Sefirah: Outer function in Divinity and
soul
|
Human Soul Powers: soul expressions of Divine motivations
|
Keter- Crown above consciousness
"Three
Heads (levels) in Keter":
|
Essence
of Keter:
Unconscious
unity of faith (emunah) -
Essence (etzem) of soul
in Atzilut or God's
essence.
Inner
Keter:
Unconscious
source of (higher self rooted in delight (ta'anug).
Outer
Keter: transcendent will (ratzon) which higher self expresses through will/
|
Chokmah -Wisdom insight
|
Bittul- Selflessness (Conscious
illumination inspires self nullification)
|
Binah- Understanding concept
|
Simchah- Joy (Understanding
awakens joy)
|
Daat- Knowledge of idea
|
Yichud- Union (Union
with idea awakens emotions)
|
Chesed- Kindness expansion
|
Ahavah- Love of God and Divine in all
things
(Response
of Divine giving)
|
Gevurah- Restriction, Might
|
Yirah- Awe of God (Mystical
awe of Divinity)
|
Tiferet- Beautiful harmony
|
Rachamim- Compassion (Balances
kindness with restriction)
|
Netzach-Victor, Eternity
|
Bitachon- Confidence (Confidence
inspires determination)
|
Hod- Splendour, Thanksgiving
|
Temimut- Sincerity (Sincere
response to Divine Glory)
|
Yesod- Foundation connection
|
Emet- Truth (Desire
for expressing higher powers as truth in action)
|
Malchut- Kingship action
|
Shiflut- Lowliness (Action
through receiving higher Sephirot lights)
|
Blog Archive
November 29, 2019
Sefirot and Powers of the Soul
Shadow Quotes and the Daimonic Attitude
According to Jungian analyst Liliane
Frcy-Rohn, the dark treasury of the personal shadow includes our infantile parts, emotional
attachments, neurotic symptoms, as well as our undeveloped talents and gifts. The shadow, she says, "retains contact with the lost depths of the soul,
with life and vitality—the superior, the universally human, yes, even the
creative can be sensed there."
The "brain of Jung," Marie-Louise von Franz acknowledges the relationship between the devil and the personal shadow when she says, "The principle of individuation is actually related to the devilish element, insofar as the latter represents a separation from the divine within the totality of nature. The devilish aspects are the disrupting elements—the affects, the autonomous power drive, and such things. They disrupt the unity of the personality."
James Hillman, the so-called "anti-Jungian" said: "The unconscious
cannot be conscious; the moon has its dark side, the sun goes down and cannot
shine everywhere at once, and even God has two hands. Attention and focus
require some things to be out of the field of vision, to remain in the dark.
One cannot look
both ways."
Jungian Astrologer, Liz Greene points to the paradoxical nature of
the shadow as both the container of darkness and the beacon pointing toward the
light: "It is the suffering, crippled side of the personality which is
both the dark shadow that won't change and also the redeemer that transforms
one's life and alters one's values. The redeemer can get the hidden treasure or
win the princess or slay the dragon because he's marked in some way—he's
abnormal. The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption, and the
suffering redeemer who can provide it."
Author Doris Lessing tells us: "Yet there
is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: Without this sting of
otherness, of — even — the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then
nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness — what we in our ordinary
daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent — these are nothing
without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from their shadow sides."
William Shakespeare: "This thing
of darkness I acknowledge mine."
Pondering these questions can awaken awareness of the personal shadow. But, we have to be willing to consciously feel and suffer these feelings without acting in a base way on their prompting. Fortunately, there are many methods of sublimation which contribute to conscious feeling without denial and repression. Art-making in all its shapes is good because we can choose to contain suffering within images, sounds, paint, color, ink, movements and gestures. In this way we can preserve the unconscious shadow in a mindful state of awareness.
Imaginal dialog is effective too. If I am willing to let feeling become a personification through creative imagination, that personified emotion can express itself to me. The presence of this previously unconscious spirit within my daylight consciousness can teach me something new about my totality. By maintaining an openness to the inner figures of emotion, I gain in power and inner light. I can choose to take the advice of this inner figure, or I can reject it's opinion since I am responsible for my total personality. Yet this shadow figure is an important part of the complete person I claim responsibility for.
