THE |
|
a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining
to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects. |
To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan,talk.religion.newage From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (mordred) Subject: Re: Qabala -- Summary of my work & Now: working the paths... Date: 11 Mar 1995 00:25:21 -0800 [from alt.magick: cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low)] Steven Cranmer (CRANMER@brivs2.bartol.udel.edu) wrote: > cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Colin Low) writes about the Paths... > >[...] There are plenty of commentaries > >on the G.D. map (such as Gareth Knight's), but I have real misgivings about > >some of the G.D. material, and most of these misgivings centre on the paths. > >I am not saying there is no value in these attributions - clearly, lots of > >people have used them, and got something out of them. Nevertheless, they > >seem contrived to me. A superficial menagerie of symbols that conceals more > >then it reveals. A forced fit, and not only forced, but badly forced. > I agree, but I find it harder to dump the "forced fits" so easily... [many perceptive comments deleted] Steve, I wasn't suggesting anyone should dump the G.D. stuff. Even taken superficially at the level of a symbol set for the art of memory, there is a lot of useful stuff. The discordance between G.D. correspondences and traditional correspondences can easily be ignored by taking a leap upwards through the planes to the point where the difference between a raging rogue elephant and a pet hamster is of little consequence. I had another point, but I didn't make it explicit. I have noticed that pathworking has degenerated into fluffy-bunny game. Pathworking should tear the psyche to pieces. What I find described as pathworking is little different from KingsQuest, a game where you wander through a magical land filled by curious and strange creatures and artifacts. You pick things up, you put things down, you pass guardians, have banal and incomprehensible conversations, and rescue the princess. Or something like that - what I described in my last post as the multi-media CDROM approach. There are many fluffy-bunny presentations of pathworking using the GD correspondences which seem to me to lead to practices as void of content as an evening watching "The Never Ending Story" on a continuous loop VHS video. Part of the reason for this is the lack of intelligent questioning. You are clearly asking questions, so you are excused, but there are lots of pathwork clones who follow the GD correspondences "by the book" (777 that is), and if they spend an evening wandering through enchanted landscapes, they consider the mystical quest is coming along just fine. Personally, give me KingsQuest, or better still, a bottle of whisky. The message in my last post wasn't a suggestion to junk the GD correspondences. It was a result of my own realisation that outside of the fluffy-bunny approach I had seen no deeper appraisal of what the paths really signified, and I didn't understand them myself. If they aren't an excursion through symbolic landscapes, then what is the territory being concealed so effectively by the map? What psyche-shattering revelations are pointed at by the 22 paths? The nearest I can come to explaining what I think the paths signify from a personal point of view (i.e experienced subjectively) is based on the idea that the sephiroth underpin states of consciousness. That is, the quality or energy or emanation of a sephiroth as it manifests in the psyche is perceived as a "state of consciousness". These states do not stand alone - each state is influenced by other states, but this influence is at so basic a level that it is virtually unconscious, just as you rarely notice the hum of the air conditioning, or the oxygen content of the air you breath. Kant's categories are exactly what I have in mind - something so basic to one's consciousness in a particular state that you can't conceive that things might be different, like the person who said "my doctor thinks I'm paranoid, but he only says that because he hates me". Taking this idea, the paths only appear at the moment of a genuine and significant shift in consciousness, where the preconditions underlying the original state are exposed in a revelation. Thus the paths are experienced as gnosis, an influx of genuine revelation with the power to completely change one's outlook ...permanently. The basis for gnosis is also revealed - in any state of consciousness on the lower face of the tree we have only a very incomplete understanding of the possibilities of being, and the paths are experienced as an instantaneous comprehension that one has been unconscious of something that one is now conscious of - it isn't "knowing-about", it is as content-free as drawing the curtains on a sunny morning. What can one say? "I suddenly realised the curtains were shut". "But what did you learn?" "Well, I learned that when you draw the curtains you see things differently". "What things?" "That isn't important - it was realising that the curtains were drawn that was important". "But there has to be more to it than that." "There is; if you pull *these* curtains you see out into the front garden, and if you pull *those* curtains, you see the house next door". "But tell me about the curtains." "Well, this curtain has a picture of the devil on it, the Hebrew letter ayin, the sign of scorpio, and a picture of a large cheesecake" "So I could meditate on those?" "No no no - you have to *draw* the curtains" "On paper ... you mean, like a sigil .. " "Not exactly ..." "And what about the cheesecake?" "The cheesecake is the Kabbalah." "You mean it represents the Kabbalah?" "No ... it *is* the Kabbalah." ;-) Colin Trying to say "what the paths mean" is tricky however, and that is when one employs words and symbols, and before you know it you are back in fluffy-bunny pathworking. Or you end up having arguments with "777" clones.
The Arcane Archive is copyright by the authors cited.
Send comments to the Arcane Archivist: tyaginator@arcane-archive.org. |
Did you like what you read here? Find it useful?
Then please click on the Paypal Secure Server logo and make a small donation to the site maintainer for the creation and upkeep of this site. |
The ARCANE ARCHIVE is a large domain,
organized into a number of sub-directories, each dealing with a different branch of religion, mysticism, occultism, or esoteric knowledge. Here are the major ARCANE ARCHIVE directories you can visit: |
|
interdisciplinary:
geometry, natural proportion, ratio, archaeoastronomy
mysticism: enlightenment, self-realization, trance, meditation, consciousness occultism: divination, hermeticism, amulets, sigils, magick, witchcraft, spells religion: buddhism, christianity, hinduism, islam, judaism, taoism, wicca, voodoo societies and fraternal orders: freemasonry, golden dawn, rosicrucians, etc. |
SEARCH THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
There are thousands of web pages at the ARCANE ARCHIVE. You can use ATOMZ.COM
to search for a single word (like witchcraft, hoodoo, pagan, or magic) or an
exact phrase (like Kwan Yin, golden ratio, or book of shadows):
OTHER ESOTERIC AND OCCULT SITES OF INTEREST
Southern
Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo,
including slave narratives & interviews
|