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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, March 2021


Telling (Haggadah). Systemic Envoys.

by: Edward Carlos





Essay Section Two of three divisions concerning Ezekiel, each “Telling (Haggadah)” section is from The Margins of the Ancestors: Metaphoric Postures of Abstractions:

Part Two: A Comparative Framework of Ezekiel’s Encounter with Light prefacing Hayyot and their Merkavah, and, Some Modern Parallel Experiences:

As to contemplation of the four-letter-name YHVH:

“The letters are without any doubt the root of all wisdom and knowledge, and they are themselves the contents of prophecy, and they appear in the prophetic vision as thought [they are] opaque bodies speaking to man face to face [saying] most of the intellective comprehensions, thought in the heart of the one speaking them. And they appear as if pure living angels are moving them about and teaching them to man, who turns them about in the form of wheels in the air, flying with their wings, and they are spirit within spirit. And at times the person sees them as if they are resting in the hills and flying away from them, and that mountain which the person sees them dwelling upon or moving from was sanctified by the prophets who see them, and it is right and proper that he calls them prophet who sees them and it is right and proper that he calls them holy, because God has descended upon them in fire, and in the holy mountain there is a holy spirit. ... And behold, after this the letters are corporealized in the form of the Ministering Angels who know the labor of singing, and these are the Levites, who are in the form of God, who gives birth to a voice of joy and ringing song, and teach with their voice after of the future and new ways, and renew the knowledge of prophecy.” (A quote (p. 101) from Moshe Idel’s The Mystical Experience in Abulafia, plus formulation in his description of the revelation to Moses matching what Abulafia wrote in Hayyei ha-Olam ha-Ba / Life of the World To Come).

“The sun sends out a constant flow of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels past all the planets to some three times the distance to Pluto before being impeded by the interstellar medium. This forms a giant bubble around the sun and its planets, known as the heliosphere. ... The sun sends out a constant flow of charged particles called the solar wind, which ultimately travels past all the planets to some three times the distance to Pluto before being impeded by the interstellar medium. NASA studies the heliosphere to better understand the fundamental physics of the space surrounding us which, in turn, provides information regarding space throughout the rest of the universe, as well as regarding what makes planets habitable.”

“The Heliosphere is a vast, bubble-like region of space which surrounds and is created by the Sun. In plasma physics terms, this is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium. The "bubble" of the heliosphere is continuously "inflated" by plasma originating from the Sun, known as the solar wind. Outside the heliosphere, this solar plasma gives way to the interstellar plasma permeating our galaxy. Raditation levels inside and outside the heliosphere differ; in particular, the galactic cosmic rays are less abundant inside the heliosphere, so that the planets inside (including Earth) re partly shielded from their impact. The word "heliosphere" is said to have been coined by Alexander J. Dessler who is credited with first use of the word in scientific literature in 1967.”

(Wikipedia reference, the two quotes above are imminently based on NASA via the internet on the subject of Heliosphere).

Akin to acknowledging the divinity of Creation which is related historically to time’s seeming flow sequentially, this essay is told with awareness of serial processes as to Creation through contemplation of the frontispiece quotes. My consequences, the close encounters and being within the light, explicated thereof close encounters acknowledge earlier moments in human history as incarnations, as phenomenological formations. These two quotes represent a connection between symbolic codes by areas of study defining information – that of language as religious utterance and that of science as a form of measurement of our phenomenal world. Both deal with the breadth and length of existence. Each is inspired and inspiring in turn. Please consider the implications as to integrating the above thoughts together and as to similar connotations from other fields of study. In this series of essays I explore the experiencing of light.

The prophets of The Old Testament include Enoch (B.C.E.) only as a kind of preface for Ezekiel, Moses, and others who will follow (C.E.), eventually leading to Abraham Abulafia much later (b. 1240-c. 1291 C.E.); each of whom experienced the supernal light via a merkavah in the company of the hayyot. I present an illustration of encountering such visionary light adjacent to ophanim (wheels, whirlwind, throne) or merkavah (chariot, as in the mystical tradition to follow) and hayyot or living holy beings (presumably angels and archangels) during my own lifetime of experiencing close encounters. Encounters systemically carry yet more examples of how languages convey information. Thereby, I view that the synonyms to metaphor, i.e., allegory and imagery, then, and now, offer general inferences foretelling such as a narration – potent with imagery, verbal and/or aural and visual, with telling of an important story -- perhaps mythic, perhaps as a parable – but seemingly at some level appearing as an actualized living situation from an elsewhere time and space.

