Tag Archives: mansions of the moon

Unlocking the Observatory: 17th Century German Pop-Divination Texts, Natal Stars, and Numbers

May 25, 2022 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of discussing the obscure Telescope of Zoroaster (ZT), a manual of divination and spirituality originally published in French in 1796 (FZT) at the close of the French Revolution, which was later translated into German in 1797 (GZT) and then again in an abridged form as part of Johann Scheible’s 1846 Das Kloster (vol. 3, part II, chapter VII) (KZT), with Scheible’s work then translated into English in 2013 as released by Ouroboros Press (OZT).  Although OZT is how most people nowadays tend to encounter this system, I put out my own English translation of FZT out a bit ago as part of my research, and while that translation was just part of the work I’ve been up to, there’s so much more to review, consider, and discover when it comes to this fascinating form of divination.  Last time, we talked about the “natal stars”, ZT’s own take on the lunar mansions and the angels associated with them, and how utterly weird the whole thing is. If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

※ For those following along with their own copy of ZT (get yours here!), the relevant chapters from ZT are the “Second Supplement” and “Third Supplement”.

Following up on the last post, we talked about how utterly bizarre and obtuse this system is of associating the angels of the lunar mansions, or “natal stars” as ZT calls them, and given that ZT uses them nothing like lunar mansions it may be for the best to use ZT’s moniker instead.  This is all so clearly (and yet so unclearly) depicted by all the oddities of ZT’s Plate VI:

The more I looked at it, the more confused I got.  I tried plotting out all available information every which way: mapping out the house-to-mansion and mansion-to-house-less-the-intelligences-numbers, seeing if there was any repeating pattern of numbers being skipped, trying to trace geometric patterns between mansions on the Great Mirror—nothing.  The more I banged my head against this, the less I understood what was going on.  Heck, I even counted how many of the tiny divisions there are in the Border of Plate VI and found out that, although there are supposed to be 13 of them per mansion to represent the 13(ish) days per Sun traveling through the mansion (which is a super weird notion), which should yield (according to ZT) a total of 365, a handful of them have 14 divisions and one even has 15—and even then, 28 × 13 = 364, which doesn’t match with what ZT says regardless.  Even trying to reverse engineer and come up with my own systems and methods of assigning mansions to the houses wasn’t coming anywhere close to what ZT was doing.

Like, yes, to be sure, there are a number of things about ZT that I don’t have answers for—where it gets its unique take on planetary numerology, for instance—but all of those are relatively minor things that don’t impact the actual function or process of the divinatory method of ZT.  Meanwhile, here we have something that is clearly stated as being important, but which itself is not used in the actual divinatory method at all, which would still be functional (even if somehow potentially incomplete?) without it—and which even the Redactor of ZT says was something thrown on as an extra bit to keep people going in ZT and which wasn’t going to be mentioned at first anyway.  Again, the more I looked and considered this, the less sure I got of what the hell it’s doing.  It was clear that I wasn’t getting anywhere, and even the seeming leads that might have revealed a blind kept going nowhere.

I decided to take a different approach.  I mentioned the various options of what could be going on here last time: either it’s all arbitrary, it’s just a bad and incomplete pattern, it’s a blind, or it’s an importation based on another source that explains something about the method in a way that ZT alone can’t and doesn’t.  Maybe it’s that last option, and I would have to look at non-ZT texts to find something.

First, I tried looking up lists of lunar mansion angels.  It’s a distinct quality of ZT that gives such a list with the three big archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael included; these aren’t in Cornelius Agrippa’s list from TBOP book III, chapter 24, and lists like this tend to be remarkably stable over time even if some of the spelling changes a bit.  The only thing I was coming up with was something from Franz Bardon’s work, specifically the list of angels of the sphere of the Moon which was encoded in Bardon’s work and subsequently decoded by Emil Stejnar, but I cannot for the life of me figure out where Stejnar was getting this list from in any of Bardon’s works, and Stejnar himself doesn’t say; indeed, the annotators of such a website note that the “angelnames are cited according to Stejnar[;] the edition of Agrippa’s ‘Occulta Theosophia’ in my possess gives different angelnames”.  Beyond that one dead-end of a lead, though, I couldn’t find anything.

I backed up and instead reconsidered: what about the lunar mansion names?  The list given in ZT’s “Second Supplement” (Alnacha, Albukaim, Alkoreya, Aldaboran, Almuzin, etc.) are all recognizably the names of the 28 lunar mansions, even considering their variants in older texts, and especially considering all the many and various ways Arabic names and words get corrupted and mangled in European texts.  In general, while such variation can occur from text to text, such changes only happen slowly over the course of many generations of copying, and are as much impacted by the source language as well as the destination language.  In that light, people don’t often just come up with their own transcriptions and spellings; they typically use the ones they’re shown.  While these names of the lunar mansions are definitely intended to represent the lunar mansions, and while they’re kinda close to what Agrippa has, they’re not exactly the same.  Maybe this is an indication of some alternative lineage of astrological information the author of ZT was privy to?

So I started googling for some of the names in older texts, and that’s when I found the 1757 Das Große Planeten-Buch, published in Leipzig by Johann George Löwen (DGPB).  It’s written in an older German in Fraktur, so it’s not the easiest thing to read, but as I was flipping through it, I noticed that it contains a whole lot of information about a lot of different divination systems—astrology, yes, but also geomancy, numerology, palmistry, phrenology, and the like.  In the first part of the book that focuses on astrology, pages 54—96 have information about the lunar mansions, spelled nearly identically to what’s used in ZT.  For example, consider this introductory paragraph from part I, chapter 35 (page 73): Von dem Stern Algayre und seiner Würckung “on the star Algayre and its effects”:

Transcribed and translated:

Dieser Stern so auch Alhayre heißt, und zum Beherrscher Jazariel hat, nimmt seinen Anfang im 2. Grad und 24. Minunten der ♓︎ [♍︎], und reichet mit seiner Kraft bis in den 15. Grad und 54. Minuten der ♎︎, ist temperirter ♃ und ♀︎ Natur, und ist mehr glücklich denn unglücklich.

This star, also called Alhayre, and which has Jazariel as its ruler, begins in 2°24′ of Pisces [Virgo] and its power reaches until 15°54′ of Libra.  It is tempered by the nature of Jupiter and Venus, and is more fortunate than unfortunate.

Here we have a description of DGPB’s mansion XIII Algayre (equivalent to Alhaire in Agrippa), and while the degrees are a bit off from what we’d expect, the chapter goes on to talk about people born in the mansion who have this or that quality, lucky days of the week, colors of clothes to wear and the like, and it even gives an angel name, too—but take a close look at this first paragraph, and you’ll see that it gives a nature of Jupiter and Venus to this lunar mansion.  We see the same with other examples, like mansion XV (Algaphar) being given to the Moon, mansion XVI (Alzibinin) being given to the Moon and Saturn, and so forth.

To be honest, given the contents of the book as a whole, DGPB doesn’t seem to be aimed at actual practicing astrologers; rather, it seems to be more of a manual and guide for non-experts who have an interest (if not quite a full study) in the work, and is meant to offer quick and simple approaches to astrology and other forms of divination and prognosis.  It is, in many ways, a lot like those pop-divination manuals we see for cheap in even otherwise mundane bookstores in the new age section that we often give to beginners or children as a gift to spur their interest.  In that light, consider:

  • It’s uncommon for non-expert guides for astrology to mention the lunar mansions.
  • It’s even more uncommon for such descriptions of lunar mansions to get planetary assignments.
  • It’s still more uncommon for there to be a mix of one or two planetary assignments per mansion.

…and ZT does all those things, too.

