The Magician's Kabbalah

by Marcus Katz

  Path 11: The Fiery Intelligence

  Path 12: The Intelligence of Light

  Path 14: The Illuminating Intelligence

  Both Light and Fire, as we saw in the chapter relating to the Ain Soph Aur, are symbols of the Creative aspect of God, or the Universal process of generation. The early Persians venerated the Fire God as the supreme Creator God, and this probably relates to primitive associations between fire and survival. It was only in later civilisations that we moved away from fire and earth gods and began worshipping sky gods. Perhaps as our species begins to explore the vastness of space, we will develop an allegiance to water gods.

  Note that Path 11 is called the Veil, and Path 12 the "Image of magnificence". Again, Kabbalah warns us that the experiences of photism we may have in mystical experience are no more reality than any other experience, and are still merely the garments of God, not the Being.

  (ii) The second Triad adds the two Paths leading from the upper Sephiroth to Tiphareth, the seat of awareness. These two Paths are Path 15 and Path 17, the "Constituting" and the "Disposing" Intelligences. The first is the Path to which the Emperor card is attributed, and relates to the "Creation in warm darkness". This fits with the symbolic meaning of Aries, the generative force in Astrology, which is also attributed to the Path. On the other side of the Tree, the Lovers card symbolises the "Disposing" of occult experience through intuition, which is how the Golden Dawn saw the card, as the "impact of inspiration on intuition". That is to say, the experience in awareness of that which is above the Abyss comes not through the Intellect (Hod), the Emotion (Netzach) or the Imagination (Yesod), but above these faculties.

  (iii) The third Triad connects Chesed, Geburah and Tiphareth. The Paths are Paths 19, 20 and Path 22, called as follows:

  Path 19: Secret Intelligence

  Path 20: The Will

  Path 22: The Faithful Intelligence

  Path 19, the second of the Paths coming down the Tree to run horizontally across, is said to "receive fullness from the highest benediction", and to relate to "spiritual activities". We can see that as the top Path of the Triad of the three Sephiroth forming the transpersonal aspects of the psyche, and even the trans-conscious aspects, or pre-conscious activities, then this would be the case. In a sense, the Path also acts as a reflection in a lower order of Path 14 above it, which is the "Institutor of arcana, foundation of holiness". In more mundane terms, we can see that Path 14 refers to Nature, and Path 19 below it refers to our relationship to Nature.

  Path 20 "prepares beings individually for the demonstration of the existence of Wisdom", according to the Sepher Yetzirah. As we have already seen, ‘Wisdom’ is one of the meanings of Chockmah, and as this Path connects Chesed to Tiphareth, we can see that Chesed acts as a precursor of Chockmah, manifesting itself to the Initiate of Tiphareth as loving kindness, as if to say, "there is a Wisdom governing the Universe".

  The tarot card of the Path is the Hermit, and we can see that he acts as a demonstrator of Wisdom by his very being, and the Lamp he holds aloft. The fact that the Path is called "Will" is of interest in that the Hermit can be taken to represent the Way of Initiation, and in terms of the descending flow of the Tree, the expansive nature of Chesed. When these two aspects are merged, we gain the true essence of Will; that we are unalterably part of the process of the Universe in manifestation, and our realisation of this state is our Will, and everything else is Klippoth, or a shell that separates us from our actual nature.

  Path 22 is that to which the Justice card is attributed, and as the Sepher Yetzirah states, "spiritual virtues are deposited and augmented within it". That is, the process of Geburah at any level or in any system is that of discernment, sorting the wheat from the chaff. This particular path is where that process is seen to be taking place, as Justice, or as Crowley re-titled the card, "Adjustment"; doing so to indicate that the card had no relation to our usual, limited, sense of justice with its connotations of ethics, politics or even common-sense, all of which are rooted in the illusionary universe about us.

