The Guardian Daimon

The Guardian Daimon is a spiritual entity that is said to be assigned to an individual's soul at birth. This entity is given a mission from the Divine to help that individual fulfill their life's purpose. What exactly this life's purpose is changes depending on the philosopher or theologian consulted. In the present day, the idea of the "life's purpose" is framed in such a way that asks an individual "what are you here to do?", focusing on some action or goal that a person should or must accomplish before they die. Classically, the life purpose of an individual had more of a religious connotation, with many theologians believing the life's purpose was to become more whole or more connected to the Divine in life to facilitate an easier and more lasting form of salvation for the soul upon death.

There are several different types of daimon and not all of those types perform Guardian Daimon functions. For example, within a Judeo-Christian context, angels are classified into one of seven Choirs (Seraphim, Cherubim, etc.) with different powers, spheres of influence, and responsibilities depending on which Choir they are a member of. Daimon are much the same. The Syrian Platonic philosopher Iamblichus provides a three-tier system of daimon categorization in his work, On the Egyptian Mysteries.​ The largest and most prevalent group of daimon are those that preside over a single, natural function and essentially personify some natural law. The second class of daimon preside over judgment and reward the just and righteous while striking down the wicked and corrupt. The final and highest class of daimon work to assist the gods in rewarding theurgists for their labors. Iamblichus is not very clear on which class of daimon the Guardian Daimon typically belongs to, but a decent case can be made for it belonging to the second class which appears to be more aware of and involved with the physical world and human affairs within it.

The Astrology of the Daimon

The concept of the Guardian Daimon was so widespread and accepted that astrologers of the time devised methods of looking into the natal chart to determine the identity of the Daimon. Iamblichus, however, did not agree with astrologers in this endeavor, feeling that it was improper to turn to astrology on this matter.

"If we must to reveal to you the truth concerning one's personal Daimon we must say that he is not distributed to us from one part of the heavens nor from any of the visible planets but from the entire cosmos - its multi-faceted life and its multi-form body - through which the soul descends into generation. And a certain individual allotment is imparted to us, allotted to each of our aspects, according to an individual jurisdiction. This Daimon, therefore, is established in the paradigm even before souls descend into generation. And when the soul selects him as its leader the Daimon immediately attends to his task of fulfilling the lives of the soul to the body when it descends."

His argument here is pretty clear; because the Daimon's influence over life is so multi-layered and wrapped into the whole of our being, it's impossible to assign it as being signified by this or that planet in a natal chart. It must be something more holistic, even if astrology cannot account for it. As Iamblichus was writing during the 3rd and 4th century CE, the astrological techniques he is referencing are likely the Hellenistic technique that seek to identify the Kurios and Oikodespotes. These two planets represent the life path of the native (Oikodespotes) and how well that life path is actually made manifest throughout the native's life (Kurios).

Both the Oikodespotes and the Kurios perform or provide information on functions that are classically delegated to the Platonic Guardian Daimon. It is likely that the two are philosophically related in their origin. Perhaps Iamblichus felt the ability for the natal chart to identify the Guardian Daimon implied that it was the planets - not the soul - that paired individuals with their Guardians and felt it necessary to take back some autonomy for the undescended soul. However, it is equally likely that the chart's ability to identify this Guardian Daimon is a reflection of a process that occurs during ensoulment; something more like a signature upon a cosmic contract cementing a partnership between a divine spirit and a human soul.

Regardless of how Iamblichus felt about such a practice, astrologers were clearly utilizing it in his time and continued to do so well into the medieval and Renaissance periods. The techniques used differed and were attributed to various religious groups, but the main ideas were more or less the same. The most popular technique sought to identify the main planet to which the soul of the native belonged or most closely resonated with. From here, it was implied that the Guardian Daimon of that native also belonged to or resonated with that same planetary sphere. After a broad planetary type was identified, attempts to divine the name of the Daimon from placements within the chart were commonly applied.
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What Kind of Daimon Are You?

In the medieval astrological tradition, Guardian Daimon are said to originate from one of the seven planetary spheres and the impact of the partnership formed between the Daimon and the unembodied soul is considered powerful enough to be reflected in the chart of the native at their birth. The most common method used to identify the planet to whom the Guardian Daimon belongs is to see what planet the native's soul belongs to. In the medieval period, this was accomplished by identifying the Almuten of the Figure.

An almuten (Latin transliteration of the Arabic al-mubtazz which literally means "the victor") is a planet who has the most dignity in a specific degree of the zodiac. The Almuten of the Figure is a compound almuten which takes into consideration the dignity the planets have in five specific degrees in a natal chart.

