On the Angels of the Hours

In my research on the Arbatel recently, I came up with a slightly more fleshed-out/thought-out approach to using what (little) we have in the actual text to come up with a conjuration ritual.  The skeleton is all there, and bears much resemblance to other conjuration rituals in the late Solomonic line, like the Heptameron or Trithemian rites.  Still, though, I threw in something that wasn’t part of the Arbatel proper: a prayer of invocation to one’s holy guardian angel adapted from the Ars Paulina as found in the Lemegeton (at the very end of the text).  To some, this might be an odd place to dig for extra material, considering how the text (at least in the form given by the Lemegeton from Sloane 3825) is technically dated later than the Arbatel, but there’s an important connection between the two: Paracelsus.  The Arbatel references Paracelsus or Paracelsan/Theophrastic forms of magic and philosophy, and would fit in quite well with the general Paracelsan school at the time of its writing in northern Italy or Germany; if not written by a student of Paracelsus, then definitely by someone in the general circles that the Paracelsans ran in.  The Ars Paulina, on the other hand, doesn’t have such explicit references, but the signs are all there.  Quoth Asterion on his old Solomonic Magic blog where he discusses the Table of Practice from the Ars Paulina (excerpt edited for clarity and formatting):

Upon researching the Archidoxes of Magic of Paracelsus, I came to study more closely it’s relation to the Pauline Art of the Lemegeton.  My guess is that not only it was heavily influenced by the Archidoxes, but composed by the very same man who translated it into English, that is, Robert Turner, or perhaps one of his close circle.  I have four reasons for this conclusion:

1. The Seals of the Zodiac in the Ars Paulina are the same seals that Paracelsus prescribes in his Archidoexes, On Occult Philosophy.
2. The recipes use to make these seals are of Paracelsian origin, but all the mistakes are also in the Turner translation. Joseph Peterson made up a comprehensive table, and we can see that all translation mistakes made by Turner turn up in the Ars Paulina. From there, every manuscript of Ars Paulina perpetuates Turner’s mistakes.
3. The year 1641 is mentioned in the text, also gunpowder.
4. The Table of Practice:
   In his diatribe against negromancy, Paracelsus rejects seals and signs of the spirits quite violently, but grants particular merit to two figures of astounding power:

   ‘Two triangular figures, cutting one another thorow with a cross, are so painted or engraven, that they do include and divide themselves into seven spaces within, and do make six corners outwardly, wherein are written six wonderful Letters of the great Name of God; to wit, Adonay, according to their true order. This is one of the Characters we have spoken.

   (Paracelsus, of Occult Philosophy, chap. III, page 41, Turner translation)

   We might be tempted to say that this is a quite simple pentacle, met all over. But I was not able to find one such seal, either in print or in manuscript, that dated before the publication of the Archidoxes.
   The author of the Pauline art was so much of a Paracelsian, that he even denied the spirits evoked the right to have a seal, making their lamens exclusively astrological. It is my guess that the table of practice had much to thank Paracelsus; its central figure is exactly what he describes.

Given the Paracelsan connections between the Arbatel and the Ars Paulina, and the fact that they’re not too far distanced in time and space, I found it okay enough to incorporate a prayer from the latter into a ritual of the former.

Of course, once I pulled the guardian angel invocation from the Ars Paulina, I wanted to know more about the context and rest of the practice of the Ars Paulina, if only to sate my own curiosity and make sure I’m not tapping into something I don’t want to be tapping into.  Plus, with an elaborate Table of Practice design like the one given in the Lemegeton, how could I resist busting out my Illustrator skills to make a modern set version?  It helps that Joseph Peterson of Esoteric Archives is so excellent with his scholarship and research, because he pointed out that the squiggly characters on the planetary circles in the Pauline Table of Practice are those given (in a much clearer, more regular form) in the Magical Calendar as the “7 planetarum sigilla”.  Using those versions, I made two variant designs of the Pauline Table of Practice:

As you can see, the first image is designed as close as possible to the original text itself.  The second image, however, is a variant I designed where I first swapped out the placements of the planetary circles to better match a more heliocentric sphere-based (or, as some might say, qabbalah-based) arrangement, rotated the planetary circles so that they “point” outwards away from the center of the Table, and use the divine name Elohim instead of IHVH, with one letter put between each pair of outer planetary circles for a more balanced arrangement.  Of course, were I to use these, I’d first use the by-the-book design and only later, if I felt comfortable enough doing so, would try variants.  Still, it was a fun little project.

