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Unlocking the Observatory: Figures, Mirrors, and the Great Mirror

May 11, 2022 By in occult Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Where were we? We’re in the middle of discussing the obscure Telescope of Zoroaster (ZT), a manual of divination and spirituality originally published in French in 1796 (FZT) at the close of the French Revolution, which was later translated into German in 1797 (GZT) and then again in an abridged form as part of Johann Scheible’s 1846 Das Kloster (vol. 3, part II, chapter VII) (KZT), with Scheible’s work then translated into English in 2013 as released by Ouroboros Press (OZT).  Although OZT is how most people nowadays tend to encounter this system, I put out my own English translation of FZT out a bit ago as part of my research, and while that translation was just part of the work I’ve been up to, there’s so much more to review, consider, and discover when it comes to this fascinating form of divination.  Last time, we talked about the 112 (or 113) tiles used for divination, what each needs to have on it, and what each means in divination. If you need a refresher on what we talked about last time, go read the last post!

※ For those following along with their own copy of ZT (get yours here!), the relevant chapters from ZT are the “Second Step”, “Fourth Step”, “Seventh Step”, and “Third Supplement”.

Alright!  As of the last post, we now have the toolset required for divination; in Tarot terms, we’ve taken a good look at all the cards (so to speak) and know what they are, what they represent, and the like.  What comes next is how to make use of such tools, and just as Tarot cards get drawn and arranged into spreads, so too are the tiles of ZT drawn and arranged into…well, there’s a bit of terminology we have to go through and sort out first, I suppose, because ZT was trying to innovate its own terms in a time when such terms were still in the process of taking shape and becoming standardized.

  • Figure: A geometric shape composed of tiles, named after the shape that it forms.
  • Mirror: A whole figure that is used for divination.
  • Tablature: “The reasoned and just enunciation of what a Great Mirror gives to read”, i.e. the interpretation and reasoning of a divinatory session (especially, but not necessarily, making use of the “Great Mirror”—more on that term later).

In order to form a figure from tiles, one composes a figure by arranging successive tiles in an outward spiral, starting from one tile then proceeding counterclockwise, with the second tile always to the lower left of the first then proceeding outwards from there.  Tiles within figures are always densely-packed, meaning that there is no space between them and tiles are pushed together against their own edges and corners.  In this way, given the hexagonal geometry of the tiles, figures can be formed in shapes that are overall triangular, quadrangular, or hexangular.

There are four kinds of triangular figures that ZT allows:

  1. The 3-tile triangular figure, also called the “small triangle”.
  2. The 6-tile triangular figure, also called the “simple triangle” or “hollow triangle” (because its center is a meeting of three tiles at a vertex instead of a whole tile itself).
  3. The 10-tile triangular figure, also called the “full triangle” (because its center is a whole tile).
  4. The 15-tile triangular figure, also called the “large triangle” or “double triangle” (because its center is another whole triangular figure).

There are three kinds of quadrangular figures that ZT allows (which it calls “lozenges” or “diamonds”):

  1. The 4-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “small diamond” or the “hollow diamond”.
  2. The 9-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “medium diamond” or the “full diamond”.
  3. The 16-tile quadrangular figure, also called the “large diamond” or the “double diamond”.

There are three kinds of hexangular figures that ZT allows (which it also just calls “hexagons”):

  1. The 7-tile hexangular figure, also called the “small hexagon” or the “orbital hexagon” (because the outer six tiles form an orbit around the center tile).
  2. The 19-tile hexangular figure, also called the “medium hexagon” or the “double hexagon”.
  3. The 37-tile hexangular figure, also called the “large hexagon”, the “triple hexagon”, or “the totality” (because it includes all other possible figures that are permissible according to ZT).

ZT gives a lot of precedence and eminence to the large hexagon, because it forms the basis of many of the divinatory processes and cosmological models used in its “Great Cabala”.  Although that is one of the reasons the large hexagon is called “the totality”, the other is more in the sense of a limitation.  One might wonder why we might not make larger triangles or diamonds by adding in more tiles and continuing the spiral; ZT disallows this by saying that only the figures that can be contained within the large hexagon are permissible for use in divination.  Thus, one cannot make a triangular figure out of 21 tiles or a quadrangular figure out of 25 tiles because they wouldn’t be able to “fit” inside the large hexagon.

This leads to a distinction that ZT makes between what it calls “real figures” versus “ideal figures”:

Any isolated figure is called “real”; it therefore forms a picture, a mirror. Any included or contained figure is called “ideal”.

In other words, a whole figure that is composed from tiles and seen as a whole is considered “real”, while any subset of tiles within such a figure that could also be composed as a separate figure on its own is called “ideal”.  Let’s say that we draw three tiles and form a small triangle; this would be a real figure.  If we draw another 16 tiles and, with all the tiles put together, make a medium hexagon, then this is another real figure.  However, if we look at the bottom “pie slice” of that medium hexagon (tiles 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, and 11), and note how those tiles form a sort of sub-figure in the shape of a hollow triangle, then this sub-figure is an ideal figure, because it is not a figure on its own but is part of a larger figure that it is found within.  In that light, a real large hexagon contains all other possible figures as ideal figures within it; thus, although one might consider the large hexagon to be the goal of being built-up from smaller figures, ZT takes the opposite approach and says that the large hexagon is what “came first” in a sense, from which the smaller figures could be broken out.  Although this seems like an odd distinction to make, it forms the basis of a powerful interpretive technique later on, so it’s good to start paying attention to the possible ideal figures that might occur within a larger real figure.

When it comes to the structure of the large hexagon, it helps to consider it in terms of its general structure as having one center and three “belts” or “zones:

  1. Center: house 1 (also called the “focus”)
  2. Inner belt: houses 2 through 7
  3. Middle belt: houses 8 through 19
  4. Outer belt: houses 20 through 37 (also called the “frontier”)

With all that out of the way, we’re finally able to talk about ZT’s main approach to divination: the Great Mirror.  This is a large hexagon formed in the usual way, but each tile-position (what I’ll call “house”) in the Great Mirror has particular cosmological signification.  As a result, ZT also talks about the large hexagon as using the “astronomical aspect” or “sidereal aspect” (in contrast to the “temporal aspect” or “chronic aspect” which is another use of the large hexagon we’ll get to later).  In many ways, the Great Mirror is the ZT equivalent of the Celtic Cross spread in Tarot or the Grand Tableau in Lenormand.

The above diagram is a reproduction of ZT’s own Plate III, which includes a bit more information than what’s shown above but which we’ll get to in a bit:

The Great Mirror is generated the same way as with any large mirror: counting in an outwards counterclockwise spiral starting from the center and proceeding to the lower left.  The Great Mirror is broken down into four regions based on its overall structure:

  1. The center, which is the single house 1 in the middle of the Great Mirror.
  2. The solar belt, which consists of houses 2 through 7 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the inner belt), immediately around the center.  This belt is also called the “central belt”.
  3. The planetary belt, which consists of houses 8 through 19 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the middle belt), immediately around the solar belt.  This belt is also called the “sidereal belt”.
  4. The zodiacal belt, which consists of houses 20 through 37 (i.e. the Great Mirror use of the outer belt), immediately around the planetary belt.

