Enochian Temples: Generating the "Abyss" Experience with the Temple
by Benjamin Rowe

Copyright 1987, 1992 by Benjamin Rowe

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Generating the "Abyss" Experience with the Temple


WARNING: The technique described herein can be VERY DANGEROUS to the 
emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being of the magician who makes use of it. I 
am releasing it solely because full disclosure was one of the requirements under 
which the Enochian Temple system was originally given to me. The entities who 
provided the basic information feel that people can not grow to spiritual 
adulthood without being exposed to adult hazards. My experience of the results 
prevents me from being quite so cold-blooded. The same goals can be 
accomplished by more gradual means, as those entities have stated themselves. 
The magician who choses to use this technique must take full personal 
responsibility for both the decision to do so, and for any events resulting from its 
use.

Should a magician want use it despite this warning, he or she should do so only 
after constructing a strong, fully charged Temple which includes the altars of the 
sub-elements. And any invocations using this technique should be immediately 
preceded by the erection of the strongest wards the magician is capable of 
constructing. 

The names of a Tablet's Seniors can be formed into a table on their own by 
placing their names one above the other, going clockwise from the Senior of 
Jupiter. For the Earth Tablet, the table of the Seniors would be:

A C Z I N O R
L Z I N O P O
A L H C T G A
L I I A N S A
A H M L I C V
L A I D R O M

Similar pseudo-tablets can be formed from the other elemental tablets. Names of 
six letters are formed by reading down the columns. These names already exist 
in the Temple, where they are formed by drawing a circle clockwise from any 
square of the Senior of Jupiter, connecting the corresponding squares in the 
other Seniors' names. In their natural place, they express the radiatory effect of 
the Elemental King as his force passes out along the paths provided by the 
Seniors. But the names can also be used in another way. 

First, hollow hexagons are formed, as in figure ( ), one-half unit thick with outer 
faces one unit wide. Each letter of a name is assigned to one of the wedge-like 
segments of this structure in clockwise succession. Each name's hexagon is 
placed immediately below the corresponding arm in the wheel of the Seniors, 
about two-thirds of the way from the center of the Temple to the end of the arm, 
with the base side at the same level as the tops of the pillars. The hexagon 
attributed to the Sun is in the center of the upper Temple, with the Elemental 
King's beam passing through the hole.

In the chart as given above, the columns are attributed (from left to right) to 
Venus, Sun, Saturn, Earth/Luna, Jupiter, Mercury, and Mars. When used in 
invocations, the name should be vibrated immediately after that of the King or 
corresponding Senior, and at no other time. Also, the first enochian key should 
always precede the invocation of the element when these names are used. 
When they are visualized in the upper Temple, an appropriate telesmatic image 
for the Senior (or the god-form of the related planet) should be visualized 
standing upright above (not in) the hollow center.1 The magician himself should 
stand in the beam of the King while invoking them, and attempt to identify 
himself with it to the greatest extent possible. 

As the Elemental King and each Senior is invoked with the corresponding name 
from the table, the hexagon should be visualized as projecting itself downwards 
into the lower temple, forming a hollow crystal column. The force of the King or 
Senior is channeled down through the column and then radiates outward 
through the faces. (This is in contrast to the normal Temple formulation, where 
the Seniors' force spreads out to form a curtain around the lower Temple.) 

In the Enochian system, six of the planets are attributed to the first six sephiroth 
of the Tree of Life. The seventh, Saturn, takes in the last four sephiroth as a 
group. In the formulation here, the Senior of Saturn takes Sol's place in 
Tiphereth as the governor of the elements, and the Elemental King abandons his 
solar attributes, taking on his secondary attribution to the path of Shin, which 
connects Tiphereth and Kether in Achad's version of the Tree of Life. 

In the Tree of Life, the centralizing effect of Sol normally causes the forces of the 
upper Tree to be focused in Tiphereth. But when Sol's force is repressed or 
removed, the balance of these sephiroth moves to the empty area in the center 
of the upper Tree. The path of Shin passes through this area, but it does not 
provide any focus for the forces of the six sephiroth.2 Each of the sephiroth 
becomes focused in itself, and the attractive force of each draws equally on the 
empty center area. That area experiences a uniform pull outwards in all 
directions, resulting in the rending and dispersal of anything placed there. A 
conscious being passing up the path of Shin perceives this effect as the 
experience of the Abyss.

Normally, the Enochian Temple expresses the essential unity of the Tablets with 
the whole Tree of Life as a balanced, integrated structure. Using the technique 
presented here suppresses that integrity and replaces it with a strong force 
towards dispersion. The magician, identified with the Elemental King's beam of 
light, places himself to experience the full strength of that dispersion.

Depending on the degree of success, the magician may experience a variety of 
perceptions. At the least intense level, he may experience sensations of 
inexplicable "wrongness" and non-specific paranoia, or a sense of jittery energy 
like an overdose of methedrine. At a somewhat more intense level, he will 
experience a sense of his soul being ripped into extremely small pieces, while 
each piece is simultaneously being crushed to a point.

At full force, the experience then evolves into what can only be called the 
perception of voidness; the negation, the removal of any being or value from 
absolutely everything perceptible, both internal and external. The intensity of this 
voidness can not be adequately described. At this stage the paranoia sometimes 
returns, causing the magician to perceive the voidness as an all-consuming 
malevolent entity. Giving in to this paranoia, struggling to avoid being devoured, 
brings one on to the path of those whom Crowley calls the Black Brothers. If one 
does not struggle, that which perceives is itself absorbed into the void and 
another condition supervenes for which description is futile.

Footnotes

1	Images for the Seniors of the Earth Tablet are given at the beginning of 
each Senior's section in The Book of the Seniors, which is available through the 
Archives.
2	The idea that an eleventh sephira exists in this position is one of the most 
vile lies ever perpetrated. It is unfortunate that some otherwise competent 
scholars have made their reputations by spreading it even further. While there is 
the appearance of something occupying the center of the hexagram when it is 
viewed from lower down in the Tree, this appearance is entirely hallucinatory. 
The Tiphereth consciousness merely sees a reflection of itself in the surface of 
the Great Sea, as a skin diver sees a distorted reflection of himself in the waves 
above his head.