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I would love a clear guide on the difference between the various planetary entities
Like, what is the difference between:
planetary spirit (eg Sorath)
planetary intelligence (eg Nakhiel)
Olympic spirit (eg Och)
and then also I guess the planetary archangel (eg Michael) although that one's less confusing
What is the difference, and therefore how would you make choices about which to invoke and when?
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Adding to that: the difference between the above and invoking the planet by name
And then the planetary spirit of the picatrix which have eight names
"Above us DAHIMAS, below us ABADULAS, at our right hand DAHIFAS, at our left hand ATI'AFAS, before us MAGANAMUS, behind us GADIS. TAHIMARIS moves and BANDALUS names."
Do Not invoke the planetary blind force spirit.
Soraths gematria value is 666 for an example.
The difference basically is that the planetary Archangel or Olympic spirit is called upon first, then the intelligence, and finally the spirit if you are trying to force the spirit to do this or that.
If you are not trying to force the spirit of the planet to do anything then stay away from invoking the spirit of the planet. Invoke instead the Archangel of the planet, or the Olympic spirit. The intelligence is a second party if you will, and the spirit a blind Force third party.
My personal use is more about daily planetary prayers, and planetary "introductions" are coming up later in Helios Unbound
But it's not just that. I like to understand a system. A table of correspondences where someone just says "and here's a list of names you can say, they're all different but you don't need to know how or why" is super frustrating to me (not talking about barbarous words - "planetary" + "intelligence" are not barbarous words and should have meanings that are distinguishable from "planetary spirit")
Even Sorath being a Persian word of power, or a spirit being "second" is not really an answer to what the category of beings is and how it differs from other categories (not ungrateful! I appreciate you sharing the info you have!)
And the... incuriosity? or expectation of incuriosity? is really common in ceremonial magic. I don't know if it's a holdover from Golden Dawn but it's shocking to me how little writers expect practitioners to question - they just give you words to say and actions to do and expect you to be happy to follow instructions without know what they're for. And often even the idea that I would care or want to understand the meaning of the symbols I'm being asked to use is confusing to a lot of people.
Of course some knowledge is experiential not verbal, but it seems to go beyond that - which is why I think it might be a Golden Dawn hangover (in hierarchical systems, you do what you're told because you've been told to do it by someone of a higher rank, you're not supposed to need your own reasons for doing it)
I suppose I'm really a chaos magician making use of ceremonial magic structures, rather than a true ceremonial magician, and I can see why chaos magicians jettisoned a lot of this in the 90s, but I think there's value there and don't want to jettison it, so I need to understand it
And the... incuriosity? or expectation of incuriosity? is really common in ceremonial magic. I don't know if it's a holdover from Golden Dawn but it's shocking to me how little writers expect practitioners to question - they just give you words to say and actions to do and expect you to be happy to follow instructions without know what they're for. And often even the idea that I would care or want to understand the meaning of the symbols I'm being asked to use is confusing to a lot of people.
Before anyone debunks it: I remember reading it in a very old travel diary of some rich Englishman who wrote about the customs of Persia. Last night I couldn't find it anymore, the entry in my dictionary says it actually means face, image, icon, ghost.
I am sorry for derailing it without giving an answer earlier. What I think this name shows is how the Hebrews recognized it as having power (by the way it was used to describe the magic of making figurines for example) and they therefore incorporated it into their system, maybe even creating / naming a new rank in the hierarchy to justify its use.
Personally I only call the archangels (when I do) and don't see a reason for using the planetary intelligences or planetary spirits.
My opinion - not knowledge or something that I can back up with books or proof - is that these lesser names were brought into Ceremonial Magick when they were discovered. To either connect with the people who used it, or to show that their spirits are under the rule of (less powerful than) the Angels.
If I may interject on basis of language ...
The reason I mentioned Sorath=666 was to illustrate the point to those familiar with Judeo Christianity.
Whether or not it's "the beast" is beside the point.
