The Chamber
Dream of about three or four days ago:
I dreamed that I was in a round room (This may have been an evolution of the empty room in the Mall, from the Death of the Invisible Man dream). There was just enough room for about 5 or 6 ppl to sit around the table and enter or exit the room. The walls were made of some odd sound warping material that was supposed to keep the room safe from being spied on. My father and I were the only ones sitting at the table. We began to quarrel over something very important. My wife and the woman named White took my side and argued with my father with me. My mother stood behind my father, although she would not help him. It became a riddling contest, where questions were being thrown back and forth. For some reason, though, I was able to go out on the street and find ppl who knew the answers, while my father wouldn’t ask anyone for help. Basically this stacked the deck in my favor. His riddles grew increasingly more difficult. But I remembered something he told me the other day (in Waking Life): The way to win a riddling match is to ask a question without an answer.
Red, White and Black
Okay, so I’m starting to understand some of the technique involved in the transmutational art, I think. The other day I had a good omen by way of a moth that showed up while getting a caffeine fix.
I was meditating on the random topics that the radio sometimes brings up for me. I realised that when I get angry (I mean really pissed off), often enough it seems to summon a person with power over me into the samekh/sukkoth. So I came up with this as a map for the three color processes. The other colors I still want to experiment with.
==
Rage = Seeing Red again = Projecting rubedo outwards
Clarity = See clearly now = Projecting albedo outwards
Despair = Paint it black = Projecting nigredo outwards
What happens when you focus them inwards? Solution.
Emers(i)on, the Bodhisattva
My wife and I sat up late tonight discussing (and drinking coffee). I think the particular thread of conversation that lead me to the topic I want to post on was the relation of happiness to enlightenment. I deal with this quite a bit, as I go to a lot of 12 step meetings, and because my sponsor reads a lot of New Age material like A Course in Miracles. The main problem I’ve found in that paradigm is that it becomes assumed that if you aren’t at peace or blissful or joyous, then you must be doing something wrong. I always think of Job, and how the three friends (I’ve often wondered if you couldn’t reduce their names to different schools of thought/magick in the Babylonian Talmudic mindset) basically accused him of various forms of sin (whether a secret sin, punishment at birth, or even the hinted-at alternative of past life karmic debt) when things went wrong. Eliyahu came along and elaborated on the idea that God does as God wills (actually wills/is – like qi vs. will – internal force vs. external force?), and we can’t question it. Then God corrected Eliyahu, and said, “Sure, question me! …but you really won’t understand the answer if you aren’t ready for it. And if you are ready for it, you won’t have to ask.”
Anyways, I think this is kind of the idea behind the Choq-laws, and in particular, the Red Heifer ashes.
The Red Heifer laws are one of the great mysteries of Judaism, it seems to me. So in writing about the structure thereof, some rabbis have noted, that in fulfilling the requirements of creating the ashes (touching a dead body), one becomes ritually defiled. However, the result of that defilement is that purification can occur. But what are these ashes? Certainly they are literal ashes, but we must look at the Sod (secret) level as well as the P’shat (simple) level. The mind quickly makes the leap from ashes (thrown in the air, and rubbed on the body in the Old Testament as a sign of mourning) to sorrow , and sorrows are generally the result of disappointed expectation, belief, thoughts, ideas… in short, Qlippoth-forming mental activity. The (Ginnunga)gap between hope and reality, That versus Thou, defined identity and being. It may be that our qlippothic self-imposed limitations may, in fact, be what allows us to achieve the raising of the sparks, Tikkun.
Let me elaborate. It is my beliefs, my limited perspective that drives me to express. Were I infinite, there would be no need to express. If I knew all, I would have no reason to dispense knowledge in trade for knowledge. In the same way, we can look at many great heroes who were driven to help and aid their fellow men… by the fact that they were bound by love or an oath or a geas. Their vows forced them into action, though by nature any vow is a limitation, a missing-of-the-mark (hamartia) where the mark is infinity. This hamartia-sin is the essence of defilement – a separation between the part and the Whole. However, this separation allows for the Christ to love man past the point of Death, the Bodhisattva to stay the execution of Buddha-hood.
