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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2022


Word And Flesh.
Conjoining Of The Mystical Moment
And Magical Impulse.

by: James Edward Carlos




Segment #6 of IT

Regardless of personifications in written language, especially when mystical expressions are incurred, indicated by capitalizing words for emphasis or other significance (such as Word and Flesh), personifications we might render when writing or acknowledge when reading theology, philosophy, or poetry; the implication of such processes in language is intended to engage an understanding of the connection and the levels inherent in the very image. The empowerment of such capitalization of the initial letter of the word being magnified suggests two (at least) worlds of spirituality in the temporal and historical context of patterns, in the supernal world and the physical world acting in concert. The capitalization conceals the small or regular letter while the conflation regards the superlative context; i.e., Word inculcates, meaning that the usage or inherent methodology designates a sensibility of recurrence (akin to memory and reflection) and thus reflects such issuance while mentally absorbing word. The process enables assurance that an individual can express higher concerns with the use of regular language.

In imagery, in language, patterns are revealed and recognized over the courses by which time is enacted through image manifestation in the next close encountering. The symbolic in such patterns enables the human to have a sense of regularity and offers recourse for grasping the nature of the body and soul as one in it’s beginning and again when completing life. One needs guarding, however, because of the inevitable stereotyping such usage portends, stereotyping that robs the initial revelation of content. Codification invites such difficulty.

What is given without capitalization, thereof, such as in “authorship,” or “creator,” is contained in that which is given a personification via a capital letter so designating the word of some hierarchical degree of Authorship, or Creator. This element in written language suggests a parenthetical structure in how the human body engages birth and dying, and the temporary closure that such a language form offers as imagery. The written form is inclusive, while simultaneously offering expansiveness to awareness. Although subtle and perhaps deceptively simple, the parenthetical quality is indicative of both the power of language, suggestive of the metaphoric base of utterance, and contains both a visual and grammatical stylization to the imagery it suggests. A similar case can be made for other biblical writing forms exemplifying procedure and exigencies of meaning--the setting aside of certain words using italics, for instance. Imagery is depicted thereof in the manner and style of writing, a possible carry-over from the origins of demarcation which goes beyond the many forms of elucidation.

Considering the question asked in this same passage about differentiations of the expanses, emanations, or archangelic levels, one notes certain images that expound a mystic’s initial awareness. Given some sense of mystical consciousness, therefore, the initiate reads biblical exegesis and other writings with an intuition of such reflection; e.g., with regard to an initializing quote/s circumstance incorporates the following from The Zohar:

“All is in supernal mystery for the wise of heart. …(verse): 'Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in your youthful days' (Ecclesiastes11.9). The book of Ecclesiastes, which abides in supernal mystery, and is written in the form of mashal, an allegory, for it contains no verse without sublime wisdom, allegorically--even its smallest verses. (p. 323, Volume 5; see below). …

“Surely, this verse is fitting, and is meant allegorically! Who can expound this allegory? If it bears some simple interpretation, then it contains only what we see with our eyes. And if it is wisdom, who can comprehend it?" …

(Footnote regarding the above): "Some simple interpretation' renders derasha, 'interpretation, homiletical interpretation,’ contrasted here with deeper wisdom. 'I have not come here for derasha, but rather for the essence of the matter.'”

(pp. 322-324. The Zohar, Pritzker Edition. Volume Five. Translation and Footnote Commentary by Daniel C. Matt).

I attempt some degree of personal footnoting similar in manner to the interpretative commentary occasioning the verse, given to various levels of demarcation as understood. An explication thereof the metaphors and imagery with the kind of particular semblance and association discovered is offered on the basis of connection to some thoughts rising out of imagery experienced in mystical encounters:

a). The embedding of stars in the darkness of the expanse is what it is sometimes experienced in mystical flight, as when being lifted through an open tunnel - a wormhole perhaps - an aspect of a means for transport, and an indication of flight, one sees the light of such stars in the surrounding darkness. One realizes through vision and general sensibility the intimation of the light of the soul one is, that the entire galactic expansion is, despite and because of the very distances conveyed. The bearing of the stars, in this flight, offers intimacy through perception (perception being a constancy of procedure, of how the human experiences and senses the “contagions” of various levels) and awareness of distance simultaneously. Intimacy and distance regarding perception are cohesive aspects of a whole mechanism.

