There are many different types of beings that you might encounter in your work as an exorcist and you should never assume that because a being is not a demon or parasite that it is not harmful or dangerous: that could be a very stupid mistake (one that I have made often).

It is back to the understanding that life is not simple and straightforward with good on one side and bad on the other. Anything can be bad for you if it doesn’t follow your agenda—a good dose of Ebola virus will focus your mind on beings that are not inherently bad within themselves but are bad for you. I’m sure that if you were infected, and laid on a bed with blood squishing out of your eyeballs, you would feel like the greatest of all demons was eating you alive.

Also be prepared for encountering consciousness that is completely off your radar. Don’t be too ready to give a being a tag or name—by doing that you might actually miss what the being is and therefore not be able to get rid of it or work with it. Living human spirits can possess other living humans, angels can possess humans, the list of weird and wonderful permutations of invaders is breathtaking. (Hey, do you have any ancient Sumerian bone eating spirit in you?…want some?)

While you digest the fact that anything and everything can invade just about anything and everything, be aware that there is a really stupid idiosyncrasy that humans have—they melt at cute faces. In the world of an exorcist, nothing is cute, nothing is harmless, and you take nothing for granted—children are not born sweet, puppies shit everywhere, and yes your mother-in-law is an alien. If something has big soft gentle eyes, that is good: it means the target is easier to hit when you have to poke them out. If you are easily taken in by fluff, spin, or sob stories, then don’t be an exorcist straight away—go work for central government and be a therapist for members of parliament; that will be all the preparation that you need.

The other thing to remember is that the wide variety of beings that you could potentially take out of someone can also be potential co-workers. You will work with a variety of beings in your job and you must not have prejudices regarding certain beings—you just need lots of common sense and strict boundaries. You will make mistakes, they will be hard and painful, but you will learn a lot from them and you will learn about the beings from direct experience, not some poky 17th century magician’s version of dungeons and dragons.

The first set of beings we will look at have had the worst and longest history of being misunderstood, abused, ridiculed, and deballed. Angels have had to suffer the indignity of their image being dressed up in spangled frocks and Birkenstocks, and made to tend people’s cabbages…Findhorn has a lot to answer for!

Angels

The first thing to remember about angels is that they were not invented by Judaism. Most if not all western ritual magic today relies heavily on the names, hierarchies, and systems developed by Semitic peoples—but angels did exist before that!

The next thing to understand is that angels are not constructs of humanity, were not invented by anyone, and they have no sense of humour (I know, I tried…). They are thresholds between non-existence and existence. They are messengers, doorways, weavers, destroyers—they manifest the action of Divinity, and they ensure the manifestation of Universal patterns.

They only appear to us as vaguely human sometimes because otherwise they would scare the shit out of us. But if you can step beyond that, they appear as fire, as wind, as sand, as stars, and their deeper forms are platonic solids and geometric shapes. A mathematician who does deep magic might see them as mathematical script and a nature worker might see them as the elements or particles in full force.

For the work of an exorcist, all the many different manifestations have a place and a use, and none should be discounted. There will be times to work with angels in their Semitic expressions, other times to work with them by function and others still to work with them in their raw form. It depends on what you are doing, why, and where.

So before we look at angels as helpers, co-workers or guides, let’s look at the negative aspect of a possession that involves an angel. If an angel is doing damage to a person, then it has to be ascertained whether it is supposed to be doing that or not. Usually if an angelic being is just doing its job, then you and said victim will know nothing about it and it will just happen.

Bound angels and ritual attacks

If an angel is attempting to destroy someone and you pick up on it, then chances are it has been bound or chained into service by ritual magic and is being operated by someone. The most common presentation of such an angel is usually in a form of an angel of air or fire. Sometimes you will come across a ‘named’ one, i.e., Samael (a favourite with magicians who have no ethics, a bad temper, and a mental age of six) in which case you have to deal with them in context of the culture that the name came from.

Some angels have been bound in service for centuries by the use of ritual magic, usually Kabbalistic, and because they are beings of operation, some humans figured out how to capture and operate them for their own will. One very interesting thing I discovered while working on a bound angel was that its presentation (part eagle, part lion, and loads of impressive wings, talons, eyes, and weapons) was a direct result of the binding. As soon as I managed to unbind it (after nearly killing myself in the process), it completely transformed into a different being. It told me that its presentation was the effect of the magic and clued the magician as to what its capabilities were in a visual language that humans could understand. Interesting, huh?

