You now have the ability to order my new book, “Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit” in paperback direct from the Publisher’s website. Thoth Publications promise to be able to ship worldwide – especially useful if you find Amazon or Barnes & Noble don’t deliver to your particular country!
For more details, please follow this link: Conjuring Demons For Pleasure and Profit
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Here at Castle Sumner, no sooner have I come out with a book (nb: PLUG) in which I, ahem, dissect references to Abramelin in A Dark Song, than I find another reference to it in pop-culture, namely the newest adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire.
In his article What Is The Book Of Abramelin The Mage From Interview With The Vampire? Mike Worby says:
When Lestat, Louis, and Claudia corral their victims from a Mardi Gras party into a room during the Season 1 finale where they purport to have hidden their secret, Lestat describes the fictional liquid as being the famed elixir of life which has oft been the goal of alchemists for hundreds of years. However, how he claims to have come into the knowledge of the concoction relates to a tome that he calls “The Book of Abramelin, the Mage.”
As it turns out in this often fantastical take on “Interview With the Vampire,” the book Lestat describes is based on a real piece of occult history. […]
Of course, as with any supposedly magical tome, we obviously can’t confirm or deny whether any of this actually works. Still, as the basis of a simple throwaway line in “Interview With the Vampire,” the writers must be lauded for doing their research and finding an appropriate real-life book to cite for their characters’ supposed magical knowledge — and even one that viewers in the real world can actually read today if they want to.
OK I’m going to skip over the fact that that scene was set in late 1790s America, when Abramelin was not available in English, and the only published edition extent was not called “The Book of Abramelin.” 😉
The question which naturally arises in the mind of an occultist is – could Abramelin be really used for Alchemical purposes? In my new book, Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit, I argue that it can, and indeed I myself have attempted to do so.
My thoughts turned to Alchemy almost immediately after completing the Operation. In its immediate aftermath, I spent a lot of time researching the history of the concept of the “ Holy Guardian Angel,” in the course of which I also researched the etymology of a term bandied about by contemporary occultists, the Augoeides.
Crowley implicitly used this as a synonym for “ obtaining Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.” However, taken literally, the word Augoeides does not refer to an angel or dæmon at all – it means “ dawn-like image ” or “ shining body .” Hence, Augoeides should more properly refer to the Resurrection- or Solar-Body, which is the Philosophical Gold. Or to put it more simply, if one imagines Divine Union as a destination, the Augoeides becomes the car which takes one there, whilst the Holy Guardian Angel adopts the role of the driving instructor who teaches one how to drive it in the first place.
I thought : could I use Abramelin-magick itself to help me realise my Augoeides ? The Book describes the function of the third word square of part IV, chapter 7 as “ to learn all sorts of Alchemical arts from the spirits.” Perhaps this really meant Internal Alchemy ? If so, then in amongst all the word-squares which promised rather worldly, low-magick attainments, I had found one which could provide me with practical help as a Hermetic magician.
Sumner, A (2022) Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit: an Abramelin memoir, Thoth Publications, Leicester, UK – p534
The significance of this is that some continental schools of Alchemy (e.g. Kremmerz et al) allege that it is the realisation of the Solar Body which provides the true key to immortality – by allowing one to exist in a perfected form, free from the ravages endemic to imperfect matter. Or in other words, the Elixir Vitae although not literal, is nevertheless a metaphor for a real Alchemical phenomenon.
To cut a long story short, I did a magical operation in which I deployed word square number three from Book IV, Chapter 7 of the Book of Abramelin, whilst researching all I could about Alchemy, and discovered a powerful method of meditation, similar to Kundalini Yoga, which synthesised the teachings of Sendivogius, Isaac Newton, Paracelsus – and of course, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistos.
NB: I do not claim to have realised the Solar Body – I claim to aspire to do so. I’m still just a neophyte in that regard.
So in conclusion, to answer Mr Worby, yes, in my opinion it is both plausible and possible. In fact I shall probably make a note to watch this new adaptation when it becomes available on Netflix.
Filed under Books, Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit
Announcing the new book by Alex Sumner:
Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit: An Abramelin Memoir is published by Thoth Publications and is available worldwide from Amazon and all good bookstores. To quote from the back cover:
“DURING THE YEAR 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic affected people across the world in a number of different ways … I personally chose to use the time to carry out a lengthy Magical Ritual to invoke an Angel and subsequently summon and bind all the Demons of Hell.”
