Tamiel, Holy Guardian Angel of Exile

Images generated via Midjourney.

I have gone back and forth over how public I want to be about my recent experiences touching the transcendent core of my self known as the Holy Guardian Angel. But given the direction my metaphysical explorations are going and my recent essay, A Reluctant Guide to Making Friends with Spirits where I briefly describe my HGA and thoughts on what the HGA is, I figure I may as well tell the whole story for record-keeping and posterity's sake. I'll continue to have more experiences which will likely be central to many of my writings and explorations, so it's worth having supplemental writing to link.

Anyway, here's the short version: as far as I can tell, last month I attained the knowledge and conversation of my holy guardian angel. "She"--because they first appeared to me as a goddess-like angel figure--is called Tamiel. I actually made first contact in December 2020 during a journeying session. The only evidence I could find of Tamiel online is from the biblical Book of Enoch, "an ancient Hebrew apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Enoch contains unique material on the origins of demons and Nephilim, [and] why some angels fell from heaven." (Wikipedia)

In it, Tamiel is described as one of the angels who taught astronomy (in biblical times, indistinguishable from astrology) to humans, and was also sometimes named Kasdeja from Aramaic, literally, "inhabitant of Chaldea", or "astrologer". I've subsequently confirmed this via further divination, journeying, direct synchronicities, and realizing that in many ways the myths associated with Tamiel are my myths, riddled throughout my life. And the more I have connected with Tamiel, the more magical--and strange--life has become. There's a lot to unpack there, so I'm trying to keep notes on all of it. For the detailed account, read on.

Note: this writeup is dense with talk of gods, planets, angels, scripture, psychic abilities, visions, and personal reflection with zero epistemic distance that would only be fluff here. If you're not magically operant or familiar with how I conceptualize my experiences, I highly recommend reading my guide (linked above). I'm also giving myself permission to say as much as I have to say about the topic, so prepare for plenty of personal musings about my life and its signs.

December 5th, 2020 - "First" contact

(Note: this experience is the same as described in A Reluctant Guide to Making Friends with Spirits. If you've read that, you can skip to the next section without missing anything.)

On December 5th I tweeted "might fuck around and roam the imaginal realms". I had been reading Mat Auryn's Psychic Witch and Konstantinos' Summoning Spirits and had always read about journeying, and was curious about it. So I decided to just give it a shot. That evening, combining a basic exercise from each of those books, I counted down to 100 with the intention of being in the alpha wave state, and then imagined a shimmering white ellipse flanked by dark curtains. Passing through, in my mind's eye I saw vast rolling hills--think Windows XP background but prettier, a pure white sky. A figure approached me who seemed to be flickering or glitching between multiple states: crone, woman, and something else. She settled into the form of a beautiful goddess-like figure in flowing white clothing wearing a circlet.

She said something like, "It's about time you got here." I had no idea who she was or what she was talking about so I shrugged. I asked her name, and she said "Tamiel". I figure she must have said "Tamriel", a continent from the Elder Scrolls video game series, and felt very skeptical. She offered to help stabilize my visualization and I agreed. She touched my forehead and I felt a rushing, tingling sensation throughout my body but mostly on my head. The image itself did stabilize but I was tired and losing concentration. She seemed to agree, transformed into a hawk or eagle, and flew away. Later, a doe came and sat with me while I was meditating, which only while writing this I have just realized mythologically represents the incarnation of deities, a connection to the supernatural, a messenger, or a familiar.

Later I looked up the name Tamiel and found it was the name of an obscure fallen angel from the book of Enoch who evidently taught astronomy to humanity. As in, astrology! I am an astrologer and astrology is central to my life path.

December 23rd, 2020 - Brief visit

I felt ambivalent about Tamiel. There was something in her nature that felt cold, and I had mixed feelings about angels given their fearsome biblical depictions. Intellectually I understood that angels, if they existed, would have existed since the beginning of creation and preceded their Abrahamic descriptions. But I still felt uneasy with her familiarity and the fact that she seemed distant yet powerful, and interested in me. She did not feel dangerous, or unkind, but she felt martial and very matter of fact which unnerved me in my supposed magical fantasy Windows XP spaceland.

I decided to talk to Tamiel again. This was a brief session that I did not take many notes on, but I recall doing the same procedure and meeting Tamiel in more of a void.

The key phrases I noted were:

• "You have all the pieces, just put them together."

• "The cartographer, mapping the sky."

• "Fear not, the eagle watches over you."

As it turned out, she was right that I had the pieces. The cartographer, mapping the sky, referred to herself, but obviously would also refer to me. The eagle thing is interesting, though. I didn't know this at the time, but eagles are associated with Jupiter/Zeus, a planet that is configured very strongly in my natal chart and with whom I had done past magical work before. Jupiter is generally considered the greater benefic and provides luck and protection, which I feel has been signified in my chart and shown in the general circumstances of my life.

I wouldn't try to contact Tamiel again for about a year and a half, though I would wonder about her from time to time.