And would you look at that: of the 28 mansions that ZT lists, 13 exactly match with what DGPB give and another 6 partially match, for a total of 19 (well more than half):

Mansion ZT DGPB Match
1 ☉ ♃ — N/A
2 ♄ ♄ Full
3 ♀︎ ☿ ☽ No
4 ☿ ♀︎ No
5 ♄ ☉ No
6 ♃ ♃ Full
7 ☉ ♄ ♀︎ ☽ No
8 ☾ ☽ ♀︎ ☽ Partial ☽
9 ♂︎ ☉ No
10 ☿ ☿ ☽ Partial ☿
11 ☉ ♀︎ ♃ ♀︎ Partial ♀︎
12 ☉ ☿ ☿ ☽ Partial ☿
13 ♀︎ ♃ ♀︎ ♃ Full
14 ♃ ♄ ♀︎ No
15 ☽ ☽ Full
16 ☽ ♄ ☽ ♄ Full
17 ☽ ☿ ☽ ☿ Full
18 ☉ ♂︎ ☉ ♂︎ Full
19 ☽ ☿ ☽ ☿ Full
20 ♄ ♂︎ ♄ ☽ Partial ♄
21 ☿ ☿ Full
22 ☽ ♄ ☽ ♄ Full
23 ☾ ♄ ♃ No
24 ♂︎ ♀︎ ♃ ♀︎ Partial ♀︎
25 ☉ ♃ ☉ ♃ Full
26 ☉ ♂︎ ☉ ♂︎ Full
27 ♀︎ ♀︎ ♃ Partial ♀︎
28 ♂︎ ♂︎ ☉ Partial ♂︎

Also, I should note, that specific linked copy of DGPB was published just a few decades before ZT in a major printing epicenter, Leipzig—which, I note, was a city that Nerciat himself worked in as a librarian.  Further, this book just happened to be part of a trend of similar books that produced virtually the same information verbatim for centuries.  Like, just searching for the unique spelling of some of the mansion names, I’m able to find dozens of copies of this book dating at least as early as 1650 and as late as 1852, but with even earlier versions under similar titles presenting similar information in a similar format but not the same wording as early as 1544 or 1541.  Notably, however, those earlier versions in the 1500s don’t seem to have the planetary associations, which only appear in the later versions starting (as far as I’ve found) in the 1600s.  At some point between the late-1500s and the mid-1600s, it looks like some minor German tradition of pop-astrology (and I’m only finding books in German in this situation using these similar names) added in planetary associations to the lunar mansions.

At this point, I’m not dragging it out further, because for the purposes of this investigation, we have a solid-enough conclusion, at least to my satisfaction: it appears as though ZT was heavily influenced in its development, at least as far as its angelic stuff is concerned, by some sort of popular or easily-accessible astrological resource (perhaps in or produced from Germany) that provided a brief introduction to the lunar mansions, but weirdly also provided its own innovative system of planetary associations to the lunar mansions, as well, which is not found  (at least to my knowledge) outside this weird “lineage” of “pop-divination” German texts.  The inventor of ZT took this system and adapted it to the geometrical restrictions of the Great Mirror, mapping what it could from these texts to the Great Mirror.  Not all such pairs of planets would work in the Great Mirror, to be sure; DGPB has mansions VII and VIII given to the planetary natures of Venus and the Moon together, but the Great Mirror has these planets on opposite sides of the hexagon, so there’s no such house that falls in both their orbits at the same time.  This would force the inventor of ZT to allocate what they could, and then squeeze in the rest what they couldn’t.  It’s not a perfect match, but it’s far more than just coincidental; barring anything else saying otherwise or any other source coming up with anything better, the notion that the author of ZT was relying on another book of astrology current and available to them and adapting it to their own system is far more likely than there being a blind or this being merely arbitrary.

And, while we’re at it, DGPB also includes a good chunk of numerological stuff.  In that version linked above, on page 14, it has a Tafel der überbleibenden Zahl, dadurch die Planeten den Menschen zugeeignet werden “Table of the remainder-number, whereby the planets are given to humans”.  If you take the numerical sum of someone’s name and reduce it to a single digit, by giving each of the digits 1 through 9 to one of the planets, you can determine the planetary nature of that name (and, by extension, that person).  Such a system doesn’t give numbers their own symbolic meaning, which is otherwise super common in many numerological systems, but rather gives the numbers to the planets and lets the planets define their meanings.  To that end, DGPB gives the following table:

  1. Sun
  2. Venus
  3. Mercury
  4. Moon
  5. Saturn
  6. Jupiter
  7. Mars
  8. Sun
  9. Venus

It’s not an exact match—Venus gets two numbers instead of the Moon, the Sun has one of its numbers off a bit, and Mercury and the Moon (swap with Venus?) would have to be swapped around—but several of the numbers do match between these systems.  This is certainly different than other numerology systems, like that of the Holy Guide (1662) of John Heydon, upon which later numerologists like Sepharial in his The Kabala of Numbers gives a table like:

  1. Sun
  2. Moon (New)
  3. Jupiter
  4. Sun or Earth
  5. Mercury
  6. Venus
  7. Moon (Full)
  8. Saturn
  9. Mars

It seems like those German pop-divination books like DGPB, even if not that specific one, provided both an astrological and numerological basis for ZT’s own system, although not exactly.  Admittedly, it’s just close enough to suggest a connection, but it’s just different enough to suggest that something else is going on, here, too.  I mean, at least with the numbers, if we consider ZT’s Plate II again…

…we can see that there’s this neat symmetry going on in how the planets are associated with the primitive Numbers.  Using Saturn/Lethophoro/5 as a fulcrum, each side is balanced by the other: Mercury with Jupiter (sophist/philosopher or servant/king), Venus with Mars (female/male), matter-Moon with spirit-Moon, and matter-Sun with spirit-Sun, which would also make Saturn in the middle as being the “dark” point between the two extremes of “light”.  By taking a numerological system like that of DGBP as a basis, it’s not inconceivable that the inventor of ZT shifted some of the numbers around to make a more pleasing balance of sorts, and then (like DGPB’s remainder-number planetary system) gives those numbers meanings based on their planets.

It’s all kinda circumstantial, both for the bit about the lunar mansions as well as the planet/number associations, but it’s not too unreasonable or infeasible that this is what happened.  I can’t prove at the present time, unfortunately, that this is what happened, and maybe some reader more adroit at 1600s-ish German (or other continental European languages) with an eye for tracking astrological or numerological texts can help trace and track down more such texts that might afford more leads, especially regarding how such texts like DGPB came to associate planets with the lunar mansions.  However, it’s what I’ve got to go on, and—if I do say so myself—it’s not an unbelievable possibility.

Let’s close down that line of inquiry; I’ve nothing more to go on, after all, and while this is a good thing to stand on, it doesn’t solve the other big issue we raised last time: how do the compound Number tiles themselves get associated to the angels/mansions?  Well, we have at least some inkling of what’s going on, at least.  To go through what we can discern from Plate VI and the table of angels:

  • There are 90 compound Number tiles.  28 goes into 90 a maximum three times with a remainder, so we can allot at least three compound Number tiles per angel.  28 × 3 = 84, and 90 – 84 = 6, so there are 6 remaining compound Number tiles.  ZG gives each of these remainder compound Number tiles to each of the corner houses in the Great Mirror.
  • For most compound Number tiles, we can simply allocate a tile to one of the houses in the orbit of the planet of that compound Number, e.g. how 43 reduces to 7, making 43 a number of Mars/Adamasto, putting this number into the orbit of Mars (specifically house 23 with Raphael).  These seem to have been done first.
  • All of the planets except the Sun have houses in their orbit that belong exclusively to them, while the Sun has no houses in its orbit that belongs exclusively to it.  Additionally, because the Sun and Moon are broken out into their material and spiritual Intelligences for their own houses for the purposes of the Great Mirror for the angelic associations for the rest of the houses (they’re all densely packed into the middle of the Great Mirror), it’s not clear how to cleanly allocate the solar and lunar compound Number tiles.
  • Because of this, the corner houses certainly have to get at least some of these tiles.  ZT says that they’re given to the Sun and Moon, and if we go down the table, the corner houses (mostly marked with a ✠) alternate between the Moon and Sun (mansion VIII/house 34 gets a lunar Number, mansion XI/house 25 gets a solar Number, mansion XVII/house 31 gets a lunar Number, etc.).
  • This also has the result, given how the mansions are allocated to the Great Mirror houses, that the left and upper corners of the Great Mirror all get lunar numbers, and the lower and right corners get solar numbers.  This matches with how the solar and lunar Intelligences themselves are allocated to the Great Mirror, with both Seleno and Psykomena on the upper left side of the Great Mirror, and with Genhelia in the lower right.
  • The rest of the solar and lunar numbers just kinda get…scattered around.

That is…well, frankly, as far as I can discern.  If we take a look at how many tiles fit the patterns above cleanly or not, then out of the 90 total compound Number tiles:

  • 57 tiles have no problem at all getting allocated and are all about where you’d find them; notably, these are almost all tiles of the non-luminaries (e.g. tile 40, given to house 31, a tile of Jupiter/Aglaé and in Jupiter’s orbit).
  • 3 tiles are kinda okay (62, 10, 46), which are in the orbit of their associated planetary Intelligence, but technically speaking these are the “extra” Intelligences of Genhelia (matter-Sun) and Psykomena (spirit-Moon) given to houses 3 and 6, respectively, and it’s not clear whether these Intelligences should be considered to have orbits of their own like the other planets do.
  • 28 tiles are those of Genhelia, Seleno, Psykomena, or Psykelia, which are just sorta scattered all across the Great Mirror.
  • 2 tiles seem completely incorrectly assigned:
    • Tile 39 (expected to be in the orbit of Venus) gets associated to house 23 (Raphael) in the orbit of Mars
    • Tile 94 (expected to be in the orbit of Mercury) gets associated to house 5 (Kiriel) in the orbits of Saturn and Mars.

