Archetypes
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An unfinished, unpolished, nonfinal excerpt from a work in progress:
"The World of Atziluth
The highest (inmost, most exalted, most subtle) of the Four Worlds is the World of Atziluth, called (somewhat misleadingly, post-Jung ) the “Archetypal World.” It is the realm of unconditioned divinity. That which is Atziluthic is the Essence behind the highest intuitive and philosophical perceptions of “God” that humanity has had.
[FOOTNOTE: "Archetypes," as defined and used by C.G. Jung, are the language units of Briatic consciousness in the same way that symbols are the language of the subconscious, and words are of the conscious, aspects of Yetziratic consciousness]
..."
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This might serve the discussion also. Again, from an incomplete work in progress:
"The World of Briah
The next highest plane is the World of Briah, or "Creative World." Magicians say that archangels are native to Briah, as the direct agents or messengers of God. Briah is a level above that at which most people operate but – a very important point! – it is the natural level of the awakened or fulfilled human being. Awakening unto Briah is the spiritual destiny of every person, the Next Step of humanity, and the goal of spiritual initiation. One who has attained this is called an Adept.
Qabalists associate Briah with the element Water. This is not the turbulent water of troubled emotion, but the serene embrace of the Great Mother, the "passionate peace" or "peace profound" (pax profunda) of a great inner, vital stillness. "Water" becomes a useful metaphor here in two different ways: First, in contrast to the divisive, excited, and tumultuous characteristics of Yetzirah, Briah represents a tranquil and clear lake that has become capable of reflecting sunlight, brilliantly, even blindingly, without diminishment or distortion. Second, in relationship to the Atziluthic Plane still above (the plane of unconditioned divinity), Briah is like a chalice which becomes filled by Divine Inspiration, a womb that has become fertilized by a Sacred Seed, a sanctified grail pierced by the Sacred Lance, and, again, a lake lucidly reflecting the One Light of the Spiritual Sun. It is a consciousness beyond emotion, beyond thought and word, even beyond image.
It is usual to say that where Yetzirah manifests a diverse range of colors, in Briah there is Color, an essential and imageless idea transcending chromatic diversity; that where, in Yetzirah, are all possible numbers, in Briah is the idea of Number; and so forth. This concept is hard to grasp unless one has experience of it; and that experience appears, initially, to be wholly intuitive. Later, it may become a more commonplace state of mind.
Also, although some theorists would relate the experience of samadhi to a higher level than Briah, Some forms of samadhi are certainly of a higher level than that presently discussed.] classical descriptions of samadhi provide an almost perfect description of the Plane of Briah. For example, according to Swami Vivekananda,
Suppose I am meditating on a book; I have gradually succeeded in concentrating the mind on it, and then in perceiving only the internal sensations, the meaning, unexpressed in any form. That state of dhyâna is called samâdhi.
Compare this description to the examples given in the previous paragraph. Patanjali's description of samadhi – that, by it, "is taken off everything that hides the lordship of the soul" – is quite accurate in its description of the Briatic level. These are examples of attempts to describe the phenomena of Briatic consciousness.
In brief terms, the awakening to this World of Briah from that of Yetzirah is an unveiling of the spiritual realities that are hidden by the drape of human thought and emotion. It is a perceiving past the transient to the Eternal, past the ever shifting and personal to the still, serene, and transpersonal. Briatic consciousness is, to use Vivekananda's phrase, a disclosure of "the lordship of the soul" – of the inherent stellar divinity of every man and every woman."
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Source?
Unconditioned unmodified uncharacterized startup stuff?"
Hmm... Case refers to Atziluth as "the plane of abstract ideas" and as "the world in which all potencies of manifestation, however extensive that manifestation may be, are concentrated into a single POINT."
As a "plane of abstract ideas" generally, I can see the unconditioned, unmodified, uncharacterized stuff. But Case also writes:
@Paul Foster Case said
"The EGO receives the flux of archetypal ideas from Kether, and proceeds to specialize them in particular forms of imagery. One single archetypal idea such as that of the human body in a sitting posture, may be specialized into innumerable special creative expressions. The specializing agency is Ruach in Tiphareth, the power of creative mental imagery, flowing out into man's personal field of experience from the EGO center."
I suppose the question is whether or not the idea of a human body in sitting posture (an archetype leading to the creation of a type of chair, leading to the manufacture of said chair, leading to the placing of one's ass in said chair) is Atziliuth or Briatic. The idea seems conditioned, modified and characterized. Perhaps the it sits in the gap between the top of the Yod, and the tail?
You wrote:
@Jim Eshelman said
"It is usual to say that where Yetzirah manifests a diverse range of colors, in Briah there is Color, an essential and imageless idea transcending chromatic diversity; that where, in Yetzirah, are all possible numbers, in Briah is the idea of Number; and so forth."
