LBRP
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@Redd Fezz said
"The Unicursal Hex centers around the Abyss, which makes sense with regards to the 0=2 formula and the regular Hex centers around Tiphareth, which makes sense regarding the Soul and the Personality."
Well, no, the Unicursal Hexagram fits on the Tree of Life in exactly the same places as the Star of David variety.
The rest looks mostly correct, though, except that your way of drawing it doesn't sustain the "backing into the Tree" alignment of the pillars. Mikhael, as Archangel of Hod, is on one's right, and you are still showing Hod on the left.
"The dangling Yesod and Malkuth behind the Magician standing at Samekh and Peh just represents a shift in consciousness, yes?"
I suppose. But actually, all you're saying is that hind brain (Yesod) is behind one and forebrain (Tiphereth) is before one, right?
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Well, no, the Unicursal Hexagram fits on the Tree of Life in exactly the same places as the Star of David variety."Huh, I read differently elsewhere. And it fits so well with all the ideas I had written about archetypes, Kether and Tiphareth.
@Jim Eshelman said
"The rest looks mostly correct, though, except that your way of drawing it doesn't sustain the "backing into the Tree" alignment of the pillars. Mikhael, as Archangel of Hod, is on one's right, and you are still showing Hod on the left."
I was imagining one backed into the standing tree and facing the tree on the ground. As he is backed in, Hod would be on his right. I guess you're saying the one on the ground should be flipped. I thought it was supposed to be the backside of Adam Kadmon, since you "can't see the face of God."
@Jim Eshelman said
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"The dangling Yesod and Malkuth behind the Magician standing at Samekh and Peh just represents a shift in consciousness, yes?"I suppose. But actually, all you're saying is that hind brain (Yesod) is behind one and forebrain (Tiphereth) is before one, right?"
Yeah, I guess so, but I never thought of Tiphereth as the forebrain before. I thought the forebrain was self-consciousness or Malkuth. -
@Virgil said
"Although such definitions are constructs in support of understanding, it would be more accurate to say that Tiphareth is the circumference, the dot is Da'ath and Kether is their sum dissolution. What I find interesting is the nature of Da'ath. It really is Binah conferred as a weapon.
P.S. Crowley would have noted a degree to that stance. Short of knowing the intended symbolism, if one occupies Samekh and Peh, then they entered what I like to call the 'Wheel of Conscious Splendor', which is a psychic condition where the personality begins to understand the continuum of consciousness."
I am sad to say, I don't know what any of this really means.
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@Redd Fezz said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The rest looks mostly correct, though, except that your way of drawing it doesn't sustain the "backing into the Tree" alignment of the pillars. Mikhael, as Archangel of Hod, is on one's right, and you are still showing Hod on the left."I was imagining one backed into the standing tree and facing the tree on the ground."
Yes. But their pillars align. And, in reality, they are the same Tree, just simultaneously existing extended in two different dimensions. And in either case the Pillars are aligned.
"As he is backed in, Hod would be on his right. I guess you're saying the one on the ground should be flipped. I thought it was supposed to be the backside of Adam Kadmon, since you "can't see the face of God.""
You mentioned you read that somewhere recently, but it's not part of any source instruction or original intention of the Pentagram Ritual. Everyone is entitled to their own interpretations, of course.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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"The dangling Yesod and Malkuth behind the Magician standing at Samekh and Peh just represents a shift in consciousness, yes?"I suppose. But actually, all you're saying is that hind brain (Yesod) is behind one and forebrain (Tiphereth) is before one, right?"
Yeah, I guess so, but I never thought of Tiphereth as the forebrain before."
Solar, self-conscious, Ruach-themed (cf. Resh, The Sun, as "face" and front of head) vs. lunar, subconscious, Nephesh-themed (cf. Qoph, The Moon, as back of head).
"I thought the forebrain was self-consciousness or Malkuth."
Malkuth isn't self-conscious when it comes to brain consciousness. It's simple neural sensation, all of the nerve endings from the body that eventuate to the spine and rise up together into the brain.
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Is the TOL really like a sphere that wraps all the way around so that any place you choose to bisect it would be the 2-dimensional "ground" you are talking about? I can draw another illustration if that doesn't make sense, but I think it is what maybe you're really saying because when I consider why you'd project a TOL on the ground, it seems almost arbitrary. But, if you're encapsulated in it, then it makes a sort of sense to look at it in layers like that (to me, anyway).