The vastness that is suggested in the cosmic range is inimical to the spiritual range. A sense of vastness initiates the adept into awareness of the larger, immeasurable actuality and beyond any immediate local reconciliation except to merely sense the inscrutable history of the cosmos, to that expansive consciousness from within which, then, mystical consciousness comes, thereafter. The expanse is appreciated as a grace confirming while deflating earlier concepts incorporated in one’s understanding, for examples--personal-cultural religious efficacy and early adherence to certain religious concepts or edicts. Yet such insight, rather than crippling, enables the mystic a movement into a beyond from this earlier cultural zeitgeist. A greater sense of freedom is instilled. By degree, we humans may choose to act on that implication. We are awed.

b). The metaphor of two worlds conditioning the flight, with each a given correspondent of the other, each reflecting that other, is given prominence in this passage; the mystic is absorbed into a supernal place while sustaining the physical place (despite certain enormous breaks in corporal sinew in movement from one state into another accompanied by intense sharp momentary pain). One grasps that other (Other) and the notion (understanding) that all physical worlds share relationship, as well as being bound to this supernal place as environment for the soul. The ecological and spiritual relationship is inclusive of all species incurred in each physical world (ours being Earth with her seemingly infinite reservoir of multiple species of all forms). The human-body and this earth-world share an inherent oneness of familial significance while varying inimically by degree of variance and differentiation from other such worlds and their inhabitants;

c). The radiance of light is absorbed and thus offers a quality of reflecting the nature of the soul and the radiance of understanding and wisdom (aspects or expanses of the supernal world such as in the imagery of the sefirotic symbols for awareness, a discovery cohabitant with an appreciation after the incurrence of the early manifestations of mystical events). The radiance of light suggests, intellectually, statutes taught in mystical encounters that often fall over into symbols and rituals of creativity and expression; the radiance emanating from the source confers emotionality and spatiality to the consciousness equally resonant within the occasion and the continuance thereafter.

The shining of light enacts energizing factors in the relationship between the two environments for the soul - the supernal world and the earth-world, thereafter, however, always more significantly integrated in consciousness and qualities exacting conscience. While such encounters prepare one for the death experience, the passage through dying and into the unknown next stage – immanence upon immanence – because thereafter, the souls (such as ancestral spirits) who meet are each manifested through a form of moving colorful lights cohesive with a sensing of the transparent body within, in compliance to the awareness; these twittering light forms surround the adept once returning to this spiritual milieu, as celebratory, welcoming, reassuring, and nourishing to the soul in its “new” environment.

The mystic grasps, too, that several such worlds exist in whatever form they abide as form, each establishing a territorial range within supernal verity. A form within a form marks the ideational, and, indeed, suggests a continually vibratory nature, expansive and contractive as within yet other forms. Breathing as realized, this is coherent with the grasp from this middle ground of body moving within as to quantum particle reality as a microcosm in spatiality temporally and without into the hindermost galactic and universal fields beyond our neighborhood but with the macrocosm as into which we are thrust. The expansive structure of this symbol, as form within form within form, etc., becomes a personal symbol for the relationship between and within any sensing of structural cohesion, one level to another, and marks the quality of radiance. Light in its elocution is only a peak of the vast and cosmic darkness (I note St. John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul”) and in this superb breadth is Consciousness as the ultimate mystical image, inclusive with the many levels in the spreading, inwardly and outwardly; as in close encounters we are floating within, grasping all sides of the incorporated embodiment of middle grounding in between. The very twittering and shimmering of the darkness is an indication of the deeper range of light, thus suffusing while dissembling objective formulations about light and its reflective power. Awe, instigative, is an emotional response to what is perceived as vital, vast, and boundless, and a sense of manifest celebration is engendered (very of archangelic thrusting and soaring as above Yesod and below Da’at), and as of incomposite with a sense of relief at returning “home” after an encounter.

