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Kabbalistic Cosmology and its parallels in the ‘Big-Bang’ of Modern Physics

Posted: July 22, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Uncategorized

In earlier articles I have tried to point out the links between hermetic and alchemical ideas and the developing current of thought in modern physics and cosmology. In this present piece I would like to pursue the strange parallels between the late 16th century reformation of kabbalistic cosmology that arose through the insights of Isaac Luria, and the recent reformulation of the ‘big-bang’ into the so-called ‘inflationary model’ of cosmic creation. Although the formulation of these two cosmologies was separated by some 400 years, we can recognise that they addressed the same problem, that of the emanation of the cosmos out of nothing.

Before Luria the main stream of kabbalistic ideas arose from the centres in Spain. From the Gerona school emerged the main statement of ideas on the sephiroth, while Moses de Leon put together the Zoharatic writings. This stream of mystical cosmology arose out of intuitive perceptions, and the writings of this period tend to be obscure and clouded in allusion rather than being deeply argued philosophical works. They derived their authority by appealing to interpretation of hidden wisdom in the canonical books of the Jewish tradition, the Pentateuch and Torah, rather than consistent argument. Thus, during this period it was assumed that the sephiroth and the layers, strata or worlds that made up the cosmos, emanated in some way directly from the Ein-Sof – the limitless being of the deity. There were, however, certain philosophical and theological contradictions in this simplistic emanation that were glossed over by the earlier kabbalists until Luria faced up to these problems, restructured the cosmology and resolved many of these paradoxes.

Similarly, the earliest formulation of the ‘big-bang’ theory (first named in this way by astromomer Fred Hoyle in 1950) which pictured the universe as emerging or emanating from a single cosmic event, was flawed. If one followed its mathematical descriptions fully through to their conclusions it described states of affairs that did not correspond to reality. In particular it could not adequately account for the uniformity of the cosmos, the formation of galaxies, or the fact that the universe seems to be composed of matter rather than anti-matter. Cosmologists, however, clung to this model out of conviction, pushing its paradoxes to the back of their minds, and hoping that its problems would eventually be sorted out. Much of these contradictions were resolved by the ‘inflationary scenario’ devised by Alan Guth in 1979.

I am not here suggesting that Luria foresaw the problems of twentieth century physics, or that cosmologists and fundamental physicists are secretly adept in obscure areas of kabbalah, however, it seems that the Lurianic kabbalists and the modern-day researchers of Creation were approaching the same cosmological problem, though using different sets of ideas. What these parallels do reveal is the way in which the human mind formulates and pictures an event as vast and awesome as the creation of the cosmos. The simplistic archetype of the cosmos emerging from a single source or event, in a straightforward way, does not satisfy the patterning of our minds and both these cosmologies found ways of introducing a ‘falling into matter’ which harmoniously touches some archetype within our being.

Let us look at both of these cosmic pictures, beginning with the kabbalistic cosmology of Isaac Luria.

Lurianic Cosmology

Luria’s cosmos is not an abstract static one, but the world for him emanated out of a dynamic interplay of archetypal forces. In this way he departs from the cold rigidity of the earlier kabbalistic schemes. Our present world has arisen out of three great dramatic cosmic events–the Simsum, or contraction of God, the Shebirah, or breaking of the vessels, and the Tikkun, the reconstruction or rectification.

Before the Simsum, the various powers of the Ein-Sof or Infinite God, were harmoniously balanced and could not be separated from one another. These aspects were the opposing forces of Compassion (Rahamim) and Stern Judgement (Din), bound together in light. At the beginning of existence, the Ein-Sof withdrew into itself, creating an empty space (the Tehiru or vacuum), within which the forces of Din began to take on an independent life. This deeper concealment, or contraction of the Ein-Sof, thus resulted in a purging of the harsh dross which contained all elements of potential evil from the being of God. The empty space thus contained the forces of Din and a remnant, the Reshimu, or impression of the the Divine Light.

