Kabbalah And Psychology

The Sefirot (Sephiroth) are a fixture in almost the entire Western corpus of magickal practice, although most modern practicioners know only their names and perhaps their most common associations. However, they are an excellent map of the mind of mankind and can be a rich source of study. I am not here to proselytize for venturing on the 22 paths as much of the Western ceremonial tradition concentrates on, but rather to provide a treatment of the Sefirot in a easy to understand manner. Please note that my understanding of this topic is heavily informed by the Lurianic school of Kabbalah. Also note that these scribblings borrow heavily from other authors, as I consider this to be a “working document” as I continue to flesh out my thoughts. Consequently, this document will be altered periodically in ways large and small.

Before and surrounding the Sefirot themselves is the Ein-sof, the primal, all-encompassing "Infinite God". This God is the union of both Yesh (being) and Ayin (nothingness), as well as male and female and good and evil and all other basic oppositions. As such, it is the reconciliation of everything and it's moumenal opposite. It represents the primal unconscious that is completely beyond the individual’s conscious awareness. According to Jung:
There is little hope of our being able to reach even an approximate consciousness of the self, since however, much we make conscious there will always exist an indeterminate and undeterminable amount of unconscious material which belongs to the totality of the self.

Tzimtzum (Contraction/Concealment)
The doctrine of Tzimtzum explains the transition from an infinite, all-encompassing God to the existence of a pluralistic world. Luria held that in order to create an independent, finite world, Ein-sof (understood as the full plenum of being) must contract itself and, moreover, conceal an aspect of itself from itself. Tzimtzum creates a division within the divine essence. This division actually creates the possibility of knowledge, through a distinction between subject and object, knower and known. That which is concealed, that which Ein-sof no longer knows as part of itself, becomes the created, finite world, and can be known as distinct from God. From a psychological perspective it can be said that an act of Tzimtzum or concealment lies at the very core of the human psyche, for it is only through concealment and it's variants, i.e.: denial, repression, symbolization, displacement, condensation, etc. that a division is set up between subject and object, conscious and unconscious, and the human personality is born.

The Sefirot
The first of the Sefirot, the one closest to the infinite godhead (and, by extension, to the primal unconscious) is Keter (Crown), identified by the Kabbalists with ratzon (will, desire). In Hebrew the verb ratzon is used in the commonest expressions of desire (e.g. Ani ratzon = "I want"), suggesting that desire, a primal libido in all of its potential ramifications (sexual and otherwise) is the basic manifestation of the human psyche. One step removed from this "desire" is the Sefirah representing the intellect (Chochmah), suggesting that, as Freud held, intellect (i.e. cognition) only emerges as a superstructure built upon desire. The next Sefirah, Binah (Understanding) is according to the Kabbalists a blending of the first two. Binah is held to be the origin of all creativity and is thus referred to as the Celestial Mother. Through Understanding, will, directed by intellect gives birth to the lower worlds.

The next three Sefirot, represent a second triad which, in effect, repeats on a more concrete level the dialectic of the first three. Chesed (Love) is, according to the Kabbalists, fundamentally an expression of desire, whereas Din (Judgment) is an expression of intellect, for in judgment, distinctions that have been held in theory are actually made and implemented in reality. This implementation of the idea is perhaps the reason why this Sefirah is also referred to as Gevurah (strength or power), and serves as the foundation for aggression, and, ultimately, for the harsh, punitive judgments which the Jewish tradition identifies with evil. Love and Judgment are reconciled in the Sefirah Tiferet/Rachamin (Beauty/Compassion) which, according to the Kabbalists serves as a paradigm for all further reconciliations, both within the godhead and man.

The next two Sefirot, Netzach (Glory) and Hod (Splendor) can be interpreted as the further instantiation of man’s libido and intellect in the "glorious" and "splendorous" manifestations of human individual and collective cultural expression. These two Sefirot are reconciled by Yesod (foundation) which the Kabbalists equated with the phallus, and which in turn engages in a dynamic coupling with the final Sefirah (Malchut/ Shekhinah), representing the feminine aspect of the psyche. Indeed, it is the erotic coupling of male and female, and particularly, the masculine and feminine aspects of the psyche that serves as the most prominent Kabbalistic metaphor for the completion of God and creation. Jung, in his works on alchemy, discusses this theme as a symbol of the unification of the self (Jung, 1963).

