns you back and turns you into a pretend magician.

In one magical order called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a candidate who is blindfolded meets an officer who represents this Dweller on the Threshold. This officer threatens the candidate with a sword and blocks the path until the candidate can tell him his name. The candidate is prompted to say “Darkness is thy name, thou Great one of the Path of shades.” The officer replies: “Fear is failure, so be thou without fear. For he who trembles at the Flame and the Flood and at the Shadows of the Air,hath no part in God.

In the path of becoming a real magician you have to face your fears and this process is what is known as the Dweller on the Threshold. But it is more than this overcoming lower self fears. Real magic is protected by the collective fears of humanity. Its biggest fear is “what if magic were true”. What if an individual really could change the universe. In this path it is a fear that we all face and all come up with our own answers. When we face it, it is our first real teacher. In most cases it means we will leave the path completely back to the safety of our books.

Reblogged from 2009

Sodthe,net

For the last few weeks I have been busy on a non-occulty project called Sodthe.net (STN)  It is a news for nerds site but it is entirely humour-based and satire.    It covers tech news, but also science and archeology.  If I am honest it covers the sort of non-occult stuff, rants and humour that interests me written in a way I find amusing.   I find it interesting that on this site I can't stop myself making bizarre occulty references  and writing in Sci-fi references and stories.
I hope it takes off because it has been a lot of effort.  Those who have visited it like it and we are just starting to get the site onto all the search engines and get noticed.   We will be adding more made up pictures and stories as soon as we get a moment.
So pop in... if you see a story you like, comment, share it with your friends and spread the word... this could be a lot of fun 

Diagrams in the Golden Dawn

Few of the diagrams of the Golden Dawn are used in the Modern Golden Dawn initiation rituals.  This is because many modern Golden Dawn orders were based on the rituals printed by Israel Regardie just before the Second World War in his Golden Dawn book.
The Bristol temple was going through a phase of removing parts of the ritual it did not understand or felt were cumbersome and the versions of the rituals that Regardie experienced were these cut down rite. The candidate still saw the diagrams, they were given to him or her during their course work and that was felt to be enough.
When deciding on the rituals of the Magical Order of Aurora Aurea I felt that we should return to the Whare Ra rituals. Whare Ra was the last surviving order of the Golden Dawn, closing its doors in the late 1970s. I worked with some of the people in that temple after it closed and know the magical depths they managed to find within the Golden Dawn system.
Going through the old rituals, I was surprised at quite how many of the diagrams there were which have to be presented to the candidate. Some were obvious, some I had seen and some were a complete mystery. Some diagrams even appeared to be repeated or the information duplicated across several grades. In each case the diagram was explained by the officer, often extending the length of the ritual considerably.
Part of me started to agree with Bristol and think they should be edited out. After all how can a candidate who has undergone an initiation that means anything actually stand, let alone comprehend the subtleties of a dozen diagrams.
I had been following a few threads on the various diagrams and decided that what ever happened they were important for a reason unknown and the Magical Order of the Aurora would use them in its initiations.
One thing we did do was to use the godforms associated with the diagrams to over shadow the candidate during the speeches and to link the diagram to the candidate's sphere of sensation. I thought that this would be fairly tame and a sensible magical use of the them.

However during psychic observations of the use of the diagrams in the initiations we started to notice that they were doing something more than we thought. Firstly the godforms appeared to be teaching the candidate something in connection with the tablet while the speeches were taking place. Secondly the godforms appeared to use the tablets magically to change the candidate's sphere of sensation. In several cases we heard a clicking sound when some people were exposed to the tablets as their sphere of sensation was re-orientated.
This was interesting so I returned to the rituals to note where some of the confusing diagrams apppeared. Perhaps the strangest was the Geomantic Diagrams which were scattered throughout the GD rituals. However if these diagrams were part of a huge psychic operation which is taking place on the candidate's sphere of sensation over several rituals their function becomes more than simply providing intellectual information. Geomancy works with the Earth spirits so in the initiation it is sealing and earthing the different components of the psychic operation. This is particularly so in the 4=7 when the candidate is shown something which tells them how to build an Earth talisman. Pat Zalewski was the first to spot the fact that when Mathers converted the the Cipher manuscripts so that the geomantic symbols used in the talisman were Rubeus and Puer. It made sense in some respects in that the path where the candidate is exposed to this particular talisman is on a Luna path and Mathers wanted to hint at the feiry Mars aspect of the Moon. The fact that he changed it is crucial because it says he recognised that the presentation of the diagram would have a magical effect. Unfortunately he was being a little too clever by half. The author of the Cipher documents said that the talisman should be Rubeus and Admissio. The fusion of these two geomantic symbols would be to negate the destructive aspects of Rubeus and allow the positive flow of love. This path after all is a move towards Netzach and very appropriate to the idea of the Moon under the influence of Mercy.
So it appears to be fairly clear that an operation is taking place here and not simply the masonic presentation of intellectual knowledge.

Berridge's AO diagram of Nebuchadnezzar

Take another example. Several times the candidate is shown various versions of the geometric shapes, in different guises. The information could be worked out the first time you see the diagram so why do you get a reprise for the second and third times. My suggestion would be that this is giving the sphere of sensation instructions in an energy form that it can use them to communicate but also crystallising parts of the sphere of sensation so that they fit to those shapes.
All this is fairly good magic covered under a dry intellectual shield. If the diagrams, such as tarot, have the effect of shaping the sphere of sensation then it becomes crucial that they are used and presented to the candidate.
But the diagrams also have another function in the temple. When they are not being showed to the candidate they act as invisible stations for power. This makes their placement important as it is possible to see lines of force between them. Remember that in an initiation the temple represents the candidate's sphere of sensation so these focal points become crucial.
With these diagrams being restored to the position of magical weapons their power becomes obvious. However this does raise some pretty obvious questions. The first is why did the Bristol temple think that ditching the diagrams was a good idea?
It is quite likely that in various times in its history the Golden Dawn has degenerated. The magical meaning behind the rites has been lost. While Felkin's Whare Ra remained on the ball there was no-one to check what the “provinces” were doing. There is an inherent trend within the Golden Dawn to kill off its magic side, or at very least, not study it. When this happens an order goes through the rituals and the motions of a working order without it being one. Diagrams, which superficially appeal to the Intellect are easily dismissed for what they appear to be, rather than what they really are.

Reblogged  from 2010