At this point the Ein-Sof emanated a ray, the kab ha-middah or “cosmic measure”, which is represented in the first letter of the Tetragrammaton, Yod. This ray penetrated the tehiru and worked to organise the opposing forces that now filled this space, and brought into manifestation the Primordial Man, the Adam Kadmon. This is the first and highest of the Partzufim or Archetypal Persons that appear in Luria’s scheme. At this point the four Worlds (Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah and Assiah) had yet to be emanated, thus Adam Kadmon essentially lives in a fifth and higher spiritual realm of existence. However, this fifth world contained four levels, which were described by the four expansions of the Tetragrammaton (AB=72, SG=63, MH=45 and BG=52), which appear often in kabbalistic numerology.

Initially Adam Kadmon did not have the form of a man, but appears as a set of ten concentric circles, the outer circle remaining in close contact with the Ein-Sof. These ten Sephiroth eventually reorganised themselves into the linear form of the human body. From the head and eyes of this Primordial figure bright light poured forth. This light was gathered and held by the vessels (Kelim) of the Sephiroth. These vessels, the primitive ten Sephiroth, could only receive God, they could not in any sense resemble the giving, creating power of the Ein-Sof. In this sense the vessels were incomplete and could not hold the light.

The vessels of the upper three Sephiroth Kether, Hokmah and Binah at first performed well in the task of holding the light, but when the light poured down through the lower vessels, from Hesed through Yesod, these six lower vessels shattered and were dispersed into the chaotic void of the tehiru. This was the Shebirat-ha-kelim, “the breaking of the vessels”. The original vessels were in what is now the world of Atziluth, but when the light from above penetrated the Sephira Malkuth, this shattered into 288 sparks which failed to return to the primordial source but instead fell through the worlds, and became attached and trapped in the broken framents of the vessels which formed the kelipoth, the “shells” or “husks”. These husks became the evil forces of the Sitra Ahra, the “other” or “under” world, preventing the return of the sparks of divine light to its source. Thus the light or energy of creation “fell into matter”.
The next stage in the cosmic process, and the one in which we are ourselves living, is that of the Tikkun, the period in which processes of restoration and repair must be undertaken. The primary medium for this restoration is the light that continued to emanate from the eyes of Adam Kadmon. This light now became refashioned into a series of emanations known as the Partzufim or Archetypal Persons which restore order to the chaos of the Shebirah.

The Sephira Kether is reshaped into the Arikh Anpin, the “long-face” or Greater Countenance of the Ein-Sof, also named Attik Kaddisha (or Attik Anpin), “The Holy Ancient One”. Hokmah and Binah form the two archetypal figures, the Partzufim Abba (“Father”) and Imma (“Mother”), respectively. A fourth Partzuf is formed from the six lower Sephiroth, from Hesed to Yesod, and is known as Zeir Anpin (“the Lesser Countenance or face of the Divine”). A final Partzuf is formed round Malkuth, the Nukba de-Zeir (“the female companion to Zeir”), also known as Rachel-Leah.

Abba and Imma remain in a constant state of union (like the Shakti and Shakta in Hindu cosmology), and from this union is born Zeir. Similarly Zeir Anpin and the Rachel-Leah Partzuf, are joined in an eternal state of married union.

In Luria’s scheme the Biblical Adam had the task of reintegrating the divine sparks as his being contained all of the various worlds, his body being a perfect microcosm of Adam Kadmon. Adam should have separated the divine sparks from the husks and restored them to the light of the divine. Adam of course failed in his cosmic task, and this responsibility has now been passed on to all humanity. It is the task of humanity to find the sparks of the spirit buried in the husks of the material world and and raise these sparks to their divine source. How this is achieved through spiritual exercises is a major part of Luria’s Kabbalistic practice, but it takes us beyond the scope of this article.

Luria thus images creation as an exile of the sparks of light, and a parallel is drawn with the diaspora of the Jewish people. The Partzufim Abba and Imma in the world of Atziluth are the source of Israel Sabha, “The Ancient Primordial Israel”, that exists on a spiritual level.

