From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: The Middle Pillar
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 92 01:02:15 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

9207.30 e.v.


Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.


Steve Cranmer quotes Bra'n:

>> On a semi-related note, I have a question about the version of the Middle
>> Pillar ritual B.A. posted.  Does anyone know where the god-name for Daath
>> came from?  It's not supposed to have any correspondences as such, right?
>
> I was wondering about this myself...does anyone know?  Oh, and the color
> too. it is the same as Yesod in this exercise.  That seems strange to me.


Steve writes:
 
Well, there are parallels between Daath and Yesod.  See Colin's notes for
more verification of that.


Response:

Below the Abyss these two are parallel.  In the Abyss they are united.
I was shown this by my HGA.  This is the reason that their colors are
sometimes said to be the same.  After one passes through Tiphareth
one moves into a sort of 'mirrored water' in which one simultaneously
enters Daath and Yesod.  From there one steps into both Kether and
Malkuth, again simultaneously, due to their essential unity.  It is only
the Abyss (Maya) which makes them appear to be different from one another.


Steve:

I like to think of the tree as sort of being seen from 2 perspectives:
our conscious "ego" sees it as it is commonly drawn, but the "Holy
Guardian Angel" (translate however you wish) sees it upside down.  Our
Daath is his/her/its Yesod, and so on.  That's why the Knowledge and
Conversation takes place in Tiphareth - its the only sefira the 2
'entities' share.  This also may imply the existence of 2 other sephiroth
between the ego's Malkuth and Yesod (to correspond to the HGA's Binah
and Chokmah.  I've seen descriptions of an 'outer abyss' at this level,
and it makes some sense.


Response:

Yes, and the HGA is simply our reflection as we come from Malkuth.
When we 'meet' in Tiphareth we are really coming to identify our self
with our shadow.  Tiphareth is the Center of a cosmic mirror-game.  It
is also useful to see the HGA as a sort of phase-shifted reflection of
ourselves due to our awkward imaginative abilities.  We think of ourselves
in terms of past or future and these shadows fuse into a sort of meta-reality,
giving rise to a 'being of light' which, being us, has as much at stake
as we do in our Conversation.

I'd guess that the 'outer Abyss' is the passage into language.  The inner
would be the transit beyond language, into nonduality.


Steve:

This, of course, is all my own probably warped interpretation.  I just
like the fact that the 'composite tree' has 13 'sephiroth' - one of my
favorite magical numbers.


Response:

Perhaps this is why Daath is sometimes not considered a sephirah: given
these 13 correspond rather directly to Jesus (Tiphareth) and the 12 apostles,
it might be valuable to cast one out (a la Judas) from our admiration and
obscure the connection.  I'd imagine a Kabbalist would hate this association,
though I'm sure the symbols and numerological associations between Christianity
and Judaism arise from the same or similar source.



I note that I find little value in Qabalah aside from brief glimpses into the
Tree.  I still find the associations of the spheres rather repulsive.  The
central pillar makes some sense to me, but the outer pillars seem very warped.


Invoke me under my stars.   Love is the law, love under will.


I am I!


Fr. Nigris