Isilion

Late last winter and early spring I did my best to systematize my understanding of Abulafia derived from Aryeh Kaplan’s “Sefer Yetzira” and “Meditation and Kabbalah” along with things I’ve found at places like this
http://learnkabbalah.com/basic_meditation_techniques/
I take very seriously Kaplan’s statement that he had been authorized by his masters to release what he knew, at least about the basic technique. Of course the secret is not in “knowing” but doing the exercise.

I use a very simple technique where I permute the the “five” vowels sounds with the letters of the Mame making very slight but distinct head motions. It takes about twenty-five to thirty minutes to work through it. It is much easier than one would think, actually. I incorporated it into an evening walk so that I started as I left the house, walked out and back so that I finished a block or to from home so I could then just enjoy the clarity. It requires concentration, but only gently. As I walked and recited the sounds silently I would ever so slightly bob my head, almost like someone with an iPod listening to a rhythmic song.

For a lazy instant after the last sound and movement I could see the Name everywhere, radiating out from within the trees and the patterns in the asphalt of the road and the grass and leaves and shadows.

I have been on hiatus in the heart-breaking world of politics; that phase has passed–at least as an all-consuming obsession.

I am returning to the long term trajectory of my life after an enlightening roller coaster ride.

But that’s what this is…

I’ve felt an "I give up" post coming on for some time, and this isn’t really it, but I am totally at a loss as to where I should be going and what I should be doing. I’ve given time, money and sweat over the past year doing everything I know to help the national campaign and the local one only to see it more or less come to nothing as far as real change.

When Ron Paul’s nomination effort began to unravel I put my hopes on working locally to get Ron Paul Republicans on the ballot for congress. I think we did as well as could be expected in Maryland, but the fact of the matter is Peter James, Collins Bailey, et al, are going to get their asses handed to them in November. One only has to look at the number of votes their Democratic rivals got in the Maryland Primary to recognize that.

Before I got involved in Ron Paul’s campaign I had come to accept that voting in national elections was a complete waste. The choice boils down to the color of your chains. The thing is Ron Paul has very much succeeded in educating me. He took my vague, unfocused, intuitive disgust with the state and gave me the analytical tools and reasoned principles to see exactly how imperial delusions, monetary flimflammery, collectivist pandering and media enabling work to prevent any real, substantive debate or political action that might threaten the status quo.

So now I see things much more clearly than ever, including my impotence. I am very angry and very frightened.

I also have no idea what I can do about any of it. I see Ron Paulers and other liberty seekers working on various projects, trying to pull together a core of interconnected activists, and I respect their efforts, but other than contributing money I don’t know what I can do. I don’t have any marketing skills, video talents or leadership ability to contribute. I’m just an aging geek with moderate IT skills and unless someone needs a help desk guy I’m not going to be a mover and shaker no matter how many pep-talks I give myself. They fact of the matter is I’ve already given more than I can afford and the cynic in me fears all our efforts are simply going to become a way of fleecing a new type of sheep: liberty junkies who work their asses off in dead end jobs throwing away their not very disposable income looking for another fix of freedom.

However, I can’t unlearn what I know, the liberty bell cannot be unrung. There is something burning inside of me. I have to do something or I’m just going to become a bitter old man who shakes his fist at everything and accomplishes nothing.

I’d like to see the way forward, but I can’t. Where do I go from here?

Even though I took some introductory courses in economics in college, it was always boring to me, also, other than the very basic stuff like supply & demand and the law of diminishing returns, I didn’t really understand it. I was originally drawn to Ron Paul’s campaign because of his opposition to the war and his unwavering defense of civil liberties. His economic stuff was just more blah, blah, blah, until he started getting through to me with the idea that economics and monetary policy are fundamental to understanding both domestic and foreign policy and the political structures and processes at play in this country and around the world. Talking about those things without talking about economics is like trying to talk about music while ignoring the concept of rhythm; like trying to understand Magick without knowledge of Qabalah.

I’ve actually been aware of him for several years, and it has been an amazing education for me. Regardless of the outcome of this election–and between you, me and the Internet, I am less confident about that than I was six months ago–there are now thousands, if not millions, of people like me who are waking up to the principle of spontaneous order and the emergent properties of a free society. He has let the genie out of the bottle and it is not going back in.

“I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’d be snow at Christmas
They said there’d be peace on Earth
Hallelujah, Noel be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas we get we deserve”

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

Woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.

