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Barbelith Quaballa: 6 - Tipharet

15:25 / 05.11.03

Translation: Beauty.

At the center of the tree, Tipharet represents the Sun and the principle around which all the other spheres revolve: Love. Love in this case is unconditional divine love, selfless and without limit. The nature of love is to put another before yourself, to act in a selfless manner. But not in the way of Chesed where one is filled with the will of the Other, but in combination with Chesed and Gebura so that the self chooses to give. The ego is laid down by its own will, choosing its nature. In this way, love comes unobstructed from the self, for the self chooses to put another before its own needs. Love under will.

The other major aspect of Tipharet is the death/rebirth cycle, as represented by divinities such as Christ, Osiris, Mithras, and Baldur. Each is linked to the sun, which holds a constant cycle of death and return each day and year, and which is attributed to this sphere. But the point of ego dissolution required to exist in a state of selfless divine love is also one of death and rebirth. In the death of the Ego, the divine self is born, not dead but transformed to a higher state.

Here also are the 4 elements of the spheres below combined into the 5th transpersonal element of spirit. This is the highest point the mortal existance can reach in an unelightened state, and the lowest point the purity of the divine can descend before being hidden by matter. It is the mid point between Man and God, where both exist at once in balance.

Tipharet marks the boundry between animal and divine intelligence. An animal can not wilfully give against its nature, but an awakened soul can having evolved beyond animal intelligence to self aware and self directed sentience. It is thus the point of the soul itself, that which marks us as unique from other animals, and allows access to the transpersonal and transcendent realms above.

Qlippoth: Pride, selfishness. The soul chooses to remain in darkness, unevolved and unenlightened. Selfishness is the opposite of the nature of love. The shell of the animal and physical nature that is not filled with divine essence remains of a beastial nature.

Barbelith Quaballa - Index

17:26 / 05.11.03

Aaaa! You gotta slow down cusm. I mean, you and everybody are probably plugging away thinking all's well, but I still was waiting for some free time to emerge for me to drop some info back on Binah.

Tiphareth is when everyone is like a dog. All Dogs Go To Heaven.

19:49 / 05.11.03

There's no rush, these threads will be here for a long time. Get to them when you can, I'm just getting them out there to start from.

Unconditional Love

09:09 / 08.12.04

this degredation of animality, is there any other way of saying what your saying without using this terminology, all nature is divinity, there arent levels of divinity, like some roleplaying or computer game, humans are nature, and too imply that selfishness and pride are beastial and are somehow less than human is in some respects deciding to beat upon your nature. the logical extension of such philosophies is environmental disaster, there is no love of sophia, mater, in such awareness.

this subtle loathing of matter tends to appear in alot of monotheistic based mysticism, do you not think its about time we learnt to accept our nature and the beauty of our nature?

09:45 / 08.12.04

do you not think its about time we learnt to accept our nature and the beauty of our nature?

Dunno whether this is implicit in the Quabala itself or just an add-on from the Victorian filter we tend to see the western mystery trad through...

The whole point of the Tree of Life, as far as I'm concerned, is that it is a single object. The sephiroth are descriptions of the same thing perceived from different angles, Kether is not "higher" or "more divine" than Malkuth. They are the same thing. Malkuth is just the denser, material end of a spectrum. The Sephiroth are perhaps best considered as cross sections of a tree, like the rings you see in a tree trunk, rather than points on a ladder.

Unconditional Love

13:38 / 08.12.04

i think it is an implicit attitude based on western conceptions of time, because time is percieved as a linear progression at the level of accumulating years and then at a cyclic level as you think of the hours of the day old fashioned clock based on the passing of seasons.

many models tend to based on the linear progression as western scientific illuminism comes into play, as it fits well into evolutionary theory, the very idea of progress and living life as an ascension towards something, wether that be social status, or the accumulation of wealth.

the seasonal and cyclic tend to be characteristics of more agrarian culture and natural cycles to emphasise the dependency on nature for survival, perhaps.

the cross section of a tree is a great metaphor and works well when considering the four worlds, its very easy to compartmentalise (is that a word) with cabalah, far too easy. perhaps i could try with an emphasis on the lightening streak or serpent and the movement rather than as static paths of sephira.

17:21 / 09.12.04

My experience of tiphareth is that it's the eye of the hurricane. in that place, you feel utterly still, with the whole universe whirling madly around you as it's axis.

the 'beauty' seems to lie in the realisation that all your perceptions of the world revolve around you as their source. your world reflects your beauty just as the world of the godhead reflects the beauty of the godhead. in that sense, godhead and human reflect each other. I suspect that mirroring effect is what creates the phenomenon of the holy guardian angel, and related effects. it is how god sees you, and vice versa.

18:00 / 17.12.04

There is a difference between animal intelligence and human intelligence. An animal is reactive, mechanical. Animal intelligence is automatic, programmed response to stimuli. What is consider Human is acting of liberated free will. If the tree is seen as levels of consciousness, as is the Victorian perspective, then animal intelligence is in Malchuth and the liberated Will in Kether.

Tipharet then, is these two types of response in perfect balance. One acts in harmony with the world, with the right balance of automatic response and directed free will to be most effective.

The Golden Dawn introduced the idea of the Sepheroth as grades of initiation, giving the idea that Kether is the ultimate goal of personal evolution. But I suspect it is the state in Tipharet that is most represenative of Enlightenment.