I don’t necessarily consider myself an atheist these days. More of a pantheist along the lines of Meher Baba’s cosmology, but I don’t adhere to any specific religion.
It says Easter in one of the English translations and Passover in the other. This year, Easter and the last day of Passover fall on the same day.
The Holy Guardian Angel, as I understand it, is basically the same sort of tutelary deity as the daimon in late Greek myth. According to Dr. Justin Sledge, a Youtuber who covers the esoteric, the Abramelin likely originated from a ritual meant to contact an angel called the Sar Torah for the purpose of acquiring eidetic Torah knowledge.
Something about this way of doing it spoke to me when I learned about it. I can’t quite explain, but the accounts I’ve read from people who have undertaken it say that it’s had a positive effect on their lives.
As the author puts it in the text, he taught the pure Kabbalah to his oldest son and this method to his second, since he could only pass the former on to one child a la Isaac giving his blessing to Jacob rather than Esau. As with most writings of this nature there were probably emendations made by a Christian at some point to make it more accessible to a wider audience.
Only for purposes direcrly related to the ritual. The rest of my free time will be spent engaged in my devotions, in studying the Old Testament and other religious texts (I have Jewish Literacy by Telushkin, The Religions of Man by Huston Smith, and God Speaks by Meher Baba to start with, and I intend on reading the entire Bible front to back at least once, which I’ve never done before), and writing about my experience.
Basically, yes. I see this as a kind of self-guided therapy.