The Tree of Life, Parts Four and Five
Mar. 17th, 2022 02:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
The essays below are the fourth and fifth of a series of seven instructional papers on the Tree of Life, the basic glyph of Cosmic structure and process in the traditions inherited by the FHR. They were written by John Gilbert and is presented here with only minor editing. As I noted in introducing the earlier sections, it is irrelevant whether you believe or disbelieve in what follows. What matters is that you read these texts, think about them, understand them, and come to your own conclusions about the material covered in them.
A comment from last week may be worth repeating here. Whenever John wrote of Gnosticism he meant the teachings of the Universal Gnostic Church, the specific and rather idiosyncratic tradition of Gnostic spirituality he taught and lived. Other Gnostic traditions and teachings went in different directions, as you’d expect from a movement that focuses on personal experience of spiritual realities.
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THE TREE OF LIFE
by John Gilbert
Part Four - Love, Power and Harmony
Spanning the Abyss is a path running down the right-hand side of the Tree of Life from Father God to Daughter God directly below. Also spanning the Abyss is a path running down the left-hand side of the Tree of Life from Mother God to Son God or God the Son directly below.
Father God is the Father Archetype and the Male Archetype. Mother God is the Mother Archetype and the Female Archetype. Daughter God is the Daughter Archetype and the Maiden Archetype. Son God is the Son Archetype and the Knight or Young Man Archetype.
These archetypes each have many variations and definitions. An interesting exercise is to start a page in your journal for each of the five major archetypes we've already discussed. Then add other possible names and attributes for each over the course of several weeks or months.
For example, The Creator Archetype also includes such other archetypes as architect, artist, author, builder, designer, discoverer, founder, inventor, and producer. Any type of creative endeavor is a candidate for classification under the master symbol of The Creator.
As we examine the Son and Daughter Archetypes we find two very interesting facts:
First, the only energy coming down the Tree of Life into Daughter comes from Father and the energy coming down into Son comes from Mother. The energy from above changes polarity as it crosses the Abyss. The Male gives birth to the Female and the Female gives birth to the Male.
Secondly, the only energy from the other "parent" comes through the first. Mother God sends energy across to Father God and that's the only female energy that goes down to Daughter God. Father God sends energy across to mother God and that's the only male energy that goes down to Son God. It's difficult to understand how the polarity can change in such an arrangement.
Daughter God is the fourth Sephirah on the Tree of Life and its Hebrew name is Chesed (Hess' - ed) which means Mercy. Mercy is also called Charity, Love and Unconditional Love. Mercy is the archetype of the loving daughter. But, remember Mercy is a reflection of the Father-Mother-Creator Archetype. So the Father-Mother-Creator Archetype contains the Loving Daughter.
Son God is the fifth Sephirah on the Tree of Life and its Hebrew name is Geburah which means Severity. Severity is also called Strength, Power, Trepidation, Chaos and Conflict. Pachad is another Hebrew name assigned to Son God. Pachad means Fear or Trepidation. All of these names are assigned to this sphere and the Son of God, the Son of the Goddess or the Widow's Son. (That's a long story in itself because the Black Widow is Binah, the Mother Archetype. She's also the Black Madonna.) Power is the archetype of the God of War and the warrior and this warring son is contained within and is a reflection of the Father-Mother-Creator Archetype.
There's one more Child of Deity, but this child is a very special child. It receives energy from all of the first five Sephiroth. The Creator, Father, Mother, Daughter and Son all send energy down into the sixth Sephirah. It is literally the child of all the Sephiroth above it. This Child of Deity is on the Middle Pillar directly below The Creator but on a level further down the Tree than both Daughter and Son. It completes the second triangle on the Tree of Life, the triangle reflected from above, the triangle reflected across the Abyss.
The name of this Sephirah is Tiphereth (Tiff' - er - et) which means Beauty. Other names assigned to Beauty include Harmony, Balance, Son of God and Christ Consciousness or Krishna Center. It is the archetype for the Peacemaker, the Hanged God and the Sacrificed or Crucified King. It's also a direct reflection of the Father-Mother-Creator Archetype.