June 23rd 2022 - Illumination

While writing my spirit guide, I figured I would recount my experience with Tamiel. In the process I fell down a rabbit hole of research and realized that she was my Holy Guardian Angel.

The Book of Enoch

Tamiel comes from The Book of Enoch. Scriptural exegesis is not exactly my wheelhouse, so I consulted a few friends in the process. My well-informed Jewish friend @taalumot tells me that the Hebrew spelling of Enoch is Chanokh, who is described in the Book of Genesis from before Noach (Noah). Chanokh lived 365(!) years, and then "walked with God", which isn't how the other deaths of the old men from Genesis are described. The book about him was not preserved by the redactors of the Bible--in fact, we only have it because of the Ethiopians and we don't even know if it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic. Fragments of an Aramaic version were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are as my friend puts it, full of "crazy angel shit" that the priests likely found theologically inconvenient. Still, it's quite clear that some Jews and early Christians alike were interested in this book.

Trying to get as close to the original source text as possible, I got a copy of R. H. Charles' edition of The Book of Enoch, who also produced the critical Ethiopian version. The first section of Enoch is called The Book of the Watchers, referring to the 200 angels who fathered the nephilim. Enoch was a man "whose eyes were opened by God" and delivered a vision by God's angels, along with an apocalyptic tale for the godless. Next is the story of the fall of the Watchers, 200 angels dispatched to Earth to watch over humans. They began to desire human women and eventually descended upon them to produce the Nephilim, but not before their leader Semjâzâ expressed fear that they would not all actually go through with it, and he would be left to pay for all their sins. These Watchers made an oath among themselves, "bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it."

As they comingled with humans and produced children, they taught humans "arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques that would otherwise be discovered gradually over time by humans"¹. God punished them for this, and they begged for leniency, asking Enoch to plead with God on their behalf. Enoch, being the messenger, did so and relayed the message: no. Punishment, forever.

Investigation

So... what gives? If Tamiel is a fallen angel who was punished forever, how is she just here, showing up in my journeys? I would think she's supposed to be on fire or something.

Since I was going to do a reading on an angel, I decided to put on something suitably vast and dramatic. I settled on Franssens: Harmony of the Spheres. I asked the god Hermes to act as liasion between myself and Tamiel. Something came to me spontaneously, and I drew a single card I called "the symbol at the gates". Its purpose was to gauge the nature of the actual container and experience I was about to enter into. I drew the Four of Pentacles: containers, protection, holding, boundaries, barriers.

At this time, my spouse Ras was around and briefly interrupted me. I realized that I needed to do a visualization to help myself mentally focus and stay in this mental space. I began to envision my normal white light force-field barrier thing but the imagery unexpectedly changed on me, to pure cold frost, a chamber of ice encapsulating the space. Yet it shimmered brightly, almost white itself, seeming to hold an intrinsic power of some kind.

Holding the question "What is the nature of Tamiel?" in my mind, I drew three cards in a triangle formation (topic on top, two themes on bottom): Six of Wands, Seven of Wands reversed, Page of Pentacles reversed. I interpreted this to mean that she was once a great power, a victor indeed, but now fallen, dematerialized. She can no longer touch the earth and can only act through humans now.

Next I asked: "What is the nature of your imprisonment?" For this I did a 5 card spread combining Past-Present-Future in the middle, "Solar/Mainstream Depiction/Concept" on top, and "The Truth" as in what-actually-happened on bottom.

The top card was The Star reversed. Stars are esoterically associated with angels, so this is an extremely literal depiction of the fall from grace. Past-present-future went: Four of Cups, Two of Pentacles, Eight of Swords. This I read as Tamiel being stuck or lost somewhere for a very long time (purgatory, hell, what have you) due to her involvement in the fall. Now, a deal has been cut somehow, and there is some amount of operation allowed.² Things are moving and changing. The future is unclear, and still being negotiated. I also get the sense that Tamiel is and will still be punished in some form, that they do not get to see the results of their works and that their service is restitution. Finally, on the bottom, the truth: the words that came through were tempering, restoration, learning, wisdom. As if this were really about learning after the fall, despite the human fixation on stories from ages ago.

7 minutes in, Ras turned on a lamp and the bulb flashed extremely brightly and burnt out completely. I took note of this as highly significant, since if there's one thing I knew about angels it's that they are associated with fire and light. I looked at the chart and noted that the Sun was exactly at the midheaven, the highest point in the sky, sometimes interpreted as the point at which Spirit descends to earth. I also noted the position of the lot of fortune, a point which moves through the zodiac by 1° every minute, which by transit I interpret as the moment-to-moment signification of material experience. It was exactly conjunct (13' away) my natal part of fortune in Leo, in Jupiter's term, in the transiting 11th house (which the ancients referred to as the house of "good spirit"), all while being trined within 2° by Jupiter from Aries, who himself was also exactly conjunct my natal midheaven.

