the Daimonic Craft
The following excerpt presents the third previously unpublished chapter from my exploration on the daemonic in Paracelsus’ work, which I loosely titled All Angel, All Flesh. The first two chapters can be accessed here and here. I wrote this text from a practitioner’s point of view with the dual intention of inspiring confidence in your own goêtic work, as well as overcoming traditional misconceptions about ritual magic that are often repeated in the West.
Additionally, these pages provide an essential basis for understanding the original works of Paracelsus. The latter is helpful when reading my own books on Paracelsus, such as Holy Heretics, INGENIUM and the soon-to-be-published extensive study of his Olympic Spirits.
LVX,
Frater Acher
source: Liber De Inventore Artium
What should man make of himself or what does he make, who has really nothing in himself, but a naked man? Only what is given to him from outside, otherwise there is nothing there. And from that which is injected, in whose nature he then is, the same thing he can do and the same thing he is.[1]
Now it follows that the first fathers in the body learned nothing from themselves, but had everything from God without means. He presented them with good and evil, in which they deceived themselves and made devils of themselves, while others kept themselves in the truth.[2]
Now the angels have no luminary,[3] only God [is a luminary], into whom all things go and from whom all creatures flow their own. The luminary does not mean God, but the beings of the angels; for the good [heavenly bodies] mean good angels, the evil ones mean evil angels. So man takes the angelic nature from heaven and is like heaven. He who knows the angels knows the astra, he who knows the astra knows the horoscope. The wise man, who knows all the world, now knows how to put man and angel together. He is Lucifer on earth, he is Jupiter in heaven, and so of the others.[4]
In August 2023, I had the opportunity to speak with an Aghori lineage holder in Kathmandu about practical magic. My first question to him was whether he had managed to practice magic without experiencing any negative setbacks to his physical health. We conversed in English, which was not a first language for either of us. He glanced at me, nodded to indicate that he understood, then looked back at the vegetables he was peeling and replied calmly:
"The art is to work only with those spirits and beings that approach you of their own accord. Do not call upon spirits or force them to come to you, but work with those who are already in the land where you live, as well as those who seek you out of their own accord. My spirits can therefore be poisonous and harmful to you, but prudent and healing to me. And vice versa. Our bodies are different and we are all unique; our contact with the spirits must be the same. Give each one their own spirit, and the body will not be harmed beyond what it is meant to be.”
This is roughly how I remember his response. I relate it here because we find in it an impressive parallel to the teachings of Paracelsus. In his works, the dividing line as to whether contact with good or evil angels, spirits or devils is appropriate or not is never drawn categorically. Instead, Paracelsus points out that each of us is uniquely predisposed to master certain arts. Such disposition cannot be changed, but it can be allowed to spoil, like a plowed field lying fallow. If, on the other hand, we decide to bring to life the arts that are inherent in us, we find ourselves already in the middle of our own narrow path. Your spirits are not my spirits, and your angel may poison and numb me where her/his presence heals and instructs you. The same is true for telluric underworld spirits and the denizens of all other corners of the cosmos.
To embrace our unique disposition for particular arts is indeed an act of free will, without which we won’t progress. However, none of us get to choose what it is that lies dormant with uns, only to face our destiny in the flesh. Much of our magical path is therefore dedicated to the slow process of gaining sovereignty over how we can best express and apply the individual traits of our disposition. Paracelsus says, I decide to rise from my bed for the night, and the angel of the corresponding work is already around me.[5] It is not the angel that lifts me from my bed, but the agency of my free will. As soon as the will moves, however, the strings of fate that it has struck vibrate back. In Paracelsus’ cosmology, every movement produces such angelic resonances. We make the decision, we decide to ask, to seek, to knock, and the spirits answer in that very same moment. Like a double helix we see human will and daimonic response intertwined, one unable to take the place of the other, yet eternally bound into one.