  (iv) The lower of the two upward-pointing triangles on the Tree is that composed of Paths 24, 26 and 27. Tiphareth itself is called as a Path, the "Median Intelligence", and it "multiplies the flow of emanations", acting as a Kether below the Veil of Paroketh. Whereas the three Paths of the upper triad deal with the light of Creation, these three Paths deal with the life of Creation:

  Path 24: The Imaginative Intelligence

  Path 26: The Renewing Intelligence

  Path 27: The Active Intelligence

  The tarot cards which relate to these Paths are those often seen as the negative aspects of the whole deck, being Death, The Devil and The Blasted Tower. However, in the light of the Path descriptions above, we can see that they symbolise essential qualities of the Creative and Generative processes of the Universe. Path 24, that of Death, gives "Similarity to the likeness of Beings". That is, beneath and beyond the transformations taking place about us, the ‘Song remains the Same’, as the Led Zeppelin song puts it.

  All Creatures, including ourselves, are in a sense the froth on the wave of the Universe, forever changing our manifestation, and yet always remaining part of the Wave. Our lives and deaths are like watching the patterns emerging and being re-absorbed on the surface of a wind-rippled lake. The ripples are our lives, the Water is manifestation, and the Wind is God moving across the Waters; a process which did not end at Genesis, but is part of the continual emergence of the Universe and is still happening right here and now. This awareness of the Death path is part of the result of the Vision of Beauty seen by the Adeptus Minor on attaining Tiphareth.

  On the other side of Tiphareth, we have the 26th Path to which is attributed the Devil card. The Golden Dawn described this card as an image of Pan, who is the Greek God of Creativity and Generation. The Path is called the "Renewing Intelligence", and hence governs the processes of regeneration. That is to say, this Path regulates and kicks off constant cycles of activity just as the thermostat in a central heating system governs the activities of the whole system.

  Path 27, the third and final Path running horizontally across the Tree is that called the "Active Intelligence". It is the "Spirit of every creature, the motion to which they are subject", and has the Blasted Tower card attributed to it. In the earlier versions of the card, it was entitled "The House of God, Struck by Lightning" and perhaps we can see a reference to the first lightning flash of creation striking the primordial soup from which life emerged. In a psychological rather than cosmological context, the Path represents the interaction of the thought process (Hod) and our emotions (Netzach), which together generate, or at least act as symptoms of the motion to which we are subject.

  (v) We have just examined Path 27 with regard to the Triad of Tiphareth, Netzach and Hod, and now we will examine the first of two Triads coming down from those two Sephiroth and having Path 27 has their uppermost Path.

  The first of which leads down to Yesod, and the second to Malkuth. Connecting Hod to Yesod we have Path 30, the "Collective Intelligence", and from Netzach to Yesod we have Path 28, the "Perfecting (or Natural) Intelligence". Here we begin to deal with the Stellar or Astrological aspects of the Tree, as it relates to the realm of the sky, with Air being attributed to Yesod. The tarot cards at the base of the Tree mirror this scheme, with Path 30 having the Sun card attributed to it, and Path 28 the Star card.

  Through Path 28, the "nature of everything in the orb of the sun is completed and perfected", which refers to both basic astronomy and the fact that the "orb of the sun" symbolises the Sephiroth about Tiphareth, to which the Sun is attributed. Netzach represents the instincts and processes of nature, and Yesod represents the foundation or compilation stage of an activity or creative process. Thus this Path is where life takes on levels of meaning and is woven into a whole. The Star card shows this as the pouring forth of water, as does the Zodiacal sign of Aquarius which is also attributed to this Path and card.

  On the other side of
the Tree, Path 30 is where "Astrologers derive the speculations and perfection of their science according to the movement of stars". This Path is thus related to the science (Hod) regarding the hidden substructure (Yesod) of the World (Malkuth), and aims to comprehend the processes running through Path 28. The tarot card relating to the Path is that of the Sun which is the centre of any form of Astrology or early Astronomy.

  (vi) The final Triad of the Tree is that of the Paths leading to Malkuth. We have already examined the central Path, and here we will look at the two Paths leading from Hod, Path 31, and Netzach, Path 29.