I drew four more cards, asking: "What do you want from me/us?" Top card: King of Cups reversed. Middle two: Ace of Wands, Nine of Wands. Bottom card: Nine of Swords. I read this as a bequeathal, tools, the phrase "weapons of God" came to mind. It is a relinquishing, given to protectors and upholders. For the Nine of Wands I felt drawn to inspect it more closely and learned for the first time that in the Rider-Waite-Smith depiction there's a patchwork of zodiac and planetary glyphs, and began to view this as representing journeying, psychism, and power, the contemplation of the map of the stars. I even began to see the swords as "rays into the future", alluding to the ancient concept of rays cast between planets forming aspects. It also had a particular synchronicity with the patchwork hexagonal board of the Telescope of Zoroaster that I had been reading about just a few days earlier. I also got the impression that these tools were being given away to a chosen few directly by Tamiel, but that they're also being provided by many other spirits in different proportions to different ends, and not necessarily universally selfless or good ones.

I decided to end the session and asked if Tamiel had any last things to say. I drew another diamond spread: Five of Cups reversed, Two of Pentacles and The High Priestess reversed, and Eight of Pentacles. I read this as a pretty direct message: "So much has been lost, misused, spoiled by ignorance. We can change this with diligent work, hard work."

Exactly one hour from commencing the transmission was complete. The transiting lot of spirit, which I interpret to be the sign of spirit's influence throughout a day, was within 8' of trine with transiting Jupiter who was just setting on the horizon.

Confirmation

I had been discussing this experience with Hawk who has inspired a wave of local HGA activations, though I didn't have an inkling this would relate to me at the time. But we had friends who had their HGAs reveal their names in dreams, so Hawk asked me if I thought Tamiel could be my HGA. This took me aback, since despite the literal name Holy Guardian Angel, I didn't think it was possible mine would be in like, scripture, let alone an apocalyptic tale. But there was plenty of evidence pointing straight at a direct connection to me, so I decided to investigate.

I spent some time calming and centering myself and pendulum-tested to ask "is Tamiel my HGA?" and received a firm yes. I decided to draw three cards, asking to be shown something which confirms its nature. I drew the Five of Swords, Three of Pentacles reversed, and the Three of Swords reversed³. At first it didn't make much sense to me.

Then it hit me: this is a perfect depiction of the story of exile. Leaving heaven to comingle with and fall in love with humanity, teaching them all of these arts and then being punished for it. I got a tremendous sense of somberness, resignation, and ages-old hurt with this reading, as if Tamiel and her kind felt like they weren't punished just for trespassing but also for their love of humanity.

In all of this, there has been something about Saturn and Aquarius. Several of my astrologer friends have been trying out conceptualizing Saturn as the feminine occult crone, due to her associations with time, experience, old ways, magic, and being more receptive/containing. (It's also interesting to note that one theory goes that the ancients gave Saturn to the day sect to contain her natural night-time maleficence, and Mars to the night sect to contain his natural day-time aggression.) Before I knew any of this I journeyed to meet Tamiel, who first appeared to me as a shifting feminine triplicity figure, one form of which was definitely crone. The inexplicable shift to frost visualizations is another clue given that Saturn is the esoterically cold, icy planet. Saturn's themes align: exile, prison, loneliness. But also attempting to help the many with tools, information, and wisdom through her expression in Aquarius. Even the symbol at the gate, Four of Pentacles, is very Saturnian. In my own natal chart, I have Saturn in Aquarius opposing a natal stellium of the Sun, Moon, and Jupiter in Leo. Tamiel is associated with the 12th degree of Aquarius (opposing my Sun-Moon midpoint within 1°).

But it wasn't just Saturn. I had also been talking to Shuly who has done a deep study of the relationship between natal charts and contact with the holy guardian angel. She takes the lord of the lot of spirit and the almuten (a medieval technique for finding the most significant planet in one's chart) to most closely describe the nature of one's HGA. (Before your preconceptions about almutens pop up--the way Shuly does it is cool.) Mine are the Moon and Jupiter. The latter made a lot of sense; Jupiter had been highly involved in my chart at the time and indicated in the microtiming of the transits during my Tamiel interactions. Plus, a being giving gifts of wisdom and knowledge is very Jupiterian. I would later also make a link between the Moon as my lord of spirit, Tamiel's initial triple-feminine appearance which included the crone, and Hekate's virgin-mother-crone triplicity. Another friend Brea pointed me to Hekate's role in divination and astrology in Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature, which I am eagerly awaiting in the mail.

As I had these realizations, I put on my headphones to listen to my frequently-listened-to chillout playlist which was already playing. The audio is at the exact start of these lyrics in a song called "How I Feel" by Wax Tailor:

On the stage please
They're all waiting for you
Birds flying high, you know how I feel
Sun in the sky, you know how I feel
Breeze drifting on by, you know how I feel
It's a new dawn, it's a new day
It's a new life for me

And ends:

I have something very important to say to you, please
I, I think he wants to be heard, that's all
OK, let's hear you
I'll tell you, I am talking about my life
I just can't seem to get back through to you
I'm not just talking about one person
I'm talking about everybody
What, what, what do you mean
You know what I'm talking about

I was talking to Hawk about this as this synchronicity occurred. They sent me a screenshot of lyrics they had captured at an earlier point, which also perfectly aligned with the theme of making contact with something deep within oneself, something that's been with you your entire life.

