Daath/the Abyss
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I'm not certain if my conception of Da'ath will be of any use here but for what it's worth here's my $.02.
I have done a lot of meditational work including a lot of work with the Tarot on the paths in the form of the Advanced TCR. One of my experiments was to begin at Malkuth using the 4 10 of the Minor Arcana and using the Major Arcana for connecting the Sephira. Of course this put me in a position to work through the Abyss and Da'ath. My understanding of it was that the Abyss was the place that you would go mentally if you weren't able to look in the mirror of the self and see yourself for who you truelly are. It is the reflection of your lower and base self. It is the exact thing we cannot look at objectively that keeps the average person from K&C with their HGA. What carries us across the Abyss is our strength of character gained through our dedication to our evolution. "Enflame thyself in prayer..."
As you can see from the statement above I see knowledge as self-knowledge and I also perceive that the Abyss is the ego. If the ego gets in the way of the aspirant there is no hope that they will cross the Abyss and all the knowledge of man will not reflect the Divine nature of our inner-star. The veils of ego will not unfold and no possibility of comprehension in the Supernals.
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I've been puzzling over the following description by AC. After explaining Jechidah, Chiah and Neschamah, he writes:
This triune principle being wholly spiritual, all that can be said about it is really negative. And it is complete in itself. Beyond it stretches what is called The Abyss. This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meanings; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions.
(Little Essays, p. 13; bolded underline mine).
AC appears to be describing consciousness perceiving material phenomena as delusions within The Abyss. That is, the Supernals looks outward and sees the Abyss stretching out infinitely.
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How is this description reconciled with the grade system of the A.A. where a person commences from Malkuth and works up the Tree to Tiphareth before reaching The Abyss that, if ever crossed, one might hope to reach the Supernals?
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Is it correct to identify the Abyss with Nuit and consciousness as a star suspended in infinite space?
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In the Little Essays excerpt, given the Supernals are surrounded on all sides by the Abyss, is it correct to say that there is nothing "beyond" the Abyss?
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@he atlas itch said
"AC appears to be describing consciousness perceiving material phenomena as delusions within The Abyss. That is, the Supernals looks outward and sees the Abyss stretching out infinitely."
Where does he say "material." The "contents" of this may be material impressions but, especially, are contents of Ruach, including thoughts, impressions, determinations, labels, etc.
"1. How is this description reconciled with the grade system of the A.A. where a person commences from Malkuth and works up the Tree to Tiphareth before reaching The Abyss that, if ever crossed, one might hope to reach the Supernals? "
What is there to reconcile? I'm not seeing a discrepancy. Please clarify.
"2. Is it correct to identify the Abyss with Nuit and consciousness as a star suspended in infinite space?"
I think that metaphor would be very misleading.
For one, if Nuit is a particular place on the Tree, it is at 0 (beyond Kether). Though her lower octave Babalon is attributable to Binah, and there are a lot of Binah impressions native to the experience of the Abyss, this wouldn't be an accurate description either. (Babalon is the reward beyond the Abyss.)
"3. In the Little Essays excerpt, given the Supernals are surrounded on all sides by the Abyss, is it correct to say that there is nothing "beyond" the Abyss?"
No.
Hawaii is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. Is it correct to say that there is nothing beyond the Pacific Ocean?
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"Material" is not in that quote but AC then writes:
"Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions."
So, strictly speaking, Phenomena is the impressions or *perceptions *of the material plane rather than actual matter itself. This excerpt from Little Essays seems like an accurate description of reality, but I am not sure how to map it onto the Tree.
Some background: several years ago, through regular practise of Liber O, the material plane became transparent and I suddenly perceived infinite space in all directions . It was disturbing and unsettling to say the least and I don't dwell on it too much. Nonetheless my understanding from that experience remains unchanged. I perceive all phenomenal impressions to be "suspended", almost dreamlike, within that space. I know that if someone swung a bat at me, the nerves of my body would feel pain. Yet this perception of the material plane remains unchanged. At the most extreme points I do not even identify with my body - I feel like a bodiless consciousness or that I am dreaming my body.
So is this Space the equivalent of the Abyss? I would not describe it as Nothing, which would be the absence of all qualities. What I perceive is definitely Space because it has depth and appears to be like a vast consciousness that I am "inside". What do you say Jim?
The possible discrepancy lies in how one understands that Little Essays excerpt. AC seems to identify consciousness with the Supernals, which is surrounded on all sides by the Abyss. If consciousness is identical with the Supernals, how can we work "toward" the Supernals - that is, if we are already there? And what happened to the lower realms of the Tree in this description - have they now been consigned to the great storehouse of impressions within the Abyss? Or, when writing that description of the Supernals, was AC speaking from "above the Abyss"?