I call this the "daimonic attitude." I don't know if I invented this term or not, but find that a daimonic attitude assumes personality and intellect all throughout the soul I live within. I can generally talk with another intelligent being. I can argue, persuade and agree with it, even it it's values are at times radically different than mine.
Magical traditions retain spirit lists such as the 72 demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon or other grimoires. These can be useful in practical magic, and that seems to have been their historical purpose. But someone who is open to the daimonic worldview and the creative imagination hardly requires a prefabricated grimoire to converse with the pregnant darkness. The individual psyche opens seamlessly into the collective unconscious of humanity even as the anima mundi births all our personal souls.
Close the eyes and breathe deeply, drifting into an easy trance state. What is your mood? What feelings predominate? Ask them to become visible in images. Wait... it will come spontaneously. Allow the imagination to express itself on its own authority. Be patient with your inner world, allowing it to visualize itself within the mirror of self-reflection.
This is the daimonic attitude: spontaneous, willingness to feel, openness to beholding interior images, patiently waiting upon the unconscious to present itself to awareness and having faith in the image.
November 27, 2019
Prayer
May
Urania's lamp shine upon my path
May I see
the saving light of the world!
May I draw
aside the Veil of mystical Isis
To read
the always-burning truths of Nature
hidden
behind Her magical curtain,
inscribed
upon the scrolls of time.
November 26, 2019
Prayer for the Dead
Angels
ever watchful,
Guardians
of souls!
May your
vibrations stream
Our souls'
petitioning love
Unto our
Hallowed Dead
Those
within your charge,
That,
united with your power,
Our prayer
may helpfully radiate
To the
souls it lovingly seeks!
The Internet is the Opposite of the Etheric Life World
There is
much anxious talk about the advent of artificial intelligence. Occult talkers
are not immune to this rather clever way to worry catastrophically. While I
read a good deal of science fiction and I enjoy a robot insurrection as much as
the next guy, I do have difficulty working up a good panic about the doom of
humankind by AI. It is interesting to me that most of this discussion appears
on social media which I think has a similarity to the etheric plane with its
flow of pictorial images. Yet the Internet is the opposite of the etheric-life
world.
I
sometimes use a fourfold model of the cosmos where matter is represented by
elemental earth; etheric-life is represented by water; astral-soul by air; and
archetypal spirit by fire. Allow me to analyze machine reality in terms of the
two lower levels: physical-matter (Earth) with its sub-parts: plasma, gas,
liquid and solid; and etheric or formative life forces (Water) with its
sub-levels: life meaning, tone structure, light pictures and warmth.
Spirit
|
Fire
|
beingness,
light, love
|
Astral-Soul
|
Air
|
thinking,
feeling, willing
|
Etheric-Life
|
Water
|
life-ether,
tone-ether,
light-ether,
warmth-ether
|
Physical
|
Earth
|
states of
plasma,
gas,
liquid,
solidity
|
Social
media occurs on the Internet which is a digital machine reality housed in
physical-mineral computers. Although "social media" appears
life-like, and is the medium for human, emotionally charged communication by
texts, picture-images and complex sounds, it is obviously a production of the
world lower than etheric-life world of elemental Earth. The basis of machine reality is constructed of a digitally
interactive "cloud" which exists only within the physical-mineral
world.
Through
computer technology we are provided a communicative system which mimics the
higher etheric-life world existing one step higher than the mineral world. The
etheric world streams into the planet from outer space, bringing animating
vitality to the bodies of plant, animal and human kingdoms. In the human race,
the etheric-life matrix, initially forms our physical bodies and sustains them
through incarnation, scattering back into the global matrix upon our deaths.
The etheric world has been described in occultism as having four related
levels: where the first is the most subtle, verging upon the human soul, and
the final is the most biological, merged into the homeostatic functions of the
physical body: life-ether, tone-ether, light-ether and warmth-ether.
A life-etheric world can be recognized by our human sense of
ourselves as having a life purpose. We
feel motivated to think, speak and act in the external world out of a personal
meaning, purpose and will. Life-ether expresses motivation in our biological
organs to maintain movement and function: heart, keep pulsing, liver keep
processes, kidneys keep filtering, stomach keep digesting.
