Real Angels aren't faggots
and they don't do tricks
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I recently became aware of the 'Left Behind' series of books and movies, set in the days after the Rapture when all the true believers get to go home with Jesus. I thought it was a reasonably interesting take on the topic - if abominably written (and acted), cardboard characters drooling sentimentality at every turn and a theology that wasn't so much faithful to its source but a parody of it instead.
Christianity has been rendered devoid of mystery and terror. It can be seen in the ease with such anodine pap can be accepted as a portrayal of an event which, were it to take place, would be the antithesis of the accepted rationality of our times. Such an event would the triumph of the anti-real over Reason.
And now it's the basis of a soap-opera.
You can see the same de-mystification of things in the inversion of the word 'awesome' in popular usage. The word derives from the Old English egefull, meaning dreadful - as in to inspire dread, terror, and the awareness of imminent and unavoidable destruction. Now it means something liked or desired, something particularly appreciated or satisfactory. It means a particularly effective detergent; the most recent technotoy, the ride you get in your new car.
Say to someone now "My God is High and Awesome" and he'll think you mean stoned and, like, the PS2.
And then there's what's happened to the portrayal of Angels in Christian culture. Go read Exodus, where God's chief killer (and a child killer at that) is an Angel. Go read Ezekiel, where the Angels are more freakish than anything dreamed up in Hollywood, where the mere vision of them leaves the prophet stunned and helpless for a week after. Then walk into a store selling Christian literature and imagery. Go look at the pretty blonde boys in bedsheets; or go watch such feeble nonsense as 'Highway to Heaven' and 'Touched by an Angel'. You've only to do these things in order to see what it is that has taken the place of the Celestial Killers and Monsters the prophets knew, an iconography that has been emasculated - castrated in favour of the depiction of an effette whitebread jesus and a host of heavenly faggots.
Fortunately, the real Angels don't give a fuck what we think about them. And they haven't changed from Ezekiel's day.
You might wonder how I know. Those few of you who've read what I write here know that I am a Ritual Magickian. Those fewer still who have read and paid attention will also know that I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from the tradition of Thelemic Ritual. One aspect of that tradition that has inspired me from the beginning is its injunction to attain to the 'knowledge and conversation of ones Holy Guardian Angel'.
But since I am a Chaote, and since Chaos knows no morality, on first encountering this injunction it occurred to me to ask, "What would my Holy Guardian Angel look like if divested of the pious spunsugar crap that the common Christian cocoons his Angels in?"
If Chaos knows no morality, it knows a fractal symmetry and order. Which is to say, "As above, so below". And since that's so, Hell can never have been more (or less) than Heaven reversed in all its relations, and the Demonic no more than the Love of Angels for Men revealed in all its cruelty.
When Metatron, Angel of Death and God's Choirmaster, killed the firstborn sons of Egypt he had a smile for every killing, and a frown for every jew-brat he had to spare. In case you aren't aware let me tell you the truth of it - Angels don't like us, the second-born raised above the first and given command over them.
They may not like us but they lust after us and they're easily seduced: especially if one foregoes command and chooses obedience. Oh, not to the will of the Angel, but to the will of the Thing that produced Angels and Magickians both.
The Angel I know I described here (Link) though I called him by another Name. Not that the Name isn't his, I just hadn't quite come to terms with the fractal nature of the Divine (dualism is hard to erase from the mind).
As I said - I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from Thelema. The Angel I sought was a Killer and a Monster, with ten thousand eyes in each of its six wings and the head of a Bull, a Lion and a Man combined. I found him, of course - because whatever is truly sought after Magickally is always found. And I learned that the Demonic and the Angelic are as close to each other as breath and the body that breathes it, and each are equally innocent.
Innocent, because whatever obeys the law of its nature is in accord with the principle of perfect Justice through which God first created the possibility of Being, and then the actuality of Being - not merely its foundational principles but its unfolding into every actual sphere of life. That which accords with justice has committed no crime and therefore cannot be condemned. What cannot be condemned is innocent. Angels, Demons, Men - we all embody this principle, which is no more than this: you can't fight what you are, without twisting what you are into something perverse and corrupt.
