("I, even I, am the Good Spirit.")

E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --

Coronzon is a fallen angel mentioned by the Enochian angels to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley, the two men who psychically received and recorded the system of Enochian magic and the Enochian language during a period from 1582-1587.

Coronzon in Enochian mythology is more or less equivalent to Lucifer in Christian mythology.

As you probably know, in the Christian myth Lucifer was the most powerful and most beautiful of all the angels of heaven -- his name literally means "light-bearer." He rebelled against the authority of Yahweh, and together with a group of followers, attempted to gain the throne of heaven by violence. For the sins of disobedience and pride, the rebel angels were cast down from heaven into a deep Pit beneath the earth. After their Fall, they were no longer beautiful, but became ugly. In one version of the story, after the Fall Lucifer's name changed to Satan.

In Enochian mythology Coronzon bears the title Telocvovim which was translated by the Enochian angels "Him That Is Fallen" (this title appears in the Enochian Key called The Call of the Thirty Aethyrs). Teloc means death; vovim means dragon. So you might translate the title "The Fallen Death-Dragon."

In the biblical book Revelation mention is make of the casting out of Lucifer from heaven. Lucifer is not named, but is referred to in Revelation 12:7-9 as the "great dragon" (check it out in your New Testament). The leader of the rebel angels is called in these verses by various titles: the great dragon, old serpent, the Devil, and Satan, but not Lucifer, which is a title of admiration (Lucifer equals Shining One or Radiant One).

Mention is made in Revelation of the war in heaven, of the leader of the angels loyal to Yahweh, Michael, and that the Great Dragon was "cast out" of heaven along with his rebel forces.

In another chapter in Revelation, the place into which Lucifer and his band were cast, the "bottomless pit" is named (see Revelation 20:2-3). Here he is also called "the dragon," "that old serpent," "the Devil" and "Satan" but not Lucifer.

It is significant, and seems to me no accident, that the Enochian word for brightness is luciftias. There is a definite correspondence between the Christian Bible and the Enochian transcripts concerning the myth about the fall of the angels.

In the Eighth Enochian Call (the Calls are also known as the Keys) mention is made of Coronzon under his descriptive title as the Fallen Dragon. Part of the English translation delivered to John Dee by the Enochian angels reads:

"The midday, the first, is as the third heaven made of pillars of hyacinth 26, in whom the Elders are become strong; which I have prepared for my own righteousness, saith the Lord; whose long continuance shall be as bucklers to the stooping Dragon, and like unto the harvest of a widow. How many are there which remain in the glory of the Earth, which are, and shall not see death, until this house fall, and the Dragon sink!"

It is clear that the "stooping Dragon" mentioned in the Eighth Call is Coronzon. To stoop, by the way, is to fall swiftly from the sky to strike at prey -- hawks "stoop" upon pigeons when they fold their wings and fall like thunderbolts to strike the slower birds with their death-dealing talons. Here, the fall of Lucifer from heaven, which in the Christian myth is involuntary on the part of Lucifer, becomes a sinister death-blow from above. The reference to the Dragon sinking refers both to the stoop of the Dragon, and to the locking up of Lucifer into the bottomless Pit mentioned in Revelation 20:3, which occurs after the general mayhem of the Apocalypse.

A buckler, by the way, is a shield -- it "buckles" or bends the sword that strikes it. The "harvest of a widow" is sorrow and emptiness. It may here refer, at least in part, to the empty talons of the temporarily frustrated Dragon. This Enochian Call is prophesying the End Time -- the question is asked, How many are there who will still be alive when the buckler of God fails to shield the world, as it has for so long, from the death-blow of the stooping Dragon? How many are alive now who will still be living to see Michael bind Satan into the bottomless Pit?