A tone-etheric world can be noted in terms of how
we recognize the presence of organically occurring patterns in our bodies and in
Nature. These patterns are similar to our culturally constructed systems of
musical harmony whereby pitches are organized into patterns of intervals and
chords each producing culturally-determined responses to sound experience. In
occultism, music is often a metaphor for Nature's ordered construction of
shapes throughout crystal formation in metals and minerals as well as cellular
and organ tissues in plants and animals. This metaphor operates down to
microscopic shapes and geometries of chemical molecular chains and the
probability patterns of atomic electrons, protons and neutrons.
We can
recognize a light-etheric world in the
colors of our memory pictures which emerge in
collage-like tableaus during our nightly dreams. Etheric light also
appears in conscious daytime fantasies of imagination as another aspect of the
etheric world directly underlying our human culture and personalities.
Occultists consider the most intimate human-animal quality of the etheric-warmth world to be the immanent heat of
our own bodies. Our agency and our very livingness appears to be shaped by a
purpose inclusive of both waking and sleeping.
Body temperature rises during conscious physical activity as well as
during REM dream states. Body heat decreases in both awake resting states and
in the unconsciousness of non-dreaming.
While the
etheric-life world is often symbolized in magical traditions as elemental
Water, the lower world in which life is imitated by the Internet is elementally
Earth and mineral-metallic. The personal computer is composed of many different
metals, plastics and alloys. Copper, lead, and gold are used in various parts.
Lead is used as solder, radiation shielding and as a plastics stabilizer in PVC
cabling. Gold is used for pin plating while copper is a good conductor of
electricity and is also used to make the hard disks along with aluminum,
magnesium, silicon and zinc. Hard disk platters often are composed of alloys of
cobalt, nickel and iron. Computer casings often contain steel, aluminum and
carbon fiber. Plastics are mainly used for insulation to protect parts against
heat, some are used in capacitors which conduct electricity.
Through
computer technology we are provided a communicative experience characterized by
what could be called virtual or machine-warmth, machine-light, machine-tone,
and machine-life-likeness.
Machine-warmth arises from
the physical frictional properties of
electricity moving through metal with some machine components requiring
more electricity than others. Electricity passing across circuits and through
wires meets a degree of resistance. This is like two hands rapidly rubbing
together and creates heat. Depending upon the kind and number of applications
running or calculations being performed, the amount of electricity used results
in variable heat production. Certain components generate more heat:
- The CPU or Central Processing Unit handles number crunching data or text input in a word processor.
- The GPU or Graphics Processing Unit handles graphics intensive processes. The GPU handles billions of calculations and instructions per second and can produce more heat than the CPU.
- The Heat Sink is a thermally conductive device covering a CPU and GPU to absorb some of the heat being generated. Often fans are incorporated into the heat sink to disperse heat.
- HDD or hard disk drive contains small disks that spin as information is written and accessed by other components - a steady flow of electricity is needed during certain functions to keep disks spinning which generates heat.
- The optical disk drive (ODD) can play CDs or DVDs which spins the inserted disks so data can be read and written. The ODD uses a laser to read and write which require a large electrical input which generates considerable heat.
To
encourage heat dispersal PCs prefer a hard surface. For dispersal they also
prefer a cold/dry environment rather than the opposite which can case it to
generate more heat
Machine-light appears upon a
gaseous video display using an electrically charged ionized gas called plasma
to illuminate pixels. A pixel is the
basic unit of programmable color on a computer display. It is a logical unit,
not a physical unit. The specific color of a pixel is a blend of
red-green-blue. Three bytes of data are allocated for specifying a pixel's
color, one byte for each major color part. A bitmap is a file that indicates
color for each pixel along a horizontal and vertical axis.
Machine-tone is the
acoustical sound wave of an audio signal which is converted into an encoded
numerical sample in continuous sequence. Many samples are required to replicate
the waveform with each sample representing the intensity of the waveform at
that instant. The number of bits used when taking samples varies according to a
spectrum of accuracy in imitated quality. Common sampling is 16 bit samples
taken over a spectrum of 44.1 thousand cycles per second (44.1 Kilo Hertz,
kHz). Another way to phrase this is that in CD quality media, audio samples are
taken 44,100 times per second each with 16 bit sample depth. Digital audio is
used to record, store, manipulate, generate and reproduce sound using audio
signals encoded into digital form.
