The Banner of the North

"My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth."

Hanging upon the northern wall of the temple is the Banner of the North, as if flying from the four towers of the Castle of Carbonek. In the temple it marks the symbolic portal of entry of the forces of Earth, summoned by the sacred magician and assembled to do his or her bidding.

"Stoop not down into that darkly splendid world wherein continually lieth a faithless depth and hades wrapped in gloom, delighting in unintelligible images, precipitous, winding: a black ever-rolling abyss, ever espousing a body luminous, formless, and void."

Depicted here in the green of earth and the northern quarter, the banner is charged with the alchemical sigil of Earth in the black of Malkuth. Green is the color of the fecund earth.

In our tradition, the North is the quarter of Earth, of secrets, and of silence. It is associated with Malkuth, also colored black in its densest aspect, and hence with the godname Adonai.

The archangel of the quarter is Uriel, Regent of Earth. She is the patron of the knowledge garnered by experience. Uriel can be visualized clad in black, holding the pentacle. It is effective to see this figure standing in the opening of a cave or silhouetted against the night sky.

Other denizens of symbolic north include Artor, the bear of Logres, the nature spirits, and all the goddesses of earth, such as Demeter.

The elemental beings of the North are the gnomes, and their ruler is Ghob, the melekh or angel who represents their forces at the conscious level.

Control such forces in your own nature, or in the words of the ritual, "Be laborious and patient like the Gnomes, but avoid grossness and avarice," and then pray

THE PRAYER OF THE GNOMES

by
Eliphas Levy

O Invisible King Who, taking the Earth for Foundation, didst hollow its depths to fill them with Thy Almighty Power. Thou Whose Name shaketh the Arches of the World! Thou who causest the Seven Metals to flow through the veins of the rocks! King of the Seven Lights! Rewarder of the subterranean Workers! Lead us into the desirable Air and into the Real of Splendor. We watch and we labor unceasingly, we seek and we hope, by the twelve stones of the Holy City, by the buried Talismans, by the Axis of the Lodestone which passes through the center of the Earth. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord! Have pity upon those who suffer. Expand our hearts, detach and upraise our minds, enlarge our natures. O Stability and Motion! O Darkness veiled in Brilliance! O Day clothed in Night! O Master who never dost withhold the wages of Thy Workmen! O Silver Whiteness! O Golden Splendor! O Crown of Living and Melodious Diamond! Thou who wearest the Heavens on Thy Finger like a ring of Sapphire! Thou who hidest beneath the Earth in the Kingdom of Gems, the marvelous Seed of the Stars! Live, reign, and be Thou the Eternal Dispenser of the Treasures whereof Thou hast made us the Warders! Amen.

Prepared by Emmanuel Rose
Ó Emmanuel Rose 2001