source: Philosophia Magna – Fragmentum Libri de Somniis et Euntibus in Somno
But now understand further about walking and dreaming. Know then that walking has its origin in us without the angels, and dreaming has its origin in us without the angels. But as we have caused it and it is at work, walking and dreaming, then the angel is there and represents his office as a guardian by day and by night. So this is to be understood: It is day and I have a cause to get up and go. So I get up and go. At the same moment, my angel is there and lifts me up and leads me into the power of God. So even if I sleep and the same spirits give cause in my sleep for me to get up and walk, he is there and lifts me up and guides me. As if he wanted to speak to those who see me walking: Behold, men, how God so faithfully preserves you in your sleep, and how you walk and climb and accomplish incredible things in high places and on high places and ends which you cannot reach when you are awake and which are impossible for you to reach when you walk. When you see that God protects and guards you in your sleep, when your nature impels you, with the same spirit that has given you cause to walk. He guides you even more when you are awake and knowing during the day. But the body is the same when you walk and when you sleep.[6]
So one part causes the other. That is, walking causes the guiding angel, the unskillful act causes the guarding angel, and according to how we are, we are met.[7]
In the following we will read a series of quotations from Paracelsus on this important aspect of magical apprenticeship. Over the course of his life’s work Paracelsus continued to circle around this essential point: The shape of the awakened Philosophus Adeptusdormant within each of us, looks unique according to our own capabilities. The way in which our path must be guided is equally individual, and is best shaped by the respective spirits themselves, who are masters of the arts to which we are called. There is only so much room for general manuals and strict codification if we do not want to deform such process from genuine initiation into human theatre. Just as the angels and spirits are each placed over a different part of creation to guard, evolve and nourish it, so our fingerprint in this world is also unique. Who can know what we are set over, what art we are meant to master, except ourselves and the spirits waiting for us to call on them?
The much-vaunted magical craft is at the heart of many Paracelsian writings. As a reader, however, you must realise that for Paracelsus the magical arts are no different from all the other arts. They all have to be sought out, taught and maintained by the spirits; they all have to be integrated into the signatures and ruts that we carry within us as individual dispositions. That is why my art will always differ from yours. Paracelsus’ model of learning therefore stands in stark contrast to the academic approach of both the 16th and 21st centuries. Books can contribute to the general preparation of the mind. But the real work takes place in the face of the sweat of practice, which silently, deliberately and patiently places the book of instructions in the hands of the spirits.
This contrast not only with academia, but also with Modern Western Magic itself becomes even clearer when it comes to the question of who decides what we actually want to learn. In the best Humboldtian tradition, modern primers guide us through all the Isms of magic, grinding the stone of our mind and art from all sides until we emerge as magical polymaths from our Faustian quest. Paracelsus would have burst out laughing at this lofty ideal and poured himself another beer! In his strongly animistic view of the world, what we learn, at what point in time, and on the basis of which material, is not in the hands of man, but is rooted in our divine disposition. The concept of fate is much less helpful here than that of grace. One is graced with this gift, the other is graced with that. Neither has chosen their talents, but has made the hard journey of discovering them and recognising them as such within themselves. A blue-eyed person remains blue-eyed and a redhead red-haired until age turns eyes and hairs all misty and grey. Just as we cannot change our body size once fully grown, we do not have the power to change the predispositions that have been placed into our spirit and flesh.
Certainly, we can learn skills and arts that don’t come naturally to us, even without innate talent. But how much sharper will our blade be when we choose to draw out the shapes that have been dormant in us all along? Paracelsus would have admonished us not to waste these talents, as they are nothing other than the divine grace for each one of us, an “angelic greeting”[8] embodied in our flesh.
