September 28, 2016:
My Dreams of Gaia card is the Ten of
Earth, a repeat. Hmmm . . . lots of
Earth cards lately; my card for yesterday was the Seven of Earth, the day
before was the Twelve of Earth/The Seneschal, and the day before was the Ten of
Earth again. Perhaps I should treat
these three cards like a quick reading!
The Seven of Earth tells us to ground, integrate and center in order to
connect to self, spirit, and the world around me. The Sensechal reminds me that being a leader
might not be the best way to manifest my skills for the highest good of all;
being an assistant to a trusted leader instead just might allow me to blossom. The Ten of Earth tells me that I have been
made stronger by my past experiences, and that all aspects of my life should be
coming together in a way that will increase my own confidence and well
being. All three cards are related to
the physical world, but not just the physical world. They all address the idea of finding a place
in my world that will offer me fulfillment, and will allow me to effectively
serve myself and those around me that I love.
Okay, so over the past few days I did
some research on Da’at on Wikipedia and the Hermetic Library. Yes, I know, there are more complex and
complete texts out there on the Tree, but I’m not trying to become an expert,
I’m just trying to get enough of an understanding of this mysterious place on
the Tree to be able to use what I learn.
The first thing I realized is that the
words “Da’at” and “Abyss” are not necessarily interchangeable. Da’at means Knowledge, and it is considered
to be a combination of the energies of Wisdom (Chokmah; Wisdom is thought to
come from outside our mind and is brought into our thinking) and Understanding
(Binah; Understanding is thought to come from within our mind and is the way we
process in a personal way the Wisdom being offered). In a way, Da’at can be seen as the mirror
image or shadow of Yesod (which can be seen as the bridge between a physical
world focus (Malkuth) and an awareness of all the non-physical states of
being), as Da’at bridges the gap between awareness of the many non-physical
states of being and the ability to perceive and at least partially understand
Deity. In this sense, Da’at secures and
maintains the bond between Wisdom and Understanding, and can be seen as “hidden
knowledge.”
Da’at is seen by some as the sephira
that contains all the others, kind of the way that each of the Aces of the
Tarot Minor Arcana contain all of the other numbered cards of its suit and The
Fool contains each of the Major Arcana cards.
This kind of validates an alternate keyword for Da’at: Unification. The Unification of Wisdom (offered by an
outside source) and Understanding (making that Wisdom our own). Perhaps we could also call this process
“Personification.” In this sense, Da’at
serves as the connection between the intellect and emotions/feelings/visions
that are tools for understanding Deity.
It is this “extending knowledge” that encourages us to act in accordance
with our personal “truths” that have been discovered within the alchemic Great
Work, and within the living of life with awareness.
So what, you ask, is the Abyss? The best short description I found was that
the Abyss is the gulf or space between abstract ideas. Some say the Abyss represents the time before
the Creation, but I am coming to see it as a place that exists between cycles
of Creation. Perhaps those past cycles
failed because of an imbalance in the manifestation of the sephiroth, perhaps
they each grew old and irrelevant, and so were retired. Whatever the reason for the failure, the
detritus of the cycles have accumulated in the Abyss. Thus, the Abyss can be seen as a place of
un-being. To me, this is similar to the
dark days of the moon, or the deepest time of Winter, when Nature rests. In the Wikipedia entry, Dion Fortune
describes the Abyss as “a cosmic compost heap where form is digested under the
dominion of the Angel of Death and turned into something fertile where new
growth can take place.” And so, the
Abyss does not contain “nothing,” it contains the “un-manifested.”
This idea of a gulf or chasm
separating Deity (the upper three sephiroth) from physical world beings and
their experiences (the lower seven sephiroth) corresponds with the concept of
the Biblical Fall. There are different
descriptions of the reasons for the Fall, but afterward a separation was
created. Adam and Eve were chased out of
Eden and exiled into the outer world, a great metaphor for the reason of the
existence of the Abyss and the separation of sephiroth it creates. The Fall is also the reason that Da’at is
hidden; after all it contains the knowledge necessary to perceive Deity, and
that ability was taken away or separated from mankind after the Fall.
All of this information is echoed in
the Tarot Major Arcana High Priestess, the keeper of hidden knowledge. Even her Hebrew alphabet correspondence tells
of crossing the Abyss; she is Gimel, the camel who is able to cross the
harshest dessert and still live.
This separation of one thing from
another or finiteness can be seen as limitation, a necessary part of the
Tree. After all, there is a whole Pillar
dedicated to Form, which is created by limiting or shaping the energy of
Force. But the sephira of Da’at is on
the center Pillar, the Pillar of Balance, the same place where we find
Yesod. Perhaps the message here is that
we cannot cross the Abyss without learning how to balance Form and Force.
In the end, Da’at and the Abyss
combine to offer a powerful tool for training the mind (not for informing it,
as the keyword Knowledge suggests) as claimed by Dion Fortune. It is the place where we become less aware of
what we know and more aware of what we don’t know.
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