d). Senses, a language process of the body, incorporate of perception in whatever means, augment the spirit of the flesh and compose for earth inhabitants (at least) a continuity that is made manifest by the Word, a symbol of Consciousness enacting Itself into Form, sometimes inferred to be Logos. (Actually, perhaps, almost any word would be equally suggestive, used in such context, such as “It” or “Itself”; it seems such a word like Logos is an inference of philosophical and scientific history, given change and substance from usage in whatever context brought it {the word} that significance for repetition. Language, itself a metaphor of dynamics, like all inherent imagery in expression, is an enactment of Consciousness, as is Image. All physicality is an expression of Consciousness. As imagery evokes us, we in turn create images. We enter (into this form), and thus, congruently, we leave—the soul being the concurrence of values and a degree of conscience grasped and acted upon.

The inference here is to mystical consciousness and ascendancy as well as the parenthetical enclosure of death whenever occurring after birth. We leave with degree of value, which is the stigma of reentrance later (and for some resistance, too, if thus karmic enactments and is thereof inscribed and empowered); entering with blood on our hands, we are washed anew in the waters of this ongoing flowing river, a river of light in the sky. The Milky Way is a primal radiant image of our galaxy addressing our swimming in the current with all else. Death is one virtue of the process beginning at birth; a significance of pre-birth participatory enactment and after-death soul continuance, but it appears, the formlessness will be at significant, change, opportunity, and a variance from the form previously known. e). Relevant to the imagery of the waters projected in metaphoric manner in this passage of The Zohar (and my suggestions immediately above) are liquids that sustain life, liquids that bear seed, that emanate or are emitted, such as water of which life is composed and such as sperm issuing from both female and male genitalia as stated in The Zohar, itself a river of light, pulsating and ebbing, reflecting Itself as a serpent of light zigzagging, lightning-like and sharp, daring, and biting, through cosmic darkness. Dare we ride the light? And, if accepting, what form/s do we recognize the light to be when manifesting? What is the meaning of the image? And, we might ask how psychological and how physical is the image manifesting.

f). Imagery is the sustaining metaphoric vehicle for symbols such as that of water that flows into a continuing river of interaction and achievement. Metaphor, enacted as image and memory, is experiential in quality. One is awash with the flames of valuation, with a spiritual energy that the body does not always seem to easily handle, often taking a toll on physical health. Yet, from these encounters, too, the recovery is more frequently an energy being revitalized.

Imagery is indeed a metaphoric activity, an experience, within the understanding that all mystical language is metaphorical, the metaphor that is our inherent actual experiencing, and enlisting of the adept over time (in the process of becoming). Such expansion is subtle and unconscious; the mystic learns to heed intuition, to acknowledge the surreal and the subconscious that carries the illumination although often hidden to cultivate the confusion felt. When the mystical experience is upon one, many qualities surface if one is drawn into a reading of them, through a preliminary surging, occurring with a transparency as images juxtapose and overlap, appear and disappear, reflect, and absorb, with the sensation of a surreality “covering” the surface of one’s existence at the moment. A cloud of surreality encompasses the adept’s perception incurring and ensuring an equal shifting flow in consciousness. Remember the cloud of unknowing, the presentation of an aurora borealis and the great mystique of plasma.

g). Any given image manifests and likewise sustains a pattern of imagery expanding any initial inferences, and each is expansive in potential, singularly, and/or within whatever patterns that occur in an individual history of pulsating incarnations. A reflection sustains a connection between upper and lower countenances, and between that which we ordinarily call spiritual and physical (like subject and object, the experience is formatively one): this is of the reality of the various levels of imagery inter-enacting. I.e., as in the gaze between two (or sometimes more) between individuals, a configuration emerges between the two who are each caught in the gaze. An Inbetween space manifests. This is a spatial sense of where the gazes pass beyond each other or come to co-habit momentarily at least. Once again all is made manifest in the conjoining and is continuing below as above, and above as below (the all is all). Resonant persuasion!