Countering the propaganda against Iran with photos of real people, places, events that show the opposite of what the media wants us to fear.

read more | digg story

“Then I saw a burning light, as large and as high as a mountain, divided at its summit as if into many tongues. And there stood in the presence of this light a multitude of white-clad people, before whom what seemed like a screen of translucent crystal had been placed, reaching from their breasts to their feet.

“And before that multitude, as if in a road, there lay on its back a monster shaped like a worm, wondrously large and long, which aroused an indescribable sense of horror and rage. On its left stood a kind of market-place, which displayed human wealth and worldly delights and various sorts of merchandise; and some people were running through it very fast and not buying anything, while others were walking slowly and stopping both to sell and to buy. Now that worm was black and bristly, covered with ulcers and pustules, and it was divided into five regions from the head down through the belly to its feet, like stripes. One was green, one white, one red, one yellow and one black; and they were full of deadly poison. But its head had been so crushed that the left side of its jawbone was dislocated. Its eyes were bloody on the surface and burning within; its ears were round and bristly : its nose and mouth were those of a viper, its hands human, its feet a viper’s feet, and its tail short and horrible.

“And around its neck a chain was riveted, which also bound its hands and feet and this chain was firmly fastened to a rock in the abyss, confining it so that it could not move about as its wicked will desired. Many flames came forth from its mouth, dividing into four parts: One part ascended to the clouds, another breathed forth among secular people, another among spiritual people, and the last descended into the abyss. And the flame that sought the clouds was opposing the people who wanted to get to the Upper World And I saw three groups of these. One was close to the clouds, one in the middle space between the clouds and the earth, and one moved along near the earth; and all were shouting repeatedly, “Let us get to the Upper World!” But they were whirled hither and thither by that flame; some did not waver, some barely kept their balance and some fell to the earth but then rose again and started toward the Upper World. The flame that breathed forth among secular people burned some of them so that they were hideously blackened and others it transfixed so that it could move them anywhere it wanted. Some escaped from the flame and moved toward those who sought the Upper World, reiterating shouts of “O you faithful, give us help!” But others remained transfixed. Meanwhile, the flame that breathed forth among spiritual people concealed them in obscurity; but I saw them in six categories. For some of them were cruelly injured by the flame’s fury; but when it could not injure one of them, it burningly breathed on them the deadly poison that flowed from the worm’s head to its feet, either green or white or red or yellow or black. But the flame that sought the abyss contained in itself diverse torments for those who had worshipped Darkness in place of Light, not washed by the font of baptism or knowing the Light. And I saw sharp arrows whistling loudly from its mouth, and black smoke exhaling from its breast, and a burning fluid boiling up from its loins, and a hot whirlwind blowing from its navel, and the uncleanness of frogs issuing from its bowels; all of which affected human beings with grave disquiet. And the hideous and foul-smelling vapor that came out of it infected many people with its own perversity. But behold, a great multitude of people came, shining brightly; they forcefully trod the worm underfoot and severely tormented it, but could not be injured by its flames or its poison. And I heard again the voice from the Upper World, saying to me: Light strengthens the faithful so that the Darkness cannot conquer them.” ~Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias

As if something neglected had been going on behind the scene.

Three Mothers: Alef (א), Mem (מ) and Shin (ש).
In the Creation are Air, Water, Fire.
Heaven was created from Fire;
Earth was created from Water; and
Air from Spirit decides between them.
~ Sefer Yetzirah 3:3.

Ron Paul creates enthusiasm. And not the fake, choreographed, everybody-wave-his-name-on-a-stick-and-wait-for-a-pause-to-go-wild “enthusiasm” endemic to modern campaigns.

No. REAL enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that compels you to ride from South Dakota to Ames on a motorcycle in order to have the privilege of passing out campaign literature for eight hours in the hot sun in exchange for no money. The kind that causes you to attend campaign events not out of a sense of duty, or responsibility or to be a team player, but for the same reasons you would go to a movie or a sporting event. It’s not where you HAVE to be, it’s where you WANT to be.

Moreover, you find yourself in the company of some pretty gnarly types at a Ron Paul event. It’s a DMV-esque crowd; some of us haven’t bathed, some of us think the government blew up the World Trade Center with lasers from space, and some of us think that the world is run by a conspiracy involving lizards from space and the reanimated corpse of the Queen Mum. And it doesn’t matter. You wind up loving those guys, because when they look at a humble country doctor from East Texas, they see what you see. They hope what you hope. They yell what you yell.