This mentality of binding and subduing is the basis behind the magic expressed in the greater and lesser key of Solomon—also known as magic for retards. Do you go around kidnapping government workers, bankers, shop keepers, delivery men, and ‘bend’ them to your will? No. If you need something you ask them or employ them.

Slavery went out of fashion quite a while ago. So why do it in the inner realms? The need to capture angels or demons and bend them to your will shows a distinct lack of intelligence, maturity, and a huge inferiority complex. It also shows intense ignorance about how to work magically with angels and demons.

But surprisingly it still happens and is a technique that is handed down through magical lines along with the bound angels and demons.

Here is a practical example:

Not too long ago, I started to get dangerously ill. Nothing was helping, and I and others went into the inner worlds to see what was happening. I had an angel chained to my ass with orders to destroy me. (I have tended to piss off a few prominent Kabbalists. It’s a particular skill that I have.)

So I worked in ritual and vision, and asked the angel if its orders of death came from God. He said no (thankfully angels don’t lie, they are very open about who, what, and where, and they are also very Aspergers). I asked the angel who had sent him and he willingly told me all that I needed to know. I pointed out to the angel that death can only be the will of God and not the will of man. The angel agreed but said that he had been commanded, and because he was magically bound in service, he had to do as he was told. The angel then showed me the terrible energetic burden he carried from the suffering he had caused by being bound in service, and that the binding had been there for a long time. I asked him if he would still destroy me if I managed to find a way to release him. The angel said that if he was released, I would not be destroyed unless God willed it.

I looked and saw a chain attached to the angel’s leg and as I looked closer, it appeared as a braid of words and sounds that felt like metal when you touched them. Before I could decide what to do, I had a deep instinct to eat the words that bound the angel. It took a while and when the binding was gone, the angel marked me, (Hey dudes, got a spell eater here…. Look out for this one if you get stuck….) and was gone.

For weeks I had a terribly inflamed intestines/colon, nausea, etc, but the deathly cold and weakness was gone, and besides my insides processing the magic, I felt great.

That was a whole revelation to me and set me off in a line of research that I am still digesting (ha) regarding the binding of angels and demons in religion and magic. I was horrified to see how much it was and still is practiced in certain quarters, and explains a lot about why angels really don’t like a lot of humans.

The binding of angels to attack usually happens in relation to curses rather than possession but it is something that has to be taken into consideration when you are first making an assessment of a host.

Angelic beings will appear as humanoid beings with many wings, or as wheels of fire, or as geometric shapes, or they may appear as a platonic solid suspended above the head or buried deep in the body of the victim. Most tribal societies don’t work with these beings in a cursing/attacking sense. It tends to be more in a community that uses ritual magic or the mystical arms of the monotheistic religions. One major exception to the rule is Tibetan magic which is a category all of its own.

But in the strict cases of possession, you are much more likely to work with an angel as a helper rather than as a problem. From this point on, most angels will be talked about in plural as angels tend to be like money problems—one divides into many and is endless.

Working in vision with angels

The ways to work with angels are many and vary from ritual, to simple calling, or to visionary working. It all depends on what you need and why. Visionary work with angels is the least well known method but can be very affective, although it can knock the shit out of your body if you are not careful.

When you work in vision, you are using the imagination as an interface so that your spirit can work in the inner worlds and interact with beings that have no outer body expression that you can work with. It is not psychology or wishful thinking—that is the therapy domain and has no use in the work of an exorcist.

When you work in vision, the mind passes through the imagination into an inner arena and the inner contacts and beings can use the content and structure of your imagination to find a common vocabulary that you can both use to communicate. So when you ‘see’ something in vision, it is not often literally what you are seeing, but it is the signature or vocabulary of what that being actually is—an angel of air will appear with wings and eyes to tell you it’s an angel and can see a lot. When it no longer has to do that, because you have gotten used to the feel of it, it will appear as a tornado or as a geometric shape.

The more you get used to working in vision, the less you will eventually see and the more you will feel as your brain gets used to interpreting things beyond its comprehension. Because various branches/races within humanity have a wide variety of things in common, the visions of major beings like angels are all held in common—they are seen in very similar ways all over the world. That is because we all have certain things in our imaginations in common, so our interpretations of certain powers can be very similar.