Notably, of all the angels in the Great Mirror, Kiriel is the only angel that expects a tile of a particular planet (Saturn) but doesn’t have one.  All the other angels get at least one tile of each planet they’re in the orbit of, with the possible exceptions of house 2 (Tagriel) and house 7 (Michael), where they expect solar tiles (specifically of Psykomena) but get the wrong kind of solar tile (Genhelia), but given how closely associated Genhelia and Psykelia are, it’s not clear whether it’s okay that one substitutes in for the other.

Beyond this, I’m stumped.  Unlike the mansion/planet associations or even the possible connections between the planets and numbers, I’m not sure how ZT is actually doing the work of allocating the compound Numbers to the lunar mansion/angelic houses of the Great Mirror beyond the general rules above.  Like, to pick a perfectly regular set of tiles that have no surprises whatsoever (part of that large set of 57), it’s not clear to me why all the Jupiter/Aglaé tiles get associated to the houses they do:

  • Tile 15 with house 27 (mansion 6, Dirachiel)
  • Tile 24 with house 29 (mansion 14, Ergediel)
  • Tile 33 with house 29 (mansion 14, Ergediel)
  • Tile 42 with house 28 (mansion 25, Aziel)
  • Tile 51 with house 12 (mansion 13, Iazekiel)
  • Tile 60 with house 27 (mansion 6, Dirachiel)
  • Tile 69 with house 4 (mansion 1, Gabriel)
  • Tile 78 with house 29 (mansion 14, Ergediel)
  • Tile 87 with house 27 (mansion 6, Dirachiel)
  • Tile 96 with house 14 (mansion 12, Bethunael)

This is, unfortunately, something I’m stumped on.  Beyond the likelihood of the inventor of ZT just allocating what tiles they could based on the overall rules and notions they had and fitting in wherever they could wherever else they had space for it—with the possibility of a slip-up or two, like with the Raphael and Kiriel bits as noted above—I’m not sure what the rhyme or reason is for allocating the compound Numbers to the mansions/angels/houses.  I can’t determine a geometric pattern of triangles or flow, and I’m not seeing anything in DGPB that might indicate anything along these lines in whatever numerological stuff I can find.  It’s a bit of an anticlimax, unfortunately, after the whole bit about finding leads on the other questions I’ve had, but even if I can’t say that there’s a pattern, at least there’s a trend, and that’ll have to be good enough to content myself with for now.

This is, of course, where I plead to the broader community for help, at least for those whose eyes can suffer Fraktur longer than mine can and who can more deftly search Google Books or Archive.org for old German (or other continental European) texts on divination, numerology, and astrology.  If, dear reader, you might have any notions, inklings, or even leads about some of these unanswered questions, do say so in the comments!  It might not lead anywhere, given the obscurity of things like this, but who knows?  I’ve been surprised at a number of points before in this research, and I fully expect to be surprised yet as I continue it.

Unlocking the Observatory: Natal Stars, Stellar Angels, Lunar Mansions, and Questions

May 22, 2022 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of discussing the obscure Telescope of Zoroaster (ZT), a manual of divination and spirituality originally published in French in 1796 (FZT) at the close of the French Revolution, which was later translated into German in 1797 (GZT) and then again in an abridged form as part of Johann Scheible’s 1846 Das Kloster (vol. 3, part II, chapter VII) (KZT), with Scheible’s work then translated into English in 2013 as released by Ouroboros Press (OZT).  Although OZT is how most people nowadays tend to encounter this system, I put out my own English translation of FZT out a bit ago as part of my research, and while that translation was just part of the work I’ve been up to, there’s so much more to review, consider, and discover when it comes to this fascinating form of divination.  Last time, we talked about reading the large hexangular figure as the Great Dial and how to use “option-whittling” to determine the specific details of a situation, including especially matters of time. If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

※ For those following along with their own copy of ZT (get yours here!), the relevant chapters from ZT are the “Second Supplement” and “Third Supplement”.

And now we get to the part of the ZT discussion that had me scratching my head (and banging it against my desk) for the longest time, and one of the reasons why I got so obsessed with trying to figure ZT out.  This is about to get messy, so strap in, dear readers.

We’ve covered a lot of ZT up until this point, it’s true; while I’m not following the order of ZT’s “Steps” or “Supplements”, I have covered the majority of the actual divinatory technique itself (barring the process of divination, refinements to query and tool, etc.), and even part (but only a very small part) of the spirituality, theology, cosmology, and anthropology of the ZT.  And, up until this point, much of the technique-related stuff is surprisingly simple: sure, there’s definitely a lot to it and damn-near countless ways to plot out various arrangements of things in the Great Mirror, but the bulk of the system isn’t a whole lot more than “there are some primary general concepts, we can combine and permute them in these ways, and now we have all these secondary specific concepts”.  This very approach is what got us all the meanings of the 99 Number tiles and the meanings of the 37 houses of the Great Mirror, and even the “option-whittling” approach used to simplistically determine time or other details of situations isn’t too complicated to figure out at a high level and apply in a variety of different ways.  This is why, given all the complexity and specificity that ZT can allow as a divination system, I think ZT is a masterpiece of elegance by means of extrapolation from simplicity.

Take a look, dear reader, at the plate called “The Urn”, which gives ZT’s own depiction of the various tiles to be used for divination, embellished with all relevant information for amateurs to more easily pick up and run with as they learn the system of ZT:

Each of the Number tiles has the number in the center in the middle, the planet (more accurately, the planetary intelligence) it’s associated with on the left, and the Zodiac sign it’s associated with on the right.  Each tile also has a name in the banner underneath the number; tiles 1 through 9, the primitive Numbers, get the names of their respective Intelligences, but each of the other tiles has the name of what appears to be an angel: Gabriel, Kiriel, Barbiel, Dirachiel, and so forth.  Moreover, some of these angel names are repeated across multiple tiles, e.g. Dirachiel has tiles 15, 60, and 87.

Thus do we come to the “Second Supplement”.  This chapter opens up with a lengthy and passionate introduction to how the method of ZT is but the foundation of a much grander system of theurgy and divinity—the layer of stone that gives way to marble, marble to crystal, crystal to diamond, diamond by heavenly brilliance itself—and that we shouldn’t be surprised that humans are but one type of entity throughout a dazzlingly diverse cosmos of entities of all kinds both corporeal and incorporeal, and how humans have the ability to see visions of spirits or who are taught about matters of the future or of God by means of spirits.  Immediately after this, we are introduced to the notion of a particular set of angels relevant for our studies in ZT (although, admittedly, nowhere referenced in any earlier part of the book).  I’m just gonna quote what ZT says on this point:

The Great Cabala recognizes, as we have seen, nine Intelligences. However, the two solar Intelligences and the two lunar Intelligences answer only to one planet each per pair, even if the Intelligence presiding over the material aspect subject to its Planet is not, somehow, a first Satellite of the spiritual Intelligence, rather than an Intelligence of the first order itself. On these grounds, the totality of Intelligences has only seven bases, which are the seven Planets. Each of these planets has four Messengers—Angels, in other words, which are according to the Greek etymology Αγγελος, this word meaning “messenger” in this beautiful language. These Angels, or Messengers of the Planets, are therefore 28 in number. There are as many boxes in the Great Mirror, allowing for each Angel to have their own fixed abode. Each Planet lodges in its orbit the Angels attached to it. Recall that some boxes are common to two Planets; the Angel who dwells in such a box is at the service, then, of its two corresponding Intelligences.

We will present a Table below where all the Cabalistic Angels are named and, next to each, as many mysterious Stars as they govern in the celestial regions. Following these, their names will be specified, as well as their Planets and the box that each Angel occupies in the Great Mirror, along with the three or four numbers assigned to it among the 99 with which the Table of Intelligences is provided. The Angels that rule four numbers each are those that occupy the six corner boxes of the Great Mirror; three of these are solar and three of these are lunar, as the column of signs in the table will show.

Each of the Stars that we will shortly name is, by its own account, a natal Star. It is common enough to hear that “so-and-so was born under a lucky (or unlucky) star”; however trivial this manner of speaking has become, it is still of cabalistic origin. Indeed, each of the allegorical Stars (which we will make known) influences all humans born under it, for each star’s reign is 13 days, 61 minutes, and 25 seconds per year. The total of the reigns of the 28 natal Stars anticipates the six hours per year on the totality of 365 days, with the 366th day of the leap year included in the net total of the days of four years. The domain of the 28 Stars thus starts again from the same instant every four years to complete a new period at the end of the same duration. This calculation can be verified by the Candidate arithmetically.

