qos | Entries tagged with qabalah

For the past couple of years I've been contemplating changing my last name, the name I inherited from my father, to LM's last name. The more I progress along this path, the more that name reflects who I am and who I am becoming.

It's a little bit ironic, because all my life I've been someone who did not intend to take a husband's name -- and indeed did not take my husband's name when I was married. But my initiation as a priestess was catalyzed by LM's death, and my ongoing union with him is something that defines me and continues to distance me from the restrictions of my childhood socialization and expectations.

But as my long-time friends know, I continue to have a strong connection to my parents, especially my father. I don't change my last name in large part because I don't want to hurt him. (There are also not insignificant issues of keeping my kinky-Pagan identity at least somewhat distinct from my mundane life and day job, but that's an entirely different set of issues than what I'm focusing on right now.)

At some point yesterday I started silently repeating a new form of my name to myself: my first name, my father's last name, and LM's last name. For the first time, it seemed appropriate to have my family name as part of my into-the-future name. So much of who I am, of how I interact with the world, so many of my strengths, are symbolically reprsented by that name.

And that's when I suddenly saw my name on the Tree of Life: LM's last name on the pillar of Force, my father's last name on the pillar of Form, and my first name on the Middle Pillar, integrating and balancing those energies.

It felt very, very right. It felt balanced and whole, honoring the very different but very potent family/union energies which have gone in to making me who I am today.

(And, it occurs to me, it might appeal to a particular ancestor as well. . .)

It remains true that the Underworld Path is my primary orientation as a priestess. I am initiated and ordained in this path, and intend to remain faithful to it.

I use the techniques and wisdom of Hermetic magic, including Qabalah, as my central mode of practice, and I both want and need to refine my skill and knowledge in this area.

I work with specific deities who don't have obvious connections to each other but who are all resonant with the Underworld Path as I walk it. (YMMV)

I want to increase my devotional practice to promote deeper relationships with my patron deities. This was once the center of my spiritual life, but grew tenuous in the years I wasn't sure about the nature of the Divine or whether there were individual gods or not.

My relationship with LM is a central part of my life and an integral aspect of my spiritual path. I want to enhance our working relationship as priestess and priest.

I am also ordained as a Grail Priestess, and I want to energize that aspect of my spirituality again. I smiled yesterday when I remembered that the oldest Grail text is Preiddeu Annwn the story of Arthur and his knights voyaging to the Otherworld to seek the Cauldron of Annwn. It's an Underworld text.

My sexuality is closely connected to my spirituality. I need to continue to explore how this expresses itself in public as well as private work.

I also have a vocation as a spiritual director and teacher, and it is important to me to strengthen my skills in this area and to express my gifts in public work. I would like to be financially rewarded for this work, but I don't want that to be my central motviation in doing it.

None of this is actually new, but as I re-establish myself in the upper world, it's evidently important for me to work through all of this again and reaffirm what I am doing and how it fits together for me, rather than just accepting what has become habit during the years of grieving.

My teacher sent this to me yesterday. . .

Click twice for full size

The Thirty-second path is the Administrative Intelligence, and it is so called because it directs and associates the seven planets in all their operations, all of them in their due courses.

I've felt like hell today, bad enough that I forgot just how *good* I've been feeling for a while. I don't know if I'm coming down with something, if its my cycle, or what. I'm not even sure if I'm going to be clear-headed enough to meditate this evening, but I'm heartened at the prospect of moving on to the next part of the Tree of Life after spending a couple of months meditating on Malkuth.

The "Mythological Principle" is The Descent to the Underworld.
I hope it's not hubris for me to expect to feel quite at home here. . . or at least find it familiar territory.

One element which is going to be interesting is that the Tarot trump associated with this path is The World, which seems quite the opposite of the Descent to the Underworld. I'm sure that's going to make for interesting meditations. . . Although I get the sense that it connects far more with the "Administrative Intelligence" aspect of influences coming down from Yesod, providing the patterns for the forms which arise in the material world of Malkuth.