One of the significant lessons to be garnered from such close encounters involves a major factoring of cohesion between various incarnations. These past incarnations occur in a variety of methods for the human encontrant encountering the light, the merkavah, and the hayyot. The connections between lives, different incarnations at different moments in the history of humankind, tell us of patterns for the soul in its flight through time and space collaborating both terms at the same time gesturing always to fulfilling teleological circumstances to come, as if preordained. The grain of the future excites a prophet to prophetic action, the essence of which is revelation which is inspiring. Theorizing about such movements, like memories, are reverberations looping within the bubble of a heliosphere as a double helix-spiraling within our universe where time brings phenomenological events within a form of a return, sometimes as an explicit, purposeful, reoccurrence, or as other versions of memory that hint of the depth and a greater breadth than hitherto perceived. I believe that NASA with the various excursions such as Voyager 2 will discover that this looping as a semi-closed form will bring information as to my allusions. When the processes involved are discovered, such as new forms of gravity and cross-current patterns between orbiting vicissitudes and gyrations of incarnations and reincarnations penetrating at certain frequencies both within the heliosphere and external as to other universes.

This essay explores my own theoretical relationship as to illustrating the above introduction to this and other succeeding sections, all four based on the journey into the soul initiated by Enoch but succeeded by Ezekiel, Moses, and Abulafia (the center reverberation prophet-wise is Ezekiel in this four part essay most of which is included in this manuscript). From my own history of encountering thus I relegate the imagery that sometimes appears from where a memory of the past stirs often, being site-oriented; i.e., a memory of another previous incarnation induces a past life experiencing, but in that process a former time is yet to unfold once again as through a personal encounter being what is ordained to reappear as in my own history of close encounters. Humans attempt predicting the future, but encounters amplify on this tendency by urging a prediction of the past to further amplify that past and thereby to enlarge the present with its balancing state of momentary being as of a new all. Close encounters induce levels of memories as paths to understanding the expanses of information, each time as a preamble to the past enabling recognition and recovery; therein the encounter with light is viewed as a narrative semblance as of a mythic tale, and/or as allegorical and symbolic within of which the effect is surreal but appearing in an individual’s current lifetime-framework as if a dream, or a vision. Herein the encountering is a metaphorical insistence full of resonances of intertwining levels of consciousness that make up our experiencing - that of establishing a new and ever deeper context within the current encounter but which conveys past incarnations as actual phenomena as experiential and not simply as memories envisioned. Such a complexity resounds with every nuance that we experience in such episodes and the insights remain in our mental disposition thereafter.

With such actions, the actuation of a memory as a phenomenal experience is, suddenly, the spark (inferred sometimes as a voice as in The Zohar and the Torah (The Law by Moses revealed as in first five chapters (the Pentateuch) in Holy Bible) providing the means to our eventual comprehensions or given expansively as metaphors where we are left to ponder what they mean. Such theoretical necessity is the work by which the encontrant-human is then to resolve. This inclination seems to be a further demarcation in our own era from past resonances although Ezekiel describes wheels within wheels as to the merkavah as object, but the phrase is yet relevant to grasping the nature of Ezekiel’s statements about his encountering the merkavah as a manifest light. Meanings discovered are essential to meaning’s resonance in expansive coordinates. The lights within the harboring of the chariot (the hayyot within) are symbolic especially when inferring that lives as to the images prescribed bear relationship. Pluralities are successive moving toward image expansion and inclusion, expressed as akin to lights within lights, to images giving resonance to additional images pertaining to breadth and depth.

Therein, too, exceptional circumstances of lifetimes within lifetimes are wedded even if not immediately recognized. Therein the term “demut, likeness, generates a likeness. (Tselem),” ... ((by this essay – thus, a paraphrase: an image generates other images)) ... “(Hayyot) Creatures, emerged from the force of Creature who is male—but since they are female, they are called hayyot, creatures, inhering in the four sides of the world, embracing all troops and legions. Demut, Likeness, in the mystery above and in the mystery below--acquiring figures from above, acquiring figures below. They comprise the figure—precisely!—of all sides, emitting figures of all sides above and below. ... After it has said demut, it is written this was (mar’eihen), their appearance (Ezekiel 1:5)”). (p. 460. Ibid.). I.e., the phrase, “happening it happened” is inclusive of the implicit pluralities and multiplicities, not merely as if incidental nor as the engendering of Eve as a gender symbolic with regard to Creation’s larger system of inevitability – giving birth. The ascent of being is a gratification of becoming, as through form, thus as the enduring of all species through the birth of another. Holy living beings are spiritual scribes engendering life through the feminine Shekinah-half of God (as being, and as given form. Hence the dramatic story of the Garden of Eden and the assumption of human form as a garment of flesh that covers the pervasive light of being). Eve, thereby, is an enduring spiritual prototype giving birth – as then to woman, and mother, acknowledging the manifesting of female as gender – I,e., She is based on the archetypal spirit Shekinah.

