mythos said:
Venicebard, I'm sorry to hear that your living situation is so fragile.
Fret not: it’s not all that fragile, just a bit ‘internet unfriendly’. The worst thing about my situation is the flooding of books and papers in the somewhat squalid (cheap) housing they are presently in. Most of the affected books are still readable, though. The Torah being likened to water (since both flow from above to below), perhaps fate is simply ‘laying down the law’ by notifying me when I get on the wrong track: I think all misfortune is ultimately of this nature.
...given my age and state of health...
One of the beliefs driving me on in my investigations of the more secret (lost) teachings of Qabbalah has been the following passage from Harold W. Percival’s
Thinking and Destiny, in which I place great stock (believing it proceeded from gnosis), since much in it that seemed utterly strange I have empirically confirmed:
“The Hebrew letters are elemental forms, magical figures, through which nature elementals may be used. The vowels are the breaths and the consonants are the forms through which they work.
“There was a class among the Jews who could use these letters to produce magical results with the aid of nature spirits. They knew a great deal about the workings of the body, and so could build up strong healthy bodies for the worship of their God. Their time was before Christianity.
“After Christianity a class among the Jews developed a system, the remains of which are known as Cabala. They claimed that this Cabala was the secret knowledge of their sacred books. Each of the twenty-two letters represents a particular organ or part of the body and is an opening to reach elementals and for elementals to come into the body. The elementals build the body, change it[,] and destroy it. By knowing the use of each letter a Cabalist acquired psychic powers. He could evoke and use these elementals through the letters and thereby bring about changes in his body. He could in the same way learn about the structure of physical nature and so bring about changes in it. These may be magical phenomena. The Cabalists had an opportunity of raising the Jewish religion. Because they guarded that knowledge too selfishly and would not give it out, they lost it. Only fragments, which are ineffective, remain to them.”
When I started out, I held little or no hope of ever actually figuring out what “organ or part of the body” each letter represents—yet I succeeded in this! I’ve not yet figured out how to use them, but hey, I’m not done yet! As for magical phenomena, I have some small experience of same and developed a better understanding from studying shamanism (though I do not practice it). And as for ‘psychic powers’ (which Percival is at pains to say one should not seek in and of themselves, though they arise naturally with one’s advancement in self-control), I have twice experienced ‘psychic insights’, one that was completely confirmed (exact time of arrival of a loved one in L.A., which I ‘felt from afar’ from deep affinity) and the other not yet completely confirmed but consistent with what a certain intelligence expert has made clear (though not commonly known).
My current understanding of Bardic culture is that there is a difference between the Celtic one and the one in the Languedoc, Aquitaine regions history and language-wise ... though logic tells me that Breton and Celtic are linked.
Brittany was colonized from Britain, and in fact a British ‘paramount king’ led 12,000 of his warriors there around 470ish to carry his defeat of the Saxons in Britain to those ravaging the Brittany region, which he did but was then defeated by Euric the Goth and his much larger army (whose turn against him was unexpected). Arthur Ashe thinks this was Arthur himself, while another author claims it to have been Ambrosius Aurlienus—who by the way was probably the first of the two ‘Merlins’ (the other being the mad prophet Myrddin a century later), from Welsh confusing V (U) with M (Ambrosius Avrlienus into Amrlienus Ambrosius?)
So much was lost in the Languedoc from French rapine and the Inquisition (and repeated ‘chomping at the bit’ on the part of a people more enlightened than their conquerors but lacking Greeks’ ‘complacency’). But the signs of it are clear: the Arthurian cycle, and the inspiration the Troubadours felt from the Tristan story. And we know what happened in that age was out of the ordinary, from its literary influence on surrounding cultures and from the glow anyone not chronically insensitive
must feel when confronted with the music of the Troubadours: the closer to that time and place, the greater the glow, musically (says my trained ear). And it just happened to also be the birthplace of Qabbalah (or what is called that today).
You are more than welcome.
(Edited to add: )
Oh, I guess I should list the organs and parts, huh. The simples run the gamut of the round:
samekh-head
tzaddi-throat
cheyt-shoulders-and-arms
vav-breasts
ayin-(certain centers in the mental atmosphere associated with the heart)
qof-womb(women)-prostate(men)
teyt-crotch/loins/digestive tract
heh-male organ and clitoris
zayin-terminal filament of spine
yod-spine opposite heart
lamedh-spine opposite shoulders
nun-spine opposite cervical vertibrae
The doubles are the 7 'steps' in alchemy, more or less:
1st step involves prostate (suppression of sexual desire), but reysh itself is the organ of heredity (testes, ovaries): mastery of body-mind (learning to concentrate)
2nd step: kaf-kidneys, freeing feeling mind from dominance of senses
3rd step: gimel-adrenals, freeing desire mind from same
4th step: tav-heart, use of mind of rightness (conscience)
5th step: dalet-lungs, use of mind of reason
6th step: peh-pituitary, use of mind of I-ness (as in 'I know')
7th step: beyt-pineal (rear half), use of mind of self-ness
And the three mothers represent the habitations of body-mind, feeling, and desire, respectively:
alef-sympathetic nerves
shin-cerebrospinal nerves
meym-the blood
I feel reasonably certain of all of these, in the 'for what it's worth' department. Th-th-th-that's all, folks.
