I have also added four introductory chapters:
1. What is the Abramelin operation? explains the historic background of the operation. It is not the sort of academic study that Dave Evans could have provided, but just a very basic summary of what was known about the operation when I began, plus reference to material more recently discovered.
2. Background. Why I attempted the operation outlines my personal background to the operation: how I heard about and why I decided to try it.
3. Preparing for the operation. This is the most practical chapter, because it goes into some detail about the problems of performing an ancient ritual in a modern Western environment, and some of the challenges to be addressed.
4. Notes towards an understanding of my diary is added to outline some of the personal issues I had to face—like following instructions to pray to a God that I did not believe in, and what sort of meditative practices to choose. This chapter prepares the reader to make better sense of the diary, without my having to fill it with masses of extra explanatory footnotes.
Finally, I have added four Postscript chapters to address questions about the later impact of the operation on me and on my life. This does something to answer the inevitable question “was it all worth it?”.
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1The late David Evans later co-founded JSM—The Journal for the Academic Study of Magic—and his books included The History of British Magic After Crowley, published in 2007.
2A 2016 Irish independent horror film, written and directed by Liam Gavin and starring Steve Oram and Catherine Walker.
CHAPTER ONE
What is the Abramelin operation?
The book as I knew it
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is a fifteenth century grimoire, or book of magic, that includes instructions as to how an individual can make contact with their Holy Guardian Angel. It was translated into English by S.L. MacGregor Mathers in 1893 and his edition was published at the beginning of the twentieth century and has been reproduced in several editions since. I had a beautiful 1950s reprint of the original Watkins edition and—to be used as a working copy—a de Laurence 1929 edition that was ex libris Order of the Cubic Stone.
In the introduction Mathers explains that the manuscript was in French as part of the private collection of the Marquis of Paulny housed in the Biblioteque de l'Arsenal in Paris. It had been translated into French from the original Hebrew of “Abraham the Jew”. Mathers had not found any other copy or replica of the book—not even in the British Museum's extensive occult collection. Ted Bryant (an ex-disciple of Aleister Crowley who helped me prepare for the Abramelin operation) said that was surprising. In his experience it was more usual for several copies of any grimoire manuscript, with variations, to be found in various collections across Europe, so the existence of just one unique copy was suspicious. George Dehn's later research (see below) confirmed Ted's doubts.
This version of the text is presented in three books. The first book is written as an epistle from Abraham the Jew to his son, outlining his story, his magical quest, how he discovered the true magic, and advising him on the one true path. The second book was the most important for my purposes, because it describes the main part of the operation: how to build an oratory, prepare the necessary materials, and conduct oneself for the six months of retirement. It concludes with a detailed description of what to do in the weeks after meeting one's Holy Guardian Angel. The third book is full of magical squares to be used to work wonders.
What the second book describes is a six-month preparatory retirement, beginning at Easter, and running through three phases of two months each. After that preparation, one should experience the knowledge and conversation of one's Holy Guardian Angel and, under its tutelage, one would subsequently be introduced to orders of spirits and would learn how to deal with them and be issued instructions on how to deploy the magical squares from the third book.
My main interest was in that initial six-month preparation. The concept was that no-one should attempt to work with these spirits unless they had first proven themselves by undergoing ritual purification and preparation—in this case for six months. This made sense to me, so I was more interested in this grimoire than others that put greater emphasis on conjuration and less on rigorous preparation (just as one might choose a university that actually required one to study for a degree, rather than simply pay for the certificate!).
I had read Israel Regardie's Tree of Life, and he too felt that the really powerful part of the operation was in the spiritual preparation it demanded, and the effect this could have on the candidate. One of the outstanding features of Abramelin is that it is a conjuration that does not require a protective “magic circle”. Instead, the long preparation is expected to strengthen and seal the candidate and the oratory against evil.
It was not that I had no interest at all in conjuration, but I did have reservations. Firstly, I would not want to attempt it unless I had already proven my worth and ability to handle such stuff. Secondly, while I could accept the reality of a spiritual initiation over six months, I found it much harder to believe in magic squares that could, for example, make an army appear or enable one to fly through the air looking like an eagle.
So my attitude was that the retirement was something that I needed to do for my own progress; should I then find myself somehow transformed into a great sage or mighty spiritual warrior, I would be in a better position to judge the value of later magical operations and decide accordingly.
You could argue that, at this stage, my approach was more psychological than magical: more Regardie than Crowley.
The book as it is now understood
In 2006 a totally new English language edition, called The Book of Abramelin, was published. It was translated from a German edition compiled by Georg Dehn. This new version was based on research into further copies of the manuscript that had since been discovered in Germany. These revealed that the French version used by Mathers was very incomplete, and the new edition could therefore be accepted as more accurate, and a better guide.
While recognisably similar to the Mathers version, it was different in several important respects. Most important from my point of view was the fact that the German version required eighteen instead of six months of retirement—divided into three phases of six months each, rather than three of two months each. The requirements for each phase were pretty much as in the Mathers version, except three times as long. Eighteen months would make a huge difference, but I was not altogether surprised, because I had felt at the end of my six months that the retirement was still far from complete—see Chapter Three.
Another difference that would have been extremely significant if I had attempted the ensuing spells, was that the magic squares provided in the Mathers version were found to be seriously incomplete. I may have intuited as much at the time, for I had my own doubts about attempting to use those squares.
A further big difference is that the German version has an additional book—making four parts in all. Between the biography and the instructional part was another book of folk-magic spells. This seems a bit odd, because the first book advises one against dabbling in magic, and suggests that nothing should be attempted without a thorough grounding in the true, holy magic as described in book three. Certainly I would not have been interested in this part, so its omission was relatively unimportant for me.
I will not go into any greater detail here, because I am not an historian or archivist. I have nothing to add to the account in The Book of Abramelin by Georg Dehn—so I recommend that edition to anyone needing to know more about the background. And I certainly recommend that version for anyone planning to perform the operation, because it is less ambiguous and more clearly written than the Mathers version.
On the other hand, I do value some of the comments added by Mathers in the footnotes. In a few respects—such