The core problem of the pre-Lurianic emanationist cosmology was that if God the Ein-Sof was perfect and limitless in his being, then what emanated from Him had to be itself perfect, and in a sense such an emanation was merely God revealing Himself rather than an act of creating a universe from which he could stand outside and apart. One of the central ideas of Judaism was that God stood outside and apart from the created world, a ‘hidden God’. If God directly emanated the universe then clearly He was in the Universe and bounded by the universe. In order that something non-divine and finite should come about, it was necessary that there was a radical break in the process of emanation, a dilug or Kefitzah (“leap” or “jump”). Thus to address this philosophical problem there arose the Lurianic doctrine of the Simsum, the withdrawal, concentration, or concealment of the Ein-Sof. Luria even describes a state of being before the act of creation, in which the Ein-Sof manifested to Himself the Ein-Sof Or (the “light of the Ein-Sof”). There is a parallel here with the earliest state of the cosmos that can be envisaged by modern cosmology, which we will look at later. At the beginning of creation the Ein-Sof withdrew into Himself through the Simsum, thus creating an empty space, a vacuum or void (called the chalal or tehiru). Next, the ray (the kav) from the Ein-Sof Or beamed into this primaeval vacuum and so proceeded the emanations as described above. Effectively, this distances God from the Creation even before anything has come into manifestation, it allows for a cosmos created ex nihilo, literally “out of nothing”. We will see that the central idea of modern cosmology is the emergence of the universe out of the vacuum state.

The Inflationary Universe

Present day cosmologists picture the universe beginning around 15 billion years ago in the “big-bang”. The energies involved in this explosion of space-time, matter and energy out of nothing were enormous, however, in the past two decades particle accelerators have allowed scientists to explore some of these energy densities in their laboratories (cooresponding to the state of the universe after one thousand billionth of a second), so the theories that have emerged about the big-bang are to some extent supported by experimental evidence and not merely upon speculation.

The universe emerged out of this point event and the space it occupied rapidly expanded until it filled up the vast tracts of space explored by astronomers. When we try to picture epochs close to the big-bang, all the energy and matter of the universe must therefore have been packed into a much smaller space, and therefore the universe had a much denser energy level. The earlier we go back in time, closer to the event of creation – to 1 second after the big-bang, to 10 to the power -3 or one thousandth of a second, to 10 to the power -9 a billionth of a second, and so on – the smaller a volume of space it occupies, and consequently the higher its temperature and energy density. The simplest of big-bang models thus assumed that at the instant of creation the universe had infinite density and temperature. The idea was that the universe emerged out of a naked space-time singularity, a kind of knot in space-time, like a black hole in reverse. This model of an explosive expansion from a point of nothingness (which had infinite density), raised more questions than it answered. In particular it proved difficult to see how the various physical constants and relationships between different particles had adopted the values they have. For example, the ratio of matter to photons of light (the so-called baryon number), or the relative strengths of the four fundamental forces of nature – gravity, electromagnetism, weak interactions, and strong nuclear force. If the value of some of these constants had differed by a fractional amount the universe would have taken a radically different course. On the macro scale, stars and planets would not have come into being, while on the smaller scale even the long-chained carbon based molecules that are the building blocks of living cells could not have come about unless the physical constants which constrain the nature of chemical bonding had adopted the values they have. Some philosophers and theologians saw the possibility of evoking the hand of God acting to adjust these various values to create the particular special conditions that gave rise to the universe we know today.

This period of theorising about the big-bang in the 60’s and 70’s is to some extent akin to the earlier kabbalistic cosmology, in which God had to play an active formative role in structuring the chain of events. Further there was the problem of what was before the big-bang singularity, and what caused it to happen. God could again be called upon for assistance.

Isaac Luria had realised that if God played a formative role in the structuring of the cosmos then the cosmos would be a direct manifestation of Him. God would not have been able to separate Himself from his creation, and therefore our created world would in fact be part of God’s body.

In a similar way present day cosmologists did not feel inwardly happy with creation theories in which some factor, outside the equations and mechanics of creation, set the critical values of the constants of nature that determined the shape and form of our universe as we know it.

In 1979 Allan Guth, an american physicist, devised a theory which seems to have solved many of the problems inherent in the simplistic big-bang theory. He looked at a very early stage in the development of the universe from about 10 to the power -32 to 10 to the power -43 of a second after the initial creation. [10 to the power -36 for example, is a billion billion billion billionth of a second.] At around 10 to the power -43, the ‘Planck’ moment when the strength of the gravitational force comes to equal that of the other fundamental forces, quantum gravitational events dominated the emerging universe, its minute bubble of space-time being subject to quantum fluctuations. The universe could indeed be described at that early epoch as a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum. The energy that the universe contained was bound up in special fields of force, (the Higgs fields named after the physicist who first described them) which were essentially unstable.