  Through correspondence, the 31st path, between the Sephiroth Hod and Malkuth, is illustrated by the tarot card of the Last Judgment. The path is said by the Sepher Yetzirah to “rule the movement of the sun and moon”. So the card illustrates the regulation of judgment – making decisions as to what (or whom) goes where in the universe. When we see this path and card in connection with the paths making up the lowest four positions of the Tree of Life we see a set of essential activities; the 31st path (Judgment) regulating, and the other three paths renewing, perpetuating and manifesting. This lowest area of the Tree consists of these four building-blocks of the universe, the world of activity, Assiah.

  Finally, Path 29, to which the Moon card is attributed, "forms the bodies, and governs their growth". As the link between Netzach, the Sephirah of Nature (and its cycles) and Malkuth, the Sephirah of the World of Action, we can see that this Path would indeed be formed to regulate the corporeal aspects of manifestation. At this level the Tree is functioning as a model of biological principles and the apparent processes going on in the world around us. It is as we venture further up the paths that we gain knowledge of the unseen realms and higher orders by virtue of constantly widening our conceptual framework to accept the recognition of these levels.

  We spend our life upon these twenty-two Paths, so must not expect to comprehend them individually or together in any immediate fashion. We must gradually compare our experience to their nature, learn, change our thinking, and re-engage our life in their context. We create a living experiential map of our situation and through it slowly construct and calculate a new equation; one of unity and not of separation.

  EXERCISES

  1. Take five Paths, and in turn look at the Sephiroth they connect, and work out your own images and keywords for the Path. Link these if you wish with the tarot Card, Planet, Element and so forth connected with the Path. For example, for the Path connecting Geburah and Chesed, you might have the image of a children's see-saw, a Lion-Tamer, and two Kings standing together, one a warrior and the other a ruler. Continue to build up your own 777 or Book of Correspondences with these images.

  The Psyche: A Curtain of Souls

  All cosmologies include some attempt to describe and model the elements that constitute the human experience and the nature, constitution and processes of the inner realm. Their complexity and lucidity varies from culture to culture, and often models are variations on a theme, or expanded versions of earlier systems. The simplest model might well be that implied in Descartes’ famous dictum, cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am."

  The Self is one of the basic experiences of the human psyche, in that it is that to which we constantly refer our experience, both in the environment, for example, "I am having a cup of tea", and in our inner world, such as "I am feeling happy." It is impossible to define these two worlds as separate except in our mundane experience, in that the external world so-called is in part, if not in totality, an experience equally generated by our own internal world.

  In Kabbalah, this is indicated by the separation of Tiphareth, Self-Awareness, to Malkuth, the actual world, by Yesod, the intermediating ego-state. Our thoughts (Hod) and emotions (Netzach) constantly alter the process of Yesod (Ego) in acting as our interpreter of the environment such that what we perceive is in fact our shared vision of the world, not the actual world itself. Kant expressed this in his Prolegomena to any future Metaphysics;

  As the senses never and in no single instance enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, and as these are mere representations ... all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be held to be nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere else than merely in our thought.[94]

  The actual world is termed by Kant the Ding-an-sich, the "thing-in-itself". This is Malkuth, which in itself is also Kether, after another manner.

  The medieval Kabbalists, such as Abraham ibn Ezra, followed on from the Neo-Platonic school of Plotinus in utilising a threefold division of the functions of the psyche. These were then mapped onto the Tree of Life in various fashions. The three primary divisions and their literal meanings are:

  Nefesh (NPSh; breath, spirit, soul, person, character in drama)

  Ru'ah (RVCh; Wind, spirit, ghost, disposition)

  Neshamah (NShMH; breath, soul, life, living creature)

  This trinity, as developed by such Kabbalists as Rabbi Moses Korduero and Rabbi Yitzchaq Loria, is usually taken to represent:

  Nefesh = Animal vitality

  Ru'ah = Self-awareness

  Neshamah = Transcendent awareness

  Eliphas Levi summarises these elements as the Passions, the Reason, and the Higher Aspirations, and puts it that "The body is the veil of the Nephesch, the Nephesch is the veil of Ruach, Ruach is the veil of the shroud of Neschemah”.[95]

