Satan and the Qliphoth
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@Law said
"I am curious about the Thelemic/qliphothic/ etc interpretation of satan?"
@Aleister Crowley, Book IV, Cap. 21 said
"The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God"
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@Law said
"I was just thinking about how the qliphoth is a world of shells that is a "flipside oF" the tree of life...."
Not to go off on a tangent, but I'd like to share an alternative interpretation of the qlippoth that doesn't reflect the (majority? left-hand?) view of them as some kind of "evil powers" or "flipside Tree." The following extended quotation is from Colin Low's online book Notes on Kabbalah, which I recommend heartily. (This quote was taken from an earlier version than the most recent PDF edition, because it was easier to cut and paste from the older ASCII text version...!)
@Colin Low said
"Whether the source was Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Manicheanism or some combination of all three, Kabbalah has imported a view of matter and form which distorts the view of things portrayed by the Tree of Life, and so Malkuth ends up as a kind of cosmic outer darkness, a bin for all the dirt, detritus, broken sephira and dirty hankies of the creation. Form is evil, the Mother of Form is female, women are definitely and indubitably evil, and Malkuth is the most female of the sephira, therefore Malkuth is most definitely evil...quod erat demonstrandum.
By the time we reach the time of S. L. Mathers and the Golden Dawn there is a complete Tree of evil demonic Qlippoth underneath Malkuth as a relection of the "good" Tree above it. I believe this may have something to do with the fact that meditations on Malkuth can easily become meditations on Binah, and meditations on Binah have a habit of slipping into the Abyss, and once in the Abyss it is easy to trawl up enough junk to "discover" an averse Tree "underneath" Malkuth. This view of the Qlippoth, or Shells, as active, demonic evil has become pervasive, and the more energy people put into the demonic Tree, the less there is for the original. Abolish the Qlippoth as demonic forces, and the Tree of Life comes alive with its full power of good and evil. The following quotation from Bischoff [10] (speaking of the Sephiroth) provides a more rational view of the Qlippoth:
"Since their energy [of the sephiroth] shows three degrees of strength (highest, middle and lowest degree), their emanations group accordingly in sequence. We usually imagine the image of a descending staircase. The Kabbalist prefers to see this fact as a decreasing alienation of the central primeval energy. Consequently any less perfect emanation is to him the cover or shell (Qlippah) of the preceeding, and so the last (furthest) emanations being the so-called material things are the shell of the total and are therefore called (in the actual sense) Qlippoth."
This is my own view; the shell of something is the accretion of form which it accumulates as energy comes down the Lightning Flash. If the shell can be considered by itself then it is a dead husk of something which could be alive -- it preserves all the structure but there is no energy in it to bring it alive. With this interpretation the Qlippoth are to be found everywhere: in relationships, at work, at play, in ritual, in society. Whenever something dies and people refuse to recognise that it is dead, and cling to the lifeless husk of whatever it was, then you get a Qlippah. For this reason one of the vices of Malkuth is Avarice, not only in the sense of trying to acquire material things, but also in the sense of being unwilling to let go of anything, even when it has become dead and worthless."
The internal quote (footnote 10) is to Erich Bischoff's book The Kabalah (Weiser, 1985).
Steve
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I kind of see Satan, the Devil card in the Tarot as the Man of Earth. Its we humans. We supposedly have fallen from divinity.
This is my own personal interpretation.
If you take the three grades in Thelema as their Tarot correspondences:
Man of Earth 15
Hermit 9
Lover 6
and add them together:
15 + 9 + 6 = 30
Just 1 away from another Qabalistic number and the number Frater Achad got in his work Liber 31.
For me, the Tunnels of Set, the Dark side of the Tree are mirrors of the Tree of Life, and up till now signified by barbarous names of pagan and christian flavor. To me this is just another way to interpret them.
Has anyone ever heard of the Gra Kabballah? The tree before the so called Fall of Man?
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@Frater Sabaechi said
"I kind of see Satan, the Devil card in the Tarot as the Man of Earth. Its we humans. We supposedly have fallen from divinity.
This is my own personal interpretation.
If you take the three grades in Thelema as their Tarot correspondences:
Man of Earth 15
Hermit 9
Lover 6
and add them together:
15 + 9 + 6 = 30
Just 1 away from another Qabalistic number and the number Frater Achad got in his work Liber 31."