One thing to be aware of when you are working with angels in vision: it’s bloody hard work! The vision, although playing out through your imagination, is actually a real energetic contact which impacts the whole body. Be prepared to be wiped out by working in vision with angels—it’s like carrying lumps of stone uphill while having toddlers crying at your ankles and your mother nagging you on the phone all at once. You can end up bruised, aching, and irritable while sporting a smacking headache. And the cure is coffee, lots of it.

Sandalphon

The Sandalphon are a great lot to work with and they have somewhat of a sense of humour. Maybe they have to, as they were commissioned to be companions to humans and one must have a great sense of humour to be able to take humanity seriously.

The Sandalphon work as close companions when you are operating in service in the human realm. As an exorcist, even if you are working up and down the Abyss, you are still operating within the human realm as you are approaching the various levels from a human starting point—from the ‘humanity ledge’ which is our world.

If you are going deep down into the Abyss, then just the fact that you appear as human is like painting a large juicy target on your head. The Sandalphon can help by disguising you and walking beside you.

Many years ago I had a dream of a being walking beside me through a desert, his legs vanishing into the earth up to his knees and his hair trailing behind him on the ground. He told me about the golden city, about death and the holy of holies, and he disguised me by blowing sand over me until I looked like a stone. I asked him who he was and he said:

“I am he upon whom you lay between the stars and the underworld, I am the rock upon which you stand, the grains of sand beneath your feet, I am around and within you, I am completion.”

Well that was all good and profound but I still didn’t have a bloody clue who or what he was. He began to turn up whenever I was working in the desert by the Abyss and then two of them began working with me. Over the years they have saved my ass more times than I can count and taught me a great deal, but it took me a few years to get the information out of them that identified them as Sandalphon.

Then, me being the great intelligence that I am, I assumed they were called Sandalphon because they were always in the desert (sand…clever, huh?). It was only fairly recently that I came across the Greek word ‘Synadelfos’ which means co-worker, and the penny finally dropped. I guess I am beginning to understand why angels sort of look at me in despair sometimes when I am working.

Practicalities of the Sandalphon

They will walk along side you in the desert if you call upon them as you emerge out of the void towards the Abyss. They will assist in holding a being with you (not for you) and if you have to go deep into the Abyss, they will disguise you as an earth type being (sand, rock). They will teach you how to inwardly bind a being up and put it into storage, and similarly how to release beings that have been bound in the desert. Just be careful that if you get the urge to release something that you know what it is and why it is there.

As you walk across the desert towards the Abyss, you will see many beings, usually angels, bound up like cocoons and placed at the edge of the desert. These are beings that do not have a shelf life like the beings of the Abyss—they are immortals and have been bound to stop them expressing themselves in life and death. They will be released when the time is right and when their power is needed out in the universe. Until that time they stay cocooned and sleeping (so don’t get the urge to free them…).

The one thing the Sandalphon will not do is to go ‘up’ the Abyss. They have a stone-like density to them, which enables them to go deep into the Abyss, but that density prohibits them from going up to less formed areas within the Abyss.

The Barakiel

The Barakiel are an interesting lot and are taken up with protection and justice for innocent victims, accompanying new life as it falls into generation, striking things/lightning, electricity, etc, and they will work with you if there is a heavy possession of an innocent.

There are two main ways to work with them: bring them to you without vision or go to them in vision. If you bring them to you, it can be very effective but you often end up with a flurry of dead cows in the neighbourhood (lightning strikes). If the possession is serious though, it might be necessary to just bite the lightning so to speak and get on with it.

If the possession is subtle, then you can go to them in vision either for them to come back and work with you, or you can take the victim there in vision for them to work on the soul. It can be very dangerous for a variety of reasons, so they are very much a last resort in some cases, but they are effective. If there is cursing of an innocent, then they can be very good.

The way that they work in such circumstances is that they will strip the deepest part of the possession or curse from a person, so that you as exorcist have a popped boil to work with. They won’t do the whole thing, but they will do what is beyond you to do and they will also set in motion a chain of fate, in the event of a curse, to rebalance the scales.

If you call them to you, do it on sacred ground. The reason for this is that they are a very powerful consciousness and are not regularly worked with, so the path for them is steep, i.e. the energy filters are not well used, so they can cause damage. If you are on sacred ground, that filters them a little. I work in a church when I have to call them in.

Stand in both the void and the outside world, and inwardly call on them to assist you. If you cannot work in a church, then open your working space properly, using the east for an altar and a flame. Set up a sacred space with the directions so that there is an inner vessel to hold them.

