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Preparation for the Operation of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage
During the whole of the autumn of 1899 we find P[erdurabo] busily engaged in making all necessary preparations for the great operation. Outside these preparations little else was accomplished; and, except for a fragment of a MS. on the “Powers of Number,” no other record of the progress of P. during these three months is forthcoming.
This MS., though interesting enough in itself, is scarcely of sufficient value to quote here; however it may be remarked that it shows how strong an influence the Order of the Golden Dawn had had upon him, as well as the astonishing rapidity of his Magical progress.
In January 1900, P. returned to Paris in order that before commencing the Sacred Operation of Abramelin the Mage he might pass through the grade of 5º=6o°, and become an Adeptus Minor in the Second Order of the Golden Dawn.
Very shortly after the ceremony of Adeptus Minor, P. returned to his fastness to carry out the great Magical Operation of Abramelin the Mage, the preliminary preparations of which he had for so long now been setting in order.
Unfortunately we have very scanty information of P.’s daily life during these days, and all that is recorded is to be found in a small book of some twenty pages entitled, “The Book of the Operation of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. (Being the account of the events of my life, with notes on the operation by P., an humble Aspirant thereto.)”
This slight volume commences with “The Oath of the Beginning,” after which it is roughly divided into three parts. The first deals with the events of his life between the beginning of November 1899 and the end of February 1900; the second with the Abramelin Operation; and the third with the transactions P. had with Frater D.D.C.F. [Macgregor Mathers].
From the first part of this work we gather that great forces of evil were leagued against P.; and we learn this with no very great surprise, for those who set their faces against Darkness must expect Darkness to attempt to swallow them up. The Exempt Adept may laugh equally at good or at evil, but not so the mere magician whose passage along the Path of Light is only to be marked by the increasing depths of the Darkness which surrounds him.
It will be remembered that in the autumn of 1898 P. had met Frater V.N. [George Cecil Jones], who had lent him a copy of a book known as “The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage,” and had to some degree instructed him in the workings contained in it. This work P. had read and reread with the greatest interest and zeal, determining to perform the ceremonial operation laid down in it at the very first opportunity. This he was unable to do for nearly a year; it being not until November 1899 that he found it possible for him to retire to the house he had bought and make all necessary preparations for the great ceremony, which was to be commenced on the following Easter.
The system, as taught by Abramelin, of entering into communication with one’s Holy Guardian Angel, is, of all Western systems of Magic, perhaps the most simple and effective. No impossible demands are made, and though perhaps some are difficult to carry out, there is always a reason for them, and they are not merely placed in the way as tests of the worker’s skill. The whole Operation is so lucidly dealt with in Mr. MacGregor Mathers’ translation, that it would be but a waste of time and space to enter into it fully, and the following consists of but the briefest summary, only intended to give the reader an idea of the Operation, and in no way meant as a basis for him to work on.
Abramelin having first carefully warned his readers against impostors, lays down that the chief thing to be considered is: “Whether ye be in good health, because the body being feeble and unhealthy, it is subject to divers infirmities whence at length result impatience and want of power to operate and pursue the Operation; and a sick man can neither be clean and pure, nor enjoy solitude; and in such a case it is better to cease.”[1]
The true and best time of commencing this Operation is the first day after the Celebration of the Feasts of Easter at about the time of the vernal Equinox. The time necessary for the working is six months, so that should it be commenced on March 22, it would end on September 21.
The six months is divided into three periods of two months each.
First Period. “Every morning precisely a quarter of an hour before sunrise enter your Oratory, after having washed and dressed yourself in clean clothing, open the window, and then kneel at the Altar facing the window and invoke the Name of the Lord; after which you should confess to him your entire sins. This being finished you should supplicate Him “that in time to come He may be willing and pleased to regard you with pity and grant you His grace and goodness to send unto you His Holy Angel, who shall serve unto you as a Guide. . . .[2]
In the above exercise by prayer the one great point to observe, as Abramelin himself impresses in the following words, is: “It serveth nothing to speak without devotion, without attention, and without intelligence . . . it is absolutely necessary that your prayer should issue from the midst of your heart, because simply setting down prayers in writing, the hearing of them will in no way explain unto you how really to pray.”[3]
At sunset the same invocation, confession and prayer is to be repeated.
During this first period the points to be observed are:
(1) That both the bed-chamber and Oratory are to be kept thoroughly clean. “Your whole attention must be given to purity in all things.”
(2) That “you may sleep with your Wife in the bed when she is pure and clean,” not otherwise.
(3) Every Saturday the sheets of the bed are to be changed and the chamber is to be perfumed.