Of special significance in the Great Mirror are houses 1, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19, because these are the houses given (respectively) to the Sun, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, the Moon, and Saturn.  All the other houses are said to be “in the orbit” of one or two planets; thus, when we look at Mars (the “inner corner” of the Great Mirror on the lower left), then we can say that house 9 is Mars itself; houses 21, 22, and 23 are houses exclusively in the orbit of Mars; house 10 is in the shared orbit of Mars and Venus, house 2 is in the shared orbit of Mars and the Sun, and house 8 is in the shared orbit of Mars and Saturn.  Note how, while all the non-solar planets have three houses that are in their own orbit exclusively, every house in the Sun’s orbit is shared with another planet.  Thus, if we consider a planet together with that planet’s orbit, then what we’re doing is effectively considering an “ideal small hexagon” within the larger Great Mirror.  This is why the other term for a “small hexagon” is “orbital hexagon”, because it represents a single planet in one of the focal points of the Great Mirror and the six houses that surround it.

And yes, we’re being bumped back down to seven planets here, not to nine planetary intelligences.  As opposed to a 9-fold system of numerology, we’re using a 7-fold system of geometry here, which necessitates that we talk about seven places of interest and not nine.  To that end, it would be inaccurate to say “house of Adamasto” or “orbit of Seleno” (rather “house of Mars” or “orbit of Moon” respectively), because the Great Mirror focuses on planets and not planetary intelligences, even if the intelligences have their seats in their own planets.  Thus, both Genhelia and Psykelia share the same orbit of the Sun, just as Seleno and Psykomena share the same orbit of the Moon.  (It gets a little more complicated later, but that’s later, not now.)

So, as you might have predicted, each house in the Great Mirror has its own set of meanings, its own contextual or semantic field, just as the twelve houses do in an astrological horoscope or each of the card positions in a Tarot spread.  When a tile is placed in one of these houses, the meaning of that tile is to be interpreted in the scope of the house it’s found in.  Thus, there are 37 such houses, each with their own meaning—but again, there’s a system behind this.  Recall how when we were talking about the Intelligences and Numbers how, although each Number has its own signification, the significations didn’t have to be memorized but rather “generated” based on their smaller digits?  A similar approach is used for the meanings of the individual houses of the Great Mirror.

Take a look at the layout of planets on the Great Mirror: we have the Sun in the Middle, Mars to the lower left, Venus to the lower right, Jupiter to the right, Mercury to the upper right, the Moon to the upper left, and Saturn to the left.  Each planet has its own orbit of six houses, but if you consider things at a grander scale, the large hexagram is a collection of seven orbital hexagrams in the same geometric arrangement as an orbital hexagram has seven houses, kinda like a fractal.  If we consider a smaller “fractal” of the Great Mirror…

…then we can overlay this on each orbit of the Great Mirror as a whole to get a sort of “main planet vs. sub-planet” arrangement.

Consider house 24.  This is a house in the orbit of Venus, but it’s to the lower-left of this planet, which is the “fractal direction” of Mars.  In this light, we might say that house 24 is the house of “Mars of Venus”, so even though this house fundamentally has something to do with Venus, it’s about the Martian aspects of Venus’ domain.  Thus, this house has the meaning of “intense or violent passions and senses”.  By taking the overall planetary layout of the Great Mirror and applying it on a smaller scale to an individual planet’s orbit, we can arrive at a specific context through pairwise planetary interactions—not unlike the how we paired together the tens-digit vs. ones-digit of the compound Numbers to arrive at a specific indication through pairwise interactions of the primitive Numbers.

What about the planetary houses themselves?  Well, they have the “fractal direction” of being in the center, which is the house of the Sun: thus, the “Sun of whatever-planet” house is just that planet itself; just as the font of all power in the solar system is the Sun, the font of all power within a given planet’s own orbit is that planet itself.  Thus, house 9 (the house of Mars itself) is given to “military status, valor or bravery”, and house 13 (the house of Jupiter) is given to “high wisdom, science”.  The system checks out pretty well in this case.

What about houses that are in two orbits at once?  Consider house 7: this is a house in the orbit of the Sun, but it’s to the left of the Sun, the “fractal direction” of Saturn.  Thus, house 7 is the house of “Saturn of the Sun”, so this house is about the Saturnine aspects of the Sun’s domain.  Thus, this house has the meanings of “advanced age, health”.   At the same time, house 2 is also in the orbit of Saturn, to the right of the planet and thus the “fractal direction” of Jupiter.  The indications of “advanced age and health” can be thought of as much as the Saturnine aspects of Saturn’s domain as it is the Jovian aspects of Saturn’s domain, in this regard.  Likewise, if we consider house 10, the house between the positions of Mars and Venus, this house has the meaning of “romantic adventures” (again, “romantic” in the sense of being chivalrous and novel-worthy events).  From the perspective of Mars, house 10 is to Mars’ right in the “fractal direction” of Jupiter (so “Jupiter of Mars”), but at the same time, it’s also to Venus’ left in the “fractal direction” of Saturn (so “Saturn of Venus”).  Sure, it might be about “romantic adventures”, but the different perspectives here can shine a different light on that same topic.

So, in that light, here’s what ZT gives as meanings for the 37 houses of the Great Mirror, along with what the planetary considerations are of each house.

  1. Grandeur, power. (Sun of Sun)
  2. Strength, triumph, glory. (Mars of Sun, Mercury of Mars)
  3. Beauty, happy love. (Venus of Sun, Moon of Venus)
  4. Genius, great reputation. (Jupiter of Sun, Saturn of Jupiter)
  5. Treasures, gains of all kinds. (Mercury of Sun, Mars of Mercury)
  6. Domestic prosperity, inheritance. (Moon of Sun, Venus of Moon)
  7. Advanced age, health. (Saturn of Sun, Jupiter of Saturn)
  8. Severe bodily injury. (Moon of Mars, Venus of Saturn)
  9. Military status, valor or bravery. (Sun of Mars)
  10. Romantic adventures. (Jupiter of Mars, Saturn of Venus)
  11. Good fortune. (Sun of Venus)
  12. Marriage, pure feelings. (Mercury of Venus, Mars of Jupiter)
  13. High wisdom, science. (Sun of Jupiter)
  14. Magistracies or judiciaries, equity and fairness. (Moon of Jupiter, Venus of Mercury)
  15. Finance, trading or business. (Sun of Mercury)
  16. Maladministration or bad management. (Saturn of Mercury, Jupiter of Moon)
  17. Family, sedentary or domestic life. (Sun of Moon)
  18. Melancholy, weak health. (Mars of Moon, Mercury of Saturn)
  19. Envy, sorrows, setbacks or reversals of fortune. (Sun of Saturn)
  20. Birth, candor, inaction. (Mars of Saturn)
  21. Infancy, playfulness or mischief. (Saturn of Mars)
  22. Puberty, turbulence, quarrels or squabbles. (Mars of Mars)
  23. Adolescence, sympathy. (Venus of Mars)
  24. Intense or violent passions and senses. (Mars of Venus)
  25. Debauchery, infidelity. (Venus of Venus)
  26. Tenacious passions, constancy. (Jupiter of Venus)
  27. Celibacy, marital fidelity. (Venus of Jupiter)
  28. Moral perfection, maturity. (Jupiter of Jupiter)
  29. Prudence or caution, good philosophy. (Mercury of Jupiter)
  30. Bad faith, decline. (Jupiter of Mercury)
  31. Illicit and perilous fortunes. (Mercury of Mercury)
  32. Travel, hectic life. (Moon of Mercury)
  33. Inconstancy, wasted or lost time. (Mercury of Moon)
  34. Ancestors, old age. (Moon of Moon)
  35. Apathy, waning of fortune. (Saturn of Moon)
  36. Infirmity, indigence. (Moon of Saturn)
  37. Ruin, death. (Saturn of Saturn)

