Geburah Meditation
Oct. 7th, 2009 04:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosOne of my daily practices is a meditation on a Sphere of the Tree of Life. Following the program laid out by John Michael Greer in Paths of Wisdom, the student is supposed to meditate on one Sphere per day, based on the simple, introductory passages about them, and go through the entire cycle three times before engaging with the more complex symbolism.
Last night I meditated on Geburah. According to Greer, As the Sphere that balances Chesed's ordered creativity, Geburah represents destruction, dissolution, chaos. It is the power that clears away everything that has outlived its usefulness; that tears down excessive structure into simpler and more flexible elements. As a level of consciousness, it is the awareness of inner freedom, the power to break through self-imposed limitations and consciously choose one's own path in life. In human terms, it represents the will.
It's good that I just re-typed that. Last night, my meditations ended up focusing exclusively on the first part of that description. I was startled by how much it resonated with the energy of Ereshkigal, and Her work of stripping away that which does not serve. The bit about "choosing one's own path in life" got pushed into the background.
During the meditation, I became very aware of the tension between Chesed and Geburah within myself -- and this relates back to the posts I have not yet made about building a new relationship with the Emperor card and all that it represents.
There is a part of me that loves order and finds deep security in it. My father is a powerful exemplar of the Emperor archetype, played out as the King of Swords. Thus, my childhood was very much about order, paternal/patriarchal authority, and the blessings of stability through order, the preservation of existing systems, and a rational approach to life. As the Queen of Swords, I like nice, clear distinctions; I like to perceive and understand patterns. I am made deeply uncomfortable by the Queen of Cups because I associate her with high emotion, chaos, and lack of order -- and yes, I am aware that my perception is very much her shadow side, not her positive qualities.
And yet, there's a reason the term "feral" has become so precious to me over the past few years. As much as I crave order, precision, definition, and the security and comfort of having them around me, they can also drive me nuts -- and have been doing so more and more as I get older. Yesterday afternoon, prior to doing this meditation, I experienced a spontaneous inner journey in which I was reunited with a wolf companion who seems to be related to my unwillingness to remain within the restrictions imposed by others -- and by myself.
As I experience them, the Emperor and the King and Queen of Swords dislike the energy of Geburah. It breaks down the patterns and categories and systems within which they find both security and power. And yet, I feel intensely drawn to that energy -- not to sow chaos on a grand scale, but as a doorway to liberation. As an expression of Ereshkigal and Her work.
It's a creative tension I'm going to need to learn how to live with and navigate. This isn't about privileging one Sphere over another, consciously or otherwise. One of the basic principles of qabalah is that we all have the entire Tree within us, and we need to engage with, experience, understand, and balance the energies of each of the Spheres within ourselves in order to grow and to mature.
Last night I meditated on Geburah. According to Greer, As the Sphere that balances Chesed's ordered creativity, Geburah represents destruction, dissolution, chaos. It is the power that clears away everything that has outlived its usefulness; that tears down excessive structure into simpler and more flexible elements. As a level of consciousness, it is the awareness of inner freedom, the power to break through self-imposed limitations and consciously choose one's own path in life. In human terms, it represents the will.
It's good that I just re-typed that. Last night, my meditations ended up focusing exclusively on the first part of that description. I was startled by how much it resonated with the energy of Ereshkigal, and Her work of stripping away that which does not serve. The bit about "choosing one's own path in life" got pushed into the background.
During the meditation, I became very aware of the tension between Chesed and Geburah within myself -- and this relates back to the posts I have not yet made about building a new relationship with the Emperor card and all that it represents.
There is a part of me that loves order and finds deep security in it. My father is a powerful exemplar of the Emperor archetype, played out as the King of Swords. Thus, my childhood was very much about order, paternal/patriarchal authority, and the blessings of stability through order, the preservation of existing systems, and a rational approach to life. As the Queen of Swords, I like nice, clear distinctions; I like to perceive and understand patterns. I am made deeply uncomfortable by the Queen of Cups because I associate her with high emotion, chaos, and lack of order -- and yes, I am aware that my perception is very much her shadow side, not her positive qualities.