My wife mentioned that she knew a guy here in town who used to play guitar. The guy had a lot of heart, and it showed in his guitar playing. He loved Led Zep and played a lot of Floyd and other stuff, so well that it made people want to cry. Once, in a chance encounter over a bowl of smoke, he confessed that he felt like every time he played, his soul was bleeding out. Some time later he died (young, as the good often do), in a car wreck (sadly, due to a fellow band member’s drinking, according to local legend) on the way back from a gig; At the funeral, a close friend wept as he told that when he heard the guy play, it felt like he was being washed in purity.
He died because of his Wyrd… he lived to make others (w)hol(l)y.
A beinoni, righteous in many ways, but very imperfect in others, who raised Sparks. There were 500 people at his funeral, most of them people he touched briefly, but potently. And nobly he dispersed what remained of himself into the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and sparks rising unto heaven.
Hereby shall we reconcile the Furies with the Prophets.
Stand tall & shake the heavens!
…O Thou Unknown Other.
Xenosaga
Part I: Der Wille Zur Macht
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/xenosaga_script.txt
Xenogears
http://square-haven.com/games/ps/xgs/files/xenogears_script_disc_1.txt
http://square-haven.com/games/ps/xgs/files/xenogears_script_disc_2.txt
My favorite will always be Xenogears, but I must admit that Xenosaga has done well in adding to the continuum. 13 Zohar emulators one for each of the first 13 letters, plus the original (there are two Alephs – the 13 are the disciples of Christ + the man himself). Between chaos, KOS-MOS, and Ziggurat I just don’t know what to do with myself. All this so that the Slayer of God could be born.
…elsewhere…
ak-Haru … the meaning of Haruchai.
echoes from the darkness:
“Be true.
Ah, my daughter, do not fear.
You will not fail, not matter how he may assail you.
There is also love in the world.”
Butterflies
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~jdavies/bode/war/warliz.html
http://www.internet-at-work.com/hos_mcgrane/creation/csbutterfly.html
http://pages.slc.edu/~eraymond/ccorner/exchange/polite.html#black
Cracks in the chrysalis show light shining through.
Nun + Samekh
Word: NS Pronunc: nace
Strong: 05251 Type:
from 05264 (NSS) ; TWOT-1379a; n m
AV-standard 7, ensign 6, pole 2, banner 2, sail 2, sign 1; 20
1) something lifted up, standard, signal, signal pole, ensign, banner, sign, sail
1a) standard (as rallying point), signal
1b) standard (pole)
1c) ensign, signal
Also N + S = 110 = ChBQ – To embrace… the first form of bodily union.
========
I feel it in my blood. I sleep so little now, ’cause waking is a dream and likewise. Everything fizzles and glows, like the play of colors on an old LCD laptop screen. I’m swirling around a chain of events leading to my grandparent’s house, but I cannot tell how or why or even what will happen there or afterwards. The glamour is faded, but somehow I still love this Art. Love deepens and is enriched, even though that infatuation is dying. The old sorrows are returning, but they aren’t so unbearable anymore. In fact, they’re kind of like old friends… fuel for my fire. Burn it in the fire, while the world surrounds me chanting, “Charyou tree, Charyou tree, CHARYOU TREE!!!”
Emanated Torah
Torah D’Atziluth. The “first” Torah, (the “Torah of the Emanations”) was written directly by the “finger of God” and is
described in the passage of Scripture:
“When [Yahweh] had finished speaking with Moses on the mountain of Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18)
These were the “Tablets of the Testimony” that Moses destroyed when he descended from Mt. Sinai to find the Israelites, and the Egyptian “mixed multitude” with them, engaged in the Sin of the Golden Calf: Because they were written “by the finger of God” they are said to have come from the Kabbalistic realm of Atziluth “supreme emanations” and were intended for the Children of Israel — now cleansed of the sin of Adam by their refinement in “the iron furnace of Egypt” — as a manual, so to speak, for their re-entry into Eden — which is to say, the Kingdom of God.
***So what we had here was a failure to communicate. The tablets were broken, and the second Torah was given instead of the first. Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard. Back to the ‘bonds, dots, and stripes’ question that Aryeh Kaplan left me with.