But let us first provide the promised Table, after which an easy-to-use dial shall be presented to put the Amateur within reach of recognizing, without fear of error, under which Star one is born, of what quality it is, what it allows to hope for, what it threatens, and whether this natal Star is friend or foe to the planet which governed in particular the hour in which the birth took place. It is thus for all the events of life, there not being a single thing however arbitrary or futile it might seem, which is not influenced by the circumstances of Heaven.*

* We do not wish in the slightest to bring the reader back to judicial astrology, for judicial astrology sprang from the Cabala and corrupted it. […]

We are then treated to the following two-page table, where the columns are “Influencing Stars”, “Governing Angels”, “Planets”, “Houses”, and “Numbers Influenced”, respectively:

My rendition of the table, for easier reading:

Stars Angels Planets Houses Numbers
1 Alnacha Gabriel ☉ ♃ 4 10 45 69
2 Albukaim Amixiel ♄ 20 14 59 77
3 Alkoréya Géniel ♀︎ 24 12 66 84
4 Aldaboran Azariel ☿ 30 28 58 76
5 Almuzin Sékéliel ♄ 36 23 68 86
6 Alkaya Dirachiel ♃ 27 15 60 87
7 Aldira Michael ☉ ♄ 7 32 55 95
8 Albiathra Amnediel ☾ ☽ 34 ✠ 19 56 92 17 ☽
9 Alkarphès Barbiel ♂︎ 21 61 79 82
10 Algebla Ardéfiel ☿ 32 22 67 85
11 Alkratia Néziel ☉ ♀︎ 25 18 21 54 81 ☉
12 Alsarpha Abdizüel ☉ ☿ 5 27 31 64
13 Algaira Jazékiel ♀︎ ♃ 12 30 51 93
14 Alkimecht Ergédiel ♃ 29 24 33 78
15 Algaphar Ataliel ☽ 33 26 29 65
16 Alzibian Azéruel ☽ ♄ 18 38 41 62
17 Alactil Adriel ☽ ☿ 31 ✠ 11 40 74 35 ☽
18 Alkab Egibiel ☉ ♂︎ 22 ✠ 16 36 63 90 ☉
19 Alzébra Amuziel ☽ ☿ 16 13 20 91
20 Analkaim Kiriel ♄ ♂︎ 8 25 73 94
21 Abeldack Béthunael ☿ 14 49 71 96
22 Zaddadena Géliel ☽ ♄ 37 ✠ 44 50 83 89 ☽
23 Sabadola Réquiel ☾ 35 47 53 80
24 Sadahad Abrimaël ♂︎ ♀︎ 10 34 48 97
25 Sadalakia Aziel ☉ ♃ 28 ✠ 37 42 72 99 ☉
26 Alporabot Tagriel ☉ ♂︎ 2 46 52 70
27 Alkarga Athémiel ♀︎ 26 57 75 98
28 Albothan Raphaël ♂︎ 23 39 43 88

Alright, let’s cut the crap: this is just a table of the 28 mansions of the Moon with their angels, and the description preceding the table is clearly describing the same thing.  By saying that “each star’s reign is 13 days, 61 minutes, and 25 seconds per year”, it’s basically giving the calendrical equivalent of saying that each mansion’s span of the ecliptic is 12°15’26” (the average daily ecliptic motion of the Moon).  And, to those who are familiar with Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, the names of the mansions (delightfully corrupted as many Arabic names and words always are in any European text) are still basically the same as those given in book II, chapter 33, and ditto for the names of the angels of the mansions from book III, chapter 24.  For a text that so vehemently denies any connection with “judicial astrology”, debased and corrupted as ZT claims it to be, there’s a delicious sting of irony in seeing how far that’s really true.

Let’s take a closer look at the table.  What we have here is:

  • An index of the names of the 28 lunar mansions (what ZT calls “natal stars”) along with the presiding angel of each
  • Each mansion/angel’s corresponding planetary association (more on that in a bit)
  • Which house of the Great Mirror the mansion/angel is associated with (marked with a ✠ if it’s a corner house)
  • What Number tiles are associated with the mansion/angel (three for non-corner houses, four for corner houses along with what that extra Number’s specific planetary association is)

ZT goes on to note, immediately after the table, a few things that would appear to be missing from the table:

  • The primitive Numbers (1 through 9) are direct representatives of their respective planetary Intelligences, so they don’t get associated to any angel; only compound Numbers get associated with angels.
  • Houses 1, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19 in the Great Mirror are already taken up by the seven planets themselves, so those don’t get associated with any angel.
  • Because there are 37 houses in the Great Mirror, if we take away 7 for the seven planets, that leaves us with 30—two too many for the angels of the lunar mansions.  To this end, all nine of the planetary intelligences get associated a house: all the non-luminary Intelligences just get their planet’s own house, but the Sun and Moon are split, such that Psykelia gets house 1 (the Sun’s proper house in the Great Mirror), Genhelia gets house 3 (between Psykelia and Erosia/Venus), Seleno gets house 11 (the Moon’s proper house in the Great Mirror), and Psykomena gets house 6 (between Psykelia and Seleno).

Based on this—as well as a lengthy description—ZT also gives us Plate VI, illustrating the Great Mirror with all the angels associated with it.  It breaks this diagram out into a “Drum” (the large hexangular figure with the names of the Intelligences and angels in it) and “Border” (the zodiacal and lunar mansion divisions along the ecliptic, along with the 13-ish days per lunar mansion).  The Arabic numeral in each house is the house’s rank in the Great Mirror, while the Roman numerals in the non-Intelligence houses indicate the rank of the lunar mansion of those particular angels.

Now, tell me, dear reader, if you so kindly would oblige me: what about any of this makes any goddamn sense I swear to god.  How on Earth is ZT fitting any of this together, when so little of it makes any sense?

  • If you look at the order of the mansions/angels associated with the houses of the Great Mirror, what exactly is happening?  Why does mansion I get put in house 4, II to 20, III to 24, and so forth?
  • While the names of the mansions themselves are basically correct, and most of the angels seem right, there are a few that aren’t.  Comparing with Agrippa’s list, while ZT makes use of the three archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, these appear nowhere in Agrippa’s list, and instead appear to replace the angels Anediel, Gabiel, and Amnixiel.
  • Further, while most of the mansions in ZT have the same angels in the same order as in Agrippa, some aren’t; mansions 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 28 don’t have the right angel names (either being swapped out with an archangel name or just using an existing name in the wrong order, e.g. ZT giving mansion II to Amixiel but Agrippa gives Amixiel to mansion III.
  • The Numbers assigned to each angel/mansion are all over the place.  They tend to be related to the planetary associations of each angel/mansion, but so many of them have ones associated with the Sun or Moon (of either intelligence) as well.
  • What happened to the ✠ mark for mansion XI/house 25 for Neziel?  That’s a corner house, so it should have that mark, because it has four Numbers associated with it.
  • For the most part, whatever angel gets whatever planets in that table, it has at least one tile of those planets associated with it, and not others (except for the solar and lunar tiles getting scattered all over the place).  In that light, why does Raphael—an angel in the exclusive orbit of Mars—get a Number associated with Venus (39)?
  • Why does Kiriel—an angel in the orbit of Mars and Saturn—get a Number associated with Mercury (94)?  For that matter, while Kiriel has a Number of Mars associated with it (25), it lacks one for Saturn.  Where’d it go?

Perhaps the biggest question I have about any of this is this notion of planetary associations with the lunar mansions, which just isn’t…like, a Thing.  Like, I’ve spoken with a number of professional astrologers about this, and the lunar mansions don’t—and shouldn’t—get planetary associations, beyond possibly linking the nature of particular fixed stars found within those mansions to planets and from there to the mansions itself, but this just isn’t done.  None other than Chris Warnock (of Renaissance Astrology) touched on this once upon a time on his blog:

In Vedic astrology the 27 nakshatra do have planetary rulers, but this is based on a planetary period sequence, similarly to firdaria. The sequence is Sun, Moon, Mars, North Node, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, South Node and Venus. A number of traditional Western sources do give planetary rulerships for the Mansions, but each one is different, some use the Chaldean Order, some the days of the week order.

A majority of traditional sources on the Mansions do not provide planetary rulerships and those sources that do, don’t agree on the system. The Liber Lunae, Sloane Ms 3826, a mid-Sixteenth Century English source gives a strange sequence of planetary rulerships, that doesn’t follow the Chaldean Order or the days of the week. The Liber Lunae Mansions are contained in my Mansions of the Moon Book.

I would have to ask why logically the Mansions of the MOON would even have planetary rulers? Aren’t these the Moon’s Mansions? This reminds me of the confusion over planetary rulership of fixed stars. Because Ptolemy in Tetrabiblos says that fixed stars “have the nature of” various planets, this has been taken as meaning that the planets rule these fixed stars. Again, logically the fixed stars are in a higher sphere and in fact the fixed stars “rule” the planets.