In the pauses (breaths if you wish; inbetween lifetimes, perhaps as well) is where anticipation emerges and a dream might, if dreamlike, that is, break through into a larger reality, into a massive history of the vastness of phenomenal implications signifying Creation as inclusive of all pasts. In the great uttering of such breaths, births included, the effect is extraordinary-a world-trembling, shuddering awareness, as clouds are drawn into heaven via a triangular opening above you, involving you. The triangle is often a geometrical symbol of a vibrating transport into another realm, recognized in the moment of happening. Your mind-body is suspended within this startling vibratory experience recognizing that reality has changed. All is transformed somehow; you feel as if you are caught in a magnificent pause, a momentary state in the awe of this shimmering light above the earth while you on earth are living. Living, yes, as lived and thereby awakening. You miraculously experience the shift of frequencies into a new era with evidence that at the conscious level of humankind this is not yet cognized; the changes in pulse rates-frequencies are an emergence indicating dramatic change from a world of objective inadequacy to one of wholeness, i.e., holiness with love, conscience through empathy, i.e., acceptance, and the emotional rendering of joy and the nobility of calmness. The climactic experience is ultimately of the awareness that happening it happened. Every breath thereafter becomes the essence of the memory thereof.

In Ezekiel’s case the merkavah (chariot; UFO in the current realm) may be two as in distinguishing gender aspects such as in the above quote thereby to engender forthwith, or four as in species indications ultimately related. Also, the hayyot may be four other, as well, initially seen simultaneously in that the faces inscribed features: man, lion, eagle, and ox/bull are all inspirational as former god-figures historically as ramifications of the sun and often so symbolized. The religious impulse acts intrinsic to Ezekiel’s interpretation and inspiration to tell his encounter, such as in his experiencing something four as one. Yet his description is multiple as reference doubly compounded as to symbols evoked as to relationship as inferred; therein the number interweaves, interacts, and overlaps symbolically with implications like the directions of distances – east, west, south, north, and/or inside, outside, above, beneath. If the former are geographical and physical, the latter are psychological and spiritual. Both are equivalencies of intimacy and distance, an interaction that is philosophical in a sense and inspirational always.

Together the interpretations of these faces (one might read them as phases, like in the quarters of the moon) imply imagery, allegory, symbol, metaphor (especially in a series of such), and myth as with Ezekiel’s vision, and addressing herein my premise for this discourse apropos of mystical consciousness. Depth of meaning is inferred, as throughout The Zohar. However in one reference, non-Judaic, I noted the eagle was interpreted as being above the man, ox, and lion acting as a protective covering for them with wings spread, most likely as an attempt to offer a rationale when only three of the four are indicated, which is frequent in other regards. Too, Ezekiel, fretting that the bull might be taken to regard the confusion of idolatry following Exodus during Moses’ own ascent to the mountain and light where given the codicil of the ten commandments, he – Ezekiel –suggests changing the symbol of the bull to a hayyot. Hence metaphors carried significant weight as in this instance counteracting a localization of the mystical adaptation to a current implication. The changes will continue, not just in interpretation of meaning/s but the hayyot are given to changes in appearance; subsuming various (many) forms resonance to convergence of the lessons to emerge; each form is adopted as to the angelic significance by donning a body as a conveyance, becoming an active part of the lesson being imparted. Nonetheless with such an interpretation the grounding, thus-so to speak, is supernal – an important confluence and therefore a specific perception comes forth, one that sustains and nourishes us to remember that we are each memory as to what and why we were as we are.