The sphere attributed to the Daughter Archetype is called Mercy, Charity, Love and Unconditional Love. In the Order we usually refer to this sphere as Love, and by this we mean Unconditional Love.
The sphere attributed to the Son Archetype is called Severity, Strength, Fear, Trepidation, Anger, Sadness and Power among other things. In the Order we usually refer to this sphere as Power and by this we mean to include the power of Anger, Fear and Sadness.
The sphere attributed to Beauty or Harmony is also called Balance, Crucified or Sacrificed God, the Crucified or Sacrificed Archetype, Service, the Grandchildren, the Grandchildren Archetype and the Soul. In the Order we usually refer to this sphere as Harmony though we see The Creator as our Spirit and this center of Harmony as our Soul.
These three spheres form a downward-facing triangle which is a reflection of the upward-facing triangle of the World of Air. Each of the three spheres in this triangle are connected to each other. The Creator is directly connected only to our Soul (Harmony). Father is connected to both Daughter and Harmony. Mother is connected to both Son and Harmony. Everybody above is connected to the Grandchildren below.
This downward-facing triangle is a reflection of the upward-facing World of Air. It is the Child of Air. These three spheres in the lower triangle are reflections of the Archetypes. They are the reflection of thoughts and ideas.
Reflect on your own thoughts for a moment. You'll start to feel something. This something can be reduced to love, happiness, peace, and joy or it can be fear, anger, sadness and indifference. The reflection of our own thoughts and ideas are the emotions of our life.
As Above so Below. As Below so Above. The reflection of the thoughts and ideas in the World of Air Above the Abyss are the emotions of the World Below, the World of Water, the World of Emotions.
The World of Air is separated from the World of Water by the Great Abyss. There is a great chasm between our thoughts and ideas and our emotions. There is a great chasm between thoughts and ideas and emotions in the Divine Mind.
In the World of Air the male and female, Father and Mother Archetypes are the opposite of each other. You can't have one without the other. The Creator participates in both the male and female and is more than the sum of both.
In the World of Water this concept of opposites is carried one step further. Daughter is Mercy, Love, Charity and Unconditional Love. Daughter is also the opposite of all these things. She's Indifference, Apathy, Intolerance, and Unkindness.
Son is Anger, Fear, Sadness, Severity, Strength and Power. He's also their opposites. He's Joyful, Peaceful, Happy and Soft and his Strength and Power are used with Joy, Peace and Happiness.
It's in that place called Harmony where all these positive and negative emotions come together, where they become balanced. Any expression of excessive positive or negative emotions is due to an imbalance in this area of our lives.
Here's the important secret taught by most mystery religions: Emotions are a product of our thoughts. We learn fear, anger, sadness, love and all our other emotions. Our thoughts and attitudes control our emotions.
In our experience, the most difficult thing to accept about the Tree of Life is that our emotions are born in our thoughts and ideas, our attitudes and belief systems. This concept blocked many of us from spiritual progress for several years. The skeptic in us couldn't accept anything about our minds having control of our emotions. Period. As far as we were concerned, our emotions were out of control, and thinking about them didn't make them any better.
But if you stop to think about it, it's all very logical.
We think. Because we think, we start to have feelings about our thoughts. Our feelings affect our thinking and it goes round in a circle. Our emotions feed our thoughts and our thoughts feed our emotions. We can work ourselves up into a dither in no time at all. We can also calm ourselves down and change our thinking.
If Unconditional Love is a decision, why do I instantly dislike certain people? It's all based on our memory of past experiences. Our memories store things based on the amount of emotion attached to those memories. The more emotional the memory, the easier it is to remember and we remember it more vividly. Since our memories are stored in our subconscious mind, we're not always aware we're reacting to something based on those memories.
The fact is we judge people based on our memories of that person, people who look, act or behave like that person, people who speak like that person, or people who subconsciously remind us of that person. It doesn't matter who the person is, what matters is how we view that person based on our memory or past encounters with other people. We instantly dislike certain people because they remind us of one or more negative attributes of other people in our memory. We instantly like some people for the very same reasons.
Unconditional Love is a decision. We choose to love somebody or not. We choose to love something or not. We choose to love and we choose not to love. We choose to be indifferent toward certain people or things. We choose apathy over love. We choose the level of our commitment.
