15 July (Fire) Liber LXV, 4:9-10
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9. In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am.
10. In my sleep I beheld the Universe like a clear crystal without one speck. -
9. In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am.
10. In my sleep I beheld the Universe like a clear crystal without one speck.I will suppress my desire to rail against an impossible image for someone so low on the tree as I must be.
It is clearly of the highest—a resolution to all manifestation and cycle where Saturn is back to eating his children—Binah and Chokmah are locked in an eternal embrace without issue, and the brilliant one is the gate to the final, perfect sleep of dark Nephthys—Kether. The image of the mouth as an opium poppy being the gate to an infinite sleep and lucid recalls the inhalation of the Supreme god in Hindu mythology where the universe is uncreated.
It's okay. For some reason I am content, today. I think because I am aware, after the last three chapters that this is a continuity and tomorrow will perhaps bring another image that will better resonate on the lower planes.
A note on what makes Shakespeare so amazing for those familiar with this work: it is his ability to suggest both the exalted and profane, simultaneously. I am aware that I am looking for this reflection in these versus, and a little miffed when I cannot easily make the connection. A silly expectation, but one that has seemed to work for me in a lot of what I have read and thought about so far—that, no matter where I am in this process I can somehow tie the words to where I am and that this will give me a remote and fleeting access to the energies encoded into the words, designed to transform.
Today's offering was hard, though beautiful. I miss the grotesque and the bawdy, though the suggestion of a mouth as an opium poppy is amenable, it is a little too easy for me to feel I am being challenged, opened. Still, it is enough, maybe a necessary breather...
Love and Will
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I think in Jim's A.'.A.'. book, there's a good passage about Shiloam, which talks about the stilled waters of the mind being better able to reflect the light from higher planes...
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"**9. In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am.
- In my sleep I beheld the Universe like a clear crystal without one speck.**"
Yes, a technical note first: The mystical technique called "The Sleep of Shiloam" is the standard A.'.A.'. task for the Path of Mem. It is, therefore, one of the basic practices of the Adeptus Minor Within.
Some excerpts from the rather long section on "The Path of Mem" from Chapter 9 of The Mystical & Magical System of the A.'.A.'.:
"The common elements of Mem and Lamed are the particular assistance that they lend the Adept in deepening her relationship with the HGA.
Assigned to Mem is the specific method called the "Sleep of Shiloam." ...Shiloam, or Siloam, is commonly treated as a variant pronunciation of ShLM, shalom or salem, corresponding to "the marriage, or equilibration [L], of Fire [Sh] and Water [M]." By this interpretation, then, the Sleep of Shiloam is the "Sleep of Peace." Yet the actual origin of this word is the Greek Siloam [that's an Omega], the name of a pool in Jerusalem referenced in John 9, which reads, in part: [I don't have time to retype if this morning, so you can look up John 9 on your own
]What is extraordinary in this passage, saturated with mystically poignant phrases, is that Siloam enumerates to 1,081 - exactly the same as the Hebrew ThPARTh, Tiphereth! One who could not see was anointed by the Holy Guardian Angel, "the Light of the World," and then told to submerge himself in the Sphere of Beauty, the Sphere of the Sun; and, doing so, he gained sight.
It is such a mystical pool that the Adept is to submerge herself, repeatedly and profoundly."
A discussion follows on various documents with which this title has been associated, and some quotes (including from these verses) on the nature of the state, then:
"These texts, and personal experience, should be adequate to instruct the Adept. The key is that this "lucid sleep" arises from surrender to the union ("marriage") with the Holy Guardian Angel: Libra uniting Fire and Water, the Angel and the Adept, to produce the symbol of the Hexagram. Shalom also means "wholeness" or "completion."
[More discussion on the title and related documents, then...]
What is important is the attaining of this particular trance state and partaking of the sublimity of the "marriage" with the Holy Guardian Angel."
Overall, the symbolism of the Path of Mem pertains to the element Water, and to the XIIth Atu, The Hanged Man. This Trump is one of the most important symbols of adepthood. It symbolizes the condition of surrendering to the Inner Light, of conforming oneself to the Voice of the Holy Guardian Angel. It also shows the complete "reversal" of perspective (one might better say, being turned inside out!) that accompanies the transition to adepthood....
Having discovered the True Will in the Voice of her Angel, the Adept now must fully conform herself, consciously, to that Will. There always will be resistances in the personality, especially at the beginning; but she must overcome this, must "bind" herself, as by an obligation, conforming her conscious choices to the Word of her Angel. This is an ongoing process, a Taoist way of living, which must grow in the Adept until, automatically and by intense conditioning, her personality - expressed in every thought, word, and deed - is a clear channel for that Holy Guardian who is her Light, her Life, her Love, and her Liberty. Each must find her own ways to produce this result; but the essential approach is to lose (what one has called) oneself in the beatific Silence that is union with the Angel."
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Well gosh,
...all of this Shiloam business suggests a whole other take on the passage.
It even becomes personal as I can relate it to an experience I had last year. The relevant journal excerpt, from a series of skrying experiments I undertook to help me with technique, is quoted here.
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I am afraid, and I ask to be cleansed of any self-delusion so I might not mar the waters of this vision, at which I find we are standing on a beach, the expanse of a great sea stretching to the horizon. Together we walk out onto the waves of the sea itself until we are clear of the land. Then suddenly, in an instant, she pulls me under the surface of the waves, at which she puts her fingers on my mouth to stop my breath, and I know I am participating in a mystery of the tarot card of The Hanged Man. The world about me grows dark and I retreat inside myself to what seems to be an inner chamber of sorts where she is waiting with a silver chalice filled with a pure still water. The cup is tarnished, but the water is clean. She presses the cup to my mouth forcing me to drink all of it. Then? Is there a light within me, am I asleep, has my mind retreated into a dreamless stillness? During what follows I feel my sexual desires for her change into spiritual longing. I find that I am kneeling at a prayer stall in a darkened church, and as I pray and yearn for spiritual fulfillment she drapes herself on me, embracing me with an intimate, physical tenderness—caressing me with loving embraces of a decidedly sexual nature. "I hope this doesn't come across as too ostentatious, but it's hard not to jump at what seems to me to be the obvious sympathies between this experience and the passages quoted by Jim.
So, thank you!
Love and Will
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"9. In the garden of immortal kisses, O thou brilliant One, shine forth! Make Thy mouth an opium-poppy, that one kiss is the key to the infinite sleep and lucid, the sleep of Shi-loh-am."
I get the impression of intense withdrawal inward to the point of dissolving into nothing...and the pleasure that accompanies doing so.
I felt obligated to mention that was my impression before all of this "Sleep of Shiloam" stuff was being discussed.