From another synonym for metaphor, image is incurred as indicated in the initial quote herein this second section of my essay. With close encounters, such as Ezekiel’s and of Enoch’s (and my own encounters throughout this lifetime), imagery is aggressively telling and significant to the content. A narration or allegory arises in terms of a telepathic importation of ideas or thoughts provided therein as a series of images. Please note: In my case as an artist such images are pictorial/visual in nature within a narrative pre-positioning (mostly) as to creative energies. I interject a personal reference and offer an artistic rendering to exemplify the above. After drawing a large image of two eyes in direct gaze with a viewer, the gaze’s visionary-detail concentrating on the eyes automatically appears to shift form. The shape-shifting acts like an inborn-creative conjoining of perceptual interpretations upon viewing if studied at all. The drawing’s subject is of human eyes staring intensely at the viewer but then with concentrated perceiving as a meditation these eyes subtlety alter to imply lion’s eyes (or another mammal’s perhaps), and then again occurs a shift into yet another configuration of a combined eagle-angel’s co-concentrated eyes as returning the viewer’s gaze. I include the model as an appropriate fourth factor, otherwise simply presumed.




Visions


Thus I perceived my own drawing anew - (the shifting was not an original conscious intent, more so as an unconscious inscription) - perhaps a bit more difficult to elucidate but a change in perception occurs with concentrations and meditation elucidating a relationship of images so wrought. This seems an equivalence to the imagery of Ezekiel as to his seeing four beings interwoven and that the eyes thereof indicate the perceptual mechanics of a sense-oriented observation to manifest conditions of memory and appearances as to inborn relationships.

As an observer of my own drawing, titled “Visions,” I came to realize an inherent resonance of associative factors the brain carries through the central nervous system of our embodiments and the relevant DNA system; amazed by what I was observing, the shifting and subsequent metamorphoses was not an original conscious goal. My subconscious and unconscious were coactive in teaching me as to the subtle changes reached, then, acting in my conscious level of thought. I placed this drawing for further study from a greater distance than my easel in a crowded studio room, to discover surprisingly the drawing’s own essence. I had to withdraw a bit from the drawn image to discern the drawing’s own image-language. I placed this china marker drawing (60” wide by 40” high) above another drawing of the same size that followed, that of a single eye symbolizing the sun. I placed both to the left side of our living room door when entering.

Later, with driving to Vermont and Massachusetts from Tennessee to visit the Weiner brothers, Jack and Jim, of Raymond Fowler’s The Alagash Affair, I was stunned to find a similar set of eye-based color photographs in the same exact location in Jim Weiner’s own home. My visit pertained to our having shared stories about unusual light formations sometime earlier. Besides the similarity of my initial drawing and his photograph of two eyes, we each had a one-eye demarcation in a related drawing by me and another color-photograph by Jim Weiner placed exactly beneath the other artwork in his own living room. This placement of two images exemplifies the situational juxtaposition of a mental processing cross-current between us as artists and encontrants as a telepathic morphology despite the immense difference in our geographical and biological living conditions but, too, my own drawing is representative of the multiple imagery appearing in a given situation – associative factors thematically - similar to Ezekiel’s symbolic visage of the four hayyot and/or four merkavah ascertaining both simultaneously while activating at the same time multiple symbols for the four faces per other semblances as to the number four.

This illustration above stemmed from close encounters, but extends to implications to the later illustration of Ezekiel’s description of eyes suddenly appearing everywhere. Ezekiel allegorically describes a vessel with windows the circular circumference as to it’s length and height; through these windows the hayyot (some of the various kin to each other as to the variations in angelic beings) hover at the circular windows to observe those human beings in the succession, all in the nature of defining and confirming their natural inquisitiveness as to our own curiosity. Additionally, in this sense of his seeing those hayyot eyes as indicated, are multiplied in the widening arc of knowledge through successive understandings. The eyes acknowledge the phrase “looked through a mirror.” This infers windows being circularly repetitive around the circumference of the four merkavahs’ panes of which reflect like glass in human terms although I have long felt the windows of these crafts are of a with-standing metallic basis but similarly reflective visibly and mirror-like in effect. Ezekiel acknowledges the in-depth, far-seeing, far-reaching guardian-oriented advisory of the hayyot’s penetrating profundity of knowledge: “The rims of all four were covered all over with eyes—from gazing in all directions. Even though there are masters of eyes who look through a mirror upon others below, these also have eyes so that they can gaze upon each other all around, in front and behind—since these eyes are all around, on all sides. Consequently, they look here and there, on this side and that. Their view was or has been [from in front] and what will be, from behind—as is written: all over.” (Ibid. P. 486).