The list of meanings above makes sense, given the structure of the Great Mirror and these “fractal directions” that allow for different planets to overlap their meanings.  According to ZT’s own admission, however, the table given above is intentionally limited and limiting:

Be extremely careful to not take the Table that follows for a fixed indication of the significations of each of the 37 boxes from which the Great Mirror is composed. This Table is only a vehicle by which the Candidate should orient themselves, especially in the approaches which have as their goal only the ordinary career of human life.* However, if the Candidate has retained well all that we have established as precepts up until this point, then they will soon regard this Table as of little use, since there is not a single piece of the Great Mirror which does not modify, either for weal or for woe, the box assigned to it—and here we say “modify”, not “distort”.

* It will be seen, for example, that this table would furnish nothing to whoever would occupy themselves with the future destinies of empires, nations, &c.

What ZT is saying is that, even though it gives this table of contextual and semantic meanings for each of the 37 houses, it’s meant for illustrative purposes only as regards an individual human’s life, and as such, the indications above aren’t really valid for whole groups of people, the governments of nations and state, companies or industries, and the like—because the indications of table above were generated using that “sub-planet of main-planet” approach only for the scope of an individual human.  ZT, given that it is “only a key and not a treatise”, does not give tables for other scopes, but it gives us the means to come up with such tables using the same underlying method as this one.

For instance, say we’re in a battle with some army, and I want to know something about the tactics and strategy I should engage with in order to emerge victorious.  Understanding the difference of “strategy” (overall battle plan) and “tactics” (individual steps + logistics), I would want to turn to houses 2 and 5.  If we consider the table above, these two houses have the respective meanings of “strength/triumph/glory” and “treasures/gains of all kinds”, which…yeah, kinda work, I guess?  But if we look at the planetary considerations, house 2 is both “Mars of the Sun” as well as “Mercury of Mars” (the planning and direction of battle, i.e. strategy), and house 5 is both “Mercury of the Sun” as well as “Mars of Mercury” (the attacks and drives of planning and plotting, i.e. tactics).  By doing this, we can expand the indications of each house in the Great Mirror from the scant description given in ZT by understanding the overall method and then extrapolating from it as necessary and as befits a given situation we might be faced with.

Personally?  I think this is a really ingenious and elegant system of dividing up a situation into its many different aspects based on particular considerations.  Just like with the compound Numbers, a few basic principles are used on general ideas to produce a wide variety of specific ones.  Of course, just like with the compound Numbers, this is a lot to take in all at once, or so it’d seem—but the trick behind it is that we don’t need to take it in all at once, but rather just need to understand the method behind the madness.  While the table as given above is great for readings at the level of the individual human being, we yet have a method to expand on that to any level or field or context.  That said, we’re not done talking about the Great Mirror yet, because there are a few more considerations we have to work through, first.

First, when it comes to drawing tiles to compose the Great Mirror, the process works much as we would expect with Tarot cards or runes: individual tiles are drawn from the Urn without replacement (i.e. a tile can only be drawn a maximum of once), and it is placed in the first available house in the Great Mirror, not skipping to any later house nor replacing the tile in any earlier house.  While this makes obvious sense to us modern folk (you don’t take the first Tarot card you draw for a Celtic Cross spread and put it anywhere else but the first position, nor do you take any later card and swap it out with a card in an earlier position), I assume that ZT makes this point explicit because of how new the idea might have been and to reduce any chances of people “making their own fate” by fiddling with the order tiles come out of the Urn and thus how the Great Mirror ought to be composed.

As one reads through ZT, it establishes the rule that, even though there are 112 (or 113) tiles in the whole set used for divination, no more than 37 tiles are to be used in any given reading, because the large hexagram (i.e. the Great Mirror) has only 37 houses.  However, that is not technically entirely true, because ZT also has the rule that the two Principles are never used in a Great Mirror.  It’s not that they’re separated out from the Urn and can’t be drawn, but if one or both are drawn in the course of composing a Great Mirror, then they’re placed outside it entirely:

Sisamoro (the Good Principle) is placed at the zenith of the Great Mirror, at the top vertex of an equilateral triangle with the leftmost and rightmost corners of the Great Mirror.  Senamira, likewise, is placed at the nadir of the Great Mirror, below it in the same sort of arrangement.  ZT is, perhaps unsurprisingly, unclear on the exact signification of the Principles if they should appear in a Great Mirror, just that it makes such a divination super notable:

The presence of a Principle, whether one or both, imparts to the Great Mirror superlative properties, the development of which is not the responsibility of a Key. The Pure Spirit then must speak, or the student remains more embarrassed than enlightened by the intervention of these extreme influences; it is even worse when there is conflict [i.e. when both Principles appear]. On the contrary, the true Cabalist is never better served than by those effective extractions where Fate majestically reveals its most admirable decrees.

The only concrete advice that ZT gives us is this, along with what to note when considering when an Intelligence is drawn and put into the Great Mirror as well:

  1. Let us observe at which junction in the laying out of pieces for a Great Mirror where a Principle or Spirit appears.
  2. Let us pay great attention to the quality of two numbers by which an Intelligence, drawn from the Urn, follows and precedes, and also how, in the Great Mirror, such an Intelligence is surrounded, and whether it forms a full orbit in its placement or a truncated one.

That latter point is especially interesting when it comes to the Intellligences.  If an Intelligence is drawn, then it has a meaning just like any Number tile, but it also forms a sort of incidental planetary house of its own, and thus the houses that surround it form a sort of accidental orbit—but if such an Intelligence appears in the outer belt of the Great Mirror, such an orbit will necessarily be “truncated” and, thus, incomplete.  If such an accidental orbit is a full/complete one, then that might give an extra planetary consideration to each of the houses according to its “fractal directions”; if such an orbit is a truncated/incomplete one, then not all planets would get to be represented in such a way.  It’s a really neat idea to play with.