source: De Causis Morborum Invisibilium
When God the Father created the heavens and the earth, he created them to be a means by which the things over which the body is to rule could come to us. So man is a master of medicine, a master of fields, meadows and vineyards. Not because the earth and sun were given to us for this purpose, but because God gives it according to the decree of these means. That is how it pleased him. In the same way, we do not have the wisdom of the arts from ourselves, but also through a means: the same means are the spirits. In the same way as a field that gives us fruit, so the arts proceed from them. This means is to be spoken of: it is the angels, or as God calls them, who come to us. In the same way as the angel came to Mary and said: you are full of grace. As these things were made manifest, so the graces are communicated to us secretly. Let each one keep the gifts that God sends him, to one this and to another that. And let them be to him an angelic greeting, which is as much as those very gifts.[9]
All things are to be sought from God: What he calls in this way to his saints to be done - be it this or that - he called it [actually] to the spirits or devils. For so the spirits have been commanded to teach and to help, that good may come to us from friends and enemies. This has now become evident in the light of nature, that the spirits have brought the arts to light. For this purpose, that such things might be experienced in good conscience, these same spirits have been invoked, as if they did it at their own will and as if they forgot that they were conquered at the command of God. And through the Chaldeans, Persians and Egyptians, the names of the spirits were learned through magical teaching and they were held up as gods. But if one were to seek much from the saints and God’s command were not there, they would still be unable to do anything. For they are only servants. So the names have been kept. And since they did not want it the way it was meant to be, they played with their own spirits and set up the ceremonies of fasting and praying and the like, just as the Jew Solomon had his mirror and Moses his Librum Consecrationis. And so they have multiplied it further and further, thinking they could accomplish something like this. But what they encountered was nothing but nettles and foolish things, like the work of all servants, with whom the Lord has nothing to do.[10]
source: Liber De Podagricis, Et Suis Speciebus, Et Morbis Annexis
All things that are now visible were once invisible with God. These - all as they were [invisible] - are now enclosed in a limbus, that is, in a visible body. The same body has become the great world and from it the human being. From this it follows that man can do nothing but what was before him. Therefore it also follows that the angels know all human arts and needs, as do the devils. For they are created out of limbus, out of which man was also made: therefore there are good and evil men on earth, and true and false, proud and humble. For like creates like.[11]
You will also find people performing signs that command the spirits, the angels. This is like a child overcoming its father and the father doing what the son wants. For man is born of such [spirits] who have such authority and power. And unless he does it through the Father himself, nothing else is possible for him in these things. So he who follows the angels follows his Father. He who learns from the spirits learns from his Father. He who recognizes the animals recognizes himself. He who understands the elements knows how the macrocosm is created.[12]
Therefore our works follow us. This means that we will blossom and grow in them like a mustard seed: we will be small on earth, but in heaven our angels will dwell in us.[13]
source: Manuale de Lapide Philosophico Medicinali
And therefore God has arranged and provided by means that through good spirits such arcana and mysteries would be impressed upon man to fathom, that some people take angelic natures from heaven and become so constituted; these are angel-knowers.[14] Such men then have a perfect understanding of nature, and in their daily course are able to think higher than other men, to distinguish the pure from the impure, to solve and separate, and to change it in such a way that it seems impossible to others. For they, as true physicists, can come to the aid of nature by proper means and bring it to perfection through their arts. Therefore they must shrink from all diabolical and impure works, as lies against truth and perfection, and give way before them. This truth, I say, should and must be pursued if one intends to come to a blissful end.[15]
source: Philosophia ad Athenienses
For the most advanced in all things does not speak to the mortals, and does not send his angel from his dwelling.[16]
Footnotes
[1] Sudhoff, Liber de inventore artium, Vol.1, p. 315
[2] Sudhoff, Liber de inventore artium, Vol.1, p. 317
[3] The German expression Gestirn is hard to translate in this context. In Paracelsus’ terms it refers to the celestial bodies just as much as to the outer and inner firmament. The former constituting the changing constellations of the sky, the latter being placed into man and becoming his daimonic nature. — What he expresses here, therefore, is the fact that angels or daimones themselves do not have an inner firmament like humans do; rather it is through their influence that humans gain theirs.
[4] Sudhoff, Liber de inventore artium, Vol.1, p. 317
[5] HE9,276
[6] HE9,276
[7] HE9,276]
[8] HE1,319
[9] HE1,319
[10] HE1,324
[11] HE4,253
[12] HE4,297
[13] HE4,256
[14] The German term Paracelsus uses here is Engelkenner, which could also be translated as acquainted with angels.
[15] HE6,422
[16] HE8,36]