Transcribed (from the song "Satellite" by TV On The Radio):

Your voice was a satellite spinning next to me
Now I can't hear
Over the radio, someone said a satellite just went down into the sea
So I go
I fathom leagues
I am the undertow
I wait peacefully
Now I'm waiting for a signal or a sound
Where can you be found now, my love?
Where can you be?
Waiting for a signal or a sound

Integration

That night, I allowed myself to receive some form of light gnosis from Tamiel as I fell asleep.

I imagined a vast plane of frost, snow-capped and -covered, the very air itself chilling and cooling but nonetheless empowered with divinity. It seemed like a place of respite, a cold, distant island from which to view the world. Certain metaphors clicked for me. This visualization seemed to be like a way to connect with Tamiel. Perhaps a peek into her world or nature. As I sat there contemplating this, it became even more clear how deeply I understood Tamiel's story through a Saturnian theme of exile. I have been exiled--or chosen self-exile--in various ways throughout my entire life.

I wandered through the stories of exile from my past. My parents fought and separated and got back together multiple times; I experienced the loss of my first childhood home at 7 and ended up moving at least 30 times by the time I was 20; I was an extremely lonely child and occupied most of my own time; I went to college as far away from home as possible and then dropped out to wander the country for 5 months; the pandemic forced a complete retreat from old friend groups due to shifting values and frustrations at the world; even now my marriage is long distance while my spouse and I undergo the immigration process; I could go on, but you get the picture.

Contemplating all of this felt immense and mind-blowing, but also healing. I began to understand how if I had had a normal life, I never would have had the urgent need to understand people to protect myself, never would have been seduced by the promises of esotericism and astrology, never would have found this fringe path the way I found it, all perfectly signified by my natal Saturn in Aquarius. Further testimony is given by the mythology of the first decan (10°) of Aquarius, associated with the rebel, pioneer, and/or eccentric living on the margins of society, if not in complete exile.

This excerpt from Austin Coppock's description of Saturn in the first decan of Aquarius from 36 Faces blew me away with its relevance: "While other planets placed here may invite one to leave the herd behind, Saturn rarely offers its natives a choice. In youth they come to know what it is to be on the outside, looking in. From their vantage outside, however, they come to understand how systems operate better than those entombed within them. So positioned, many develop an innovative perspective. Often these natives also learn to live by rules more universal and profound than those commonly held by their culture."

June 25th, 2022 - The Tower

The next day I am woken at exactly 4 AM by howling dogs, and after falling asleep again I wake up spontaneously at exactly 6:59 AM, one minute before my alarm would go off. After doing some writing to gather my focus, I decide that if Tamiel is truly my HGA, then we may as well pick up where we left off: in a journey.

Around 7:40 AM I sit to meditate. I'm not sure what to expect and nothing appears. I sense an urging to begin the visualization myself. As I reach for an image, I begin to see the same ice plane from last night, but before it can solidify, it's rended in two as a massive ice crystal tower emerges and the ground reforms around it, creating a ring that locks the tower into place.

"What is this?" I ask, though I'm getting a little fuzzy. Maintaining receiving visualization and communication is still difficult for me. Tamiel says, "This is the tower of the tools and weapons of God."

This makes me a little nervous. I ask if Tamiel has negative aims toward it. "Of course not," she says. "We do not go against the lord. Our fall was intentional and knowing. Why do you think we made a pact to go through with it? We knew exactly what would happen because it was ordained and purposeful. My exile is a natural balance. (Almost as if a logical conclusion.)"⁴

I get the sense that despite this exile, and somber nature, Tamiel still serves willingly and has great reach throughout the universe to accomplish its aims. I ask if there's anything more and she says, "No. We have much work to do and I don't want to overwhelm you." Lastly, as I am closing the connection, she tells me that Tamiel is not her true name. I received a stream of a few different letters and almost the intimation of a name, but nothing clear.

That night I watched Everything Everywhere All At Once, which completely blew me away, especially with its richly coded esoteric language. It depicted so well the reality-melting sensations and experience of moving through ever deepening initiation processes and repeatedly moved me to tears. I wrote an essay on it called The Blooming Rose of Everything Everywhere All At Once.

A few days later I returned to the tower, but this time Tamiel took me inside, up to the 4th of infinite floors. Inside were shelves upon shelves of books surrounding a huge floorspace dominated by a table with a gargantuan book covering the entire surface. I understood it to contain every landmass in the world, with many other books in the library detailing the individual areas of every inch of the earth, every blade of grass, every speck of dirt. Everything that had been and that could be.

