I'm sitting in my hot tub - or, rather, soaking blissfully - underneath the cold Fall night spread across the sky like a blanket of jewels. It's geting cold in Santa Cruz this time of year...or at least cold by California standards. The air is in the mid 40's, just cold enough to draw out the hot water in ascending whirls of steam, thinning as they drift heavenward. Their dance is highlit by the soft glow of the white candle on the dark wood deck beside the tub.
I gaze languidly through the haze at the flickering of the flame, dancing with life. The air brings oxygen, the invisible reactive element so fiery to most yet vital to earthly existence. This is Chokmah, the active principle, unformed but driven ever forward into union with life, to feed organic metabolism and then tear down in entropic oxidation.
The wax of the candle moves between solid and liquid, the template of form and the movement toward it's realization. Without the fire the candle is formed but inert. It is an idea without manifestation, a singular structure stuck in time. The candle is fuel in potentia, waiting for the spark to bring it to life.
The flame is the enkindled union of the two, joined in mutual annihilation, it is Daath, the reason for the candle as well as it's demise. As it melts the singular form is destroyed freeing the wax to flow into new forms, to exist in time below the Abyss. The price for this release is the inevitable destruction of the wax under the oxidation of Chokmah, and the bittersweet dance of life, death, and rebirth. This union, this interplay and feedback between active and passive, is the engine of Creation, the furnace of existence. Force and Form. The light cast off by it's interplay divides through the prism of Daath, casting a rainbow down the Tree into Creation.
Next to the candle stands a glass of red wine, rapidly chilling in the night air, water condensing on the mirrored surface. Dancing in the frosted glass is the reflection of the candle, stretched and bent around the convex surface, it is simulacrum, an image of the thing itself. This is Malkuth, the kingdom, reflected through the mirror of Tipareth, the Light of Beauty. If I focus my gaze solely on this reflection, it appears that I'm looking at the candle itself. Such is existence a beautiful reflection of the Absolute, entirely real yet entirely false - A trick of the light, as it were. But beyond the glass swells the crimson vintage, the blood of life, the Soul of Bacchus. It fights the chill of the darkness and reddens the image cast onto the transparent surface in which it is contained. This is the key back to the candle, to the source of the image, the backdoor to heaven. In every pole is the seed of it's opposite.
Without the glass, the candle burns only for itself, ever unrealized. Without the fire, the reflection disappears into night, and the Absolute is just that.
Drink of the Soul and the World and its Creator will be One. |