In 1996 as a young man, Alex Sumner brought a copy of Mathers’ The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, made most famous by the occultist Aleister Crowley. Alex left it lying on his bookshelf for almost a quarter of a century … until the pandemic lockdown caused him to work from home on full-pay – and enabled him to complete the Abramelin Operation.
IN THIS BOOK YOU WILL DISCOVER:
• The magical diary of a magician who performed the Abramelin Operation for six months, right through to its exciting end.
• What the Operation is, how it is performed and what to expect from “Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.”
• Why most books about Abramelin are full of mistakes, and how you can work out the truth for yourself.
• Worked examples of how to make use of the Word Squares to attain fantastic magical effects.
And …
• Why the Abramelin Operation is actually easier than many people seem to think.
Alex Sumner is a novelist and writer on the occult. In 2009 he wrote his first novel The Magus and has gone on to write six novels in total, several short-stories, and numerous non-fiction articles. This is his first full length, non-fiction book. Alex lives with his fiancée in Essex, England.
“Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit: An Abramelin Memoir” by Alex Sumner.
Available from Amazon:
| USA | Paperback | Kindle |
| United Kingdom | Paperback | Kindle |
| Australia | Paperback | Kindle |
| Deutschland | Taschenbuch | Kindle |
| France | Broché | Format Kindle |
| España | Tapa blanda | Versión Kindle |
| Italia | Copertina flessibile | Formato Kindle |
| Nederlands | Paperback | Kindle-editie |
| Poland | Miękka oprawa | – |
| Sverige | Pocketbok | – |
| 日本 | – | 版 |
| Brasil | – | Kindle |
| Canada | – | Kindle |
| México | – | Versión Kindle |
| भारत | – | किंडल संस्करण |
Filed under Books, Conjuring Demons for Pleasure and Profit
(Tune: Che Sera Sera).
When I started Abramelin,
I asked my genius, “What will I be?
Will I be powerful, mighty and rich?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.
K-C-H-G-A!
The future’s not yours to see,
Except with chapter one, square three –
K-C-H-G-A!”
Square 3, of Book IV, chapter 1.
NB I know that technically square 2 might also work, but that didn’t rhyme!
Just a reminder that this year’s Abramelin season begins on Monday 5th April 2021, which is only four weeks away! I am currently editing the journal I wrote when I did it in 2020, which I hope will be ready later this year . It’s 103 thousand words so far, so it’s going to be pretty chunky when it is done. Meanwhile, I heartily recommend reading my blog posts which I have tagged Abramelin – if for no other reason than to be warned in advance of the issues I myself identified.
Filed under Supernatural, Uncategorized
Perhaps this is the ceremonial regalia of an order of which I’m not a member?
This is a follow-up to posts I made last year regarding original Abramelin sources online, to wit: the Dresden Manuscript, the Leipzig Manuscript, and that of the Biblioteque D’Arsenal (which Mathers translated to create the first English edition). All of these posts were basically for my own benefit, so that I at least would know where to go on the internet to find them.
Copy of the Hammer edition of Abramelin held at the Humboldt University of Berlin
I can now add another one: the “1725” Peter Hammer edition. If the date of 1725 is to be believed, this would be the earliest known printing of Abramelin, although I was under the impression that the only available versions of the Hammer edition date from facsimiles made in 1850.
EDIT: No sooner had I published this post but on further searching I actually found a better quality scan – held at the Humboldt University of Berlin. A previous version of this blog post referred to a low quality scan on Internet Archive, which is barely readable. I have now updated the links accordingly.
The magic squares being on page 243.
Incidentally, the attribution of Peter Hammer of Köln (i.e. Cologne) is spurious. There was no such person as “Peter Hammer,” and the imprint wasn’t based out of Cologne, but rather Amsterdam. The fact is that because of the repressive nature of continental Europe the late 17th and early 18th centuries, if you wanted to publish an anonymous book that was in anyway criticial of the monarchies of France or Germany (as was) or was otherwise controversial (e.g. it was a Grimoire which would probably upset the religious authorities), one would take it to “Pierre Martel” (NB Un martel is a kind of hammer) or “Peter Hammer” if in German, who would print it in Amsterdam but say it was done in Germany to throw off the scent.
Interestingly, Mathers himself said that he had heard of an Amsterdam manuscript, so perhaps he actually meant the Hammer edition?
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Better to shave it all off instead of having an embarrassing lockdown haircut!