So, how does one go about using this Table in the way the Ars Paulina prescribes?  It’s not for general angelic summoning, but for a specific type of angel: those of the hours.  Same sort of deal as the planetary hours, but you’re not calling the angel of the planet of the hour, but the angel of the hour itself.  The Ars Paulina, in its first book, lists 24 angels, each with a list of dukes under each angel:

It also lists numbers of servants, either under the angel or for each duke, and how many dukes there are both of the lesser or greater ranks, and also a name for the hour itself (except for the first hour), but these don’t appear to be used in the grimoire at all.

In this system, for instance, the first hour of any day, no matter what day of the week or sign of the year, is always ruled by the angel called Samael (likely no relation to that Samael; the text uses Samuel or Samael interchangeably for this angel).  Interestingly, unlike other grimoires that deal with angels, the lamens or seals used to conjure these angels do not make use of characters specific to that angel itself; none of the angels listed above have their own unique seals.  Instead, you construct a seal by making one circle inside another, the inner circle containing the symbol for the planet ruling the sign on the ascendant with the sign of the twelfth house at the time of the conjuration, and the outer circle containing all the planets except the one in the inner circle, starting with the Moon or Saturn (whichever is available) and going “up” through the spheres counterclockwise from there.  So, for instance, given the date and place of Wednesday, March 10, 1641 in London, England, at about 7am that day, falling within the first hour of the day (which is the example given in the text), we have Aries rising with Aquarius on the cusp of house XII (using Placidus, Koch, Regiomontanus, Porphyry, or similar space-based divisions of houses).  Thus, the seal to conjure the angel governing this hour in this time and place looks like the following:

Now we can see what Asterion meant when the author of the Ars Paulina “denied the spirits evoked the right to have a seal, making their lamens exclusively astrological”.  There’s a possibility of going with Arbatel aphorism III.17 where one can get a specific seal or character from the spirit to use in that specific hour, which would be good only for that particular magician for a given timeframe like 140 years according to the Arbatel’s reckoning, but I think you’ll see why I wouldn’t bother later on.

The manner of using these seals and these angels is fairly straightforward: make the seal (the material is not specified), put it on the planetary circle of the Table of Practice that matches the lord of the ascendant (Mars, in the case given above), lay your hand on the seal on the Table, burn some incense appropriate to the same planet, and recite the prayer of conjuration (bold text indicates the parts to be swapped out for different hours/angels) :

O you mighty, great, and potent angel Samael who rules in the first hour of the day, I, the servant of the Most High God, do conjure and entreat you in the name of the most omnipotent and immortal Lord God of Hosts, IHVH Tetragrammaton, and by the name of that God that you are obedient to, by the head of the Hierarchy, by the seal that you are known in power by, by the seven Angels that stand before the Throne of God, and by the seven planets and their seals and characters, by the angel that rules the sign of the twelfth house which now ascends in this first hour, that you would be graciously pleased to gird up and gather yourself together, and by divine permission to move and come from all parts of the world, wheresoever you may be, and show yourself visibly and plainly in this crystal stone to the sight of my eyes, speaking with a voice intelligible and to my understanding, and that you would be favorably pleased that I may have familiar friendship and constant society both now and at all times when I shall call you forth to visible appearance to inform and direct me in all things that I shall seem good and lawful unto the Creator and you.