Arabic/ancient Persian is drastically different than Biblical Hebrew the GD used. With gematria that value was derived by the ancient maguses like Agrippa and Barrett, familiar with gematria. Also familiar with the planetary sum value. This it was interjected that they were like Qlippoth entities - blind and potentially violent forces.
The point is that the planetary spirits are blind forces, yet again stating this. Unruly, ungoverned unless compelled by the intelligence compelled by the Archangel.
Might I recommend seriously this time to start the work through the archangel if using the same names found in the GD system? The spirits of the planets are not for amateurs to be blunt.
I don't mess with them because I am a complete novice with planetary magic, and find more comfort through using the angels.
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Yet I'm not anyone else but me, so so what thou wilt.
Not all all! It's not like there was a robust discussion going to derail, I was happy for any input - my frustration is with the broader tendencies of ceremonial magic, and also Reddit - I think by definition people on WF are more interested in understanding the theory
My opinion - not knowledge or something that I can back up with books or proof - is that these lesser names were brought into Ceremonial Magick when they were discovered.
That makes sense. I'm thinking of the PGM where they just add in new god names to invocations whenever they discovered any that seemed powerful, without having any intent to incorporate the actual religious beliefs
So for my specific case, I'm following the Helios Unbound process (which uses the spirit names from the Picatrix I think) and my inclination is to trust the system. The parts I understand well, I can see are intelligently put together (copy-editing issues aside). So that gives me reason to believe that the parts I don't understand well have also been put together intelligently and not recklessly. I'm an amateur, but Nick Farrell isn't, and I'll be following his system, so I think it's okay
(But that's my personal situation - other people with the same question might search and find this thread, so it's good for your perspective on it to be here!)
Our planetary "ecosystem" has a myriad types of intelligences, each type with specialized functions.
There are books written about the types, but they require both inner and outer effort. Reading is not sufficient to establish conscious working relationships. Further, the behavior of many entities will be influenced by quality of the human looking to establish contact.
As a simple start, Hodson's The Kingdom of the Gods can be found as a free download. It gives a reasonable map of some types of entity.
In the deep end: I recently read Bailey's A Treatise on Cosmic Fire yet again. I find new material every time. Cosmic Fire is a free download.
I find religious maps of entities to be less than truthful.
Leonardo gives a useful lesson in his wolf and eagle
a personal anecdote, as i wanted to know it all too.
i really had the same questions, why is green sometimes symbolic for greed and sometimes love and why is it the color of the heartchakra, etc. i have medicinal herbs at home and they work, but why?
i once went out on a initiation trip. i went to visit a woman on an island and the evening before i would meet her i went out for a walk in the woods. the woods were silent and there were no people. im quite shy in having fun, but i was alone and there were pine needles everywhere. so i decided that i at least one time in my life needed to run around like and elf in the woods and make some pine needle angels like one would make a snow angel. freaking scary shit, cause fun. anyways one of my medicinal herbs is pine needle and i know its name to be arar. it made me wonder why xmas tree, why does the name sound like a pirate and all these things. i stayed annoyed for years cause i couldnt get a real answer. then one day i was at home and a sort of huge mathematical drill enters my view and i see the calculation and meaning of pine needle. it totally makes sense, but i also realized that it really takes years to communicate that from source? to being. i realized that its similar to accepting hardcore truth like 1+1=2.
when i realized that, the world smiled, sat me on a 'chair' and said relax youve accepted the rest will follow. strangely enough i now really dont have that insecurity anymore.
i also realized that it really takes years to communicate that from source? to being. i realized that its similar to accepting hardcore truth like 1+1=2.