Above a temperature of 10 to the power 27 degrees centigrade which occurred during this early period of the universe, the Higgs fields were in equilibrium, however, once the environment fell below this they could release their energy through a process known as “spontaneous symmetry breaking”. While the symmetry conditions are maintained the Higgs fields can hold considerable amounts of energy, without this energy having a mass. Only when the symmetry is broken does the energy bound up in the Higgs fields attain a mass. This breaking of the unified symmetry between the four fundamental forces results in the separation of gravity from the other forces and consequently the emergence of particles of matter.

In the inflationary model the Higgs fields are able to remain in equilibrium for an extended period in a special state known as the “false vacuum”, a quantum vacuum state which can be described mathematically. During this period the false vacuum exerts an expans- ive force, a negative pressure, on the universe, which impells the cosmos to expand exponentially. In each minute fraction of time, 10 to the power -34 of a second, the diameter of the universe doubled, and this continued until the universe had expanded by a factor of 10 to the power 50 times its original size. This extreme exponential stretching of the fabric of space, faster than the speed of light, stored up masses of energy in the Higgs fields. After this period of inflation the Higgs fields can no longer remain in equilibrium and they spontaneously break their symmetries and release the energies trapped within them, filling the rapidly expanding universe with an intense dense fire of particles and photons.

We can see a parallel here between the Higgs fields and the vessels (Kelim) of the sephiroth, which were unable to hold the light energy that poured through them. The matter in the universe arose out of the breaking of the symmetries of the Higgs fields, which Lurianic kaballah parallels with the Shebirah, or “breaking of the vessels”, and the falling down through the worlds of the husks or shells (Kelipoth).

In the inflationary model, the Higgs fields have energy pumped into them from the intense gravitational curvature of spacetime while they exist in a false vacuum state. When the universe eventually falls into a true vacuum state, its light energies and particles of matter come into being. The theory can account for the creation of the universe as a quantum fluctuation in this false vacuum of sufficient energy to allow the inflation process to get under way. Thus it provides a creation ex nihilo.

The inflationary model also resolves various problems with the naive big-bang from an singularity of infinite density and pressure; especially the problem of the large scale uniformity of the universe, the fixing of the parameters of the constants of nature, the existence of obscure particles called magnetic monopoles and other difficult and paradoxical aspects of the earlier theory.

As I indicated above, the inflationary model allows speculation about even earlier periods in the life of the universe before the inflationary period, in which the universe was a bubble of spacetime emerging out of quantum fluctuations in the false vacuum state. One speculation which has received some credence recently is that the universe began as a quantum fluctuation in an eleventh dimensional space. This resulted in four of the dimensions expanding (these being the three dimensions of space and one of time), while the other seven became wrapped up into a seventh dimensional sphere of extremely small size. These seven dimensions remain hidden from our universe on the macro scale which only knows the four outer space-time dimensions, though they do participate in the inner structure of particles of matter.

This idea is strangely paralleled in the Lurianic doctrine of the Ein-Sof contracting into itself and forming a tehiru or vacuum while its Ein-Sof Or expands outwards. The Simsum of the kabbalists and the folding up of seven of the eleven dimensions of spacetime are obviously related. Both of these cosmologies place this contraction before the formation of the false vacuum out of which the matter and electomagnetic or light energies of the universe was later to emerge.

In a strange way the physicists of today have come to retrace the philosophical and theosophical steps taken by kabbalists 400 years ago.

Adam McLean ©

American man baffles doctors after waking up speaking only SWEDISH

Posted: July 21, 2013 by phaedrap1 in News, Science

American Michael Boatwright has left doctors baffled after waking up speaking only SWEDISH.

The 61-year-old had been found unconscious in a California motel with no memory of his past.

When he opened his eyes in a medical centre he called himself Johan Ek and spoke just Swedish.

Despite extensive enquiries, police were unable to contact any relatives or find anything out about Mr Boatwright, according to the Desert Sun newspaper.

They believe he may have been in the area for a tennis tournament, though, as he had several rackets on him when he was found.

Mr Boatwrighht, who is said to be in good health, told the paper: “Sometimes it makes me really sad and sometimes it just makes me furious about the whole situation and the fact that I don’t know anybody, I don’t recognise anybody.”