And man alive, do you ever end up yelling.

http://thecrossedpond.com/?p=1270

Among other things the Sepher Yetzirah groups the Hebrew letters by a simple but effective phonetic system based on how and where in the mouth the sounds are formed: in the throat, against the palate, tongue on the of the mouth, tongue against the teeth and with the lips. The first letters of each group–Aleph, Gimel, Daleth, Zain, Beth [ אגדזב ]–are pronounced ah-ga-dah-zah-bah. If you say it as a word, even silently, you can feel the progression from within your throat out to and through your lips. It works like a subtle mouth yoga if you say it repeatedly.

ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah

It works best at a moderate pace, but you can play around with it, varying the speed. It gets more interesting if you ponder the symbolic meanings and association with the letters. Doing it backwards is an out-to-innish sort of thing. It doesn’t work that well with bah-zah-dah-ga-ah, but other combinations do.

If I figured right, given that there are four throat letters, four palate letters, five tongue to roof, five tongue to teeth and four lip letters, there are sixteen-hundred combinations. Quite enough to build a Golem if one goes in for that sort of thing. At any rate it is an interesting exercise in neurophysiology from the inside out.

I’m off Gian Mind in the morning… but it is mostly just to do yard work around my camp site for Drum ‘n Splash next week. I love summer.

These are various tools and techniques I’ve been using to twiddle around with Qabalistic manipulations.

I have discovered that you can produce Unicode Hebrew characters with OpenOffice by using the “Insert/Special Character” function on the menu bar. It brings up a keyboard template that has a “subset” drop down box. One of the subsets available with some font sets (I tend to use “Times New Roman) is “Basic Hebrew”. It will give you a template that allow you to select individual characters either singly or is sequence. When you have the one or ones you want and click on OK your selection will be inserted into the text. It’s a little tricky because it changes the text flow to right-to-left so when you try to edit the results the arrow keys work backwards and subsequent typing has an infuriating habit of going in front of rather than after what you previously typed. But only sometimes, usually when you don’t want it to. It gets easier with practice and you’ll have many opportunities to curse the universe and learn patience. MS Word will probably let you do the same thing, but I don’t have it so I can’t test it.

Once you have a string of Unicode Hebrew you can then copy and paste it into a couple of useful web sites I have found.

One of them is www.c2kb.com/gematria
This site allows you insert Hebrew text to generate the gematrical value and list other words with the same value. The results are also in Unicode Hebrew so you can then copy and paste them back into other documents or web sites. You can also input a number and it will list Hebrew words and phrases that correspond to it. Learning to manipulate the results here is also tricky because everything on the site is in Hebrew and the seemingly random text flow problems occur here as well. It is worth the effort though.

Another good site is milon.morfix.co.il
It allows you to paste Unicode Hebrew and generates English translations. You can also insert English words and get Hebrew translations. Those results are in pointed Hebrew which I currently don’t use. If you copy them back into the previous site you can then get the unpointed word. Yet more cursing and patience, but between the two sites you can get lots of good stuff and I suspect it is faster than trying to do the same with a bunch of big reference books, assuming you have access to them.

Another good site I’ve found is www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Tanach.xml
There you will find the Tenach, the Hebrew Bible, available in Unicode Hebrew. You have the option of pointed or unpointed and everything is cut and pasteable. Very nice. If you’re like me you can just sit and stare at it. It’s very pretty. If you go to www.cvkimball.com/Tanach/Genesis.DH.xml and select Chapter 1, Simplified Layout, Consonants Content with DH off, you can feel the power of אין (Ain, Nothingness) radiating from your monitor. At least I can. Your mileage may very. You can also download the entire site as zip files and install it locally for use off line. A great resource.

Another good one is www.blueletterbible.org
This is essentially a searchable Bible joined with Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. The learning curve is kind of high, but with a little effort you can find all the occurrences of a given word in the Tenach and learn a bit about Hebrew usage. Two minuses are you can’t use Unicode Hebrew and the site has a decidedly Christian perspective, but it is still very useful and the folks who put it together deserve to be commended for their efforts.

Using all these sites in conjunction has allowed me to begin working on my own ספר ספירה (Sepher Sephiroth: Book of Enumerations). As Israel Regardie said of the Sepher Sephiroth contained in “777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley,” “There should be nothing fixed or rigid.” He notes it “can be supplemented by the explorations of each student, depending on his own judgment and integrity.” As he put it: “And that is as it should be.” I am of the opinion that this supplementation is not really optional, but that it is an obligation of any who truly aspire to the Great Work.