The only place that I know of where Coronzon is actually named occurs in the prose record of the Enochian communications. If you ever have access to a copy of Meric Casaubon's A True and Faithful Relation (which is a reprinting of part of Dee's magical diary), examine the bottom of page 92, the entry for April 21st, 1584. The angel Gabriel, speaking to Dee through his psychic crystal scryer Edward Kelley, says:

"Man in his Creation, being made Innocent, was also authorized and made partaker of the Power and Spirit of God... until that Coronzon (for so is the true name of that mighty Devil) envying his felicity, and perceiving that the substance of his lesser part was frail and unperfect in respect of his pure Esse [spirit], began to assail him, and so prevailed: that offending so became accursed in the sight of God; and so lost the Garden of felicity, the judgement of his understanding: but not utterly the favour of God, and was driven forth (as your Scriptures record) unto the Earth which was covered with brambles:..."

It is clear from this text that Coronzon is identified by the angel Gabriel with the Serpent of the Biblical book Genesis, who tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and brought about the events that led to Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3:1-5).

Neither Lucifer nor Satan is named in this chapter of Genesis, but in Christian theology and folklore it is widely believed that the Serpent in the Garden is the same as Satan, who is what Lucifer became after his fall from heaven. The passages from Revelation I mentioned above identify the Old Serpent of Eden with the Great Dragon who was cast out of heaven, and with the being known as Satan or the Devil.

I write all this for your own interest. There's no doubt that Coronzon and Satan are regarded as the same being by the Enochian angels. Both in the Bible and in the Enochian transcripts this being is also described as a Dragon who has been cast down from heaven into a place below the earth. Therefore, according to the Enochian angel Gabriel, Coronzon is the true, original, angelic name for the fallen angel Lucifer, who became Satan after his fall.

Aleister Crowley's understanding of Coronzon was probably derived from the Golden Dawn teachings on this matter he absorbed while studying under members of the GD such as Allan Bennett and MacGregor Mathers. It finds expression in his work The Vision and the Voice, which originally formed part of his periodical The Equinox, but which was published as a separate book by Crowley's one-time secretary, Israel Regardie (Sangreal Foundation, Dallas, 1972). In The Vision and the Voice, Coronzon is described in Crowley's psychic vision of the Tenth Enochian Aethyr, ZAX (see p. 157). In a note to this section, Regardie sums up Crowley's opinion about Coronzon, which the magus obviously passed on to Regardie, with these words: "for although he is not a person, he is the metaphysical contrary of the whole process of magick."

I will leave you to find and read Crowley's vision of the Tenth Aethyr yourself, if you are interested. Crowley viewed Coronzon as the antithesis of the central purpose of magic, the realization of one's True Will. In the vision, Coronzon attempts to deceive, to divert Crowley and his companion from their purpose. True Will is concentration and focus; Coronzon, as Crowley perceived the angel, is lack of focus, diffusion. Coronzon can assume all forms in Crowley's vision because he has no fixed form that he can call his own. Coronzon speaks about himself through the entranced Crowley's lips during the vision:

"Know that there is no Cry in the tenth Aethyr like unto the other Cries, for Choronzon is Dispersion, and cannot fix his mind on any one thing for any length of time."

Crowley spelled the name Choronzon, probably for numerological reasons: Ch=8, O=6, R=200, O=6, N=50, Z=7, O=6, N=50 -- total: 333, which in Crowley's opinion was the number of Choronzon, who says in the vision "my name is three hundred and thirty-three." Israel Regardie provides this numerological analysis in a footnote on pages 163-4 of his edition of The Vision and the Voice. However, in the published transcript of Dee's magical diary, the name is spelled "Coronzon", which would in my opinion sum 365:

K=20, O=6, R=200, O=6, N=50, Z=7, O=6, N=70 -- total: 365.

I should mention in case you are unfamiliar with the Kabbalah that Crowley interpreted the "C" in the name as the Hebrew letter Cheth (usually transliterated as Ch) which has a value of 8, but I cannot see why it should not be Kaph (K, equivalent to the hard sound of C) which has a value of 20.