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@Virgil said
""Her amino-acids - Lucy's amino-acids are not in the right sequence!"
"So, how do we get Lucy's amino-acids in the right sequence?"
"We get her a sequencer..."- Creator with Peter O'Toole"
Sounds like Lucy's in the Sky with Diamonds to me.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Well, no, the Unicursal Hexagram fits on the Tree of Life in exactly the same places as the Star of David variety."Oddly enough, it was your comment that the Unicursal Hexagram doesn't fit "over the whole body" that led me to believe I had it wrong. Prior to this, I had it centered over Tiphareth just like the regular hexagram. Perhaps your comment was due to a misunderstanding of my fumbling ideas... just as I have been repeatedly misunderstanding your comments.
I hope!So, I'll just try again, then. Facing Tiphareth, you are facing Hadit. The Unicursal Hexagram represents the push-pull of the Universe, the 0=2 formula. Since Hadit is the internal burning solar flame, it is located at Tiphareth, the Soul. Since Nuit are the extremes of interaction, the points of the Unicursal Hexagram point to the archetypes of knowledge in Da'ath and all the incorporating spheres of this knowledge to the personality of man, Yesod, the foundation of the ultimate grounded Malkuthian reality. Malkuth dangles as the result and the Supernal Triad remain beyond the "reach" of Hadit. Revised diagram:
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e33/rolocoaster/tree2.jpg -
RF, 93,
I have a suspicion JAE may not be close to a computer for a day or two.
You wrote:
"So, I'll just try again, then. Facing Tiphareth, you are facing Hadit. The Unicursal Hexagram represents the push-pull of the Universe, the 0=2 formula. Since Hadit is the internal burning solar flame, it is located at Tiphareth, the Soul. Since Nuit are the extremes of interaction, the points of the Unicursal Hexagram point to the archetypes of knowledge in Da'ath and all the incorporating spheres of this knowledge to the personality of man, Yesod, the foundation of the ultimate grounded Malkuthian reality. Malkuth dangles as the result and the Supernal Triad remain beyond the "reach" of Hadit"
I agree with Virgil that the purest or simplest place to 'put' Hadit is Kether. But Hadit is 'the ubiquitous point-of-view". Somebody operating from Yesod (in a ritual, say, or writing an on-line post or maybe involved in sexual activity) is experiencing things through Hadit as much as somebody having a vision of Beauty in Tiphereth is experiencing Hadit there. The Supernal triad is "beyond the reach" of Hadit only in the sense that the practitioner has not yet opened him/herself to awareness ("Hadit-ifying" ?) of the Supernals. As for defining Nuit as 'extremes of interaction', that strikes me as a bit like defining the flatness of part of a sphere. Nuit is all the Hadits in the Cosmos and their interconections, the extreme and the intimate ... though even that statement is just another definition of a form of flatness.
I think you may be confusing the Ruach (self-conscious awareness) with Hadit..? Tiphereth is the centre or home base of the Ruach, even though the Ruach conventionally encompasses all the sephiroth from Yesod through Chesed.
Tiphereth is the point of contact for the greater consciousness lying above/beyond, as well as for a deeper or broader comprehension of those below it. The East is sunrise, the Coming-up-into-Consciousness direction. Only the Ruach centred in Tiphereth can comprehend the Neshamah, the Supernal soul. Yesod, which in the LBRP represents sunset and a merging into twilight, is a contact point between the Nephesh, the animal soul or instinctual consciousness, and the Ruach, which is 'conscious consciousness'.
So facing East sets up an internal hierarchy within us: the illuminated Ruach in Tiphereth shines through the magician into the more dreamy or compulsive or (my preferred word) tidal consciousness in Yesod. This literally enlightens the Nephesh (according to its natural limits), and aligns it properly with, and under, the Ruach.
A personal prejudice here: bringing any hexagram concept into a pentagram ritual tends to muddle the cleanness and simplicity of something like the LBRP. The pentagram and the hexagram handle different things in different ways.