And one more note about Malkuth: it was a paradigm shift to be reminded that Malkuth refers to the entire physical/material universe, not just our Earth.

My favorite version of "The World" -- from the Robin Wood Tarot.

Click for full size.

Early on in my priestess training, my teacher told me that one of the tasks of the path was to learn to "think like a magician." I resisted this at first (and for a long time) because practicing magic was not something that interested me.

To say I had a limited understanding of "magic" would be an understatement.

When I thought of magic I thought only of spellcasting as presented in Wicca 101 books, which had never interested me -- and my glances at hermetic magic books which interested me even less. I defined myself as a mystic. I went inward, silently, and connected to the Divine there. The external components and rituals of spellcasting felt like unnecessary dress-up -- or, to put it less perjoratively: tools for people with different spiritual temperments than mine. I also made a fairly firm distinction in my mind between being a priestess and being a magician. It was possible to do both, of course (and my teacher was clearly an example of that) but I didn't think "doing magic" was necessary for the spiritual path I thought I was on.

It's been about three years now since I started this path. Three years, and I'm finally starting to understand what it means to think like a magician. Starting to understand.

Yesterday I started -- again -- to read John Michael Greer's Circles of Power, his book on ritual magic in the Golden Dawn tradition, which is based on Qabalah. The first couple of times I tried to read it, I had my usual allergic reaction to the Names of God, lists of correspondences (planets, parts of the body, colors, etc.), and gestures. Why? Why? WHY? was always my gut-level reaction. This is all so unnecessary!

Last night, I found myself nodding in understanding and feeling eager to finally start applying the knowledge and wisdom I found there.

What caused the change?

( This is probably going to get long. . . )

Everything in the universe exists on multiple levels and it's all connected. We exist on multiple levels, even if we can't consciously access all of them. There are ways, however, to expand consciousness which also have the effect of balancing the personality and the soul, leading to a whole cascade spiritual benefits.

And a knowledge of how everything fits together means that a human being's tool box for affecting change -- internal as well as external -- is far larger than most of us will ever credit.

And yes, "being a magician" has a lot to do with my priestess path. Aside from the personal spiritual benefits of Qabalah, the ability to function on other levels of existence is very relevant to the work I want to do, and there is far more to accomplish with ritual magic than my simplistic assessment of spellcasting 101.

I'm pretty sure there's more to "thinking like a magician" than this. (My teacher will let me know later, in private, I'm sure.) But this is a beginning.

I'm working on memorizing the Path Text for Malkuth.

The Tenth Path is the Resplendent Intelligence, because it is exalted above every head and sits on the throne of Binah. It illuminates the splendor of all the Lights, and causes an influx to descend from the Prince of Countenances.

And the scary-cool thing is that these words make sense to me -- which was absolutely not the case when I first read them a year or so ago.

On the recommendation of my teacher, I've started reading Dion Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah. The more I study Qabalah the more I enjoy it -- which continues to somewhat surprise me, but it's amazing, in-depth, wonderful stuff.

Yesterday I received a very personal clue-by-four on the subject of my repeatedly expressed desire to escape from embodiment. (The ellipses show where I've left out some of the more detailed Qabalistic theories, but I think the bottom line message retains its force.)

. . . But this is not the only test which the mystic has to face; it is required of him that he shall fulfill the requirements of the planes of form before he is free to commence his withdrawal and escape from form. There is a Left-hand Path that leads to Kether, the Kether of the Qliphoth, which is the Kingdom of Chaos. If he embarks upon the Mystic Path prematurely it is thither he goes, and not to the Kingdom of Light. To the man who is naturally of the Mystic Path the discipline of form is uncongenial, and it is the subtlest of temptations to abandon the struggle with the life of form that resists his mastery and retreat back up the planes before the nadir has been rounded and the lessons of form have been learnt. . . . If there is a mystic whose mysticism produces mundane incapacity or any form of dissociation of consciousness. . . he must return to the discipline of form until its lesson has been learnt. . . Let him hew wood and carry water in the service of the Temple if he will, but let him not profane the holy place with his pathologies and immaturities.