DailyMirror.uk.com

True Tales of Haunted Dolls

Posted: July 16, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult, Uncategorized
Tags: Haunted dolls, paranormal

Dolls have long been a source of amusement for both children and adults. However, they can also bring terror as well as joy. Read on for chilling true tales of haunted dolls and possessed playthings.

The Legend of Robert the Doll

When it comes to haunted dolls, Robert is arguably America’s most famous. The Key West doll is a fixture on local ghost tours and even served as an inspiration for Chucky in Child’s Play.

robert the haunted doll

Robert belonged to Key West painter and author Robert Eugene Otto. In 1906, a Bahamian maid reportedly gave the doll to Robert and then cursed the toy after Robert’s parents displeased her. Soon after the maid’s departure, strange events began plaguing the Otto household.

Young Robert enjoyed talking to his namesake, and servants insisted the doll talked back. They also claimed the plaything could change expressions at will and move about the house on his own. Neighbors reportedly saw the doll move from window to window when the family was away, and members of the Otto household heard maniacal giggles emanating from the toy.

Robert the Doll spooked plenty of folks during the day, but at night he focused on young Robert Otto. The boy would wake in the middle of the night, screaming in fear, as the heavy furniture in his room crashed to the floor. When his parents demanded to know what happened, Otto’s response was always the same: “Robert did it! It was Robert.”

Robert Otto died in 1974, and his notorious doll now sits on display at the Fort East Martello Museum in Key West. Legend has it the doll will curse anyone who takes a photo without permission, which Robert grants by slightly tilting his head. Visitors who forget can always beg for forgiveness which is what cameramen from the Travel Channel did after their HD camera mysteriously stopped working.

The Eyes Follow You

Though dolls like Robert grab headlines and spark imaginations, they’re not alone. Hundreds of haunted doll tales fill ghost blogs and forums across web, including one from an average woman in Moundsville, WV.

Years ago, the woman had a grade school friend named Emily and the two spent a lot of time at Emily’s home. The entire house had a strange feeling to it, but it was the attic that was the most unnerving.

“The attic was finished, but had that ‘death’ smell to it, like an abandoned building,” the woman writes. “It was always cold, despite the hot air that would rise from the floors below. The attic contained four small rooms, and one room was entirely devoted to dolls which I always found terrifying.”

One afternoon, the girls played with a few of the dolls until Emily’s grandmother called them to lunch. They placed the rag dolls back on the shelf, but one tumbled off just as they were about to leave. This was strange as the doll fell in a way that seemed physically impossible. Puzzled, the woman returned the doll to its shelf and went downstairs to eat. However, that wasn’t the end of the encounter.

“Later on that day, Emily and I were playing in the woods adjacent to her house, and I squatted down to pick up a pretty stone,” the woman writes. “When I went down, I felt something poking me in my pocket. I put my hand in the pocket, and I found two doll eyes …the eyes from the doll I had picked up earlier that day. Needless to say, I have been terrified of dolls ever since.”

Haunted Doll Sites

Though most people avoid haunted dolls, some have a passion for possessed playthings and share their knowledge and interest online.

The Doll House Cam

The Doll House Cam streams videos of haunted dolls 24/7, giving armchair ghost hunters the chance to spot a possessed doll in action.

“Set in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, amongst the mountains and streams, is a little known secret,” reads the title page of DollHouseCam.com. “Seven dolls that once were loved by little girls now adorn the home of a family of five. They don’t just sit on a shelf looking pretty. These porcelain beauties, for lack of a better description, have taken on a life of their own.”

David’s Haunted Dolls

David’s Haunted Dolls is dedicated to educating the public about haunted dolls and the best way to care for any “Spirit Children” they might come across.

“A haunted doll is not your everyday Betsy Wetsy,” he writes. “Haunted dolls are real life spirits that are attached to a certain host doll. Nobody really knows if the spirit picks that host doll, or if they are just drawn there, but we do know it happens. You might even have a haunted doll in your home, and not even know it.”

AJ’s Haunted Dolls

Folks looking to buy a haunted doll need look no further than AJ’s Haunted Dolls. The site offers a variety of creepy playthings, ranging from the innocent and sweet to the dark and destructive.

