many from one

Many from One is the Structure of the Universe

Posted on by Harold Boulette

Many from One

“’The Deity (the ever Invisible Presence),’ says the Zohar, ‘manifests itself through the ten Sephiroth which are its radiating witnesses. The Deity is like the Sea from which outflows a stream called WISDOM, the waters of which fall into a lake named intelligence. From the basin, like seven channels, issue the Seven Sephiroth. … For ten equals seven:The Decade contains four Unities and three Binaries.’ The ten Sephiroth correspond to the limbs of Man. ‘When I framed Adam Kadmon,’ the Elohim are made to say,’the Spirit of the Eternal shot out of his body like a sheet of lightning that radiated at once on the billows of the seven millions of skies, and my ten splendors were his limbs.’ …

“In the beginning of Time, after the Elohim (the ‘Sons of Light and Life,’ or the ‘Builders’) had shaped out of the eternal Essence the Heavens and the Earth. … The Chaldean Book of Numbers contains a detailed explanation of all this. ‘The first triad of the Body of Adam Kadmon (the three upper planes of the seven) cannot be seen before the soul stands in the presence of the Ancient of Days.’ The Sephiroth of this upper triad are: ‘1, Kether (the Crown) represented by the brow of Macroprosopos; 2, Chochma, (Wisdom, a male principle); and 3, Binah, (Intelligence, a female principle).” Then come the seven limbs (or Sephiroth) on the planes of mainifestation.” ~H. P. Blavatsky

Radiating Witnesses

In various ancient esoteric and mystical documents, we find variations of this concept. While the details vary, the basic concept is much the same. That concept is this: from the one Deity (God) comes many. In short, the one Godhead splits into a number of lesser beings, each of which has a special purpose or function. Here we see the first level of this Divine Hierarchy called radiating witnesses. They are called this because many believe that God created other beings to learn more about Himself. These beings could study Him from afar, and communicate back what they saw. That may or may not be true. What is more important is that God created these lesser, though still quite powerful, beings to do specific tasks for Him. Then several from One can become many from One.

Ten and Seven

In the Kabbala, we see a tree of life that has ten nodes. But here, the Zohar, according to Blavatsky, speaks of seven. She resolves this by saying the Seven Sepharoth are four Unities and three Binaries (pairs). That makes a total of ten, so we get ten from seven. In this particular section, she doesn’t go into detail about the significance of the numbers, but we can surmise that it connects man to the tree of life by the idea that man has seven energy centers (chakras)1

Limbs of Man

I think we all know that Man doesn’t have ten limbs, or even seven, so what is Blavatsky saying? I interpret this as not meaning the physical limbs of Man’s body, but the various levels of being that exists as part of our complex being. In Cosolargy, we speak of man having four levels or bodies: the physical, the mental, the psychic, and the spiritual. But we also recognize that just as we have many lesser energy centers, we probably have lesser levels of being besides those four. Logically, it makes sense that if the universe has ten levels (dimensions), then we have ten as well, one corresponding to each dimension. Continue reading “Many from One is the Structure of the Universe” →

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divine word

Divine Word and Breath of God

Posted on by Harold Boulette

Divine Word of God

“Johannes Tritheim, an abbot and alchemist, whose writings are plainer and more comprehensive than any other alchemical book, says:

‘All things have been made by the power of the divine word, which is the divine spirit or breath that emanated from the divine fountain in the beginning. This breath is the spirit or soul of the world, and is called the “spiritus mundi.” It was at first like air, and contracted into a fog or nebular substance, and afterward became “water” (Akasa). This “water” was at first all spirit and life, because it was permeated by and made alive by the spirit. It was dark in the depths; but through the outspoken word the light became generated therin, and then the darkness was illumined by the light, and the “soul of the world” (the astral light) had its beginning. This spiritual light, which we call “Nature,” or the soul of the world, is a spiritual body, which, by means of Alchemy, can be made tangible and visible; but as it exists in an invisible state, therefore it is called “spirit.”’”. ~Franz Hartmann

Divine Word

The idea of the Divine Word that comes from God is a very misunderstood concept. Too many people, thinking in human terms, and seeing God in the typical image of an old man with a long beard, think of God’s Word as speech coming out of that old man’s mouth. But God is not human, not material, and doesn’t look at all like a physical human. He is a spirit and has no mouth to speak with. His word is thought, not speech. So it is accurate to say that this word created the world and “all things” in it.

Which World?

But the inner quote from Tritheim seems to be mixing two worlds together: the physical and the spiritual. He does do a good job of explaining how one became the other, using terms that are not quite scientific, and therefore easily misunderstood. He makes it sound as if the physical world was generated from the spiritual, and that it was God who caused this to happen. In actual fact, since spirit is perfect, and matter is flawed, it makes no sense at all for God to decide to turn spirit into matter. It was the Demiurge who created the realm of matter by altering some of the spirit of the spiritual realm. Continue reading “Divine Word and Breath of God” →

