Angels and Kabbalah

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Tarot Empress: Arcanum Three

Here are some more writings and sketches of Angels, from my workbook on Tarot Arcanum Three.  Starting this topic in my previous post, I realised it is rather a large one – so this is Part Two!

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Jacobs Ladder – Archangels & Names of God – 1992

(1) YOD … The extended Tree of Life, or Jacobs Ladder, shows the interlocking Four Worlds of Ezekiel’s vision: physical (nature and chakras), psychological (planets), Creational (angels) and the Absolute (names of HASHEM the Holy One).

Jacobs Ladder, showing 4 worlds, and the Tree of Yetzirah (astrology)

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The Angels as Instruments of Law

In Yetzirah – the World of Formation’s upper regions – overlapping Beriah/Creation, and particularly around Daat of Yetzirah/Yesod of Beriah – increments of the Fourth dimension step through into consciousness.   It is a passage of transformation between the worlds – a dark mirror – the whispering of a stranger from behind my neck .   Some features of the world collapse.   In this region, are other beings.   They have a different temporal substance.   They exist without cause and effect.   Yet they are forms – the multiple facets of a philosophic crystal – of awareness.

O Angel – 1988

They have multifarious duties.  Some take an interest in and guide mundane affairs as spiritus directores.   Others are messengers from energy fields which are not human, but were shaped in a concurrent frame of consciousness.   Some are called angels.   The angel, a sub-atomic conduit of force, or cosmic ray, rules regions corresponding to inter-stellar space.   Earth is showered every day with highly charged particles – the butterfly wings through cosmos.

The Fool and the Lamb in a tent with Angels

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Angels exist outside time.   Some persons see them in human or archetypal form, for some of them descend into the world of images through the Daat window and are apparent in this way.   SANDALPHON is the Archangel of planet Earth, and MAHAEL is the Archangel of the Sun;  there is an Angel of the Solar system, and innumerable angelic hierarchies upon Jacob’s Ladder.   There are devas of the trees and woodland glades, and angelic atmospheres ruling towns and even street corners.   Mountains have their devas, as do geologic strata, resins and plant elixirs. They do their jobs outside Chronos – the circle of time.  But humans can develop a sensitive interface with them.

Time, as we live and know it, is a section across the Angel.   It is difficult for them to manifest three-dimensionally.  They do so only with human cooperation.  The Archangel of Yesod in Beriah, through whom other angelic  beings come and go, is GAVRIEL who “announced” the coming of an Anointed One to the mother.  GAVRIEL brought the dreams to Joseph, for the management of the Egyptian granary.   Cows and sheep are intuitive, but do not develop celestial vision.   Angels cannot materialize into the plane of sight.   The creatures who have the ability and the gift of destiny, to travel in and unify both worlds, are ourselves.

The Angel is the way a door opens into “seeing clearly”.  When the door is closed, we see through a glass darkly.

Archangel MAHAEL

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As our Spirit condenses, as it gravitates through the halls of upper Yetzirah into physical embodiment, we are clairvoyant to all that we are, have been and are to do, and why.   The Karma drawing us into earth’s gravity is still at this point, an undifferentiated “I” of all Eye, and probably curious, but not as yet emotionally identified.   Around the time of physical birth, the field of vision is abruptly restricted;  the soul becoming individualized, lodges into the body whose contour her various deeds and intentions created.  An aeroplane descends from the brightness into thick white cloud, and lands in a field by a toy town, dim and grey.  The child cries as the musical chord is cut.   Perhaps.

… where the Angel treads – 1988

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All languages of adepts contain activities or presences invisible to the layman, but in which we are supposed to believe!

In the Hermetic language they are called genii.
In Kabbalah they are called angels.
In Hindu and Egyptian languages they are called gods.
Theosophists call them Masters.
Lucretius of Rome called them atoms.
In the 20^th century language of maths and physics, they are called particles.

An Angels’ Sound

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Why do I find black holes so interesting?

The black hole is an archetypal dragon which guards enlightenment:  traverse its coil with great care and caution.   Very extreme things happen … temptations are offered … when one gets near the scent.  There is a growing attunement to the power of the Self – the Universe – and it is very easy to channel this mistakenly into the personal ego – into the unreclaimed wilderness which sets itself up to teach, influence and lead.   So one has to be watchful.

Strangely however, the black hole as conceived by materialists, is the great Light of Reality in metaphysics.  The black hole “shrinks” into that expansion, and becomes the birth of a star … through the veil’s other side.  This is a rather intuitive hunch, against the conventional grain.  The idea of black holes is frightening, tearing unwary astronauts apart, but only if materiality is the only frame of reference.   If it is not, then black holes open a very different prospect … of stars in the night sky at birth, creating Kalpas – the breaths of time and space.  The principle stands for eternity, society, astrophysics and the inner life.

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Returning briefly to the angels on Jacob’s Ladder:  the creatures who have the ability and the gift of choice to travel in and unify the worlds, are human.

The human psyche is a walking transformer of “force” into materiality.   Through the psyche, levels of frequency – vibrational waves which might be “angels” – interface the mobile field of height, breadth and depth.   The things we do, speak and think, create concentric ripples in this field, and in the field beyond our sight.

