Astrology and Philosophy: What the Guardian Daemon is not

September 4, 2006 by  

hermestrismegistus Astrology and Philosophy: What the Guardian Daemon is not

In traditional astrology and the underlying philosophy, the energies of the seven planets are considered powerful, but ultimately are only hindrances on our path to God, because they feed our ego and body, the lesser parts of ourselves which must rather be subjugated to the soul.

This perspective is developed in the Hermetica, a collection of writings inspired by the conflated entity of the Egyptian god Thoth and the Greek god Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus (the thrice great), dates from the first few centuries A.D. It is thought to have been compiled in the Byzantine empire based on its vocabulary, but its content harks back to a much older, Egyptian and Hellenic, line of thought.

The demons of which the Hermetica speaks are explicitly linked to the planets. They are not our Guardian Daemon, the role of which is to guide our soul out of this earthly thicket of temptations, but rather the demons are the maya, the collective name for the benefic and malefic illusion in which we dwell.

An excerpt from Corpus Hermeticum XVI

[13] The sun sets in array the troop or, rather, troops of demons, which are many and changing, arrayed under the regiments of stars, an equal number of them for each star. Thus deployed, they follow the orders of a particular star, and they are good and evil according to their natures – their energies, that is. For energy is the essence of a demon. Some of them, however, are mixtures of good and evil.

[14] They have all been granted authority over the things of the earth and over the troubles of the earth, and they produce change and tumult collectively for cities and nations, individually for each person. They reshape our souls to their own ends, and they rouse them, lying in ambush in our muscle and marrow, in veins and arteries, in the brain itself, reaching to the very guts.

[15] The demons on duty at the exact moment of birth, arrayed under each of the stars, take possession of each of us as we come into being and receive a soul. From moment to moment they change places, not staying in position but moving by rotation. Those that enter through the body into the two parts of the soul twist the soul about, each toward its own energy. But the rational part of the soul stands unmastered by the demons, suitable as a receptacle for god.

[16] Thus, if by way of the sun anyone has a ray shining upon him in his rational part (and the totality of those enlightened is few), the demons’ effect on him is nullified. For non – neither demons nor gods – can do anything against a single ray of god. All others the demons carry off as spoils, both souls and bodies, since they are fond of the demons’ energies and acquiesce in them. [And it is this love that] misleads and is mislead. So, with our bodies as their instruments, the demons govern this earthly government. Hermes has called this government “fate.”

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