"We know that there are five places of life, namely, the two places of the luminaries by day and by night, and the third is the place of the conjunction or opposition of the luminaries (whichever occurs first prior to the birth of the native), and the fourth is the ascending degree, and the fifth is the lot of fortune..."

The above quote is from Ibn Ezra's text The Book of Nativities where he discusses his method of discovering the Almuten of the Figure. Ezra identifies the five degrees whose rulers are to be scrutinized and tabulated to ultimately arrive at the mythical Almuten of the Figure. These five positions are not random, but are the positions of the five hilajical - or life-giving - places; the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Part of Fortune, and prenatal syzygy.

These five places play a much larger role in length of life techniques and general vitality considerations and it seems fitting that the places that signify life and the ability of the soul to exist in the material world could also be used to provide more information about the soul's pre-birth existence.

The planetary affiliation of the Guardian Daimon comes into play when prescribing theurgic practices to a native.2 The soul feels compelled to engage in specific activities attributed to the planets and by doing so the soul of the native comes closer to its Guardian Daimon. However, with proper utilization of planetary sunthemata, the gap can be bridged more quickly and efficiently. Performing planetary rites can help evoke the Guardian Daimon which can ultimately lead to a better, more conscious, relationship between the native and their Guardian.
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That Daimon's Name Is...

Identifying the planetary sphere to which the Guardian Daimon belongs is simply act one. In order to directly make contact with the Guardian Daimon (or at least to make it much easier), the native should know its name. After all, it is only polite to address someone by their name when you call them. Iamblichus disagreed with this concept, feeling it was more proper that the name be given to the individual from the Guardian Daimon itself and that reflection and inner cultivation were the true ways to contact the Daimon.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa compiles a number of methods in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy whereby an astrologer may deduce the name of the Guardian Daimon of a chart. In Book 3, Chapter 26 he says:

"If thou will find out the spirit that is the ruler of that work; the figure of the heaven being erected, cast forth letters in their number and order from the degree of the Ascendent, according to the succession of signs through each degree by filling the whole circle of the heaven: then those letters which fall into the places of the Stars the aid whereof thou wouldst use, being according to the number, and powers of those Stars, marked without into number, and order, make the name of a good spirit: but if thou shalt do so from the beginning of a degree falling against the progress of the signs, the resulting spirit shall be evil."

Agrippa does not attribute this method to any specific group, but the basic concept is one that will be echoed throughout other techniques he offers. The astrologer simply equates each degree of the zodiac to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet with the degree of the Ascendant being the launching point and it always going to the letter Alef (for the chart above, 27° Cancer would be Alef, 28° Cancer would be Bet, and so on). From here, any degree where a planet is placed becomes a letter in the Guardian Daimon's name.

Agrippa does not provide much detail on how the letters ought to be ordered. There is a strong emphasis on zodical order with the assignment of the letters to the degrees. This suggests that the planets that come first in zodiacal order from the Ascendant should make up the name in their order (in the chart above, Mars represents the first letter, Saturn the second, Mercury the third, etc). However, the wording regarding the "power of the stars" may imply that the letters should be ordered based on their corresponding planet's dignity or house placement.

Finally, Agrippa talks about reversing the order of the degree/letter assignments by starting with the Ascendant and going backwards against the order of signs (using the chart above, 27° Cancer would be Alef, 26° Cancer would be Bet, and so on), taking the positions of the planets in this order should give the name of an evil Daimon. In classical Platonism, an evil Daimon is a controversial topic. Iamblichus felt that Daimon could not be evil as it is the Demiurge who assigns them to their tasks and they each play a part in carrying out the Divine Order of the universe. Porphyry and Plotinus famously argued against animal sacrifice claiming that it was actually evil daimon that were feeding upon the blood and vapor of the sacrificial beast, sustaining themselves off of it and that evil daimon needed this form of sustenance to even exist.

As Christianity started to move further away from a classical Platonic framework, the lower orders of Daimon that worked inside the human body and visible cosmos became associated with demons or spiritual entities that worked to keep humankind away from salvation, rather than the gatekeepers to divinity that they were originally conceived of as being.

"By this art some of the Hebrew and Chaldean masters teach that the nature, and name of any Genius may be found out; as for example, the degree of the Ascendent of any ones nativity being known and the other corners of the heaven being coequated, then let that which had the more dignities of Planets in those four corners which the Arabians call Almutez, be first observed amongst the rest: and according to that in the second place, that which shall be next to it in the number of dignities, and so by order the rest of them, which obtain any dignity in the aforesaid corners: this order being used, thou mayst know the true place, & degree of them in the heaven.