Close. The card usually attributed to the Man of Earth is The Tower. Those three cards do add up to 31.
Dan
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@Frater Sabaechi said
"Has anyone ever heard of the Gra Kabballah? The tree before the so called Fall of Man?"
Yes, it's pretty well known. The Golden Dawn used a Tree of Life diagram in the 3=8 grade based on a theoretical "before the Fall" model, and they used one of the Tree variants attributed to Rabbi Luria ("The Gra").
I find the fact that it's in the 3=8 grade pretty interesting because it's entirely an intellectual construct and pretty hokey - but it makes the point they need to make in that exact spot, so it serves.
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@ar said
"Close. The card usually attributed to the Man of Earth is The Tower. Those three cards do add up to 31."
Usually? I'm curious, where?
Though it's not a big deal to me, since the Hebrew phrase for "man of earth" is a colloquialism for "a fool, dullard," etc., I'd tended to assign Aleph to this.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ar said
"Close. The card usually attributed to the Man of Earth is The Tower. Those three cards do add up to 31."Usually? I'm curious, where?
Though it's not a big deal to me, since the Hebrew phrase for "man of earth" is a colloquialism for "a fool, dullard," etc., I'd tended to assign Aleph to this."
I'm sorry, I can't remember where I read this. I'm almost certain is was something AC wrote, but I can't find it now.
I will look this evening and provide the source of this attribution.
Dan
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ar said
"Close. The card usually attributed to the Man of Earth is The Tower. Those three cards do add up to 31."Usually? I'm curious, where?"
The main place that I've seen it is in Crowley's Old Comment on I:40.
It's interesting how many different Tarot attributions are out there for the MoE! It's almost a miniature example of finding an English Qabalah -- so many people have their own reasons for liking one particular attribution. Some others that I've seen are:
- Somewhere on heruraha.net, maybe the now-defunct Meditation of the Day, someone suggested the Magician, with the reasoning that then all three grades would apply to Hebrew letters with a Mercurial (Hermetic or initiatory) nature: Yod, Zain, and Beth.
David Cherubim (in an online essay) suggested it's the Hierophant.
Jerry Cornelius (in his blog) suggested it could be both the Fool and the Universe (the Alpha and the Omega of the Trumps), since then the letters corresponding to all three grades would sum to 418.
@Jim Eshelman said
"Though it's not a big deal to me, since the Hebrew phrase for "man of earth" is a colloquialism for "a fool, dullard," etc., I'd tended to assign Aleph to this."
Do you have the actual Hebrew for that, Jim? (And possibly an Old Testament usage?)
Steve
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@Steven Cranmer said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Though it's not a big deal to me, since the Hebrew phrase for "man of earth" is a colloquialism for "a fool, dullard," etc., I'd tended to assign Aleph to this."Do you have the actual Hebrew for that, Jim? (And possibly an Old Testament usage?)"
It's in Sepher Sephiroth, which means I could search it on my electronic copy of my own gematria catalogue - but no, I don't remember it at the moment.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"It's in Sepher Sephiroth, which means I could search it on my electronic copy of my own gematria catalogue - but no, I don't remember it at the moment."
No problem. Maybe it's temurah: ADM (man) and AMD (fool)?
I noticed that the English phrase "men of the earth" appears in the KJV in a few places (Psalms 10:18, Revelations 18:23) to refer to the wicked -- i.e., there's an implicit contrast between the bad men of earth and the good men of God. (This is my feeble attempt to bring this thread back on-topic to the "Lord of this World," H-ShTN!)
Some of the phrases in the Book of the Law that sound strange to our ears make much more sense when remembering the archaic language of the KJV -- which Crowley was steeped in as a child. Another good example is the whole "child of thy bowels" thing from I:55. It's all through Genesis, Isaiah, etc., but in more recent versions it gets translated as "of thy flesh and blood" or the like.
Steve
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Here we go, Steve. It's in Sepher D under the value 34. HDYVT is translated there as, "A common person; uneducated, ignorant; 'Man of Earth.'"
Yet it's obviously a plural, not a singular. There are several Hebrew words spelled DYH, though none of them is given this meaning in Gesenius.
So let's follow your lead on the O.T. plurals. Your Psalms reference is actually the singular, "man of the earth," in KJV, where the phrase is ANVSh MN-HARTz = 671!!!
