4 August (Fire) Liber LXV, 4:54-56
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54. This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that devoureth his own coils.
55. When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?
56. Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the Wrong of the Beginning? -
A glyph of Zero (0) or the Source of it possibly. Seperation and manifestation causes sorrow, but "I am divided for love's sake for the chance of Union". All is Sorrow or All is Joy? Seems like a crossroads moment and a cry of despair. I recall a paragraph in Wake World:
"Round the big meadow there lay a wonderful snake, with steel gray plumes, and he had his tail in his mouth, and kept on eating and eating it, because there was nothing else for him to eat, and my Fairy Prince said he would go on like that till there was nothing left at all. Then I said it would get smaller and smaller and crush the meadow and the palace, and I think perhaps I began to cry. But my Fairy Prince said: “Don’t be such a silly!” and I wasn’t old enough to understand all that it meant, but one day I should; and all one had to do was to be as glad as glad."
Ascension or evolution leads back to the source and that is "our" (or should I say "my") goal. To us it seems that the descent or involution into manifestation is an error, but it is all part of the game so to speak. Hopefully, meditating on this aspect will help me when and if I truly hit a wall of despair that the verse hints at.
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54. This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that devoureth his own coils.
55. When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?Mapping the heart and serpent in 54 onto 55 we get:
Heart = Univerve
Serpent = the Lord thereof56. Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the Wrong of the Beginning?
And 54 maps onto 56 this way:
This serpent about the heart devouring itself is infinite.
So, It can't really ever succeed in finishing the job, can it. It is the general problem with citing the infinite—if it is without limit, then you can reduce it by any finite, or infinite amount minus a finite number, without diminishing its infinity—take ten away from an infinite sum, and it is still infinite...
Okay, the last clause is a phrase that is also a moralization, a judgment, no? Wrong = bad?
Language doesn't so much communicate as it leads, which is not a problem because I will allow myself to be lead almost anywhere as long as it is still my prerogative to drink or not. It's just that this very clear statement of wrongness seems to justify all my past assumptions regards this text about some things are considered bad and others good based on whether it is of the world, and its generation, or not.
Love and Will
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"54. This heart of mine is girt about with the serpent that devoureth his own coils."
"My heart is encircled & embraced by eternity." - Now, how is it that this snake 'devours its tail," i.e., seems to shrink? Real life confirms that "the world keeps seeming smaller and smaller" means that we are growing, assimilating more experience, having a farther-reaching understanding, connected to more people and places, etc.
So the impact of this is: "My heart is embraced by eternity and, as my heart continues to expand, as I open myself to more and more, I feel this embrace ever more tightly, it grips me more fiercely."
"55. When shall there be an end, O my darling, O when shall the Universe and the Lord thereof be utterly swallowed up?"
The plaintive reflex in response to the duality - love so intense that it seeks the extinction (= extinguishing) of the distinction between itself and the beloved.
At first, this struck me as the cry of the approach to the Abyss; but the momentum of this chapter has carried us past that. It is the Master in the embrace of the Beloved-as-Chokmah. At the same time, it could as well be (spoken or, often, unspoken) wish of the full Adeptus Minor in the throws of the Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It is am amplification of the best of human love, the blankness (almost confusion) in noticing the existential truth that the two are still two.
"56. Nay! who shall devour the Infinite? who shall undo the Wrong of the Beginning?"
A philosophical query. Ultimately, it's the wrong question; but in such a moment it may feel sometimes like the right one. (It isn't really asking "who," I think. It is saying, "Nobody can do this.")
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It is interesting to take this in context of the Paths that were implied in the previous verses:
Capricorn (Goat) -
*On the Tree of Life, Atu XIII and XV are symmetrically placed; they lead from Tiphareth, the human consciousness, to the spheres in which Thought (on the one hand) and Bliss (on the other) are developed.
[...]
This card represents creative energy in its most material form; in the Zodiac, Capricornus occupies the Zenith. It is the most exalted of the signs; it is the goat leaping with lust upon the summits of earth. *
From BOT - Atu XV
Scorpio (In Eagle form) -
*The highest aspect of the card is the Eagle, which represents exaltation above solid matter.
[...]
The serpent is sacred, Lord of Life and Death, and its method of progression suggests the rhythmical undulation of those twin phases of life which we Call respectively life and death. The serpent is also, as previously explained, the principal symbol of male energy. From this it will be seen that this card is, in a very strict sense, the completion of the card called Lust, Atu XI, and Atu XII represents the solution or dissolution which links them.*
From BOT - Atu XIII
Echoing Robert's and Mojo's thoughts, it seems that the Adept is seeing the twin phases of Life and Death, the building creatively and the reception and dissolution...and how it has to be this way. How these twin phases echo the whole Universe. The "Wrong" is interesting...the word seems to imply the feeling that these twin phases somehow represent the Universe being slighted -- it is constantly undulating -- never being able to settle on one state of "peace". It seems to correspond the creative energy found in Lust (Atu XI) or the receptive energy found in The Hanged Man (XII). Or, as Mojo quoted:
@mojorisin44 said
""I am divided for love's sake for the chance of Union"."
Edit : Also wanted to add - Enjoyed the further insight, Jim.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The plaintive reflex in response to the duality - love so intense that it seeks the extinction (= extinguishing) of the distinction between itself and the beloved."
Thanks Jim for bringing back the "bhakti" in the verses, because I just plain miss it most of the time.