Not quite the same, but I've had a couple of big realisations this year (triggered by a crisis and then having to level up very quickly to deal with the crisis) and they are hugely important and transformative, but if I were to tell you them, they would sound like trite and obvious things that anyone with even a passing interest in Buddhism/Stoicism/CBT would have heard
And they are
But this year I got them at a deep deep level at the core of my being in a way I never have before, and they became not just logically true, but part of me, and how the world looks to me now
The experience of knowing in that way sounds like your description of understanding the pine needle
i really don know which gods, spirits or whatever, but i have a flow you might understand.
here in the netherlands we have a big company called Hak. when i was a kid they used to make advertising and their slogan was ' you need the veggies made by Hak'. veggie tales is a very xtian fun cartoon series for kids and i used to watch it with my kids. el haqq means The Truth.
I would love a clear guide on the difference between the various planetary entities
Like, what is the difference between:
planetary spirit (eg Sorath)
planetary intelligence (eg Nakhiel)
Olympic spirit (eg Och)
and then also I guess the planetary archangel (eg Michael) although that one's less confusing
What is the difference, and therefore how would you make choices about which to invoke and when?
Post automatically merged:
Adding to that: the difference between the above and invoking the planet by name
And then the planetary spirit of the picatrix which have eight names
"Above us DAHIMAS, below us ABADULAS, at our right hand DAHIFAS, at our left hand ATI'AFAS, before us MAGANAMUS, behind us GADIS. TAHIMARIS moves and BANDALUS names."
Excellent question. First, before explaining what an intelligence is, we need to briefly discuss what an angel is. Now the word angel, coming from the Greek Angelos, simply means messenger; however when we say angel here we are referring specifically to those beings of emmanative nature we find in Judaism and Christianity. Think about an angel as a beam of light coming off of the Holy Spirit of or Divine Host that is god- and as it pertains to planetary angels we can wee them as light having reflected off of the planet and reaching us here. You have angels above the firmament being supernal and amongst the spheres being celestial. An angel can even emmanative from different hosts in different spheres. For instance, let's say you have an angel named Chesediel, Mercy of God, which we would by default assume to correspond to Jupiter for obvious reasons. Let's say however we want to work with him in the sphere of Mars or perhaps even Chesed of Gevurah. We would say:
Chesediel va-Madim
Va-/Ve- means of or pertaining to
Madim is Hebrew for Mars and it's sphere.
Alright so now we can finally talk about intelligences. If, angels are emanations from the Holy Sophia/Spirit, then intelligences are emanations of the Logos/Word.
When we open up the book of John, the verse therein is "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". The Book of John then goes on to explain how before the word could incarnate in the flesh, it first had to emerge from creation. The Son is also born through the mother Sophia but not as emmanative light. Emmanuel is an angel but being the angel of the presence of the Lord the Logos and the Sophia do follow. The Arbatel is a Christian grimoire and we can't understand it without understanding Christian Theology, esp. Early Christian Theology.
The Word/Logos is the logic, syntax, and grammar which allows creation to be conceived of in the mind of God and for that conception to be established as Creation. Therefore the Intelligence of Saturn is that intelligence which is the part of the Logos that provides the structure, sets the constants and oversees the natural way of things within the sphere of Saturn. It is the faculties of the mind of the Sphere.
The Olympic Spirit is the Holy Host of the Sphere, that is to say, the Holy Spirit as it manifests and is seated within the sphere. Everything of that sphere has their being rooted in and is sustained by this Olympic Spirit. The Arbatel says that they have their place in the Firmament, despite their planetary association. You have to remember our ancestors saw the stars in the sky to be apetures, holes in the firmament, whereby supernal light cames into the world. This is not to say that the Olympic Spirits are stars, no, but they share that nature of being gates of the spirit. Nor are they the gods of Olympus yet rather the spirit behind and animating those gods, as those gods are the planets within their heavens.
The Olympic Spirits are amazing to work with and the way I teach, the student forms a relationship with them as the spirits and gatekeepers of the planets. Form a relationship with Och for example, and Och can help you contact any entity of the Solar sphere, and being the force beyond them, even unto visible appearance.