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93 all,
tarot wrote: Aleister Crowley, Book IV, Cap. 21 wrote:
The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God.I agree completely!
just my two pennies worth:-)
93 93/93
James Cruz
Kohen ha-Gadhel
Albuquerque, NM -
Well, those answers had almost nothing to do with my question.... Uh so how exactly does satan apply to the qliphoth? Its been said that some demons "ball themselves up" woth other demons, I think thats how crowley described it, in the big blue brick, is satan some conglomeration of goetic demons? It was mentioned in the goetia that some demons are "very obedient to lucifer" so.....what? Could I get any straight answer?
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@Law said
"Well, those answers had almost nothing to do with my question.... Uh so how exactly does satan apply to the qliphoth?"
Ah, why didn't you say so? That's a straightforward question. And it has nothing to do with Thelema per se. It's basic Qabalah. You can find the basic information several places, including Crowley's 777 and my own 776 1/2 - but perhaps it would be useful to give a little more explanation than is usually given.
In the same fashion that Qabalah establsihes a superior class of angel called Archangel, ranking and (to use a simple idea) ruling over other angles of the same class, so to the Q'lippoth have a superior class of being called Prince, ranking and ruling over other beings of this class. In Col. CVIII of 777 you can find a listing of the Q'lippothic Princes of the Sephiroth. In 776 1/2 I give this and an alternate attribution in Cols. 71-72 of the last (2.0) version, though this numeration will be changed in a forthcoming publication.
According to one of these tables, Satan is one of the Q'lippothic Princes of Kether. According to the other attribution list, He is that of Chesed. For the purpose of answering your question, it doesn't matter - the answer is the same. It is that Satan, insofar as the name is used in relation to the Q'lippoth, is the name one of several Princes who are the (Briatic) equivalent of archangels to the (Yetziratic) hordes of Q'lippoth. Thus, he has essentially the same significance as Belial, Asmoday, Moloch, or several others.
There is another sense, related but quite distinctive. Satan is one of the four "Princes of Darkness," introduced in the Abramelin work (among other places) as reigning over all the evil of the world. Satan, Lucifer, Leviathan, and Belial are a set that have a particular role in the Abramelin operation, and are part of a larger Qabalistic cosmogony. I've written here and there, and lectured spottily on them - there is a very gerat deal in my 6=5 diaries and later - but I want to emphasize that this is separate from your question about Satan and the Q'lippoth (properly called).
" Its been said that some demons "ball themselves up" woth other demons, I think thats how crowley described it, in the big blue brick, is satan some conglomeration of goetic demons? It was mentioned in the goetia that some demons are "very obedient to lucifer" so.....what? Could I get any straight answer?
"Straight answrs start with straight questions. This post is the first time that you have asked, "How exactly does Satan apply to the qliphoth [sic]?" Instead, you asked about the Thelemic/qliphothic/ etc interpretation of satan?" I didn't answer that because there is no anser. There's no Thelemic interpretation of Satan. (Aleister Crowley had a few, but The Book of the Law doesn't mention Him once!) You were insightful enough to recognize you perhaps hadn't worded your question properly. Good! That gives a clear area for you to work on.
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well....actually, if you look at the original post, it was kind of stated there.........Well any way, a band that I listened to called TOOL started what they admited was a "lunar lodge" or what I understood was pertaining to the reverse side of the tree of life, or below malkuth (what ever that means, I'll probably never know
) so by the diagram I see in "the world of the kliphoth" by thelema press- the 1st sepher would be "dark kether" so to speak, and so on and so forth, so what exactly would the point of a lunar lodge be? How exactly would one even begin to start up/down the tree of life? -
@Law said
"well....actually, if you look at the original post, it was kind of stated there........."
I did look. (I was very careful to look before saying, 'you never asked this question.') If it's "kinda there," I can still barely see it with 20/20 hindsight. You have to come out and ask it!
This is a school. One of the basic things we teach is now to apply the processes of thought. Among the most important things in the processes of thought are the ability and will to use language well, and communication with intention. The quality of an answer is dependent on the quality of the question.