O you great and powerful angel Samael, I invoke, adjure, command, and most powerfully call you forth from your orders and place of residence to visible apparition in and through these great, mighty, incomprehensible, extraordinary, and divine names of the great God who was and is and ever shall be: ADONAI, SABAOTH, ADONAI, AMIORAM, HAGIOS, AGLA, ON, TETRAGRAMMATON!  By and in the name PRIMEUMATON, which commands the whole host of heaven whose power and virtue is most effectual for calling you forth and ordering creation, and which commands you to transmit your visible rays perfectly into my sight, and your voice to my ears, in and through this crystal stone, that I may plainly see you and perfectly hear you; speak unto me!  Therefore, move, o mighty and blessed angel Samael, and in this potent name of the great God IHVH, and by the imperial dignity thereof, descend and show yourself visibly and perfectly in a pleasant and comely form before me in this crystal stone, to the sight of my eyes, speaking with a voice intelligible and to my apprehension, showing, declaring, and accomplishing all my desires that I shall ask or request of you both herein and in whatsoever truths or other things that are just and lawful before the presence of Almighty God, the giver of all good gifts, unto whom I beg that He would be graciously pleased to bestow upon me.  O servant of mercy Samael, for all these, be friendly unto me, and act for me as for the servant of the Most High God, so far as God shall give you power in your office to perform, whereunto I move you in power and presence to appear that I may sing with his holy angels: O mappa la man, hallelujah!

Amen.

Conjuration of the dukes under one of the angels of the hour begins with an invocation to the angel itself, then a variant of the conjuration (bold text indicates parts to be swapped out for different hours/angels/dukes, and italic text indicates where to pick up on the above conjuration, again changing names accordingly for the specific duke to be conjured):

O you mighty and potent angel Samael, who is by the decree of the most high King of Glory, ruler and governor of the first hour of the day, I, the servant of the Most High, do desire and entreat you by these three great and mighty names of God AGLA, ON, TETRAGRAMMATON, and by the power and virtue thereof to assist and help me in my affairs, and by your power and authority, to send and cause to come and appear to me all or any of these angels that I shall call by name that reside under your government, to instruct, help, aid, and assist me, in all such matters and things according to their office, as I shall desire and request of them that they may act for me as for the servant of the Most High Creator.

O you mighty and potent angel Ameniel, who rules by divine permission under the great and potent angel Samael, who is the great and potent angel ruling this first hour of the day, I, the servant of the Most High God, do conjure and entreat you in the name of the most omnipotent and immortal Lord God of Hosts…

Beyond that, not much is specified in the way of ritual, though as can be seen, a crystal shewstone is mentioned in the invocation.  The text does say that, when the spirit comes, they should be welcomed, you should ask your desire of them, and when you’re finished, “dismiss him according to your orders of dismission” (i.e. whatever usual prayers or words you give to dismiss a spirit).

So why do I bring these angels up?  Well, once I understood the process of the Ars Paulina, it seemed pretty straightforward to me in all respects but one: why would I bother conjuring an angel of the hour, instead of the angel of the planet of the hour?  The text doesn’t elaborate on any differences between the angels besides their names, dukes, and how many legions of spirits they govern.  The angels of the hours have no intrinsic connection to the planets; even the introduction to the Ars Paulina states:

…The Nature of these 24 Angels of the day and night changeth every day, and their offices are to do all things that are attributed to the 7 planets. But that changeth every day also: as for example you may see in the following Treatise that Samuel the Angel ruleth the first hour of the day beginning at Sunrise, suppose it be on a Monday in the first hour of the (that hour is attributed to the Moon) that you call Samuel or any of his Dukes; their offices in that hour is to do all things that are attributed to the Moon. But if you call him or any of his subservient Dukes on Tuesday morning at Sunrise, being the first hour of the day: their offices are to do all things that are attributed to Mars.  And so the like is to be observed in the first hour of every day, and the like is to be observed of the Angels and their servants that rule any of the other hours, either in the day or night…

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I would bother with the method given in the Ars Paulina.  Like, it’s interesting, and it’s got my attention, but I honestly don’t know why I would go through the trouble of this, even for the sake of occult exploration.  It’s not a matter of “here’s a more efficient way of getting what you want”, but knowing that I already time my conjurations according to the planetary hours, why would I bother with remembering who’s who and when from a list of 24 angels, rather than working with one of the seven planetary angels, a much smaller list to memorize?  Plus, it seems more, yanno, direct to just work with the angels of the planets rather than the angel of an hour which is ruled by a planet.  If the Trithemian rite of conjuration as given by Francis Barrett was indeed developed later than the Ars Paulina as I suspect, then it seems to be a simplification for the sake of efficiency (to which I can successfully attest).

