Copyright 1987, 1992 by Benjamin Rowe
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Generating the "Abyss" Experience with the Temple
WARNING: The technique described herein can be VERY DANGEROUS to the emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of the magician who makes use of it. I am releasing it solely because full disclosure was one of the requirements under which the Enochian Temple system was originally given to me. The entities who provided the basic information feel that people can not grow to spiritual adulthood without being exposed to adult hazards. My experience of the results prevents me from being quite so cold-blooded. The same goals can be accomplished by more gradual means, as those entities have stated themselves.
The magician who choses to use this technique must take full personal responsibility for both the decision to do so, and for any events resulting from its use.
Should a magician want use it despite this warning, he or she should do so only after constructing a strong, fully charged Temple which includes the altars of the sub-elements. And any invocations using this technique should be immediately preceded by the erection of the strongest wards the magician is capable of constructing.
The names of a Tablet's Seniors can be formed into a table on their own by placing their names one above the other, going clockwise from the Senior of Jupiter. For the Earth Tablet, the table of the Seniors would be:
A C Z I N O R
L Z I N O P O
A L H C T G A
L I I A N S A
A H M L I C V
L A I D R O M
Similar pseudo-tablets can be formed from the other elemental tablets. Names of six letters are formed by reading down the columns. These names already exist in the Temple, where they are formed by drawing a circle clockwise from any square of the Senior of Jupiter, connecting the corresponding squares in the other Seniors' names. In their natural place, they express the radiatory effect of the Elemental King as his force passes out along the paths provided by the Seniors. But the names can also be used in another way.
First, hollow hexagons are formed, as in figure ( ), one-half unit thick with outer faces one unit wide. Each letter of a name is assigned to one of the wedge-like segments of this structure in clockwise succession. Each name's hexagon is placed immediately below the corresponding arm in the wheel of the Seniors, about two-thirds of the way from the center of the Temple to the end of the arm, with the base side at the same level as the tops of the pillars. The hexagon attributed to the Sun is in the center of the upper Temple, with the Elemental King's beam passing through the hole.
In the chart as given above, the columns are attributed (from left to right) to Venus, Sun, Saturn, Earth/Luna, Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars. When used in invocations, the name should be vibrated immediately after that of the King or corresponding Senior, and at no other time. Also, the first enochian key should always precede the invocation of the element when these names are used.
When they are visualized in the upper Temple, an appropriate telesmatic image for the Senior (or the god-form of the related planet) should be visualized standing upright above (not in) the hollow center.1 The magician himself should stand in the beam of the King while invoking them, and attempt to identify himself with it to the greatest extent possible.
As the Elemental King and each Senior is invoked with the corresponding name from the table, the hexagon should be visualized as projecting itself downwards into the lower temple, forming a hollow crystal column. The force of the King or Senior is channeled down through the column and then radiates outward through the faces. (This is in contrast to the normal Temple formulation, where the Seniors' force spreads out to form a curtain around the lower Temple.)
In the Enochian system, six of the planets are attributed to the first six sephiroth of the Tree of Life. The seventh, Saturn, takes in the last four sephiroth as a group. In the formulation here, the Senior of Saturn takes Sol's place in Tiphereth as the governor of the elements, and the Elemental King abandons his solar attributes, taking on his secondary attribution to the path of Shin, which connects Tiphereth and Kether in Achad's version of the Tree of Life.
In the Tree of Life, the centralizing effect of Sol normally causes the forces of the upper Tree to be focused in Tiphereth. But when Sol's force is repressed or removed, the balance of these sephiroth moves to the empty area in the center of the upper Tree. The path of Shin passes through this area, but it does not provide any focus for the forces of the six sephiroth.2 Each of the sephiroth becomes focused in itself, and the attractive force of each draws equally on the empty center area. That area experiences a uniform pull outwards in all directions, resulting in the rending and dispersal of anything placed there. A conscious being passing up the path of Shin perceives this effect as the experience of the Abyss.
Normally, the Enochian Temple expresses the essential unity of the Tablets with the whole Tree of Life as a balanced, integrated structure. Using the technique presented here suppresses that integrity and replaces it with a strong force towards dispersion. The magician, identified with the Elemental King's beam of light, places himself to experience the full strength of that dispersion.
Depending on the degree of success, the magician may experience a variety of perceptions. At the least intense level, he may experience sensations of inexplicable "wrongness" and non-specific paranoia, or a sense of jittery energy like an overdose of methedrine. At a somewhat more intense level, he will experience a sense of his soul being ripped into extremely small pieces, while each piece is simultaneously being crushed to a point.
At full force, the experience then evolves into what can only be called the perception of voidness; the negation, the removal of any being or value from absolutely everything perceptible, both internal and external. The intensity of this voidness can not be adequately described. At this stage the paranoia sometimes returns, causing the magician to perceive the voidness as an all-consuming malevolent entity. Giving in to this paranoia, struggling to avoid being devoured, brings one on to the path of those whom Crowley calls the Black Brothers. If one does not struggle, that which perceives is itself absorbed into the void and another condition supervenes for which description is futile.
Footnotes
1 Images for the Seniors of the Earth Tablet are given at the beginning of each Senior's section in The Book of the Seniors, which is available through the Archives.
2 The idea that an eleventh sephira exists in this position is one of the most vile lies ever perpetrated. It is unfortunate that some otherwise competent scholars have made their reputations by spreading it even further. While there is the appearance of something occupying the center of the hexagram when it is viewed from lower down in the Tree, this appearance is entirely hallucinatory.
The Tiphereth consciousness merely sees a reflection of itself in the surface of the Great Sea, as a skin diver sees a distorted reflection of himself in the waves above his head.