My view is that having planetary rulerships for everything is like the modern Aries = Mars = 1st house. It is collapsing the nuances of traditional astrology and losing the underlying structure.

Still, there is some support in traditional sources, the problem is which source do you choose and then what does it mean if Mars, for example, “rules” the first mansion? I can see that the designers of Solar Fire were confused because they insist on giving the location of all the planets in Mansions. We can therefore puzzle over the meaning or to my mind, the lack of meaning, of Saturn in the 5th Mansion.

And in a comment to someone else on that post, he said:

But why would a particular planet be stronger in a particular Mansion of the MOON? What does any planet, except the Moon, have to do with the Mansions? Other than “we always use the planets for everything” that is?

Like, we can consider the signs of the Zodiac and the mansions of the Moon to both be divisions of the ecliptic, sure, but if the signs of the Zodiac get assigned planetary rulerships, then why not the mansions of the Moon?  The difference lies in the conceptual backing of each: for the signs of the Zodiac, they are based on the Sun and Moon together (one solar year is an approximation of twelve synodic lunations, so we divide the ecliptic into twelve equal segments), and then we assign planetary rulerships to the signs based on their aspectual relationship to the Sun and Moon…

…but the 28 mansions of the Moon are a division based only on the daily average ecliptic motion of the Moon.  Moreover, the lunar mansions are meant exclusively for the Moon, and are used for other purposes than the 12 signs of the Zodiac are.  To give them planetary assignments or affiliations just isn’t something that’s really done, much less done commonly or in any standard approach, and as Warnock notes (and as I’ve seen myself), in the handful of texts that do attempt it—because why not, there are 28 = 7 × 4, so just give each planet four mansions—none of them seem to do it in the same way.  The other planets just don’t matter for the lunar mansions, not whether what planet is in whichever mansion, nor wherever the Moon is in any of the mansions; if we wanted to know the Moon’s strength or weakness according to other planets, that’s what the usual signs of the Zodiac are for, not the mansions.

Even if we ignore the planetary stuff, still, nothing about the rest of Plate VI or the angel/house/tile assignments makes sense.  And that’s the really frustrating bit, isn’t it?  It’s clear from everything else we’ve seen in ZT that this is a system that is built on extrapolating from principles, building up from smaller things into larger things; this system is not randomly thrown together, but is clearly something that was intentionally and explicitly designed.  And then we have this system of lunar mansions (disguised as “natal stars”, repurposed as quasi-Zodiac signs to determine someone’s ruling star/angel by seeing what mansion the Sun is in at the time they were born) which uses a system of angel associations which are mostly the same as those used in (damn near, or indeed actually) every other text but which uses some weird variation in it, and just…what?

It was even getting to the point that I was thinking that this might be a blind for something else—and I hate the notion of blinds in occult texts.

Here’s my take: yes, there are some occult and spiritual texts that do legitimately make use of blinds, i.e. ways to encrypt, encode, or otherwise obfuscate information with the use of keys or secrets that only a select subset of people would know, but throwing other people people not in the know off the trail.  It does happen, sure—but it happens so infrequently that anyone claiming that blinds are anything but rare don’t know much about the texts themselves, and are mislead by both romantic notions of secret chiefs encoding ancient wisdom in simple texts as well as the famousness of particular instances of blinds or keyword-translations that have entered the public imagination.  Across the vast majority of texts, when someone says X, it means X.  It is far, far more common to simply present a variation in technique than to present a difference with a wink and a nudge to mean something else—and it’s also even more common to just have typos in any given text.

Like, let’s be honest: unless you’re a legitimate spy (or spymaster) or professional cryptographer (like John Dee or Johannes Trithemius), you’re probably not gonna make a good blind or encryption worth your time, and you risk so much by putting out such a blinded text anyway.  Consider: if you put out a manual that proposes to teach stuff, and you deliberately put misleading information in with the intended goal that the manual should only be used by people worthy of possessing it, then you run into the ethical problem of giving people bad or incorrect processes that can cause severe issues, even irreparable harm.  If that’s the case, if such a book comes into the hands of someone exceptionally crafty who can manage to break such an encryption, then all your work just fell to naught and has entered the hands of someone you don’t know and don’t trust and didn’t want to have the information to begin with—which might be even worse than the previous situation, depending on the nature of such information.  If you want to keep information secure, then the best way to go about it is to just not publish it.  And let’s be honest: publication is expensive!  Between the sheer cost of the supplies and the process of setting type and printing text and binding it into pamphlets or books, to say nothing of making multiple copies thereof?  If you want to keep information limited, the best way is to just not commit it to paper—especially one that has to go through a publisher who can always make more such books on their own.

In that light, let’s consider the method and approach of ZT.  ZT claims to have this ancient teaching of wisdom, divination, and theurgy that allows people to rise and perfect themselves in harmony with celestial intelligences, and it says that the text it provides is a key—granted, it is only a key and not a full treatise that explains the whole system, but it is a key which it claims can unlock anything.  It then provides the most rudimentary basics of its systems and methods tells the reader to use them the rest of the way, and if the “Pure Spirit” guides them, they’ll figure the rest out on their own by using the information in ZT.  Beyond that, it fully expects that this information should be limited, which is why the book was limited to only 50 copies (it claims) and expects most people to disdain it and the author for it.  The approach of ZT here is so completely against the notion of using encryption or encoding or blinding at all: rather than trying to hide something, it just either doesn’t say it or it gives the basics of something and tells the reader to figure out the rest.

All of which is to explain my sheer frustration with this particular instance of assigning angels to the houses or tiles to the angels: everything else in this system just seems so elegant, well-put, and intentional, and then there’s this seemingly random thing, seemingly tacked-on in a later chapter with stuff that is never—not once—mentioned anywhere earlier in the text, and which doesn’t even seem necessary for the actual process of divination?  And then, in the Epilogue, the messages from the Redactor go on about how they only mentioned “the good angels, not betraying the evil ones”, and that how they “[at first] refrained from mentioning anything relating to the angels”?  And how ZT basically forces us to reinvent computus by, instead of just looking up in an ephemeris the Sun’s location along the ecliptic, making us do calendrical math to figure out under what natal star one is born under while also factoring in leap years?

This is the only part of the system of ZT that seems nonsensical, and the more I looked at it from any and every conceivable angle, the more nonsensical it became.  In that light, we have a few options:

  1. This part is really just arbitrary and made up with no real rhyme or reason.
  2. This part has some sort of pattern, but which is not clearly stated in the text and which may have as much noise as it does standardization.
  3. This part is based on some other source that ZT does not explicitly reference, which may itself have its own reasoning and method explainable in another way that isn’t dependent on or related to ZT.
  4. This part is a blind.

Option 1 (it’s arbitrary), while it can’t be ruled out, seems to fly so far into the face of ZT’s method and approach that it’s almost an insult.  Option 2 (it’s an incomplete pattern) is what I was trying to figure out, but not making heads or tails of it and being unable to reverse engineer it is itself a problem, so that’d lead to a dead end.  Option 3 (it’s based on some other system)…well, not knowing what other system that might be, it’s a possibility that would require further research.  Option 4 (it’s a blind)…like, I hate the idea, but this may well be a case of it.  Like, in my bitching about this and saying how tacked-on this whole bit feels to ZT, Nick Chapel from Hermeticulture (the lovable asshole who got me started on all of this) said:

It also sounds like the author wanted to include that supplemental material in the print run of 50, but needed to get it in to the publisher and so settled for an abbreviated explanation. It’s possible that the author might have chosen to blind the information because they knew they wouldn’t be able to lay out an adequately complete explanation in the time or space given, and wanted to ensure that anyone who was going to be using it understood the principles behind it. At least enough to see “hey, this doesn’t make sense” and have enough sense themselves not to use it until they figured it out.

[…]

…as both a puzzle designer and solver, you know that the puzzle wants to be solved. Even if it’s an intentional blind.

Like, it was this specific problem that got me to translate ZT from the original French version of it to begin with, to make absolutely sure that I wasn’t missing anything and that I could go through every section and line with a fine-tooth comb and make sure that there was nothing amiss.  And, while I definitely learned quite a bit more from FZT than I did KZT/OZT, I still found nothing in FZT that helped this particular situation.

But then, acting on a weird hunch, I did—and I’ll talk about that next time.  In the meantime, see if you can figure anything out about this particularly puzzling system, and if you can pick up on any interesting patterns or parallels with other texts, do say so in the comments!

On the Arbatel’s Seal of Secrets

September 10, 2017 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , 13 Comments

So as I work towards the end of a year of interesting spiritual obligations, I’m beginning to get back to some of my projects I had to put on hold about this time last year.  One of those projects is that of the works of the Arbatel, described in the eponymous text the Arbatel: of the Magic of the Ancients, a 16th century text that presents a body of very religious and devout occult wisdom and practice that famously introduce the seven Olympic spirits (Aratron, Bethor, Phaleg, Och, Hagith, Ophiel, and Phul).  However, while these spirits are fairly well-known, less understood and talked about is its Seal of Secrets and what the Arbatel actually preaches about wisdom that can be learned through occult means.  I’ve been mulling this particular diagram over the past few days, and it’s not the most straightfoward or clearly-explained thing in the text.

