Abramelin

[This comes from the collection of typescripts made by Cosmo Trelawny during World War II. It was copied by Cosmo Trelawny from a mass of Crowley's papers and typescripts left in his rooms by Macgregor Reid. The originals were then sold to a bookseller, and lost when his shop was bombed during the war.]

I was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn November 18 1898, but—as stated elsewhere—did not begin to perform the Abramelin operation until 1899.

'The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-melin the Mage, as delivered by Abraham the Jew unto his Son Lamech', was translated from the original Hebrew into French and rendered into English by MacGregor Mathers who, when not drugged or drunk, spent much of his time producing the enchantments of various kinds described in the third book. I once fought a magical duel with Mathers, and Mathers, for all his necromantic cunning, was well defeated.

Abraham was undoubtedly a grandiloquent liar who travelled extensively and met many distinguished people. His ceremonial magic gives rise to much more morbid curiosity than it satisfies. The statement made by Mathers that both Eliphas Levi and Bulwer Lytton were greatly indebted to Abraham for their occult development is sheer bunk. Mathers desired to give his garbled translation a greater authority than it merits. Abraham the Jew, for the most part, perverted the philosophy of Chaldea, and his grotesque mummeries are not worth the serious consideration of Hermetic students.

Occult Philosophy undoubtedly had its origins in the East—giving rise to the 'Star in the West'—but none of the Eastern nations could compete with the Chaldeans in knowledge of practical Magick—magick being applied Wisdom. The Egyptians pretended that Chaldea was simply an Egyptian colony of comparative minor import. Those however less prejudiced know that the Magi (who derived their knowledge from the Chaldeans) were more ancient than the Egyptians.

The teachings of the Hermetic Order—supported as they are by rare documents—establish that Astrological learning filtered from the Chaldeans down to the Egyptians, and from them to the Greeks—that in point of fact the Chaldeans were Antiquissium Doctorum genus—the most ancient of Teachers.

Chaldea was a part of Babylonia in Asia, the inhabitants were termed Chadim, from Chas the son of Cham. But certain it is that the subtle Teaching of the Chaldeans diffused itself into Persia and Arabia, bordering countries, and became known under the general heading of CHALDAICK.

The antiquity of certain aspects of the Great Work in Chaldea dates from the time they first began to observe the stars until the expedition of Alexander into Asia, a period of about 470,000 years. Zoroaster the Assyrian was the inventor of arts and sciences amongst the Chaldeans and was active ages before the destruction of Troy. Elichmannus, a Persian author, affirms that Zoroaster was not king of the Bactrians, but a mighty Magus and Prophet responsible for the introduction of Magical and Astronomical sciences.

Zoroaster according to certain Occult Records laughed at the moment of birth (why God only knows!) and his brain pulsated so strongly that it lifted up the hand pressed upon it—an index of his future greatness.

He is said to have lived in the desert for twenty years upon cheese so treated that it never became stale. He prayed Oramases (God) he might die by fire from heaven, and advised the Assyrians to preserve his ashes, assuring them that as long as they did so, their kingdom would prosper.

Among the Chaldeans Occult philosophy was delivered by tradition from father to son; thus the children were taught under the parental roof and subjected to strict discipline and exact observation.

Zoroaster divided all things into three kinds, the first eternal; the second had a beginning in time but no end; the third Mortal. The first is God the Father and King; the second is represented by a multitude of gods, the third by legions of demons. God is referred to as an intellectual Light or Fire. God did not confine his Fire within his intellectual boundaries, but communicated it to all incorporeal beings—such as Angles, good Demons and the Souls of men.

The next emanation was the supramundane Light, and incorporeal infinite luminous space, in which the intellectual beings reside. The supramundane Light kindles the first corporeal world, the Empyreum or fiery Heaven, which being immediately beneath the incorporeal Light, is the highest, brightest, and rarest of Bodies. The Empyreum diffuses itself through the Aether, which is the next Body below it, a Fire less refined than the Empyreum; but that it is Fire, the more condensed parts thereof, the Sun and Stars, testify.

From the Aether the Fire is transmitted to the material and sublunary world; for though matter be dark—as are also the material Demons—yet the Fire permeates and gives life to all its parts.

The second aspect—as previously pointed out—began in time, and is without end. To this aspect belong that multitude of gods under the direct supervision of God the Father and King, Angels and the souls of men. Here function the unzoned gods, the zoned gods and good Daemons. All these entities have affinity with the Great White Light. Over this middle kingdom presides Mithra—the Mind, supervisor of all secondary factors.

The third Order of manifestation is corruptible or temporal, which conceived in time will in time be dissolved. It is presided over by Arimanes, King of the Material Demons who are the enemies of mankind, but subject to the Words of Power uttered by the Occult Adept. These are the dubious entities exploited by Abraham the Jew, the son of Lamech, and who brought Mathers shaking and broken to his knees after he had paralysed his magical Will by unequalled debauchery.

There are six kinds of material Demons. The first are called Leliurius—which signifies fiery. They dwell in the air above us, but far from the vicinity of the Moon, which they cannot approach.

The second kind wander in the atmosphere contiguous to the earth and are termed aerial; the third terrestrial; the fourth watery and marine; the fifth subterraneous; the sixth Lucifugous and hardly sensible.

All these Demons intensely hate men and strive to ruin him through the medium of his objective or animal mind. Some of these Demons are worse than others; Aquatile, Subterraneious and Lucifugous, are extremely malicious; for these do not merely plague and confuse by dint of fell fantasy and diabolical delusion, but by direct assault seek to accelerate the destruction of men.

The Watery drown those who are sailing upon the water; the Subterraneous and Lucifugous, insinuating themselves into the entrails cause epilepsy and frenzy; the Aerial and Terrestrial circumvent by art and subtility, and deceive the minds of men, fostering war and illegal passion. Norman Mudd some time Scholar and Mathematician of Trinity College Cambridge broke the Magical Law of the Beast 666, and was hounded by a watery grave by Aquatile Demons.

After this manner the Demons commune with human beings, privately, so when the uninitiated are tormented by hideous ideas, they know not which way the war comes upon them. The Demons, assuming colours, and whatever forms they choose, transmit them into the animal spirit of man, resuscitating the remembrance of pleasure, exciting the images of passions, as well as when he sleeps, as when he is awake, and sometimes, titillating the genital organs, inflame them with frantic and lustful desires.

Many of the demons assault irrational creatures—animals—, not out of hate or ill will, but out of the desire they have of their animal heat. Dwelling in the most remote cavities, which are extremely cold and dry, they contract much coldness wherewith being afflicted, they vamporise the humid and animal heat; they however avoid the direct heat of fire and of the Sun because it burns and parches.

If the insinuating demon be one of the subterraneous kind, he distorts the person he possesses, as in modern Spiritism, making use of their organ of Speech. The Lucifugous Demons being by nature earthly, cold and dry, paralise the body and mind of those wretched individuals they seize upon.

The Doctors, wise in their degeneration, endeavour to persuade us that these phenomena proceed not from Demons but from humours and endeavour to cure the victim, not by incantation and expiation, but by drugs and dieting. This is not strange, since they appreciate nothing beyond sense and concentrate on things physical.

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