Key of Solomon | Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner

Tag Archives: Key of Solomon

August 12, 2022 · 2:42 pm

New Avatar Power: Using Enochian without telling you!

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Winston Churchill

One error, repeated often enough, can reproduce exponentially like bacilli. So if you ever hear of something becoming part of the “culture,” you should immediately question what culture that actually means. Anywho, the central thesis for today’s blog post which I want to present to your notice is this: people who have been using “New Avatar Power” magic – and magic derived or inspired therefrom – have been using Enochian magic all this time without realising it.

The Miracle of New Avatar Power by Geoff Gray-Cobb (new edition)

The Miracle of New Avatar Power by Geoff Gray-Cobb (1974) was in many ways typical of the output of Parker Publishing in the 1970s – i.e. America’s answer to Finbarr Books – however, once one strips out the egregious self-promotion, one realises that it does have a sort of workable, “Hermetic-Lite” magic. At its core is a method of entering into a magical state of consciousness (the “New Avatar Power Ritual”) which contains the following invocation:

“I call on thee, Mighty Arzel, who stands in the East, to assist me in this and all my ventures. I now know that the New Avatar Power is flooding to the surface. I now close my eyes gently.” (emphasis added).

Who is this “Arzel” character? I have seen various theories, but what I did notice was that just about every spirit or being which Gray-Cobb included in his book seems to derive from Gustav Davidson’s classic 1967 work, A Dictionary of Angels, including the fallen angels. I say this because Gray-Cobb refers to spirits mentioned seemingly nowhere else, except in Davidson’s book.

A Dictionary of Angels, including the fallen angels, by Gustav Davidson (1967)

Davidson says (p55):

Arzal (Arzel) – one of the 4 angels of the east who are “glorious and benevolent angels” invoked when the the invocant wishes to partake of the secret wisdom of the Creator. See Clavicula Salomonis.

Davidson further doubles-down on this assertion by printing, in the Appendix (p357) the following:

CONJURATION OF THE GOOD SPIRITS
O you glorious and benevolent angels, Urzla, Zlar, Larzod, Arzal, who are the four angels of the East, I invocate you, adjure and call you forth to visible apparition in and through the great prevalent and divine name of the Most Holy God, Erzla, …
[approximately twenty lines of text omitted]
[Rf. Gollancz, Clavicula Salomonis]

Unfortunately, I found no such reference when reading Herman Gollancz’ version of the Key of Solomon. However, I did spot straightaway that RZLA, ZLAR, LARZ and ARZL derive from the Airy Lesser Angle of the Air (Eastern) Enochian Watchtower (from the Kerubic Squares thereof): whilst “ERZLA” is the name derived from adding the “E” of “EXARP” in the Tablet of Union, to “RZLA.”

The Air (Eastern) Enochian tablet. Note the Air Lesser Angle, top left.

This I submit is where the mistake, which I mentioned at the top of this article, has crept in. Davidson took an Enochian conjuration and wrongly attributed it to the Key of Solomon! Subsequently, Gray-Cobb incorporated “Arzel” into “New Avatar Power” without realising it was an Enochian being: whilst many others have also taken Davidson’s claim at face value without questioning it.

This does not necessarily invalidate “New Avatar Power,” as – after all – many people have claimed to have some success with it. Perhaps they have discovered an attribution of the Air Lesser Angle of the Air Table albeit unwittingly!

Would it have any harm if I get The Pentacles of Mercury tattooed on me? (Quora)

The first Pentacle of Mercury from the Key of Solomon: “It serveth to evoke the spirits under the firmament.”

Alex Sumner answered:

OK speaking as a ceremonial magician here… the rationale behind the Pentacles of Mercury or indeed any other planet, from the Key of Solomon, is that when you uncover them, you attract Spirits towards you, even causing them to manifest: and when you cover the Pentacles up, you send the spirits away.

My first thought on seeing this question was “Mercurial spirits might be cool to evoke every once in a while, but do I want to evoke them all the time? When it would be inconvenient for me? To the exclusion of other types of spirits?”

Let’s face it, taking this literally, you could not get naked without being interrupted by a Mercurial spirit. Taking shower or having sex would become a nightmare! Conversely, if you were at work, and you needed the assistance of a Mercurial spirit to help you make an important business decision, you would have to strip off in the middle of the office. If you were at school or college, and you wanted a Mercurial spirit to help you with whatever you were working on, you would have to get naked in the middle of the classroom or lecture hall.

More seriously, there is a school of thought that says that by getting a tattoo of a spirit, you get owned by that spirit, which is not the kind of pact you might be wanting to achieve – i.e. better to establish a healthy relationship with the spirit by evoking it in the proper manner.

So tattoos may be generally cool, but I’d personally think twice about getting one in the form a pentacle from the Key of Solomon.