Theos-Talk Archives (November 1997 Message tl00249)

Dr. A.M.Bain wrote:
> 

> My thoughts are that you may have found a useful analogy derived from
> Kabbalistic considerations, but that the analogy is not itself something
> that can be defined as "Kabbalah."

Thank you for your observations. You are completely correct in that the
whole of my findings are a discovery of the reflection of Kabbalistic
"structure only" in natural geometry. I discovered a correlation between
the Decalogue and ordered pairs of platonic solids during the course of
meditating on "order" by way of drawing related geometric symbols in a
blank sketch book. I've been pursuing this meditation as time has
allowed for many years, having begun in 1986. There really are
overwhelming numbers of correspondences between the "Tree" and the
system of platonic solids that I have found. Although, I am in no way a
Kabbalist, and I greatly appreciate your assistance in clarifying the
limits to which Kabbalah can be bent.

The "useful" quality of the whole is that the Tree of Life and the
Decalogue can be seen as observations of a single natural structure.
This is a very important concept in that many have remarked that Judaism
in particular has divorced man from nature. However, there are some
problematical things to consider regarding the "natural" nature of this
finding. The most profound is that the natural structure which is
"thought" to reflect the structure of "Kabbalah" can be visualized,
which makes for "a" contemplation of a theosophy(Kabbalah) held to be
transcendant, making the whole part of a mental realm. 

Well, my best thoughts about this are that what we have in geometry is
really a transformation of Kabbalah (which we can regard as remaining
separate) to a model of anthroposophy. Of course in Christianity the
Gospels state that through Deliverance(Jesus) G-d has granted the power
to men to become Sons of G-d, but how literally has this been taken in
history or how literally might we take this. Suppose for a moment that
my observations and assumptions are well founded and Kabbalah does
indeed have such an offspring. Where might one go from here? The trouble
would be in the area of aligning the whole of understanding with the
microcosm, which may fall short of any big picture. Does the macrocosm
sustain the microcosm, or will someone take the view that it is really a
man or mankind that makes for cosmos. There is of course the complete
compromise where they are sustaining each other, but suppose there is a
practical side to the model. 

Frances Yates has written about "memory castles", and has described
views from both traditional and Hermetic perspectives. Classical
scholars were seeking a means to memorize vast amounts of information in
order to deliver lectures at length on the complexity and breadth the
their fields of study. At the same time Yates tells that magicians
"apparently" used these memory structures to do theurgic works. The
whole pursuit and use of "memory castles" came to a very abrupt end when
the scholars declared them to be purely occult in nature, and according
to Yates the study of mnemonics was never further investigated with the
result that all knowledge of mnemonic systems known today have been
handed down from that time. Perhaps I am digressing to much, anyway, I
have contemplated the use of the "forms" as a means of achieving two
quite divergent results one from the classical approach and one of
course Hermetic. I was completely successful in classical application,
but while my Hermetic experiment had a dramatic effect, and I was able
to repeat the result of the experiment, the effect was not exactly what
was intended... my current assumtion is that actually practicing magic
is tampering with something not to be taken lightly.

Well, I may not pursue this any futher in the magical sense, but there
may be some wordsmithing that might come of it.

until next time....

Vincent

-- 

vincent@dmv.com

http://home.dmv.com/~vincent/