93 93/93,
Edward
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My understanding is that from the darkness (Nuit) comes the Black Flame (Hadit / Soul) which travels through Nuit. That is, Hadit is ever becoming and Nuit is ever expanding-- Nuit is all space (which includes "matter"), Hadit is the experience itself of the Soul intersecting/experiencing space. So Malkuth, the body, is Nuit. Nuit is all-encompassing space through which Hadit, the flame, travels, so Nuit would also be Kether.
By this understanding, Hadit would come from Kether and return to Kether while always being within Kether, since Malkuth is in Kether and Kether is in Malkuth after a different manner. So, Hadit is also in Kether.
Whether we exist in a Yesod or Malkuth state of mind seems irrelevant to the nature of Hadit, since the Soul (Hadit) is the real nature of a man. The True self is Hadit. So, if you were functioning in Yesod or Malkuth, it is still Hadit who is functioning in these realms, clothed in the ephemeral personality.
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RF, 93,
I like the imagery here. But I still think that if Hadit is perpetually striving to attain to Nuit, to achieve dissolution in Her, then that will happen as Kether into Ain Soph; and also as a Tipherethic experience/viewpoint dissolving into the Neshamah in Binah; as Yesodic consciousness entering into Tiphereth ... and so on.
I personally can't see restricting Hadit to Kether, unless we were to say that Hadit is the Kether of Malkuth, the Kether of Hod, the Kether of Geburah, etc. etc. That strikes me as unnecessarily nit-picky. Hadit's union with Nuit is ecstatic, and not something I'd want to analyze down to the Nth degree of Qablistic exactitude. Analyzed ecstasy, to me, is like congealed spaghetti. It's still food, but .... eewww.
Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth in Kether - but, as you note, after a different manner. While not entirely forgetting that they are two sides of one cosmic coin, this side of attaining full Neshamic consciousness, I think it's more helpful to keep them separate in our work.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Hi Ed, thanks for chiming in here.
I wasn't restricting Hadit to Kether. I was saying, "Yeah, it seems like Hadit would be there, too, I think" as a response to Virgil's and your previous posts. Hadit is what eventually crosses the Abyss, right? So I would imagine it goes higher than Tiphareth at some point, anyway.
BTW, as to your previous comment about muddying up the LBRP with all this hexagram stuff, believe it or not, I'm trying to understand the LBRP. I really don't get it, so I'm trying to get the big picture to see what the hell is going on. You start out facing East, Tiphareth, and draw a pentagram. What does that represent, spirit over the 4 elements? Then you turn toward the South, which is where, Netzach? Then West is Yesod and North is Hod? So then Tiphareth represents Air, Netzach = fire, Yesod = water (okay, that makes sense), and Hod = earth? Seems like Malkuth would be earth, if you ask me.
Since you're at Samekh and Peh, you're not actually IN the center of the "solar system," but you wind up facing that center, Hadit, to receive its influence. Is that right? -
I'm not sure I'd say that it's Hadit that crosses the Abyss. The Abyssal experience would be an abandonment of Hadit into the Ocean of Binah, I'd have thought: individuality is saturated and dissolved into a vast Understanding. Ultimately, yes, it would be Hadit doing it (I think...) but recall Crowley's descriptions in the Confessions. He was not conscious, in the conventional sense, of a dividual self during that intense work with G.C. Jones.
I found getting to understand the LBRP came from practice, not from knowing all the 'stuff'. I've always found the Peh/Samekh info bothersome and distracting, to be honest.
I look at the LBRP as a way of parsing out or analyzing the personal self. I don't get too hung up on the elemental attributions of the sephiroth, I just allow the Names and Archangels to represent the elements of their Quarters, as they have done for centuries, well before the HOGD started up. We conventionally say Yesod is Air because it's on the Middle Pillar, but it's also watery. Netzach also does a kind of double duty, both as fire expressed on the personality level, and as an earth-related sephirah. It's green, after all, and being at the bottom of the Pillar of Fire, it's receptive to the sephiroth above it. It feeds 'information' to Malkuth through Qoph (subconsciousness - remember Qoph is the back of the head, and the cerebellum).
In my own work, I simply see Raphael as Air, and as therefore representing information or realization. Gabriel is Water, and is thus deep understanding. Mikhael is Fire and thus divine energy. Auriel presides over Earth, and is thus about formation and finalization. Gabe and Auri are receptive to their opposites, Raph and Mike. The Names set up the primary orientation of the temple, and the Archangels step down the energy or summarise it.