Astute readers will note that I’ve avoided talking about the inclusion of the signs of the Zodiac in the Great Mirror.  For the most part, the signs of the Zodiac don’t matter all that much for the overall indications of the houses.  However—and we’ll get to this more in a later post—the signs of the Zodiac are used by ZT to relate to the various stages of life that one undergoes, starting with Aries as birth and ending with Pisces as death.  Each of the sides of the zodiacal belt relate to one of the “six divisions of life” according to ZT (childhood, youth, adulthood, middle age, old age, senility), and so the signs of the Zodiac within them correspond to particular aspects of that growth (which is why house 20, given to Aries, also has “birth” in its indications, 21 “infancy”, 22 “puberty”, and so forth).  Beyond that, however, ZT doesn’t really do a whole lot with the Zodiac here, although that doesn’t say that one couldn’t feasibly find some way to work it into the system (even if ZT might discourage doing so, given its anti-astrology bias).

One last topic to round out this discussion on the Great Mirror.  Although ZT says that the planets are all equal and aren’t ranked among themselves in the planetary belt of the Great Mirror (the only planet with primacy being the Sun in the center), ZT also notes that it doesn’t have an account for why the planets are positioned on the Great Mirror the way they are: it notes that it does not appear to have anything necessarily astronomical about it nor anything that is particular astrological, either, just that it’s something that (it claims) is “of such antiquity sunk deepest into the darkness of the past; sub judice lis est [the case is still before the judge]”.  Admittedly, I’m not sure where ZT might have gotten this planetary arrangement from, either.  When it comes to hexagonal arrangements of the planets, one might be more inclined to recall the planetary hexagram…

…which is, of course, a development from the qabbalistic Tree of Life, like that of Athanasius Kircher in his Œdipus Ægyptiacus from 1652, and later used for any number of Hermetic or Western occultists who make use of the so-called “Kircher Tree”:

Of course, given how distant ZT’s own “Great Cabala” is from anything properly seen in kabbala of any sort, to say nothing of how much it would caustically say about established traditions anyway, I somehow doubt that this would have been an influence here along these lines.  However, if we compare the qabbalistic planetary hexagram with the hexagram formed by the Great Mirror, we see the same planetary triangles (Saturn-Mercury-Venus, Mars-Jupiter-Moon), just with a different rotation/reflection applied.

That being said, wherever the pattern of planets here came from, there is a logic and order in it.  If we proceed through pairs of the planets counterclockwise around the Great Mirror, we see two kinds of patterns arising of similar pairs and dissimilar pairs:

  1. Similar pairs arise between Venus-Jupiter (the benefics), Mercury-Moon (the neutrals), and Saturn-Mars (the malefics).  This has the result of making the horizontal rows of the Great Mirror form pairs as well: the middle row (Saturn-Jupiter) represents the greater planets (the greater malefic and benefic), the lower row (Mars-Venus) the lesser planets (the lesser malefic and benefic), and the upper row (Moon-Mercury) the neutral small planets.
  2. Dissimilar pairs arise between Mars-Venus (male/female), Jupiter-Mercury (king/servant or philosopher/sophist), and Moon-Saturn (creator/destroyer or youth/elder).  This suggests an awareness of the opposition of particular zodiac signs and extending that to the planets, e.g. how Mars rules Aries and Scorpio, which are in opposition to Venus-ruled Libra and Taurus.

As of this writing, I’m not familiar with any source that arranges the planets in the way ZT does; while ZT definitely has a logic that suggests a good awareness of basic astrological principles and zodiacal correspondences, I’m not sure if that’s enough to trace it to any particular origin, especially when such arrangements have usually been more magical than astrological.  This is another of those unanswered questions I have, and it may be that this arrangement is unique to ZT.  If you have any notion of where such an arrangement might have an antecedent or any similar leads for further research, dear reader, or if you spy any other insights or patterns in this arrangement, do let me know in the comments!

Mercury as Abyss, Island, and Bridge in the Tetractys

September 4, 2014 By in mathesis, occult, philosophy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Last time we discussed how we might traverse the Tetractys of Life in pathworking through two sets of paths, collectively termed schemata:

  • The Gnosis Schema consists of 12 paths that link every sphaira on the Tetractys in a pattern not unlike the Mitsubishi logo, looping around through three systems of four spheres each, passing through Mercury multiple times.
  • The Agnosis Schema consists of 12 paths that link all but the Mercury, Monad, Fire, and Earth sphaira together in two cycles, the hexagon and hexagram paths around the Mercury sphaira.

The big difference between these schemata is that the Gnosis Schema allows one to see into the deepest and highest reaches of the cosmos, as well as the Source of the cosmos itself, for theurgical and henosistic purposes, allowing us the choice of reincarnation as we desire until we reach our final henosis with the Monad.  The Agnosis Schema, however, keeps us trapped in a Hermetic samsara of sorts, always flitting around like bats in a cave around real Life and yet just out of reach of real Truth.  In other words, as long as we’re trapped in the Agnosis Schema, we’re not making progress to the real ends of the cosmos where the real treasure lies.  We need to make that schematic leap from Agnosis to Gnosis, and as we discussed before, it all starts with Mercury.

alchemical_planetary_tetractys_paths

The question is, though, how do we make that leap?  Mercury is at the center of the Tetractys of Life and is connected to all the sphairai but the most extreme ones, that of the Monad, Fire, and Earth.  However, it’s only in the Gnosis Schema that we can get from any of these “middling” sphairai (Darkness, Salt, Water, Air, Sulfur, and Light) to Mercury.  The Agnosis Schema has these middling sphairai all connected to each other but not to Mercury, Monad, Fire, or Earth.  As long as we’re on the Agnosis Schema, we’re barred from attaining access to those spheres, and if we can’t even get to Mercury which is the closest and most easily accessible of them all, how can we even consider being able to get to the Monad?

Thus comes in an idea that’s also present in the Tree of Life, though I’ve seen it far more in Hermetic qabbalah than Jewish kabbalah.  That idea is that of the Veils, though there are two sets in qabbalah, one of two and one of three.  The former set is the one I’m talking about: the Veils of Paroketh and of the Abyss.  In the Tree of Life, the Veil of Paroketh separate the sephiroth from Tiphareth and up from Netzach and below.  The Veil of the Abyss (or, more commonly, the Abyss) separates the sephiroth of Binah and above from Chesed and below, often with the Abyss itself represented by the “false” sephirah (se-faux-rah?) of Da`ath.  The former veil of Paroketh is illusory; there is no real separation between the personal world (represented by the lower four sephiroth) and the interpersonal world (represented by the higher sephiroth), except that of our own making.  By tearing down the veil of our own making, or at least by temporarily parting it, we gain access to higher spiritual truths.  As long as we continue thinking that the world must follow the rules we conceive to be law, and as long as we refuse to accept the universe and the cosmos on its own terms, the veil remains firmly in place.  Leave all that behind, and the veil is easily parted.  The comic series Promethea by Alan Moore gives this scene in bloody detail: on the Kircher Tree, the path that links Tiphareth with Netzach (transcending the Veil) is associated with the letter Nun, given to Scorpio and Tarot trump XIII, Death.  In order to attain new life in the Sun, the protagonists must die, literally rent apart and completely dissected.  It was all an illusion, however, but a painful one all the same to dismember.  By dismembering our preconceptions, we remember the truth of the world.

