Despite all of that (and my normal working life) I found some time to draw up a new conception of the Qabalah that I have been working on, inspired by some excellent ideas at Work of the Chariot.
This diagram isn't complete by any stretch of the imagination, but it does show the tree of life with da'ath as an actuallized sphere and malkuth as the earth-matrix as a lower reflection of the ain sof or above the spheres. There are some notes around the sides, but they aren't so important if they are illegible from the scanning. Some missing things are the letterings for the paths, which I wasn't sure how to work out since the paths now cross to da'ath from its surrounding spheres and do not lead to malkuth. Also I wanted to work in the chakras, but couldn't decide to stick with the original mappings or assign them to the seven central spheres (daath would make a good throat chakra, though the geburah/ chesed level also seems to represent breathing and communication. Tipharet could bot hbe the heart and power, and hod/netzack the emotions, except that both yesod and the second layer chakra are represented by the moon. otherwise the root chakra and the foundation of yesod relate well). Some important things to notice are that the seeven central spheres are framed on two interlocking circles, which symbolicaly has a lot of balance and power (as the veseca of two interlapping circles is a potent symbol of the interaction of multiple waves from events), and this diagram does not show the tree in relation to other trees around the central axis. But it does show the axis as being the ain sof or, the nothingness in the center of all things, which I mistakingly didn't represent before; kether is still in people as a localized connection to the non-local, but it is not the center of the wheel.
I will be drawing up some more diagrams (relatively) soon, showing this tree in relation to other trees, as I am beginning to get a clearer sense of how thy all fit together.
Also, here's another little poem I wrote a few days ago:
Do you hear angels
singing on the street corners,
in every laughing ray of sunlight
that breaks through the clouds,
and pours warmth all over the Earth
like a lover's breath?
When did I die?
Heaven is right now,
we are the only gods
to pray to.
Why ask for anything else
when it is already here?
Let go of your fear
and become the sky.
Feet float off of the ground
and worlds dance
on the tips of our fingers.
Every breath feels like the first,
and carries me back to you.
5 comments:
I like this diagram, except for one nitpick. I am strongly inclined to switch the location of your elements of air and fire. This way air and water would be at cross-odds with one another, and fire and earth at cross-odds. My reasoning being that air, taken as reason/analysis, and water, taken as emotion/intuition, would be antithetical filters. Similarly fire, taken as will/focus, and earth, taken as action/works, would be antithetical. I agree with Malkuth being earthy and the Pillar of Mercy being watery... but I find the sephiroth on the Pillar of Severity to be more airy than fiery, and Kether to be all fire. As Kether, fire/will is like a magnifying glass focusing the light of the sun, or like a telescope which is a wand of lenses after all.
I also nitpick, althought I like it (not as much as the previous piccie, because I think this one gets away from the core circularity that I find interesting) it has 24 paths.
Which is a crappy number for any really handy Kabbalistic purposes (although it's double 12, so you could go for Zodiac by day and night, if you needed to).
Suggestion : Add the other two paths back to Malkuth and adapt the thing to the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Could lead to interesting things.
Or don't - don't mind me ...
Sandalphon
Suggestion : Add the other two paths back to Malkuth and adapt the thing to the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Could lead to interesting things.If I recall correctly, Crowley tried to do this in his later years while experimenting with non-traditional (by which I mean non-Golden Dawn-standard) arrangements of the Qabalah; inspired by Aiwass' exhortation to "obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; [and] find new symbols to attribute them unto."
And it did not appear to work; the Kabbalah seems to inherently resonate with the Hebrew Aleph-beth. The 22 paths are hinted at as corresponding to the 22 Hebrew letters when these paths were first described in the Sepher Yetzirah. Daath was also a later addition, as far as I can tell by the Golden Dawn or their sources, to account for an abyss between the Supernal triad and the second triad.
Which is not to say that symbol systems should not evolve and seek new forms to express changing attitudes and meaning with new cultures. However, I personally find the Tree of Life more useful for gematria, etc, as well as for path-working and as a personal map of consciousness, if I can retain the two paths from Malkuth to each of the side pillars (i.e. the paths of Shin and Qoph). There's actually a very good reason for why the there are no paths connecting from Chokmah to Geburah and Binah to Chesed, having to do with the manner in which the lower sephiroth emanate from the Supernals.
So, in summary, I have to agree with Sandalphon's nitpick.
Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about.
Janus - read Lon Milo DuQuette's The Chicken Qabala and Jeff Love's The Quantum Gods for a sense of why the Daath thing is sketchy with respect to the Sepher Sephiroth taken as a whole system.
Ahh... you also seem to be missing the paths that connect Binah and Chokmah to Tiphareth, i.e. the paths of Zain and Heh.
thanks for the nitpicks. As I said, this is all supposition, or suggestion, and not a reflection of any truth about the qabalah.
This diagram's main fault is that it goes back to the standard singular tree and does not represent many trees in conjunction around a central axis. Which isn't to say that isn't in there, only not explicit. My next diagram should (hopefully) bring that back and take it a step further now that I have some more ideas of what I drew wrong the first time.
As far as the paths go, the core sephiroth in the diagram (not including malkuth) have 22 connecting paths, but I can see why this causes confusion. I am not so well read on the qabalah as a whole and am only making guesses as to new ways of representing it. I was interested in seeing what daath looked like as a formalized sphere, but see that this leads to many other problems with the system as a whole.
In regards to the elements, they were sort of just tacked onto the drawing, and obviously do not follow traditional arrangements of the elements around the circle, or in relation to the qabalah (as metachor pointed out). My understanding of the elements comes from personal experience with their properties, and most fits with the elemental descriptions of the i ching. Though of course I am beginning to question all that as well.
Regardless, thanks for the feedback, and we'll see where things go from here...
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