AND THUS shall he do who will attain unto the mystery of the knowledge and conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel.
First, let him prepare a chamber, of which the walls and the roof shall be white, and the floor shall be covered with a carpet of black squares and white, and the border thereof shall be blue and gold.
And if it be in a town, the room shall have no window, and if it be in the country, then it is better if the window be in the roof. Or, if it be possible, let this invocation be performed in a temple prepared for the ritual of passing through the Tuat.1
From the roof he shall hang a lamp, wherein is a red glass, to burn olive oil. And this lamp shall he cleanse and make ready after the prayer of sunset, and beneath the lamp shall be an altar, foursuqare, and the height shall be thrice half the breadth or double the breadth.
And upon the altar shall be a censer, hemispherical, supported upon three legs of silver, and within it an hemisphere of copper, and upon the top a grating of gilder silver, and thereupon shall he burn incense made of four parts of olibanum and two parts of stacte, and one part of lignum aloes, or of cedar, or of sandal. And this is enough.
And he shall also keep ready in a flask of crystal within the altar, holy anointing oil made of myrrh and cinnamon and galangal.2
And even if he be of higher rank than a Probationer, he shall yet wear the robe of the Probationer, for the star of flame showeth forth Ra-Hoor-Khuit openly upon the breast, and secretly the blue triangle that descendeth is Nuit, and the red triangle that ascendeth is Hadit. And I am the golden Tau in the midst of their marriage.3 Also, if he choose, he may insread wear a close-fitting robe of shot silk, purple and green, and upon it a cloak without sleeves, of bright blue, covered with golden sequins, and scarlet within.
And he shall make himself a wand of almond wood or of hazel, cut by his own hands at dawn at the Equinox, or at the Solstice, or on the day of Corpus Christi, or on one of the feast-days that are appointed in The Book of the Law.
And he shall engrave with his own hand upon a plate of gold the Holy Sevenfold Table,5 or the Holy Twelvefold Table,6 or some particular device. And it shall be foursquare within a circle, and the circle shall be winged, and he shall attach it about his forehead by a ribbon of blue silk.
Moreover he shall wear a fillet of laurel or rose or ivy or rue, and every day, after the prayer of sunrise, he shall burn it in the fire of the censer.
Now he shall pray thrice daily, about sunset, and at midnight, and at sunrise. And if he be able, he shall pray also four times between sunrise and sunset.
The prayer shall last for the space of an hour, at the least, and he shall seek ever to extend it, and to inflame himself in praying. Thus shall he invoke his Holy Guardian Angel for eleven weeks, and in any case he shall pray seven times daily during the last week of the eleven weeks.
And during all this time he shall have composed an invocation suitable, with such wisdom and understanding as may be given him from the Crown, and this shall he write in letters of gold upon the top of the altar.
For the top of the altar shall be of white wood, well polished, and in the centre thereof he shall have placed a triangle of oak-wood, painted with scarlet, and upon this triangle the three legs of the censer shall stand.
Moreover, he shall copy his invocation upon a sheet of pure white vellum, with Indian ink, and he shall illuminate according to his fancy and imagination, that shall be informed by beauty.
And on the first day of the twelfth week he shall enter the chamber at sunrise, and he shall make his prayer, having first burnt the conjuration that he had made upon the vellum in the fire of the lamp.
Then, at his prayer, shall the chamber be filled with a light insufferable for splendour, and a perfume intolerable for sweetness. And his Holy Guardian Angel shall appear unto him, yea, his Holy Guardian Angel shall appear unto him, so that he shall be rapt away into the Mystery of Holiness.
All that day shall he remain in the enjoyment of the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
And for three days after he shall remain from sunrise unto sunset in the temple, and he shall obey the counsel that his Angel shall have given unto him, and he shall suffer those things that are appointed.
And for ten days thereafter shall he withdraw himself as shall have been taught unto him from the fulness of that communion, for he must harmonize the world that is within with the world that is without.
And at the end of the ninety-one days he shall return into the world, and there shall he perform that work to which the Angel shall have appointed him,
And more than this it is not necessary to say, for his Angel shall have entreated him kindly, and showed him in what manner he may be most perfectly invoked. And unto him that hath this Master there is nothing else that he needeth, so long as he continue in the Knowledge and Conversation of the Angel, so that he shall come at last into the City of the Pyramids.
Thie above is an excerpt from the Eighth Æthyr of Liber CDXVIII, The Vision and the Voice. In Liber XIII, “the instruction given in the Eighth Æthyr for the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel” is referred to the grade of Adeptus Minor; references in the “Curriculum of A∴A∴” in Equinox I (10) designate it as Liber VIII in Class D. Neither the printed text in Equinox I (5) nor Crowley's commentary as published in Equinox IV (2) clearly delinate it, but the portion extracted here seems as good a demarcation as any. In the version of Liber VIII printed in Equinox IV (1), two additional paragraphs before and after the section here given were also included. Later on in this Æthyr the speaker identifies himself as Aiwass, who by that time Crowley had identified as his own HGA. The present somewhat long-winded subtitle is composited from the two references to this ritual in Liber XIII.
The operation outlined above may seem rather lengthy and exacting; the Aspirant is invited to compare it with that descirbed in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, and bear in mind that the procedure described in the French MS. of Abramelin translated by Mathers was itself shortened and simplified from the earlier German version of that volume.
Notes.
1: It is to be hoped that the Aspirant is not expected to have the use of a small sports hall containing a ten and a half foot long green porcelain boat for this ritual. While Crowley apparently revised the rather impractical first draft of the Ritual of passing through the Tuat into something actually doable, no description of the temple setup has been published.
2: This is the Oil of Abramelin described in The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, Book II, cap. 11. The incense recipe in the previous paragraph is from the same place. “Stacte” is storax.
3: See endnotes to Liber 185 for the Robe of Probationer.
4: See AL II, 36-43.
5: One of the tables of letters received in the Dee-Kelly workings: see Liber Chanokh.
6: This refers to the 3 by 4 block of letters at the centre of Dee’ “Holy Table” or “Table of Practice” again, see Liber Chanokh.
Text of Crowley material © Ordo Templi Orientis. Key entry, HTML coding and notes by Frater T.S. for Nu Isis Working Group, Leeds.