Bonds, dots, and stripes: connected intimately to the Realm of Aztiluth; they’re derived from Genesis 31:30 (I think), in a description of one of Yakov/Jacob’s dreams about Princes and Goats, speckled, dotted, and branded. The Princes go up upon the Goats (Crowd surfing for Egregores!) in the passage. Anyways, to go into more detail I’d have to get out my notes, and then I’d be typing for 20 minutes, and then I’d have to rush off to work and wouldn’t get to drink my coffee or smoke my nico-stick. So, A-deux.
Samekh
I was talking with my wife about Samekh as a segment of meaning… A scene in the cosmic drama, whether dreaming or awake.
2 samekhim: First one was Saturday morning… dropping the car off at my father-in-law’s house. I was sitting in the truck with the Boy, and as I would breathe in, I would start to feel light as air, like I would float away. Breathing out would make me feel heavy again. I kept alternating and trying to take longer and deeper breaths. Later on, I wondered why I didn’t just keep inhaling until I flew away.
Second one was Saturday night… sitting up with my wife, talking about all the things that have happened in the last several months. All the anger, all the fear… it gets overwhelming sometimes. It just helps to talk about it. Listening to her talk, I found myself fading out… the chair, the desk, the living room computer, the entertainment center and the TV equipment, all of it started to fade out… it was so close to how it was the first time I saw it… bright blue and blazing, like phosphorescent sapphires, swirling and dancing like a motion-enhanced fractal of an ant colony’s movements. It was close.
Eyes and Ears
“One of the holiest sites of ancient Greece, Delphi was the pre-eminent shrine of Apollo. Cradled by Mount Parnassos and a valley of olive groves, it was also sacred to Dionysus, who was supposedly buried there. But Delphi is chiefly known for its legendary oracle the most famous of the ancient world.”
- http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=73723
“I am the eye with which the Universe beholds itself and knows itself Divine…”
- Hymn to Apollo, Shelley
Where’s The World Amphictyonic Council when you need them?!?
And who is the Charioteer? Abrasax… Asabrax… Abaxars… Abraxas perhaps?
Kaplan talks about the usage of the word Prophet in the Tanakh, and basically comes to the conclusion that there were certain groups at that time who had weapons grade prophetic ability… In several instances the wording was mixed about so that the word prophecy vanished from the sentence (The Ignorant juggle too?).
The eye of Odin is a rose… petal by petal it unfolds its wonders. Samekh is a circle, a moment, a dreamscape encapsulated only by the meaning permeating it. It looks like a closed vessel, which makes me wonder what will hatch when it has been incubated. Samekh can be one immortal day, one eternal moment. The Art. Samekh is also a Sukkot (hut); The festival thereof is rapidly approaching (Oct. 10-12, sort of).
David and Joseph
“Similarly, the Zohar contains many references to the same intriguing concept. It views the human brain as ‘contained in a shell which will not be broken’ until the end of days; only then ‘will the shell be broken and the light [shine] out into the world from the brain, without any covering on it’ [Zohar Vol. III p. 217}.”
- Edward Hoffman (The Way of Splendor: Jewish Mysticism and Modern Psychology)
“Another great kabbalist, Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna (the great 18th century talmudic and kabbalistic genius, also known as the Vilna Gaon) presented a messianic vision in which there are many ‘Messiahs’. He taught that there are three levels of Messiah, the first of which is not a person at all, but a spiritual evolutionary process – the messianic Ruach (Spirit or consciousness) we have been discussing. This Spirit of Messiah has been riding in the universe and guiding it from its very inception to its enlightened and inspired conclusion.
The second level of Messiah is inhabited by the great leaders and visionaries who are able to embody a large amount of the messianic Spirit (level one Messiah). The thoughts, words and actions of these Messiahs have a great influence in the world and helps humanity make evolutionary quantum-leaps towards enlightenment. The third level of Messiah is the messianic Spirit which rests in everybody’s heart – what each one of us thinks, says, and does to bring about a better world.
The Vilna Gaon had a specific practical plan for the redemption of the Jewish People, which is recorded in a remarkable document called Kol Hator (the Voice of the Turtledove). The Vilna Gaon sent pioneers from Lithuania to the Holy Land in the late 18th Century, a time when Palestine was desolate, to establish collective settlements based on Truth and Equality. These early orthodox, scholarly settlers came with a five-hundred-year plan for the unfolding of Messiah.
