Follows is a post quite convoluted, like the webworks of a spider, in order to explain the "sweetening" of the month of Chesvan as a fundamental process in the workings of Kabbalah and the wisdom traditions.
As mentioned in the last post about this month eight in the Hebrew calendar, Chesvan is the month of the fixed zodiacal sign, scorpio(8 legged arachnids including spiders) and including the eagle and the snake. The nature of this sign and it's related creatures involves the most profound level of intimate secrets and the noble level of trust and whispered knowledge. The gematria/number value of Nachash/snake(358) equals that of moshiach/annointed(358). We hope to explain why in this writing. Early kabbalistic texts often use the sign of the snake instead of the eagle as one of the faces of the four chayot haKodesh, the four living creatures that support the merkabah throne. In the translation of
Rabbi Jacob Ben Jacob Ha-Kohen's "Explanation of the Letters" in the book,"The Early Kabbalah", we read, " Similiarly I will enlighten you as to how you can discover that the letter tet informs us about the holy creatures. Know that the tet equals nine and that there are nine degrees of holy creatures. They are: man, lion, ox, snake, wheel of man, wheel of lion, wheel of ox, wheel of snake, and one wheel in the Earth....Corresponding to these nine degrees the prophet, peace be upon him, recorded nine visions of the first and second Chariot." This preceding verse about the creatures and the wheels contains a great secret. Study and meditate on it - Eight living creatures in a circle surrounding the wheel of Earth! The snake has a potion(sam) in it's fangs that can inflict death on other creatures. The lifting up of this power of death is involved in the goal of "conquering" death and this is a theme for the eighth month. In order to fully bring the merkabah throne into our physical world and therefore support the dwelling of the neshamah/soul(Shechinah) of the Earth here, we need to have all the sparks of all the holy creatures redeemed and interfacing with our human world. This includes the serpent realm, the left face of power.. We have the famous story of the serpent staff of the Egyptian magicians being swallowed by the scepter of Aaron which became a snake when it was placed on the earth surface. This episode actually also represented the swallowing up of the holy line of ancient initiation into the temple mysteries by the Hebrew priesthood. The plague of the death of the first born Egyptians also is the marking of an ending of a priestly line and it's being usurped by a new lineage historically. Remember it is said in the aggadah/legends that the pharoah could pronounce 70 of the sacred 72 soulroot names of the Creator. This usurping of one lineage by another sets the pattern for the unification of lineages that the Hebrews have taken an active part in. This unification has brought the tikkun Olam/repair of the world at the deepest levels. An understanding of the mechanics of how this has worked adds an important level of credibility to all the great religous traditons for they all have been an essential part of the uniting of the soulroot names in our world. Diverse prayer and ritual forms focus the soul spark(one of 72)of a language group according to the specific rythmic calendar of that culture. This is all part of a bigger global picture we are attempting to paint here. This work does also involve the number eight of the Abrahamic covenant and it is therefore closely related to the importance of this Hebrew eighth month. Bringing the soul of the Earth into the human world is the means for "conquering" death which as mentioned is closely associated with this month. So is the angel of Edom/Rome - samael, and the swallowing up of this seraph-samael has been a big part of the priestly work. As stated before, there is a tradition that the "annointed redeemer" will never be revealed to the world. It is in this spirit of how a person might be a candidate for that "initiation", that this matter is explained. We must remember that all humans are really somewhere on the path of initiation in a temple/school larger than the entire physical universe. The angel of Rome-samael is also an angel of death. This angel is a seraph and the seraphim are angels which are associated with the sephirot/sphere of meadim/mars(rules blood and power) called geburah/power.(planets mars, venus, the sun & moon are now all conjoining in Aqra/scorpio in the first week of Chesvan!). The ancient sages have said that when he, samael, is conquered the mem will be removed from his name and he will be transformed to Sael - one of the 72 holy angel soulroots. This is how the "swallowing" up of this serpent angel/seraph has happened. The covenant of Abraham, called the eshel/vine of Abraham is at eight days. The "vine" of Abraham is often artistically depicted as a spiralling vine, a helix around the columns of the arches on the title page of ancient Hebrew mystery texts. This naming ceremony is a powerful prayer that connects the life force and prayers of an entire population throughout 3500 years of history.The helix is a potent symbol of time. A previous post explains why 3500 years was needed to complete the merkabah in the physical. A good candidate for initiation into a lineage with the responsibility for healing the world could be an heir to the priestly line of Israel and would turn eight days old on a day that was also an ancient holy day in Europe including Rome, and in modern Christianity, who the Rabbis have said took over the power of Edom/Rome. Christianity uses wine to represent blood in there symbolic covenant with the Creator. The real blood of generation of Israel (metaphorically an aspect of the scepter of Aaron) joined and swallowed the symbolic blood communion on a day that humdreds of millions took communion with their root soul connection to deity. The angel of Rome has been swallowed up! The Barzel/Iron in the blood has brought in the metal of Rome which is iron and the associated power of the planet mars. It is this Barzel/iron that also connects us to the crystal red stoneflower that was the pillow of Jacob. This kind of shamanic synchronicity has been happenning over thousands of years. This is a revealed secret that only few have ever understood. One snake(line of initiation)2000 years old swallowed by one much older serpent(3500 years). This is also the "reason" some people have decided to attempt to end the line of Israel. They have figured out in some partial understanding, that their own edge on power over others would have to come to an end when the work of the unification of the lineages was completed. These kind of people are called Amalek in the Torah and they have been an adversary throughout the life of Israel. The mysteries of this adversary is also therefore closely involved with the most twisted kind of "power" related to the nature of the eighth month, the "bitter" month. The sweetening of this bitter month is also related to the conquering for all time of the adversary amalek.