The Blind Spirit is the raw potential of the planet, it's primordial chaos if you will and if it helps to think of it as the material, nephesh or underworld of the planet so so. You "never" evoke the blind Spirit first for the same reason you would never call a blind elemental without first calling the elemental King.
Calling the Olympic Spirit, Intelligence and Blind Spirit is a powerful combination as you have called the Spirit, Logos and all lesser forces of the planet.
Then you can call to the archangel of the plants or, the God of the planet and the light thereof as the Archangel.
Here is how I prefer to do it, with Dawn of the day ruled by the planet being the most opportune time:
I. The LBRP - You are not trying to clear the working space, you are doing this to banish your outward perceptions so that you can be seated in your spirit and in Tiphereth. Now we can begin to work celestially.
II. Call to the Olympic Spirit - is the center
III. Cast a circle - as we will be evoking a celestial sphere into it.
IV. The LIRH - in the form to invoke the four Enochian seniors of that planet.
V. Evoke above the Intelligence of the planet
VI. Evoke below the Blind Spirit of the planet.
VII. Face the planet in the sky and with the greater hexagram call the archangel and/or god, or consecrate your planetary talisman etc. This of course assumes that the the planet is above the horizon and can be seen.
In doing the LBRP change nothing but with the LIRH be sure to do it in the celestial order: Fire in the East, Earth in the South, Air in the West and Earth in the North.
In your working with the Olympic Spirits, petition them to reveal their nature to you, and especially here as it pertains to their relationships with the intelligences and blind spirits.
As for just calling the name of the planet, you can do that and you will get one if two things, especially depending on your state if mind:
A) The god by which we still call the planets even though most today merely see them as material.
B) The Materia of that sphere in Assiah.
If you want the gid and are unsure of your ability to hone in on them, maybe use a language/name that has never been used to refer to a modern understanding.
Lastly I can not comment on the names in the Picatrix as that is not where my experience, let alone expertise is.
My personal use is more about daily planetary prayers, and planetary "introductions" are coming up later in Helios Unbound
But it's not just that. I like to understand a system. A table of correspondences where someone just says "and here's a list of names you can say, they're all different but you don't need to know how or why" is super frustrating to me (not talking about barbarous words - "planetary" + "intelligence" are not barbarous words and should have meanings that are distinguishable from "planetary spirit")
Even Sorath being a Persian word of power, or a spirit being "second" is not really an answer to what the category of beings is and how it differs from other categories (not ungrateful! I appreciate you sharing the info you have!)
And the... incuriosity? or expectation of incuriosity? is really common in ceremonial magic. I don't know if it's a holdover from Golden Dawn but it's shocking to me how little writers expect practitioners to question - they just give you words to say and actions to do and expect you to be happy to follow instructions without know what they're for. And often even the idea that I would care or want to understand the meaning of the symbols I'm being asked to use is confusing to a lot of people.
Of course some knowledge is experiential not verbal, but it seems to go beyond that - which is why I think it might be a Golden Dawn hangover (in hierarchical systems, you do what you're told because you've been told to do it by someone of a higher rank, you're not supposed to need your own reasons for doing it)
I suppose I'm really a chaos magician making use of ceremonial magic structures, rather than a true ceremonial magician, and I can see why chaos magicians jettisoned a lot of this in the 90s, but I think there's value there and don't want to jettison it, so I need to understand it
I've never gotten the sense in my many years of Golden Dawn studies that they ever discouraged experimentation or expected you to just take their word for it regarding the nature of entities or how magic worked. I think people assume this as it can be argued Mathers ended up ruling with an Iron fist to keep control of the order despite being only 1 of the three co-chiefs. This was mostly in regards to administrative affairs and his not willing to reveal these secret superiors. LLL was clandy and of ill respute and instead of just being honest about the situation and lineage he doubled down with "secret chiefs"
This did influence how magic and ritual is done but one must understand that it is nessisarily for mystery traditions to do their initiations by the book to create a lineage of experience and build up the egreogore. There is power in that. It isn't to suggest you have to do things a certain way in your personal praxis.