We are studied as to our gaze in return, with an “eye” to our proportional futures as if allocated; in return they see into us, ascertaining our depth. The hayyot intuit-and-surmise our levels or grades of empathy, innocence, emotional dextrality and excitability, depth of forbearance, limitations, promises, i.e., our entire psychic enterprise for the challenges to us for development. The spiritual enterprise is for moving beyond such physical limitations as in a given lifetime, realizing an intention for us to go beyond the import of any one encounter. In the directions we thereof and thereby choose for our teleological perspective in our orientations, we are soul-guided, as in the adage that eyes are windows to the soul. The merkavah tradition of exposition over the centuries has been attuned to mystical relevancies as per culture and the abundant possibilities of locations of scholars addressing or addressed by encounters. As to historical eras the immediate resonances are circumstantial but appear to remain closely aligned to the basics of the Judaic laws and mores when all is augmented by or said to relate to, or stem from the Sefirot schemata. I generalize, in keeping with this processing, beyond the more strict resolutions beyond Ezekiel’s tribal culture, wars and nations in their shifting processes (which most of the chapter on Ezekiel professes) and the laws and rites that are binding of faith to act. Yet, interpretively, the multiple but separate-as to tonal individuating- sefirothic implications are continually mentioned in clarification in The Zohar about the happenings taking place, and echoed in footnoting page after page. A deference exists thereby as the additions then take place, over and over in that such expansion is frequently contradictory by seemingly being contractive in nature -- information (yes) but as a distraction (too). This opens the door to confusion that acts then as a primal point of wisdom reaching into the souls of those who are encounter-involved. I address these broad implications in as simple a manner as possible without another entire side reference taking over with a loss of the initial tract of consciousness in relationship to mystical consciousness as pertaining to the manifesting light. Yet, the nature of this complexity is mystical consciousness in terms of the shifting being relevant to other layers of consciousness.

I examine these terms (metaphor, posture, and abstraction) in the light of Ezekiel’s utterances (as examined in The Zohar-Prizker Edition, Volume 12). The companion rabbis in The Zohar reflect throughout on subtleties such as mannerisms in language to theorizing about meanings that the encounter might be considered in its entirety. I trust their implications as genuine, expanding, contractions. The merkavah holds the gestalt of the encounter that is in itself a metaphor, one inside another, wheels within wheels, light within light.

Analytically I prefer the direct comparative aspect of metaphor because close encounters are so “other” and always acutely experiential and unique despite similarities that are perhaps more structural or mechanical than being content-oriented, or despite ideational reduction to objectify a narrative’s subject material (which is always uniquely personal, initially at least from my viewpoint). Inherent to these percepts is an implicit wider confirmation, but to be later attenuated when the entity (the personal self in any encounter with supernal beings) sufficiently assimilates meaning/s; the merkavah procedure is always teleological as an acclimation of the content at that seemingly final moment rather than a direct image-to-image association as a description per se. In other words, parallels are instinctively, existentially, structural when posited from one memory to another both in compositional aspects and as an advent into meaning.

If the past experiences are prophetic to current phenomenological processes that I am assuming, correctly or incorrectly, then intuition is a keynote clue resonant to time as an inverse or reverse formative sensation in that earlier conscious plane of being. I add this from experiencing past lives on occasion as actively then, with no foresight recognized in that period of time as to the much later time (sometimes 1000s of years) (i.e., now as then existent momentarily) whereof resides a recognition of the past, often site-oriented. And yet, the thought of patterning is no thought because of the inevitability of the effect of both continuous personal body changes and the significance of memories thereby changing also and presciently due to consciousness as subliminal in part as to the levels of awareness. As in any narrative, the processes and forms are seemingly available to recall as with, for example, hypnotic recall with the precipices of altered states of consciousness, amnesia not withstanding preventively, perhaps cautiously. Consciousness is inferential to our activities being visible but to the subconscious animate deep therein awareness (as momentary non-awareness) is as a stirring but invisible interior. Operative in time these images insist on becoming cognate to other layers filtering through to experience as cognitive visible assertions.