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divine cause

Divine Cause and Derived Existence

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Everything that derives its existence from participation in some other reality presupposes the ontological priority of that other reality. Thus it is clear that the divine Cause of created beings – which derive their existence from participation in that Cause – is incomparably superior to all such beings in every way since by nature its existence is prior to theirs and they presuppose its ontological priority. It does not exist as a being with accidents, because I that were the case the divine would be composite, its own existence receiving completion from the existence of created beings. On the contrary, it exists as the beyond-beingness of being. For if artists in their art conceive the shapes of those things which they prelude, and if universal nature conceives the forms of the things within it, how much more does God Himself bring into existence out of nothing the very being of all created things, since He is beyond being and even infinitely transcends the attribution of beyond-beingness. For it is He who has yoked the sciences to the arts so that shapes might be devised; it is He who has given to nature the energy which produces its forms, and who has established the very is-ness of beings by virtue of which they exist.” ~The Philokalia

Derived Existence

Any being or thing that was created by some other being is a derived being and has a derived existence. This quote from the Philokalia is saying that such a derived being, having been created by some other being, cannot be greater than that which created it. This is really very logical if you think about it without letting ego or passions cloud your thinking. After all, an artist may create a great work of art that lives on long after the artist has been forgotten, but that doesn’t make the work of art greater than the being that created it.

Divine Cause

There are many causes of things and creators of things, but there is only one Divine Cause and that is God. Naturally, God is greater than anything He has created, that is essentially the definition of God. If you accept that the universe is logical and intelligent rather than random, then it is reasonable to believe that an intelligent organization has a hierarchy with a being or force at the very top of the structure. That is what most of us call “God”. And as such, He must be greater than any and all of the created beings and things on the lower levels of creation. Continue reading “Divine Cause and Derived Existence” →

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archons

Archons and the Demiurge

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“In his arrogance, Yaldeboath decides that he is the most powerful being in the universe and he declares himself to be the only God. The Demiurge then goes on to create the physical world, together with various archons, heavens and powers. Some of these are thought to belong to the 365 days of the year and others to the seven days of the week. Yet others seem to be more personal, for they deal with emotional and mystic forces.

“The Apocryphon is incredibly detailed as to the creation of man. The Archons, as we have seen elsewhere, attempt to creat a man, They fail to give him life, however, since they cannot make him move until Sophia tricks Yaldeboath into breathing his essence of the Light into man, allowing him to become a living being. Finally comes the creation story of Genesis with its episode in the garden: Adam and Eve eat of the “Tree of Knowledge” and are cast out.

“It is an interesting exercise to deconstruct the myth simply to understand the culture and thinking which gave birth to it. …

“First we have Unity in the Light; then duality in the pairing; recognition of the Three in the Trinity; four within the creative soup and so on. If we allow it to, this can take us into the hidden significance of numbers.” ~Bernard Simon

The Demiurge Declares Himself God

This is the start of everything going wrong. Whether you think of the Demiurge as a single being, or as a group name for the fallen angels led by Lucifer makes little difference. When he/they decided in their arrogance that they were equal to the true God, they crossed a line that should never have been crossed. The decision that they were equal to God meant that they had no reason to operate within the Laws of God, but could make up their own rules. They then decide that they could create a universe of their own, with their laws, and where they ruled. That is the start of the physical universe of death, disease, and destruction. Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, is the jealous god, the angry,destructive god. He is not the real God, not the God that Jesus called Father.

Archons, Heavens, and Powers

Simon says that, according to the Gnostic “myth,” the Demiurge created Archons, heavens, and powers. This is being put into the language that people of the distant path could understand. Today we might say that with the creation of the physical universe, Yaldeboath also created various forces, energies, and powers. Some of these forces do good, others are destructive. In Cosolargy, we recognize that there are forces that tend to pull us further down into matter and complete materialism. But there are also forces that try to pull us up to the higher levels of being, the spiritual levels. We can just be like a piece of driftwood being pulled hither and yon by those forces, or we can choose to help those forces that we want to pull on us. Hopefully, that is the spiritual forces trying to save us, and not the destructive forces trying to destroy us. As the old Native American legend of the Two Wolves says, the wolf you feed is the one that wins.

Creation of Man

I think the Apocryphal creation of man as given in the quote is intended to be allegorical, not literal. Either way, I don’t think it is accurate. We know that man existed before the fall into matter, otherwise, there would have been nothing to fall. What the Archons and the Demiurge created was a physical body for man. But we existed long before that as purely spiritual beings. In any case, this tells us that not only was the physical universe a creation of the Demiurge and his Archons, so was man in his physical form. Fortunately, however, we are not just physical beings. We have a spirit and soul. That gives us the power, should we choose to use it, to reverse the process and become beings of pure spirit again.

Tree of Knowledge

There is much misunderstanding with regard to Adam and Eve and the eating of the forbidden “fruit”. I really don’t know how so many jumped to the conclusion that this forbidden fruit was a simple apple, yet today many believe that is what it was. Why should a simple apple have been the forbidden fruit?

First, the full name of the tree was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is important that the full name is used if we are to understand why it was forbidden. Knowledge is a great thing, but knowledge of evil is not. You don’t teach people how to make bombs with the expectation that doing so will make them peaceful. You don’t teach people how to use a sword with the idea that they will ten grow flowers. You teach such things so they become warriors. And learning knowledge of good and evil meant that some would become evil. That is why it was forbidden. Not because a dictatorial God liked to create arbitrary restrictions.

This Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was the source of physical light, a sun much like the one we have now. That light carried knowledge just as light now carries knowledge. And that light triggered the process that made Adam and Eve become physical beings. This was the gift of the Demiurge and his Archons.

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