(4) No animal is to enter or dwell in the house.
(5) “If you be your own Master, as far as lieth in your power, free yourself from all your business, and quit all mundane and vain company and conversation; leading a life tranquil, solitary and honest.”
(6) “Take well heed in treating of business, in selling or buying, that it shall be requisite that you never give way unto anger, but be modest and patient in your actions.”
(7) “You shall set apart two hours each day after having dined, during which you shall read with care the Holy Scripture and other Holy Books.”
(8) “As for eating, drinking and sleeping, such should be in moderation and never superfluous.”
(9) “Your dress should be clean but moderate, and according to custom. Flee all vanity.”
(10) “As for that which regardeth the family, the fewer in number, the better; also act so that the servants may be modest and tranquil.”
(11) “Let your hand be ever ready to give alms and other benefits to your neighbour; and let your heart be ever open unto the poor, whom God so loveth that one cannot express the same.”[4]
Second Period. During the whole of this period the accustomed prayer is to be made morning and evening, “but before entering into the Oratory ye shall wash your hands and face thoroughly with pure water. And you shall prolong your prayer with the greatest possible affection, devotion and submission; humbly entreating the Lord God that he would deign to command His Holy Angels to lead you in the True Way. ...”
During this period the points to be observed are:
(1) “The use of the rites of Marriage is permitted, but should scarcely if at all be made use of.”
(2) “You shall also wash your whole body every Sabbath Eve.”
(3) “As to what regardeth commerce and rules of living, as in the first period.”
(4) “It is absolutely necessary during this period to retire from the world and seek retreat.”
(5) “Ye shall lengthen your prayers to the utmost of your ability.”
(6) “As for eating, drinking, and clothing, as before.”[5]
Third Period. Morning and Noon ye shall wash your hands and your face on entering the Oratory; and first ye shall make Confession of all your sins; after this, with a very ardent prayer, ye shall entreat the Lord to accord unto you this particular grace, which is, that you may enjoy and be able to endure the presence and conversation of His Holy Angels, and that He may deign by their intermission to grant unto you the Secret Wisdom, so that you may be able to have dominion over the Spirits and over all creatures.
“Ye shall do this same at midday before dining and also in the evening,”[6] as well as at sunrise.
During this period the points to be observed are:
(1) “The man who is his own master shall leave all business alone, except works of charity towards his neighbour.”
(2) “You shall shun all society except that of your Wife and of your Servants.”
(3) “Ye shall employ the greatest part of your time in speaking of the Law of God.”
(4) “Every Sabbath Eve shall ye fast, and wash your whole body, and change your garment.”[7]
If possible the whole of this Operation should be performed in a place where solitude can be obtained; the best being, as Abramelin writes: “Where there is a small wood, in the midst of which you shall make a small Altar, and you shall cover the same with a hut of fine branches, so that the rain may not fall thereon and extinguish the Lamps and the Censer.”[8]
The Altar should be made of wood and in the manner of a cupboard, so that it may hold all the necessary things.
There should be two tunics, one of linen, and the other of Crimson or Scarlet Silk with Gold. The sacred oil is prepared from myrrh, cinnamon and galangal mixed with olive oil. The incense of Olibanum, storax, and lign aloes, or cedar, is reduced to a fine powder and well mixed together. The Wand is cut from an Almond-tree.[9]
The third period having been completed, on the morning following: “Rise betimes, neither wash yourself at all nor dress yourself at all in your ordinary clothes; but take a Robe of Mourning; enter the Oratory with bare feet; go unto the side of the Censer, and having opened the windows, return unto the door. There prostrate yourself with your face against the ground, and order the Child (who is used as assistant and clairvoyante) to put the Perfume upon the Censer, after which he is to place himself upon his knees before the Altar; following in all things and throughout the instructions which I have given unto you. . . . Humiliate yourself before God and His Celestial Court, and commence your prayer with fervour, for then it is that you will begin to enflame yourself in praying, and you will see appear an extraordinary and supernatural Splendour which will fill the whole apartment, and will surround you with an inexpressible odour, and this alone will console you and comfort your heart so that you shall call for ever happy the Day of the Lord.[10]
“During Seven Days shall you perform the Ceremonies without failing therein in any way: namely, the Day of the Consecration, the Three Days of the Convocation of the Good and Holy Spirits, and the Three other Days of the Convocation of the Evil Spirits.
“On the second morning you shall follow the counsels your Holy Guardian Angel shall have given you, and on the third you shall render thanks.