On occasion, though, I utilize the “like”-“as” comparative conjunctures in metaphors but find the generalizations in that posturing as sometimes distracting one semblance to or from another and more comparatively historical in the given moment. From such dis-positions regarding content I prefer then a comparative quality as to my own similar experiences as relating to the history of Ezekiel, now interpolated as a mystical tradition as exemplified in the chapter, “Merkevet Yehzqel” or “Ezekiel’s Chariot” (as published in the final twelfth volume of The Book of Radiance). The translators continually, in marginalizing footnoting, find equivalencies from the history of Judaic theology and as stated always relevant to interpretations based on the Sefirot. The Zohar- Prtizker Edition. 2017 publication date. Translators are Nathan Wolski and Joel Hecker in the final three volumes). The entire process is metaphorical from these complicated procedures in evaluating what is given and why I sometimes state that the very language of mystical affirmation is metaphoric, basically being visual in nature.

As to posture, both physical involvement and psychical attitude are indicative of a psychological and spiritual nature which administers our intentions reconciling both essence as to the quality of our endeavors at any given moment and acknowledging a presence that establishes a frame of mind as administrative to our personal emotional perspective and history. We are in the surround of a pervasive essence. I address everything as if “presence” is a continual inherent and internal significance, operative through the levels of consciousness as encounter explicate. And, my conditioning arouses a sense that “essence” similarly acts as awareness of a given intentionality. I address intent as a basis for an aura of localization within the level necessitated in the grid and as to both the external form of the merkavah and the interiorization of the activities involved. With the exposure to the light, Ezekiel’s posture is an act of succumbing. Ezekiel prostrates himself before something amazing, something so seemingly apocalyptic he falls to the ground, his thought being of exile. With Enoch, by comparisons, the light Enoch perceives is so momentous he fell as if upward, his posture being prayerful and devout. Disciples of prophets were witnesses along with other prophets, such as Abraham Abulafia who stated: “And I immediately fell down as if I were not in the world, for I did not feel any strength in any organs.” .... (and J. Judas Albotini, disciple of Abulafia, further commented of his own observance of his mentor): “and his intellect also departed him, like the will to act, and he falls to the earth as if dead, and lies down and falls asleep,” the “absence of sensation following ‘the storm of the organs.’ “ (p. 77. The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia. Moshe Idel). Referential to the given bodily format of a human being-entity such a compositional inference of the depths within is indicative of our own skeleton having a formative and dynamic structural component that is foundational given recourse to our overt actions. The Zohar expressly confers the status of the physical body, commensurate with the creation of Adam as an androgynous being, and again with the creation of Eve in relationship to the physical and emotional needs of any androgyny for reemergence through the blending of the two as one, one couple – inferring coupling (the region of birthing via conceiving; i.e., each such being a reverberation of the Creation). To exemplify:

“Once they have all been intertwined, a single corpus is fashioned from them –mystery called Adam, despite the difference of countenance on their respective sides. ... From the midst of these—inner secret of the point that stands upon them—diverse legions go forth, according to their species. ... Adam—Male and female. Mystery of the male is the letter (final nun), mystery of consummated man. This letter rules over the point that is above the four living beings. In this mystery, inner mystery of all—all those other legions and all those troops are called by this name, as is written: thousand of thousands (Psalms 62: 228).” The footnote, (#52 (Ibid., p. 463) adds more to the identification: “Adam—Male and female . . . In Zoharic Kabbalah, the term Adam signifies the primordial (or restored) union of male and female in both human and divine realms. That unity is symbolized by the final nun whose upper part derives from vav, manifesting the Male, with the lower extension symbolizing the Female. The latter is characterized as a “point” that presides over the four creatures that act or support the throne-chariot. Ultimately, all levels of existence occur in the ideal form, called Adam—a male androgyne.” (Ibid.). The expressed notion of an inherent potential bisexuality speaks to the many mythic orientations of being multiply composed, and enters our wider literature as symbolic and mythical manifestations such as mermaid and mermen (half human and half fish) (angels–half bird and half human)(satyr–man and goat) (centaur–man and horse); i.e., to exemplify with the angelic reference what is explicit in the very image of angels in flight are symbolized as the wings of the hayyot in Ezekiel’s references as if the outer compositional elements are bird-inspired because of flying; hence the eagle as strength and far seeing thereby--characteristics forming within the human, i.e., man as Adam. The Ezekiel symbolic manifestations are relevant to the human strengths to be one with the animal kingdom as to the nature of abstractions, being one with, and yet distinguishing in the vision aptitudes forbearing in the four faces observing the kingdom beneath heaven (physicality, corporality) in the four directions. Human responsibility is implied, although as one of the animal kingdom, we are nonetheless given sovereignty, which suggests responsible action is our inheritance.

