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I don't know if he's a Tibetan shaman, but I'd be very dissapointed if he hasn't acquired a small monkey familiar wearing a fez, and even more dissapointed if he isn't wearing a tuxedo and pith helmet, as promised, for the duration of his journey.
Brilliant definition of The Abyss.
I think its an integral aspect of our experience of the world. In terms of the Tree of Life, it's the broken Sephiroth, the one that's somehow got a bit fucked up, so that the Supernals (Kether, Chokmah, Binah) are not properly connected to the Sephiroth below the Abyss. Quite literally a fall from grace. The Gnostic idea of God descending into matter and getting stuck there. The Biblical fall from Eden. Our personal "Abyss-like" events that we experience fairly regularly in our lives from time to time, are the way in which our consciousness processes this diconnection from the source.
Those "Abyss" experiences are just our means of traversing this broken gulf or damaged link in our reality. If Daath was a proper functioning Sephiroth then we might conceivably exist in a perpetual Eden-like state of grace, directly plugged into the pure emanations coming down out of Kether.
But that's not what it's like. Taking up the speculative larval reality metaphor for a moment, the existance of a broken Sephiroth might be necessary in order for a reality such as ours to grow to full maturity. A bit like cutting the umbilical chord so the baby can strike out on its own. Or on the other hand, it could all be some terrible mistake! Our reality could just have gotten a bit fucked up on delivery, and we're stuck in this situation because of some huge Kafka-esque adminsitration error.
Either way, it doesn't make a great deal of difference. The only means of negotiating the gap between our conception of reality and the Supernals (and by extention, the ultimate Divine Source, or God) is via the broken Sephiroth Daath. Which means integrating and processing this Abyss-type material within our lives as it arises. That's why crossing the Abyss is often described as an initiatory experience, and why successful crossings often result in magicians upping their game. Because that's what's happening. You're bridging the unpleasant gap that seperates you from The Supernals. It's not a linear process. And the diagramatic form of the Tree of Life tends to be a bit misleading in that sense. You have to cross the Abyss constantly, again and again through the course of a life, but each time you accomplish this you create a bit more of an access path to the Source. You build another thread by which the Divine light of Kether can rush into your reality more fluidly and effectively, without having to circumnavigate a buggered Sephiroth that reduces it to a trickle.
In this sense, the 'Great Work' might be considered a process of repairing the damaged part of the Tree and opening a makeshift channel through the Abyss that functions as a link to Kether. Astral toilet roll and phantom sticky-back plastic. Please mind the gap. If we accept the notion that our reality is a single organism, then this process is being played out on a massive scale within the lives of everyone and everything that exists or has ever existed. It also implies that repairing the damaged link and getting our reality properly connected up to the higher Sephiroth is vitally important to the continued health of our reality, and the various terrible problems in our world are at some level a symptom of this broken reality that needs fixing. Horrors from the Abyss.
There are various technologies that have been developed to fix that gap, ranging from direct methods such as the degree system of the A.'.A.'., to technologies developed by the magicians and shamans of cultures throughout the world. Who are effectively the pioneers of Abyss-crossing. This is important, but its just the far edge of things, the guys out on the sharp end. Ultimately, everyone is engaged in a process of negotiating the Abyss within their lives. Everyone wants to get connected to the source. Everyone at some level remembers what Eden was like and wants to get back. When you first take really good E, you leap the Abyss and you're there - where every soul is beautiful and the music sounds like the music of the spheres.
To my mind, the role of the Shaman or Doc is about helping those around you traverse the Abyss, in whatever small ways you can. Which can be as formal or informal as is necessary in a given situation. If you can do a bit of magic to help someone find a job when they desperately need one, at some level you are assisting their passage through a fragment of the Abyss. Even if you're not actually a magician at all, thinking in these general terms and functioning in this way within your life and in your interactions with other people is contributing to this speculative healing process of the damaged Sephiroth. And if there's any aspect of truth behind any of this, it really needs to be more than a handful of dodgy geezer in bedsits facilitating this process.
Hope some of that made sense. |
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