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Exactly how do you construe "this" by which I take you to mean this forum, as a school? Or do you? In any case I still have no bloody idea what the hell anything on this sight has to do with applying processes of thought. for all the thousands of Dollars of my hard (and it is hard) earned money I pour into these obscure and ultimately useless texts that cover the virtual shelves of the internet, I havent gotten any real answers as to how this universe works at all, not even any selfish answers on black magic that I so desperetly desire for obtaining personal gain. Nothing. Im really starting to think that all this is a lot of crap and that all these demons and gods and all the rest is just some bad joke that people carry out in order to alleviate the embarassement of someone of any ability actually finding out that they fell for all this in the first place. the fact that i post a question here and get 20 odd conflicting answers is just more fuel to the fire that I will eventually throw all my occult texts into. In any case, this isnt a stab at you, jim, but..............damn
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@Law said
"Exactly how do you construe "this" by which I take you to mean this forum, as a school? Or do you?"
This forum is owned and operated by College of Thelema. It is a casual, experimental "extension classroom" for C.O.T. (This has been discussed many times on this forum in the past.) Teachers, students, and general public are invited to meet in a lightly-moderated contextto discuss a variety of things.
But despite its casualness and relative lack of conventional structure, it is still very much part of C.O.T. and its instruction.
"In any case I still have no bloody idea what the hell anything on this sight has to do with applying processes of thought. for all the thousands of Dollars of my hard (and it is hard) earned money I pour into these obscure and ultimately useless texts that cover the virtual shelves of the internet, I havent gotten any real answers as to how this universe works at all,"
That comes from actual initiation, not from reading.
"not even any selfish answers on black magic that I so desperetly desire for obtaining personal gain. Nothing."
Yeah, those tend to be the questions that get answered least. There are several good reasons for this, of which only two are:
(1) Of those who know how to make this work, some are sufficiently wise not to lead you into shooting yourself in your foot.
(2) Of those who kow how to make this work, the rest are working it for themselves and not particularly interested in sharing.The best key, though (meaning, the one with greatest return on the investment and without strings attached), is not necessarily the quickest. It is to undertake the Great Work itself - to pursue actual initiation - without any goal for "powers." Make the goal your own spiritual progress. In the course of this, of being drawn deeper and deeper into the truth of yourself, you'll begin reorganizing your life in greater conformity with your own nature. Wealth won't be a problem.
"Im really starting to think that all this is a lot of crap and that all these demons and gods and all the rest is just some bad joke that people carry out in order to alleviate the embarassement of someone of any ability actually finding out that they fell for all this in the first place."
I think the kind of magick that is most interesting shouldn't be undertaken until one is already a full Adept. (If you didn't want that unsolicited opinion, then I apologize - I was answering what looks like a hidden question here.)
"the fact that i post a question here and get 20 odd conflicting answers is just more fuel to the fire that I will eventually throw all my occult texts into. In any case, this isnt a stab at you, jim, but..............damn"
Thanks for the last
And I understand the frustration.Actually, the diverse posts are an education in themselves. In our hunger for freedom including speech, we like to think that all opinions are equal. That's not true. All opinions deserve equal chance to be expressed (not necessarily in a particular place or time LOL!), but they aren't equal. You've gotten opinions from people not only of diverse points of view but also of diverse levels of experience, and everything that comes with that.
I have recommended for decades, and continue to recommend, that when one is ready to start in earnest then one should pick an Order or other formal, structured path of teaching, commit oneself to it, and continue until one has completed it. Don't look right or left or backwards, just keep moving forward. The internal consistency of a well-constructed single system is important. But before doing this you have to get clear on what your goals are - and to approach a system that will address them.
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A look at the answers you received that appear to you as contradictory.
You asked about Satan. Tarot answered about "the devil." That actually was non-responsive. A common error (propagated by modern culture) is to think of a single entity called The Devil and then associate a whole shopping list of characters, and that problem was made here: The Devil, as conventionally conceived, does not exist, but Satan is a specific Qabalistically-defined entity.
Steve admitted that he was giving an off-the-beaten track answer, and actually wrote about the Q'lippoth, not about Satan.
Sabaechit seems pretty candid that he's giving personal views, his own raeding of things. (And then he digressed the thread off into the direction of The Gra, and secpondary digressions from that.)
We don't get back to your topic until Shacdar's post, which is just agree within Tarot.
You then clarified your question and got one answer from me.
So really, I don't think you got eight diverse answers. You really only got a single answer on your actual question before you clarified it, and another answer after that.