Choosing Correspondences for Rituals
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I've got at least a seemingly simple question about picking correspondences in the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram, but I guess the question is as valid for other rituals as well. As an example, Venus can be attributed to the Sephiroth Netzach (7) or the letter Daleth (14) and depending on which is chosen, some of the correspondences such as Colors, Divine Names, etc. may vary. The question is simply this: is there a simple, established way of resolving which set to use?
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@Deus Ex Machina said
"Venus can be attributed to the Sephiroth Netzach (7) or the letter Daleth (14) and depending on which is chosen, some of the correspondences such as Colors, Divine Names, etc. may vary. The question is simply this: is there a simple, established way of resolving which set to use?"
The real answer is: This is art. The artist will find his or her way through it.
However, to give some guidelines...
Get clear in mind whether your operation is one of Netzach or one of Daleth. Don't think of it as just "a Venus ritual" - compel yourself to ascertain whether it is a Netzach ritual or a Daleth ritual. (You can still draw supplemental correspondences from the one you don't pick - again, it's art! - but you don't want to confuse a path and a sephirah just because they share a correspodence to the same planet.)
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Thank you. I assumed as much, but a doubt crept in that I hadn't grokked something obvious and I couldn't shake it.
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This post clears up the differences between the path and sphere very well: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5891&p=32953&#p32953">viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5891&p=32953&#p32953</a><!-- l -->
The path of Daleth is the Venusian energy (Green in the Yod scale) and Netzach is the field that energy acts in (Green in the Heh scale). In my own experience of invoking the paths and spheres relating to a shared principle, they certainly seem "similar but different". Nearest way I can phrase it is that the Path is the current of the energy, and the sphere is where that energy has pooled (the fact that the primarily used colours of the Paths are the Yod / King scale, and that of the Sephiroth being Heh / Queen scale makes perfect sense in this regard). It also makes sense that the Planetary Intelligences and Spirits are attributed to the Paths, and not the related Spheres (which get the Angelic Choir as their main Yetziratric beings).