On that note I'm not going to tell you what to do but you should know that the Arbatel isn't particularly.... helpful to a chaos magic model. Chaos magic is very much of the psychological model, though to be fair it's rather open to adaption, and the kind of magic in the Arbatel, these grimoires, and especially if the Olympic Spirits, requires you to immerse yourself in a world of spirits. The Arbatel especially is rooted in Christian piety though at the same time, Paracelsus, who was a huge influence thereon as you know...wasn't very fond of the Christian authorities of his day and one might accuse him of being more Pantheistic and Animist than Christian. I suppose as a Native American who practices their tribal spiritually which is now strongly admixed with Christianity that's way I like Paracelsus, the Arbatel (could do without the Calvinism though) and Frater Achar.
You are aware of his work, and the Golden Dawn so I figured as someone whose practice employs the Olympic Spirits as part of its fire foundation, Id give you my planetary frame rite to help you firm your own relationship with these entities. Hopefully you find a similar love of them as I do. If after searching though, you find they don't integrate well into your chaos magic paradigm, that's ok to.
Excellent question. First, before explaining what an intelligence is, we need to briefly discuss what an angel is. Now the word angel, coming from the Greek Angelos, simply means messenger; however when we say angel here we are referring specifically to those beings of emmanative nature we find in Judaism and Christianity. Think about an angel as a beam of light coming off of the Holy Spirit of or Divine Host that is god- and as it pertains to planetary angels we can wee them as light having reflected off of the planet and reaching us here. You have angels above the firmament being supernal and amongst the spheres being celestial. An angel can even emmanative from different hosts in different spheres. For instance, let's say you have an angel named Chesediel, Mercy of God, which we would by default assume to correspond to Jupiter for obvious reasons. Let's say however we want to work with him in the sphere of Mars or perhaps even Chesed of Gevurah. We would say:
Chesediel va-Madim
Va-/Ve- means of or pertaining to
Madim is Hebrew for Mars and it's sphere.
Alright so now we can finally talk about intelligences. If, angels are emanations from the Holy Sophia/Spirit, then intelligences are emanations of the Logos/Word.
When we open up the book of John, the verse therein is "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". The Book of John then goes on to explain how before the word could incarnate in the flesh, it first had to emerge from creation. The Son is also born through the mother Sophia but not as emmanative light. Emmanuel is an angel but being the angel of the presence of the Lord the Logos and the Sophia do follow. The Arbatel is a Christian grimoire and we can't understand it without understanding Christian Theology, esp. Early Christian Theology.
The Word/Logos is the logic, syntax, and grammar which allows creation to be conceived of in the mind of God and for that conception to be established as Creation. Therefore the Intelligence of Saturn is that intelligence which is the part of the Logos that provides the structure, sets the constants and oversees the natural way of things within the sphere of Saturn. It is the faculties of the mind of the Sphere.
The Olympic Spirit is the Holy Host of the Sphere, that is to say, the Holy Spirit as it manifests and is seated within the sphere. Everything of that sphere has their being rooted in and is sustained by this Olympic Spirit. The Arbatel says that they have their place in the Firmament, despite their planetary association. You have to remember our ancestors saw the stars in the sky to be apetures, holes in the firmament, whereby supernal light cames into the world. This is not to say that the Olympic Spirits are stars, no, but they share that nature of being gates of the spirit. Nor are they the gods of Olympus yet rather the spirit behind and animating those gods, as those gods are the planets within their heavens.
The Olympic Spirits are amazing to work with and the way I teach, the student forms a relationship with them as the spirits and gatekeepers of the planets. Form a relationship with Och for example, and Och can help you contact any entity of the Solar sphere, and being the force beyond them, even unto visible appearance.
The Blind Spirit is the raw potential of the planet, it's primordial chaos if you will and if it helps to think of it as the material, nephesh or underworld of the planet so so. You "never" evoke the blind Spirit first for the same reason you would never call a blind elemental without first calling the elemental King.
