April 18 (Earth) Liber LXV, Cap. I, v. 18-20
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**18. So also the light that is absorbed. One absorbs little, and is called white and glistening; one absorbs all and is called black.
19. Therefore, O my darling, art thou black.
20. O my beautiful, I have likened thee to a jet Nubian slave, a boy of melancholy eyes.
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In the ideas of N.O.X. and L.V.X. I wanted to reference something, appropriate in these verses, I've read that is much clearer than what I can repeat and it serves me to read it again today. From the Black Pearl volume 1, Number 5 (published by College of Thelema) in the essay on the number 210, available here if anyone is interested:
@Ike Becker said
"More commonly is light, not night, employed as the metaphor for spiritual awakening. Words such as "enlightenment" and "illumination" reiterate this metaphor...
Yet beyond this Light is a Night - not an infernal darkness, but a Supernal Darkness. Not a subterranean lightlessness, cut off from the Sun's illumination, but the rich, velvety depths of space which exceed the modest shell of earth's reflecting atmosphere. It is our intellect that we analogize to elemental Air - and beyond this small Ruach-shell of our personal psyches is a transpersonal Night, an ecstasy and bliss of illimitable love...
This is the Night of Binah, which hungrily draws forward the 'Lover' or Adept, even as the Light of Tiphereth lifts up the aspirant who is 'Man of Earth.' It is the Night that exceeds the Light- a Night, in fact, comprising so intense a Light that it overflows and paralyzes the sensorium, thus appearing to be an absence of all things. It is nequaquam vacuum, "nowhere, a void." "
These ideas are comprehendible in the way they are delivered such that I can understand the concepts, but they are not integrated as a whole into my understanding. The best I can do is contemplate the nature of light and where I can anchor it in which would be in the appearances of the physical world. An object that absorbs all colors appears black, as it doesn't reflect a particular color back so we "perceive" it as black although it is reflecting a type of light back. It leads one to ask what is behind the light being reflected? What is the real "thing" that we in our regular vision only see as reflected light? Good questions to continually ask I think.
The angel here is referred to, I think, as that. As the actual being behind the scenes that I don't normally perceive. I normally see it as this color or that - as aspects. So here I am led to focus my attention on what is behind these aspects. What is the image behind the image? Still, in verse 20, V.V.V.V.V. employs an object to adore, the Nubian slave, because, possibly, even knowing what is "beyond" we still need an object of adoration in manifestation to link us to the Divine.