venicebard
No, nor would I try: I can explain it logically, as Plato approached things, but the language of science (excepting technology itself, where there is tangible progress) has become debased. (In mathematics, for instance, infinity is considered a number even though infinite means numberless.) I can of course reconcile the basic discoveries of quantum physics (minus quark theory, which I reject in favor of partons) with Hermetic science and Qabbalah (as opposed to Kabbalah, its mere remnant from which I had to reconstruct the deeper teaching over several decades), but to explain the Platonic notion of an Idea or Form to a modern scientist would be like trying to teach a kindergartener calculus!AmounrA said:
I am in accord with you here, though I think much can be gleaned from the earliest Kabbalists, as well as from Luria and his crowd. But I myself found the paths to be a side issue, in that the underlying structure that gives meaning to the letters and Sefirot can be grasped without reference to these paths.
Certainly in historic times knowledge of nature has been on the rise. But Kabbalah, rather than progress, has 'fanned out' across a whole spectrum of speculations: since I take Lurianic Kabbalah as a surfacing of some of what was left of Qabbalah in his day that got gathered together in Safed after the expulsion from Spain, I see no progress whatsoever in Kabbalah but rather merely a process of its core being lost from too much secrecy combined with external persecution.
But within what has floated to the surface, if one applies the kindred knowledge of the Kelts concerning letters (and their symbolic numeration), one can extract the tincture. Since I cannot explain it whole in 30 minutes (what's left of my online time here at the library today), I can only begin today, and continue on other days.
Consider bardic numeration of letters, and the calendar-order in which letters were originally placed (dating back at least to around 1700 B.C.E., when both ogam consaine and Tifinag were inscribed on rocks near Petersborough, Canada), which is close to ogham order. The latter is B-L-F-S-N, H-D-T-K-Q[Kk], M-G-Ng-'Z'[Ss]-R, A-O-U-E-I. The tree-calendar, though, substitutes P the water elder for Ng reed, and (based on the Irish word for alphabet being bethluisnion) an initial sequence B-L-N-F-S.
To this we add Robert Graves's addition of two hidden letters, Aa the palm (ailm in Irish meaning both palm and fir), and Ii the mistletoe: the latter I have confirmed, in that square-Hebrew yod hovers over the line precisely as mistletoe (or loranthus, its eastern equivalent) hovers above the ground, being rooted in another tree. (Graves had not noticed this by the time he wrote The White Goddess.)
Next, we 'parse' this based on Sefer Yetzirah into 3 mothers, seven doubles, and twelve simples. The relations of these depend on the wheels: four rounds each half the height of its predecessor, all related directly to every individual. They are:
(1) That centered atop standing Adam Qadmon (the Form or Idea of Upright Sentience, which draws all things to Itself without Itself moving or changing in any way -- the Unmoved Mover) and resting on the same ground that Being rest upon. It goes from up to out (horizon without) to down to in (horizon within) and back to up via 13 middot or divine attributes (up, departure from up, approach to out, out, departure from out, approach to down, down, departure from down, approach to in, in, departure from in, approach to up, and the return to up), the first 10 of which are realized in Adam Qadmon and called Sefirot, progressing from up to in, from the One Whole to the One Self.
(2) That centered atop one seated in meditation (and resting where that being rests): the horizontal diameter of this wheel passes through (or tangent to) the head and connects the two horizons, inner (behind) and outer (ahead). The manifested surroundings, therefore, constitute seven signs or stations (signs 4 through 10, cancer through capricorn) and are the seven doubles.
(3) That centered at that beings heart, the zodiac of the seated torso, which when he or she stands becomes the broken-and-extended zodiac going down the legs to the feet but while seated in meditation can be thought of as circular, returning up the spine to the head. These of course are the twelve simples.
(4) That centered at the womb, namely the round of the womb, which is dark and forms a limit to what can be perceived: it is the physical universe (while a fetus, and symbolically afterward as well) and explains why the sky is dark. It is dark because it is the present instant, and light has finite velocity, meaning that it cannot illuminate in an instant but rather takes a finite duration to do so.
The first of these is the realm of the eternal (Truth), the second that of finite durations (thoughts), the third that of the doer acting in the present instant by trying to sense where it comes from and direct where it goes to, and the fourth -- dark because, as Plato reminds us (in chapter 19 of The Republic), that which abides not cannot be known -- is the present instant itself.
The mothers represent the first three wheels, or their centers (which the wheels fully express), because these three have other wheels in their bellies. (The fourth does not, that is, when limiting ourselves to the four wheels of Ezekiel's vision.) The doer is alef (eagle in Egyptian). The thinker (2nd wheel) is shin, which stands for an original O or U in the Logos that came back in the form of omega but was shushed in Semitic from the form it took in Egyptian, the w hieroglyph quail chick. And the knower or Monad (1st wheel) is mem-sofit (final mem). Intermediate mem, however, occupies libra or down in the calendar, leading to its being identified with water and shin (at the point aries or up on the doer's wheel) with fire. The reason for this (and much more besides) will have to wait until later, as I am outta time.