The Instability of the Sefirot
There is an inherent weakness and disuniity in the Sefirot which results in their ultimate demise. The Sefirot "closest" to Adam Kadmon, Keter, Chochmah and Binah are comprised of more powerful vessels and they alone can withstand the impact of the lights emanating from the eyes of Adam Kadmon. Each of the others are shattered by the divine emanations.

Psychologically speaking we might say that man’s values and psychic structures as they are initially constituted cannot always serve him well as he matures. The strongest aspects of the ego, those most resistant to psychological decompensation in the face of a surge of libidinous energy, are the basic structures of cognition and perception. However, those aspects of the ego that bind, contain, and structure emotion (the seven lowest Sefirot which are spoken of in the Kabbalah as "emotional") are subject to a psychic shattering as a result of a surge of libidinal energy from the unconscious. Jung spoke of the intellectual and moral values keeping the archetypal images of the unconscious in check until the former are "weakened by age or criticism" (Jung, 1963, p. 473). Such weakened structures are subject to being overwhelmed by a flood of unconscious material.

Shevirat ha-Kelim, the Breaking of the Vessels
The seven lower Sefirot shatter. Even the highest Sefirot, which do not shatter, fall from a higher to a lower place.

The structures of the ego are insufficient for man to contain the energy and imagery of his unconscious mind. These structures must shatter, creating a chaotic, disjoint and dangerous but necessary state from which a new man and self can eventually emerge. Will and intellect have fallen in status. Reason can no longer resolve all difficulties in its path. The ego has been deflated. Kabbalistically, it is only when the "vessels break" that the individual can become truly human.

Tikkun Haolom, the Restoration of the World
The whole Sefirotic realm must be reconstituted and restored via Tikkun haolom (the Repair and Restoration of the world). The restored cosmos, however, will differ considerably from the world as it was originally created.

The restored Self is an achievement that transcends the spontaneous and automatic development of the ego in childhood. When the structures and values which served the nascent ego are shattered by personal crisis, e.g. in adolescence or mid-life, the relations between the primal unconscious, the ego and the personal unconscious must be restructured into a more unified, flexible (and hence more livable) arrangement. According to Jung, the archetype of the "Self" emerges after mid-life to perform this formidable task. Unlike the ego, the Self is not a bastion of consciousness which, like a rider on a horse, limits and controls the forces of the unconscious psyche. Just as the Kabbalist’s restored cosmos involves an integration rather than separation of its various levels, the Jungian Self involves an integration between "conscious", "pre-conscious" and "unconscious", and between anima, animus, persona and shadow. The Self manages desire through wisdom rather than repression and control, for its desire is already integrated with the higher elements of the soul. In Kabbalistic terms, the psyche after Tikkun is one in which each of the Sefirot are fully integrated with each of the others.

The psyche itself must be unified through a coincidence of opposites, especially between its masculine and feminine elements. Further, these inner unifications are reciprocally modeled from, and model, the significant relationships of human life, in such a manner that the inner dynamics of the human psyche reflect the structure and vicissitudes of man’s interpersonal existence. Eros plays a critical role in the psyche’s personal and interpersonal development. Man, even in the depths of his individual psyche, is essentially a social, interpersonal, being. The deeper one probes into one’s self, the surer one finds a representation of the "other". The formation of a Self is hardly a solitary enterprise but is, as the Kabbalists imply, conditioned upon relationships of passion, friendship, and mutual support. The individual, like God himself, cannot hope to be complete outside of such relationships.

The Reunification of Male and Female
The raising of the sparks has the effect of not only reunifying masculine and feminine aspects of the divine (and human) psyche but of harmonizing all other contradictions within the psyche as well. As we have see, for Jung, such unification is the most important psychotherapeutic principle. The fully individuated self is one which having seen the multiplicity, disharmony and conflict of an actual lived existence, comes to experience a harmony behind all of its manifold expressions and appearances.

Ritual Keys

A key is typically defined as a means of gaining or preventing entrance, possession or control of a location or process. A ritual key as it pertains to psychology, theurgy, mystery schools and magickal practice is a technique involving deliberate actions with appropriate intent, to provide additional meaning or potentials to various operations. The use of ritual keys can provide a number of advantages to an individual who understands proper usage.