This is where I started asking questions and digging in deeper.  One helpful description of the Pauline working comes from Imperial Arts on their LJ (where they give a description of how they work the Pauline Table), notes that the method of creating the seals for the angels of the hours doesn’t tie you to them, but rather to the time and space of the conjuration (especially considering the implied use of specific space-based house systems as given by the example seals in the Ars Paulina).  This is unique, and such a simple observation surprises me.  In pretty much every ritual I’ve done, there’s always been the unstated assumption that I need to make some sort of ritual space separated out from the rest of the world; through the use of wards, circles, and spiritual boundaries, I insulate myself and my space so that I can work as undisturbed as possible from external influences in the space around me or my temple.  Separating myself from timing is impossible, and indeed the spiritual connections of the time of my rituals is something I incorporate fully, but the spiritual connections of the place (beyond genii loci or having to deal with physical disturbances) is something that never occurred to me to incorporate in a ritual framework.  Plus, since the hours of the day (in the old reckoning) are inherently tied to the place, I’m kind of embarrassed I never put two and two together like this.

But I kept digging.  Based on a friend’s advice, I signed up for Gordon White’s grimoire course, where I got to hear him talk about the history, development, and use of grimoire-based magic in the West.  This, combined with asking several friends about the use of angels of the hours, led me to learn and understand that the angels of the hours is actually a much older system than I would have realized, going back to the Hygromanteia of Solomon, at least!  Indeed, the Hygromanteia of Solomon even goes one step further, and gives unique angel-demon pairs for each hour of each day of the week, leading to a total of 2 × 24 × 7 = 336 total spirits for that system alone (due to which I’m going to refrain from including them in this post, especially given that Skinner in his edition of the Magical Treatise of Solomon gives five separate lists from different manuscripts, each with their own omissions or changes to the names).  Thus, for any given hour of any given day of the week, there’s a unique demon and its corresponding binding angel, which itself is a practice commonly found in the older Solomonic texts: the demon does something we consider awful according to its nature, but there is a specific angel that binds the demon and keeps it from doing its thing, and by calling upon the angel, we prevent the demon from hurting us.  It does indeed seem like this system got simplified as time went on; excepting the Ars Paulina, the only other relatively modern Solomonic text I can think of that incorporates any kind of hour-based magic apart from the planetary angels is the Heptameron, where each of the 24 hours has a specific name used in creating the elaborate Heptameron-style Circles of Art:

Like the Ars Paulina, however, the Heptameron says that the hours themselves are given to whatever planet rules that given hour on that particular day:

It is also to be known, that the Angels do rule the hours in a successive order, according to the course of the heavens, and Planets unto which they are subject; so that that Spirit which governeth the day, ruleth also the first hour of the day; the second from this governeth the second hour; the third; the third hour, and so consequently: and when seven Planets and hours have made their revolution, it returneth again to the first which ruleth the day.

So what gives?  What’s with all the hour names and angels of the hours?  Besides the fact that using these in ritual ties you temporally and spatially to the ritual, especially in the Ars Paulina way of creating seals based on the actual horoscope of the ritual, why would we bother with using these annoyingly large lists of names as opposed to a simpler, more efficient, and no less effective set of seven planetary angels?

