What is this Holy Guardian Angel, whose knowledge and conversation the Adept seeks? Is it a separate being, a great Agent of God, celestial lover and companion, sent forth to guide, lead, and protect the Adept? Or is it best categorized as an exalted aspect of the Adept’s higher consciousness? Or does this question even matter?
From his earliest commitment to teach humanity, Crowley pointedly elected not to attempt to resolve the raging conflict between the numerous phrases historically employed to describe the goals of magical, mystical, or religious attainment. The Great Work is utterly individual, utterly personal, particular, specific, and unique to each who undertakes it. Whether the object of aspiration is personified as the True Self, the Augoeides, the Genius, Ishvara, the Logos, the Christos, Atman, Adonai, the Holy Guardian Angel, or any of 56 other possibilities; whether the goal is called adeptship, attainment, initiation, mastership, cosmic consciousness, samadhi, union with God, spiritual development, mahatmaship, moksha, liberation, or whatever; it is nonetheless true that, deep within each seeker is the Key to THAT which is sought, and which, though perhaps ultimately identical for each that has attained, is also utterly unique for each that aspires. Each name, each label, implies a rational or metaphysical theory that, being rational, cannot be true. By choosing the title of “the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel” which had been employed by Abra-Melin, Crowley admittedly elected a term that he felt had the least metaphysical baggage, and yet was so simple that even a child could relate to it.
A private letter written by Crowley, and reproduced on pp. 159-60 of THE EQUINOX No. 1, itemized his thinking on this point:
Lytton calls him Adonai in ‘Zanoni,’ and I often use this name in the note-books.
Abramelin calls him Holy Guardian Angel. I adopt this:
1. Because Abramelin’s system is so simple and effective
2. Because since all theories of the universe are absurd it is better to talk in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical man.
3. Because a child can understand it.
Theosophists call him the Higher Self, Silent Watcher, or Great Master.
The Golden Dawn calls him the Genius.
Gnostics say the Logos.
Egyptians say Asar Un-nefer.
Zoroaster talks about uniting all these symbols into the form of a Lion – see Chaldean Oracles.
Anna Kingsford calls him Adonai (Clothed with the Sun). Buddhists call him Adi-Buddha – (says H.P.B.)
The Bhagavad-Gita calls him Vishnu (chapter xi.).
The Yi King calls him “The Great Person.”
The Qabalah calls him Jechidah.
We also get metaphysical analyses of His nature, deeper and deeper according to the subtlety of the writer; for this vision – it is all one same phenomenon, variously coloured by our varying Ruachs – is, I believe, the first and the last of all Spiritual Experience. For though He is attributed to Malkuth, and the Door of the Path of His overshadowing, He is also in Kether (Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth in Kether – “as above, so beneath”), and the End of the “Path of the Wise” is identity with Him.
So that while he is the Holy Guardian Angel, He is also Hua and the Tao.
For since Intra Nobis Regnum deI all things are in Ourself, and all Spiritual Experience is a more or less complete Revelation of Him.
Yet it is only in the Middle Pillar that His manifestation is in any way perfect.
The Augoeides invocation is the whole thing. Only it is so difficult; one goes along through all the fifty gates of Binah at once, more or less illuminated, more or less deluded. But the First and the Last is this Augoeides Invocation.
As the foregoing, hopefully, has made clear, even this basic elected term of the A.'.A.'. – the Holy Guardian Angel – must not be taken by the aspirant to imply any specific dogmatic or sectarian theory. As the Probationer was advised at the beginning of this quest, in
Liber Causæ:Therefore by the order of D.D.S. did P. prepare all things by his arcane science and wisdom, choosing only those symbols which were common to all systems, and rigorously rejecting all names and words which might be supposed to imply any religious or metaphysical theory. To do this utterly was found impossible, since all language has a history, and the use (for example) of the word “spirit” implies the Scholastic Philosophy and the Hindu and Taoist theories concerning the breath of man. So was it difficult to avoid implications of some undesirable bias by using the words “order,” “circle,” “chapter,” “society,” “brotherhood,” or any other to designate the body of initiates.
Deliberately, therefore, did he take refuge in vagueness. Not to veil the truth to the Neophyte, but to warn him against valuing non-essentials. Should therefore the candidate hear the name of any God, let him not rashly assume that it refers to any known God, save only the God known to himself. Or should the ritual speak in terms (however vague) which seem to imply Egyptian, Taoist, Buddhist, Indian, Persian, Greek, Judaic, Christian, or Moslem philosophy, let him reflect that this is a defect of language; the literary limitation and not the spiritual prejudice of the man P.
Especially let him guard against the finding of definite sectarian symbols in the teaching of his master, and the reasoning from the known to the unknown which assuredly will tempt him.
We labor earnestly, dear brother, that you may never be led away to perish upon this point; for thereon have many holy and just men been wrecked. By this have all the visible systems lost the essence of wisdom.
This question of the exact nature of the Holy Guardian Angel, although only resolvable by the experience of each Adept, is, nonetheless, a reasonable and expected question from any aspirant to this attainment. We will limit ourselves, here, to Crowley’s answers. Crowley provided different answers at different times, depending on what it seemed necessary for the particular student to hear. For example, in
Magick Without Tears, a book aimed especially at beginners, he made the following statements: [Quotes from Letters 42 & 46 of MWT, and reference to Letter 43. Then an intentional contrast to other quotes extracted from
Liber Samekh, and a few quotes from the New Commentary.]
It is certainly possible that, by providing this range of commentary, we have done nothing more than confuse the sincere aspirant. Admittedly – given our view that the experience of what we call the Holy Guardian Angel is “utterly individual, utterly personal, particular, specific, and unique to each” – the only wholly consistent approach would be to say nothing about it at all. We have elected to balance this consideration against our responsibility to teach, by pointedly inviting every student to ignore any of the interpretations we have offered here unless they “strike home” as personally relevant.
Furthermore, this discussion is primarily aimed at those who are on the earlier stages of the Path. The Adeptus Minor surely already will have drawn (conscious or unconscious) conclusions about what it is that is sought, conclusions so inherent to her own nature that they may be entirely unconscious.
The real substance of this present chapter is that the Adeptus Minor has one task, the one task at which she has been aiming from her first entry onto the Path; and that now, prepared, she is pledged to undertake it...
). And I think Jung said that the deeper the archetypes, the more they represent something that shades from instincts into natural laws, and thence to "gods" and ultimately "God", by a perfectly sensible scientific route.
