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Building on a point I raised in my previous post, I’ve realized this may be the biggest practical challenge that non-Christian practitioners simply cannot avoid.
The entire Solomonic system operates along a chain of divine authority. From the consecration of tools to the invocation and the dismissal, every step is carried out in the name of a specific entity, and at the very top of this chain—as the original texts make abundantly clear—stands the Triune God. If you’re a Christian, there’s no problem at all; the engine is already in place. If you’re not, then what you’re facing isn’t a matter of faith, but an engineering problem: the power source for the entire machine is in someone else’s hands.
I’ve seen four ready-made solutions, each with its own real cost.
The first is to recite it verbatim. Recite the formula of the Trinity exactly as it is, even if you don’t believe in it. Some argue that the divine name itself is a technical element, unrelated to what the practitioner believes. I respect this stance, but for those of us who come from a devotional background, it feels like signing someone else’s check. Moreover, my principle is that the practitioner’s own state of mind is part of the ritual; reciting creeds I do not hold—that is a rift I cannot bridge.
The second approach is to replace the deity. You swap out the authority slot with your own primary deity. The cost is that you contaminate two lineages simultaneously: your primary deity’s ritual system is forcibly grafted onto the grimoire’s mechanical structure, while the grimoire system is forced to accommodate a deity for whom it was not designed. I strictly enforce the separation of lineages, so this path is a dead end for me.
The third approach is self-proclamation. This is the path where you declare yourself to already be a deity and issue commands from that divine status. The cost lies in the fact that the entire safety framework of this system is built on the premise that you are not at the top. If you place yourself at the top, then between you and whatever manifests, there is nothing but yourself. A previous post on this forum explained this point very thoroughly: the essence of the original method is that you assume yourself to be a god, and beyond the god, the only one truly responsible for your safety is yourself.
The fourth approach is the intermediary. It involves having your Holy Guardian Angel hold authority on your behalf—the Abramelin path. This is the proper path, but it requires you to first complete a process measured in months and years. Strictly speaking, it postpones the problem rather than resolving it, because the question remains: whose authority stands behind your angel?
I personally follow the fifth approach, though stating this may be controversial.
My entire theological stance boils down to a single principle: the highest position is occupied by a being, and that being is unknowable. I am certain that the Most High exists; this is not a strategic assumption, but my genuine belief. However, I refuse to claim to know who He is. He is not the Trinity, nor is He any name I can call upon. When I work, the endpoint of the chain of authority is the Most High—whomever He may be.
This approach has two qualities that I value highly. First, it introduces no doctrine. I don’t need to convert to anything, nor do I need to pretend anything; the reverence is genuine, and only the name remains open-ended. Second, it automatically satisfies the separation of traditions. Because that top slot carries no name, it doesn’t clash with any tradition I hold; my devotional work maintains its own flow, and the Solomonic framework is powered without being burdened by a god with whom to compete. There is also an added benefit: honesty. Every invocation I recite is true at the moment I utter it. In a system where I require every syllable to be traceable to the original text, this is the only configuration in which my theology and my recitation do not conflict with one another.
Incidentally, this is not some modern contrivance. There truly stood an altar in Athens inscribed with “To the Unknown God,” which Paul witnessed with his own eyes in Acts 17, and Pausanias also recorded altars dedicated to the unknown gods. The ancients had long since built temples to the unnamed Supreme Being. Negative theology is an entire tradition—from Pseudo-Dionysius to the medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing—in which God can only be approached through what He is not. A large portion of the invocations of the Highest God in the PGM are, by their very nature, tradition-agnostic. Even at the very core of the grimoire tradition sits a famously unspoken name. At the heart of this tradition lies a name we do not utter.
So I’d like to ask you all: What do you put in your “God slot”? If you work with the Solomonic system and you’re not a Christian—or not just a Christian—what do you use to power this machine, and what price has it exacted from you?
The entire Solomonic system operates along a chain of divine authority. From the consecration of tools to the invocation and the dismissal, every step is carried out in the name of a specific entity, and at the very top of this chain—as the original texts make abundantly clear—stands the Triune God. If you’re a Christian, there’s no problem at all; the engine is already in place. If you’re not, then what you’re facing isn’t a matter of faith, but an engineering problem: the power source for the entire machine is in someone else’s hands.
I’ve seen four ready-made solutions, each with its own real cost.
The first is to recite it verbatim. Recite the formula of the Trinity exactly as it is, even if you don’t believe in it. Some argue that the divine name itself is a technical element, unrelated to what the practitioner believes. I respect this stance, but for those of us who come from a devotional background, it feels like signing someone else’s check. Moreover, my principle is that the practitioner’s own state of mind is part of the ritual; reciting creeds I do not hold—that is a rift I cannot bridge.
The second approach is to replace the deity. You swap out the authority slot with your own primary deity. The cost is that you contaminate two lineages simultaneously: your primary deity’s ritual system is forcibly grafted onto the grimoire’s mechanical structure, while the grimoire system is forced to accommodate a deity for whom it was not designed. I strictly enforce the separation of lineages, so this path is a dead end for me.
The third approach is self-proclamation. This is the path where you declare yourself to already be a deity and issue commands from that divine status. The cost lies in the fact that the entire safety framework of this system is built on the premise that you are not at the top. If you place yourself at the top, then between you and whatever manifests, there is nothing but yourself. A previous post on this forum explained this point very thoroughly: the essence of the original method is that you assume yourself to be a god, and beyond the god, the only one truly responsible for your safety is yourself.
The fourth approach is the intermediary. It involves having your Holy Guardian Angel hold authority on your behalf—the Abramelin path. This is the proper path, but it requires you to first complete a process measured in months and years. Strictly speaking, it postpones the problem rather than resolving it, because the question remains: whose authority stands behind your angel?
I personally follow the fifth approach, though stating this may be controversial.
My entire theological stance boils down to a single principle: the highest position is occupied by a being, and that being is unknowable. I am certain that the Most High exists; this is not a strategic assumption, but my genuine belief. However, I refuse to claim to know who He is. He is not the Trinity, nor is He any name I can call upon. When I work, the endpoint of the chain of authority is the Most High—whomever He may be.
This approach has two qualities that I value highly. First, it introduces no doctrine. I don’t need to convert to anything, nor do I need to pretend anything; the reverence is genuine, and only the name remains open-ended. Second, it automatically satisfies the separation of traditions. Because that top slot carries no name, it doesn’t clash with any tradition I hold; my devotional work maintains its own flow, and the Solomonic framework is powered without being burdened by a god with whom to compete. There is also an added benefit: honesty. Every invocation I recite is true at the moment I utter it. In a system where I require every syllable to be traceable to the original text, this is the only configuration in which my theology and my recitation do not conflict with one another.
Incidentally, this is not some modern contrivance. There truly stood an altar in Athens inscribed with “To the Unknown God,” which Paul witnessed with his own eyes in Acts 17, and Pausanias also recorded altars dedicated to the unknown gods. The ancients had long since built temples to the unnamed Supreme Being. Negative theology is an entire tradition—from Pseudo-Dionysius to the medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing—in which God can only be approached through what He is not. A large portion of the invocations of the Highest God in the PGM are, by their very nature, tradition-agnostic. Even at the very core of the grimoire tradition sits a famously unspoken name. At the heart of this tradition lies a name we do not utter.
So I’d like to ask you all: What do you put in your “God slot”? If you work with the Solomonic system and you’re not a Christian—or not just a Christian—what do you use to power this machine, and what price has it exacted from you?
