Secret Key

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Below you’ll find my working notes and central record for my conversations with the ancient and august Shemhamephorash angels, who are present at the deepest roots of one of humanity’s oldest recorded approaches to the Divine.

The Introduction text contains my response to a query I received in response to a budding wizard who stepped in halfway through my report to my working group, which contained the texts linked below. It gives (a little bit of) context, as well as my procedure, and is included for those who want to make the experiment of the 72 themselves. Deeper explanations coming soon! Please feel free to browse in the meantime; there’s a lot here already.

Each Angel’s page contains

• (1) Text for each Angel’s attributes, correspondences, and sovereignty, as received via Ambelain and amended by the good people at guideangel.com, with especial thanks for the Hebrew. Please note that Ambelain is a problematic source, a proponent of Catholic and French imperialism during its heyday. In my practice as given below, I have shed a lot that I felt was a dangerous modern accretion to the tradition (such as the national names, and some of the more Chauvinist interpretations of the angels’ nature), as well as working to jail-break the practice from centuries of monotheist power structures that it antedates and that have, at times, forged a weapon out of the angels’ sacred gift.
• (2) The results of two separate year-long courses of invocation. The first was undertaken from Spring Equinox 2021 to 2022, followed by a “fallow” year during which I worked to integrate the messages and blessings I had received, then a second course from 2023 to 2024 to extend the work and provide grounds for comparison. The messages received are, of course, my own work and that of my own guardian angel, and also the work of the great Angels whose presence I requested and received, with many good and personal proofs of their efficacy, goodwill, and beneficence. The text provided is in places intensely personal; as I am able, I’ll edit it additionally, but for now, here it is in its raw state.

I offer this work in gratitude for the angels and their gifts, and for the records and workings of the good and holy, and mostly unnamed, people who have brought this tradition to me across the millenia–and in the hope that it will bless your life as it has blessed mine, and be a part of that great Miracle which is the union of heaven and earth, and the flourishing of their children throughout this holy and living world.

INTRODUCTION

Q: For those of us who are newer to … magic, can you say a bit about the process you’re going through? The 72 are the Shem HaMephorash angels, right? Is there a particular formal working you’re doing, or book you’re using…?

A: The following is the detailed procedure I use for scrying with the 72 Angels of the Shem, which I started with several others following the general calendar and guidelines in the Angel Magic course [an international wizardly research group under the auspices of the Gordon White’s Rune Soup]. It’s a course of 72 invocations over the course of a year, so about one angel every five days. This is my second time around the wheel, after taking a year off to integrate the first round.

None of the following is strictly required to contact these angels, who are always with us—and your practice will necessarily depend on your own nature and approach. However, I believe that without the names and seals of the angels, the operator’s spoken and deeply felt intent, the verses from Exodus (and perhaps the individual versicles as well), it would be a different sort of working. There are lots of ways to pray in this living tradition, which is made new with each practitioner; it helps to invoke often, and the more you put into your practice, the more you’ll be in a place to receive what is continually offered.

I’m using Ambelain’s PracEach Angel’s page containstical Kabbalah as a basic reference—correcting for his staunch and strident Catholic imperialism and occasional significant errors of attribution or translation—along with the similar but often more helpful (and significantly less chauvinistic and imperialist) attributions and instructions at www.guideangel.com, which is helpful enough to provide the Hebrew letters for the seals. Where they differ regarding the versicles, etc., I’ve tried to reconcile them through direct research with a concordance bible, or made a judgment call, then consulted with the angels themselves once I got one on the line.

I’m also using an eclectic, heretical, and bespoke launch sequence, because that’s how I roll. I tie my 72 work into my daily prayers by including the current angel along with the Heptameron angels, allowing me to shorten the invocations considerably during the 72 calls since I’m already “plugged in.”

The calls are made at a dedicated altar facing east, with a red cloth on a card table. The seal for the current angel (which I drew during the first course) is on the altar, stacked on top of a black obsidian mirror, atop (1) a King James bible, (2) an Apocrypha, and (3) a shrine to Penemue/Thoth made from a hollowed-out Chicago Manual of Style and containing sacred writings. There is a candle on either side of the seal. In front of this stack is the talisman made according to the instructions given under Mumiah, modified somewhat for my purposes, atop which I’ve placed a selenite sphere used for scrying. Also on the altar are frankincense and a burner, a glass with water blessed at my main altar, pens and paper (I use blank 3×5 cards), and a bell.

For the launch sequence, I clear the space with the bells, then pray a (pagan and jailbroken) Our Lady, followed by a slightly repaganized version of the initial prayers in Ambelain (basically Isaiah 66:1-2, followed by a prayer to set sacred space and request the presence of the angel). Then I light the candles and incense and pray Exodus 14:19-21, first in my best, but undoubtedly atrocious, attempt at Hebrew, then in English, followed by this prayer (neglecting Ambelains’ overwrought and frankly overpowering Angelic Conjuration):

_Open to me, Lord and Lady, the fountain that you opened to my first parents. Part the veils as you parted the waters, O Lady, Lord, that I may know and speak with the angels of the Elohim Shemhamephorash. In this appointed time wherein you reign, I call upon {Name} who is {attribute}. Be present, {Name}; guide, bless, and protect me._

Then I asperge the seal, repeat the versicle associated with the angel in English, then sing it repeatedly in Latin until I feel something shift that feels like the presence of the angel. Then I begin writing the report as the experience unfolds for me, which I post here with minimal editing. The experiences last usually 20 minutes to half an hour; when I feel the energy drop or the vision resolves, I pass the seal through the incense smoke, along with the newly written cards and my prior reports, give Ambelain’s “Thanksgiving,” and extinguish the candles.

If you’re just beginning, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get lengthy visions or clear voices overnight (though you certainly may!). The angels will speak to you in the ways that you’re ready and best able to understand–maybe in dreams or day-time omens, chance grace, or a single image or sound that opens itself to you.

All that’s to say, your mileage will vary depending on your own life experiences and the lenses and filters and tools you bring to the angels.* I firmly believe that if you come with nothing but a prayer and openness to hearing an answer, you’ll get one–and the more you drink from that holy fountain, the stronger and sweeter it gets. Welcome to the Shem—may you go with grace on your walk with the angels!

*To give you an idea of the lens I’m bringing to my visions: I’ve been doing angel magic of some form for most of my life, first in a pious Mormon family, and later through a couple decades of freelance theurgy and goetia, with a heavy emphasis on scrying, trance journey, and scribework. More recently I’ve taken initiation in the earth-based Crossroads tradition of spirit work through local teachers and continue to teach in that community, and of course I’ve been an avid follower of our dear Gordon’s work since he first crossed my radar.