By Amanda Moreno
I have often joked that I’m so anti Things I Cannot See (ghosts, presences, etc.) that I don’t even like the idea of guardian angels. At this point, the joke should probably be stricken from my tape o’ scripts, as shamanic journeying practices have expanded my understanding of the nature of guides and imagination. But there is something unsettling about an invisible presence.
One of the reasons (and there were many) that I did some dabbling with an offshoot of the Golden Dawn — a system of ceremonial magic and occult study — was because of an experience I had with archangels during a ritual. Up until recently, felt experiences of divine beings or energies were rare. Often times in a ritual setting I’d just be going on faith that the entities/elementals I’d called on were there combined with a psychological/biological understanding of how ritual works.
The reasons for my hesitance in working with ‘angels’ probably goes back to that persistent theme of working on trust and an entrenched belief that I will eventually be betrayed by myself or any ‘other’ that I call on for help. I’m pretty sure we all come from long lines of ancestors who have been betrayed by religion and god. Hell, just reading the news is enough to turn many of us away.
But I had an experience in a ritual led by a friend, in which she performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, calling on four archangels, and I could actually feel the energy coming in. It felt absolutely ancient — older than the Earth, older than any cosmology — and it took my breath away. And then things lined up so that I got a chance to be initiated into a Golden Dawn-esque group, and began working with these angels on regular basis.