Machine-life or Artificial
Intelligence is the imitation of the life-ether which we realize in
terms of meaning, vitality, functional movement and purpose. The much-discussed and hotly
anticipated advent of AI "… is the branch of computer sciences that
emphasizes the development of the intelligent machine, thinking and working
like humans. For example [AI can be recognized
in] speech recognition, problem-solving, learning and planning."
(Farhan Saeed at www.iqvis.com).
Mr. Saeed
lists the following examples of AI programs which are presently, if crudely, in
operation.
- Siri is a digital assistant designed by Apple to respond to voice-activation in performing daily tasks like message sending, voice calls and calendar inclusions.
- Telsa is pioneering a self-driving car.
- Cogito combines machine learning and behavioral science to enhance customer service AI systems. "The AI solution analyzes the human voice and provides real-time guidance [to the phone professional] to enhance behavior."
- Netflix uses prediction algorithms to make recommendations based on customer likes and previous choices. Pandora is called "… the DNA of music" using a core group of four hundred musical characteristics to analyze songs and making recommendations to customers.
- Nest is Goggle's AI which controls home temperature based on your daily routines and activity levels.
- Boxever is an AI system working in the travel industry which "conveys micro-moments or experiences that can please the customers."
- Flying Drones are being involved in home shipping of products, making videos and in news reporting.
- Echo from Amazon is a web search product that also schedules, helps you shop, controls "… lights, switches, thermostats, answers questions, reads audio books, reports traffic and weather, gives info on local businesses, provides sports scores and more."
Machine-life
or AI appears sufficient in analyzing our external, behavioral patterns and
routines, and then predicting out of that analysis what we might want next.
Human behavior patterns certainly imply a degree of purposefulness. However,
does AI really sense meaning as a human being experiences meaning? Does an AI
gain a sense of energy and motivation, joy and exhilaration in accessing
meaning? Is the raison d'etre of an AI
affirmed and strengthened by feeling this enhancement? Probably not. So, at
this time, etheric-life appears to be only superficially imitated by the
computer.
It is
similar to the process of an actor building up a role as a famous personality.
The actor studies video and audio records, reads books, reviews available
photographs of the life of the famous person. This is a first step in creating
a reputable character. The actor will practice
imitating that person's voice, their recognizable gait, stylistic
gestures, typical clothing and personal quirks. Artificial Intelligence can
apparently do most of this external depiction of apparently meaningful human
behavior, given enough processing power.
But then
the actor "becomes" the role neurologically. This is probably based
in our depth understanding of the interior of other people. We have an
intrinsic understanding of the "reality" of another personality;
that they also have an interior set of drives and values, motives and purposes.
The actor can take on a felt semblance of that other personality because of
this basic interpersonal assumption: you are like me to some degree. Actors
can, for a time, enter into sympathy
with the gestalt of behavioral details. She becomes, through innate powers of
imagination, empathy, self-reflection and skill, that other.
Can the
Artificial Intelligence perform this act of taking on a role all the way from
behavioral details to the internal gestalt? It is likely a matter of time
before it will be able to fool the human observer into believing it is one of
us. What will happen culturally when the AI is engineered to convincingly take
on the persona of a thinking, feeling, willing being? We may have a decade or
so to figure out the implications.
Mind-power Daimons
New
Thought affirmation meets the Spirit Model of magic!
I find this useful in learning how to behold the spiritual world and the myriad intelligent beings therein. I've always been drawn to the daimonic world-view - that we are immersed and surrounded by invisible beings. This kind of prayer helps to make it more real.