The Abyss, on the other hand, is much more of a problem on the Tree of Life.  To keep it very simple and brief, almost to the point of a lie, the Abyss is the division of the mundane and the spiritual; it’s the gulf between what the world should be and the world that is damned to be, the mirror between what is and what Is that cannot normally be transcended.  It’s the purpose of the magician or theurgist to transcend this gulf and attain divine understanding, wisdom, and finally the crown of all that exists and not-exists.  It’s a dangerous thing, especially since the Lightning Bolt Path on the Kircher Tree doesn’t actually have a path where it should between Chesed and Binah.  All the same, the Abyss must be transcended and crossed over, and it’s no easy thing.  Some people never do and get lost in it, while others spend a long time in dark places only to come out a completely different person (which is quite the goal of the whole thing).  Going back to Promethea, as opposed to a few pages where Promethea and Barbara crossed the veil of Paroketh, a whole issue was devoted to their crossing the Abyss, and it wasn’t a pleasant or rational part of their journey.

A similar case exists with making the jump from the Agnosis to the Gnosis Schemas.  While we’re stuck in our cycle of mindless and uncontrolled rebirth, we lack the ability to achieve true life, power, and knowledge.  At any stage on the Agnosis Schema, we have the option of going to the sphaira of Mercury or to the nearest extreme sphaira (the one of the same system which belongs to the one one is already in, e.g. if one is in the sphaira of Salt, the nearest extreme sphaira is that of Earth).  However, making the jump from the Agnosis Schema to Mercury on the Gnosis Schema is most important, even though one could feasibly start their path at any point on the Tetractys.  Mercury is the most preferable starting point, because Mercury is a figure of balance and allows one to start with equal footing and a clean spiritual slate; further, given the road-opening, guiding, and quickening abilities of this sphaira, starting with Mercury is arguably the best choice and continuing along the Gnosis Schema paths as normal.

Still, the process of getting from any of the middling sphairai to Mercury is, itself, crossing an abyss of sorts.  It’s not because there’s no path that exists (because Mercury is connected to all the middling spheres), but because the types of path are so divergent from the normal roles of Mercury.  The Agnosis Schema seeks to circumvent Mercury however it can, while the Gnosis Schema leads right to Mercury time and again.  The first abyss we must cross in order to get to Mercury from any of the middling sphairai is that of desire: we must first seek out Mercury, we must first seek the path to take before we even take it.  Once there, we have suddenly jumped to the Gnosis Schema.  As one of the prayers in my gnostic work goes, “in order for us to understand the gnosis, we must first seek a firm foundation”; Mercury provides us with that foundation.  We must first seek our guide, our protector, our initiator to assist us in our real work.  Finding that guide and opening the door is just the beginning to it all; it might be that your guide is Hermes, your Holy Guardian Angel, a yidam, or some other tutelary spirit, but something that guides you along the Gnosis Schema as it applies to you is just about crucial to starting the Work.

But, once we get to Mercury, what then?  If we stay where we are, we’ve crossed the abyss only to be stranded on an island.  If we forget that, hey, we have a cosmos to explore (and then some), reveling in our initiation and fact that we can go anywhere without actually doing so, we end up back on the Agnosis Schema.  But wait!  There are no paths connecting the sphaira of Mercury to anything on the Agnosis Schema, so we end up trapped there.  We end up in a one-node loop; rather than running around in circles, we end up twisting in the wind.  Being trapped in Mercury is always dangerous, not just after our first initiation into the Gnosis Schema, but because we risk this every time we return to Mercury on the Gnosis Schema.

  • We go through the Hot System and we return to Mercury, thrilled that we’ve overcome our obstacles on that part of the cosmos, yet end up burning up too much with joy and think we’ve accomplished and are in charge of everything.  Only by recognizing our inability to act fully within the cosmos and our ultimate nature as finite, non-omniscient, and manipulatable creatures and allowing ourselves to be acted upon can we free ourselves from the Agnostic sphaira of Mercury.
  • We go through the Cold System and we return to Mercury, feeling confident that we understand how things are affected by others in the cosmos, and end up passively waiting for true action to happen to ourselves when we need to accomplish it ourselves.  Only by realizing that we still need to play an active role in the cosmos do we free ourselves from the Agnostic sphaira of Mercury.
  • We go through the Cosmic System and we return to Mercury, catching a glimpse of the Source and really grokking important truths about creation as a whole.  After this, we end up with what Fr. Rufus Opus elegantly calls “insufferableprickitis”, or “Moses Off The Mount Syndrome”.  After all, when Moses came down from the Mount and jamming with the Lord, his face was so radiant and glowing from the divine interaction that he wore a veil to mask himself.  Without wearing the veil (and this isn’t like the veils we discussed above), we come across as a holier-than-thou (even if it’s true) douchebag who thinks they know everything because they had one brush with God.  In this state of pride, we think we’ve done everything there is to do and are confident that we’ve attained the Great Work, when all we’ve done is made a loop around the cosmos once.  We end up stuck at the Agnostic sphaira of Mercury until we realize that there’s still so much more, that no finite amount of practice can truly equate infinite gnosis.

All that being said, while getting to Mercury can be a bitch of an abyss in and of itself, and while visiting Mercury has its own dangers that turn it into a deserted island isolated from the rest of the cosmos, when approached properly and respectfully, Mercury becomes a bridge from something into its complement.  That’s Mercury’s role, after all; to balance things out between opposites.  Mercury is placed between Sulfur and Salt, Light and Water, and Darkness and Air.  We continue on our path of the Gnostic Schema by traversing Mercury and transforming ourselves from one thing into its opposite.  Mercury is not only our beginning but our constant transformation; it is only in the extreme sphairai of the Monad, Earth, and Fire do we have no choice but to continue along our path of Gnosis and keep going in one direction or another without immediate recourse to Mercury.  Mercury, in a sense, is our “home away from home”, our place of respite between systems as well as our nexus of transformation between systems.

We can fall into the Agnosis Schema at any stage of the Gnosis Schema if we linger too long or if we lose our way; with Mercury as our guide leading us away from and towards our cyclical destination, that shouldn’t ideally pose a problem, but we humans (and, for that matter, all entities) are constantly fighting against what we should do, even if it’s a subtle and instinctual reaction.  If we stray from our path even a little bit, we lose our way; if this happens at the Monad or the sphairai of Fire, Earth, or Mercury, then we end up stranded until we loosen ourselves up and make ourselves capable of further progress, or until we strengthen our resolve and continue along the path of transformation.