Anger is a decision. It may be conscious, subconscious or even unconscious, but it is a decision. Conscious anger is often called "righteous anger." We're entitled to feel angry and so we do. Subconscious anger is a habit we've formed over time. We've been angry in this situation before and here we are again. Eventually our anger can become so automatic it's done on an unconscious level. Our thoughts birth our anger.
Fear is a conscious, subconscious or unconscious decision. We become anxious and our anxiety turns to fear. We worry about what could happen and our worry becomes anxiety, and our anxiety becomes our fears. If we expect the worst, we begin to worry that the worst will happen. If we expect the best, we begin to worry that the best will happen. Our thoughts birth our fears.
Sadness is a decision. It's a conscious, subconscious or unconscious decision based on past memories collected by our senses of sight, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling and the emotions we decided to connect to that memory.
We are the parent of our emotions. Our thoughts, ideas, attitudes and beliefs give birth to our emotions. And we imbue our memories of people, places, things and events with these emotions. We are the product of our entire lifetime of thinking, birthing and growing our emotions. Study my emotions and you can understand my thinking, the thinking that gave birth to those emotions.
This is a very hard lesson to fully comprehend and understand. We talk to people who have hormonal imbalances that cause them great depression. Telling them they thought themselves into this depression is not a cure for their problem. Drugs are not a cure for their problem. The only cure is serious spiritual work and very few people are willing to invest the amount of time and energy to do spiritual work. It's a commitment and commitments take energy, time and work.
Your assignment, should you choose to participate, is to ponder your emotions this week and see if you can trace them back to your own thoughts, ideas and attitudes in your distant past.
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THE TREE OF LIFE
by John Gilbert
Part Five - Paroketh
The Abyss separates the World of Air from the World of Water. It is the third veil on the Tree of Life. It is the third veil we must rend as we return to our Source from the World of Manifestation which is our physical universe. As we come down the Tree of Life we now reach the Second Veil. The Second Veil is called Paroketh which means Portal and it's the Portal through which we must travel to reach our Soul. It's also the Portal through which the first order member of the Golden Dawn must pass in order to become an Adept.
Paroketh is called the Veil of Illusion because what we see below this veil is an illusion. Reality is on the other side. Our soul resides in the true reality. Our ego and persona reside in the illusion of reality. Paroketh is also called the Curtain of Fire which refers to the fact that the World of Fire is located beneath the World of Water on the Tree of Life. As we descend into matter we must cross this Curtain of Fire.
Additionally, Paroketh is called the Curtain of Water because as we ascend the Tree of Life from the World of Fire we're confronted by a Curtain of Water which we must part (like Moses at the Red Sea) to ascend further.
As we incarnate into this physical world, we move down the Tree of Life from our beginning in Awareness at the top of the Tree. We build our intentions and focus ourselves down to one primary purpose for incarnation in the World of Air - the first three spheres. In the teachings of the Order the body we inhabit here in the World of Air, the World of Archetypes is our Spirit. Our Spirit is our Higher Self, our own Holy Guardian Angel. It's our Spirit that decides to incarnate and it's our Spirit that decides upon our purpose for incarnation. It's our Spirit which our Unmanifest Self builds in the World of Archetypes as the first step in our physical incarnation.
Since we cannot move across the Abyss in our Spirit, the Order teaches that our Spirit creates our second body, our Soul. Our Soul lives in the World of Water, the Creative World where we create the essence of what we will become in the physical reality. Our Soul is in constant communication with our Spirit. Our Spirit knows everything our Soul knows and experiences, just as our Unmanifest Self above the Tree of Life knows everything our Spirit knows and experiences. And, since our Unmanifest Self is a "Spark of Light in the Consciousness of the Unmanifest Creator," the One Source of All-That-Is knows everything our Unmanifest Self knows.
Our Soul decides how we'll express Unconditional Love and all our other emotions in our lives so we can reach the goal of achieving our purpose in the physical reality. It's in the World of Water where the blueprint for our emotional reactions to life are created. It's here we plan the relationships of our life. It's in this world where we attune our emotions to our life's purpose. We build an Emotional Body and that Emotional Body is our Soul. In various paradigms our Soul is also called our Etheric, Christ Body, Christ Consciousness, Conscience, Krishna Center, Krishna Consciousness and our True Self.