I ask about astrology, and Tamiel says first I must understand why we're doing this. The goal is to bring wisdom to the earth. She says: "The world is changing as always. I am the keeper here; I can only make changes through you and others." I get the sense that this is a subtle work, requiring discernment, because making people light up with wisdom requires subtlety, flexibility, and ingenuity. Tamiel then embraces me in a kiss. I feel my familiar overwhelming bliss sensations and take a huge breath. Tamiel tells me she has given me a gift to help our bond, to bring us closer and make communication easier. This time I could not see Tamiel's face: it was obscured by brilliant light at all times.

Union

I continued to have journeys and conversations with Tamiel. I began to notice that the way she felt in all of our interactions, the tone of her voice, sounded like the inner voice of wisdom that I'd experienced at various points in my life as intuition. I figured that my intuiton probably was my HGA. Innate voice whose purpose is to help you make good decisions that's always been there and seems to have nothing but your best interests at heart? Yeah, that sounds like a holy guardian angel/higher self/inner self/soul/whatever.

From that point, the procedure was simple if subtle. I constantly asked myself yes/no questions through various divinatory means, getting closer and closer to my body until I was doing muscle testing. With my recognition of Tamiel as that inner knowing, I quickly went through tarot, pendulums, astro dice, muscle testing, to simply asking myself questions in my head. In turn, the voice got louder and stronger than I'd ever experienced. I still had to be calm enough to "hear" it, but it was getting easier and easier, and even seemed to able to cut through my emotional noise at times. She would speak entire paragraphs to me.

Confirming her wisdom repeatedly through divination and external verification, I grew to trust Tamiel's intentions through her icy temperament. She invited me to take counsel from my gods, from God, The Big "Guy" Itself, anything. The emphasis was clear: Tamiel was there to guide but not dictate. I could do whatever I wanted with my life, but she would tell me her opinion. But I had a very clear life path, and if I followed that and developed myself spiritually, there were untold gifts and successes possible--all the things I've ever wanted for myself. Sounds too good to be true, but luckily, I had done a good enough job of stumbling upon my life path already that Tamiel and I were in complete alignment. May as well, right?

Tamiel's "kiss" also seemed to do something to my heart center. One problem I was experiencing with our new immediacy of communication was that it was so fast that it triggered reflexive answers, intrusive thoughts, or other distracting preemptive ideas that my mind automatically wanted to fill in. But I found that my heart would "glow" with a blissful feeling of presence and comfort when in deep communication with Tamiel, and she instructed me that I could imagine and "summon" (biofeedback) the feeling again to bring myself back to center with her. We would do meditations I called "heart time". Tamiel told me that these sessions served to deepen our connection, bringing us closer together, granting me further sensitivity and vision, and make communication easier. I would sit and focus on my heart center as I felt her presence there, which felt like a sort of dynamic energy that feels like enthralling "passion". Perhaps a strange word, but I have come to learn that emotion itself is a form of literal subtle energy which can have a charge and phenomenological sensation when doing energy work. To put words to it, the passion felt like an increasing openness to the awareness of the immense numinousness of her nature, as well as my own.

In general, recognizing Tamiel within myself changed everything for me. In a way, she was--is--me. My work with Tamiel has become more of an active shepherd in my life, guiding me through difficult times, periods of doubt and fear, and leading me through emotional releasing work tied to chronic conditions and ailments in my body. One night shortly after, my spouse Ras was singing a childhood song which reminded me of when my mother used to hum it to me. My heart clearer than ever, I weep. Trying to describe my recent experiences, I become overwhelmed by the overwhelming appreciation and the feeling of being home. Now, I have this awareness that there's truly some part of spirit that I can rely on, that feels real and substantial. I found myself. I cry, each sob just as much a laugh of joy.

On July 5th Tamiel gave me her true name⁵. I felt it was correct, and Tamiel told me as much, but I found some external verification through gematria, a method of representing language as numbers which allows you to identify potential correspondences and connections between various words. I don't know a ton about gematria, but I do know I can go to gematrix.org and plug in "Tamiel", yielding 165 in Jewish gematria, 360 in English gematria, and 60 in Simple gematria. 360 is interesting to me since it's the number of degrees in the zodiac, and Tamiel is biblically associated with astrology. But you can also "reduce" these numbers: 360 becomes 9 (3 + 6 + 0 = 9) and 60 becomes 6 (6 + 0 = 6). Interestingly, Tamiel's true name's gematria in English and Simple gematria also reduce to 9 and 6 respectively, and the actual gematria totals are also extremely close to those of Tamiel's.

As Tamiel has explained it to me, the true name's purpose is to establish an instant strong connection to her. It can be used as a memetic key to put myself into the mindspace for clearer communication and presence. On the magical level, the true name itself is a literal energetic connection to her nature, and can also be used as an invocation for magical workings. During this time, I was experiencing very frequent heart-center activation in the form of powerful stimulus, bliss sensations, and general heightened awareness, as well as a significant general sense of "presence" and throbbing in my third eye region.