To be innocent in this way, innocent because expressing perfectly the unfettered actuality of what one is, is a perspective and a way of life that can't be supported by the common man's Christianity. Daddy-god is supposed to save me from my sinful heart (if my heart is sinful) not give me a means to perfectly express it. Angels are meant to keep us on the straight and narrow, not be complicit in the service of our lusts. Demons are not meant to guide, to inspire, to bring about self-knowledge and self-control. Yet if you look at the origin of the word, the Greek Daimon, from which the Christian Demon derives, did exactly those things.
And the iconography of contemporary Christianity has no image which can in any way express the existential terror, the awareness of dissolution, embodied in the confrontation with a Being that knows itself absolutely, which serves a purpose entirely Other to anything we know as a purpose of our own.
One must be subtle when dealing with Angels. It's always wise to remember that while they will always deal cunningly with the Desires of Men, and with the Magickians who invoke them for the satisfaction of those Desires, they will never be less than honest when dealing with the will of the God whose slaves they are. The Magickian who deals with Angels (or Demons if you prefer) must remember that while he has authority to command, he hasn't the wit to forsee every consequence of his command - and that the malice of the Angels will see to it that, in the end, every command returns upon him to his hurt.
I am a Magickian. I deal with Angels, for love of their terror, their horror, and their beauty, in desire of their wisdom and their power. I invoke them, I command them to appear, to shelter, protect and guide me. But not in my name. Not ever in my name, but in the Name of the Thing that made us both, whose Servant I am just as they are.
And that being so, they are friendly to me (as friendly as Angels ever get) and do my bidding. That, and the fact that I don't bother them with petty shit like making money, being happy, and getting laid.
If, in my dealings with Angels, I'd discovered a bunch of pretty faggots in white bedsheets who could do tricks I wouldn't be concerned about invoking them for personal wealth, health and general well-being - and I'd be living in Califoria channeling healing spirits and playing with crystals instead of conversing with creatures whose breath can wither the marrow, the brush of whose feathers destroys nations - I'd be a Wiccan, or a Satanist, or a Christian, instead of a Ritual Magickian.
That is what I am, however. When I invoke the Angelic Powers it's not because I need a job or a promotion, or because I'm dying of cancer, or because I want my neighbour's wife. It's in pursuit of those things I desire that pertain exclusively to what is revealed in the knowledge and conversation of my own Angel/Daimon.
I suppose you might want to know what such conversation sounds like, what might the substance of such knowledge be?
I won't tell you.
Christianity has been rendered devoid of mystery and terror. It can be seen in the ease with such anodine pap can be accepted as a portrayal of an event which, were it to take place, would be the antithesis of the accepted rationality of our times. Such an event would the triumph of the anti-real over Reason.
And now it's the basis of a soap-opera.
You can see the same de-mystification of things in the inversion of the word 'awesome' in popular usage. The word derives from the Old English egefull, meaning dreadful - as in to inspire dread, terror, and the awareness of imminent and unavoidable destruction. Now it means something liked or desired, something particularly appreciated or satisfactory. It means a particularly effective detergent; the most recent technotoy, the ride you get in your new car.
Say to someone now "My God is High and Awesome" and he'll think you mean stoned and, like, the PS2.
And then there's what's happened to the portrayal of Angels in Christian culture. Go read Exodus, where God's chief killer (and a child killer at that) is an Angel. Go read Ezekiel, where the Angels are more freakish than anything dreamed up in Hollywood, where the mere vision of them leaves the prophet stunned and helpless for a week after. Then walk into a store selling Christian literature and imagery. Go look at the pretty blonde boys in bedsheets; or go watch such feeble nonsense as 'Highway to Heaven' and 'Touched by an Angel'. You've only to do these things in order to see what it is that has taken the place of the Celestial Killers and Monsters the prophets knew, an iconography that has been emasculated - castrated in favour of the depiction of an effette whitebread jesus and a host of heavenly faggots.
Fortunately, the real Angels don't give a fuck what we think about them. And they haven't changed from Ezekiel's day.
You might wonder how I know. Those few of you who've read what I write here know that I am a Ritual Magickian. Those fewer still who have read and paid attention will also know that I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from the tradition of Thelemic Ritual. One aspect of that tradition that has inspired me from the beginning is its injunction to attain to the 'knowledge and conversation of ones Holy Guardian Angel'.