Turns out, that’s the wrong question to ask.  Technically, yes, you can call upon the angels of the hours for pretty much anything that you can call upon the angels of the planets for, at least in terms of getting stuff done down here.  In fact, according to the opinions and experiences of my friends and the reasons why these angels of the hours were developed in the first place, it actually might be more effective to call upon them instead of the planetary angels alone, specifically because of their limited scope and being tied temporally and spatially to a given context.  In some ways, they can be considered one of the most powerful set of spirits because they’re so immediately present in a spatial and temporal (or at least temporal) sense.  Just as you could work with some generic deity of the Earth, you could also work with the specific genius loci of your land, which is generally a more recommended practice because they’re so much more powerful within the limits of their own domain (for more info on this, check out Kalagni’s posts about genii loci on eir’s blog Blue Flame Magick).

For similar reasons, you could work with the angel ruling the planet that rules the hour, but now that I look at it, that could easily be seen as “skipping a step” in the chain of manifestation.  Looking at it from a classical Solomonic way, then, the most immediate and present power would, indeed, be the hour itself, which is ruled by a planet, which is ruled by an angel.  Even if you really just wanted to work with Michael of the Sun, there’s still the matter that he’s more distant than what’s staring you right in the face a foot away.  Plus, if the angels of the hours are given all the powers and offices of that planet, then it actually makes more sense to work with them than the planetary angels, because they’re equivalent in office (at least in regards to getting stuff done “down here”) but greater in effective force because they’re more immediately present in time and space.  Plus, we see that there are demonic allusions to the hours, as well; it’s odd to see an angel described as having “dukes” in the Ars Paulina like in the more well-known demon-focused books of the Solomonic genre, and while the Heptameron has kings and ministers of angels, they’re notably of the airs and winds on a given day, mundane and worldly instead of heavenly or planetary; in the Hygromanteia manuscripts, there are specific demons for the hours with their corresponding binding angels, which are called upon in tandem (MS Athonicus Dion. 282, trans. Skinner):

I conjure you, angel NN who rules this hour and who is appointed for the provision and service of mankind; angel NN, eager at all times, strong, brave, and sharp!  I conjure you by God who ordered you to guard this hour to be my collaborator, together with your submissive demon NN, who is appointed to be servant at this hour.  Cooperate with me, and make my work effective, good, and true.

If the angels (and demons) of the hours are more forceful in their works because of their spatial-temporal presence, then note one of the ramifications of this: any of their antics can cause problems for you both spatially and temporally in a way that planetary spirits wouldn’t be able to cause so quick or so hard because of their spatial-temporal distance.  Just as how any event where the genius loci is troubled can go awry because the spirits of that land are unsettled, how much more so would it be if the angels or demons presiding over the immediate time and space of your ritual were acting up?  Many magicians nowadays take pains to guard their temples and sacred spaces and ritual areas from physical, acoustic, and spiritual invaders, but I haven’t heard of anyone warding the time or the overall spatial-temporal context of the ritual.

In this sense, we have an exceedingly good case to make to bring back the angels of the hours, or at least reincorporate them into our work: to give us further protection in our rituals by warding not only the space of the ritual but also the time of the ritual, by focusing on the most immediately felt and known temporal effect, that of the hour itself, apart and before any planetary rulership even begins to come into play.  You can see this in how far the Heptameron goes to build its Circle of Art, by incorporating the names of the hour, the season, the spirits of the winds, the minor angels of the heavens, and the planetary angel(s) of the day itself.  While we don’t need to go so far to clear the airs, so to speak, I claim that by simply giving a token nod to the angel ruling the hour of the ritual, we can make our results much stronger and more direct.  We probably needn’t do much more than offer a sincere invocation to the angel of the hour with its dukes in the Pauline fashion, or to the angel with its demon of the hour and day in the Hygromantic way, simply to open the ways for our ritual to proceed as we desire and that all baneful, harmful influences be kept at bay by the strength and virtues bestowed upon the angel and its ministering spirits/serving demons.

This is definitely something I want to explore more, in addition to the Arbatel works, and see if I can’t augment my already-existing Trithemian rite with an invocation to the angel of the hours.  I’d need to get more supplies and tools for it, but I think a proper Pauline Table of Practice to experiment with wouldn’t hurt, either.