Elongations.

Concerning the implications of life and death within the expanse, in terms of consciousness and knowledge, lightning, striking out into the eternal space of the cosmos, parallels the concept of the cosmic serpent in the path delineated when reading the star patterns, inclusive, e.g., of the Ouroboros and Eridanus, plus the Milky Way as evidence of a larger ephemera, a secret path concerning knowledge, which one might consider as the completion of the fourth supernal of the origin in Creation (Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah). The serpent, like the lightning, is an image parallel to the flow of the cosmic tree, The Living Tree, with its outreaching, stretching, limbs bearing blossoms, foliage, and fruit.

(pp. 157-160. The Ladder of Lights: A Step-by-Step Guide to the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds of the Qabalists Including the Angelic and Archangelic Realms. 1968: Helios Book Service, Ltd., Great Britain. William G Gray, author).

According to William G. Gray, the non-sefiroth is Da’at, or Daath, representing knowledge in the Tree of Life, although less explored in the Kabbalah literature, at least in contemporary expositions. The particular spelling of the Jewish nomenclatures in the following quote (as with all quotes utilizing different spellings) is that used by Gray, that Da’at ... “...is not an extra Sephirah at all, but the original position occupied by Malkuth the ‘fallen Sephirah’. To understand this, we must go back to the beginning of things when the Tree of Life started to grow. The original creative Tetragram produced the Perfect Pattern, the four points of which were Being (Kether) Wisdom (Chockmah) Understanding (Binah and Knowledge (Daath). An ideal arrangement of pure Consciousness, centered on Nothing (Ain Soph Aur) but Energy. At this stage, however, there was no objective creation to be conscious of. … The original ‘Fall’ was not that of Man, but of God Who sought Knowledge through the Experience of Man. This was the ‘expulsion from Paradise’. Man was projected from subjective existence in the Divine Consciousness into a state of separated objectivity, becoming a being with limited self-determination.” (p. 157. Ibid.) … Daath is the meeting point of subjective and objective consciousness, Inner and Outer experience, and past facing future. We might remember it is a product of Wisdom and Understanding in the first instance. Going down the tree Daath is formed by thinking, and going up the tree by feeling. (p. 160. Ibid.).

The expansion is radial, a radiance flowing outward in all directions

and hence the often-used spatial orientation of south-east-west-north degrees (and the further indication of spatiality with height and depth) enters into the symbolic equation, again as one will note in considerable biblical passages and in the study of biblical precepts as in The Zohar. And, the radial shape appears in photo particle bioluminescence in quantum physics experimentation. One learns to study the personal history of one’s “own” imagery and the insistence by which images appear and reappear. The visible manifests from deep within the invisible. One manages to sense, as well, any broader pattern in one’s personal history, and, as well, any such pattern manifesting a dynamic of recurring phases of culture processed sequentially and expansively in any given Age or subsequent Eras thereof. Expansiveness operative through each segment confirms such processes and forms, image-based and structural, when compared to another such division of time with changes in systems of communications. The Great Year (26,000 years) is evoked riding the burning tail of the phoenix, an image of mystical visions of destruction and recreation, an image of vast fires, earthquakes, and world floods.

We learn to forget, however, in a personal way, and culturally as a world society-- each process an evocation of how Da’at enters into our individual lives, often initially as an intuitive sense, “Itself” a forgotten memory inclusive of dying and death when necessary for the metaphoric reality to become the current reality of our experience. Forgetting is both personal, and thereby often conditioned by mystical encounters as a reverberating aftermath of amnesia. In the eventual surfacing of the images that will compound as memory surfacing of that which this provocation may remind us. Events in past lives come forth in various ways. Yet forgetting is cultural, too, but the processing of past cultures resurface in the larger historical patterns emitted, like with the supposition of past world-wide destructions (such as The Great Flood and those past occurrences indicated as legendary by Plato) caused by an eon-based reoccurring passing of the phoenix-serpent comet of fire through our galaxy. PART FIVE: ITSELF.