I understand your Hawaii analogy to mean there is a vast ocean (i.e. the emotional ordeal of crossing the Abyss) and beyond that ocean lies infinite space (Nuit). My memory is hazy, but I seem to recall the 8=3 grade has lots of allusions to the alchemical process of calcination (liquified matter being turned to a dry white ash under a slow steady heat). I understand calcination to be the process occurring in the crossing of the Abyss, where everything works toward severing all emotional attachments (the terror lies in attachments to identity), toward total surrender, and consciousness becoming dry and lucid.
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@he atlas itch said
""Material" is not in that quote but AC then writes:
"Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions."
So, strictly speaking, Phenomena is the impressions or *perceptions *of the material plane rather than actual matter itself. This excerpt from Little Essays seems like an accurate description of reality, but I am not sure how to map it onto the Tree."
Fair enough. The important thing to realize, though, is that these impressions are psychological. In other words, Ruach phenomena. They aren't the physical world (presuming, for sake of discussion, that such exists); they're the psychological projections be put in the physical world, and which substantially create not the world itself, but our experience of it. (The two need have no particular relationship to each other.) - Your experiences, cited, make this same point, I see.
"So is this Space the equivalent of the Abyss?"
No. Or: Not necessarily. (It could be one symptom of the Abyss, but that's not the only layer at which to produce this. It could also be the Path of Tav.)
Think of the Abyss (for example) as the simultaneous coexistence of all separate units of knowledge or fact or definition - none filtered by selective perception or the ability of the brain to create sanity by excluding them. Infinite chatter (to well beyond "white noise") with no integrating principle.
"I would not describe it as Nothing, which would be the absence of all qualities. What I perceive is definitely Space because it has depth and appears to be like a vast consciousness that I am "inside". What do you say Jim?"
I recognize this state in fair detail. My first experience of it was as a Neophyte 1=10, in Malkuth, as my access to the actually immediately behind physical reality increased. It took other forms years later.
"AC seems to identify consciousness with the Supernals, which is surrounded on all sides by the Abyss."
A particular kind of consciousness. Not all consciousness at all levels.
"f consciousness is identical with the Supernals,"
It's not. (At least, not without modifiers to make this clearer.)
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Thanks Jim. That's a very helpful answer.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Hawaii is surrounded by the Pacific Ocean. Is it correct to say that there is nothing beyond the Pacific Ocean?"
I've been pondering the ocean/space reference. How do you reconcile the allusions to calcination (drying to white ash) with the fact Binah is associated with water?
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Then shall thy brain be dumb, and thy heart beat no more, and all thy life shall go from thee; and thou shalt be cast out upon the midden, and the birds of the air shall feast upon thy flesh, and thy bones shall whiten in the sun.
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Then shall the winds gather themselves together, and bear thee up as it were *a little heap of dust *in a sheet that hath four corners, and they shall give it unto the guardians of the abyss.
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And because there is no life therein, the guardians of the abyss shall bid the angels of the winds pass by. And the angels shall lay *thy dust *in the City of the Pyramids, and the name thereof shall be no more.
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Yet shalt thou not be therein, for thou shalt be forgotten, dust lost in dust.
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Nor shall the aeon itself avail thee in this; for from the dust shall a white ash be prepared by Hermes the Invisible.
Liber Cheth
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@he atlas itch said
"I've been pondering the ocean/space reference. How do you reconcile the allusions to calcination (drying to white ash) with the fact Binah is associated with water?"
First, you're the one relating it to calcination, so I won't hold myself accountable for it
But the bigger answer is that Binah and Chokmah are alternately related to water-fire or fire-water according to context. The Zohar characterizes Binah as of Fire and Chokmah as of Water; modern Qabalists have found a reversed pattern.
I addressed this briefly in my translation of Sepher Yetzirah, in a footnote to Cap. I, v. 12:
@"JAE on SY said
"In this development, Water corresponds to Chakh-mah and Fire to Biynah. This is opposite what most Hermetic Qabalists would suspect, and, in fact, a case can be made for reversing them. Chakhmah (corresponding to Yod) is titled the Root of Fire and Biynah (corresponding to Heh) is titled the Root of Water. These essential attributions persist. Yet, in The Zohar, Biynah is said to correspond to Fire and Chakhmah to Water; and in the ‘King,’ or Atziluthic, scale of color, Biynah is crimson and Chakhmah blue. A primary symbol of Biynah is the pyramid, from the root pyr- meaning “fire,” even as a river or stream is an important Chakhmah symbol. Additionally, there is a traditional counter-intuitive aphorism affirming that in Man is peace and in Woman power. These paradoxical and seemingly antipathetic attributions should not be abandoned too quickly when working with Supernal sefiyrothic ideas."