Eyes

I have always been fascinated with the idea of having some sort of second sight, psychic perception, or other mode of extrasensory seeing. I believe that's also tied up in my fascination with divination and the body as a divination instrument. Tamiel would spend meditation sessions "working" on my third eye area, provoking intense stimulation. She showed me how to shape my attention to perceive the subtle nature behind physical matter. During one psychedelic heart experience which arose during a meditation, I looked at the dead and blackened flowers near me and in them perceived the mythic themes of stillness and death. I looked at the jar of magnesium supplement next to it and "saw" the rapid, rollicking, ecstatic energy of mineral and sugar. The electricity and silicon chaos of frenetic energy inside my phone. The ink in a pen and its deep blackness power, the inert dead stillness of the plastic encasing it.

During one journey, Tamiel offered to "help me see". She appeared to me in full biblical angel form, her face splitting into multiple rings covered in eyes. The feathers on her wings began to wink eyes into existence, and strands of fabric-like material flowed around her. Covered in eyes, of course. I agreed, and she enwreathed me in the strands like a mummy, covering every inch of my imagined body. She told me that in order to materialize sight, I would need to develop my inner sight first. I felt my consciousness widen and enter an extremely associative state, and went through a whirlwind visualization of different types of landscapes, and then various memories from my childhood popped into my consciousness, as if a tour through my own life. I drifted off to sleep shortly after, but we would revisit my memories again soon. The next day, similar to how I had felt for the presence behind the objects around me, I "saw" the eyes wrapped around my skin, fresh. Tamiel explained that this was the visual metaphor for actual changes which were happening to my subtle body. With time, the vividness of the eyes would fade.

I didn't take the contents of these visualizations to be literal--at least not yet. As I've seen in my journeying experiences, imagination is a pathway to the truth and externally verifiable information. My imagination in perceiving these things may simply be logical conclusions drawn from my intellectual understanding of the material and matter I'm looking at, but the practice of allowing imagination to happen at all and see what it develops into is the point. My imagination "skills" are rusty--that is, my ability to calmly and dispassionately receive a visual or "guide myself" through a journey. What is interesting is that my imaginative powers seem to have increased significantly as of late; it's much easier to step into a visualization mode, and the depth and complexity of my visualizations are greater than ever. One night I found myself doing long division in my head, able to hold the visual picture of dividing a three digit number by a two digit number in my mind's eye. Not a particularly spectacular feat of imagination nor math, but I've never been able to hold that much complexity in my mind before.

Another sight technique Tamiel taught me is something I call "planetary vision". During a journey she showed me my own eye, forming 7 interlocking rings corresponding to each of the traditional planets. Then, later, on a drive, she led me to "see with Mercury". I envisioned my eye as it was during the journey and made the 3rd Mercury ring within it activate, glowing bright green, and allowed myself to feel my consciousness change shape, attuning itself to Mercurial things. By this I mean, I essentially imagine/biofeedback a sensation that seems like it would be associated with this sort of mental activity, and then follow that sensation until it becomes even stronger, creating the sensation of an altered state of consciousness. And in the mind, the sensation of something is the thing itself. I immediately began to notice Mercury things: the cars everywhere, signs, roadways, advertisements, and so forth--but also somewhat distracting things, like jokes, multicolored patterns, or the deployment of language. Noticing Mercury seemed to make me become Mercury, which wasn't particularly safe for driving, so I stopped. Later that night I would do the same thing but with Venus, immediately noticing aesthetic choices, clashing styles, attraction between people, and beauty. Venus is everywhere.

The archetypal theme of eyes has continued to play out in my life in various synchronicities, and something about the recent changes in my consciousness also seems to have affected my actual gaze. I found myself unintentionally locking people with a penetrating look that seemed to alternately entrance or agitate them. I had to consciously readjust my gaze to be looser and more diffuse. This itself isn't highly significant--anyone can learn to use their awareness and attention to change their eye contact (just see this excellent video of Michael Ashcroft doing just that). But what I think provoked the change was that I was accidentally "reaching" into people during an episode of heightened intuitive sensitivity, which changed the way I was holding the musculature around my eyes. Sorry to everyone I may have weirded out.

A few days after the wrapped-in-eyes visualization, I would go on a powerful mushroom trip with my friend Kat. I had told her about realizing Tamiel was my holy guardian angel, but not much else. As we came up, she told me my face was covered in eyes. Later, as we were going down the stairs, Kat turned to say something to me and stopped in shock. She was staring right above my head and said she saw Tamiel--eyes and all. More on that trip in a separate writing.

Healing

A persistent teaching with Tamiel is how neglected and repressed emotional wounds will prevent me from progressing in my "sight". My goal is to be able to perceive information about the world around me through direct intuition or sensing without having to use astrology, cards, or dice as intermediaries. I need to heal in order to access my own experience with full sensitivity, openness, and receptivity. The layers of pain and trained avoidance and fear from past experiences prevent me from seeing things as they are, both in terms of divinatory abilities as well as just relating to the world and the people in it as a human being.