Confirmations: Words And Numbers,

Star Gazing And Outer Space.

“The Word of God. Revelation means that that thick silence which fills the endless distance between God and the human mind was pierced, and man was told that god is concerned with the affairs of man; that not only does man need God, Body is also in need of man. It is such knowledge that makes the soul of Israel immune to despair. Here truth is not timeless and detached form the world but a way of living and involved in all acts of God and man. The word of God is not an object of contemplation. The word of God must become history. “Thus the word of God entered the world of man; not an “ought to,” an idea suspended between being and non-being, a shadow of the will, a concession of the mind, but a perpetual event, a demand of God more real than a mountain, more powerful than all thunders.”

(p.84. I Asked For Wonder. A Spiritual Anthology--Abraham Joshua Heschel. Edited by Samuel H. Dresner).

“A great noise awakened the anchorite, and he opened his eyes to find himself bathed in light. … The cacophony came from overhead, directly overhead. A violent wind flattened the lush grass around the barrow, battering the trees, stripping leaves from their branches. The anchorite was pelted by twigs and bits of bark driven by the ferocity of the blast. “The light above him, which was not the natural light of day, moved as though it flitted from perch to perch among the tops of the trees, and the shadows of the objects in the defile shifted, clockwise, counterclockwise. … Though the light was blindingly bright, it carried no heat. The anchorite bowed his head and screamed, but the shrill sound of his voice did not carry over the roar. “Then a thundering voice. “Who is it?” the voice seemed to say again and again. The anchorite could not be sure of the words. “Who is it?” or something similar, again and again until the anchorite thought that he could bear no more.

“It is I,” he said quietly, his gaze still directed downward. The voice, the Voice, made its repeated request.

“Come into the open where we can see you,” it called. And again,

“Who is it?”

Mustering all of his failing strength and courage, the anchorite bellowed in reply, “it is I!” At the same moment, he turned his pale face heavenward, forcing his eyes wide open, daring to look for a single moment into what he knew to be the beautiful burning face of the Angel of the Lord.” (pp. 113-114. Dogs of God. Pinckney Benedict).

As evidence of the bearing of other physical worlds, as in the reference (b) (in Part Four of IT) listing of expositions regarding mysticism and the connections between supernal and regular physical worlds, worlds of lower statuses, we find a fascinating indication in the final pages of The Zohar, Volume Two. A tale begins that involves Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Yose who meet an inhabitant from another such place who remains nameless. The world is called Arqa; the voice they hear speaking of waylaying might be perceived, curiously, as that of a bandit or pirate possibly commandeering but steering an airborne vessel, and the passage is as follows:

“As they were walking, they heard a voice: ’’Armed band of cutthroats442 waylaying crookedl! Veer above! Do not descend to an unroofed fortress443 below!’ Rabbi Yose said, ‘Conclude from this that the blessed Holy One wants to guard our way!’

“They climbed up into the mountains, between towering cliffs. They said, ‘Since the blessed Holy One favors this way, we will witness something or a miracle is about to happen.’ “They walked on, then sat down by the crevices in the rock. A man climbed out; they were astounded. Rabbi Yose said, ‘Who are you?’

“He replied, ‘I am one of the denizens of Arqa.’444

“He asked, ‘Human beings live there?’

“’Yes,’ he replied. ‘They sow and harvest. Some of them look different, stranger than me.445 I came up to you to discover the name of the earth you inhabit.’ “He said, ‘(Erets), Earth.446 for here dwells (Erets ha-Hayyim), land of Life,447 as is written: Erets, Earth, from which bread emerges (Job 28:5)—from this one bread emerges; from the others, not. And if it does emerge, then not of the seven species.’448

“Meanwhile, he entered his site. They were astonished, and said, ‘Surely by this the blessed Holy One wants to arouse us.’