Recognition: Our cosmos is constructed of
interlinking spheres of myriad spiritual beings and intelligences; all moving
in a cosmic dance of essential harmony and mysterious concord. Everything
sensory, living, soulful and knowable is constantly emerging out of the Nine
Orbs of the Spiritual World. Out of the
One emerges Creative Mind, scintillating within the Stars of the Celestial
Wheel. Before the Throne of Wisdom stand Seven Creative Spirits, Principles and
Agents of Mind. Out of Mind through the Seven emerges the Archai, grand
Daimonic Time Spirits of meaningful aeons, significant seasons, creative days
and planetary hours. Within the living matrix of kairotic Time, Archangelic
Intelligences assemble holy ideas and potencies within nations, groups, and
collective destinies. Archangels emit Angels as messengers of the dreamtime
building with images for human help. Attracted by the lights and tones of the
Twilight Spirits come elemental daemons of fire, air, water and earth,
materializing forms woven by Angels, designed by Archangels, regulated by
Archai, sculpted by Exusiai, motivated by Dynamis, idealized by Kyriotetes,
arranged by Thronoi and conceived among the wheeling wisdom of Erelim whose
axial center is the Stillness of the One.
Unification: My being is rooted in fiery
daemons who serve Creative Mind, burning, shining, flaring spirits of egoic
heat and dryness in spiritual reality. My being is ensouled by the aerial
daemons who serve Creative Mind, blowing, exhaling, inspiring, expanding spirits
of astral heat and wetness in psychic locality. My being is enlivened by the
aqueous daemons who serve Creative Mind, flowing, springing, fountaining,
streaming spirits of etheric cold and wetness in elemental life and harmony. My
being is grounded in the earthy daemons who serve Creative Mind, hardening,
mineralizing, sinking, weighing spirits of physical cold and dryness. My
mineral body was shaped and engraved by Silent Aralim, manifesting all mineral
bodies on this Earth. My etheric body is an organism woven into matrices of
life by the Shining Chashmalim. My astral body is a breathing soul located
within the sentient world by the Holy Serafim. My spiritual ego is a spark of
eternal presence, harmonized by the Malakim in the light of our evolutionary
fire-flower coming from the One.
Realization: All phenomena of sight and sound,
smell, taste and touch reveal the wise and guiding presence of immanent spirit
beings. Visual images, remembered etherically, unfold in soul-consciousness as
sentient daemons with a life and mission of their own! Experiences of sound
retained in tone-ether, reveal spinning geometric shapes of beautiful
intelligences I long to meet. I am embedded in the vaporous bodies of fragrant
thought-beings whose sensory forms are evanescent. I am momentarily altered by
the bitter, sweet, sour, salty sensory bodies of spirit beings briefly
incarnated as they pass through me. Textures and kinesthesis emerge as sensory
bodies of entities organizing through the trace of my skin, taking passage
through me on their own paths. All experiences of livingness, animation and
vitality which surge within, around and through me are evidences of inner
spirit beings! Every action of Imagination, willed or spontaneous, is the
temporary structure of an angel with magical origins and goals. Each zesty,
motivating feeling of purpose and meaning is the brush of an angels wings, a
touch of its grace. Moral urges arising in my heart from august astral spirits;
inspiring moods, sweeping in from loving beings in the surrounding world soul;
illuminating ideas catalyzing Intuition are aligned with divine messengers -
all these inner experiences are potent signals of daemons.
Thanks: I am grateful for the building
awareness of mysterious daemonic movements through the spiritual world. I
gladly receive the presence of daemons whose temporary bodies make me take
notice. If the daemons appear in plants or if they show themselves riding
animals, and if they wish to shape the winds and breezes to their ends, or play
in the sprays and streams of flowing water, cavorting in the dramatic shows of
weather, I welcome their coming and going!. I am grateful for surges of
vitality which suggest their formative life-forces are close by, moving near,
settled intimately. I am glad for their true grace which softens my heart
against tyranny and dilates my feelings in the care of others. I give my thanks
to daemons that speak to me with their invisible breath, bringing companionship
always, friendship often and arcane messages as needed to help me on the path.
Release: Now I propel this affirmative prayer
for beholding daemons, into Creative Mind. I release my energized word into
daemonic hands, knowing they carry my consonants up to angelic beings. I
strongly feel angelic beings receiving my words and bearing up my vowels into
the hands of their princes. I envision with trust the choral leaders,
catapulting my word into the spirits of time, dissolving this word into
compelling vibrations merging into Creative Mind - Potent Feminine Mind of the
One, Holy Shekinah of IAOE, Poetic Spirit of David the Beloved - Creative Mind,
our Maker, Founder, Active Law, Manifesting All, Omnipresent, Omnipotent,
Omniscient, One Mind. Let it be so!
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