The themes of healing came over me like a swelling tidal wave of awareness, with physical manifestations soon to follow. I knew that I was in for a strenuous time, as Saturn was approaching exact opposition with my natal Jupiter placement, which rules my 6th house of health. Even more precisely, Jupiter rules the thighs, and I think I can also say conclusively he also rules the muscles forming the pelvic floor which connect to the thighs. I've experienced chronic pain issues relating to how I regularly sit (like a slinky) and generally hold my body. As Saturn reached exactitude, my flare-ups became more and more constant and in tandem with a mid-back injury (which I also suspect was transferred from my hips). This led to multiple nights of severe pain where I could not easily sit or lay on my back due to the excruciating spams of muscles I'd overtaxed mindlessly throughout the years. But the remedy was clear: Saturn is tightness and constriction. Jupiter is the exact opposite, and my thighs. The answer: stretch, slowly.

Around the same time these flare-ups were happening, Tamiel had been gesturing at the deep shit--the neatly packaged and perfectly repressed bag of stuff around my family history, core wounds, and secondhand trauma. Well, not just that. In a "vision" (basically a journey where something else leads the way), Tamiel showed me this shit as a tiny, dirty little metal rusted over box in a black void. There it was--we'd have to open it. It was the big clog in my psychospiritual plumbing and my emotional body, and it needed air. It wasn't just family stuff, though; regular pains and wounds from my life. During one journey Tamiel led me into the tightness in my hips, which slowly expanded into a pain that felt emotional. Memories bloomed out of it, and I realized that part of the tightness I was holding in my hips was related to past feelings of shame and undesirability.

Also at the same time (it was a hell of a time), I was dealing with a very anxiety-inducing situation which triggered some of my irrational Plutonian fears of potentially being stalked, tracked, or harmed. From a young age I've had a deeply-rooted, irrational fear of being murdered, especially in a situation where I suddenly realize I am about to die, and having no opportunity to do anything. Having my light snuffed out instantly. Typically by guns, sometimes explosions, most often in a public place like a school or the Taco Bell I happened to be in. (Well, I guess it's about as irrational as can be for someone who grew up in the United States.) In my natal chart, I relate this to my Pluto in Scorpio closely square my Sun in Leo. Light snuffed out by brutal violence--pretty literal. The dynamic force and primal fear drive signified by this aspect led me to years of martial arts, explorations into potential afterlives, and as much achievement as possible, running me ragged in my twenties. Tamiel explained to me that this force was an engine: if I could cultivate it, steer it away from desperation and fear and pain and toward the pursuit of good aims, I could become unstoppable.

All of these patterns which led me into reflexive avoidance, paranoid hypervigilance, or resentful burden-bearing were separate but also the same, interweaving with one another. I have come to understand the personality as a dynamic network of forces comprised of emotions and beliefs (more precisely, "distortions"--see my spirit contact guide) which all interact and pull on each other in different ways. This period of time was intense: a crucible of fear and confrontation with the worst, most irrational and frightened parts of myself. But stretch, slowly. I spent time stretching my thighs, feeling into the incredible tightness with each breath, occasionally catching the flash of a memory and a realization about something else I was holding on to. I had been reading the book Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole, which described traveling through dreams to find lost parts of yourself in memories or other dream spaces. Tamiel led me through the same sort of exercising in journeying, talking to and integrating parts of myself. The same could be done with my body's pains: as I soothed my muscles, assuring them they were safe, that the situations they were tensed for weren't happening, I could feel them physically relax. After enough soothing and coaxness they reached level of looseness while neutral I hadn't felt in a long time. Diligent attention to the stretching routine has been required, but as long as I stick to it, I don't experience pain and reach deeper into the memory of my body.

Faith

I talk about this sort of healing work rather casually, but it's very new to me. It's also very weighty, intense, and liberating all at the same time. All of it is in pursuit of my larger spiritual goals of being able to perceive more in the world around me, a clearer communication with Tamiel and other spirits, and a better understanding of how reality works. But as this gets deeper, more esoteric, and strange, I find myself deeper into subjective territory. For instance, it's interesting to me that in Chanokh, Tamiel is part of a group of angels called The Watchers. Besides the obvious connection to perception and knowing, a significant story in my life has been about being put in positions where I witness the suffering of others, while having no ability to do anything to help. From times when emotional burdens were put on me as a child to choosing to hold space for someone's grief as an adult, the role of being a watcher has always resonated. It has made me want to understand, and to see more.