A ritual key has similarities both to sigils and to programming by dint of the process of deciding how a given procedure will unfold. Many sigils are created by deciding what operation(s) are necessary for a given effect, such as “first, invoke my servitor, then have him find my target, and then have him attach him”. This is essentially a short program of three steps. Similarly, a ritual key may be constructed by use of a sigil or other method, but the core operation is deciding what sequence of steps will be taken and what method they employ”. Unlike a servitor which can be expected to manifest some degree of intelligence, a ritual key is a program in that it will activate according to the instructions given.

Advantages
One advantage of having a ritual key is a heightened degree of precision when creating an effect. By identifying what particular mechanism of operation will be employed, and process in which that principle will work, a specific operation can be programmed to operate consistently. An excellent illustration of this example are the ubiquitous icons that litter the desktops of computer users everywhere. When I click on a particular computer icon, the computer locates the operating files for Microsoft WordTM, loads them into memory along with any associated library files, and executes the program itself.

A similar but distinct advantage of the use of ritual keys is that common operations can be activated without having to engage in a ritual. Rituals can be very powerful, but consume materials and require time not only for the ritual but for setup and takedown. If we consider a banishing of a sacred space as an illustrative example, it is possible to use a ritual key to create this effect, rapidly and without use of a ritual, as the operator can essentially “shortcut” to the desired application. With a specific series of gestures, words or a combination, an operator may choose to immediately generate a specific effect provided that ritual key is invoked with intent. In this example, I have used a ritual key of a specific gesture and word (with intent) to banish and area and create a sacred space for other ritual use. This technique allows for “quick draw” utility both for attack and defense if the situation warrants it.

A final advantage when using a ritual key is that it can allow for greater emotional energy to be used in actual ritual for the actual ritual purpose and less for what are often considered preliminaries. A typical magickal worker maintains a certain amount of emotional and etheric energy at any given time, and magickal operations require this energy in order to maintain focus or power a specific effect. If we consider a ritual cleansing of a home or other building in this context with an estimated duration of 20 minutes, it allows one to spend more time on the ritual cleansing of the structure and less time on opening the ritual. By essentially preprogramming the preliminary or parallel elements of the ritual, more of this emotional and etheric energy can be directly expended on the task at hand. The ability to wring more “spell points” out of a given magickal operation can be a potent advantage, with group workings of workers with differing symbol sets being an obvious example.

Example
Steven wants to be able to generate a “spoiler” on an individual whom he suspects is attempting to leech his energy field. The method he has chosen is to generate a field of disruptive energies, a discordant cacophony of energetic noise that he feels will confuse and discourage his attacker, and make it difficult to create a link and which will tend to erode under the chaotic environment. Normally Steven requires a few minutes to “ramp up” for an operation, and he is concerned that by the time he is ready to activate this effect, the connections will already be made. Consequently, he designs a ritual key which is activated by a specific hand gesture and the word “no”, while concentrating with specific intent. Steven practices this for several days, consciously creating this aggressive intent while using the desired word and gestures until he feels he has assimilated the procedure and is ready to do so in the real world. When out in his daily life, he encounters his antagonist and with intent makes the gestures and pronounces the word “no”, and the effect materializes without the normal meditative time Steven requires.

Love Without Pity

“The difference between love and pity is the absence of perceived hope in the latter”

“Compassion is the vice of kings”


Love is a wonderful thing, and setting all arguments aside about the specific definition of love it is generally agreed that love is a desire to be with another, to miss them when they are gone, and to share experiences with them. However, love does have a dangerous variant, being pity. Pity is the destroyer of love and the destroyer of relationships. Pity implies two very grave errors.

The first error is an implicit assumption that something is wrong with the other. The second error is still greater since it involves the complex of the Ego. To pity another person implies that you are superior to them, and you fail to recognize their absolute right to exist as he or she is.

“... for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent.”1 Sympathy, obviously, is the more correct frame of mind, for it is a pitiless love involving in reality an identification of oneself with the other; it is therefore an act of true love. “There is no bond that can unite the divided but love”2

Love for me does not involve taking care of someone. Taking care of someone makes me their father or guardian, not lover. Everyone needs help, but at what point does help or sacrifice for another become a crutch that stifles their self-sovereignty? That is the cruelest debasement, a theft of what matters most. It is a rape most vile.

Reference:
1.Liber AL I:57.
2.Liber AL I:41

Tesseract Magick Part IV: Tesseract Magick and the Enochian System

In recent months, I was introduced to a gentleman online who was interested in exploring the concept of Tesseract magic in the context of the enochian elemental tablets. An adept of the method pioneered by Benjamin Rowe in his excellent essay Enochian Temples, he was interested in expanding on the original method to fully encompass some potentialities of the system. I was intrigued by the idea, as my personal Great Table introduced in a previous posting had not been fully realized.