Okay, it just seems at odds with Case's teachings, where he would seem to assign the idea of Chair to Atziliuth, and you would assign it to Briah. I certainly don't mind that it appears to be at odds with Case -- one reason I joined TOT, after all, was the allowance of such heresy -- but it's worth noting.
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93,
I would not call a chair an 'idea'. A chair is already a functional form.
The 'idea', the Atziluthic archetype, might be 'repose' or 'stillness'. In B'riah that would become 'something that induces or sustains rest'. Chair designs would surely be Yetziratic, the development of the original idea into a practical conception; and the tush that is placed on them is clearly Assiatic.
As I recall, Jung justified his conception of an archetype from Plato's use of the term. But a Platonic idea is something different to what Jung went on to develop. I suspect Jung was a little closer to Paracelsus' concept of an 'archeus', a kind of primordial essence of something, in his thinking, but his ideas seem to have changed over the years.
Jung, as I recall, describes an archetype as being largely devoid of content, and being essentially a form that (if I understood him right) tends to determine the content that can emerge from or pass through it. That's actually something on the borders between B'riah and Yetzirah.
93 93/93,
Edward
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I'm not a big fan of Ken Wilber, but he has a few good points to make regarding Jung's idea of an archetype in 'Grace and Grit'. Here's a link:
ribes.tribe.net/jung/thread/e7bc9a11-2488-49c5-b3e5-26ab36b04639
His main point is:
"Second, there is Jung's whole use of the word "archetype," a notion he borrowed from the great mystics, such as Plato and Augustine. But the way Jung uses the term is NOT the way those mystics used the term, nor in fact the way mystics the world over use that concept. For the mystics--Shankara, Plato, Augustine, Eckhart, Garab Dorje and so on--archetypes are the first subtle forms that appear as the world manifest out of formless and unmanifest Spirit. They are the patterns upon which all other patterns of manifestation are based. From the Greek "arche typon," original pattern. ... these archetypes are nothing but...rainbow patterns of light and sound and vibration--out of which,in manifestation, the material world condenses, so to speak.
"But Jung uses the term as certain basic mythic structures that are collective to human experience, like the trickster, the shadow, the Wise Old Man, the ego, the persona, the Great Mother...and so on. These are not so much transcendental as existential. They are simply facets of the experience that are common to the everyday human condition. I agree that those mythic forms are collectively inherited in the psyche. And I agree entirely with Jung that it is very important to come to terms with those mythic "archetypes." ... But those mythic forms have nothing to do with mysticism, with genuine transcendental experience."
EM
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@zeph said
"
@Jim Eshelman said
"Source?Unconditioned unmodified uncharacterized startup stuff?"
Hmm... Case refers to Atziluth as "the plane of abstract ideas" and as "the world in which all potencies of manifestation, however extensive that manifestation may be, are concentrated into a single POINT.""
Semantics may be a problem here. Briah is (universally, as far as I can recall ever reading) accepted as the plane of abstract thought - but I don't think that's what he means. I think he means those more primitive abstract potentialities that can become thought when they touch a mind. Seed-ideas &c.
On your futher quote: Case uses "ego" to mean the the personality-level, "Ego" to mean the Tiphereth level, and "EGO" to mean the Kether level (what Fortune and others call the Individuality). So I'm floundering just a little at "EGO receives from Kether" because, in his normal usage, there would be an identity (well, an IDENTITY <g>) there.
Is an "archetypal idea" the same as an "archetype"? We're tripping over words, I think. I love the phrase by Denning and Philips, comparing Yetzirah and Briah, in which they contrast "the archetypal images" of Yetirah and "the imageless archetypes" of Briah - really dead-on, and a fine bit of word-wielding.
@Paul Foster Case said
"The specializing agency is Ruach in Tiphareth, the power of creative mental imagery, flowing out into man's personal field of experience from the EGO center."
But this is already down to Yetzirah - he's speaking or Ruach (which is natively in Yetzirah and, with illumination, is lifted up into Briah) and mental imagery (which is disctinctly Yetziratic).
"I suppose the question is whether or not the idea of a human body in sitting posture (an archetype leading to the creation of a type of chair, leading to the manufacture of said chair, leading to the placing of one's ass in said chair) is Atziliuth or Briatic. The idea seems conditioned, modified and characterized. Perhaps the it sits in the gap between the top of the Yod, and the tail?"
ROFL.
Using different language, I would say that there is an archetype of The Seated One - an archetype normally referring to Binah ideas (Isis and others, Qabalistic equations of "throne" to Binah and Briah variously and most Heh-major and -minor ideas more broadly). This Seated One archetype is Briatic and is infused by inarticulatable divinity ideas from Atziluth so that, if one is able to experience this in Briah, one experiences Divinity incarnated in The Goddess Of Illimitable Faces & Forms, Uplifted Upon Her Throne, Inviting Approach To Her Knees etc. etc. etc. so forth World Without Ends Forever And Ever AMEN.
This then manifests at the Yetziratic level as particular goddesses who fit this, e.g., Isis.
