Thursday, November 15, 2012

Metabolism III - Qabalah


The ToL can be overlaid on the structures outlined in Metabolism I and II to create a 'vertical' ToL one that most practitioners of the WMT are familiar with in that it overlaps with the body, and a 'horizontal' ToL which overlaps with the way in which consciousness processes moments.  These two ToLs are interelated as we must remember that the body is a map of the mind, and the mind is a map of the body.  I will outline the way in which these ToLs operate and interact.



YESOD

The 'vertical' ToL is fairly well understood - Malkuth is positioned at the feet, Yesod at the genitalia, Hod and Netzach at the top of the hips (and more importantly the kidneys and adrenal glands), Tifereth at the solar plexus (often misattributed to the heart), Gevurah and Chesed around the heart (again more importantly the Thymus gland), Daat at the throat (and thyroid/parathyroid), Chokmah/Binah at the pineal (serotonin/melatonin) and Kether with the pituitary.  As a student of Biochemistry and Genetics, endocrinology formed an important part of my degree and I feel confident that these are the correct positions for the vertical ToL overlapping the body.  Later on in this blog, I will provide important specific technical details on these associations.  The 'horizontal' ToL is less well understood in the WMT and is related to the explanation of the structure of consciousness discussed in Metabolism II and the three spheres of influence, perception and thought outlined in Metabolism I.  In this ToL the vertical 'ToL' above to this paragraph relates to Yesod in the horizontal.



TIFERETH


There is an interaction between the physical body and its sphere of direct physical influence, i.e. the reach of your arms (and the effective range of the cloud of pheremones you emit).  This first sphere relates to both your physical influence and the Inner mind, where you believe yourself to think, i.e. the front of your head.  Feelix himself remember represents the 'memory' or 'altered past' that you contain within you, not only on the psychological level of the actual memories that you have but on a physical level as the memory of the genes you carry.  Hod and Netzach, as 'remembering' and 'forgetting' respectively, represent the pathways of interaction between your body and your physical influence, and your memory and inner mind.





DAATH
 The next phase of the 'horizontal' ToL is the interaction between the 'inner mind' and the 'perception/experience of the moment'.  There are two pathways here.  Between the perception of the moment (Daat) and the inner mind where we typically think we think (Tifereth) there is the interpretation or analysis (Gevurah) and between the inner mind and the perception is the response (Chesed).  The arrows obviously indicate the way in which this process happens.  Experience, Analysis, Reflection (in the inner mind), Response.







KETER
The final phase of the 'horizontal' ToL is the interaction between the 'experience of the moment' and the 'altered future'.  Each experience of a moment, must emerge from the '(altered) future' into the '(percieved) present'.  This 'altered future' relates to Keter* and as described in the earlier posts on Metabolism each moment must be 'reduced' (Chokmah) from this source, reduced into perceptual experience.  Our choices on how to interact with the moment go on to 'change the future' (Binah).




What follows is a list of the associations necessary for understanding this part of the Metabolism of Time, and is a list of the name of the Sefira, and its association in the vertical and the horizontal.  Please memorise and explore these associations:

  • Keter / Pituitary / Altered Future
  • Chokmah / Pineal / Reducing the Future
  • Binah / Pineal / Changing the Future
  • Daat / Thyroid / Experience (perception) of the Moment 
  • Chesed / Thymus / Reaction to the Moment
  • Gevurah / Thymus / Analysis of the Moment
  • Tifereth / Solar Plexus (pancreas) / The Inner Mind
  • Netzach / Adrenal / Forgetting
  • Hod / Adrenal / Remembering
  • Yesod / Genitals / Altered Past
These correspondences are absolutely fundamental in understanding how the vertical ToL relates to the horizontal ToL in the Metabolism of Time and whilst the details would take up far more space than is comfortable for a blog post, I will provide a few supplementary points here.  Lets look at the genital's relationship with the concept of the altered past - the genitals are the store of the genetic soup in the form of eggs and sperm depending on the individual and the store of the transmissible genetic information which originally fused from the parents of that individual - they represent the past in that they contain the long history of the evolution of DNA based organisms on this planet, they represent the 'altered' past in the sense that they potentially can unite with another individual and so collectively alter the past that is stored in future generations.  Now when we look at the relationship with the genitals and the position of Feelix in the horizontal ToL, we see that our conscious idea of our own body, the Feelix that exists at the centre of the spheres of influence, perception and thought is related to Yesod and hence to the genitals - do I imply that in this sense our whole body is a giant walking sex gland?  No.  But what I do imply is that we, in the sense of our consciousness of self, are a walking spiral of DNA, an information pattern, and this feeling of a physical body that exists at the centre of our mental cell is congruent with the DNA that exists in the nucleus in the middle of a typical cell**.   By way of elaboration lets look at some of the molecular developmental biology of the fruit fly drosophila:




As the DNA fuses in the initial phases of the generation of any new organism and the cells begin to divide, the emerging creature begins to generate a 'head' end and a 'tail' end, a front and a back.  Therefore there is a 'head' end and a 'tail' end within the DNA itself.  The cells of your head are expressing the head section of your DNA, the cells in your liver are expressing the liver section of your DNA, etc, each cell containing all the DNA of the individual but only expressing certain parts of it.  Your physical idea of yourself then, when we look past the personality you have acquired as a result of your social interactions, etc is, for want of a better name, Feelix.  We are all, at the level of Yesod, Feelix.





*Keter as the 'fifth world' or 'the world to come' in Qabalah.  This also relates to the fifth world of Adam Kadmon and the tip of the Yod.   The savvy Qabalist will see also how this entire structure relates to the Lurianic model of emanation in that the outermost 'sphere' is related to Keter and emanation occurs within according to the tzimtzum. 

**Red blood cells are an important exception and will be discussed in length later in this thesis.


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