Assiah
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I've been pondering this since Jim's post too. (I was the one confusing Malkuth and Assiah)
I think each of the sephirot may find greater expression and resonance with one of the four worlds, like Assiah and Malkuth, or Yetzirah and Hod. And that a 'single action' can express itself in several worlds.
Let me try an example, and see if others can tweak or correct my rough spots.
A person who draws a diagram for a widget. His mind is working primarily in Yetzirah, because he's engaging in abstract conceptualization of a hypothetical physical object. If he's relying on his file cabinet intellectual thinking to decide how he represents different parts of the widget (which he most likely would be) his mind is also in Hod. All the things you can measure and quantify in the situation, like the movement of his hands, the application of graphite to paper, the electrical impulses of his brain, are happening in the world of Assiah. The map, as a physical 'diagram', would be a part of Hod in Assiah. And in Malkuth, there is no such thing as a 'map' or 'diagram'; there is paper, covered with graphite, on a wood and metal desk. And we, picturing just the physical thing, without thinking of maps or abstractions, are engaging in Malkuth in Yetzirah thinking.
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@FiliusBestia said
"Is Assiah all things manifest, throughout the Tree as it manifests in that World? Meaning, I could relate the whole Tree to manifest existence in its various forms, in Assiah?"
Yes. There is a little more to Assiah than that, but the simplest to say is that it is the whole of the so-called material world. Another way of saying the same thing is that it is the whole of experience which comes to us through the five material senses.
Assiah also includes borderland areas, generally termed "etheric" - that aspect of the "non-material" which, nonetheless, conforms in essential shape and disposition to the physical universe.
Assiah means "what is made or done." (In many languages of the world, "to do" and "to make" are the same verb.) Therefore, Assiah is commonly called "The World of Action." By being the field of action, in the usual sense of that word, it is the field where things are actual. The "coming into being" gradiants of the three non-Atziluthic worlds are characterized by the respective words "creation," "formation," and "making/doing," which, admittedly, might not be wholly distinguishable with am English dictionary but, in any case, provide good "handles" for discussing their respective natures.
"Whereas Yetzirah is the...map?...formative world behind Assiah, and so all the Sephiroth therein?"
Pretty much true, yes. "Map" isn't a word I'd have picked, but I can't objecvt to it.
If something at least has a form, then it has a Yetziratic component. If that form yes substance discernible to the five physical senses, it has an Assiatic component. If it doesn't haver that material substance, but the five senses are used as a way for the brain to wrap itself around perceiving the thing, then it's Yetziratic. (An example of this is when we use imagination - one Yetziratic expression of the human psyche - to create specific forms for archangels in the Pentagram Ritual, such that their inherently Briatic natures can be brought down the planes in expression.)
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@Alrah said
"Is the 'mind' in the formative world behind (within) the 'brain' in the manifest world?"
That would be the usual expression, yes. (But not all of mind. Some 'mind' is Briatic.)
Assiah vs. Yetzirah is the old "matter vs. spirit" arguement of past eras and philosophies, the "body and blood of Christ" dual components, the bread vs. the wine.
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" Assiah also includes borderland areas, generally termed "etheric" - that aspect of the "non-material" which, nonetheless, conforms in essential shape and disposition to the physical universe."
You speak of the ether of science, the energy that they theorize allows the material universe to exist in-tact. A substance yet to have been measured or observed, but a theory that continues to this day.
I understand the basics on all which you say, I just wished to get a little clearer understanding of it. Thank you.
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I think it's not the ether of science, but more something like ''the lowest astral'', universal 'akasha-substance' which is closest to the matterial plane.
I. Regardie wrote about that in Chapter 4 of his ''Tree of life'' (similarities and difference between magickal etheric susbstance and ether of science)
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I don't have my diary directly with me, but I came to a similar conclusion on the astral realms, and the higher realms, a couple months ago. So you don't think the ether has anything to do with the astral?
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@danica said
"I think it's not the ether of science, but more something like ''the lowest astral'', universal 'akasha-substance' which is closest to the matterial plane."
Yes. Exactly.
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@FiliusBestia said
"I don't have my diary directly with me, but I came to a similar conclusion on the astral realms, and the higher realms, a couple months ago. So you don't think the ether has anything to do with the astral?"
What science once called "ether" - a physical substance thought to fill 'empty' space, conceived at a time when it was firmly believed there could be no vacuum - is a discredited idea, a fiction. Where they thought there must be "ether" (for lack of anything else being there), we now know there is vacuum.
This word - from a root meaning "air" - is still used, mostly poetically, like "heaven," or "way up there" or "off in the upper vastnesses," etc. This leads to many uses akin to "the insubstantial realms," and thus (again, it was originally poetic, I suppose) to realms "just past the terrestrial and material" - the lower astral.
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@FiliusBestia said
"I don't have my diary directly with me, but I came to a similar conclusion on the astral realms, and the higher realms, a couple months ago. So you don't think the ether has anything to do with the astral?"
scientific 'ether' no, but magickal ether yes; it is a part of astral realm of existence as a whole, as Jim said -
"realms "just past the terrestrial and material" - the lower astral"
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Assiah also includes borderland areas, generally termed "etheric" - that aspect of the "non-material" which, nonetheless, conforms in essential shape and disposition to the physical universe."
Would this be things like abstractions (i.e. "marriage", "coolness", "President of the United States")? Those are non-material, but conform in shape and disposition to the physical universe.
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@Bryan said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Assiah also includes borderland areas, generally termed "etheric" - that aspect of the "non-material" which, nonetheless, conforms in essential shape and disposition to the physical universe."Would this be things like abstractions (i.e. "marriage", "coolness", "President of the United States")? Those are non-material, but conform in shape and disposition to the physical universe."
No, those are even more abstract. When they aren't material, they are ideas.
These are far more dense than ideas.
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I dunno. Presidents can sometimes be awfully dense. yuk yuk yuk.