It’s not that we fall by fate from Gnosis into Agnosis or vice versa, but it’s a choice we make, even if we’re unaware we’re consciously making it and the repercussions of doing so.  Tying the sphaira of Mercury back to its mythological counterpart, Hermes is the god of guides and guide of gods, men, spirits, souls, and heroes.  If we choose to progress along the Gnosis Schema to accomplish the divine imperative given to us, then ouranic (heavenly) Hermes will lead us on; if we choose to linger or abandon that quest, then chthonic (underworld) Hermes will lead us to Styx and leave us there until we dig ourselves out again.  It’s dangerous falling back into Agnosis, especially if we’re at one of the extreme spheres, since we may not be able to find our way back.  Of course, the rules change a bit once we achieve henosis and union with the Monad, where we can freely choose to leave the Tetractys completely and enjoin what becomes of us with the Infinite and Simple, at which point we’ve completed our path and ended up exactly where we need, and no longer need a guide to continue our path.  That said, that’s the endgame, and chances are we’re nowhere near that stage of spiritual evolution yet.  If you were, then I hope your divine prerogative includes something more than reading one magician’s ramblings on the Internet.

Tetractys and Magic

August 15, 2014 By in mathesis, occult, philosophy, whining Tags: , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Alright, alright, I can hear some of my readers mutter in the distance.  “Yes, polyphanes, we know you like the Tetractys.  We get it.  You’re on a huge Pythagorean kick lately.  You’ve been on this kick for over a month and a half now.  Yes, it’s awesome.  But what about magic?  What about conjurations and talismans and shit?  When are you going to talk about those things again?”  Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten.  Yes, I admit I’ve been taken with the Tetractys and this new field of occult mathesis as of late, but to be fair, it’s a huge new thing for me that I didn’t expect to develop.  I honestly feel like I should be spending more time on it, more meditation, more scrying, since it’s all so new and, thus, unexplored.  And, to make proper use of it, I feel like more exploration is definitely needed.  Otherwise I’d just be stumbling around with a wand in the dark, and I like to do my research before jumping into anything.

Though, I also have to wonder: what substantially changes if I use the Tetractys of Life instead of the Tree of Life as my core magical framework?  The best answer I have for that is, well, not terribly much.  I mean, the only real kabbalistic thing I use in my work is the use of particular godnames to conjure the planetary and elemental angels under; maybe I rap several times on the altar to open up a ritual, the number corresponding to the spirit’s sephirah; I might occasionally use a number square to charge something upon.  But, really, that’s about it.  The planets, stars, and elements would exist regardless whether I used the Tree, the Tetractys, or neither, as they have for countless other cultures and magicians before me.

celestial_spheres

The heavens still remain in their usual order, which is probably one thing that neither the Tetractys nor the Tree of Life really affect.  I mean, Saturn is still the next heaven in line under that of the stars, and Jupiter is the next one under Saturn.  In this scheme, there are still ten heavens, with the first one being that of God (Monad) and the last one being that of the Earth (Decad).  Thus, the sphere of the fixed stars is still recognized as the Dyad (2), that of Saturn as the Triad (3), that of Jupiter as the Tetrad (4), and so forth until that of the Moon as the Ennead (9).  The sephiroth are not the planets, and the planets are not the sephiroth; the Tree of Life assimilated the planets into its structure as a later development of the Tree itself, corresponding to the planets without identifying with them.  The planets are still a representation of number, and numeric representations of the planets are still important tools independent of whether they’re placed on the Tetractys or the Tree.  In that light, the magic number squares of the planets can still be used as important tools, and the use of numbers to associate with the planets as well.

In this view, perhaps my idea-in-passing from a ways ago about using a Greek version of the magic number squares could still be used.  After all, the planets are a different realization of number and are associated with the sephiroth, but are not themselves the sephiroth; the number squares are also representations of number in the same way as the planets are.  The magic squares are not kabbalistic in and of themselves in the same way we’d reckon kabbalah; they’re a tool used to understand the kabbalah, but they are not themselves kabbalah.  The only real change to be made here would be to create a set of Greek number squares and find a new set of spirit names to make sigils with; that idea is one I’ll have to pursue for sure.  The hangup I had with that, to be honest, was the fact that I couldn’t easily assign a simple 1-to-10 numbering to each of the dots in the Tetractys.  It’s easier to see the planets or other forces as distinct groups working in tandem with each other on different levels in a conceptual way apart from the nested-spheres view.  The planets are number, too, and with a bit of clever rearrangement can be put into a tetractys of their own.  While I like my arrangement of the planets onto the Tetractys, it’s surely not the only way to do so, though I have good reasons for going with the model I have.

Say some reader says “well, I think the number squares should stick to kabbalah, so we should use another model of numerical mediation”.  Okay, good!  I like making new models and tools.  However, what could be used in their stead?  The regular polygons of a particular number, say?  Well, if you exclude the Monad (which is a simple point) and the Dyad (which is an infinite line or a circle, neither of which are polygons), we run into an issue.  The “true” Greek way of developing a polygon is to use a compass and straightedge, neither of which are marked for degree or length.  While the triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, and decagon can be constructed by a compass and straightedge, the heptagon and enneagon cannot.  They can be approximated, sure, but these numbers cannot be made into regular polygons by compass and straightedge alone, similar to the ancient Greek geometrical problems of squaring the circle or doubling the cube.  It’d be like trying to make a magic number square of rank 2, which cannot be done.  While their ideal forms might be good for meditation, it’d be hard to apply those forms in reality or construction of forms.  This itself can be considered a mystery worthy of meditation, but in terms of applying or constructing numbers, I’d prefer number squares myself if the rank of the square is going to be the same as the number of sides of the polygon.

Beyond numbers, what else might have to change?  Colors?  I’ve gotten good enough results with the colors as used in the Golden Dawn Queen and King scales, so I may as well stick to those (though seeing what else the spheres themselves can show me is useful).  Names of spirits?  Obviously, since Greek names and spelling follow radically different rules than Hebrew, but again, those would just have to be obtained through scrying and numerological research.  The associations of other tools, symbols, and the like with the planets is pretty firmly established and I see no reason to change all those.  So, if by and large the major tools of my work aren’t going to change by switching over to the Tetractys from the Tree, what really changes?

alchemical_planetary_tetractys_paths

The set of paths I have on the Tetractys really don’t work for the Tree of Life; if you try to take the standard ten sephiroth and apply the same paths I have on here, you end up with something resembling metaphysical spaghetti.  While the paths on the Tetractys make sense to me, they cannot be separated from the Tetractys.  The Tetractys offers a radically new meditation and theurgic model of manifestation and understanding how the Divine interacts with all that exists.  That’s the big thing that the mathetic Tetractys provides: a modern Neoplatonic/Neopythagorean model of emanation and divine flow from high to low and back up again.  Unlike the Tree of Life with its neatly-defined start and end points that are so diametrically opposed to each other (due to the Jewish conception of the mortal world being so far removed from the divine), the Tetractys shows how everything is involved in a balanced way in the evolution of everything.  The Monad exists as much as it does down here as it does up there, after all; there’s no need of a God to “recede” from itself to allow for creation within-yet-apart from the rest of its own infinity.  There’s no clean start point for us to use the Tetractys, because not only are we composed of all the forces in the Tetractys, but all of the Tetractys is within us equally and directly.  It might make good sense for us to start with the four elements that compose our bodies and senses of self, but we could easily start with ourselves as a unified whole, or a Monad unto ourselves, and see how we quickly devolve/evolve into a Dyad between ourselves and the rest of the cosmos.