“Rabbi Hiyya said, ‘Certainly so! Now, this verse that you cited reminds me of a sublime word I learned from my grandfather concerning Passover: The blessed Holy One gave Israel this bread from the Land of Life,449 and later, bread from heaven.450 This word we have established.’

“’He further said, {157b} ‘When a person issues into the world, he knows nothing until he tastes bread.451 Upon tasting bread, he is stimulated to know and perceive. Similarly, when Israel left Egypt, they knew nothing until the blessed Holy One gave them a taste of the bread of this earth,451 as is written: Earth, from which bread emerges. Then Israel entered into knowing and perceiving the blessed Holy One. A baby does not know or perceive until he tastes the bread of this world, whereupon he knows and perceives matters of this world. Israel did not know or perceive supernal matters until they ate supernal bread, whereupon they knew and perceived that realm.’

“’The blessed Holy One wanted Israel to know more of the realm befitting this earth,’453 but they were unable until they tasted bread from that realm. Who is that? Heaven, as is written: I am going to rain bread from heaven for you (Exodus 16:4)454 Then, they knew and contemplated that realm. Before eating bread from these sites, they knew and perceived nothing.’ “Rabbi Yose came and kissed him, saying, ”it was precisely for this that the blessed Holy One aroused us!455 So, Israel’s initiation into knowledge was bread.’ “They rose and walked on. While they were walking they saw two Damascene plums, one male and one female.456

“Rabbi Yose said, ‘Every single thing in the world corresponds to the pattern above, and everything above has its counterpart on earth,457 and everything on earth has its counterpart in the sea.’458” (pp. 374-375. The Zohar-Pritzker Edition, Volume Two. Daniel C. Matt, translator) (original footnoting numbers included). (Note: Arqa is associated with the lower Earths, listed in Godwin’s Cabballist Encyclopedia; mentioned as one of seven spiritual worlds in Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Daniken but without scholastic confirmation as to source of his statement. See the following. The spiritual worlds in other written sources indicate their association by name with the lower seven seferot). (Note: as to other employment of footnoting numbers, I retain these throughout the above for readers’ easier searching through The Zohar).

Again, this edition’s footnotes verify the varying symbolic levels of this parable including qualities of other worlds and of spiritual nourishment (eating bread), giving yet another range to metaphors employed and warning of illusory aspects of what is real at one level and/or at another level: of especial note is commentary on Arqa being one of the seven levels, herein like earth, and corresponding to seven heavens (and perhaps the cosmic sea), plus six such others (Nesziah, Erez, Adamah, Thebel, Tziah, and Geh) that are referred to as seven worlds (i.e., seven inhabited spiritual worlds perhaps of physical demeanor) although not with the same names as in Sefer Yetzirah.

(pp. 146-148. Chariots of the Gods From Outer Space. Erich von Daniken). (to be noted, however, Von Daniken’s sources are not specific as to his citing).

“Therein an assemblage of nomenclatures surround the parable, reflecting, possibly, varying traditions with subsequent legends and perhaps folk tales, each adding to the implications rather than subtracting as one might ascertain from comparison. Perhaps, symbolically, the spiritual worlds are yet another phase of metaphors for seven planets in keeping with Verse 4:7 in Sefer Yetzirah: “Seven planets in the Universe: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Seven days in the Year: The seven days of the week. Seven gates in the Soul, male and female: Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and the mouth.”

(p. 174. Sefer Yetzirah. The Book of Creation. In Theory and Practice. Aryeh Kaplan. (Samuel Weiser, Inc., York Beach, Main. 1997).