The serpent wrapped around the caduecus of Hermes is another echo of the helix of time of the snake as a part of a global healing. The relationship of the covenant of Abraham to the caduecus of healing and the tikkun olam, the healing of the entire Earth has been a long held secret. The caduecus being a symbol for medicine and healing since olden days. The ancient shamanic traditions of Israel and other indigenous native cultures have many related interconnections between the animals, the nature of the heaven worlds(the fifth continuum) and the many traditons of initiation among the seventytwo nation/language lineages of humanity. It is in the sacred text of another venerable priestly line, that of Tibetan Buddhism that we also find the connection of the Hebrew blood covenant at eight days to mysteries of death and rebirth as written about in their Bardo Thodol. It says there that the days following the death of a person are symmetrically related to the days following birth. Read in the ancient Bardo text of Tibet what is recorded as happening on the eighth day after death and you will find an outstanding connection to the covenant at eight days after birth. As the famous Native Plains Indian prayer goes, Mitakuey Oyasin - We are all related!
We all have triumphed.
2 comments:
ג' חשון תשס"ז
Dear Chasmal,
Sukkot was a wonderful and peaceful time to revisit some basic texts – and to discover, again, that what I thought I understood is still far beyond reach. In doing so, I also re-read your blog, culminating in your beyond-words last post - and see that I have some basic questions which are foundational. Maybe I am kind of grasping for air in an attempt to understand what you have just written – or more likely stepping back into familiar terrain in order to prepare myself for what you've just written. In any case, in reading your posts, I am clearly making some pretty big assumptions about underlying issues – about which I may or may not be on target. So, on the chance that I'm not the only one with these questions, I thought I'd post them. Perhaps as you hopefully continue to write and to teach, you will find an opportunity to address them. As usual, defining the questions goes a fair way towards answering them – so I guess that it's more important that the questions are "true" than that the answers are provided. Here goes…
You write that the ARI performed unifications which "included the work of joining the seventy two soul roots" (01apr) which is related to repair of the world. This, in turn, is related to (or at the core of?) the work of bringing "the soul/neshamah of the planetary being fully into the human world" (23apr). You write that this unification "would achieve the very work that the Jewish religion was created for"(01apr) - which is "to fill the world with holiness" (23feb). And, you write that the task of bringing the neshama into the human world is only part of the task – that we need also to "support the dwelling of the neshamah/soul(Shechinah) of the Earth" – which requires us "to fully bring the merkabah throne into our physical world" (21oct). So…
(1) On the Unifications: What does it mean to unify the sacred names of the Divine? What are these names? From your 21oct post, this work seems to be more than a human task; is this true? How is this work related to the joining of the 72 soul roots? Does this joining always occur as a result of, as you write, the pattern of the "usurping of one lineage by another" (21oct), which sounds like a difficult, conflict-filled process?
(2) On the shechinah: You identify the soul of the "planetary being" as "Shekinah, the soul of the Earth" (03june). Various sources in Jewish tradition describe the exile of the Shekinah as parallel to the diminishment of the moon and that geula is associated with as you write, the "raising up of the stature of womanhood" – [the moon?] that is "parallel to the very physical manifestation of the Shekinah, the soul of the Earth in the human world" (03june). Arieh Kaplan writes that the shekinah is associated with the earth, but more often sources identify her with a female aspect of the Creator, not necessarily embedded in the material world. There is confusion here… What does it mean that she was exiled? Was she ever part of the human world? If so, what happened? How does bringing her fully into the human world relate to the work of unifying the sacred names of the Divine?