Following on from my previous two posts on the subject (i.e. this one and this one), after having given more thought to the question “How can you tell what is and is not an authentic Abramelin word-square?” it occurred to me that a convenient method of answering this had been provided by Aleister Crowley.
In his “autohagiography” he described what happened when he tried teaching clairvoyance to a student:
I would, for example, give him a talisman which he had never seen before, and ask him to discover its nature. We would then compare the result of his investigation with the book from which I had taken the talisman, and he would find that he had judged correctly. (For instance, I would give him a square containing thirty-six characters in Enochian, which he could not read. He would pass in his astral body through an imaginary door on which this square was inscribed, and tell me that he had come out upon a balcony overlooking the sea, where a violent storm was raging. I would then refer to The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, identify the square, and note that its virtue was to arouse a tempest.
Crowley, Confessions, chapter 61.
This, I would submit, suggests a practical solution to how to verify an Abramelin word-square, or reconcile apparent differences between different Abramelin source manuscripts. I.e. take the word-square one wishes to investigate, and pass through it as if going on a tattva-journey. By thus scrying one will get a clear impression whether the word-square is correct for you, or if there is something wrong and requires further investigation.
There is, however, one criticism which I would make of Crowley’s method. At the time of the incident he described, Crowley had gone through the Abramelin operation, or at least purported to – he certainly did not complete the operation in the manner originally envisaged by Abraham the Jew, the author of the Book of the Sacred Magic. Nevertheless, if we accept for one moment that Crowley had completed the operation, the student whose clairvoyance he was testing had not.
The Golden Dawn says that when undertaking these sorts of scrying exercises, one should call for a guide to protect oneself on the astral landscape. An Abramelin alumnus, investigating a word-square in this manner, will have the best possible spirit-guide upon which to call – his or her own Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley’s student presumably had not connected with his HGA in the Abramelin-manner or at all, and yet he attempted to scry into a word-square empowered by demons which Crowley had already evoked!
Needless to say, like a lot of people in Crowley’s life, the student came to a bad end. This may not have been the Great Beast’s fault, as the student had a pre-existing Cocaine addiction which compromised his mental health, but it would not be altogether churlish to speculate that Crowley’s intervention probably didn’t help. Hence, I would recommend that it is best to attempt this after one has attained KCHGA, just to remain on the safe side.
If you have enjoyed reading this article, please consider making a donation to my Just Giving page – raising money for poor and vulnerable families affected by the Covid 19 lockdown. All thanks to God and my HGA for being able to participate in the Sacred Magic.
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The first page of Book 4 of Magia Abraham oder Underricht von der Heiligen Cabala – Mscr.Dresd.N.111 – a version of Abramelin held in the University of Dresden Library and accessible online.
You are able to access yet another original Abramelin manuscript – this time from the University of Dresden’s archives. This post is as much for my own reference as anyone else’s, however: if you have a need to inspect one of the source documents that Georg Dehn used to research The Book of Abramelin, the Saxon State and University Library has an electronic copy available online.
This one is called Magia Abraham oder Underricht von der Heiligen Cabala (i.e. “The Magic of Abraham or teaching of the Holy Qabalah.”) The Word Squares of book four can be found on Folio 243 (page number 240) onwards – you’re welcome. 😉
If you have enjoyed reading this article, please consider making a donation to my Just Giving page – raising money for poor and vulnerable families affected by the Covid 19 lockdown.
All thanks to God and my HGA for being able to participate in the Sacred Magic.
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Part of the Abramelin process is preparing the word squares – all two hundred and fifty five of them – for use in the final ritual. Which leads me to wonder: how do I know that any of the word squares are in fact correct?
This thought arose when I was going through each of them in the Book of Abramelin – when I noticed that one of the squares – the 12th square of chapter 5 in book four – to obtain servant spirits in the form of an ape – contained a mixture of six and five letter words – there was not indication how words of differing lengths were expected to fit into a square.
Enquiring on a Facebook group alerted me to the fact that one Abramelin manuscript is located in the University of Leipzig’s library, where it is called Cabala mystica Aegyptionorum et Patriarchum, das ist das Buch der wahren alten und gottlichen Magia geschrieben von Abraham den Sohn Simonis an seinen jungern Sohn Lamech – Cod. Mag. 15., i.e. “Mystical Cabala of the Egyptians and Patriarchs, which is the book of the true, ancient and Sacred Magic, written by Abraham the son of Simon, to his younger son Lamech.”
If you are able to read German, you can download the actual book here – but it is only available fifty pages at a time (there are four hundred and seventy pages in total).
