The Order consists of eleven degrees or levels, organized into three groups, the Orders of the SS, the RC and the GD respectively set forth in One Star in Sight sub figurâ CDLXXXIX. In the A∴A∴, blind is not blind guide and progress is measured by this series of degrees. The Order of A∴A∴ adheres more or less strictly to the guidelines set forth in Liber Collegii Sancti sub figura CLXXXV by Aleister Crowley.
The Robe of the Adeptus Minor is identical to that of the Probationer.
"Adeptus Minor" Summary
The Grade of Adeptus Minor is the main theme of the instructions of the A∴A∴ It is characterised by the Attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel.
(See Equinox, The Temple of Solomon the King" ; Liber CDXVIII - The Vision and the Voice, Eighth Aethyr, also Liber Samekh, etc., etc.).
This is the essential work of every man; none other ranks with it either for personal progress or for power to help one's fellows. This unachieved, man is no more than the unhappiest and blindest of animals. He is conscious of his own incomprehensible calamity, and clumsily incapable of repairing it. Achieved, he is no less than the co-heir of gods, a Lord of Light. He is conscious of his own consecrated course, and confidently ready to run it. The Adeptus Minor needs little help or guidance even from his superiors in our Order.
His work is to manifest the Beauty of the Order to the world, in the way that his superiors enjoin, and his genius dictates. [...]
Secondly, he must keep silence, while he nails his body to the tree of his creative will, in the shape of that Will, leaving his head and arms to form the symbol of Light, as if to make oath that his every thought, word and deed should express the Light derived from the God with which he has identified his life, his love and his liberty – symbolised by his heart, his phallus, and his legs. It is impossible to lay down precise rules by which a man may attain to the knowledge and conversation of His Holy Guardian Angel; for that is the particular secret of each one of us; as secret not to be told or even divined by any other, whatever his grade. It is the Holy of Holies, whereof each man is his own High Priest, and none knoweth the Name of his brother's God, or the Rite that invokes Him.
[One Star in Sight sub figurâ CDLXXXIX]
[...] I begin to collect and direct my thoughts; gently, subtly, persistently turning them one and all to the question of retreat and communion with that which I have agreed to call the Holy Guardian Angel, whose Knowledge and Conversation I have willed, and in greater or less measure enjoyed, since Ten Years. [...] But I do indeed ask for a Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel which is not left so much to be inferred from the good results in my life and work; I want the Perfume and the the Vision. [...] I want that definite experience in the very same sense as Abramelin had it; and what's more, I mean to go on till I get it. [Liber DCCCLX - John St John]
After crossing the "Veil of Parroket", here begins the entrance into the Second Order of A∴A∴ - the R.C., where the degrees passages are more imperceptible than those of the First Order. The climax of all the work of the magician takes place at this level, where he obtains the "encounter" with his Holy Guardian Angel and the discovery of his True Will.
“Adeptus” is a Latin word meaning "obtained" = "a person who has attained secret knowledge", but the deeper meaning would be "the one who can". Occurring in the sefirah of Thipharet, the Sun, a study of it is necessary.
Here the member can assume the position of Cancellarius of the Order.
The adept must have realized that it is in the paths and sephiroth of the central axis of the Tree of Life that the major changes in his consciousness occur, and here it is no different.
"I reveal unto you a great mystery. Ye stand between the abyss of height and the abyss of depth. In either awaits you a Companion; and that Companion is Yourself. Ye can have no other Companion. Many have arisen, being wise. They have said «Seek out the glittering Image in the place ever golden, and unite yourselves with It.» Many have arisen, being foolish. They have said, «Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world, and be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime.» I who am beyond Wisdom and Folly, arise and say unto you: achieve both weddings! Unite yourselves with both! Beware, beware, I say, lest ye seek after the one and lose the other!" [Liber Tzaddi vel Hamus Hermeticus (33-39.)]
The degree of Adeptus Minor, or Minor Adept, has a difference: it is divided into two stages: Adeptus Minor External and Adeptus Minor Internal.