On another point: The "burned to white ash" metaphor is actually a Chokmah reference mostly. In Chapter 81 of Confessions, Crowley wrote:
@Confessions, Ch 81 said
"In The Vision and the Voice, the attainment of the grade of Master of the Temple was symbolized by the adept pouring every drop of his blood, that is his whole individual life, into the Cup of the Scarlet Woman, who represents Universal Impersonal Life. There remains therefore (to pursue the imagery) of the adept ‘nothing but a little pile of dust’. In a subsequent vision the Grade of Magus is foreshadowed; and the figure is that this dust is burnt into ‘a white ash’, which ash is preserved in an Urn. It is difficult to convey the appropriateness of this symbolism, but the general idea is that the earthly or receptive part of the Master is destroyed. That which remains has passed through fire; and is therefore, in a sense, of the nature of fire."
The statement in Liber Cheth that, "from the dust shall a white ash be prepared by Hermes the Invisible," is a reference to the Master's eventual passage to Chokmah, not to the M.T. grade itself.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@he atlas itch said
"I've been pondering the ocean/space reference. How do you reconcile the allusions to calcination (drying to white ash) with the fact Binah is associated with water?"
...
But the bigger answer is that Binah and Chokmah are alternately related to water-fire or fire-water according to context. The Zohar characterizes Binah as of Fire and Chokmah as of Water; modern Qabalists have found a reversed pattern."Garstin's Secret Fire: an alchemical study has a whole chapter (Chapter VI) about the attribution of Binah to Fire.
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I wrote the entry that the first poster is talking about, and it is historically accurate. My (secondary) source is Gerschom Scholem's "History of Jewish Mysticism" and his tranlations in "The Early Kabbalah".
Scholem makes an important distinction between "Kabbalah" and "Jewish Mysticism", making it clear that everything we call Kabbalistic in textual terms is about 1000 years old at the most, developing from earlier Heikhalot/Merkabah mysticism. If people use Kabbalah to mean all Jewish mysticism, it confuses things.
Jim has made highly important points as have others, but I posted originally to make one point - the "abyss" is not empty. Crossing it is not like doing a Luke Skywalker/Fellowship of the Ring job on a narrow bridge over a gaping chasm, it involves swimming upstream through incredible forces.
Jim, would you agree that much of what you say about Daath equates to Maya in Buddhism? -
@sethur said
"Scholem makes an important distinction between "Kabbalah" and "Jewish Mysticism", making it clear that everything we call Kabbalistic in textual terms is about 1000 years old at the most, developing from earlier Heikhalot/Merkabah mysticism."
I would disagree only a little. I agree so far as texts such a The Zohar (800 years old) and The 32 Paths of Wisdom (about 900 years old) are concerned. But the Sepher Yetzirah is, at the latest, a little more than 1,000 years old, and (from the dialect used) more likely about 2,100 years old.
"Jim, would you agree that much of what you say about Daath equates to Maya in Buddhism?"
Much? Well, at least some. Hardly all, though. Maya is the substance that the Magus uses, and is therefore a much higher idea than the Abyss. In some situations one could almost say that Binah is Maya to the extent that Binah represents the "substance" (in the most subtle meaning of that word) woven by the magician. (Maya isn't illusion, as often translated; rather, it is the substance out of which illusion is woven.)
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93,
Sethur wrote:"My (secondary) source is Gerschom Scholem's "History of Jewish Mysticism" and his tranlations in "The Early Kabbalah". Scholem makes an important distinction between "Kabbalah" and "Jewish Mysticism", making it clear that everything we call Kabbalistic in textual terms is about 1000 years old at the most, developing from earlier Heikhalot/Merkabah mysticism. "
While my knowledge of pre-Medieval Hebrew texts is non-existent (beyond reading a couple of translations), I'm impressed by Scholem's student Moshe Idel, who suggests Scholem was over-strict in what he excluded as 'Kabbalah,' possibly to avoid being dismissed as a flake as he tried to establish a scholarly basis for Kabbalistic studies. Idel concedes Scholem's main point - not all Jewish mystics were in the broad general stream of Kabbalah - while suggesting a careful reading of the texts indicates that the roots of the conceptual structures the medieval Kabbalists wrote about are found in the earlier writings.
93 93/93,
EM
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Much? Well, at least some. Hardly all, though. Maya is the substance that the Magus uses, and is therefore a much higher idea than the Abyss. In some situations one could almost say that Binah is Maya to the extent that Binah represents the "substance" (in the most subtle meaning of that word) woven by the magician. (Maya isn't illusion, as often translated; rather, it is the substance out of which illusion is woven.)"
I am curious what you mean by "substance". On one level it sounds like the astral, which would place it in Yetzirah. But if it is a much higher idea than the Abyss, it must be something else. It reminds me of this quote by AC:
*The word of a Magus is always a falsehood. For it is a creative word; there would be no object in uttering it if it merely stated an existing fact in nature. The task of a Magus is to make his word, the expression of his will; come true. It is the most formidable labour that the mind can conceive. Having made this decision, my next task was to cause my word to become flesh. *
www.hermetic.com/crowley/confess/chapter81.html
[edited for clarification]