In Book III, of Agrippa's Books of Occult Philosophy, in Chapter 26-27, there is a method to discover (supposedly) the name of a good, and a bad spirit, that has been "assigned" to you at birth.

I'm trying to do this, but I can't quite make sense of it, I'm going to be buying another translation before Christmas, and hopefully that will help clear it up, but I thought I'd try here first.

From what I can understand (which may be all wrong), the method in Chapter 26, is to take your birth chart, and starting at your Ascendant, assign in order the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, and wherever a planet rests, that letter is part of the Spirit name. But how do you order the letters to get the name? I've figured out my seven letters, but from there, I don't know how to arrange them to find the name.

I've also read two different explanations on getting the name of the bad spirit, one is you label the letters backwards from the Ascendant, the other is you use the letters (degrees) opposite of wherever a planet rests in your chart.

Can anyone clear this up for me?

As for chapter 27, I'm just lost, so any help there would be much appreciated.

Wouldn't it be easier to evoke an entity who'd know and ask it directly? Is it possible to communicate with either of your geniuses to get their names, with what information you already have? How about contacting Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa himself?
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There's also some English versions in the public domain:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Occulta_Philosophia/Book_3
http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa3.htm

This post has been edited by SeekerVI: Dec 16 2007, 12:20 PM

Start with the letter of your Sun sign move through the planetary order, in order.
As a shadow . . . you could go in the reverse (adverse) direction or alternatively, opposition planets.

If you use hebrew or greek, remember appropriate endings.




I think this basic method of personal zodiacal spirit naming is also in The Magus . . .

Thanks Palindroem, I just have one question.

When you say through the planetary order, in which order to you mean? Start at the Sun and move outwards? Or start with the Sun, and then go to the fastest-slowest order (Moon-Mercury-Venus etc). Just I see both used, so I'm wondering with you mean. Thanks.

Traditionally . . . in the order they move-quickness. I think though, that doesn't start with the Sun . . instead with the moon.

Agrippa has two different planetary orders and uses them seemingly indiscriminantly. I don't really get it.

In this case, start with the order per movement/transition. Then, maybe later see what the other "produces". You may resonate better with one or the other.

This post has been edited by palindroem: Dec 21 2007, 11:50 AM

Thanks for the latter advice (sorry I didn't respond to it before).

Anyways, I got a new translation, and according to the footnotes, you just follow the order they appear in your chart, counterclockwise from the Ascendant. Reading that, and rereading the old english it actually made a lot of sense.

I've figured out the names, but not worked with them yet, but I'll put up my results when I do.

This is a fascinating subject, I have been divining names of intelligences by using the mystical associations of the individual hebrew letters for sometime, however I'm curious about this method as well, and how they compare. In chapter 26, Agrippa suggests that a useful genius may be divined based on what the magician wishes to accomplish and by composing (as far as I can tell from the text) a starchart beneficial to that purpose and then taking the spirit's name from that.

What I'm wondering though is exactly what he means we he talks about assigning letters - there are only 12 hebrew letters that are associated with the signs/houses; is that saying that only these 12 letters will be used to determine the name of said spirit, or am I missing something critical here?

peace

This post has been edited by Vagrant Dreamer: Jan 23 2008, 12:39 AM

I haven't figured out what is intended when divining the useful Genius from a chart. I have two ideas, which both differ from yours.

The first, is it is treated like Horary astrology. In horary astrology, if I lost my car keys, I wouldn't make a chart of when I thought I lost them. I'd sit down at the computer, draw up a chart, and the chart, from that moment I asked and looked, would hold the answer. So I thought perhaps when you have decided "I want to do a love spell" then you go, and get a chart for that minute, and use it.

The other is "I want to do a love spell at 1633, January 30th, 2008" so you draw up the chart for that time, and use it.

Personally I think the first is more likely, but I haven't experimented to see what I get from it.

Assigning the letters means all of them. Not just the 12 associated with the signs. What you do is start at the ascendant (let's say 0 Aries, just for ease of use) as assign it Aleph, then go to Aries 1, and that is Beth, 2, Gimel. Etc etc.

But, the only letters you record, and the the letters that fall on a degree with a planet. So if you had Venus at 6 Aries and not other planet from 0-6, then Zain, would be the letter you use in the angel name. You go around the Wheel, and in that order, however they fall, you write down those letters, to divine the name. When doing your Angel/Demon (or however you want to term them), you use every planet. Or at least, I would, otherwise it would be unbalanced.