  A further development of these divisions, after the original Zoharic teachings, appended the Chiah (ChIH: soul, life) to the system, thereby making a parallel to the four worlds:

  Chiah = Atziluth

  Neschamah = Briah

  Ru'ah = Yetzirah

  Nefesh = Assiah

  A final addition to these teachings came with 13th Century occultists, when the concept of a Yechidah was added, referring to the ultimate spark of God within the psyche. The word comes from the root IChID, meaning ‘oneness’, and is a similar root to IChID, ‘privacy, union with God’.

  The trinity of Yechidah, Chiah and Neschamah were all bound up under the title of the Neschamah, and attributed to Kether, Chockmah and Binah. The Ru'ah was attributed to the six Sephiroth including and between Chesed to Yesod, and the Nefesh to Malkuth.

  Crowley, in Little Essays Towards Truth, describes the four elements as:

  Yechidah: Point, quintessential principle of soul

  Chiah: Creative impulse (Will) of Yechidah

  Ruach: Mind, spirit

  Nephesch: Animal Soul

  Crowley noted that the Ruach, centred in Tiphareth, reaches its culmination in Da'ath, the union of Chockmah and Binah, and positioned at the Abyss. Thus the ultimate transcendence of the Self is brought about by this Divine Knowledge.

  Kabbalists saw their work as ultimately bringing about the descent of the Neschamah by the holy union of the King (Melekh) and Queen (Matronita), which refer to Tiphareth and Malkuth. As the Ramak stated in Pardes Rimonim:

  The Nefesh (Lower soul) can motivate the Ruach (Middle Spirit) and the Ruach in turn motivates the Neshamah (Upper soul). The Neschamah then ascends from one essence to the next, until it reaches its source.

  The Soul in Ancient Egypt

  The Kabbalah is only one of many cosmologies which attempt to describe the functions of human experience. The ancient Egyptians developed a complex system of souls inhabiting the individual, and as these may be contrasted against the Kabbalistic divisions, I will mention them here briefly.

  As the Egyptian Model in earlier esotericism is often based on the works of Wallis Budge, whose writings were original at the time, but are now dated by more modern research, there are many differences of spelling and opinion as to the significance of the various elements making up the Egyptian model.

  For example, the Khu is referred to by Perkins in his Egyptian Life and the Tree of Life, and rendered as "intelligence of divinity" attributed to Kether.[96] However, Khu is actually the now discredited reading of the word Akh, and is one of the spirit forms
released at death, with the root meaning of "to be bright" (the Akhu are the spirits of the dead). Thus it is not applicable to divinity or Kether in the way Perkins sees it, as it would rather be allocated to Yesod in terms of the Sephiroth or the Nefesh in terms of the divisions of the Soul.

  However, for further exploration and correspondence to Kabbalah I give here the divisions of the soul within the esoteric model based on the Ancient Egyptian system.

  Egyptian Name

  Glyph

  Qualities

  Khat (Kat, Xat, Kab)

  Fish

  Body

  Sahu

  Mummy & Seal

  Spiritual Body

  Ka (Kai)

  Upraised hands

  Image, Double

  Ba (Baie)

  Various birds

  Spirit-Soul

  Khaibt

  Fan

  Shadow, Aura

  Akh (Khu, Khou, Yekh)

  Bennu bird

  Bright Spirit

  Sekhem

  Owl

  Vital Power

  Ren

  Kneeling man

  Name

  Hati

  Lion

  Whole Heart

  Ab

  Jar

  Will

  Tet (Zet)

  Upright snake

  Soul

  Hammemit

  Radiating sun

  Unborn Soul

  Whilst these may seem obscure and complex, they have practical use within ritual and magical acts. Florence Farr, in Egyptian Magic, saw these divisions acting through magical practice by influencing the Ka and the Ba in the Ab.[97]