The Mystic Path - Path 24
12:54 PM
We are currently engaged in an almost two-year initiatory Pathworking with The Qabalah Tree of Life. You can read what that's all about here. In the meantime, I have been documenting our work as we explore the Paths.
It is important to know these are brief notes. A true understanding of each Path begs a vital understanding of the Sephiroth connecting them. Further research on your own is highly recommended.
It is important to know these are brief notes. A true understanding of each Path begs a vital understanding of the Sephiroth connecting them. Further research on your own is highly recommended.
We have completed Path 25, now for Path 24 .....
"Life is the dream, Death is the dreamer, they belong to each other like lovers, and like lovers they are parted for a while and come together again at last. The title of the [Path] is, 'Child of the Great Transformers.' The Transformers here are Life and Death, the Child is Man!" (Dolores Ashcroft Nowicki, The Shining Paths, p.89)
This is the final path of the three-part Dark Night of the Soul. The previous two Paths have perfectly set up the Initiate's Work ahead. "The task of the student on this path is to let go of the old and yield to that which is unfamiliar, trusting in the love of the divine." (Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, p. 330)
Gareth Knight recounts Dion Fortune's seven types of Death that are listed in her seminal work The Cosmic Doctrine. They are:
First Death: two separate forces ceasing to exist independently, but becoming a single, entirely new manifestation.
Second Death: the evolution of a lower form to a higher form.
Third Death: death of the physical body, synonymous with Path 32. "When one dies physically, one is treading this Path." (Knight, p. 90)
Fourth Death: sleep, which is a lesser form of the Third Death.
Fifth Death: death of the Personality, the process of this, the 24th Path.
Sixth Death: trance, which is an induced sleep, akin to the Fourth Death.
Seventh Death: Illumination; a death of the Personality where "the Personality lives within the physical world, so that all the Paths below Tiphareth are still functional but controlled from the higher instead of the lower levels, by the Individuality." (Knight, p.93)
In this Path we are concerned with the Fifth Death, in that it will eventually lead to the Seventh Death. "The aim is to elicit one's true Spiritual Will and to have the courage to act by it, and one's true Spiritual Will cannot possibly be of a selfish or mere 'trying to be different' nature." (Knight, p.97) This is why death is a necessity in order for the higher orders of consciousness to work appropriately; the lower animal mind will distort whatever information is coming in through Tipherath . . . so the animal mind (the Personality) must die.
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| "Into the Shadows" by J.R. Slattum |
The Hebrew letter of this Path is Nun, the Fish (obviously representative of water) and astrologically by Scorpio, ruled by Mars (a planet of fiery energy). So these two energies together could be shown to mimic a First Death, the blending of fire and water to make steam (the essence of Spirit). "In alchemy, this card explains the idea of putrefaction, the technical name given by its adepts to the series of chemical changes which develops the final form of life from the original latent seed in the Orphic egg." (Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, p.99)
Where the Abyss is the gulf between the Supernal states of the Godhood and the Ethical Triad (the higher spiritual centers of man) so we are also experiencing a similar gulf here with Paths 26, 25, and 24, separating the Individuality and the Personality. "The Gulf is something that has to be leaped, and leaped alone, stripped of all hindering burdens, in faith [...] It is thus one of the crisis points of spiritual progress because of the great temptation to turn back from the unknown to the apparent safety of known things, and to succumb to this temptation is to lose all the fruits of past endeavour." (Knight, p.98-99)
A helpful image to meditate on is that of Nun, the Fish, and that it is mirroring Path 28 - Tzaddi, the Fish-hook (The Star Trump). Is the hook catching the fish or is the fish swallowing the hook (Jonah and the Whale)?
"It may be noted that there is no reference to birth throughout the symbolism of the Trumps and this is because birth is death and death is birth, each being opposing sides of the same coin." (Knight, p. 89) This path is a renewal, a regeneration into a new form of being. This is the goal of Initiation. All gods and myths centered in Tiphareth are gods and myths that have died to become reborn: Christ, Osiris, etc.
"Death is as natural as life, and indeed it is seen by initiates as a higher birth, with life on earth as the real death. If the thirty-second path is trodden at physical death, then perhaps we could call the twenty-fourth a practice run." (Ashcroft-Nowicki, p.91)
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