People then copy this and sit, with their bodies, in chairs in Assiah - that is, they put their own Assiah in a chair!
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@Jim Eshelman said
"It is usual to say that where Yetzirah manifests a diverse range of colors, in Briah there is Color, an essential and imageless idea transcending chromatic diversity; that where, in Yetzirah, are all possible numbers, in Briah is the idea of Number; and so forth."Okay, it just seems at odds with Case's teachings, where he would seem to assign the idea of Chair to Atziliuth, and you would assign it to Briah. I certainly don't mind that it appears to be at odds with Case -- one reason I joined TOT, after all, was the allowance of such heresy -- but it's worth noting."
I haven't figured out yet whether or not I disagree with Case on that. It depends on what he meant by "idea." That word is used sometimes to refer to a seed-unit in consciousness that isn't anything at all until it is planted in a fertile matrix (of, say, a human mind).
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I keep Blavatsky's Theosophical Glossary (1892) at hand primarily because it is a standard reference reflecting how Crowley and his contemporaries understood many of the words they used. I was curious whether "archetype" was in it.
Not quite... but close.
She has an entry for "Archetypal Universe," marked as a Kabbalistic term, definition provided by Westcott: "The ideal universe upon which the objective world was built." That's the key to the classical idea: "Ideal." Adam Qadmon is the "Human Ideal" independent of any particular human, and so forth. Very Greek.
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The Blavastky definition brings to mind these words of Claude Bragdon, quoted by Case in TF:
@Claude Bragdon said
"Now the generic or archetypal form of everything in the universe is naturally not other than the form of the universe itself. Our stellar universe is now thought by astronomers to be a spiral nebula; and the spiral nebulae we see in the heavens are stellar systems like our own. The geometric equivalent of the nebula form is the logarithmic spiral. This is therefore the unit form of the universe, the form of all forms."
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@Jim Eshelman said
"This might serve the discussion also. Again, from an incomplete work in progress:
"The World of Briah
The next highest plane is the World of Briah, or "Creative World." Magicians say that archangels are native to Briah, as the direct agents or messengers of God. Briah is a level above that at which most people operate but – a very important point! – it is the natural level of the awakened or fulfilled human being. Awakening unto Briah is the spiritual destiny of every person, the Next Step of humanity, and the goal of spiritual initiation. One who has attained this is called an Adept.
Qabalists associate Briah with the element Water. This is not the turbulent water of troubled emotion, but the serene embrace of the Great Mother, the "passionate peace" or "peace profound" (pax profunda) of a great inner, vital stillness. "Water" becomes a useful metaphor here in two different ways: First, in contrast to the divisive, excited, and tumultuous characteristics of Yetzirah, Briah represents a tranquil and clear lake that has become capable of reflecting sunlight, brilliantly, even blindingly, without diminishment or distortion. Second, in relationship to the Atziluthic Plane still above (the plane of unconditioned divinity), Briah is like a chalice which becomes filled by Divine Inspiration, a womb that has become fertilized by a Sacred Seed, a sanctified grail pierced by the Sacred Lance, and, again, a lake lucidly reflecting the One Light of the Spiritual Sun. It is a consciousness beyond emotion, beyond thought and word, even beyond image.
It is usual to say that where Yetzirah manifests a diverse range of colors, in Briah there is Color, an essential and imageless idea transcending chromatic diversity; that where, in Yetzirah, are all possible numbers, in Briah is the idea of Number; and so forth. This concept is hard to grasp unless one has experience of it; and that experience appears, initially, to be wholly intuitive. Later, it may become a more commonplace state of mind.
Also, although some theorists would relate the experience of samadhi to a higher level than Briah, Some forms of samadhi are certainly of a higher level than that presently discussed.] classical descriptions of samadhi provide an almost perfect description of the Plane of Briah. For example, according to Swami Vivekananda,
Suppose I am meditating on a book; I have gradually succeeded in concentrating the mind on it, and then in perceiving only the internal sensations, the meaning, unexpressed in any form. That state of dhyâna is called samâdhi.
Compare this description to the examples given in the previous paragraph. Patanjali's description of samadhi – that, by it, "is taken off everything that hides the lordship of the soul" – is quite accurate in its description of the Briatic level. These are examples of attempts to describe the phenomena of Briatic consciousness.
In brief terms, the awakening to this World of Briah from that of Yetzirah is an unveiling of the spiritual realities that are hidden by the drape of human thought and emotion. It is a perceiving past the transient to the Eternal, past the ever shifting and personal to the still, serene, and transpersonal. Briatic consciousness is, to use Vivekananda's phrase, a disclosure of "the lordship of the soul" – of the inherent stellar divinity of every man and every woman."
"Jim, is this work finished? I know it's 6 years later...I can be late sometimes.
If it is finished, where can it be found?
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That particular work has been left on the back burner. Every time I start to finish it, another project takes precedence.
But a discussion of the Four Worlds was included in my Visions & Voices that was published a little over a year ago.