So, let’s start from the basics.  The Fourth Septenary of the Arbatel focuses on secrets, starting with aphorisms IV.22 and IV.23:

IV.22: We call that a secret, which no man can attain unto by humane industry without revelation; which Science lieth obscured, hidden by God in the creature; which nevertheless he doth permit to be revealed by Spirits, to a due use of the thing it self. And these secrets are either concerning things divine, natural or humane. But thou mayst examine a few, and the most select, which thou wilt commend with many more.

IV.23: Make a beginning of the nature of the secret, either by a Spirit in the form of a person, or by vertues separate, either in humane Organs, or by what manner soever the same may be effected; and this being known, require of a Spirit which knoweth that art, that he would briefly declare unto thee whatsoever that secret is: and pray unto God, that he would inspire thee with his grace, whereby thou maist bring the secret to the end thou desireth, for the praise and glory of God, and the profit of thy neighbour.

Aphorism IV.24 then lists three sets of seven secrets, classifying them into the greatest secrets, the medium secrets, and the lesser secrets, each focusing on a different kind of goal or aim ranging from the divinely sublime to the mundane and temporary.  Arbatel also says that the greatest secrets are those that “a man of an honest and constant minde may learn of the Spirits, without any offence unto God”, a qualifier not given to the other two, suggesting that the greatest secrets are the ones that are innately of God and for God and that the others are more easily inclined to lead away from truth and divine works.  In general, the secrets listed here fall more-or-less in line with the powers claimed by magicians in countless other texts: healing of all illnesses, knowing God and truth, longevity, the obedience of spirits, the transmutation of metals, excellence in all sorts of arts and sciences, and so forth.  By dividing them up into greater, middle, and lesser, however, we get a clear sense of priority from the Arbatel, encouraging us to focus more on the most beneficial, kind, and holy works and less so on the more mundane or “contemptible” ones.

Moving on to aphorism IV.27, the Arbatel then discusses a particular diagram that it calls the Seal of Secrets:

Make a Circle with a center A, which is framed by a square BCDE.  At the East let there be BC, at the North CD, at the West DE, and at the South EB. Divide the Several quadrants into seven parts, that there may be in the whole 28 parts: and let them be again divided into four parts, that there may be 112 parts of the Circle: and so many are the true secrets to be revealed. And this Circle in this manner divided, is the seal of the secrets of the world, which they draw from the onely center A, that is, from the invisible God, unto the whole creature.

This is a simple geometric construction telling us, basically, to make a circle bounded by a square, with the circle divided up into seven divisions, and each division divided further into four sections, for a total of 4 × 7 × 4 = 112 sections.  Some versions of the Arbatel include such a diagram, which I’ve reproduced below without the letters or labels but includes the division-level boundaries, but it could be technically written to be constructed in a more simple way as well with all the lines converging without inner boundary circles:

Continuing from the above, the Arbatel then begins describing the function of the divisions and sectors of the seal:

The Prince of the Oriental secrets is resident in the middle, and hath three Nobles on either side, every one whereof hath four under him, and the Prince himself hath four appertaining unto him. And in this manner the other Princes and Nobles have their quadrants of secrets, with their four secrets.

But the Oriental secret is the study of all wisdom; The West, of strength; The South, of tillage; The North, of more rigid life. So that the Eastern secrets are commended to be the best; the Meridian to be mean; and the West and North to be lesser.

(A note on the word “noble” here: Peterson in his modern translation of the Arbatel uses the word “governors” to describe these six subordinate spirits, while the original Latin uses the word “satrap”, a Persian term originally describing provincial governors but later adapted to refer to leaders who act as surrogates for larger world powers.  I adore the word “satrap”.)

The division of each direction into seven rulers, with one dominating Prince and six Governors under him, is fairly straightforward, and also that each ruler presides over four secrets unto himself.  What’s peculiar is that each direction is also given to have a quality of secret: the East for the greatest secrets, the South for the middle, and the West and North for the lesser.  Though not explicitly stated, it’s pretty much certain to me that the secrets here are meant to refer to the greater, medium, and lesser secrets given before in aphorism IV.24.  However, this seems to break the neat one-to-one regularity we would expect to see here, as we see elsewhere in the Arbatel; why should one set of secrets be given to two quadrants?  Peterson in the preface to his translation of the Arbatel says:

…[f]or symmetry, it is tempting to speculate that the seven lesser secrets listed—those of strength—are actually sought from the west, while the north secrets—those of harshness—are destructive and are not explicitly mentioned.

If Peterson is right, and I’m greatly inclined to think that he is, then that means that there are actually four sets of secrets: the greatest, the medium, the lesser, and a fourth unmentioned set of seven secrets that are focused on destruction, harm, and violence.  If the greatest secrets are those that can be learned “without any offence unto God”, while the medium and lesser secrets are more tempting to lead away from and offend God, then the unmentioned secrets are those that are most likely to veer too close or outright into what the Arbatel considers cacomagy or “evil magic”, which are doomed to offend God and should be avoided to the point where they are not even listed in the text.  The works of the lesser secrets would instead be recommended to replace those of this hypothetical unmentioned set, if only to direct the reader of the Arbatel to maintain a good life without temptation of evil.

Anyway, following this in the same aphorism, the Arbatel describes a twofold purpose of this diagram, one as a divine revelation and the other as a mere mnemonic device:

The use of this seal of secrets is, that thereby thou maist know whence the Spirits or Angels are produced, which may teach the secrets delivered unto them from God. But they have names taken from their offices and powers, according to the gift which God hath severally distributed to every one of them. One hath the power of the sword; another, of the pestilence; and another, of inflicting famine upon the people, as it is ordained by God. Some are destroyers of Cities, as those two were, who were sent to overthrow Sodom and Gomorrha, and the places adjacent, examples whereof the holy Scripture witnesseth. Some are the watch-men over Kingdoms; others the keepers of private persons; and from thence, anyone may easily form their names in his own language: so that he which will, may ask a physical Angel, mathematical, or philosophical, or an Angel of civil wisdom, or of supernatural or natural wisdom, or for any thing whatsoever; and let him ask seriously, with a great desire of his minde, and with faith and constancy and without doubt, that which he asketh he shall receive from the Father and God of all Spirits. This faith surmounteth all seals, and bringeth them into subjection to the will of man. The Characteristical maner of calling Angels succeedeth this faith, which dependeth onely on divine revelation; But without the said faith preceding it, it lieth in obscurity.

Nevertheless, if any one will use them for a memorial, and not otherwise, and as a thing simply created by God to his purpose, to which such a spiritual power or essence is bound; he may use them without any offence unto God. But let him beware, lest that he fall into idolatry, and the snares of the devil, who with his cunning sorceries, easily deceiveth the unwary. And he is not taken but onely by the finger of God, and is appointed to the service of man; so that they unwillingly serve the godly; but not without temptations and tribulations, because the commandment hath it, That he shall bruise the heel of Christ, the seed of the woman. We are therefore to exercise our selves about spiritual things, with fear and trembling, and with great reverence towards God, and to be conversant in spiritual essences with gravity and justice. And he which medleth with such things, let him beware of all levity, pride, covetousness, vanity, envy and ungodliness, unless he wil miserably perish.

In one way, the Seal of Secrets is a sort of divine cosmogram that shows how the spirits presiding over the secrets of the cosmos are produced and how they govern, with a ruling prince of spirits presiding in the center of each direction with three noble subordinate rulers on either side.  Though it has a divine purpose and origin, the Arbatel also concedes it may be used as a mnemonic device merely and only to remember how the spirits that exist apart and away from the Seal function and how they’re organized.  In either way, though, it seems that Arbatel suggests a distinct catalog of 196 secrets and their corresponding spirits.

With all that said, the Arbatel is lacking in actually explaining the deeper use or purpose of the Seal.  It’s likely because the Arbatel is essentially an incomplete work; of the nine books it describes, only the first is extant, which is what we actually call the Arbatel today, though it calls itself the Isagoge, “which in fourty and nine Aphorisms comprehendeth, the most general Precepts of the whole Art”.  To me, the Arbatel raises more questions about the Seal and the secrets it describes than it answers.  So, what’s the deal with dividing the Seal up in the way that it does?  What first came to my mind was to compare the 4 × 7 = 28 divisions of the circle in the Seal of Secrets to the 28 Mansions of the Moon that survive in Western magic, as given by the Picatrix and Agrippa:

However, despite the use of 28 divisions, I don’t think there’s actually a connection (though I’d like there to be).  The 28 Mansions start with Alnath at 0° Aries, which is exactly celestial east.  However, the eastern quadrant of the Seal doesn’t have a well-defined “start”, and given the lack of elaboration in the text as well as the construction of the Seal itself, it would seem that the corresponding eastern point would fall smack-dab in the middle of the central division of the eastern quadrant, the seat of the Prince of Wisdom in the East according to the Seal of Secrets.  That doesn’t seem to lend itself well to associating each ruler of secrets to a single Mansion of the Moon.