Searching through the manuscript, I came to a word square which at first glance looked like the one I was after – although there were several differences in spelling, e.g. “CEHHER” instead of “Cephir” in both Dehn’ and Mathers’ version.
The word square in question as it appears in the Leipzig Manuscript.
CEHHER – ELAALE – HARRAH – HARRAH – ELAALE – CEHHER
On looking closer it quickly became apparent that the order and attributions in the manuscript differed to both Dehn and Mathers. For example, the 10th, 11th and 12th squares in the Leipzig version were:
KELEP in the form of a dog
CEHHER in the form of a lion
KOBHA in the form of an ape.
Whereas Dehn gave:
KELEF in the form of a lion
KOBHA in the form of a dog
CEPHIR in the form of an ape.
I presume Dehn decided on his own attributions by comparing it with yet more manuscripts. This makes me wonder, though, although we may be able to find the manuscripts and look at them, how can we possibly know if any of them are “correct,” in the magical sense? Is a mistake really a copyist’s error, or was it written down by an actual magician who found that that particular variation happened to work for him?
The word squares in chapter five are supposedly under the presidency of the Holy Guardian Angel himself. So ultimately, the only way we can be sure is after attaining Knowledge and Conversation, and thrashing out the problem with the HGA itself.
If you have enjoyed reading this article, please consider making a donation to my Just Giving page – raising money for poor and vulnerable families affected by the Covid 19 lockdown.
All thanks to God and my HGA for being able to participate in the Sacred Magic.
Filed under Supernatural
News today that over a third of Britons apparently believe they have a Guardian Angel, with “17% unsure.” This plus recent discussions I have been having over the interwebby-type thing have got me thinking about the subject. The “Holy Guardian Angel” is a term that crops up a lot in the occult, mainly thanks to a certain Mr A Crowley. I wrote an article about this a little while ago, but I thought I would expand upon the subject with an attempt to debunk some myths which crop up about it.
If one reads the Book of the Sacred Magick of Abramelin the Mage, one finds that the “Abramelin Operation” is a preparatory step before embarking on a career as a ceremonial magician which will involve evoking all the demons of hell, charging magic squares, etc. Moreover, if one consults other grimoires such as the Pauline Art, Trithemius’ Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals, etc, one finds that the invocation of a Guardian Angel is an important first step before communicating with other intelligences. Finally, one should note that according to “777” the so-called “Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel” is the spiritual experience not of Kether, nor even of Tiphereth, but of Malkuth.
The reality of the situation is that from being the ultimate end, KCHGA is the exact opposite – it is only the beginning of the path. The end is “Divine Union.” KCHGA on the other hand should be seen as the simple basic qualification that one is now an actual magician, as opposed to a mere theorist.
Related to this realisation that KCHGA is the beginning, not the end, is the unfortunate phenomenon one sees of people who let their egos inflate egregiously when they say they have achieved KCHGA, as if this is supposed to mean something. The true experience of KCHGA is not exalting, it is humbling – rather like one feels humbled when coming into the presence of something of great beauty like a great work of art.
The only gratifying thing that can truly be said about KCHGA is that it may be the bottom rung of the ladder, but at least it is the right ladder.
I have dealt with this in a previous blog post. This is an assertion put about by Crowley, but the evidence breaks down when one starts to examine and compare the grimoires from the past which actually mention Holy Guardian Angels. The HGA is the Guardian Angel of the Clairvoyant process – be that a crystal ball, magic mirror, or one’s own ability to skry generally. The HGA ensures that only the spirit with which you desire to communicate speaks to you, and that it speaks the truth when it does so. In mediumistic terms the HGA is a “Spirit Guide.” Franz Bardon in his book “Initiation into Hermetics
and in the present day the Kabbalist Z’ev Ben Shimon Havlevi, state that the souls of departed human beings can fill this role as well.
The Higher Self is better thought of as the Yechidah, the Divine Spark within one’s own soul, which corresponds to Kether. The point being that whilst Knowledge of the Higher Self is a valid aim of magick, it is theoretically possible to achieve this without having anything resembling conversation with anything resembling an angelic being.
This is something I have seen crop up from time to time. Yes it is true that Crowley used “KCHGA” to describe the work of the 5=6 of the A.’.A.’. . Yes it is also true that this term is not used in the 5=6 teachings of the Golden Dawn – phrases like “higher self” being used instead. On this basis I have heard it confidently asserted that the term “Holy Guardian Angel” belongs to Crowley only and does not form any part of the GD’s teachings.