What does the Tetractys really represent?  If the Tetractys is fully present within each of ourselves, then that means we can start anywhere and go anywhere on our personal Tetractyes; we can start at Earth and work our way up through the elements, then the reagents, then the principles, all the way up to the Monad and back down to Earth; we can start at Fire and sublimate ourselves to Nothingness and back down to pure matter once more.  The Tetractys of Life is less about state than it is about process, less about what we are and more about how we come to be in every passing moment.  It’s the connections that we should study, I claim, since that’s where the real beauty and action happens.  Once we understand how we work internally, then we can start expanding outwards and relating ourselves to the rest of the cosmos.  I mean, if each of us is an individual Tetractys in the world, then we’re each our own monads, each taking part in an even larger Tetractys that connects and binds us all together.  Once we can understand the grander connections, we can scale back down and back up in a neverending Tetractys fractal, understanding how the cosmos as a whole is based on the same principles we are, and how we can use the same processes with different materia at different levels.  After all, ten monads does not a decad make; it’s the connections and processes between them that link them together into an ordering, a kosmos of its own.

While the Tree of Life in Jewish kabbalah was originally intended to be used as a mediation model to indicate the interaction of the Creator with Creation, and eventually picked up associations and correspondences to further those meditations, Hermeticists and occultists generally took qabbalah into their own hands as a model of magic and system of correspondences as a cosmological framework.  I don’t consider this an abuse of kabbalah, but I do consider it (at worst) a misuse of the system generally, especially when many people don’t have the required background to fully explore kabbalah as it’s meant to be studied and used.  In the same way, I don’t intend for this Tetractys of Life to be used as a system of correspondences but, again, as a meditative and theurgic blueprint for understanding how things come to be.  Tables of correspondence exist aplenty; good meditative models are harder to come by.

Magically, the use of the letters on the Tetractys’ paths deserves exploration.  For instance, the path between Venus/Water and Jupiter/Air is connected by Nu/Scorpio.  And, while the exact correspondences between the signs of the Zodiac and alchemy differ from tradition to tradition, the most common association I’ve seen with Scorpio is the process of Separation, where a mixture of two or more substances into distinct groups, usually with one of the components of the original mixture enriched in one of its resulting groups.  Air and Water are closely related, both being moist and easily blended with other substances, but it’s by their separation that we can see warm air rising and cool water falling, as in the Poemander’s description of the creation of the world.  Alchemically, we can understand separation in this sense of refining a particular lump of mass within a mixture, but we can also see it in other occult ways, too, such as whittling down extraneous forces to get to the heart of a particular matter or spirit.  We know that the path of Nu is a “lower register” in the Tetrad as the single path is directly above it in the Dyad is, or the path of Nu compared with the path of Xi, which we know is associated with Water, that which permits change and flow.  While Air connects and diffuses itself, Water flows and changes things, cutting certain areas off from others or whisking things away from one place to another.  Water is a form of separation, as separation is a representation of Water.

So now that I’ve thought about the place of the Tetractys of Life in magic a bit more, it doesn’t really have as big an effect on my magical practice as I thought it might have (or worried it might have).  Kabbalah was famous for crossing religions and traditions and incorporating more and more tools into its own toolbox; why not let mathesis do the same a bit, especially from those parts that themselves came from Neoplatonism or Pythagoreanism?  My day to day magical practice and religious offerings are going to be maintained, and the colors and materials of my talismans won’t change much if at all.  I will need to make versions of the magic squares using Greek letters and go through the planets and start getting new spirit names (as well as to figure out why there’s a “spirit of spirits” and “intelligence of intelligences” for the Moon and the like from the spirits themselves), but that’s something that we could all make do with, after all.

Oh, and names of God?  I haven’t forgotten about those, either.  Making use of my names of God from my first foray into making a Greek kabbalah, let’s see what we have.  First, recall that the Tetractys is composed of four ranks: a Monad, Dyad, Triad, and Tetrad.  I temporarily propose these names of God for these ranks, all based on Revelation 1:8, which contains all these names of God (attributes, really, but eh):

  1. ho Kyrios, “the Lord”
  2. hē Arkhē kai to Telos, “the First and the Last”
  3. ho Ēn kai ho Ōn kai ho Erkhomenos, “He who Was and Is and Is to Come”.
  4. ho Pantokratōr, “the All-Ruler”

All are God, of course, and the overall monadic name could easily be God (ho Theos), the Aeon (ho Aiōn), the Whole (to Holon), and so forth.  Personally, I’m getting into the habit of using Aiōn or Iaō as my primary go-to names of God, though my old Stoic inclinations always keeps the Whole nearby in my mind.  So, in conjurations, I’ll test how the use of these specific names work, though I’ll also shoot for other names to see whether other appellations or descriptors of God work better, or whether there are more secret names of God to be used.  Who knows?  As this Tetractys model of magic develops, maybe these names’ll be obsoleted in favor of others, or another method can be used entirely.

Emanation in Qabbalah versus Mathesis

August 3, 2014 By in mathesis, occult, philosophy, whining Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

So, in the meantime of developing the Tetractys of Life and starting to use more Pythagorean and classical Neoplatonic ideas in my studies of the occult, I think I’ve finally found a word that accurately captures what I want to name this system.  The broader system in Hermeticism and Western occulture is qabbalah (or Jewish kabbalah or Christian cabala, to use different spellings to indicate different traditions).  All these words have the same root in Hebrew: קַבָּלָה‎, meaning “tradition” or “reception”.  I’ve been using a Greek transcription of this word, καμπαλα or “kampala”, to describe my Pythagorean-Neoplatonic system, but this is still basically the same word, and I’m developing it to a point where it doesn’t really fit into the qabbalistic scheme anymore.  After thinking about the thing I’m developing and going through some Greek dictionaries, I think I’ve found a word to name this new system of occult thought: μαθησις, or “mathēsis”, which means “the act of learning” or “obtaining knowledge”.  This word is related to our word “mathematic“, which itself comes from Greek meaning “scientific, disposed to learn”, itself from Greek μαθημα, or “that which is learnt”.  While this Tetractys of Life and everything are things to be learned, sure, they’re all tools to learn more.  Hence, the broader system I want to call is appropriately mathēsis, a term that’s been used before in the pre-modern and modern Western world by philosophers such as Descartes and Leibniz to describe a hypothetical universal science modeled on mathematics.  And, well, since Pythagoras established that everything is number and (in our modern sense) mathematical, this isn’t too bad a term.  To that end, I’ve gone through and labeled all the Towards a Greek Kabbalah posts (which are their own blog project in their own right) under the category of mathesis.