Beginning from the degree of the Ascendent through each degree according to the order of the signs to cast 22 of the letters of the Hebrews; Then what letters shall fall into the places of the aforesaid Stars, being marked, and disposed according to the order found out above in the Stars, & rightly joined together according to the rules of the Hebrew tongue, make the name of a Genius: to which, according to the custom, some Monosyllable name of Divine omnipotency, viz. El, or Iah is subjoined.

But if the casting of the letters be made from an angle of the falling, and against the succession of signs, and the letters which shall fall in the Nadir (that is the opposite point) of the aforesaid Stars, be after that order as we said, joyned together, shall make the name of an evil Genius"

This technique, which Agrippa attributes to unnamed Hebrew and Chaldean masters, focuses on the degrees of the four angles and finds the planets that have dignities within them, working towards a goal that's similar to the Almuten of the Figure technique above, except it's the Almuten of the Angles.​

The degrees of the zodiac are assigned to letters of the Hebrew alphabet, starting with the Ascending degree as Alef and assigning the other letters to the degrees that follow in the order of the signs much as they were in the technique above and the degrees of the planets would indicate the letters of the Guardian Daimon's name in the order of their authority of the angular degrees.

The table above shows the information needed to determine the almuten of the angles of the chart discussed previously. Saturn has the most authority, so the letter that is assigned to Saturn's degree would indicate the first letter of the Guardian Daimon's name. Venus, with the second most points, would indicate the second letter, Mars the third, and so on.3

Agrippa again discusses the Evil Daimon, telling his readers to assign the letters starting from the Descendant, going backwards against the signs, and taking the degrees directly opposite the planets in their order of authority over the angles.

"But the Chaldeans proceed another way; for they take not the Almutez of the corners, but the Almutez of the eleventh house, and do in all things as hath been said. Now they finde out an evil Genius from the Almutez of the angle of the twelfth house, which they call an evil spirit, casting from the degree of the falling against the progress of the signs."

This technique that Agrippa attributes to the Chaldeans is a bit more simple. Instead of taking the compound Almuten of several degrees, it instead focuses on the Almuten of a single house cusp. The good Daimon of an individual is told from the dignity lords of the eleventh house cusp, while the name of the evil Daimon is discovered from the dignity lords of the twelfth house cusp.

The basis of this technique appears to be the original Greek names attributed to these two houses. The eleventh house is called Bonus Daimon (The House of the Good Spirit) while the twelfth house's name is Malus Daimon (the House of the Bad Spirit). From here, it makes sense to attribute the name of appropriate spirit to the planets who hold authority over the degree of the house cusp. It may be interesting to note that this is the only Guardian Daimon identification technique that Agrippa mentions that will not work within a whole sign house format as it requires an intermediate house cusp.

"There are also the Arabians, and many others, and some Hebrews, who find out the name of a Genius by the places of the five Hylegians, and making projection always from the beginning of Aries, and the letters being found out according to the order of Hylegians with the Astrologers, being reduced into a known order, and being joined together, make the name of a good Genius: but they draw the name of an evil Genius from the opposite Hylegian places, projection being made from the last degree of Pisces against the order of signs."

The way Agrippa introduces this technique suggests that it may have been the most popular in his time or among his sources. It is framed differently from the techniques above by starting the Hebrew alphabet assignments from 0° Aries instead of from the Ascendant degree of the chart being scrutinized. Instead of calculating almutens of degrees, this technique focuses on simply identifying the degrees of the hilajical places discussed above, ordering them appropriately, and assigning them their Hebrew letter based on their distance from 0° Aries.

The order that the letters should be placed in is not readily apparent from what Agrippa shares of the technique, but it is likely that they are supposed to be ordered in a way that reflects the hilaj's hierarchy in the candidacy for the office. This is something that will change depending on the individual chart. The Sun's letter should be first and the Moon's letter second if the individual was born during the day; the Moon's letter should be first and the Sun's second if the native was a night birth. From here, the Ascendant's letter should be third if the individual's chart is conjunctional (new moon before birth) and the Lot of Fortune's letter should be fourth. If the chart is preventional (full moon before birth) the Lot of Fortune's letter comes third and the Ascendant's letter comes fourth. The syzygy's letter should come last in all charts.

