The Olympic Spirits have defied occultists’ attempts at classifying and ranking every phenomenon and noumenon for which we have a verbal label. And the attempts at pigeon-holing them have aimed high and low.
Some would associate them with the deities of pre-historic European religions. Some would make them roughly equivalent with planetary spirits, and therefore in need of direction from planetary archangels when they are invoked. And others, such as the blogger
Rufus Opus, postulate that they are mixed beings partaking of more subtle and lofty qualities like angels, but at the same time having a more immediate and effective connection with the mundane realm such as one would more likely associate with demons or elementals.
A consensus is nowhere near being settled on.
Into the fray jumps
Nick Farrell, a well-know magician and writer from the Golden Dawn tradition (Ware Ra line) with his article in the latest edition of the
Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition, entitled
“Olympic Spirits: The Hidden Gods”. In his attempt to find their proper niche in the cosmic hierarchy, Mr Farrell goes for something far grander: they ARE the gods. They are what you get when you pass the white light of the All through the prism of emanation. Heavy stuff.
If this is so, then my cautious approach of calling them in the name of the God name of the sphere and the archangel of the sphere is like calling the organ grinder in the name of the monkey. I was doing this because some sources suggested they were like planetary spirits, and need guiding forces to make them manageable. There were other sources that said they simply would not let themselves be confined to a triangle. If what Farrell says is true, then Duh!
Much of what he says makes a lot of sense (in a Golden-Dawn-trained-thinking sort of way). His suggestion to use the sigils as portals to their realms seems well worth trying, and is very close to
RO’s Merkavah method.
I would caution readers of his article to consider that his dismissal of the majority of the text in the grimoire might not be the wisest modus operandi. I have found that if you read it and reread it, clues you didn’t notice early on start popping up. It is a deceptive text. Things are hidden out in the open.
(The photo above is from the 1971 film They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward. Among other themes, it explores the question: What is real?)