noby
I've been reading Rachel Pollack's The Kabbalah Tree, and came across a fascinating historical passage which details a mystical practice within the Jewish tradition. This passage serves to give some background on the vision and approach to the divine which informs the Tree of Life and the Kabbalah as a whole, and also, at least in my eyes, speaks to some of the aspects of the Chariot card in the tarot.
In my earlier post to this thread, I correlated the Chariot to mystical practices such as yoga. The practices of which I was thinking at the time were generally practices which originated or were refined in the "Aeon of Osiris." It's interesting now to look at the same inner work from an approach with a different quality and a different perspective. The shamanic practice described above arose during the Aeon of Osiris, but the roots of shamanism stretch back to the Aeon of Isis. Shamanic practices are a way of disciplining and directing energies to lead to liberation or at least an experience of the divine, yet lack some of the puritanical and dualistic attitudes which reflect part of the shadow side of worldviews from the Aeon of Osiris.
Of course, in the end, yoga, shamanic and trance practices, and any other mystical practices are all different approaches to the same thing, which is the working out of the human relationship with the divine, and the yearning for intimacy with the divine. It is interesting how discipline and restrictive outer forms can lead to such ecstasy and freedom. I think the practice and vision of the merkavah is interesting in the way it reflects on all of this, and speaks to the Chariot in many ways.
Two thousand years ago, right around the time of the teachings of Jesus, Judaism faced a great crisis. Rome was trying to crush the Jewish desire to follow its own traditions, and in the year 70, in response to Jewish rebellion, the Roman army destroyed the vast Temple of Solomon that had stood as the center of Jewish ritual and spiritual life for hundreds of years.
Without the temple, and its seasonal rituals and sacrifices, how would people join themselves to God? The Sefer Yetsirah was, in fact, one answer, and it began a strain in mystical religion called "the work of creation," that is, the contemplation of the origins and structure of existence. Through meditation on the wonders of the sephiroth and the letters, and their place in the creation of the world, the mystic comes to a sense of the divine power that fills all existence, especially our own lives.
Another response was a kind of shamanic revival called "the work of the merkavah," or the work of the chariot. The chariot refers to a mystic vision described in the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel lived during the Babylonian Exile, after the destruction of the first temple (Rome actually destroyed a second temple, rebuilt after the return from Babylon). His experience was therefore meaningful to those going through the pain of Roman attacks. The prophet described a highly detailed vision he had of a heavenly chariot, wheels within wheels and winged creatures with four faces. The merkavah mystics used this vision as their own vehicle for trance journeys into the seven hekhaloth (palaces) of heaven. The purpose of these journeys was to see the divine face to face, the very experience Jacob describes after his night of wrestling.
The great detail of the merkavah writings show that the journeyers considered the hekhaloth real places and not just hallucinations or subjective images. They warn of improper responses one might make at certain points in the journey. At the same time they recognized that all this took place on an inner level, stimulated by meditation and magical practices, for they described the experience as a "descent" to the chariot, even as the traveler ascended to the palaces. The chariot was inside the self as well as in the heavenly realms.
In my earlier post to this thread, I correlated the Chariot to mystical practices such as yoga. The practices of which I was thinking at the time were generally practices which originated or were refined in the "Aeon of Osiris." It's interesting now to look at the same inner work from an approach with a different quality and a different perspective. The shamanic practice described above arose during the Aeon of Osiris, but the roots of shamanism stretch back to the Aeon of Isis. Shamanic practices are a way of disciplining and directing energies to lead to liberation or at least an experience of the divine, yet lack some of the puritanical and dualistic attitudes which reflect part of the shadow side of worldviews from the Aeon of Osiris.
Of course, in the end, yoga, shamanic and trance practices, and any other mystical practices are all different approaches to the same thing, which is the working out of the human relationship with the divine, and the yearning for intimacy with the divine. It is interesting how discipline and restrictive outer forms can lead to such ecstasy and freedom. I think the practice and vision of the merkavah is interesting in the way it reflects on all of this, and speaks to the Chariot in many ways.