Another one.

> > “He [the HGA] is not, let me say with emphasis, a mere abstraction from
> > yourself; and that is why I have insisted rather heavily that the term
> > ‘Higher Self’ implies ‘a damnable heresy and a dangerous delusion.’

> > “If it were not so, there would be no point in ‘The Sacred Magic of
> > Abramelin the Mage.’

> > “Apart from any theoretical speculation, my Sammasati and analytical
> > work has never led to so much as a hint of the existence of the
> > Guardian Angel. He is not to be found by any exploration of oneself.”

> It would be helpful to provide the source of your quote from Crowley.

“Magick Without Tears”

> I
> was under the impression that Crowley thought that Aiwass was his HGA,
> is this correct

He said a variety of things along those lines, the popular quotes
being:

“I now inclined to believe that Aiwass is not only the God or Demon or
Devil once held holy in Sumer, and mine own Guradian Angel, but also a
man as I am, insofar as He uses a human body to make His magical link
with Mankind, whom He loves, and that He is thus an Ipsissimus, the
Head of the A.’.A.’.”

as well as:

“I lay claim to be the sole authority competent to decide disputed
points with regard to The Book of the Law, seeing that its Author,
Aiwaz, is none other than mine own Holy Guardian Angel, to Whose
Knowledge and Conversation I have attained, so that I have exclusive
access to Him.”

both from Equinox of the Gods.

> or did he backpeddal against this eventually?

Not overtly, to my knowledge, but he expounded a variety of
inconsistent ideas on the nature of the HGA. In particular, in Equinox
of the Gods again he says:

“Of course I wrote them, ink on paper, in the material sense; but they
are not My words, unless Aiwaz be taken to be no more than my
subconscious self, or some part of it: in that case, my conscious self
being ignorant of the Truth in the Book and hostile to most of the
ethics and philosophy of the Book, Aiwaz is a severely suppressed part
of me.”

a possibility which he flatly refutes years later in “Magick Without
Tears”, quoted above, although to be fair he wasn’t particularly keen
on it in EOTG either. In other places he describes Aiwass as being a
“secret chief”, as well as entertaining the possibility that Crowley
himself is a “secret chief” without knowing it.

He is also on record as saying:

“the theory implied in these words [knowledge and conversation of the
Holy Guardian Angel] is so patently absurd that only simpletons would
waste much time in analyzing it. It would be accepted as a convention,
and no one would incur the grave danger of building a philosophical
system on it” [MITP]

and, according to Frank Bennett at least, said that “nothing else but
the integration that occurs when the conscious and subconscious are no
longer separated by repression and inhibition” [from the Confessions].

Also the quote from MWT I gave originally.

> And if he did think Aiwass was his HGA does this conflict with some of
> your statements on the subject?

Yes, obviously, since I maintain the HGA does not actually exist in
reality. However, many of his other quotes support my position, so you
can attach whatever import you like to this. Trying to pin down Crowley
on an idea like this will rarely be fruitful, especially when you
consider he had a vested interest in promoting Aiwass as an objective
being of awesome power external to himself, yet sufficiently intimately
connected with himself to cement his self-appointed position as such
being’s sole earthly ambassador.

Note, for instance, that whilst he says:

“Aiwaz, is none other than mine own Holy Guardian Angel, to Whose
Knowledge and Conversation I have attained, so that I have exclusive
access to Him”

nowhere in his entire literary output (to my knowledge, at least, I
don’t know it all by heart) does he ever mention actually having such
further direct access to Aiwass other than the 1904 incident. The idea
of Aiwass actually being Crowley’s no-jokes Holy Guardian Angel is
completely out of character with the majority of the rest of his
writings on the subject.

Thus, I view the Equinox of the Gods comments as being largely rhetoric
(since its purpose was to promote Liber AL and Crowley’s role as its
sole worldly authority), and the more straightforward comments from
MITP and the later MWT to be a much better indicator of what he
actually thought.

> I mean, if Aiwass was his HGA and
> contacted and communed with Crowley to produce Liber Al… well this
> brings up all sorts of contradictions.

I don’t see why. Crowley always maintained that Aiwass was an objective
entity. While, as you can see above, he sometimes entertained the idea
that Aiwass was indeed a “severely suppressed part of” him, he appears
never to have really bought into this idea.

That being the case, if we assume Aiwass is an objective individual, I
don’t see how it makes the slightest bit of difference whether that
individual is Crowley’s “HGA” or not.

As you can see from the MITP quote, and from the original MWT quote, I
don’t think Crowley ever for a moment actually thought the HGA was an
actual honest-to-goodness personal guardian angel.

> Don’t some of todays Thelemites invoke Aiwass in place of their own HGA
> until they (supposedly) learn the name of their own HGA?

Lots of people do all kinds of stupid things.

> > Again, for avoidance of doubt, KCHGA does not involve any kind of
> > contact or communication with any entity or between parts of yourself,
> > no matter how far you want to abstract the definition of “angel”, and
> > to speculate along these lines is ultimately idle.
> Then you disagree that Aiwass could have been Crowley’s HGA then?

I disagree.