Qabalah before Qabalah.

 Qabalah before Qabalah.

 

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

Plotinus’ theology has three components, The One, The Divine Mind and The Soul. The One can be seen by those familiar with the qabalah as the supernal triad on the Tree of Life, however if we were to place it in a sephirah it would be ascribed to Kether. He also makes a distinction between The Good and The One, this can be understood Thelemically as looking at it as either Hadit who looks at it as separate but from Nuit’s perspective there are no opposites. “Then it is without self-perception, without self-consciousness, ignorant of itself. We must remember that we have considered it only in its opposites.” The Good is the source of creation as it holds all and its overflowing creates everything. “If we assume that It possesses within Itself the distinction of knowing and known, we make It a manifold.” The very reason that the One can’t be understood by the intellect is that it is too far removed from our perspective, however it is the fact that we seek to comprehend through experience the nature of The One that proves its existence.

The Divine Mind is the LUX and it is this that inspires any aspirant to take up arms and embark upon the path to understanding. It is the Shekinah in qabalah, Thelemites refer to what we call the Magick Lamp, the Lamp is the Soul of an Adept that illuminates eternally after being inspired by the light of the Divine Mind, of one who is doing the Great Work. Hadit is eternal he is as much a part of The Divine Mind as he is The Divine Mind, but not the Soul. The Soul is transient like the body but Hadit is pure Spirit, therefore it is necessary to construct the Soul and purge it of all impurities so that it may serve by this fortification as an adequate vehicle for the light, once the light has become fully aware of its potential. In my opinion therefore saying that Hadit becomes self-aware is misleading, as it is the magician’s awareness of Hadit that illuminates the Soul and turns one into an agent for good. “We shape ourselves into the Divine Mind; we make over our soul in trust to the Divine Mind and set it firmly in That. Thus, what That sees the soul will awaken to see. It is through the Divine Mind that we have the vision of The Unity.” We are therefore already part of the celestial hierarchy and need only to realize our place in the cosmos, a point that is reiterated throughout the writings of the Neoplatonic philosophers and not at all foreign to Thelemic thought. “The integral omnipresence of unity is universally recognized; for all men instinctively affirm the God in each of us to be one, the same in all.” “…In virtue of that unity the Good may be regarded as truly inherent. Hence the Good is not to be sought outside; it could not have fallen outside of what is. It cannot possibly be found in non-Being; within Being the Good must lie, since it is never a no-Being.” This again speaks of the incomprehensible or more accurately the indescribable nature of such an attainment, it is the fact that non-Being has been experienced that it cannot remain as non-Being, for it is interpreted by Being. This then goes against the idea that one needs to disregard the ego, without an ego there truly is no understanding and no Great Work, only experience as perceived through a broken lens. The attainment spoken of above is that of Tiphareth, and we should realize that K&C is therefore not a once of merit badge; but is the junction along the path where the work truly begins. If this wasn’t the case Thelemites would be ass holes and Thelemites are certainly not ass holes.

“The greatest, later than The Unity, must be the Divine Mind, and it must be the second of all existence, for it is that which sees The One on which alone it leans while the First has no need whatever of it. The offspring of the prior to Divine Mind can be no other than that Mind itself and thus is the loftiest being in the universe, all else following upon it—the Soul, for example, being an utterance and act of the Divine Mind as that is an utterance and act of The One. But in Soul the utterance is obscured, for Soul is an image and must look to its own original.”

The conversation taking place between an Adept and his Angel can be seen as an interpretation of the All-Soul and his unique rendering of this interpretation to the world is his Great Work. The Soul does this by uniting with the All-Soul, as in the same way that Hadit is one with Nuit, our Souls are also one and the same with the All-Soul. Knowledge fostered through union with the All-Soul is what leads to the Great Work. So, although he has already been immortalized by his attainment, it wouldn’t be a very civilized thing to do, if he just basks in the glory of his own greatness, ignoring his responsibility to the world at large. In Rosicrucian terminology the All-Soul is called the Astral Light, and by achieving union with the Astral Light one is able to see into the past or even foretell future events. In more modern phraseology we call it the collective unconscious. A lot of phenomena take place when one is somehow unified with this field of consciousness, although usually the effects are not fully realized or long lasting, as these insights were but flashes from this sphere of consciousness and didn’t represent the actual attainment. However, after one has united with the Divine Mind, a magician attains the ability to draw from this source at will. This is from my understanding the conversation that takes place between an Adept and his Angel and it is from this that the Great Work is formed and realized. Each individual’s True Will is unique and it is upon this attainment that the True Will is recognized and then followed, this is possible for the simple reason that every aspect of ones being constitutes the soul, although it is worked on in the astral, it must and does carry influences from man’s entire make up, reflecting his characteristics, physically, intellectually and ethereally and asar-un-nefer is thus achieved for the congealing of these different parts of being that take place when the light pours down and enlivens the Adept.

I hope you enjoyed reading and in the words of Liber AL vel Legis: II,71“But exceed! exceed! II,72 Strive ever to more! And if thou art truly mine – and doubt it not, and if thou art ever joyous! – death is the crown of all.”

“Love is the law, love under will.”