This basic structuring composes our internal bodily and psychical mechanisms and the characteristics adapt coordinately to every vital postural change we administer as to that intentionality that stubbornly, aggressively, remains active in the layering of ideation. I draw comparisons thereby, akin to subdural as potential space in brain cellular layering with the question of spatial cavities or spaces within and purposes thereof, (see Haines, Duane E.; Harkey, H. Louis; Al-Mefty, Ossama (1993). "The "Subdural" Space." Neurosurgery. 32 (1): 111–20). Additionally in this circular surround, I refer to the word subterranean as in secret recesses in general which are aggressively congruent with our subconscious administration, another issue of compound or multipart amalgamations. In the account, the generic word flesh frequently is used which encompasses and perhaps compliments my illustrations, but has undertones as to the basic mechanisms of materials in any matter. I include the fine arts creative working implications as with the biblical connotations in Genesis about the creation. “And the word was made flesh,” as described eventually in The New Testament via St. John of the Cross (John 1:14 King James Version (KJV), augmenting the relationship of one matter as form/process to another in terms of a possible metamorphosis. As in the fine arts, abstractions imply the heritage from which imagery as non-objective is derived. However, in keeping with the original thesis for this text, I refer to and paraphrase those sections utilizing distinctions in the triadic upper three levels of the Sefirot in The Old Testament, herein the precedent of the Torah relegated to being as of The Zohar: Itself (Keter – Light, the drawing force of En Sof), Himself (Hokhmah – Wisdom emanating; Male). As to the third constituent Beriah – Understanding; Female) the relevancy of the “Herself” interplays through Shekinah – the third Spiritual Comportment of God, and who cohabits all levels on the Female side of the Sefirot. (Daniel C. Matt expresses implications of mythic reality. (p. xxvii-xxviii):

“Shekinah, also known as Malkhut (Kingdom), is the divine feminine: daughter of Binah, bride of Tif’eret. She is ‘the secret of the possible’ receiving the flow of emanation from above and engendering the myriad varieties of life below. The union of Shekhinah and Tif’eret is the goal of spiritual life. Virtuous human action stimulates Yesod, the Righteous One, and brings about the union of the divine couple. Human marriage symbolizes and actualizes divine marriage. Sabbath Eve is the weekly celebration of the cosmic wedding and the ideal time for human lovers to unite. ... The mythical imagery of the sefirot is stunning. The kabbalists insist that these figures of speech should not be taken literally; they are symbols of a spiritual reality beyond normal consciousness.” *(italics are by this essayist as acknowledging mystical demarcation). “Sefirotic descriptions are intended to convey something of the beyond. Anyone who becomes fixated on the image itself misses the point. ... The kabbalists maintain that the sefirot and Ein Sof form a unity, ‘like a flame joined to a burning coal.’ ‘It is they, and they are it.’ ‘They are its name, and it is they.’ ... The sefirot appear to possess a multiple and independent existence. Ultimately, however, all of them are one, the true reality is the Infinite.” (This essayist uses the term “Creation” in place of “Infinite” to expound on the eternal processing from a phenomenological perspective, acknowledging thereby an objectified substance). “Nevertheless, the prominent mythological character of the system cannot be denied. In a sense Kabbalah represents ‘the relevance of myth,’ resurfacing after being attacked for centuries and being pronounced dead by the medieval philosophers. The kabbalists appreciate the profound nature of myth and its tenacious appeal.” (Besides splendid commentary on the kabbalist mystical movement, Daniel C. Matt translated the first nine volumes of The Zohar – Pritzker Edition).

The hayyot’s angelic appearance is or can be variant while time is made seemingly aberrant and perhaps unstable, and this too seems significant as to the four faces symbolized. Whereas in Ezekiel’s exclamatory utterance the verbs was and were are italicized I suggest to exemplify congealment of spiritual references to spatiality, utilizing a temporal formatting. This structuring is indicative of reflection after an encounter, as in recall while writing, or when sharing with others. In these spatially oriented locations connective links act as a divinization of spatial primal points and times, depending upon how the past as memory such as in déjà vu appears and/or is relived as phenomenological in the current moment of existence. Then, time and space become harmonized as an inborn spiritual phenomenology coalescing fully intended


Thursday, March 28, 2024