The latter returns us to equalization, in part, of body openings mirrored, back and forth, by male and female—all sensory receivers. And, we are reminded of differences in interpretation. This symbolism occurs in a related tale. In one tale, the interpretation is that Cain left earth for Arqa after slaying Abel. This is a societal gesture that in later legendary writing has the effect of a white martyrdom whether the exile is self-imposed or by other circumstance. Analogously, the exile of Christian saint and mystic, Columba, with twelve monastic companions, leading to eventual passage in the year 563 to the mystic isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, an imposed estrangement from Ireland after having caused a “holy” war over a copy of the psalms, called Cathach). (pp. 84-103. Chapter V, “The Battle of Cul Dreimne” and Chapter VI, “Passage to Iona”). Columba. Ian Finlay). (1979: Richard Drew Publishing Co., Glasgow).

Genesis 4:14 states that Cain, protected by Yahweh with a sevenfold vengeance, would live but be a fugitive and a wanderer over the earth, although said to settle in the land of Nod, east of Eden. (p. 8. “Genesis.” The Jerusalem Bible. 1966. Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden city, New York. General Editor, Alexander Jones). (Other interpretations of possible connections are to be noted, e.g., that Columba’s Holy War, initiating his “martyrdom as leaving Ireland” was over his having copied a borrowed bible from St. Finian and not returning the original and the copy as dictated at the time by tribal law).

Of many references to the number seven (and other numbers) in The Zohar, in the Old Testament, over and over in the biblical books citing visions, dreams, and encounters as in the Book of Revelations, Earth is stated to be the highest of seven levels. The word, species, also relevant to the number seven, deals with grains for bread, the bread of earth mirroring the bread of heaven. Bread stands for the basic nourishment and sustenance of humanity; bread is source material. Seven suggests abundance.

Most probably seven in this case, in The Zohar, refers to the sefirot, the lower seven expanses of the sefirot if referencing the concept of Adam Kadmon, where earth or Malkhut (Kingdom, Shekhinah, Presence, Earth, Moon, Queen, Apple Orchard, King David, Rachel, Assembly of Israel) symbolizes the lowest extremity in the ladder, i.e., the feet of the archetypal anthropomorphic inference of the sefirot. What is highest is lowest as in the image of the sefirot as the Living Tree, an affirmation of inclusiveness of physicality with spiritual expansiveness. Attributes, as the several associations listed with the initial mention of each sefiroth, form a conglomerate of meaning. An understanding of the word, seven, as with other numbers in Holy Scripture, is a realization of spirituality. With spiritual nourishment reflecting necessary physical nourishment, not just for basic sustenance, but, also, for salvation; the adept is given resources for transcendent flight and a strength enabling one for exposure to the surreality of other worlds. Such exposure is an imposition on the regular life, and can be dangerous and potentially debilitating. Nourishment allows the necessary health to ascend to the levels degreed in the encounters. An inference, too, of the numerical index is that all levels of the sefirothic ladder of divine consciousness indicate spirituality, including the physical amalgamation. Numbers are abstractions, a means to the nuance of the transcendent and impersonal cosmic realm. Numbers are serial, lending a sequential factor in the expansion and thereby accenting a resonant vibratory quality, while always being non-conclusive in the pathway to infinity from the finite.

Confluences, perhaps, or influences of astrological-astronomical bearing, suggest a relationship between the Hebraic Adam Kadmon as archetypal human male form (perhaps figuring in the esteem placed on patriarch Jacob) configured celestially in the constellation, Orion, and anthropomorphically reflective of both the human male body as well as the Egyptian deity of redemption—Osiris. The image of a divine father is as if born of an ancient game of star-watching, shepherding in my imagination, and perhaps the result of an archaic mentality and creative consciousness via a shepherding of awareness of a supernal consciousness rising in a follow-the star-dots; and, such a monumental form as the Orion configuration emerges to become chronic in the imagination of humankind. Something personal and intimate arises out of the density of the impersonal astronomical distance. The human discovers a reflection of self in the sky, a means to a spiritual and supernal larger self-personification regardless of the imprint of self-aggrandizement. As if an indicator of evolution in the objective demarcation of looking upward and outward, rushing forward to confirm each other’s discoveries of meaning (“Come and See” as stated repetitively in The Zohar), observing and naming, thus, confer status on being. In alliance thereof, is the continuity of being through repetitious usage that further implies being in the eternal present and in the now, as does the word, this, and as is use of the word, Who, which often implies it, or a personification of Itself. The pronoun is often presented in the stance of a question but which implies a profound essence (and answer therein) of the Godhead, in: “Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, is also know as this, which implies ‘constantly present right here.’ (p. 450, ftnt. 701, The Zohar, Volume 3, in discussing “Who is the vine?”)(I mention that the vine as symbol has held forbearance to Dionysus in the Arian Age and to Jesus in the Piscean Age and that the symbolization pertains to repetition of symbols in the initial Era of a given Age).