The next step in our descent down the Tree of Life is to cross the Veil of Illusion, the Curtain of Fire. Just as our Spirit builds a body to exist in the World of Water, so our Soul builds a body to exist in the World of Fire. This body is called our Astral Body or our Ego Body and it is our Ego and our Astral essence. Our Ego is the complex building block upon which our physical body, persona and personality are built. Our Ego resides in the World of Fire and it's in constant communication with our Soul.
It's important to realize not all Souls create an Ego and descend into the World of Fire. Not all Egos create a body and a persona and descend into the World of Matter, the World of Earth. Likewise, not all Spirits create a Soul and descend into the World of Water and not all Unmanifest Selves descend into the World of Air. Those who remain in the World of Fire we call Ghosts. Those in the World of Water we refer to as Astral Beings, Spirit Guides or Animal Guides and we consider many to be Masters. Those who remain in the World of Air are Ascended Masters, Adepts and Great Souls.
The fact that you and I inhabit a physical vehicle means we decided to manifest for some purpose and we entered the World of Archetypes, World of Emotion, World of Desire and the World of Matter in that order. Our job is now to discover our original purpose and then accomplish those goals. That process is called "climbing or ascending the Tree of Life." It's also called evolution, alchemy, pathworking, and magic. This is just the opposite of our descent into matter which is called involution.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-17 07:26 pm (UTC)Thank you for sharing these.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-18 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-17 09:19 pm (UTC)Reading Levi, this, and the Judson exercise is my start. I will revisit the OSA as I had put that aside. That will be my will training!
Tamar
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-18 01:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-17 09:26 pm (UTC)From this statement to the end, it answered a lot of questions...and opened up more.
Last week I had a synchronicity with your previous post and this week I have one with this post. It pertains to chapter 10 in Levi's high magic.
(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-18 01:25 am (UTC)Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 05:13 am (UTC)I did find myself scratching my head a bit at this passage, though:
In our experience, the most difficult thing to accept about the Tree of Life is that our emotions are born in our thoughts and ideas, our attitudes and belief systems. This concept blocked many of us from spiritual progress for several years. The skeptic in us couldn't accept anything about our minds having control of our emotions. Period. As far as we were concerned, our emotions were out of control, and thinking about them didn't make them any better.
I realize asking you, JMG, about this may not get the best results (with the Aspergers and all), but perhaps for the commentariat: is this, in fact, normal? The baseline most folks have? If anything, I've struggled with the idea that emotions are not neatly solved by "understanding" them or thinking about them, that the fact that I "get it" doesn't immediately resolve an emotional issue, and there might be more experiential work involved.
So, I'm interested to hear anyone else's thoughts, or if this is perhaps a shallow understanding of the material.
Thanks,
Jeff
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 11:49 am (UTC)One example might be a difficult work situation. If you frame yourself as a victim and focus on that, you probably have resulting negative emotions and dealing with these directly is difficult and unending. However if you can change the framing such that you are someone of agency in a difficult situation, and act sincerely to slowly achieve your goals and incrementally improve matters… the crippling emotions simply are not there to deal with. Instead you face concrete problems that can be addressed instead of unaddressable fears.
The Order of Essenes would also add that it is even better if your goals are externally focused, benefiting others. I.e. not goals of trying to make oneself feel / look better, but of striving to make this a better world to live in some small way.
I wouldn’t say this is normal or even easy, but it is possible…
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 05:35 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 12:46 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 05:36 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 03:00 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 05:22 pm (UTC)I am a clinical mental health therapist and I can say that the idea that our thinking results in our emotions is correct. JMG, feel free to correct me here, understanding is just a prat, and in some instance not a necessary one to changing your emotions. Change how you think, change your beliefs, and then your emotions will naturally change. Just as you develop from the top of the tree down.
Also, remember that some of these beliefs are unconscious, and you may not have consciously created the beliefs.