But since I am a Chaote, and since Chaos knows no morality, on first encountering this injunction it occurred to me to ask, "What would my Holy Guardian Angel look like if divested of the pious spunsugar crap that the common Christian cocoons his Angels in?"
If Chaos knows no morality, it knows a fractal symmetry and order. Which is to say, "As above, so below". And since that's so, Hell can never have been more (or less) than Heaven reversed in all its relations, and the Demonic no more than the Love of Angels for Men revealed in all its cruelty.
When Metatron, Angel of Death and God's Choirmaster, killed the firstborn sons of Egypt he had a smile for every killing, and a frown for every jew-brat he had to spare. In case you aren't aware let me tell you the truth of it - Angels don't like us, the second-born raised above the first and given command over them.
They may not like us but they lust after us and they're easily seduced: especially if one foregoes command and chooses obedience. Oh, not to the will of the Angel, but to the will of the Thing that produced Angels and Magickians both.
The Angel I know I described here (Link) though I called him by another Name. Not that the Name isn't his, I just hadn't quite come to terms with the fractal nature of the Divine (dualism is hard to erase from the mind).
As I said - I am a Chaote deriving inspiration from Thelema. The Angel I sought was a Killer and a Monster, with ten thousand eyes in each of its six wings and the head of a Bull, a Lion and a Man combined. I found him, of course - because whatever is truly sought after Magickally is always found. And I learned that the Demonic and the Angelic are as close to each other as breath and the body that breathes it, and each are equally innocent.
Innocent, because whatever obeys the law of its nature is in accord with the principle of perfect Justice through which God first created the possibility of Being, and then the actuality of Being - not merely its foundational principles but its unfolding into every actual sphere of life. That which accords with justice has committed no crime and therefore cannot be condemned. What cannot be condemned is innocent. Angels, Demons, Men - we all embody this principle, which is no more than this: you can't fight what you are, without twisting what you are into something perverse and corrupt.
To be innocent in this way, innocent because expressing perfectly the unfettered actuality of what one is, is a perspective and a way of life that can't be supported by the common man's Christianity. Daddy-god is supposed to save me from my sinful heart (if my heart is sinful) not give me a means to perfectly express it. Angels are meant to keep us on the straight and narrow, not be complicit in the service of our lusts. Demons are not meant to guide, to inspire, to bring about self-knowledge and self-control. Yet if you look at the origin of the word, the Greek Daimon, from which the Christian Demon derives, did exactly those things.
And the iconography of contemporary Christianity has no image which can in any way express the existential terror, the awareness of dissolution, embodied in the confrontation with a Being that knows itself absolutely, which serves a purpose entirely Other to anything we know as a purpose of our own.
One must be subtle when dealing with Angels. It's always wise to remember that while they will always deal cunningly with the Desires of Men, and with the Magickians who invoke them for the satisfaction of those Desires, they will never be less than honest when dealing with the will of the God whose slaves they are. The Magickian who deals with Angels (or Demons if you prefer) must remember that while he has authority to command, he hasn't the wit to forsee every consequence of his command - and that the malice of the Angels will see to it that, in the end, every command returns upon him to his hurt.
I am a Magickian. I deal with Angels, for love of their terror, their horror, and their beauty, in desire of their wisdom and their power. I invoke them, I command them to appear, to shelter, protect and guide me. But not in my name. Not ever in my name, but in the Name of the Thing that made us both, whose Servant I am just as they are.
And that being so, they are friendly to me (as friendly as Angels ever get) and do my bidding. That, and the fact that I don't bother them with petty shit like making money, being happy, and getting laid.
If, in my dealings with Angels, I'd discovered a bunch of pretty faggots in white bedsheets who could do tricks I wouldn't be concerned about invoking them for personal wealth, health and general well-being - and I'd be living in Califoria channeling healing spirits and playing with crystals instead of conversing with creatures whose breath can wither the marrow, the brush of whose feathers destroys nations - I'd be a Wiccan, or a Satanist, or a Christian, instead of a Ritual Magickian.
That is what I am, however. When I invoke the Angelic Powers it's not because I need a job or a promotion, or because I'm dying of cancer, or because I want my neighbour's wife. It's in pursuit of those things I desire that pertain exclusively to what is revealed in the knowledge and conversation of my own Angel/Daimon.
I suppose you might want to know what such conversation sounds like, what might the substance of such knowledge be?
I won't tell you.