These five-hundred years began in 1740 CE (when both Luzzatto and the Vilna Goan were alive), the sunrise of the sixth millennium according to the Hebrew calendar. The first two hundred and fifty years of this messianic process, (until 1990), involves gathering the exiled Jewish people back to their homeland (Israel) building a just and kind collective society of inspired, enlightened people who passionately seek Truth both through the revelations of the mysteries of the Torah (Kabbalah) and through the knowledge of the natural sciences. This 250-year period is associated with Messiah son of Joseph. The final 250 years which complete this 500-year plan (1990 – 2240), is associated with Messiah son of David.
A 500-year unfolding of a messianic era means that many leaders and individuals are necessary for this to happen. No one leader, no matter how great and holy, can do it all. The Spirit of Messiah (level one) has to be embracing, embodied and expressed by many level-two Messiahs, and ultimately by all of us level-three Messiahs who live at any time of this 500-year process.
In Kol Hator, the Vilna Goan referred to a famous messianic vision from the Zohar, which says that in the year 1840, the “wellsprings of the great deep will burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens will open” (Genesis 7:11). The world is then ‘flooded’ with lower Wisdom which rises from below, and upper Wisdom which descends from above. The Goan understood that the ‘lower Wisdom’ is the proliferation of the natural Sciences and that the ‘upper Wisdom’ is the spreading of the mystical secrets of the Kabbalah.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the first chief Rabbi of Palestine) also wrote about the Messiah as a gradual process with two complementary halves. He related Messiah son of Joseph to nationalism, and Messiah son of David to a more complete messianic stage where Israel will join together with all other nations as one ‘family’ whose consciousness is finally mature enough to achieve a “purer language” (Ruach Hakodesh, Divine Inspiration), and “all call upon the Name of God” (Zefanya 3:9), each in their own way. He wrote that the lesson of the Messiah is that all peoples and all religions should recognize that they draw their Inspiration from the same Source. This Inspiration is then expressed through each nation’s own unique histories, language, literature, art, etc. This world is richer because of all of this diversity, and therefore there is no need for jealously, hatred or war.
Joseph and David are also traditionally associated with the two kingdoms of Israel that developed after the death of King Solomon. The northern kingdom was ruled in Samaria by a king from the tribe of Joseph, and the southern kingdom, Judea, was ruled by a descendent of David who was from the tribe of Judah. The northern kingdom did not follow the Torah from the beginning, they even went so far as to worship golden calves. This kingdom (Joseph) was materially well organized and excelled in the more mundane aspects of governing and providing for the material needs of the people, while the southern kingdom was faithful to the Torah and excelled in spiritual pursuits. Unfortunately, throughout their rule, as recorded in the Book of Kings, these two kingdoms were mostly at each other’s throats.”
- From “A Cure For Messianic Madness” by David Friedman
http://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/pages/teachings_kabbalah_art_a_cure.htm
The Invisible College and The Academy, salimondo?
Trees
I’m working temp/part time for my dad these days. Lotsa fun. Butting heads with the old man, just like the God of the ’50′s intended it. What’s really cool about it is the trees. I used to walk among them (and they among me) and sing songs, hoping to find elves or places of faery. My new self thinks of olives, and the Middle East, and the oil of anointing, and the fact that I get to help the trees along as their fruit thickens, ripens, and then is picked (yeah, yeah, mostly to turn into those black canned things… don’t eat the raw olives… UGH!). Today I sat and realised how much I’ve always revered my Father, and sat in awe as I saw God directing angels here and there to make the Anointing for we mere mortals. One of the ones I’d call a friend is Rafa (short for Rafael), who is a Oaxacan Indian. He taught me most of the spanish I can remember (not like that High School stuff that slips away quickly… I can think in these Words) and a couple of Indian words that reminded me of trinkets hidden in black earth.
Dream: I was flying high in the air, in the midst of a dark gray cloud. Suddenly I dropped below the cloud cover and saw beneath me an enormous Tree, composed entirely of ashes. Each fleck of ash was a moment of human sorrow. It stretched high into the heavens and deep into the underworld. There was a small island of ash at what seemed to be the base of this Middle Earth, and I knew that I must go there.
Note to self: Find piece; keywords “Tears mixed with the Ashes of Eden Entombed”; If you can’t find it, write it again.