Hope that helps,
Lee
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 05:53 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 05:39 pm (UTC)As JMG says below, though, it was helpful to draw attention to the fact that the quoted paragraph doesn't just say "thoughts", but "thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and beliefs", and as you point out, some of those are unconscious and/or opaque to us.
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-18 05:53 pm (UTC)Behind every emotion, the Stoics liked to point out, is a judgment -- that is, an act of the mind. Most of our judgments are deeply entangled with our attitudes and belief systems, and so revisiting a judgment very often requires us to go deep into the roots of our attitudes and belief systems, to interrupt the feedback loop John talks about further down -- our emotions feed our thoughts and our thoughts feed our emotions -- and work through old tangled emotions and memories that are holding our attitudes and belief systems in place. (That's the work that the Order of Spiritual Alchemy practices are meant to do.) As we finish that process, we become able to rethink our beliefs and our attitudes, and as we do that, our emotional life changes.
The crucial point John is making here is that emotions are not autonomous. They aren't independent of our minds and wills -- they are set in motion by our beliefs and attitudes, which in turn are rooted in thoughts and judgments we make in the present and have made in the past. Knowing that is the first step to beginning to let go of unhelpful emotions and replace them with beneficial ones.
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 07:56 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 04:44 pm (UTC)Delighted to hear that you're enjoying the work! I had the same reaction when I first took up occult studies -- "wow, this is actually fun!"
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 05:52 pm (UTC)Your description helped me figure out where I was getting this wrong. I might rephrase now "Various mental processes, some conscious thinking, and others less so, produce our emotions, and conscious thinking is our window into these processes. Various techniques and practices can use that window to change the processes such that they change the emotions they produce." That's much more helpful and much more nuanced.
Highlighting the link between thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes and emotions is also helpful. I've tended to be very comfortable with "thinking" and awkward with "feeling", and I think that characterizing them so distinctly might contribute to that. Re-categorizing "feeling" as downstream of "thinking" puts emotions into a field I am more comfortable and confident with, so that ought to be helpful.
Apologies for the navel-gazing, I hope that the thought process might be helpful to some others. Again, thanks very much for the clarification!
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 01:53 am (UTC)These fused amalgams of heart and mind color our perceptions, filtering out whole ranges of equally plausible explanations for the way past events unfolded. Thus, we find it difficult to grasp any possible explanation that differs from our preferred take on the truth. These emotion-holding ‘vessels’ of beliefs and cognitive choices also shackle our energy and hinder our ability to respond freely and flexibly in situations that resemble or replicate the original ‘fire-shaping’ incidents of the past. The belief structures are sometimes like glass that be melted and re-made in a new shape; others are more like fire-hardened pottery and they can only be broken, not reformed. In this case, building a new world-view can be difficult, time-consuming, humbling and incomplete, just like stopping smoking or any other habit rooted in the dark soil of our unconscious being.
Re: Thoughts Controlling Emotions
Date: 2022-03-19 05:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-18 04:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-03-18 05:41 pm (UTC)This John Gilbert?
Date: 2022-03-19 08:23 am (UTC)That John Gilbert!
Date: 2022-03-19 04:46 pm (UTC)Re: That John Gilbert!
Date: 2022-03-19 05:02 pm (UTC)Re: That John Gilbert!
Date: 2022-03-19 08:58 pm (UTC)Re: This John Gilbert?
Date: 2022-03-21 04:28 am (UTC)Thoughts become things..
Date: 2022-03-19 06:22 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts become things..
Date: 2022-03-19 09:10 pm (UTC)1) Choose the thing you desire.
2) Resolve that until you get it, nothing else matters to you.
3) Make a list of everything you can go to make your desire a reality.
4) Do them all.
5) Make a list of everything you will have to stop doing to make your desire a reality.
6) Stop doing them all.
7) Keep it up. Depending on how big a thing you have in mind, it may take a while.
The universe is not a vending machine. It does not exist to give you whatever you want, just because you want it. You can achieve your goals at least some of the time, but not just by wishing or visualizing or inflating a sense of entitlement to the bursting point! The gods put us in this world and said, "Choose what you desire -- and then earn it."
Re: Thoughts become things..
Date: 2022-03-19 09:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-04-01 01:39 pm (UTC)