Minor Adeptus External
Adeptus Minor (without). — Is expected to perform the Great Work and to attain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. [One Star in Sight sub figurâ CDLXXXIX]
Adeptus Minor Internal
Adeptus Minor (within). — Is admitted to the practice of the formula of the Rosy Cross on entering the College of the Holy Ghost. [One Star in Sight sub figurâ CDLXXXIX]
The difference between them is both tenuous and distant: while the Adeptus Minor External aims to "obtain (to attain) Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel " the Adeptus Minor Internal has the "attainment" of Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel. "
Words are poor crutches in describing any evolutionary change of state, for if they are under the baton of reason, they may be misleading, otherwise they are clumsy in an attempt to describe any spiritual experience or transcendent phenomenon. Trying to differentiate the two states, we could refer to the A.M.E. at an incomplete level when compared to the A.M.I.. The former still needs the steady and guiding hand of his instructor, and his relationship with his Angel has not been completely defined. His total external independence on the path to initiation had not been achieved. The second, you are already fully aware of your relationship with your Guardian Angel. Here your instructor leaves you, for the Angel himself will guide you more explicitly forward.
There are no more oaths to be filled and technical obligations to be fulfilled. The pasHGAe through the First Order had this purpose: to prepare the adept, to give him all the weapons and theories to reach this point.
Here, the Jesus Christ of Christendom died. The death of its former, rotten state, to resurrect with its new (perhaps ancient) Self, where the balance is to be attained, for Thipharet is in the midst of the Tree of Life balancing it by the direct enlightenment of Khether the Father. "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Thipharet emanates from the lower sephiroth the light of the Father by his lesser reflection, the Holy Guardian Angel of the Magician, which in turn is filtered by the lunar sephirah of Yesod until he reaches Malkuth where his perception comes misunderstood by many. Hence the ascending search for the Tree of Life . From now on, it will be only him and his Angel, under the virtue of his True Will. [See "The Vision and the Voice", Aethyrs 8 and 18.]
It is easy to remember that every sefirah possesses his "qliphoth" and in the book of sacred magic of Abramelim the Magician, the demons of Abramelim are invoked after contact with the Holy Guardian Angel.
The Holy Guardian Angel
You who are my own, besides all mine;
Without nature, nameless, atheist;
That when the most vanishes, you remain in the crucible;
You who are the secret and the heart of the Sun;
You who are the hidden source of the universe;
Thy solitary, royal fire in the immersed staff;
Always scorching; you who are the only seed;
Of freedom, life, love and light forever;
Thou, beyond sight and word;
I invoke you; and so my fire plows!
I invoke you, my life, my lighthouse,
You who are the secret and the heart of the Sun
And that arcana of the holy arcana
Of which I am a vehicle and I am a cloak.
Demonstrate your terrible, sweet luster:
Appear, as is law, in this son of yours!
Adonai, Adi-Buddha, Al-Haqq, Allah, Asar Un-nefer, Atman, Augoedies, Chrestos, Christ, Genius, Grand Master, Ishvara, Jechidah, Kia, Logos, Ori, Holy Guardian Angel, Self, Sun, Vishnu, ... God.
Every culture in every part of the world knows it. All, his ways, seek him. There are as many definitions for Him as there are minds on the planet.
The following is a letter from Frater SATVRNVS (Karl Germer) 8°=3□ A∴A∴, in order to illustrate the subject, sent to another initiate of the Order, Soror Is in January of 1951:
"Based on my experience I am certain that I reached Tiphareth in January 1927. And it was a great experience ... but the years that followed revealed some surprises - which I shall call 'manifestations' - I never got these mesHGAes from the Holy Guardian Angel It was only in 1946, perhaps 45, that I was taken by the hand and forced, against my will, to act in certain ways which later proved to be extremely beneficial to me. Aleister Crowley on a subject beyond my comprehension.
The mistake we all seem to make when we hear about this HGA and other stories about it, I think, is to expect something of the sort to hear voices or to have the vision of another fellow or His Majesty the HGA as something similar to what occurs in this plan. Soon after my experience in 1927, when my HGA warned me that I had no idea of what he was speaking to my soul, I was informed that to understand His language there would have to be an adaptation to this plan. In other words, one does not have to go through existential plans to communicate with the other. I did not follow this advice - out of stubbornness, aided, probably, by a typical terrestrial nature.
Aleister Crowley gave me some practical examples of the interventions of HGA One in 1946, when the needle of his syringe broke and was alone in Netherwood, when a man arrived, in the middle of a snow storm, with no apparent cause, in his house a mile or two away and found him prostrate; so he called a doctor who came and saved him. If you're twenty-five minutes late, you'd be dead. These are special cases. What we have to learn is to hear your voice in the most ordinary things in our lives.