“Each and every one of my Spirit Children and paranormal items are unique in their own special way,” AJ writes. “Not only because they are inhabited with a beautiful spirit, but because of the vessel they have chosen. I try and collect a variety of hosts, spirits, and unique paranormal magical items.”

By Christie Gordon

MysteriousUniverse.com

Welcome to the pleasuredome: How we evolved to love music

Posted: July 16, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Uncategorized

Part of an ancient cave bear femur flute discovered in Slovenia in 1995

In 2008 at Hohle Fels, a Stone Age cave in Southern Germany, archaeologists discovered what is thought to be the oldest example of a man-made musical instrument: a vulture bone flute dating back to the period when ancestors of modern humans settled in the area (~40,000 years ago). This discovery suggests that our ancestors were probably grooving to their own beat long before this time – making music, arguably, one of the most ancient human cognitive traits.

This raises an interesting question: In a time before electric duvets and home pizza delivery, how and why did our ancestors find time to indulge in such a non-essential task as the creation of music?

This was a mystery contemplated by the father of evolution Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man he questions why a skill which appears to provide no survival advantage should have evolved at all, stating “As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least direct use to man in reference to his ordinary habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed”. However, in his autobiography he later suggests a solution to this mystery while reflecting on his own lack of musical appreciation, lamenting “If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature”. Here Darwin seems to have stumbled upon a fact with which many of us would intuitively agree, the notion that music can enrich our life by generating and enhancing emotions. But can we find a biological basis for this assumption?

Do you hear what I hear? – How our brains process and store sounds and melodies:

Scientists believe that we are unique in the way our brains process sounds. Unlike other animals, the auditory centres of our brains are strongly interlinked with regions important for storing memories; meaning, we are very good at combining sounds experienced at different times. This ability may have been crucial for the evolution of complex verbal communication. For example, consider times when the meaning of a spoken sentence does not become apparent until the last word – we’d have a pretty hard time understanding each other if by the end of a sentence we had already forgotten how it started! This is a skill even our closest relatives appear to lack, and one which is necessary for development of both language and musical appreciation.

We are also really good at forming long term memories for sounds – think about your favourite song, are you able to hear the music in your ‘mind’s ear’? Scientists have found that most people are able to imagine music with a surprising level of accuracy.

It is believed that throughout life, as we listen to our own culturally specific music styles, our brains develop a template of what music should sound like. These templates are specific to each individual, depending on what forms of music they are exposed to. From this we develop the ability to predict how certain music styles should sound and are able to tell when something doesn’t quite fit our expectations. The musical templates we develop throughout life provide us with a standard against which we judge the desirability of new melodies.

How music tickles the brain’s pleasure centres:

Life can be a bit of a maze, and there are times when we need something or someone to give us the thumbs up and let us know that we’re doing things right. Like a parent praising a child, our brains provide us with an internal ‘reward’ signal to let us know we’re on the right track. This system, in the brain’s mesolimbic area, is responsible for the hedonistic sense of pleasure produced by evolutionarily desirable behaviours, such as eating, sex or caring for offspring. Scientists are now able to see this reward system and the behaviours which activate it using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Interestingly, along with activation caused by behaviours with an obvious survival advantage, researchers have found that the strong emotional response people experience when listening to music (defined as the feeling of chill you get when listening to a particularly emotionally charged piece) also activates this reward system.

Imaging studies reveal that the rewarding aspect of music is also a very personal phenomenon, since mesolimbic activation can be initiated by different melodies in different people. This is due to the way our brains are connected. Auditory and frontal cortex regions, which store our musical preferences, are linked to mesolimbic reward pathways meaning that the sensation of music-induced pleasure is defined by your own personal musical preferences.

It is therefore possible that music could have started life as a way of strengthening social groups, through shared preferences – something which still happens today. Groups linked by a shared emotional experience could form stronger bonds which may ultimately have helped group survival. These findings indicate that our ability to enjoy music may be less mysterious than Darwin originally thought.

Post by: Sarah Fox

The brainbank.scienceblog.com

Detecting DNA in Space

Posted: July 10, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Science
Tags: Astrobiology, genetics

If there is life on Mars, it’s not too farfetched to believe that such Martian species may share genetic roots with life on Earth.