Certainly something to think about the next time I start gnashing my teeth over the griefs and frustrations that make me wish to escape from life. . .

I'm finding that "progress" in my priestess studies manifests in a variety of ways. One of the most satisfying to a Queen of Swords like myself is realizing that I am comprehending a text which previously caused my eyes to cross.

My copy of John Michael Greer's Paths of Wisdom is falling apart from hard use, so I don't take it anywhere. Instead, I pulled my copy of William G. Gray's Ladder of Lights off my shelf this morning for lunch break reading, bracing myself for a serious challenge. The last time I tried to read this (at least six months ago, and possibly as long as a year), it was very slow going and I thought my head was going to explode from the sheer bulk of utterly alien concepts.

What a pleasant surprise to discover that the first two chapters now make perfect sense! I don't claim to fully understand all the concepts or their implications, but this book no longer reads like a foreign language. For example: I still have trouble remembering which of the four worlds has which name, but I *get* the four worlds and their differences. (Imperfectly, to be sure, but it's now part of my understanding.)

This is me doing my Queen of Swords happy dance!

(And if anyone can create an effective Queen-of-Swords-Happy-Dance icon you'll have my eternal gratitude and some kind of gift! Bonus points for animation. . . )

After a very long time of pain, inertia, and frustration, I'm starting to see sudden movement in several places in my life, including a nice big income tax return just as my savings was starting to get perilously low, not one but two strong leads on jobs (a second interview on one and a call from a friend on another), new sacred sexuality energy in my life, creative work on the Ereshkigal devotional. . . even doing better helping Wolfling focus and follow through on her homework.

And the timing corresponds pretty strongly to my starting the Malkuth meditations in my Tree of Life studies.

Malkuth is the physical world, not just in the "pentacles" sense of body/house/job/money, but the entirety of the plane of physical existence. Any magical working (or any creative endeavor) begun or worked in the other planes must come into existence in (or at least have its energy come down the planes to impact in) Malkuth for it to be meaningful on the human level.

It feels as if the energy of my meditation is kick-starting several other areas of my life.

Now to keep focused and keep the meditation going in a consistent way as I enjoy/pursue all the unfolding goodness. . . !

The first two nights of the more advanced Qabalistic meditation have gone very well, and have provided extra motivation for doing my basic practices, which is great.

I had a good conversation with my patrons the other night about the direction of my path and the focus of my efforts right now. No time to go into detail at the moment, but it was a welcome exchange. Part of it was the realization that I'm still not far along in my basic skills to do some things I've been thinking about. No harm or shame in that, just a need for continued dedication.

I'm on break at work right now, wishing I could be home and focusing on spiritual pursuits -- but grateful for even the income of a temp job.

*Finally* finished three cycles through the sephira meditating on the general attributes of each.

Now it's time to start the journey of each sephiroth and path, meditating on each of the symbols listed in Paths of Wisdom (John Michael Greer, highly recommended).

This is a huge undertaking, and will take approximately three years to get through the entire Tree, assuming I am faithful in doing the work. If I'm not consistent, this could take five years or more.

This gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "Onward and upward!"

Yesterday afternoon I had a certain amount of 'excitement' in my mundane life around my livelihood, both good and bad. While I can't deny a lift in the adrenaline levels, overall I remained calm and without agitation. After I got off work I had to make a couple of extended stops to deal with the situation, and still had to stop at the grocery store before going home. Despite my hunger, I did not get fast food on the way -- which would have been an automatic reaction a couple of months ago.

I got home, made a quick and simple dinner with Wolfling and watched the end of a movie with her, caught up on LJ, made sure I had the clothes I need for today's job interview (part of the "good" above), then retired early to do my practices.