... Once you work the universe on high planes, the actions and powers of the HGA manifest themselves in others naturally.
... Intense practices and invocations enable the soul to react and understand the language of the HGA more clearly and clearly.
This should perhaps be added to the previous comments. I am sure that Aleister Crowley's fully conscious realizations have gradually revealed this problem. His journals show that his HGA often communicated more clearly through women like Ouarda the Seer (Rose Kelly), Mary d'Este ... and by other means. He insisted on questioning the messenger with all the analytical power of his brilliant mind, so much so that those who tried to persuade him of certain very important things were not at ease and departed.
We must all strengthen ourselves in this concept, not succumbing to despair, but learning how to improve our condition.
If you knew how 666 sought, often blindly, by the light and not only him, all of us! The best we can do is take a single ray of light from the billions and trillions sent to us by the Sun, generously, without discrimination. We can take one in particular that best fits our nature as an individual. The ray we get is different from the next. Van Gogh's was different from Gauguin's and so on. Do not give up! You should not feel inferior to anyone! You have the love of all, respect and admiration! You are dissatisfied with yourself! It is the kind of sensation that precedes a birth. Ask any artist, statesman or even an entrepreneur when a great decision is to be made ... I am being careful in answering your doubts and uncertainties. The reason for this, is that I myself have been meditating on this problem for more than twenty years. I asked Aleister Crowley several times, but I did not understand his answers; you must understand the subject intensely; each one must 'seek in the horror of the forests' alone; the solution comes to the end of all the aspirations, or the struggles fought ..."
The next is a consideration of Frater Ever:
"It is a fact that one of the forms of 'Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel' occurs in the plane related to the Desire Body, and that a symbolic form of the 'Angel' can then appear to the aspirant. But as it is written, 'Knowing them by their fruits', the validity of any mystical or magical experience is in the evolutionary effect it produces in the personality of the person who obtains the experience.
It does not matter, from the point of view of humanity (or from the point of view of the Universe), whether our spiritual rapture was beautiful or delightful. What matters is whether it was environmentally friendly. The initiates define the spiritual advancement of the human being as greater efficiency in the promotion of universal harmony.
If the rapture does not bring benefits to the universe in which you live, the formula that composes it is not Love, which presupposes interaction and communication, but Hate, which presupposes separation.
'Mystical' or magical views of 'saints' occur constantly in all religious systems. In the nomenclature of yogis, such visions are forms of Dhyana, which is the mystical experience that precedes Samadhi, which is the true mystical experience that the yogi aspires to. In Samadhi there is perfect identity between you and experience; therefore the manifestation of form, or of a separate entity of yourself, is impossible. As the Bagh-i-Muattar says: 'Allah is the atheist, He does not worship Allah'.
Christians who experience visions of 'Jesus Christ' or 'Virgin Mary', for example, are experiencing projections of the astral plane from the intensity of their own desire. If he clings to such visions, he is in great danger of being obsessed by an entity of a low nature. The incredible religious persecutions of Christians against each other and against members of other cults, the appalling cruelties of the Roman and Protestant Inquisitions, had their origin in the attachment of believers to such visions.
(...) What can be done in this case? How can we convince a simple soul that the Jesus Christ of the Gospels is only a symbol of the Adept, or that the Universal Virgin is too sublime to be concentrated in a mere human form. Especially when we know that both the Christ and the Virgin are archetypes that exist in one form or another, in each and every human subconscious.
Yet as the Book of the Law says, 'Do not be an animal; refine thy rapture! '
The initiate only passes beyond the Vision of the Angel to a true communion with him when he realizes that it is precisely the Vision that separates him from Him.
Which yogi will reach Samadhi as long as he feels satisfied with Dhyana.
It is necessary to take the utmost care with astral visions. The astral plane is infinitely plastic: the substance that composes it is always ready to take on the forms of our desire or our fear. For this reason, the Astral (like everything else in this world) is a double-edged sword."
Advance to Adeptus Major
To attain the Grade Adeptus Major, he must accomplish two tasks; the equilibration of himself, especially as to his passions, so that he has no preference for any one course of conduct over another, and the fulfilment of every action by its complement, so that whatever he does leaves him without temptation to wander from the way of his True Will. [One Star in Sight sub figurâ CDLXXXIX]
This balance of passions and deeds compose the first task.
A COMPENDIUM BY FRATER D.M.T. 