That said, we do know that each Mansion of the Moon is given to a particular set of talismans, works, and properties that are used in astrology and astrological magic, each with its own presiding angel.  If we can’t allocate the 4 × 7 = 28 rulers of secrets into the Mansions of the Moons, what about the 7 × 4 = 28 secrets they rule over themselves within a single quadrant?  It could be conceived that each of the secrets ruled over by a direction’s Prince and six Governors could be allocated to a single Mansion of the Moon, giving us more insight into what each of those secrets could be, recalibrated for each direction and its corresponding kind of secret: thus, the rightmost secret of the Prince of Wisdom in the East would be given to the same Mansion (13, Alhaire) as would the same secret of the other Princes, but with Alhaire directed to Wisdom in one instance or to Strength in another, depending on the Prince being worked with.

While this is reasonable, I also don’t find it likely.  While I’m no expert on Paracelsus (who was either a large influence on the Arbatel or who founded the overall school and body of work the Arbatel builds upon within Renaissance Hermeticism) and given that much of his work is lost, I don’t think the Mansions of the Moon would have figured prominently in his or derivative works, so any actual association between the Mansions of the Moon and the rulers of secrets or the secrets themselves based only on the fact that they share the number 28 is tenuous at best; indeed, Peterson doesn’t even mention it in his version of the Arbatel.  That said, I’m still investigating that with the help of friends who are more well-versed in Paracelsian stuff than I am.  However, given that the lunar mansions weren’t really that important a topic in Western astrology or astrological magic since their introduction in the 12th century, I’m not holding my breath for such a connection.

Still, there’s another way to consider how to understand what the multitude of secrets are and their nature.  Consider how the text associates the directions with the four types and four sets of secrets, including Peterson’s hypothetical “unmentioned” set for the North and “a more rigid life”:

Secret Set
East Wisdom Greatest
South Tillage Middle
West Strength Lesser
North Harshness Unmentioned

Something to note is that the strength of the secrets—greatest to lesser and then to unmentionable—follow the path and light of the Sun, which rises in the East, culminates in the South, and sets in the West (at least from the point of view of an observer in the Northern Hemisphere, which makes sense for a book published in Switzerland during the Renaissance).  We know, from aphorism III.21, that the first hour of the day (sunrise) is the most appropriate time to conjure the Olympic spirits, and would be considered the strongest time of day; thus, the East is given the greatest secrets, and the strength descends from there as the Sun’s light grows older.  However, the Sun only rises at (more or less, accounting for time of year) due east, though the eastern quadrant of the Seal of Secrets covers the area from the northeast to the southeast.  If we associate due east with proper sunrise, then this means the three governors to the north of the Prince in the East are about the dawn, the time of early morning when the sky begins to brighten but before the Sun rises.  Likewise, the Prince in the West would be given to sunset, and the governors to the north of that Prince are dusk, the time of evening after the Sun sets but while the sky still has some light in it.  This means that the Prince of the South would be given to high noon, and the Prince of the North to midnight.  Note how the three sets of secrets listed explicitly in the Arbatel are then associated with the times of day when it’s light outside; the dark period of the night, after dusk and before dawn, would then be given to the unmentioned set of secrets.  This spatial-temporal reckoning of daylight with the secrets makes sense, at least to me, such that the secrets that should be revealed are made so by the light of the Sun, and those that shouldn’t remain occluded by the dark of the night when the Sun’s light is gone from the sky, in addition to the usual connections between darkness, nighttime, evil, wickedness, and so on.

Even still, though, there’s much about this Seal that remains unexplained, especially when considered alongside the system of the seven Olympic spirits in the text.  For instance:

  1. Do the four quarters of the Seal have a connection to the four elements that we’d normally see based on their connections to the directions?  If so, can we make use of those connections within the system of secrets within the Arbatel?
  2. Do the seven rulers within a quarter have any connection to the seven planets, or do there just happen to be seven for an unrelated reason?  If there is a planetary connection, which of the seven planets would be the prince of the direction, and who would be the governors under him, and in what order?
  3. Should we consider the seven Olympic spirits to “have their place” among the spirits in the Seal of Secrets, or should we consider a distinct Seal of Secrets for each planet, such that each of the seven planets have their own set of greatest, medium, lesser, and unmentioned secrets?
  4. Are the spirits described in the Seal of Secrets to be conjured alongside or independently of the Olympic spirits?  If so, then what is the purpose of the Olympic spirits within the system of secrets described in the Arbatel?  If not, then again, what’s the connection between the prince/rulers within a direction (or across all four directions) with the planets and their Olympic spirits?
  5. Do the seven rulers each have their own take on the seven secrets associated with that direction, or is it one of the secrets within the set per ruler?  If the former, what distinguishes the specific rulers’ takes on each secret, and do they have other providences, perhaps by relating to the other systems of magic described at the beginning of the Arbatel?  Or, alternatively for the former, are the four secrets under each ruler unrelated and given in addition to the big secrets given within the set associated with the direction?  If the latter, does this actually mean that there are four approaches to each secret within a set given by the Arbatel?
  6. What does the Arbatel mean when it says that the secrets of the South are for “tillage” or “culture”, referring to agriculture or cultivation, and how does this actually relate to the middle secrets which are more associated with the results described in books like the Liber Juratus or Ars Notoria?
  7. What does the Arbatel mean when it says that the secrets of the West are for “strength”, when the lesser secrets are more associated with mundane affairs and success in worldly matters?
  8. If Peterson is right and there is a fourth unmentioned category of secrets, the unmentioned ones for the North, how do they relate to “a rigid life”, and what are they?  If he’s wrong and the lesser secrets really are allocated to both the West and the North, then what distinguishes their spirits and the secrets they rule over?

Some of these questions might have answers based on other hints elsewhere in the Arbatel.  For instance, at the end of aphorism III.17 which contains the information about the seven Olympic spirits, there are the “most general precepts of this secret”; the fourth precept here says that “in all the elements there are the seven Governours with their hosts”, suggesting that the Olympic spirits or the planets they preside over are present in each of the four elements, and thus in the four directions, and that that there is some connection between the seven rulers in each direction and the seven planets with their Olympic spirits.  Later, in the invocation of the Olympic spirits given in aphorism III.21, there’s the statement “…beseech thee that thou wouldst send thy Spirit N.N. of the solar order…”, which indicates that there are multiple spirits of the Sun that can be worked with, not just Och which is the only named solar spirit given in the Arbatel; otherwise, why make the name general but the order definite here as an example?  This may suggest that while Och presides over all works of the Sun, there could be four rulers of secrets set under Och (one for each direction and set of secrets).  As for the fourfold division of secrets under each ruler of secrets in the Seal, note that aphorism VII.49 lists four kinds of good sciences: knowledge of the word of God, knowledge of the government of God through his angels, knowledge of natural things, and wisdom in humane things; these might be hints as to the ways a secret may be known or effected, though since this doesn’t mirror exactly the corresponding evil sciences, this might not necessarily be the case (though a case could be made for this, since even though there are seven evil sciences given, three of these are more states of manners of practice rather than actual works of science, so there could be still four corresponding evil sciences to match the four for the good ones).

Of course, all the above must be understood knowing that I haven’t yet worked with the Olympic spirits themselves, but in the near future, I plan to make that one of my big project priorities.  Perhaps that will help shed some more light on the secrets hidden yet within the Arbatel.

Search Term Shoot Back, September 2015

September 30, 2015 By in internet, link, occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

I get a lot of hits on my blog from across the realm of the Internet, many of which are from links on Facebook, Twitter, or RSS readers.  To you guys who follow me: thank you!  You give me many happies.  However, I also get a huge number of new visitors daily to my blog from people who search around the Internet for various search terms.  As part of a monthly project, here are some short replies to some of the search terms people have used to arrive here at the Digital Ambler.  This focuses on some search terms that caught my eye during the month of September 2015.

“what are the corresponding planet of each mansion of the moon” — In the system I learned it (I’m unsure if there are others), there are 28 lunar mansions that cover the 360° of the Zodiac.  The first lunar mansion starts at 0° Aries, and is given to the Sun.  From there, the lunar mansions are given to the planets in the weekday order: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.  Since there are 28 mansions and 7 planets, this cycle repeats four times, so that the Sun begins at the same zodiacal position that the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) do.