My practice cycle was far from perfect. I'm becoming increasingly aware of how hard it is for me to hold focus through even the relatively brief Qabalistic Cross, much less a full Middle Pillar -- but I suspect that my intensifying awareness of the lapses is a sign of my overall improvement. I even did my Qabalistic meditation (Netzach, last night).

I did my evening cup ritual with LM, and actually remembered the insights I had over the weekend. Connecting with him felt good, and he was able to give me more insights to integrate. (It's amazing how certain aspects of Swedenborgian theology which I didn't care much about when I was a Swedenborgian are helpful now. . . )

And then I kissed Wolfling goodnight and had my bedroom light turned off by 8:50pm. Instead of lying awake fretting, or jazzing on an adrenline jag (curiously absent), I fell asleep almost immediately and slept deep and hard. This morning I feel rested and grounded.

As my teacher has started to tell me with more frequncy lately: TSW -- This Sh*t Works.

Being reborn hurts.

Being 'between' hurts.

For all my growth, I remain a Queen of Swords.
For those of my type, ambiguity sucks -- and where I am now is full of ambiguity.

There is continuity with the past, yes -- but the old answers, the old methods do not work.

Even my sexuality seems to be impacted -- and being smacked up against that this afternoon was not a happy or comfortable experience.

I retreated into my practices this evening -- retreated to take refuge in them, rather than pick them up like a heavy duty. That, at least, is a positive change.

I sat in my meditation posture (back against pillows against the headboard of my bed, soles of my feet together, hands loose in my lap) and did four-fold breaths, then relaxed into more natural breathing. I started to frame questions about my emerging identity, about my future.

Immediately I got a crystal clear message in my mind: In the past, your identity was based on what you thought, what was within. Going forward, it will be made from what you do.

( Unpacking the Message )

The funny thing is that I can't be sure who sent those words to me. Usually my inner senses are clear enough that I have some sense of who is addressing me: a deity, a spirit, LM, or my own projection of someone from my life: my father, a teacher, etc. This message didn't seem connected to anyone in particular.

I think, based on some other messages I've been getting lately, that it is most likely my higher self. I've been getting quiet but clear messages lately which have been nudging me into better choices about things like alcohol and doing my practices. It's been very clear that although I don't consciously address myself, it's not an external being nudging me. It's me, my knowing-better self. And that feels like a great step forward.

All those stories did shape who I am. The identity I created for myself was real. But despite some very positive elements, it has proved insufficient to deal with being a full adult in this world. It is insufficient to my vocation. It is insufficient to being a good parent (including the need to provide for my child materially).

This also neatly folds in with the other meditations I've been doing around consciously embracing the more explicitly (to my formulation) masculine power archetypes, in particular the King of Swords and the Emperor. All of my most important work has been inward-focused. It's time to claim the yang energy, the Chokmah energy of the Tree of Life, and start projecting outward.

Sometime early this morning I dreamed that I was in an apartment with my mother, my sister/daughter (Wolfling and my sister often seem to be a single person in my dreams), and a young woman who was a friend of my sister/daughter. Something in the conversation made me recall and mention that when I was in the 7th grade my best friend and I would sometimes put chocolate syrup on pepperoni pizza (not because we particularly liked it, but because it was a passion of a character we had created). My sister -- she was definitely my sister in that moment -- turned to me and asked if there might be a time when I didn't tell that story again.

I don't remember now what I said in response, but it was brief and bitter and not very nice -- earning me a rebuke from my mother, despite my 40+ years of age.

I lost it. I have never in my life utterly lost my composure with either of my parents, but in this dream I simply could not take any more. I started with an even more bitter pseudo-apology and then went into a litany of everything I've been dealing with for the past several years, starting with LM's death, then three moves, losing my job. . . In my dream it went on and on, and I didn't hold anything back. It was amazingly cathartic.