When writing out a Genius name for a specific intention he says "then those letters which fall into the places of the stars the air whereof thou wouldest use", which I understand as, only use the letters that are on planets beneficial to the working. So for the love spell, you might only use Venus (duh), Mercury (communication) and Jupiter (increase, joy, oversimplified I know), as those relate to love and a happy relationship, but tossing in Saturn and Mars might add more stress to it.

Okay, I understand so far.

When the degrees of the house total more than 22, which is typical, at least 30 degrees if you are using a system that divides the houses equally, do you just start over from aleph again?

Your interpretation of using the names of the genius sounds accurate, now that I have read it again. Thanks for that clarification.

peace

Yeah, sorry, I forgot that. So in the example I gave 0-21 would be the 22 Hebrew letters, then 22 Aries would be Aleph, and it would start all over again, going through the alphabet as needed.

That was fast, thanks! I was about to log off and do my nightlies, now I can put this one in there as well. If I have some significant results, I'll bring them back to share.

peace

i haven t thought a lot of this method but sounds interesting.
But let me ask you this: the arraz of the planets should be:
A. chaldeean , Luna, Mercur, Venus, Sol, Mars, Jupiter Saturn?
B. the alignment that is actuallz in the natal chart, in the order that the planets line themselves up? Luna, Saturn, Sol, etc etc etc a million possibilities

The Fourth Book of pseudoAgrippa contains further info on this method. but there, the order of the succeeding alphabet for the angel starts at Aries, and for the Demon starts at Libra.
That would mean:

A. Literally, the alphabet starts with Aleph at 0 Aries and goes around, repeating about 15 times and ends at 29Pisces
for the demon, the alphabet starts at 0 Libra and goes in the same way, ending at 29 Virgo.

B. Alegorically, the Aries mentioned is supposed to be the Ascendent, while Libra is the descendent.

Part B would be more logical, since it would mean that each person has its own code, of the 360 possible Ascendent situations.

Now the problem of the negative genius remains: Starting from the Ascendent but in clockwise manner, opposite to the Angel s, or in counterclocwise manner, like the angel s code , but starting counting the letters from Libra?

its pretty late and haven t gotten around to read the whole text, just putting this out there.

You're to go around the chart, using the order of the planets in your chart. So if your Moon is in the first house, Jupiter the second, and Mercury the third, your order is Moon, Jupiter, Mercury etc.



I agree. I think the Aries/Libra are examples, not so much you start with Aries, but that you start with the Ascendant.



You can try both, I've found that starting at the Ascendant and going clockwise worked well to produce my Demon though.

i ve only calculated my good genius letters and their gematria fits perfectly in my numerological scheme, very awesome...
but just the 7, not counting the termination El. i think i ll use either the rose cross to sigilize them, either a special form of aiq bekar.

If I understand what you're saying, you're conceiving of this wrong. It isn't you divide the chart into 22 sections. Starting at the Ascendant line, that degree is Aleph, and each degree is the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, until you use all 22, then you start at Aleph again. So each successive degree is another letter, not that a letter rules a 16 degree chunk of the chart.

the idea of this technique is the multitude of variations it gives. the 22 lettered alphabet does not fit in exactly with the 360 degrees, therefore there s more work put in into calculating.

Abed, due to the fact that this is an astrological technique and astrology was passed on from the Greeks to the Medieval and Renaissance period mainly through arabic authors, i think it would be very appropriate to use this with the abjad, If you re muslim, not christian or jewish or at least ceremonially based upon this tradition, the 28 letter alphabet would in fact be more advised than the hebrew.
The proper termination would be in your case IL.
M L Kh W F Dj M just to give an illustrative example would be the genius MELKHUFDJEMIL, and by gemaria you could also find which one of the Asma Ul Husna rules over it and can help you contact him.

Also, i ve devised a method of making a square out of it. Regardless if it is hebrew or arabic, the name of the genius would have 9 letters, 7 planets + A L, termination, 9 letters.

Make a square of 6X6 and write the name from right to left:

6 5 4 3 2 1

3 2 1 9 8 7

9 8 7 6 5 4

6 5 4 3 2 1

3 2 1 9 8 7

9 8 7 6 5 4

well, here we have a problem, because if we use a wider range, we change the data. You could use the 360 degrees divided by 28, it s very wide, but you get the lunar mansions. ascribe each lunar mansion with a letter and get the name of the spirit, but it will not be as potent as the Agrippa spirit, but a lunar spirit that would be ascribed to you.

Listen, read the FourthBook of Agrippa. He says some things about the arabic points and something called Almutel. Maybe you can enlighten us about its meaning.
bismillah, habibi
asterion