All in all, there are four different orders possible:
Day birth, Moon waning: Sun, Moon, Lot of Fortune, Ascendant, Syzygy
Day birth, Moon waxing: Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Lot of Fortune, Syzygy
Night birth, Moon waning: Moon, Sun, Lot of Fortune, Ascendant, Syzygy
Night birth, Moon waxing: Moon, Sun, Ascendant, Lot of Fortune, Syzygy

Below is a table to help determine the letters assigned to each degree of the zodiac.4 (Click to enlarge)

Taking this system and applying it to the example chart, the letters for the degrees of the hilajical places listed in the first table give the following letters: Mem, Vav, Het, Alef, and Tet. The letters have to be ordered appropriately based on the type of chart, but this is already the case in this example as it is a diurnal chart with a waxing Moon, so follows the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, Lot of Fortune, and Syzygy pattern.

You are My Vowel

The Hebrew alphabet is a little intense for outsiders. Primarily because vowel sounds were historically not indicated in writing and depended on context to make the reader aware of what sounds to use (unless the letter itself could serve a vowel function such as vav and yod in some cases). Since the astrologer is only looking to divine a name, there is no context within which to place the name. This often leads astrologers to present a mess of consonant sounds that lack vowel sounds to give it structure and call it a name. Disappointment is sure to follow when the name is not immediately recognizable or pronounceable.

Unfortunately, there is no real rule for how to correctly proceed. Many divination type methods can be used to assign the correct vowel sounds to the letters, such as making contact with the Daimon and asking them, or using some sort of cartomancy to reveal the answer.5

Fortunately, the vowels are not completely necessary, as determining the letters that make up the Daimon's name is enough to help contact them through writing or invoke them in talismanic or theurgic work. The letters themselves can serve as a magical image that enable communication without the need for having a correct pronunciation.
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Conclusion

Of the techniques listed, Ibn Ezra's method for identifying the Almuten of the Figure (minus the house considerations discussed in the notes section) and the final Agrippa technique make the most conceptual sense and synergize well together. That the five life giving places should come together to not only indicate a physical manifestation of the soul, but also to characterize the soul's planetary partner and identify the Guardian Daimon by name is a very well thought out and holistic, multi-faceted approach to the technique.

Though initially overwhelming and more than a little intimidating, identifying and connecting with the Guardian Daimon and its planetary sphere can be a great help in astral theurgic workings. Being aware of this connection between a native's soul and a planet is tremendously helpful in remedial work as reinforcing this connection has a calming effect on the soul and increases resolve. It's not uncommon for people to go through periods in their life where they feel alone and directionless, but the Guardian Daimon is always there in our corner to provide support and guidance when we need it.
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Notes

1. Ibn Ezra's technique for determining the Almuten of the Figure actually has steps beyond this. They include assigning points to planets based on the house they are placed in, among special considerations only applicable to the superior planets:
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1st house – 12 pts
10th house – 11 pts
7th house – 10 pts
4th house – 9pts
11th house – 8 pts
5th house – 7 pts
2nd house – 6 pts
8th house – 5 pts
9th house – 4 pts
3rd house – 3 pts
6th house – 2 pts
12th house – 1 pt

I have not found this to be very helpful. This part of Ezra's technique appears to be a call back to the Hellenistic Kurios which was also determined by house placement (among other considerations). By applying a house placement variable to the Almuten of the Figure it, simply put, is no longer an almuten.

2. Similarly, other grimoires of astrological magic discuss curses that require knowledge of the target's Almuten of the Figure. By controlling this planet, the practitioner controls their victim. So, keep the identify of your Almuten to yourself.

3. In this case there is actually a tie between Jupiter and the Moon. Instructions on what to do in the case of a tie are not given, but it would probably be broken by taking the positions of the planets in the chart into consideration. Perhaps the most angular planet comes first, or the one with the most dignity in its degree, or both

4. The letters Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pe, and Tsadi have two forms that are written differently but pronounced the same. The second form is used if the letter comes at the end of the name.

5. Fortunately, there are only nine vowel sounds in Hebrew. However, an aside should be taken to discuss the history of the Hebrew language.

Hebrew died out as a spoken language after the fourth century CE and was only utilized by religious and rabbinical scholars before its re-emergence as a spoken language in the 19th century. This is important as it suggests that medieval occult scholars and practitioners were working with Hebrew without really knowing how to pronounce the language as the medieval Biblical Hebrew was more akin to a contemporary restructuring of the more ancient Biblical Hebrew from the BCE era.

The specific focus on the Hebrew language for occult workings is likely due to an idealization of the Biblical pact between Abraham and the Hebrew God. This pact cemented the Jewish people as God's Chosen and was likely seen as a endorsement of Jewish culture and language. Therefore, this language must hold special powers over divine beings. It may also be due to the influence of the Christian theologian Origen who identified Hebrew as the original, occult language in a way that competed with Iamblichus's own idealization of the Egyptian language.