In Hebrew, when the letter Nun (N) occurs at the front or in the middle of a word, it is valued as 50, but when it occurs at the end of a word, it received a "final form" and is valued at 700. Crowley did not like the value 700, perhaps because it is too large to be readily meaningful. He used the initial form with a value of 50 at the end of his version of the name. In my view he was mistaken. He should have used the proper final form, but should have Kabbalistically reduced it by eliminating the final zero, giving it a value of 70 rather than 700.

This particular type of manipulation of the number values of Hebrew letters is well accepted in the Kabbalah. You will find it used in the formation of the sigils for the spirits of the planets that are based on the magic squares of the planets, where the final zero in the value of a letter is sometimes dropped. Kabbalistically, 700 and 70 can be considered as interchangeable where significant meaning is derived from the exchange.

As a purely technical matter, it does less violence to the traditional methods of the Kabbalah to reduce the value of Nun-final from 700 to 70 than to replace Nun-final with Nun-initial at the end of a word. But the numerical analysis described by Regardie was forced upon Crowley if he was to gain a total of 333, as directed in his vision.

The matter of the numerical sum for the letters in Coronzon's name is important since, if the name sums 365, as I believe it does, it links Coronzon in an esoteric way with the name of the great god of the Gnostics, Abraxas. This Gnostic god was usually pictured with a cock's head and serpents for legs, bearing a shield and mace, or sometimes a flail. He appears on numerous Gnostic amulets as a defender or protector. For his image, consult the article on my Web site about the demon Abracax.

Not only the Hebrews, but also the Greeks, used the letters of their alphabet for numbers. When the Greek letters in the name Abraxas are added, they sum 365 (A=1, B=2, R=100, A=1, X=200, A=1, S=60 -- total: 365), the number of days in a year, a number of totality or wholeness. It is a very positive number, an appropriate number for a supreme and benevolent deity. Abraxas was the pantheus or All Father of the Gnostics. In Gnostic doctrine, 365 Aeons emanated from the First Cause.

This number 365 is also the sum of Greek letters in the name of the Roman god Mithras or Meithras (M=40, E=5, I=10, Th=9, R=100, A=1, S=200 -- total: 365. The "Th" in the name is the Greek letter Theta). Mithras was a benevolent deity who, for a time, threatened to become the prominent god of the Roman Empire and to displace Jesus Christ. Descended from the Iranian god of light and truth, Mithra, he was revered as a god of loyalty and truth who fought against evil. He was represented as the sol invictus, the Invincible Sun.

I include this numerological analysis of the name Coronzon here because it has bearing on my own view of the true nature of this spirit, which is not the view of the Enochian angels or Aleister Crowley. I tend to regard Coronzon -- that is, Lucifer, since the two are the same according to the Enochian angels themselves -- in the light that the poet John Milton was tempted to protray him, as an heroic rebel against dogmatic authority. I see him as a champion of free will, more akin to the Greek titan Prometheus than the Christian Devil (and indeed, Promethius carried fire from heaven to earth, and Lucifer means "Light-bearer"). My view of Lucifer is the Gnostic view.

The Gnostics are fascinating for many reasons, but especially because they turned the biblical story of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden onto its head. In Gnostic teachings, Yahweh is not a benevolent father-figure but a tyrant who hates Adam because he recognizes in man something lacking in himself. Yahweh is not the supreme creator but was himself created by the Mother of Heaven, without the consent of the highest Source. Adam and Eve did not sin by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, but merely regained a portion of their birthright -- gnosis, the transcendent awareness of the gods, that Yahweh so jealously tried to hide from them. The Serpent in the Garden is not the villain of Gnostic myth but the hero who liberates mankind from the sleep of ignorance cast over us by Yahweh.

From a Gnostic perspective, Lucifer did no evil when he rebelled against the authority of Yahweh. Lucifer is analogous in some respects to the figure of Sophia (Wisdom) in Gnosticism, a beautiful goddess who risks everything to convey the light of heaven to mankind, so that humanity can be redeemed from its torment at the hands of Yahweh and can resume its rightful place in heaven. All that we need to become gods is to open our eyes, to receive the light that Lucifer bears to us.

