Basic Pathworking Q: Fool on Shin vs. Aleph

Breakbeat_Mystic

What is pathworking - is it exploring or buidling? Often it seems like building as people instruct it- like building a palace of memory. Visualize this door, go through it, visualize this symbl/letter, etc.

Well, that's building, not exploring... so is pathworking about exploring some sort of supranatural territory or building one? If one is exploring, one will find stuff (symbol letter there, whatever), if building, one will place it - if one places it does it matter if say, on the street of the fool it is alef, or shin or tau? If it is, after all, some inner-city psycho-scape?

I like to take the cards to bed with me - lucid dreams feel more like exploring than building - but I do both.
Seems like there's a very certain kind of conformity with pathworking the Sephira - at least enough of Gareth Knight and similar authors would lend the impression that these things tend to hang tight to a certain set of rules.

What gets interesting is just how many different styles of tree there are. For instance, most of us are familiar with the Athanasius Kirchner model (Golden Dawn lineage favorite) of the tree of life that likes to have two of the paths (29th and 31st) from Netzach to Malkuth and from Hod to Malkuth where as I'm seeing the Ari tree has those paths crisscrossing the would-be 'Daath' from Binah to Chesed and from Chokmah to Geburah. The Gra likes to do them different still and split the difference of connections between Yesod and Tiphareth - so, dunno, mysticism is still a but hullabaloo to me but I'm hoping to make the best sense of this sacred construct that I can. :)

They all seem to at least agree on 22 paths, 10 sephira, 32 intelligences. I will admit however that I'm little more than a postulant in the orders so - I suppose I'll start hitting my temple degrees and worry about the different types of philosophical flora the almighty tetragrammaton created. Till then I won't really worry about too much more than the kinds of card deck I'm getting my hands on and trying to stay feasibly within method.
 

hoomer

Pathworking as far as I understand it is looking at the type of relationships that exist between the sephira.

Pathworking is actually just as it sounds. You meditationally walk the path between the Sephira. The traditional way is indeed, memorize the phone book, learn 1001 correspondences... then force yourself through meditation to walk the path. This isn't the only way, just the most popular.

Pathworking is often used in modern times to relate to any guided meditation, however it is a relatively modern thing which is ONLY qabbalistic. Other "new age"pathworking is not pathworking, that's just a bad label being applied to sell stuff.