Mars [Credit: NASA]

More than 3.5 billion years ago, a blitz of meteors ricocheted around the solar system, passing material between the two fledgling planets. This galactic game of pingpong may have left bits of Earth on Mars, and vice versa, creating a shared genetic ancestry between the two planets.

Such a theory holds great appeal for Christopher Carr, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Working with Gary Ruvkun at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Maria Zuber, the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics and MIT’s vice president for research, Carr is building a DNA sequencer that he hopes will one day be sent to Mars, where it can analyze soil and ice samples for traces of DNA and other genetic material.

Now in a step toward that goal, Carr and colleagues at MIT, Harvard University and MGH have exposed the heart of their tool — a DNA-sequencing microchip — to radiation doses similar to those that might be expected during a robotic expedition to Mars. After exposure to such radiation — including protons and heavy ions of oxygen and iron — the microchip analyzed a test strain of E. coli, successfully identifying its genetic sequence.

Carr says the group’s results show the microchip can survive up to two years in space — long enough to reach Mars and gather data there for a year and a half.

“Over time on Mars, a chip’s performance could degrade, reducing our ability to get sequence data. The chip might have a higher error rate, or could fail to function at all,” Carr says. “We did not see any of these issues [in our tests]. … Once this chip has been through two years of a Mars mission, it still will be able to sequence.”

The researchers reported their results in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology.

Simulating a solar storm

Any life on Mars, past or present, would have to be extremely resilient: The planet’s atmosphere, made mostly of carbon dioxide, is 100 times thinner than Earth’s, providing very little warmth. Temperatures can plummet to minus 195 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the other hand, the deep subsurface of Mars is not much different from that of Earth, which is known to harbor microbes. Results from the Curiosity rover, currently exploring Mars, suggest that beneath the planet’s surface lies a dry and cold — but otherwise likely benign — environment, with all the major elements required for life.

To detect such subterranean life, a DNA-sequencing instrument on the surface of Mars would have to withstand temperature swings and steady exposure to space radiation. Such exposure could cause chips to report false positives, for instance, or to record extra bases in DNA sequences.

Carr and his colleagues tested the effects of Mars-like radiation on a commercially available sequencing chip. The tested chip contains 1.3 million microwells, each of which can hold a single bead containing an amplified fragment of DNA that can be used to generate a DNA sequence.

To test the chip’s resilience to radiation, the team traveled to NASA’s Space Radiation Laboratory at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Once there, the researchers, working with a total of 40 microchips, first performed electrical testing on 20 chips — a process by which a chip’s gain, voltage and wells are calibrated to verify that the parts are working properly.

Following electrical testing, Carr exposed the chips to various levels of radiation, using a linear accelerator and an electron-beam ion source. The highest radiation dose sustained by the chips was more than they would experience during a two-year mission to Mars.

After the chips were irradiated, the team once again tested the electrical performance of each, and found very little change in the chips’ functioning.

Life on Mars and beyond

In a second round of testing, Carr exposed the remaining 20 microchips to the same radiation levels as the first batch, then took the chips back to his lab and loaded each with DNA fragments from E. coli. Despite their exposure to radiation, the chips were able to analyze DNA and correctly identified the bacterial sequences.

“These chips are great candidates to do sequencing on Mars without any modifications that we know of right now,” Carr says. “We essentially see no impact from radiation. That was a critical thing for us to show.”

Chris McKay, a planetary scientist with the Space Science Division of NASA’s Ames Research Center, says a radiation-resilient DNA-sequencing chip, such as the one used in this experiment, is a promising candidate for future life-detecting missions to Mars and other planets.

The paper by Carr and colleagues “reports on an important step forward on the development of DNA sequencers for planetary missions,” says McKay, who did not contribute to the research. “In addition to being part of the search for life on other worlds, the DNA searcher would be relevant to assessing sites for human exploration.”

In previous studies, Carr and his colleagues have found that the reagents used in DNA sequencing can also withstand similar radiation levels. Taken together, Carr says, the results suggest genetic sequencing may be a viable process in space.

Beyond Mars, Carr says, DNA sequencing may be of interest in places such as Jupiter’s moon Europa, where liquid oceans may harbor signs of life. More promising, Carr says, are places like Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that is thought to be in a potential habitable zone, and that has much less intense radiation.