After some experimentation with the enochian elemental tablets, I was contacted and the failures he had encountered were detailed. It was resolved that he would continue to experiment, but that both of us would continue to explore the reasons for the difficulties being encountered. Having a general familiarity with the system, I began a systematic analysis of the enochian elemental tablets. In the course of my research, I undertook a mathematical analysis of the elemental correspondences of each of the squares in all four elemental tablets.

The enochian tablets in total are by definition a representation of a magical universe, presumably balanced among elemental forces of air, earth, fire and water. They are not. This is a bold statement, so I will explain in more detail. Mathematically, a balanced representation of four elemental forces where repetition is allowed (for example, a square with two faces being associated with Earth) but there the order in which those faces are colored is a type of combination. Mathematically, the number of combinations of four elements in sets of four where repetition is allowed but the order is important is 256. That is to say, a 16x16 grid of 256 squares is necessary to contain all possible combinations of elemental forces. By way of contrast, each enochian elemental tablet consists of a 12x13 grid of 156 combinations, which is approximately 60% of the number of squares required. Similarly, the entire enochian tablet containing all elemental tablets is likewise far too large to represent a balanced magical universe. Similar review of the Tablet of Union does not correct these errors. By definition, I submit that the underlying premise of the elemental tablets is flawed; it does not represent a balanced conception of the universe, and anyone with a tablet of paper and a free evening can verify this.

This discovery led to the creation of what is now referred to as the tesseract Great Table. Essentially, the Great Table is a 16x16 grid of tiles, with elemental forces associated with each face of each individual tile and consequently a balanced representation of the elemental forces of the universe. The Great Table is conveniently broken into four subtables with each subtable having lesser elemental angles like their enochian counterpart (fire of fire, water of air, etc.) and also inherently follows the mathematical and mathemagical connectivity structure of a tesseract.

As always, I invite discussion.

Tesseract Magic Part III: Operational Notes

The original Tesseract ritual as designed by Ebony Anpu was a working designed to essentially destroy this universe, shunting the caster to a new universe. Consequently, the caster might over the next week encounter their friend Steven, who has always had long brown hair and brown eyes. However, in addition to years of memories with Steven as just described, the caster might indeed have a duplicate set of memories where Steven was taller, with short black hair and different colored eyes. The ritual in question is not available except in the crudest and most incomplete versions on the Internet, as the creator and his students decided that the ritual was dangerous and not to be casually disseminated.

The ritual as it was originally created demonstratably works, but is not without inherent dangers. The original version was limited not in power but in scope; the caster could indeed shunt themselves to new universes but control was extremely limited, the caster could essentially get a new “version” that was dramatically better or worse than the previous with no recourse but to cast the ritual again. Finally, there was the issue of being able to do very little else in terms of expanding the corpus left by Ebony Anpu due to lack of understanding of the true mechanics of a tesseract. This is no slur on the work of Ebony Anpu; the mathematics of a tesseract were available at the time, but the true understanding of the actual architecture and it's connectivity were largely accessible only to a handful of university faculty.

At this point it is necessary both to summarize the first two portions of this document and place them in context to the overall operational schema of the expanded practice of Tesseract Magick. In Part I, the hypercube was illustrated and the base table was presented, along with an overview of how the base table illustrates the connectivity between the cubes, faces, edges and point of the tesseract. The base table and the tesseract illustration are sufficient to turn a tesseract. I have been experimenting in this fashion and I have enjoyed a higher degree of control regarding the new conditions I am wanting to jump to. The reason for additional control appears to be in the cubes. By standing on one cube with a known (and undesireable) set of conditions, one can move through cubes with changing conditions, changing them as you go. Note that a cube in a tesseract has six (6) faces like any other cube, so up to six circumstances can be undertaken, although normally the number of circumstances desired for change is smaller. This is one of the projects I would like to work with others to develop a concrete methodology on.

