THE MYSTIC PATH - PATH 6: TIPHARETH
8:01 PM
Me, my beloved, and a collection of crazy souls are currently engaged in an initiatory Pathworking with
the Qabalah Tree of Life. You can read what that is 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. Further research on your own is highly recommended.
It is important to know these are brief notes. Further research on your own is highly recommended.
The last ten paths are actually not Paths per se, but represent the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life consists primarily of ten spheres (with an invisible 11th sphere) called Sephiroth. Gareth Knight defines the Sephiroth as the "stages in the emanations of the Spirit of God or man in its progress from noumenal existence to its building of a physical vehicle in the phenomenal world." (A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, Vol. 1, p. 24) Imagine the Tree of Life as a process chart, each Sephirah a phase which establishes itself as its own sphere of intelligence, but then precedes the force of movement to the next phase. It starts from the top with from the Unmanifest and ends at the bottom, where Matter has manifested fully to the end result of evolution. We are starting at the bottom and following the path of Creation back to its Source.
Tiphareth is the sixth Sephirah, known as the "Mediating Intelligence" from the Sepher Yetzirah. Tiphareth means, and is, Beauty: the Divine Plan coming into fruition as it should be. It is the central Sephirah which holds all the others around it in balance, the axis mundi. Taken into context of the three Triads on the Tree of Life, it is the apex of the Ethical Triad where the machinations of the Universe build together the "rules" or "ideas" of what form will be in the Manifest before it is moved to the Astral Triad below to be, actually, formed. It is where Above and Below meet.
There are many symbols and associations attributed to Tiphareth, one of them being the symbol of Christ as the Son, which is why the Princes of the Tarot (along with the Sixes) are the primary correlation, as well as the planetary body of our own Sun. Kether represents the Father, and Yesod being the Holy Spirit, therefore we see how the Bible can actually be a vital Qabalistic text in understanding the Tree, but especially Tiphareth and its symbology.
Dion Fortune provides probably the most succinct analysis of Tiphareth's purpose in her magnum opus, The Mystical Qabalah. Not only does she attribute the sacrificial gods (such as the Christ and Osiris) to this Sephirah, but she also calls it the "Giver of Illumination" (Dionysus). "Illumination," she says, "consists in the introduction of the mind to a higher mode of consciousness than that which is built up out of sensory experience. In illumination the mind changes gear, as it were." (p. 180) This illumination, according to the entire aim of the Great Work as described within the Golden Dawn system, is delivered by means of a ray of Light whose source really comes from Tiphareth, not actually from Kether (the Source) as most may assume.
As initiates, this must be understood, because illumination is so often misunderstood. This is why absolute devotion to the Great Work is essential. "Unless there are ideas in our minds which are illuminated by this higher mode of consciousness, our minds are merely overwhelmed, and the darkness is more intense to our eyes after that blinding experience of a high mode of consciousness than it was before." (Fortune, p.180) If we do not ready ourselves sufficiently, slowly, patiently, humbly, then this flash of illumination is nothing more than a blinding light of which will leave us with more mystery and darkness than when we first went in to the mystical experience.
But, Dion rarely gives a warning without a remedy . . . this is why not just the Christ as adult is important to this Sephirah but most especially the Christ as Child: " . . . we must accept the fact that the Child-Christ does not spring like Minerva, full-armed from the head of the God-Father, but starts as a small thing, humbly laid among the beasts and not even housed in the inn with the humans. The first glimpses of mystical experience must perforce be very limited because we have not had time to build up through experience a body of images and ideas that shall serve to represent them." (p.180)
These images and ideas can only be compiled into the conscious mind through time, through study, patience, and discipline. We must always remember the lessons of the Child-Christ in Tiphareth, who takes to grow and evolve, in order to understand the illumination waiting for us. The Christ story, the Christmas story especially, can teach us a lot. For we must always start anew, everyday, from the place of the Fool, the beginner. "Mystics are very apt," according to Dion, "to make the mistake of thinking that they are following the Star to the place of the Sermon on the Mount, not to the Manger at Bethlehem, the birth-place." (p.180-81)
Following this, a developed Initiate on this Sephirah will then henceforth be capable of engaging in that culmination of the Great Work as prescribed by Abramelin the Mage: the Knowledge and Conversation with one's Holy Guardian Angel. The Holy Guardian Angel is that Higher Self, that place of the Individuality that resides in Tiphareth, our place of eternal incarnation, whereas the Personality manifests through the lowers Sephiroth and changes from incarnation to incarnation. Following this path of illumination, refining one's higher self, the Knowledge and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel is "the prime characteristic of this higher mode of mentation that it consists neither in voices nor visions, but is pure consciousness; it is an intensification of awareness, and from this quickening of the mind comes a peculiar power of insight and penetration which is of the nature of hyper-developed intuition. The higher consciousness is never psychic, but always intuitive, containing no sensory imagery. It is this absence of sensory imagery which tells the experienced initiate that he is on the level of the higher consciousness." (Fortune, p.182) In other words, any mystical experience still operating out of a tactile of visionary state is still operating in the Astral Triad, rather than the Ethical Triad where mystical experience is more of, as Dion stated, a "hyper-developed intuition."
GOD NAME: Jehovah Aloah va Daath. “God Made Manifest in the Sphere of
Mind.”
ARCHANGEL: Rapheal, Healing of God.
COLOR:
Gold, yellow, or pink.
SYMBOL:
Calvary Cross, Rose Cross, the cube.
VIRTUE:
Devotion to the Great Work.
TAROT ATTRIBUTION: The four Sixes; the four Princes.
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