Alright, so, labels and terms are out of the way.  I want to talk about emanation in mathēsis and how it compares to qabbalah, because there’s a critical difference between the two that really should be understood.  While I originally set out to develop a qabbalah-like system based on Greek mathematical and grammatomantic principles that essentially shared the same ideas, I ended up with a much different beast of a cosmology than I had anticipated.  For instance, consider the idea of emanationism, where successively more complex forms of existence and reality develop or flow forth both within and from a higher and more primitive source.  This is distinct from creationism, where things are made as they are without successive steps by an external creator, and from materialism, where things come about from other things without a metaphysical origin.  The idea of emanationism is replete throughout many forms of the occult, not least in both Pythagorean, Neoplatonic, and mystic Jewish thought.  It can be seen in both the kabbalistic Tree of Life as well as in this new mathetic Tetractys of Life, but not in the same way.

For instance, consider the Tree of Life in qabbalah.  There are ten sephiroth, each assigned a particular number from 1 to 10 and descending from the top to the bottom.  Each sephirah represents a different attribute or aspect of the one God, or a different way God expresses his will.  There exists a particular set of paths, collectively termed the Lightning Bolt Path, that hits each sphere in sequence from Kether to Chokmah to Binah all the way down to Malkuth.  This describes the emanation of the cosmos from God in successive forms, ultimately culminating in our existence down here on Earth.  This also ties in (or perhaps founded?) the notion of an Idea of God descending through the many spheres of Heaven, hitting each planet in turn, building up more form and density until it hit our lowest Earth-plane, finally becoming a manifest Thing.  There is one Source and one Goal, clearly marked out with clearly defined stages in between.

The Tetractys of Life also describes emanation, but not in the same way.  Like the Tree of Life, there are ten spheres or units, each representing an aspect of creation in a different manner.  Like the Tree of Life, there is one Monad at the top, the undifferentiated and divinely simple source of all things.  Like the Tree of Life, the Tetractys of Life describes an emanatory or development of creation from the top down.  However, that’s where the similarities end.  Instead of having each sphere on the Tetractys represent a different emanation or stage in existence, the Tetractys shows emanation based on the rank of the Tetractys; instead of going One-Two-Three-…-Ten, it goes Monad-Dyad-Triad-Tetrad.  In other words, there are only four stages of emanation in the Tetractys compared to the ten in the Tree.  The emanatory dyadic principles of Light and Dark  occur simultaneously and as two parts of a whole, not in a sequence.  They are different, but they are in a kind of super-alchemical marriage as One, since they both come from One.  Likewise, the emanatory triadic reagents of Salt, Mercury, and Sulfur occur simultaneously as a result of the marriage between Light and Dark, as do the emanatory tetradic substances of the four elements from the harmony of the three reagents.  And, from these four substances, all of material creation is made.

Why is this significant?  Because we have different notions of a “starting point” when working with the Tree and with the Tetractys.  With the Tree, we can all safely agree that we’re down here in the tenth sephirah of Malkuth, and it’s our job to rise through the sephiroth in the reverse order compared to how we got here.  With the Tetractys, however, there is no single starting point; our starting point is below the Tetractys, in the unnumbered and implied pentad of all the things that exist, the symbol of which is the pentagram and which represents the Divine Proportion (φ).  In that sense, our starting point is below the Tetrad working within as a Pentad, itself not represented on the Tetractys.  The Tetractys is the source of life but is not itself life in the same sense that the Monad is the source of existence but is itself neither existence nor nonexistence.  We must first understand how the Pentad comes forth from the Tetrad, then the Tetrad from the Triad, then so forth back to the Monad.

tetractys_pentad

So, rather than thinking of each of the ten spheres in the Tetractys as a separate stage of emanation, it’s more proper to understand mathetic emanation as occurring in four stages (divine simplicity, differentiation, system, embodiment) compared to the qabbalistic ten.  And, within each stage, there are different forces at work that represent how that emanation of the cosmos takes place.  While the Tetractys of Life illustrates the different types of forces within each rank of the Tetractys, this is only an ideal representation, much as the Bohr representation of atoms is convenient to understand ideal spatial relationships between an atom’s nucleus and electrons, but in reality the electrons move in indeterminate electron clouds where either the speed or location of a subatomic particle may be known but not both at the same time.  In other words, Light and Dark take place at the same time and interchangeably within the Dyad, as do the three reagents within the Triad, as do the four elements within the Tetrad.  We may find it easy to focus on one element, reagent, or principle at the same time, but this is a hyperfocused and ultimately false distinction that isn’t true on a fundamental level.  That said, on a fundamental level, everything is already part of One and is One, much as the distinction between the sephiroth in qabbalah is only apparent from the point of view of the Created and not of the Creator.

So why am I clarifying the notion of emanation when studying mathesis in using the Tetractys of Life?  Because it requires a different sort of understanding of the cosmos than what we’re used to thinking based on the Tree of Life in qabbalah, which is arguably the starting point for much of Western occultism today.  Why does this matter?  Because I ran into the practical problem of trying to assign numbers from 1 to 10 to each of the spheres in the Tetractys.  I wanted to link the spheres on the Tetractys to the sephiroth in some way, or find some sort of numerical sequence for the forces in the Tetractys, so I could link these spheres to other types of magical technology and techniques.  For instance, consider magic squares, the qameas of the planets.  If the planet Saturn is corresponded to the sephirah of Binah, and Binah’s number in the order of emanation is three, then three is the qabbalistic number of Saturn.  Thus, the magic square or qamea of Saturn is a 3 × 3 grid of numbers from 1 to 9 (or 3²), upon which we can plot qabbalistic names and sigils of various spirits and concepts related to the sphere of Saturn.  I personally like the use of magic squares in magic, and I wanted to find a particular way to develop a set of magic squares to each of the forces in the Tetractys of Life.  However, after a good amount of reflection and late-night thinking, I couldn’t find a way to suitably number the spheres on the Tetractys outside their non-sequential lambdoma numbering.  Because I can’t (yet?) think of a way to sequentially number the spheres in the Tetractys, this makes it cut off from systems such as qabbalah and much of qabbalah-influenced magical tech; at the same time, trying to force on a numbering system like this seems ill-advised, like trying to square the circle when the two cannot be done except at a higher level.

In this case, if we have a collection of points that themselves are unordered, are we up Styx creek without a paddle?  Not at all.  The use of algebra and arithmetic weren’t the preferred means of mathematics back in Pythagorean thought, but rather geometry.  And, understanding the four ranks of the Tetractys to refer to geometric forms, we have a 0-dimensional figure as the Monad (a single point), a 1-dimensional figure as the Dyad (two points form a line), a 2-dimensional figure as the Triad (three points form a plane or a triangle), and a 3-dimensional figure as the Tetrad (four points form a solid or a tetrahedron).  Geometry, then, might be a better route to go to understand the various forces represented within each rank of the Tetractys than number squares or knocking on an altar a particular number of times.  The Tetractys is slowly but surely showing me a new way to understand the cosmos and how to apply myself within it and to it both theurgically and thaumaturgically; what new tech it’ll lead me to, I don’t yet know, but I’m excited to find out.