Elsewhere is reference to the plural, these, in terms of “ Jacob’s question, Who are these?” which alludes to idolatry, and prospects regarding seduction mentioning Samael and his riding the female serpent, an inference to ancient Egypt as rival nation, and to Orion who stands in cosmic constellation terms on the serpent-river, Eridanus. (p. 373, ftnts. 370 and 370). The discovery is associative to a psychological manifesting, a development of the prescience of meaning rising from between the objectivities of things seen skyward, named and thus confirmed. The period of time that indicates the Greek’s noting of the constellation Orion is discovered and lauded as a celestial hunter in a male human form, i.e., a celestial father who watches over and protects the entire cosmos; one of “his” (its), i.e., the constellation as a counterpart defined the mirroring Osiris who after other such intonations in other places became the majestic celestial god of life, a god of the underworld and rebirth who in his hand holds Aldebaran, the star of eternal life and resurrection. Aldebaran is, in ancient Egyptian sky-theology, the galactic source of the humanity’s astral ancestors, and a sign of continuity, signifying forbearance acting as the perpetual, potent, harbinger of everlasting life.

This cosmological clustering of metaphoric awareness is akin to the acceptance of Sirius as the star-progenitor of the African Dogon Tribe. (The Sirius Mystery. Robert K. G. Temple, and for the following, similarly, The Orion Mystery, Robert Bauvall and Adrian Gilbert).

Sirius (Sothis in ancient Egyptian culture) is Osiris’ paramour in the complexion. Contrarily, the Greeks held Orion to be the militaristic hunter-god who wields a weapon against Aldebaran—the head of Taurus, the Bull constellation interfusing, as had the Egyptians, the constellations, as the story of creation spreads throughout the heavens, literally bound to uttering the sacred names confirming the airways of the time. Interestingly, the large phallus of Osiris-Orion is conceived, then, by the Greeks to be a sword girded by Orion’s belt. The Egyptian and Hebraic resonances are both in keeping with the erotic characterization in mystical thought, the expansive Divine Phallus (Yesod, in Kaballah literature) espousing an ongoing creation of eternal life, although all such contents reflect the respective cultures. In keeping with mystical thought generally, in history and culture, from area or country to area, metaphors are, then apparent, names for deities who appear to shift in shape and consciousness, less than in content of presence and essence; i.e., the sense of meaning abides.

Inherent, too, in the process of spiritualizing humanity, is the multiple confluences that add name upon name upon name, becoming multiple, vibratory, attributes and suggesting teeming qualities of the deities deeply felt and prescient to the human psyche. These words uttered in whatever fashion of language from place to place, and over time, act as a methodology that pervades a given age: evolving from the image, expression is given voice, and in turn recorded in cuneiforms, demarcated in hieroglyphics, in the printed word, and currently in electronic machinery. From one technical advance to another, period upon period (the states of time often indicated as Eras of 2,160 years are subdivided by “inner periods of time” of 180 years, and “phases” of 15 years therein within this set of astrological nomenclatures), the verification of meaning through utterance slides through a spiraling time. Mythological in memory, always theologically confirming, a structure widens through cultural and artistic offshoots to other personages. A wide spectrum of “stars” emerges in the vast cosmic ocean.


Thursday, March 28, 2024