Planetary attributions of the Lunar Mansions

“the seven days conjuration” — A conjuration done over seven days, a period where you do seven conjurations in seven days, what?  Be a little more specific.  There are works like Pietro d’Abano’s Heptameron, literally meaning “a period of seven days”, referring to the planetary conjurations one can best perform on each of the seven days of the week; we find a similar text in the Munich Manual.  Alternatively, you could do the usual conjuration ritual, such as Trithemius’ rite, and conjure each of the seven planetary angels on your own across the seven days of the week; this is the basis for Fr. Rufus Opus’ Seven Spheres book, and his occasional project Seven Spheres in Seven Days.  It can get a little rough, especially with a crazy mundane schedule, but it’s worth it.

“which month,day and hour is the spirit of jupiter” — It…this doesn’t, I can’t.  Unless you’re talking about a particular zeitgeist, the spirit of Jupiter abides as long as the planet and its planetary sphere does, so…yeah.  The spirit of Jupiter can always be contacted regardless of the time, but there are some times that are better than others, and for this we use the system of planetary days and hours.  For instance, the planetary day of Jupiter is Thursday, and there are planetary hours of Jupiter scattered regularly throughout the week, so if you can get something set up on a planetary day and hour of Jupiter, it’ll be all the better.  As for months, this gets a little less regular.  Our system of months tracks the procession of the Sun through the Zodiac, more or less, but we don’t care about the Sun as much as we care about Jupiter, so we’d like to know when Jupiter is particularly strong in the Zodiac.  This can get into a whole talk about electional astrology, which is beyond the scope of this entry, but suffice it to say that you should check an ephemeris and read up on William Lilly’s books to figure out when Jupiter itself will be powerful.

“can you give back eleke” — First off, I don’t know why I keep getting hits on Santeria stuff on this blog, as it’s hardly ever germane to the usual stuff that goes on.  But…so, from what I gather, receiving your elekes is a ritual available to anyone with a godparent in Santeria, and is one of the important steps one takes in the process of initiation into the priesthood.  These are like your formal introductions to the orisha of those elekes, and…I have a hard time understanding why you’d want to give them back.  They’re yours, and yours alone.  Giving them back or intentionally losing them seems, to my mind, like a massive slap in the face to the orisha to whom you’ve been introduced.  If you didn’t want elekes, unless you were only a child without agency when you received them, then you shouldn’t have gone through the ritual to get them, but…I mean, hey, it’s your life.  They won’t interfere with anything, but if you don’t even want that much, go ahead.

“hermeticism homosexuality” — Bear in mind that the idea of homosexuality (yes, the mere concept of it) is recent, dating back only to the 1800s.  There is nothing ancient about homosexuality as a concept, and while we may read homosexuality into older works or storied relationships, it is folly to think that ancient peoples may have thought of themselves as inherently preferring one sex/gender to the other.  Sexuality was something that one did, not what one was (much like the guys who claim straightness but keep hooking up with dudes on Craigslist, no homo).  As a philosophy or branch of occult fields, there is nothing prohibiting or encouraging homosexuality in Hermeticism; depending on the context, homosexuality can be as much a hindrance or a help as much as heterosexuality is, and both same-gender sex as well as different-gender sex have their place.  Are they interchangeable?  I’m not convinced one way or the other on that, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t necessarily be, even though they may have different mechanics physically and spiritually.

“hermetic laws on gender and transgender people” — Like with the above search term, there’s no real connection or law that connects the occult philosophy of Hermeticism to things like gender, especially modern notions of gender that go beyond the simple gender binary that has stuck around humanity for thousands of years.  And no, although the Kybalion talks about the “laws of polarity” or gender or whatnot, that shoddy text is distinctly not Hermetic, and should not be considered as such for this topic.  For everything I’ve seen that matters in Hermetic magic, what gender you identify as does not matter, nor does the sex your body has.  If a specific item or body part is called for from a particular sex of a human, animal, or plant, I think it’s better to use that particular sex rather than think that the sexes are completely interchangeable; just as straight sex and gay sex have different powers, so too (as I see it) do male and female bodies.  Still, from the perspective of who can or can’t do magic, gender has no role to play in it.

“mercury as a cock with a human head” — Usually, in the Mediterranean, we find humanoid bodies with animal heads, like those of Egypt.  The Greeks tended to frown on these zoocephalic gods, preferring their strictly anthrophomorphic gods like Apollo or Serapis.  However, even with some of the more bizarre gods, like the human-torsoed cock-headed snake-legged Abrasax, we tend to find that the body is human and the head is animalian.  I know of no representation of a rooster with a human head as a representation of Mercury or Hermes, but perhaps you mean a phallus?  In which case, the word you’re thinking of is “herm“.

“massive cock painting” — I prefer photographs, myself, and I prefer GIFs more than those.  There’s a whole subreddit for that, too, you know!  I’d link to it, except that I’m writing this post at work, and….yeah.

“fuck a golem jod he vau he” — Please don’t fuck a golem.  The only way to turn a golem off is to kill it, at which point you turn sexy-divine lithokinesis into necrogeophilia, and that gets really weird.

“is using corse salt for protection godly or not?” — Well, you won’t find circles of salt described in the Bible, to be sure, but then, neither will you find lots of what the Catholic Church does, either.  That said, the Church uses salt in its consecration of holy water, as there’s some virtue in salt that helps to sanctify or cleanse stuff spiritually.  Plus, it has lots of use dating back hundreds of years, if not millennia, as a means of protection from spiritual harm.  It’s up to you to judge how godly that may be, but I’m on the side that it’s quite alright to do so.

“what happens if i summon spirits good” — You did it!  You summoned a spirit.  Congratulations!  Now, I hope you thought this part out, but…why did you summon a spirit?  To what end?  Anyone can pick up a phone and call a number; what’re you going to talk about?  What will you ask for?  That’s the real part of summoning that nobody seems to think about ahead of time, and the whole point of the act.  Why bother establishing contact with a spirit if you have nothing to talk about?

“symbols on solomons wand” — In book II, chapter 8 of the Key of Solomon, we find described the method to create the Wand and Staff, which involves inscribing the symbols from the Key onto the wand in the day and hour of Mercury.  Joseph Peterson on his Esoteric Archives gives a lot of Hermetic wand lore, and in his notes on the Key of Solomon, he believes that the symbols from the Key are nothing more than corrupted Hebrew for “AGLA + ON + TETRAGRAMMATON”, the same names used on the wand in Trithemius’ ritual of conjuration.  I used both the Solomonic symbols and the Trithemian names on my own personal Wand of Art, and while I’m not entirely convinced that they’re supposed to be the same thing, they do have similar feels to their power.

Ebony Wand Design

“bath soap by geomancy figure spell” — While geomancy and magic get along great, I’m less sure about things like herbs and physical supplies used with the geomantic figures; the most I’ve seen geomantic figures used in magic is by turning the figures into a sigil that can be used to augment other works.  However, by using the elemental, planetary, and zodiacal attributions to the geomantic figures, we can get a reasonably good idea of the herbs and materials needed to make a soap or wash for each figure, such that if we wanted to be empowered by the figure of Puer, we’d make a soap using warming, spicy, woody, Martian herbs and inscribe the figure or a sigil of the figure into the soap before using it in the shower.  I suppose it could be done reasonably well this way.

“names of all seven archangels including rose” — I’m not sure what set of archangels includes the name “Rose”, unless you’re a diehard Whovian who has a special place in their cosmology for the 10th Doctor’s companion.  For me, the seven archangels of the Orthodox tradition are Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Barachiel, Jehudiel, and Sealtiel.

“items to put on a sagiterian prayer alter” — Please note that you put things on an altar, but change them when you alter them.  This misspelling never fails to get on my nerves.  As to the actual search term, the idea of setting up an altar or shrine to a constellation is…unusual, though not entirely out of reason.  Normally, when worship of celestial bodies is called for, it’s directed to the seven planets, hardly ever to the fixed stars, and much less any particular constellation of the Zodiac (notable exceptions being stars like the Behenian stars, the Pleiades, and so forth).  I suppose, if you wanted to set up a particular shrine to honor the constellation and god of Sagittarius in a standard modern Western fashion, you could use colors associated with the qabbalistic path of Samekh (= Temperance = Sagittarius), which are blue, yellow, green, and dark vivid blue; Jupiterian symbols and effects, such as a scepter, a battle-crown, bay and palm leaves, and so forth; symbols that relate directly to the sign, such as statues of centaurs and bows and arrows, and things that relate to the goddess Artemis; etc.  Setting it up facing the north-north west would be appropriate, or setting it up to face the east and working with it when the sign Sagittarius rises.  Making offerings in sets of 6 is appropriate, as the letter Samekh has the gematria value of 60.