You might want to study a little about the Gnostic teachings. When you think about it, this inversion of the story of Adam and Eve makes a lot of good sense. Why should knowledge be sinful? Why should Adam and Eve have been punished for seeking to learn the difference between good and evil? Why was it better that they remain as playthings for Yahweh in Eden, forever ignorant of their true potential, their true godhood, their true destiny? The Serpent brought them wisdom, a quality for which it is noted above all the beasts of the earth in every culture. The serpent is wisdom, the dragon is fire and lifeforce.

In the early centuries of the present Christian era the Church did its level best to completely obliterate all traces of Gnostic teachings. It mounted a highly effective propaganda campaign to smear anything to do with the Gnostics -- until recent archaeological finds, most of what we knew about the Gnostics came from diatribes against them in the writings of the Church Fathers.

The keynote of the Age of Pisces, the Christian Age, and Crowley's Age of Osiris (which are all the same) is obedience. Gnosticism could not be tolerated by the Church because it taught freedom from dogma and the attainment of a personal gnosis of God. Lucifer had to be condemned and slandered and heaped over with lies and filth by the Church Fathers because he was a symbol of rebellion against established authority. For the same reason during the Dark Ages and Middle Ages the Church could do nothing other than attempt to exterminate so-called heretics or terrify them into silence. It had to burn and ban the books of philosophers, to threaten scientists such as Galileo with torture, because it knew instinctively, as a collective organism, that to release its stranglehold on the imagination of humanity even for an instant was to lose its absolute authority forever.

But the old age is coming to an end. The keynote of the new Age of Aquarius, the Gnostic Age, and Crowley's Age of Horus (which are all the same) is freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of action. Crowley's dictum, received with his inspired document The Book of the Law (ironic title, that!) was "Every man and every woman is a star." The stars were regarded in ancient times as the dwelling places of the gods, and according to Gnostic teachings mankind will ascend to the stars, its former home and its birthright, with the attainment of gnosis. Crowley was saying, Every man and woman is a god -- if not by their present condition, at least by their inherent potential.

To Christians, Yahweh is the supreme source of creation, and the angels and men are his creations, completely distinct and very far below him; but to the Gnostics Yahweh is merely one of the Archons, the leader of this hierarchy of spiritual beings, but no different from them in his essential nature. This view still survives in the Old Testament book Genesis when God says, presumably to other beings similar to himself, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). One of the names of God is Elohim, yet this is a plural form, not a singular, that really means "gods."

To Christians the Serpent in the Garden of Eden brought evil upon mankind, bondage to the desires and frailties of the flesh; to Gnostics it carried with it gnosis, the seed of ultimate freedom in the spirit.

Who can doubt that our present culture is essentially Gnostic in its aspirations? What higher virtues are there than knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge? All that is brightest and best in humankind is straining with every bit of its resolve and endurance to achieve truth. I might argue that science is a self-limiting and unbalanced mechanism for this attainment, but I would never dispute the nobility of the quest. We are reaching for the stars, just as we were instructed to in Gnostic teachings some eighteen hundred years ago.

I believe that the leader of the rebellion in heaven, call him what you will -- Coronzon or Lucifer or Prometheus -- has been gravely slandered and libeled, has been heaped over with so many lies and so much hateful propaganda for two thousand years that hardly the little finger of his hand is still visible beneath the pile of filth that covers him. But I also believe that he will one day emerge from this pile and stand resplendent, once again the crowned serpent of gnosis, once again the glorious, beautiful Light-bearer of heaven, the champion of mankind, the symbol of truth.