Calling the Olympic Spirit, Intelligence and Blind Spirit is a powerful combination as you have called the Spirit, Logos and all lesser forces of the planet.
Then you can call to the archangel of the plants or, the God of the planet and the light thereof as the Archangel.
Here is how I prefer to do it, with Dawn of the day ruled by the planet being the most opportune time:
I. The LBRP - You are not trying to clear the working space, you are doing this to banish your outward perceptions so that you can be seated in your spirit and in Tiphereth. Now we can begin to work celestially.
II. Call to the Olympic Spirit - is the center
III. Cast a circle - as we will be evoking a celestial sphere into it.
IV. The LIRH - in the form to invoke the four Enochian seniors of that planet.
V. Evoke above the Intelligence of the planet
VI. Evoke below the Blind Spirit of the planet.
VII. Face the planet in the sky and with the greater hexagram call the archangel and/or god, or consecrate your planetary talisman etc. This of course assumes that the the planet is above the horizon and can be seen.
In doing the LBRP change nothing but with the LIRH be sure to do it in the celestial order: Fire in the East, Earth in the South, Air in the West and Earth in the North.
In your working with the Olympic Spirits, petition them to reveal their nature to you, and especially here as it pertains to their relationships with the intelligences and blind spirits.
As for just calling the name of the planet, you can do that and you will get one if two things, especially depending on your state if mind:
A) The god by which we still call the planets even though most today merely see them as material.
B) The Materia of that sphere in Assiah.
If you want the gid and are unsure of your ability to hone in on them, maybe use a language/name that has never been used to refer to a modern understanding.
Lastly I can not comment on the names in the Picatrix as that is not where my experience, let alone expertise is.
I've never gotten the sense in my many years of Golden Dawn studies that they ever discouraged experimentation or expected you to just take their word for it regarding the nature of entities or how magic worked. I think people assume this as it can be argued Mathers ended up ruling with an Iron fist to keep control of the order despite being only 1 of the three co-chiefs. This was mostly in regards to administrative affairs and his not willing to reveal these secret superiors. LLL was clandy and of ill respute and instead of just being honest about the situation and lineage he doubled down with "secret chiefs"
This did influence how magic and ritual is done but one must understand that it is nessisarily for mystery traditions to do their initiations by the book to create a lineage of experience and build up the egreogore. There is power in that. It isn't to suggest you have to do things a certain way in your personal praxis.
On that note I'm not going to tell you what to do but you should know that the Arbatel isn't particularly.... helpful to a chaos magic model. Chaos magic is very much of the psychological model, though to be fair it's rather open to adaption, and the kind of magic in the Arbatel, these grimoires, and especially if the Olympic Spirits, requires you to immerse yourself in a world of spirits. The Arbatel especially is rooted in Christian piety though at the same time, Paracelsus, who was a huge influence thereon as you know...wasn't very fond of the Christian authorities of his day and one might accuse him of being more Pantheistic and Animist than Christian. I suppose as a Native American who practices their tribal spiritually which is now strongly admixed with Christianity that's way I like Paracelsus, the Arbatel (could do without the Calvinism though) and Frater Achar.
You are aware of his work, and the Golden Dawn so I figured as someone whose practice employs the Olympic Spirits as part of its fire foundation, Id give you my planetary frame rite to help you firm your own relationship with these entities. Hopefully you find a similar love of them as I do. If after searching though, you find they don't integrate well into your chaos magic paradigm, that's ok to.
Just came across this in Jason Miller's Advanced Planetary Magic, for the curious:
"In Agrippa's system, the Intelligence is sometimes thought of as good and the spirit as evil, but I adhere to a different line of thought that considers the Intelligence to be the overall guide, but the spirit as the active agent of change. This combination has worked for me many, many times, and even the most feared of these spirits (Sorath) has provided me with useful boons."