WRONG. In the Stella Matutina the Holy Guardian Angel crops up in the 6=5 Adeptus Major ceremony. In a paper in W B Yeats’ collection – which is published in George Mills Harper’s Yeats’ Golden Dawn
Hence we have primary evidence (or at least – the National Library of Ireland does) – that at least one faction of the GD incorporated the concept of “Holy Guardian Angel” at least in some respect into its Higher Grade teachings.
Filed under Supernatural
When the pupil is ready, the Guru appears.
Traditional
Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.
Luke 12:40 (KJV)
“KCHGA” (“Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel”), refers mainly to the high-point of the Abramelin Operation, which Crowley decreed was the central task of an Adept in his system of Thelema. Since then it has taken on a sort of mythical quality amongst magicians, both Crowleyan and non-Crowleyan, who take it to be the quest for knowledge of the higher self, when in fact a closer reading of mediaeval grimoires such as Abramelin, the Lesser Key of Solomon, et al, would in fact suggest it is no such thing. In grimoire magick, a “Holy Guardian Angel” was a being that one evoked to come and become the Guardian of the Crystal Ball or scrying medium that one would use in subsequent operations to contact other spirits. The Holy Guardian Angel would thus ensure that only the spirit asked for would appear, and that it would speak the truth when it did so. The “Holy Guardian Angel” of traditional grimoire magick is thus what a Medium would refer to as a “Spirit Guide,” though it would be inaccurate to think of it as ones Higher Self per se.
But I digress.
Despite Crowley’s mangling of terminology, KCHGA is nevertheless a convenient metaphor for the quest for the higher self: one could argue that it has virtually become synonymous with the same through persistence of usage over the past hundred years. In identifying the “Holy Guardian Angel” with the Higher Self, Crowley just about associated it with the concept of the “Guru” or inner teacher of eastern tradition. The real meaning of “Guru” does not necessarily refer to any of the supposedly enlightened humans calling themselves Gurus. An authentic Guru can be identified by two characteristics: firstly – they lead the chela (pupil) from darkness to light; and secondly (and most importantly), the Guru takes karmic responsibility for the fate of his or her Chelas. It will thus be appreciated that probably 99% or more of those people referred to as Gurus are not in fact Gurus per se, but “pundits” who have been accorded the title of Guru out of courtesy. More importantly, however, a true Guru may or may not be an incarnate human being, but it is also believed “the Guru” may also be a discarnate being – i.e. like the “Holy Guardian Angel.”
Which leads on to the main subject of this essay – a practical method for attaining KCGHA, knowledge of the Higher Self, the Guru, the Christ-consciousness, etc. Arm yourself with a decent deck of Tarot cards, and do a Divination in the traditional manner, based upon the following very specific question:
“How shall I make myself ready to receive knowledge of my higher self?”
(NB: note how this is phrased – this will be explained momentarily).
The Divination will provide a set of answers which will be a list of practical things for you to do to be getting on with, such as putting your life in order, concentrating on one thing and not on another, etc. Then basically you go and do all of this. The meaning of a Tarot Divination can be cross-checked by making a note of the time, date and place upon which you performed it, and then verifying it with Horary Astrology.
When you think you have done everything your divination has indicated, you may then perform another divination: “How shall I now make myself ready to receive knowledge of my higher self?” – and then repeating the process, performing further divinations subsequently as appropriate.
The reason it is phrased “How shall I make myself ready to receive knowledge of the higher self?” and not “How shall I seek the Higher Self?” or even “How shall I find the Higher Self?” is because there is hidden significance in the old saying “When the pupil is ready, the Guru appears.” One does not “find” the Guru by seeking after him / her / it, but my making oneself ready to receive the Guru’s teachings. The Guru, like the Higher Self, is a spiritual force which is not sought after, because you ought already to know where it is waiting to be found – i.e. Within. The saying “when the pupil is ready the Guru appears” is really saying that instead of concentrating on seeking the Guru, the pupil should concentrate on making him- or herself ready for the Guru. And eventually, when the time is right, the Guru / Higher Self / etc appears, often unexpectedly, like a thief in the night.
Imagine the converse of this argument: if you travelled all the way to find to India to find a Guru, but were not ready to receive their teachings when you got there, you would have wasted your journey. Likewise, if you purport to undertake a spiritual quest, like the Abramelin operation, but fail to prepare for what is going to happen when the HGA finally does appear, the results could be disastrous.
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