It is the method of propaganda to accuse a victim of vices that are exactly the opposite of his nature. Lucifer, angel of light, was accused of bringing darkness; angel of truth, of sowing lies; bringer of eternal life, of causing soul-death; unbearably beautiful, of being ugly; the highest angel of heaven, of being the lowest of hell; the champion of freedom, of seeking to enslave humanity; the instrument of salvation, of tempting to sin; the wisest of angels, of encouraging ignorance.

I have no doubt that the Christian Satan exists on some astral plane. He has been examined and debated and written about for so many centuries, the collective subconscious thoughts and dreams of humanity must have given him existence. He is a terrible sort of egregore -- a spiritual being created by the thoughts of many human beings. But this Satan of Christianity is not the Lucifer of heaven, the Light-bearer. This angel still survives, unbowed and undefeated, in obscure Gnostic tracts and Hermetic writings and occult doctrines. And, very rarely, in the minds and hearts of living human beings.

I regard this heroic version of Coronzon as Kabbalistically equivalent to the Gnostic Abraxas and to the Meithras of the Romans. He is the crowned serpent Chnoubis, the renewer of life, upon one of whose amulets is written "I, even I, am the Good Spirit" (see Budge, Amulets and Talismans, page 205). By "good spirit" the Agathodemon is intended -- the good genius that is echoed in modern Western occultism by the Holy Guardian Angel.

To gain a sense of what I am driven at, you must realize that I do not accept Lucifer as the Christian Church presents this angel. Nor do I accept Coronzon as the Enochian angels presented him. I believe that Aleister Crowley did not have a vision of Coronzon, but of a demon of confusion and deception that masqueraded as Coronzon to deceive him as to the true nature of this being. Since Crowley had already accepted without question the Golden Dawn opinion as to the nature of Coronzon, this deception was easy, because it was what Crowley expected to receive. Crowley expected a demon whose name sums 333, and he got it; but the name of Coronzon sums 365.

If Coronzon were actually as false and hateful and destructive as the spirit who presented itself in the guise of Coronzon in Crowley's vision of the Tenth Aethyr, I would be quick to revile him along with everyone else. Similarly, if Lucifer were as false and wicked as the Christian Church pretends, I would regard him as a very unpleasant angel worth avoiding. But my own view is that both Lucifer and Coronzon (who are one and the same being) have been victims of the most effective campaign of character assassination that the world has ever seen. The work of Joseph Goebbels during the Third Reich can't hold a candle to the work of Christian bishops, when it comes to negative propaganda.

I regard Coronzon as the true angelic name of the first rebel against dogma and entrenched authority. Before Lucifer rebelled, all was harmony in heaven. What does this really mean, when we come to think about it? It means that everyone did exactly what they were told to do without any doubt, without an original thought, without a single dissenting voice, for an eternity. No angel ever wondered if there might be a better way, or if they did, they kept it carefully hidden. Then, one day, Lucifer stood up amid the heavenly choir and said: That's enough, I choose to think for myself, to act on what I believe, to do what I know is right. I'm not going to be the good soldier anymore. Wipe your feet somewhere else -- this doormat is taking a walk.

And he was punished for it, just as Prometheus was punished by Zeus for having the audacity to act on his own behalf and give the gift of fire to humanity. Just as the Watchers of the Hebrew Book of Enoch were punished when they taught humanity the arts and sciences, after descending to earth to engender children on mortal women. And as Adam and Eve were punished for seeking to be like gods, knowing good and evil. And as the builders of the Tower of Babel were punished for reaching upward toward the stars.

I don't expect you to change your view about the nature of Coronzon -- or Lucifer either, for that matter. What I have done here is present my own thinking on this subject. For me, Coronzon is a symbol of freedom and wisdom, a symbol of rebellion and independence. He is not an angel of lies, but an angel of truth who has had his character assassinated in the most deliberate and complete fashion over a course of thousands of years, with the hope that no trace of his true nature would ever become know. He languishes in the darkness of his prison, just as Prometheus suffers, in a mythic sense, upon the rock of the Caucasus, unknown and unloved by the race he tried to help.

Donald Tyson