Kabbalah and Angels

memries

Veniceboard

You say in your post... ask for the connections between worlds.. I am asking.

I have read the whole thing and am beginning to understand what you are speaking about.. more or less as it were.
 

Gazel

Hello venicebard

I'm sorry that I haven't been able to answer your post during the last two weeks, returning from vacation has been taking its toll on my level of energy I'm afraid. But thanx for your answering my dummy questions once again ;o)

venicebard said:
Slowly, over a 3-and-a-half-decade period (I'm slow because I'm methodical and don't take other people's word for the most fundamental things).

I sort of guessed that already ;o)

venicebard said:
Quickly, the way to comprehend them is to see the four worlds as four interdependent wheels (as described vaguely in Ezekiel 1).

Asiyah (physical world) is the round (wheel) of the womb, out of which we are (physically) born. [etc.]

This wheel represents the eternal, Beriyah represents that which has finite duration, and Yetzirah represents that which is engaged in where the present instant (Asiyah) comes from and goes to, the former through feeling and the latter through desire (passive and active aspects, respectively, of the doer).

This makes some sense to me, but still I think I must chew it over some more to grasp it - like for the next decade or two.

No, 12: the 13th middot is the return to the first spoke having completed the (universal) round.

Okay

I'll be back (he warns).

I bet you will ;o)

Gazel.
 

venicebard

memries said:
You say in your post... ask for the connections between worlds.. I am asking.
The divine Form -- divine because all that exists seeks it -- is the standing Adam Qadmon: Upright Sentience itself, prior to division into male and female versions of same. Hence the first wheel/world is centered atop Its head (and rests where It rests). The upright form is the downward instance of the 'spoke' that whirls about to produce said wheel. The stations of this 'spoke' are described in the Bahir:

Up is Crown, departure from up is Wisdom (the wisdom to return), approach to out is wisdom's storehouse (understanding), out is Lovingkindness, departure from out is the Great Fire (severity, the veering-away from Lovingkindness), approach to down is the divine Throne (symbolizing the descent of Deity to 'meet us halfway', meaning in meditation), and down itself is the Holy Palace (the location of the Throne).

Then, departure from down to points within constitutes the doer of the conscious self (its power to act in the present instant), which is the Foundation (Yesod) of the Great Work. This leaves the thinker (part of self which deals with things of finite duration, i.e. thoughts and whether these conform to Goodness) and knower (part that deals with things eternal, i.e. Truth), which are the approach to and arrival at straight in. Since neither undergoes the Fall, they are both termed 'Victory' (Netzach). It is the doer's job (the Great Work) to create Beauty, which then completes the three greatest Forms (or aspects of the One Form) spoken of by Plato (Truth, Goodness, and Beauty).

(Three middot yet remain to be traversed, since the self is only the tenth station of the round.)

The first wheel is that of the knower itself and things eternal. But when this Being is seated, the wheel centered atop Its head is halved in height (diameter) and represents the second wheel/world, the Throne world (that of Beriyah or 'creation'): here man can join the divine Form in thought. This wheel represents the prototype (in thought) of man's surroundings: only its lower half is manifested to the senses, and heavenly bodies appearing in its upper half also show only their bottom halves.

The seven signs of the bottom or manifested half are the seven doubles, in the order P-T-K-R-G-D-B originally, changed after the Fall by reversal of P and D and the deserting of its station (seeking higher office) by R, which is replaced there by omnipresent M ("mm" or sweetness, the gentle hum of the Totality): intermediate mem is M at libra (7th station), but final mem (mem-sofit) represents the center of the first wheel (the three mothers -- mem, shin, and alef -- represent the centers, respectively, of the first three wheels (which have other wheels in their bellies), which are those of the knower, thinker, and doer (respectively).

For the third wheel is the second one halved again, centered at the heart of the seated torso. This is the zodiac of the body (spring springing up towards the head aries, summer blossoming out towards the breasts cancer, and so on), which when we stand becomes the broken-and-extended zodiac extending on down the legs to the feet. (The original goes up the spine to the head.) These twelve signs are the twelve simple letters.

And the fourth wheel, then, is the third one halved again, for it is the round of the womb (in the bottom half of the torso). This represents the physical world (Asiyah). The fact that the womb is dark explains poetically why space is dark. The scientific explanation is the fact that it represents the present instant: since light's velocity is finite, it cannot travel any distance at all in the present instant.

Hope this helps.

PS. Where does R go when it deserts libra? At libra it is the guttural R rolled at the based of the tongue; for the manifested (prototype) surroundings represent the mouth and the seated torso within it represents the tongue. What happens is that R becomes also the R rolled on the tip of the tongue, that is, it seeks the higher position of the center of the second wheel, atop the third (the tongue). But it cannot rest there, and whereas when rolled at the base of the tongue it does not go anywhere (being the growl of the faithful hound that guards Hades), when rolled at the tip or top of the tongue it tends to fall off, to be ephemeral. (R represents the body-mind, the part of the self that deals directly with the senses, of which there are four: sight/fire, hearing/air, taste/water [things must be in solution to be tasted], and contact/earth, this last being most focused in the olefactory nerves [smell] but extending also over the entire surface of the body [as touch].)