I re-center and balance myself through this, and that allows me to release whatever I'm hanging onto. There are levels to that process, and I wouldn't like to try and summarize it all in a few paragraphs. It would vary a bit from practitioner to practitioner, I'd say, but it should be an energized exercise, and not mumbled.
I do find it helpful to allow consciousness, or the centre of mental activity, to shift a little (or a lot) to the Archangels. The realer they are, the more I can release whatever's hanging me up.
The center, as I understand it, is not what's in front of me, but what's at the center of me. Hadit (in this exercise) is the absolute core of my own being, at the heart. To the extent I can become Hadit, or allow it to Be, and thus give up any effort at 'being in control', the ritual is effective. To the extent I try to force it to work ... it doesn't.
The pentagram is Spirit ruling over the four elements, yes. I also see it as an expression of the human form at its ideal best. Which is, I feel, what happens when Spirit is in charge.
In L.V.X.,
Edward
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Actually, Hadit doesn't exist at all without Nuit. "Had! The manifestation of Nuit."; "Nu! the hiding of Hadit." Note also that Nuit achieves Hadit as the Scarlet Woman.
I think its good to a degree that people involve themselves in study at this level. Past a certain point, there are many pitfalls. For instance, unless the "chosen one" is united with Nuit - no one here can achieve Hadit. Hadit extends from the ascension of the prophet, and not just anyone. The Deity exists on multiple levels, as does the very real and very true prophecy of BOTL - but its also case specific. This is the fundamental problem with modern OTO and such. They are devoid of leadership, and the very highest grade among any of them independent of Hadit is Adeptus Minor. Furthermore, I don't see any evidence for that grade. What you have is a mish-mash of intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, and many of which have a chip on their shoulders. To turn the work of saints and God no-less into a personal play-pen is a very real danger.
Also, astral projection is a very real phenomenon. You go places and effect changes in physicality - in the so-called real-world. Unless you have achieved this ability, you haven't made it off of Malkuth. And, furthermore, even if you didn't, that doesn't mean anything. Its the pursuit of power that trips people. This is not the point of any religion. I didn't have a choice and that is what the Book of the Law is really about. More accurate is to say that I had a choice, and my choice was the creation of The Book of the Law so as to leave me with no choice. IT WASN'T fun and games nor 'exploitation and profit'.
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@Virgil said
"Actually, Hadit doesn't exist at all without Nuit. "Had! The manifestation of Nuit."; "Nu! the hiding of Hadit.""
Right, out of the Void comes the Black Flame and return to the Void it does. Like Yin and Yang, you cannot separate the two. Yin/Dark/Receptive. Yang/Light/Active.
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Redd Fezz, 93,
In my last post I wrote:
"I look at the LBRP as a way of parsing out or analyzing the personal self."
That's not a good way of putting it, since what's being parsed out is anything but 'personal'. That's why we use God-names and the Archangels. The LBRP is dealing with the Universe/Nuit on a somewhat elemental or microcosmic level, but that's still a pretty big game.
I agree that Nuit and Hadit are interdependent, and that one makes no sense without the other. That's self-evident. But I can't see any way to grasp what that inter-relationship is all about without dealing with them separately first.
So one way of looking at the LBRP is that with it, we ritually set up a version of Nuit, with sacred 'somethings' in all the main directions. We start from the centre by making the Qabalistic Cross, and then we work back to that centre after having discovered the vast Periphery, the final discovery being Hadit-within as we intone 'Amen'. In this sense, it's a ritual of the interplay of Hadit+Nuit. Maybe I was slower to grasp this than most people are, but the day that clicked I found the ritual flowed much more easily.
93 93/93,
Edward
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That sounds about right.
I just drew the 6 of Wands and so looked up THE FOUR SIXES in the Book of Thoth. Interesting reading! Then, I read the description for 6 of Wands -- not so interesting, but not terribly boring, either. In THE FOUR SIXES, the point is made that Tiphareth is the only Sephirah below the Abyss that communicates directly with Kether. This is self-evident looking at the TOL, but somehow reading it clicked with what we've been discussing, including your last comment, Ed, which relates to the rest of THE FOUR SIXES comment as well. Good. After LBRP and MPR, what's the next ritual I should attempt?