And yet, there's a reason the term "feral" has become so precious to me over the past few years. As much as I crave order, precision, definition, and the security and comfort of having them around me, they can also drive me nuts -- and have been doing so more and more as I get older. Yesterday afternoon, prior to doing this meditation, I experienced a spontaneous inner journey in which I was reunited with a wolf companion who seems to be related to my unwillingness to remain within the restrictions imposed by others -- and by myself.
As I experience them, the Emperor and the King and Queen of Swords dislike the energy of Geburah. It breaks down the patterns and categories and systems within which they find both security and power. And yet, I feel intensely drawn to that energy -- not to sow chaos on a grand scale, but as a doorway to liberation. As an expression of Ereshkigal and Her work.
It's a creative tension I'm going to need to learn how to live with and navigate. This isn't about privileging one Sphere over another, consciously or otherwise. One of the basic principles of qabalah is that we all have the entire Tree within us, and we need to engage with, experience, understand, and balance the energies of each of the Spheres within ourselves in order to grow and to mature.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-08 12:39 am (UTC)Are there any good websites that explain the Tree of Life in terms that a set-in-her-ways hedge witch can understand?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-08 12:01 pm (UTC):-)
Let's See Here. . . .
Date: 2009-10-09 06:03 pm (UTC)The Tree of Life is a way to describe and map the different aspects of the Divine. I like to think of it as a kind of prism, separating the different aspects out so they can be seen and worked with individually. The energies -- the Tree itself -- also exists within each of us, and by engaging with and balancing the energies within ourselves, we gain balance and spiritual maturity. Because it comes out of Judaism, it does assume an ultimate, transcendent Divine Unity -- although it is not in conflict with polytheism.
The top of the Tree is the Sphere/Sephira called Kether, which is the highest form of deity of which the human mind can conceive. It is pure unity. Beyond the Tree are "three veils" which point to unknowable/unperceivable Divine.
From Kether, energy is poured out to nine other Spheres, each of which has its own nature. Each Sphere is symbolically connected to a name of God, an archangel, a choir of angels, tarot cards, planets, and etc., plus at least one symbolic image which has very specific colors and etc. It can be rather bewildering to begin with. In simplest terms, the Sphere are:
Kether - Unity
Chokhmah - Wisdom
Binah - Understanding
Chesed - Mercy
Geburah - Severity
Tiphareth - Beauty/Harmony
Netzach - Victory
Hod - Glory
Yesod - Foundation
Malkuth - Kingdom (The Material World)
The two sides of the Tree (see icon) are the Pillars of Severity and Mercy -- which correspond to the traditional pillars of the Temple, as seen in many versions of the High Priestess tarot card. The center "line" of the Tree is the Middle Pillar, which balances and harmonizes the extremes of the sides. My "Middle Pillar exercise" which I am supposed to do daily, is a process of consciously running energy from Kether down through the Sephiroth of the Middle Pillar, to cleanse and balance. The "mercy" side is masculine, and consists of energies going outward (yang). The "severity" side is feminine and has energy drawing inward (yin).
The goal of a Hermetic magician is to "climb the tree" from the limited, materially-focused consciousness of Malkuth up from Sphere to Sphere. At each Sephira s/he gains new and deeper understanding of self, the Divine, and existence, and balances those energies within herself. The Sephiroth are connected by Paths, each of which correspond to the Major Arcana, and part of the teachings of Qabalah are which paths to take in sequence. You can "get there from here" but some sequences are more challenging than others. (For example: the snake in this icon represents one sequence of paths that the ascent can take.)
The flow of energy down through the Tree is a way of describing the energies of creation, and that too has specific ways of mapping the journey.
This is extremely complicated stuff, the kind of material from which I would have run screaming prior to working with my teacher, but the more I study it, the more sense it makes and the more I enjoy it. It has a strong appeal to my rational mind, which sometimes balks at my mystical work. I'm using John Michael Greer's book Paths of Wisdom, which is stunningly insightful while being clear and approachable.
Is this at all helpful?