Each of us human beings has an invisible friend and guide to accompany us on our journey through life and death. Whether it manifests as a still-small voice, an innate urge, vivid intuition or an actual entity, each one of us has a teleos, or purpose, particular to our own soul’s journey, negotiating the relationship between Self and ego according to our uniqueness.
This friend, sometimes called “the Other” by Jungians, erupts into consciousness at times crucial to the equilibrium of psychological life and the path of individuation.
Guardian Angel
This friend, called The Holy Guardian Angel by magicians, or practioners of the Hermetic Qabalah, is the Angel (the term I will use in this article) that carries the call and is identified with the calling of our lives’ purpose and guides us on the way of becoming a person, a process that Jung called individuation. Through this mysterious process the Angel negotiates the tension of the opposites in service to the Self, and, as the guardian at the threshold between conscious and unconscious, acts as host of the invisibles: messenger of the gods.
The concept of the Angel, or Daimon, is an ancient concept whose origins reach into civilization’s antique cultural heritage. In Plato’s myth of Ur, Socrates describes how the souls are sent to this world, each with an Angel or Daimon, “which the soul has chosen to be guardian of his life, and to fulfill that which he had chosen” (Shrine of Wisdom, 1984, p. 34).
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