Now that its finished, I recall what it was that inspired me to start the Barbelith Quaballa threads in the first place. A conception of the different components of what is understood to be "evil", objective states that make up a subjective label. And because the quaballa is wired deep into my head, I broke it down along the sephera. Not intentionally at first, but having realized I did made it easier to organize and make sense of. I worked a bit of it into the qlippoth entries, but here's the idea on its own, and the numbers they would fall on:
1 Hate - The desire for the unmanifestation of another. Wishing another to not exist. Not the anger to kill, though that is often involved, but also the indifference of denial of recognition.
2 Cruelty - The desire to cause pain or damage to another. Not the destruction of hate, but the suffering of a broken existence. Twisting, warping, defaceing, causing deliberate imperfection and malfunction.
3 Dominance - To control another. To dominate is to deny one's will, supplanted with your own. It is to act without respect for the sacredness of individuality within a sentient creature, to reduce them to a machine or a tool, dehumanizing and objectifying.
4 Weakness - If one is not strong, one will allow their will to be lost to another, or to impulse. Terrible things have been done throughout history by men who claim to have only followed orders. To deny one's own will is to deny their own claim to divinity, and be no more than a tool themselves, as a beast or a machine.
5 Frustration - Friction within causing heat, Frustration is the root of anger and rage, like a fire out of control. The more energy we put towards an unreachable goal, the more likely that energy is to spill over into rage and senseless action. For Rage is acting in the Fire alone without the rational mind to steer our course.
6 Fear - Fear is the recognition that one is not Of You. Its root and purpose is Avoidance. It is seperation, the enemy of Love.
7 Indifference - Insensitivity, solipsism, lack of emotion or consideration for others. When one is cold, one does not consider others. One does not act from deliberate cruelty, but in blinding one's self to the feelings of others, one becomes capible of acts of Evil.
8 Lies - To willfully mislead or hide Truth. We are creatures of information. To feed one lies is to poison their soul, to seek dominance over them or their harm. To lie is to challenge What Is.
9 Desire - The root of all suffering, according to Buddhists. While not strictly evil itself, Desire is cause for one to fall to unrightous acts and thoughts. The sins of Lust, Gluttony, and Envy are all but the misuse of Desire.
10 Pride - Ever the primary of the sins, Pride appears more subtily than most give credit for. The simplest act of selfishness is itself born of Pride. For Pride in the greater sense is putting one's own self before God. In the lesser, putting one's self before another. In order for one to commit any act of Evil, one must first put themselves before the one they act against, and thus embrace Pride.
These aren't strictly qlippoth, some are imbalances. I didn't go about it looking for inversions of the spheres, but identifying the components of Evil and its causes, and then organizing them where they seemed to fall best. Though considering the tree from these does give some insights into the spheres, I think.
The first three (supernals), for example, are outward expressions. The next three are inward conditions, mirroring the outward ones above. The lower 4 are not strictly Evil, but are things which cause the states above when taken out of balance. They are the roots, just as the lower 4 elements of the tree are the components of the personality which give rise to the higher states above.
This has been cooking around in my head for about the past year, this is finally attempting to put it into text. I'm curious what y'all make of it. |