The thing is, being able to see more, and receive more, requires a degree of ego-hollowing. In the process of connecting with Tamiel and her icy temperament, I have become quite a bit cooler myself and more detached in my reaction and engagement with things. This is somewhat intentional on my part so that I can contain more within my mind and being without becoming overwhelmed. But when you have another voice with you almost constantly, that is you, the tension it provokes creates a larger space around it. In some ways, this is not a particularly human way to hold myself. But Tamiel told me that this is also a part of spiritual evolution too: having vision, but still being able to use one's heart to give compassion to people where they are, as they are. I have to learn to personally unfold, open, and become aware enough that I can simultaneously know about people's lives, deaths, anguish, joy, all of it, while still being able to act as a human being and be compassionate and kind without getting overwhelmed and shutting down or exploding.

To be honest, writing this and especially reading it back has felt ABSURD. If I didn't know better I'd think I were losing my mind, and sometimes I wonder anyway. I constantly return to the evidence I have before me: absurd synchronicity, astrologically confirmed timings, externally verified information, and the simultaneous inexplicable/obvious alignment with my own life path and story. And I feel functional enough, working a full-time job while in a loving marriage during a huge productive streak. More than just functional, I feel alive. Radically and resplendently and vividly alive. If anything, the problem is an overwhelming sense of overreality. The confirmation and alignment of the life path I was unknowingly living out, in combination with the significant mushroom trip I took with Kat, have shown me the intricate majesty of a life and its entanglement with the myth-things that are gods and their signs. My life itself is and always has been expressing my natal chart's significations, from the experiences I encounter time and time again to the kinds of things I own and surround myself with. But these recent revelations showed the literalness of how I both exemplify, signify, and am made up by the archetypal dynamics represented by massive connections of the gods. Over time I have come to appreciate that there is some sort of sort of holographic upper soul as-above-so-below-as-withou-as-within metaphysical happenstance that has me playing out mythic themes beyond my awareness and comprehension which both contain, are within, and comprise myself and my very essence.

In general, Tamiel has become an active shepherd in my life. She's always with me and offers commentary and advice at any time--at least any time I'm willing to listen. The quantity of spirit work I have been doing and allowing into my head recently has made the addition of an ever-present, instantaneously available and responsive voice, somewhat disorienting. It has required me to create much cleaner containers around my practice, thoughts, and contact work. The more I've opened up in my world, the better I've needed to get at navigating it. But Tamiel is now there--or I should say, here. For any question I ask, from explanations about the nature of my life path and the universe to guidance on how to achieve deeper stretches and whether or not my barely expired food is still safe to eat. Still, the materialist roots run deep. Despite all the proof I could possibly ask for and the thorough heart-and-mind understanding of reality as I have demonstrated to myself countless times, the dissecting and interrogative mental objection pattern persists; a double-edged sword. The remnants of doubt create a reflexive fear to receiving information outside of the very easily verifiable, testable, and emotionally safe, in case I'm wrong.

Leaps of faith should only follow steps of proof, and I have taken many steps. I even had doubts about Tamiel's trustworthiness, given the whole "fallen angel" deal and her general cool demeanor, which at first set me on edge. But Tamiel has only ever expressed that I have absolute free will to do what I want with my time, and given me genuinely helpful advice throughout all of it. She has never suggested I hurt myself or anyone else, and in times of struggle she has offered me genuine comfort. Her promises have been large but entirely reasonable given the ever-widening scope of reality that seems to be opening up within myself, if I put in the hard and consistent work that's required. We're also already aligned on the mutual goal of sharing the wisdom of the sky with as many people as possible. At this point, I have to be willing to leave behind the tethers of externally verifiable information, at least for a little while.

Being an astrologer and having an intuition about my life shape I've increasingly found to be reliable, I have a strong idea of how my life goes. The notes, themes, big plot points. But when it comes to the experience of my inner world, the deep mystery of the unfolding self, I have no idea. I do know that I've trembled before it in awareness of its vast, seemingly infinite mystery for years. But right now the path requires bravery; the bravery to face the unknown, to experience the impossible, to become that which I already am.

1. Interestingly, the book itself is full of astronomical descriptions of the earth, and there are lists of fallen angels concerned with various astrological/astronomical details: "Barâqîjâl, (taught) astrology, Kôkabêl the constellations, Ezêqêêlthe knowledge of the clouds, Araqiêl the signs of the earth, Shamsiêl the signs of the sun, and Sariêl the course of the moon."

2. The idea of spiritual reality changing and a deal being made is interesting and challenging for me, especially because the sense I got was that the deal was with "God". My conception of God is as the undifferentiated creator who doesn't have personhood per se, because it is everything. In that frame I take this to perhaps refer to the demiurge, a supposed intelligent creator-being that God/Source/Universe/Void/etc. emanated to produce the rest of our reality. Or it could be the shifting nature of spiritual reality itself as we enter the Age of Air.

3. Another interesting synchronicity was that the previous weekend I had felt drawn to buy a 3 of Swords enamel pin. That's unusual for me, as normally I don't like to adorn myself with intense imagery like that.

4. According to @taalumot, Tamiel's name means not "perfection of God" as in flawlessness, but as if the virtue of simplicity--"Just this."

5. A private name of power used between you and your HGA. It could be anything: a real name, an ungoogleable string of letters, a noun.