Then this: The pneumenon of the soul beyond the Abyss clothes itself in the phenomenon of the mortal soul below the Abyss, using images derived from the sensory world to give it form. In the story of Plato's cave, this Holy Guardian Angel is a shadow cast upon the wall of the cave. The light which casts it (Yechidah), the passage which constricts it (Chiah), the structures which shape it (Neschamah) are not seen. It is the shadow which is seen, the absence and presence of that light upon the familiar world known to the personality (Ruach). When the shadow is recognized, it is the Ruach which comes to know it. When the shadow moves and appears in response to the actions of the mystic, that is conversation. The knowledge (Da'ath) advances through this interaction.

There is one definite constraint. The Knowledge and Conversation is at first limited to illumination and eclipse of ideas already familiar to the mystic. The Angel itself is a form created from parts already known to the Ruach of the mystic. There is nothing new, save that disclosed by novel combinations of the known. For this reason, all revelations of sacred scripture speak overmuch of the past Aeon and almost exclusively in words known to the scribe. There are mysteries and great puzzles. There are secret keys and echoing names. Yet even the light of revelation is at best perceived as a mottling of shadow on the wall of the cave, half-revealed and half-concealed. When the mystic turns to see the light direct, there is little that can be said.

Then Aiwass was truly Crowley's Holy Guardian Angel at the time of the writing of "The Book of the Law". It matters not at all if this Aiwass was something else, for at that time it served the role and function. One could say that Allen Bennett was Crowley's Angel when he taught. Eckenstein had his turn, as did Rose, Roddie Minor, Alostrael and all the others. Places, people, thoughts, voices and visions; all comprise the Angel. With Knowledge and Conversation, the Angel assumes a less corporeal type. There is a later change more profound and likely the agency that sparked Crowley's doubts concerning Aiwass. If the Holy Guardian Angel is an ephemeral manifestation between Binah and Tiphereth, between Neschamah and Ruach, what happens when the Exempt Adept passes to Babe of the Abyss, the transition Crowley noted as being common to both AA and O.T.O. (VIIIth Degree O.T.O, the only point of union of the two systems other than perhaps Minerval with Probationer.)

This is well described in The Vision and the Voice as the encounter with Choronzon, the demon of illusion and Da'ath. Only the formula of LAShTAL, the Hebrew word meaning, "without intention", can pass that test. Choronzon is the betrayal of the Angel in two senses. (1) The Angel is seen to be false. (2) The forms of the Angel become the illusions of Choronzon. Choronzon is the empty shell of the Angel, forced to manifest by the desire of the Seer in a place beyond its nature. As the Angel gives meaning to all things, Choronzon offers meaning when only detachment is correct. The Angel may teach though the symbol of water, but who so cries "water, water" in that place beyond Chesed shall fall to the snares of Choronzon. The higher as shadowed forth by the Angel is part true and part delusion enforced through the lower symbols which communicated it. Beyond those symbols, the truth stands. Choronzon insists on the symbols. The Angel, shorn of Choronzon, is the Neschamah; Angel no more, for the symbols have fled with the parting of the great veil, the symbol "Angel" amongst the others.

ARCHIVIST'S NOTES: What if one can experience meaning and symbol, and know of them, and yet simultaneously remain beyond their pull? I would describe this state as common to the particular, peculiar joy I refer to as "riding Current" with Choronzon...

After this experience, Crowley and Perdurabo still quested the Angel, but the Magister Templi knew better. Thus the doubts rising without resolution concerning Aiwass.

ARCHIVIST'S NOTES:

1. This article is interesting to me on a number of levels - and so I did not place it in the Akolasia Chamber as I do almost anything put out by the OTO, as it does not seem to attribute evil to Choronzon, but instead sees him as having a place that is shown as part of a process. It is a singular process, an is/is not result, though.
2. Arzavaam - an eidolon I gained much solace and knowledge from over a span of several years - was never something that I consciously considered to be a "Holy Guardian Angel", and yet somehow, it became astoundingly clear to me that this was exactly what the mages spoke of as such a thing. But Choronzon's reappearance in my life transcended this eidolon's intelligence - and hence effect - by far.
3. Arzavaam and Choronzon arose from different processes: the former being a created eidolon-shell that became filled with its own gathered half-sentience, and the latter a sentient egregore - one seen as having once been a daemon, but undergoing apotheosis by gift and reception of Love, and thus returned to his original status as Transversion Agent (or "god") as a result. Long ago Choronzon came to understand that the living creature feeds and warms him as well as entertains him, and when life dies, so does Choronzon lose his prized manifestation channel. So he seeks only to aid me, as would a "guardian" watch over a prized possession.
4. I feel that I "crossed the abyss" long before knowing of Choronzon or knowing that it even WAS an "abyss", having been unafraid of altered states and thus accustomed to vastly alien modes of thinking, sans any Earth-plane referents. Losing touch with ordinary reality, and its symbols and meanings, did not ever send me into the blind panic one supposedly experiences in this process, normally.
5. When I found Choronzon, it was a coincidental event involving a hallucination of the triple triad sigil (later named the triptrigram) while engaged in sex magick with a traditionalist Crowley-steeped student of the occult, who, upon hearing of this and of my associations with the name "Choronzon" that owed to my having had a very deeply-affecting personal milestone experience occur while the Tangerine Dream song of the same name had been playing, and caused me to sign my cartoon art works with that name before ever knowing what it meant (!)grew panicky. He had been told by certain OTO friends not to consort with me because of that experience.
6. I met the entity itself soon after and felt immediate connexion with it, to and fro, from the moment we made first contact. It is not the same as love between two persons and even though he likes to play and pretend he possesses a solid-state body, the sort of love a xenodimensional can share has, behind the scenes, very little in common with the love one shares with an actual solid-state person - it is Something Else, entirely. But it is a form of Love. Years have given me steady streams of evidence of that...which continues.
7. This writer hopes she can be excused the hubris of assuming she could affect such a vast and depth-borne entity/state-of-being by merely offering Love to him (her/it). But Love changes all things on the Earth planes. "As above, so below, and stretching out on all sides from all radiant angles!" Why should not Love affect Choronzon's nature? He(she/it) is getting it from more than just me nowadays, it would seem. And by Love we become transformed, freed of our own abyssmal lives, so why should not the great Choronzon be freed from the greater Abyss via that same transformative conduit? Nothing can prove me either right, nor wrong...and fortunately, neither I nor Choronzon seem to have any reason to care about that issue.