“And then shall you first be able to put to the test whether you shall have well employed the period of your Six Moons, and how well and worthily you shall have laboured in the quest of the Wisdom of the Lord; since you shall see your Guardian Angel appear unto you in unequalled beauty: who also will converse with you, and speak in words so full of affection and of goodness, and with such sweetness, that no human tongue could express the same. . . . In one word, you shall be received by him with such affection that this description I here give unto you shall appear a mere nothing in comparison.”[11]
After the Third day Abramelin very wisely writes:
“Now at this point I commence to restrict myself in my writing, seeing that by the Grace of the Lord I have submitted and consigned you unto a MASTER so great that he will never let you err.”[12]
Thus, briefly though it be, we have run through the system as advocated by one of the greatest masters of Magic in the West. With perfect lucidity Abramelin brings us step by step towards the MASTER—Augoeides, Adonai, Higher Self, call Him what you will. By means of symbols of purity—by cleanliness and clean living—he leads us on by meditation and concentration through prayer to a one-pointedness, a vision or conversation with the MASTER so full of goodness and beauty, so full of rapture and ecstasy that no human tongue can express the same. Alas! that we are not simple-minded enough to accept it, and to seek at that little altar in the wood that sweet reward which at once cancels all the toils and sorrows of our lives.
But in these present times prayer has become a mockery, and it is hard, how hard we know well, for any one to pray with that earnestness which brings with it reward. The rationalist has so befouled prayer with his wordy slush that it is indeed a hard task to dissociate it from the host of external symbols and images. A man who prays to a god is at once imagined to be praying to a thing with legs; for the educated are so surfeited with tangible things that the transcendental entirely escapes them; yet the man who prays may in truth be praying to the Master, and it matters not one whit whether the Master have legs or no legs, for God does not depend on the education of man’s mind, or the standard of his knowledge, or the idols he has set up. In some cases hostility to prayer would prove more fruitful than devotion to it. He who believes in denying and blaspheming God will attain to the Divine Vision of Adonai as speedily as he who believes in praying to Him and worshipping His Holy Name; so long as he enflame himself with blasphemy and denial. It is the will to accomplish, to conquer and overcome, which in both cases carries with it the supreme reward, and not the mere fact of denying or believing, which are but instruments towards this end. But, be it well remembered! this mystery of the Equivalence of all symbols, good and evil, is only true in Daäth and from Daäth.
One man may fell a tree with an axe, another may saw it down, another dig it up, another burn it down, another wash it out of the earth by water, blast it by powder, or drag it down by a rope. In the end the tree falls, and the desire of each particular man is accomplished in spite of the variety of their tools.
Thus we find that as Rising on the Planes was one method, so was Skrying another; so again were the rituals of the Golden Dawn; so again “The ש of ש Operation” and Talismanic Magic; and now again still one more—the method of Abramelin; all different means to enable man to fell the tall tree of life and obtain the Master Vision of Adonai, the Augoeides or Higher Self.
Each method, used rightly and carried to its ultimation, leads to the same Heaven; each method used wrongly, or mistaken for the End, side-tracks the Adept into some Limbo or plunges him into some Hell. To all such as are of a devout disposition Prayer offers an excellent means of Concentration towards this end— identification with Adonai. And it matters no whit to what we pray, whether it be to Buddha or to Christ, or the top-hat and gin-bottle of a West African ju-ju, so long as we pray with our whole heart; and eventually, as the Vision informs, belief, faith, prayer, worship and supplication vanish, the burning glass of our Will has set on fire the white sheet of paper that had been our ideal; it crumples, turns brown, blackens, and bursts into flame. The gates of the mind swing apart, and the realm into which we rush is as different from the realm which we had contemplated as our ideal as the burning fire is to the cool white paper we had looked upon. For those who cannot thus believe, who in fact have no faith in prayer, there are yet other ways for them to travel, as we shall presently see; in fact so many that each could travel by a different road and yet arrive at the same destination; and it is hoped that those who study this book may thereby discover the speediest road to the Portal of the Temple.
Early in November, P. returned to London to consult with Fratres I.A. [Allan Bennett] and V.N., and shortly afterwards crossed over to Paris, and after a few days’ residence in that city returned to England; and by means of the Codselim symbol journeyed to D——, and from thence to T——. Here he received a letter from I.A. warning him of very grave danger.
P. Thereupon invoked Heru-pa-kraatist and cast himself upon the Providence of God: “that he may give His Angels charge over me, to keep me in all my ways. So mote it be!”
Thus far the events which carry us down to the commencement of the Operation, which begins with:
THE OATH OF THE BEGINNING.
1—The Book of the Sacred Magic, p. 54. 2—Ibid, p. 64. Some of the following quotations may have been abridged.
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