Quote:
Originally Posted by Zephyros
I think it is important to keep in that no Tree is an objective reality but, like anything else, reflects the views and beliefs of whoever created it. Isaac Luria, for example, operated under the assumptions of his faith about which some things were unqueestionable. His Tree operates best when viewed under the lens of Jewish dogma, and not necessarily for Hermetic or magickal practices. He was also influenced by the collective trauma of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain only forty years
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From what little I know, I agree with this. I think it is perhaps these subjective beginnings that allow the various trees to be described as arbitrary.
In the same way that the ain, ain soph and ain soph aur allow for trains of thought to be developed that cannot be had if one's starting point is that creation cannot be explained, I feel the various trees allow for wider explorations.
In Blake's terminology 'everything imagined is a portion of truth'.
if something works, I feel sometimes the proof can be in the doing, and the humblest of beginnings does not always diminish the value of the product. In Crowleyism he uses the example of chess being originally an assimilation of battle for bored warriors, but the game has evolved into something much more, whether the seed was there or not in the original game.
For me the Kabbalah, the trees and the varying perspectives from differing kabbalists give us an amazingly generous, varied and complex set of approaches that act as a kind of magick tool kit for those wanting to explore these things.
