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TOP | RELIGION | JUDAISM | KABBALAH...finally, a QBL post of worth....
To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi
From: cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low)
Subject: Re: Klippoth Nogah
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 17:07:12 GMT
R Brzustowicz (brz@u.washington.edu) wrote:
> In article , Colin Low
> wrote:
> . . . .
> >Perhaps the Klippoth are the projection of the organic basis for consciousness.
> >They are the shells between one thing and another, the separations we have to
> >make to find our way to the nearest restaurant. We project our nature into
> >our dreams and visions. This interpretation is consistent with traditional
> >Kabbalah, or at least, some versions of traditional Kabbalah.
> >
> >The Klippoth may be a projection of the "otherness" of the world, but they
> >also have a moral dimension. They are a moral "otherness".
> This is reminiscent of Plotinus' notion of "matter" as "evil" -- that
> is, as resistance to the unimpeded flow of intelligibility. "Matter"
> in Plotinus is not the material world, but the bare, abstract,
> "Just-Say-No-ness" that constitutes the ultimate barrier against which,
> and with which, the Intelligible constitutes the material world.
> It is evil because it resists, even blocks, meaning (intelligibility) --
> but it is only with this separator that a world in time can be unpacked
> from the "standing now" of simultaneous, interpenetrating meaning
> in the world of the Intelligible.
> Although the evil of matter is, in one sense, that which is most alien to
> (and external from) the world of the Intelligible, it is nonetheless
> contained therein in the relationship of difference of distinction.
Wonderfully put. Yes, I think the more intellectual or philosophical slants
on the Klippoth do come close to the Neoplatonic, but I haven't tried to
follow this up systematically. I have seen quotes from Cordovero which
suggest that he inclined towards this view, but I can't confirm this as the
Pardes still awaits translation and my Hebrew still isn't that good.
Later Kabbalists were quite contaminated by Neoplatonism - for
example, Israel Sarug was very successful in combining Neoplatonism with
the Lurianic material he purloined from Chayim Vital.
Re: your comments about matter blocking intelligibility with its "Can't Do"
attitude (looks bad on a performance evaluation - teamwork "poor",
enthusiasm "none", judgement "severe", current achievements "constitutes the
world but adamantly refuses to take part in anything"). The surprising thing
(and it genuinely astonishes me) is that reason, which might be nothing more
than an emergent property of a neural network, is in a sense congruent with
physical matter. We can construct mathematical models of matter, and they
turn out to be sufficiently congruent with the real stuff that we can build
Pentiums that are almost Ideal. This reinforces the point that physical
matter isn't "real matter": physical matter is intelligible. There
is no evidence in physics that matter is unintelligible. The increasing
quality of computer animation is an ample demonstration that not only
is the world of physical matter intelligible, it is a minor subset of
all intelligible and possible worlds.
Perhaps. You would need a mind that transcended a world to show the
self-consistency of that world. This recalls the worlds of unbalanced
severity of the Zohar which were and are no more.
So if physical matter is intelligible, to what far periphery do we push
Neoplatonic matter? It becomes an ideal. It is an otherness as inscrutable
as Kether, more so perhaps, because it is deduced rather than observed, like
a murderer in the night.
Is milk something "in-itself", or is it a colloidal suspension of oil and
water? Every point on the complex plane is in the Mandlebrot set or it
isn't, but there are regions where "in" or "out" become so inextricably
tangled that we lose interest in "in" and "out" and become more concerned
with the patterns they make. Perhaps, as in the Mandlebrot set, the
dualist separations into matter and logos are arbitrary, but the patterns
are real. Are there abstract principles existing outside of space and
time with which we can unite, or are these principles one with the patterns
they make? What were we before we fell into the fractal oilbath? One?
Two? Many? Nothing?
Some days I feel the world become as ragged as an old soap bubble.
Colin
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