Alternate Perceptions Magazine, August 2024
Part 1, Caught in the Envoy, Ezekiel's Symbols
by: James Edward Carlos
Telling (Haggadah) - Essay Section One of several divisions concerning Ezekiel:
“...by his concentration he again brings upon himself fear and trembling,and the hairs of his head stand, and all his limbs tremble.”
(p. 76. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. Moshe Idel).
“And when I saw it, I fell upon my face, and I heard a voice of one that spake.” (...and...)
“And he said unto me, Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak unto thee.”
(p. 736. Ezekiel Conclusive Chapter 1- Verse 28 (,,,and...) Chapter 2-Verse 1 of Gideon Home Bible).
“And as I quaked and trembled, I fell upon my face. And I beheld a vision.”
(p.24, The Book Of Enoch).
*“What is written of the first vision? Flashing fire, and a radiance surrounding it, and afterward from within it, like the color of hashmal.”
(p. 502. The Zohar, chapter “Merkevet Yehezqel”)
“Hayoh, Hayah. Happening it happened.”
(p. 452. Ezekiel utterance, The Zohar. Vol.12).
Part One: Caught in the Envoy – by James Edward Carlos
Ezekiel’s Symbols:
In the discourse on Close Encounters, time seems to be obliterated, neither immanent nor imminent. Space, then, is intrinsically non-definitive as an adjunct of time. All is light. How shall I speak? What might I include and how do I express what encounters with supernal Light have come to mean to me?
With this introduction to this essay concerning mystical consciousness in essence via Ezekiel’s encounter with the Light and the Merkavah (chariot), I revisit general definitions for four italicized words that pertain to my awareness apropos to my usage when referencing close encounters in today’s time; these are as to effects Metaphor. Posture, Abstraction, plus Symbol which confers a connective resolution. Throughout this essay of several parts I address such close encounters as being adaptable to the Light of Ezekiel’s encounter as presented in the Old Testament. I will make references to my own history of close encounters.
Symbols are implicit renderings of encapsulated meanings indicative of the other three companion words. Each word voiced or written is a code name for revelations found to exemplify a principle and a history, yet each acts symbolically and experientially as symbols within symbols, as lights within lights, too, and all are akin I feel to the expression wheels within wheels as expressed by Ezekiel. Ultimately, all associative expressions and interpretations about close encounters with a supernal world are symbolic even though phenomenological and existential, resulting from consequences of the events.
My use of the word metaphor (in effect - simile, image, allegory) is a development of the general relationship between pronouns echoing nouns as various qualifying intimates basically - at least initially; frequently, then, in the development of thought other qualifiers become ideational factors, often in symbolic guise, expanding on that primal connection. Such complexity addresses encounters’ medium in the given manner pertaining to Ezekiel’s experience with the Merkavah (chariot), the hayyot (living, holy, beings, or associatively, angels and archangelic forces), and Elohim (the supernal light). Currents of light manifest within that shift from a sense of entirety appropriate to the physical moment as an awareness that experience is ultimately an ever-changing gestalt.
“Happening it happened” is a sentence attributed to Ezekiel’s mysterious experience as a gestural summation, clarifying that which issues reality and is in turn issued by reality in the same exact moment. This is a telling (Haggadah) as divined in The Zohar, and I attempt to unfold this telling as to my own experiencing with a section to follow that refers to personal examples of the diversity of close encounters. Too, this complex thought acts as a kind of motto regarding nature’s changes during the ongoing primordial Creation from time beyond any human thought of time, including the present time as part of a codicil for descriptive reckoning: (p. 452 and p. 752, Volume 12- The Zohar). Encounters persistently take the concept of time as any time - past inclusive, current as a primary essential presence regarding being (inclusive of becoming), and that which is sequential and teleological as humans grasp the orbiting within a universe. What is present is immediately past, a consequence of evolution and expansion, development and change. That we are – is, as in deed, memory in the spiraling mechanism of Creation’s eternal process. I refer to this process as a Code of Existence and relate the premise of expansion to the “Seal of Truth” as expressed in The Zohar prefacing origins of encounters in the story of Ezekiel.
An ultimate mystical transfiguration suggests that Light is that eternal process that births forms of every conceivable object or matter, including the destiny that was that of Adam - the first human being and a mystery of ongoing significance and consequence. A telepathic semblance of pictorial and symbolic code emblem arises regarding the appearance of the chariot and the hashmal (lights within lights): “Hashmal -- four sparks, flaring and sparkling, interpenetrating each other. A single corpus is formed from them, called hashmal. ... Once they have all been intertwined, a single corpus is fashioned from them [via the] mystery called Adam, despite the difference of countenances on their respective sides. ... From the midst of these -- inner secret of the point that stands upon them -- diverse legions go forth, according to their species.” (p. 462. The Zohar - Volume 12. Ibid.). And further, then, I add as if to punctuate the process with other coinage: ... as to a likeness of a star, a sun, an orbit, and orbiting which thereby is a circle within a circle radiating in dimensions outwardly from a source, a primal point, a geometrical metaphor referencing what is uttered by Ezekiel attempting to describe the merkavah: “From this flame, other wheels shine, journeying in other chariots below, within interlinked palaces. This is as is written: a wheel inside a wheel (Ezekiel 6), blending in one another, penetrating one another, heads within heads, these from those, with faces divided to their different sides.” (p. 482, Volume 12, Ibid.).
The “heads within heads” and four faces confer their place in the vision as to that history for each of the prescribed eagle, bull, lion, and man predominating (as in anthropomorphic semblances of a god or as specifying a belief in such). Each “face” had histories mythically demarcating each as a symbolic initiate to the thrones of past “gods” either as the highest possible inspirational deification possible or as deifications in their own right. Various ancient nations’ demarcations evoke the symbol of the sun associating strengths of each of these animals such as in the Near Eastern nations of Babylon, Persia-Iran, Assyria-Syria, Israel, Greece, and Egypt et al. Thereby, from such as origins of thoughts, of being from which becoming is inferred, fermentation continues.
Ultimately, I see the entire Creation process as an intermingling of various incarnations, i.e., re-incarnations, all within a spiraling momentum – through a huge and complex gyre (the wheels within wheels expression), vortex, or spiral as geometrical equivalents. Such orientations are enacted through an amalgamation within linear sequential time and time that is primal point-imagery expansive. Encounters infer that from these complex issuances, i.e., soul-patterns of events appear and reappear through such sequential encounters, sometimes site-provoked. These resonances intensify meaning/s. The pluralities confer primary vessels that other crafts are within. Hence circles orbit inside the haunting dimensions adding to the symbolic gyrations, each such orbiting as enlarging.