If you are going to them, the vision to get to them is below.

The best way to work with these beings is to go to them if you are in a dangerous situation as an exorcist and ask them to work with you or to work upon you to strengthen you. The way they affect the body is through electricity. They work through the brain and nerves, which is precisely the area, along with the endocrine system, that gets burned out with magical attacks, fielding demons, and clashing with angels. They champion people on the front line as long as you don’t step off the fence—the minute you cast judgement on a being, or attack, or lash out, they will strike you.

When you work with them, their action is twofold: to uphold your body in the face of demonic attack, and to rebalance fate in a lightning strike. When you take on the role of exorcist, you wipe your slate clean and get to work. If you muddy your slate, particularly while working with them, the rebalance of that slate is quick, sharp, and dangerous. Slap a demon while you are in a bad temper and a bolt of lightning slaps you. You can just see the wagging finger in the sky….

Sometimes they will also give you work to do. You crawl to them on your hands and knees, exhausted from battling a demon and you ask for their help. They will give you help and then sometimes also a job that needs a human touch—down time is not in the angelic language.

The following vision can be used to go to them for help, training, upholding, or putting back together if you have had a very nasty time. But they will only help if you are innocent—they will not help if you are being attacked by a demon that you yourself summoned. They will also not help if you are working as exorcist and your host brought the demonic influence into themselves by their actions with violence, sex, drugs, etc. The whole fluffy bunny expression ‘they had a bad childhood’ as an excuse for bad behaviour does not wash with these beings.

The vision of the Barakiel

Sit quietly before a candle and close you eyes. See the landscape around you with your inner vision and look up to the sky. Notice clouds gathering as if a storm is coming in. Lightning begins to strike all around you and you remember your intention to go to the Barakiel. You call out to them in vision and a bolt of lightning strikes the ground close to you and time freezes. The lightning bolt stays, like a ladder, going up into the clouds.

You climb onto the lightning and step up and up into the clouds until you are at the top of the lightning strike and out in the stars. All around is you is darkness and bright stars, and you reach out to touch them. You hand feels something that you cannot see and you realise that there is a structure before you that is clothed in night and stars.

Stepping off the lightning, you find yourself walking along a tunnel of stars until you come to an entrance into complete darkness. You are reminded of the Abyss and the need to trust the powers that are all around you. You step out into the darkness and find yourself stepping into a cave that vanishes deep into something. You are drawn to walk down the dark passageway where you come to a wall of fire.

You know you must walk through it and as you step into it, you find yourself unable to move forward. Things are burned from you, magic, illnesses, rage, fire magic connections, all lifted from you, and you realise you are stood in a filter. Stepping out, you feel very different and you begin to understand how much you carry around with you.

As you walk on you see a wall of water before you and you know it is another filter. You step in and find yourself being washed of emotions that you have hung onto, hate, pain, sorrow are all washed from you and as you stand there, you begin to see how the emotions are a body expression but are not part of your soul. You begin to detach and look at your emotive structure as a human, and how that structure allows your soul to express itself in life.

Stepping forward you walk further into the passage and see a wall of falling sand that you must walk through—yet another filter to prepare you for meeting the Barakiel. The sand pours over you and abrades you. It rubs your skin and stings, but in some places it fills holes, gives ballast, and strengthens your bones. You feel the strength that substance can give you, and you begin to understand why the soul searches for physical expression, for life.

As you step out of the sand a sharp and powerful wind blows all around you, filling your lungs and screaming in your head. You find yourself trapped in a tornado which pulls words out of you, and shows you the power of those words. Your breath takes on form as you struggle to breathe and the form stands before you—the Word that is God and that is humanity stands before you as you begin to see the power of recitation.

The wind pushes you forward and you fall out of the tornado. Looking back you see that four angels stood in the passageway— the thresholds of the elements that make up humanity. They have prepared your body, mind, and soul for the meeting with the Barakiel in vision—to meet such beings in vision without preparation is to dance with death. A hand is placed upon your shoulder and you turn to see an angelic guardian waiting to take you into the hall of the Barakiel.

You are led down the passageway into a large circular hall with thirteen beings stood in a circle. You are placed in the middle and one of them speaks to you. They ask you who you are, why you have come and what do you want. You must answer with what comes to you first, not what you decide to say.

From your answer they will decide if they are going to help you or not. Commune with the beings, and be willing to do whatever they ask you to do.