At the end of my eruption, my mother was contrite, I acknowledged that I had been snarky with my sister but did not retract my anger. I'm not sure now if I brought up the fact that she had been the first one to be unpleasant.

In the past, I've had what I call "screaming dreams" when I've felt like my boundaries were being violated. There's a confrontation and I start shouting so loudly that I wake up gasping, with a sore throat. Those dreams have always been ones of frustration and even fear, of feeling trapped and helpless. This dream was of a different quality. I felt liberated. Even now, the inside of my chest feels less tight.

I've been more consistent with my practice this week, including almost-daily Middle Pillars, and have been adding a breathing practice Thorn Coyle shares in Kissing the Limitless that includes images of unbinding -- something I've been wrestling with for months. Last night I also finally got to Malkuth in a Qabala meditation cycle in John Michael Greer's Paths of Wisdom. I feel pretty confident that last night's dream is a consequence of the confluence of these practices.

It's taken me well over a month to do the first cycle of Spheres in the above-mentioned meditation. I'm supposed to do one Sphere a day -- which means that a cycle should take ten days. I almost went back and started again after a long break, but it felt important to get through one cycle and finish it rather than keep restarting in an effort to be perfect. I now feel a sense of accomplishment, and am ready to start again with Kether tonight. The instructions say to do four complete cycles before moving on to the next stage. I reviewed the basic instructions again last night, and of course I'd lost track of the details. Starting tonight I'll refresh my memory with the instructions before I re-read the description of the Sphere. But still -- I'm not beating myself up over not having done it "right". I'm celebrating that I persisted and finished, and that I have been experiencing definite benefits, even with my imperfections, and feeling jazzed about starting again. And wow is that a difference for me!

One 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.

During last month's session with my spiritual director, I told him a bit about the Qabalistic studies I've been doing. He'd never heard of Qabalah before, nor the Tree of Life. I gave him a mini-overview, stressing that I am very much a beginner, and there is now a little sketch of the Tree in his (rather thick) folder of notes about our sessions.

Yesterday he brought to our session photocopies of a couple of pages from a book called "Dante's Equation" by Jane Jensen, including a drawing of the Tree of Life. . . or what was supposed to be the Tree of Life.

The paths were all wrong. There were no vertical pillars on the right or left. Tiphareth was not shown as connecting to every Sphere except Malkuth. Netzach and Hod did not connect to Malkuth.

"Dalet" was included as a Sphere above Tiphareth, connecting with Chochmah and Binah, with nothing to show that it's not actually there in the same way the other Spheres are.

It looks like someone saw an image of the Tree of Life, copied it badly, and then built a book on it without double-checking their work. Unless this is a legitimate alternate version of the Tree that I've never heard of???? (Hard to imagine, but I can't claim superior knowledege of this topic.)

I am now morbidly curious to read the book, if only to figure out what in the world the author is doing with this model. . .

( Oh, dear. . . Maybe I won't read it. Amazon description behind the cut. )

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Balancing Names and Influences on the Tree
Further Refinement of My Self-Awareness of My Vocation and Path
Qabalistic LOL
Starting Up the 32nd Path
Learning to "Think Like a Magician"
Malkuth - Path Text
On Escaping Embodiment
Progress. . .
I No Longer Believe in Coincidence
Practice
Tree of Life Meditations
TSW
Engraved Message
Anger Eruption & The Fruits of Practice
Geburah Meditation
Qabalah Fail

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Queen of Swords

From the sublime to the ridiculous

Entries tagged with qabalah

Balancing Names and Influences on the Tree

Further Refinement of My Self-Awareness of My Vocation and Path

Qabalistic LOL

Starting Up the 32nd Path

Learning to "Think Like a Magician"

Malkuth - Path Text

On Escaping Embodiment

Progress. . .

I No Longer Believe in Coincidence

Practice

Tree of Life Meditations

TSW

Engraved Message

Anger Eruption & The Fruits of Practice

Geburah Meditation

Qabalah Fail