Angel choir, 1957

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We may choose to coast along blindly with a fateful pattern – the inertia of circumstance – or to open our eyes within the circumstance to see what it is up to.   In the latter case, we consider the circumstance in its relation to the environment, and the other wheels which turn.   If my soul is alert here, and beginning to apply steerage, I have no mob mentality.   We are co-workers in all manner of things.   This act is “awakening”.

angel, old master copy, 1957

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(2) HEH … Some Further Thoughts – Venus (green) and Mars (red) on the Tree

The following colour complementaries are from my Tarot & Kabbalah studies with the Builders of the Adytum:

venus sun mars – colour correspondences

In the “queen’s scale” colour coding, Mars is red and Venus is green. On Jacob’s Ladder, Awakening’s red path – Netzach-to-Hod in Beriah the world of Creation – converts to the green Hokhmah-to-Binah path in Yetzirah the world of Formation – uniting masculine and feminine poles across the Tree, as well as vertically. (This can be seen in the diagram of Jacobs Ladder, above).  In Tarot, the green path is Venusian – the path of the Empress. She is pregnant;  she bridges Hokhmah to Binah – the Hebrew “Wisdom and Understanding”.

The triadic plane of Tifareth, Gevurah, Hesed –  the Sun with Mars and Jupiter  – is yellow-gold.  Tifareth is the Beauty of the Tree – its consciousness.   The path bridging Hesed/Jupiter (Grace) to Gevurah/Mars (Severity) over Tifareth, is yellow – Tarot Key 8, Strength:  the woman who tames the red lion.

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The  Netzach Hod level is ruled by Mars – the path of the Tower and of Awakening.   So, Key 3 The Empress (Venus) gestates the fertile seed.  Key 16 The Tower (Mars) cracks the seedcase open.  (See my previous post. – a note at the end, re the House of God)

On Jacobs Ladder of the interpenetrating Trees of Life, these two paths overlay each other.

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All resonances on the Tree of Life are potential meditations:  an opener of doors – the Angel.  The Tree is full of angelic powers, as we awake to them with our sight, hearing and heart.

And here is a composer’s analogy, down the Lightning flash:

The Trees of Music and the physical body

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(3) VAV … A Visit to India – Holding Arunachala Rock in my left palm            (10.9.92)

In the BE-ING, there is infinite clear space.   There are senses to receive, but no “solid” wall or division anywhere.    Dive or sink into this, as the core.

The fiery Arunachala pyramid is in the I.  All things, and treasures of the world,  are in the I which permeates the i.

Arunachala sketch – one of the oldest and most sacred mountains on earth – Siva’s red rock hill

Ramana Maharshi used to say, realisation of the Self is clear as an Indian gooseberry in the palm of your hand.

Thoughts and ashram Tourists carry on more or less as usual, though somewhat hushed or swamped by the “awesome” advent of core-mystery-absorbtion.   The depth nature arises sometimes to suggest – a present, a gift to be in – for a moment.   It opens in my mid-spine behind the heart.   Fall inward!

All directions i am

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(4) SECOND HEH … And touching on the soul, and how we evolve in relation to each other …

angel by Raphael – copy

Angels lead inevitably into platonic solids – the crystallized forms of the soul’s cosmic interface are our root elixirs.  Two tetrahedrons interpenetrating, create Solomon’s Seal:  a third-eye laser beam.

Cultivate in my imagination the Tetrahedron:  the crystal of the Soul, to whose surfaces a third, extended centre point gives depth, volume and perspective … (“the height, the depth and breadth …”)

It trains the mind to overcome problems of the flat-earth polarity.

A Soul tetrahedron’s inner points touch the centre of each outer surface …

Sometimes it is like this:  I am the base, performing the first two – the polarity.  The plane of the Archangels is the raised apex, or depth;  and they perform the rest.    Hence the idea of surrender, and letting go – we come as far as we can, unaided:  then hand it over.

No spiritual or creative task is done in isolation, but in dialogue.  When They take over, I  stray and struggle to collect up my bits, and think about it.

Hear this:  every Angel in a wing, a mountain, a leaf or a person, is the One.

I have earth’s deep yearning for the sky to fill me.  One lens is as good as any, when polished.  They come to meet, as in the Masters’ limestone occulus:

Drawn up into a dark cave whose glory drop by drop 
the rain through aeons carved, 
as stalagmite to stalactite my soul evolves, 
from floor to point of meeting. 

Let us draw time, 
draw together this space.

My flame drinks wick;  in watered rock my mirrored twin appears – 
mineral kingdom interpolates, vesica pisces, droplet rock 
to drop deposit. 

Not by earthly measure large, this chamber – 
by a candle illumined:  a single drop, a sea. 
In limestone cave the work through ages dark 
as organs of our inner body, gleams. 

Hollowing this Gothic sphere, I am the ages’ hourglass – 
an instant yes, awakens sight:  the hallowing fire.

From The Masters’ Eye  1992-2009
These verses are also in my early post, Drawings of Timothy West

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Finally:  here is a sketch of a dream I had in 1969, of “a vulnerable angel”:

He (in green) felt something grow behind his shoulders – tender wings.  He is embarassed, and tries to hide this condition from the other people in the room.   Leo Tolstoy’s short story about an Angel who fell to earth – “What Men Live By” – made a deep, early impression on me.

To conclude, here is the Angel of cosmic regulation – the Tarot Temperance:

Tarot Arcanum 14 – Temperance

My articles on Kabbalah assume some familiarity with the Tree of Life, the Sefiroth, the Paths, and the Four Worlds of Jacobs’ Ladder.  For more information on the subject, visit http://www.kabbalahsociety.org ;  Zev ben Shimon Halevi’s books, diagrams, drawings and courses give a detailed introduction and a comprehensive view.

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My adventure invites fellow travellers.  I am a poet, an artist and a seer.  I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.

This blog is  a vehicle to promote also my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books). Watch this space.

 

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All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/