Part II concerns what is loosely called the Great Table, formed of four elemental tablets of 16x16 square configuration. The table has been published, but in actuality there is a second version of this table consisting of a single 16x16 square. Both tables have elemental attributions like the Enochian tablets. However, at this time these two versions are being reviewed. The two forms of the great table are two expressions of the same concepts, as both are designed to reflect a balanced magickal universe of air, earth, fire and water elemental energies, with each 4x4 grid (the base table) being numbered from 0 to 15. Now, the number of possible combinations of four elements where an element can be on more than one face is permissible and where the order the elements are displayed in is 256. This corresponds perfectly to a 16x16 grid formed of [4] base tables, each laid out in a manner similar to the Enochian elemental tablets. The purpose of the great table in either configuration allows aids in the projecting of elemental energies outward. As this is essentially working notes I shall be by necessity brief.

When projecting elemental energies for various purposes, the Great Table is of great value. Two primary methods are being reviewed at this time. The first method is to locate the square on the 16x16 grid with the designed alignment of elemental energies. When the square has been located, a sigil is drawn over the entire 16x16 matrix, with at least a single point located in each sub-table that is being invoked. I should have an example of this available shortly. For convenience, the numbers allocated to the various squares are replaced in a manner I shall presently post.

Alas, I shall have to continue this later.

Tesseract Magick Part II: The Elemental Tables

Tesseract Magick Part I: Intro and Navigation

Tesseract Magick is the name given to a ritual and a small body of knowledge that was originally created by Ebony Anpu and later carried on but not expanded on (to my knowledge) by the various Hawk & Jackal groups. Some material is out there on the internet, but in this case the primary ritual was deemed too powerful for the untrained to use and was wisely set aside. However,Wade Long retained a personal copy of the complete ritual. A former student of Ebony, he has the only physical handwritten copy of the ritual taken directly from Ebony's original. Since Wade had continued to use the ritual, along with the Rosslyn grove it was possible to have a solid understanding of the rituals and how it works based on the understanding of the creator. Unfortunately, that understanding of the tesseract was incomplete. This is no slight to Ebony Anpu, as I have enormous respect for his accomplishments and body of work. However, the available research on hypersolids simply wasn't available at the time. Consequently, his body of work could have been so much larger and encompassing.

The concept of Tesseract Magick was originally developed and promulgated by Ebony Anpu and continued by various groups and individuals since his death. A tesseract is what is referred to as a 4-cube or hypercube, loosely defined as a fourth-dimensional equivalent to a standard cube. A three-dimensional cube has (8) vertices, (12) edges and (6) faces. By comparison, a tesseract has (16) vertices, (32) edges, (24) faces and in fact can be “unrolled” into (8) cubes the same way a standard cube can “unroll” into a cavalry cross.

Let us consider how a tesseract is constructed. For convenience, the (16) vertices of the tesseract have been labeled from 0 to 15. If you look at the bottom of the image you can easily locate point 0, and a quick examination will reveal that vertex 0 connects to points 1, 2 and 3 to form a face. However, the layout of a tesseract can be very difficult to follow, and people unfamiliar with the intricate layout of this figure may have trouble. Luckily, there exists a simple chart that can reveal the construction of a tesseract and more importantly the relation of those components to the other portions of the tesseract.

The figure to the right is referred to mathematically as an adjacency matrix, which I will refer to as the base table for convenience. The base table can show one how to verify all faces and even cubes in the tesseract and their relationships to each other. Let us now learn about the relationships that can be discovered using this table.

Using the base table, it is easy to identify all of the 24 faces of the tesseract. All rows and columns reflect a face, so for example vertices 5,4,12 and 13 form a face and vertices 5,7,3 and 1 form a face as well. Please take a moment to review on the tesseract drawing to verify you understand. Now that you have verified the vertices of 8 faces, we can discover the others.

On the base table, a 2x2 grouping of squares is also a face, so for example vertices 8,9,10 and 11 form a face as does 10,2,6 and 14. Note that as you move from right to left, these faces “wrap around” back to the other side. For example, the square labeled 5 in the top right wraps around to 1,9 and 13 to form a square. For your convenience I have shown small squares to help illustrate this for you, inserting more “phantom base squares” to aid in understanding. With the (16) additional faces now shown, we can now identify all faces on a tesseract.

To find the eight cubes within a tesseract the method is even simpler. Every 2x4 grid of squares are the vertices of a particular cube. The image below shows them in two colors for easy reference.

It should be understood that it is also possible to determine all vertices that connect to any given vertex. In this case, taking the north, south, east and west neighbors will show these relationships. For example, vertices 14,2,8 and 11 are directly connected to vertex number 10. Again, please verify of the tesseract illustration to verify this.