When you have finished and you are ready to go. The floor beneath you vanishes and you find yourself falling away from the hall and falling through stars. One of the Barakiel falls with you in the form of a shooting star and you fall together towards the earth.

You fall through a storm with lightning and you see the Barakiel all around you in their conversation with the land as the lightning bounces back and forth.

You fall towards the room where you first started and if you are going to work with the Barakiel, they fall in with you. When you are ready, open your eyes and begin your work or blow out the candle.

If you are going to use the Barakiel vision with a victim, take their spirit into your arms and carry it with you as you do the vision—do not speak it out to the person. It is best though, if you need the Barakiel with you when you are working, to do the vision away from the victim. Once the Barakiel are with you in your world, they will stay with you as you go to work on the victim/host.

Sigils/signs/names

Another way that you can work with angelic beings is through sigils and names. If you have a demonic being that is of a particular line that responds to Semitic structures, then sometimes just draping the host with a stole embossed with the name of a specific angel and breathing the name of the angel into the human can be enough for the being to start to move out.

Drawing sigils upon the host is also another way of forcing a being out if needs be. The names or sigils of angels can also be used to seal a space that you are working in, or to lock beings out of a space or person once they have been cleaned.

The sigils for angels come from a variety of sources: some can be found in the work of Dr John Dee, some are in and around various ancient sites and will remain obscure until an angel shows you it—then the markings on stones and old icons you have seen suddenly begin to make sense. For example: the Barakiel can be connected to humans via the use of a lightning Z with a small star at the side of it ( Z* ). The Barakiel showed me this to use, alongside a figure of 8 that lies horizontally through the abdomen of a human and would pass in and out of the body like an energy circuit.

Those two images are shown together on Pictish stones carved in Scotland, which I found very interesting. Very possibly a coincidence, seeing as the images themselves are common enough. But I found it really interesting to find them together in exactly the way I was working with them.

If the angelic being you are working with is operating through a Semitic filter, i.e. it has a Hebrew name and operates through that personality, then you can use the name of the angel written in Hebrew as a sigil. I have found by sheer luck (with me it is never intelligent deduction) that for some reason Proto-Hebrew script is a lot more successful than more modern versions of the alphabet.

The name or sigil can be used to seal, protect, heal, or banish. Just be careful how you use them—as with all magic, intent is the major fuel and if you are a natural mediator of power, and you draw an angelic name on someone with intent, you are potentially pulling a lot of power through into someone. That doesn’t mean don’t experiment—just experiment on yourself rather than someone else, so that you can learn directly from the experience without getting into trouble for blowing up the cat or the neighbour’s first born child.

The options of which angels to work with can be endless as there are so many of them in their various forms. Like homeopathic remedies, you will find that there are certain families of angels that work with certain types of people of certain blood lines and cultures. I accumulated my ‘family’ of angelic beings just by luck, chance, stupidity, and inner ability.

I would suggest that you work with a very small amount of beings and get to know how to work well with them. From there your experience will expand along with your introductions to other angelic beings. The ones that have been most prominent for me have been the Sandalphon, the Barakiel, the Irin, Samael, a nameless angel of air, a nameless angel of fire, Gabriel (in its nonfluffy form…as an angel of death), Uriel, Metatron, and a very large dude that I know is angelic but I have absolutely no idea who/what/where or why it is. It/he turned up one day and announced that he was ‘stationed’ to work with me. The poor being looked like he had been put on potty emptying duty and did not seem overly thrilled with his job.

Summary

Only use angelic beings when heavy magic, demonic influence, or major power shifts are happening. They are not needed for hauntings, parasite possessions (unless really big), and faery infestations. These beings are one of a number of tools and helpers that you can work with, and learning a healthy respect for them will take you a long way.

Most cultures will tell you that you could not possibly work with them because you are not a priest/prophet/messiah/god. Total bullshit, that is just a human power grab, which is a byproduct of religion. But at the same time, they are not soft fluffy helpers hanging around to help at the drop of a hat, and who are here solely for our convenience. Be wary of reading up on angels by way of new age websites—they are all copied from one another and are full of inaccuracies, fantasy, and wishful thinking. Look to Hebrew text, biblical and Koranic text, Egyptian history, Mesopotamian images and histories, and early church carvings. They will all tell you much more about angels than anything else, and don’t forget the beings themselves—they can also tell you, you just need to ask.