(3) On the prayer forms and the sarim: You write that the malach/angel, Samael, is associated with the prayer form, Christianity (18apr). In the same post, you write that the hechkalot literature maps the "years it takes a prayer form to interface with the great celestial heavens and their denizen/beings" (are these beings also the sarim?) (09june). And, in an amazing recent post, you write that "this first male dragon, unutterable, needed the prayer forms to reappear in a renewed form within the tree of the knowledge of the duality" (21oct). So, it seems that the 70 sarim and 72 soul roots are in some way related; but, if so, how? Is there a prayer form associated either with each of the 72 soul roots or with each of the 70 sarim or is this connection not one-to-one, and the outcome of a long process? You write that in the aggadah it is said that "pharoah could pronounce 70 of the sacred 72 soulroot names of the Creator" (21oct). Is there a connection here? And…hmmm – I don't even know how to ask yet about the dragon…
(5) Finally, you write that "…We are now in the forty year journey of a holy people being born on a global level. We have completed sixteen years into this 40 year period"(23apr) that began in 5750/1990 – a period you call the "ingathering of the exiles" and that this period is "actually a test of our varied senses, physical and non-physical" (10may). Commentaries on Kol HaTor (Vilna Gaon/GRA) also point to 5750 as the beginning of the period of Moshiach ben David – and a period paralleling the 40 years in the desert. Can you talk more about this 40-year period and its tasks? In many ways you write as if the work is complete (e.g., "The entire world is now as the holy land"…."We have all triumphed") and our task is to recognize this and move on …and yet we are still in the midst of these 40 years....
Thank you and be well,
js
Maybe it was a mistake to stay home from work today! After writing questions earlier about "the basics", all day I couldn't stop thinking about your last post. I'm also feeling some urgency for some reason – maybe because the sky has been filled with fighter jets this afternoon …. So, here is a try to think about what you wrote – although the issue of the blood/the dam/the secret in the barzel – feels still far beyond grasp…
The Bardo Thodol, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead is from the 8th century and is a guidebook for the dead in the 49-day period between incarnations. The eight day of this period is associated with the appearance of a demon-like figure "dark-brown of colour; with three heads, six hands, and four feet firmly postured; the right [face] being white, the left, red, the central, dark-brown; the body emitting flames of radiance; the nine eyes widely opened, in terrifying gaze; the eyebrows quivering like lightening; the protruding teeth glistening and set over one another; giving vent to sonorous utterances of 'a-la-la' and 'ha-ha', and piercing whistling sounds; the hair of a reddish-yellow colour, standing on end, and emitting radiance; the heads adorned with dried [human] skulls, and the [symbols of the] sun and moon; black serpents and raw [human] heads forming a garland for the body; the first of the right hands holding a wheel, the middle one, a sword, the last one, a battle-axe; the first of the left hands, a bell, the middle one, a skull-bowl, the last one, a ploughshare; his body embraced by the Mother, Buddha-Krotishaurima, her right hand clinging to his neck and her left putting to his mouth a red shell [filled with blood], [making] a palatal sound like a crackling [and] a clashing sound, and a rumbling sound as loud as thunder; [emanating from the two deities] radiant flames of wisdom, blazing from every hair-pore [of the body] and each containing a flaming dorje;" – in short a terrifying vision drinking blood. But, we are urged not to be afraid: "Fear that not. Be not awed. Know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect."
We are told in commentary that this entity is a projection of our own thoughts and perhaps our own sins (the "achishena" period having passed unsuccessfully in the previous 7 days when the peaceful visions appeared?). And we are told that to avoid another incarnation to address the same issues, we should prepare for this moment during our lives – meditating on it and training for this time all of our lives (http://www.summum.us/mummification/tbotd/book1.shtml#p2.eighthday), that "these external forms are nothing but the past productions of our own hearts" (http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/307/afterlife.htm ).
This eighth day reminds me of an excerpt you quote from the Jewish Apocalypse of Baruch: "Into twelve parts is that time divided, and each one of them is reserved for that which is appointed for it. 2 In the first part there shall be the begin¬ning of commotions. 3 And in the second part (there shall be) slayings of the great ones. 4 And in the third part the fall of many by death. 5 And in the fourth part the sending of the sword. 6 And in the fifth part famine and the withholding of rain. 7 And in the sixth part earthquakes and terrors. 8 [Wanting.] 9 And in the eighth part a multitude of specters and attacks of the Shedim…."
So here is an attempt at an interpretation: The period between earthly incarnations in Tibetan Buddhism is 49 days – equivalent to the number of days following our departure from Mitzrayim – each of which was to compensate for the 49 levels of impurity to which we had previously descended. On the 50th day, we were reborn, so to speak, at Sinai. We, the entire "Adam" began another incarnation.
During the 49 day intervening period between incarnations, Tibetan Buddhism tells us that we encounter a variety of beautiful and terrifying projections of ourselves (dieties….sarim?). And that their power has something to do with our failure to recognize them as projections – our failure to recognize that they ARE us and take responsibility for them. So, I wonder, how do such projections appear when they originate from all human beings collectively? Is Amalek one of these projections? Is the Apocalypse of Baruch describing stages in this period between incarnations of all of humanity? Is it, likewise, important to meditate on and "train" for this period so that, in the words of Rebbe Nachman, "the main thing is not to be afraid"? Is this what you are teaching? Have we missed the (be'ita) opportunity – in Tibetan terms – of the first seven days – and now have to prepare for the 8th+ days?
… There seems to be a connection between 40 years in the midbar/desert, 40 years of ingathering in which you say we are now….I can't find it. Maybe fighter jets and clear thinking aren't good companions...
js
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