“I do think we’ll see DNA sequencing in space at some point,” Carr says. “Hopefully we’ll get a chance to be a part of that.”

Author: Jennifer Chu | Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology [July 09,

Tarot and Kabbalistic Sacred Geometry by J.S. Kupperman

Posted: July 10, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult
Tags: Kabbalah, tarot

In issue thirteen of the JWMT appeared an article on sacred geometry derived from the proto-kabalistic text The Sefer Yetzirah. That article described a way to read the first five chapters to develop what is commonly referred to as the “Cube of Space” and discussed its relationship to the aura and the kabbalistic souls. The current article builds upon the previous and will discuss a kabbalistic tarot in relation to the Sefer Yetzirah, but also later kabbalistic text. As the Sefer Yetzirah deals with the letters of the Hebrew alefbet this article will focus on the corresponding major arcana of the tarot, which are associated with those letters. This will include not only their placement on the Cube, and on the Tree of Life, but will also imply interpretations of those cards based on their location on the Cube and the sefirot that surrounds it as well as how they may be understood because of their location on the Tree of Life.

The cards of the so-called “major arcana,” the series of twenty-two image bearing or “trump” cards, of the modern tarot deck have been associated, in one way or another, with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alefbet for over two hundred years. Though developed by the likes of Papus and Eliphas Lévi Zahed modern decks that employ those letters are largely derived from the tarot work of Samuel Liddell “MacGregor” Mathers, one of the founders of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Following this are decks based on the work of Aleister Crowley in his Book of Thoth, and A.E. Waite’s Key to the Tarot, both of whom based their tarots on Mathers’ work.

The Golden Dawn’s attribution of the letters to the trumps is founded on William Wynn Westcott’s “corrected” translation of the Sefer Yetzirah, a proto-kabalistic text dating from between the third through sixth centuries C.E. Later tarot enthusiasts have used a similar ideology in developing the “Cube of Space,” much as I had done in the issue thirteen of the JWMT. One difference, however, is that previous authors have been working from the perspective of modern magical qabalah while my own perspective is derived more from traditional Jewish kabbalah. Applying this to the Cube of Space and the tarot creates a somewhat different, and very interesting, understanding of the trump cards.

Importantly, I am not claiming to represent the “correct” version of the tarot. The tarot was derived from a game; there is no “correct” version. To make such a claim is to mistake the map for the terrain. However, there are possibly some systems that work better than others and, worse, some things that present themselves as systems that, ultimately, are dead ends. Not having mistaken the map for the terrain, we must read our maps carefully if we are to proceed forward at all.

Over the last few centuries there has been any number of different orderings, names, etc. of the major arcana. Some early decks, designed for game play rather than divination, have included upwards of thirty trumps. Standardization of the trumps, their names and order has only occurred in the last one hundred or so years. This article will use the following set of card to letter attributions. I refer you to the previous article for a greater understanding of how the letter-to-sign correspondences were derived.

Table 1: Association of Letters, Signs and Cards

It is important to note that I have decided to keep the usual letter-card attributions.^[1] This means that the planets here are not necessarily associated with the same cards as found in modern tarot decks.

Part I: The Placement of the Cards and Letters

Shelosh Imot – Three Mother

Verse six of the third chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah tells of the position of the three Mother letters, , , :

The head is created from fire,
The belly is created from water,
And the chest, from breath,
Decides between them.^[2]

The Sefer Yetzirah is here describing parts of what will eventually be known as Adam Kadmon, the Holy or Divine Human. Though Rabbi Isaac Luria will eventually associate this with one of his five kabbalistic worlds it is also a term sometimes used to refer to the human form on the Tree of Life itself. Through this ideology the triad of Keter-Chokmah-Binah make up the head, Chesed and Gevurah the right and left arms,^[3] Tiferet the torso or trunk of the body, Netzach and Hod the right and left legs, Yesod the phallus^[4] and Malkhut the feet.

The twenty-two extra-sefirotic paths of the Tree of Life are divided into three horizontal, seven vertical and twelve diagonal lines. These perfectly mimic the divisions of the Mother letters, Double letters and the Simples. Placing the Mothers becomes a simple matter at this point. Breath, given to the letter A decides between fire () and water (), and is located at the level of the chest. The path corresponding to this letter runs between Chesed and Gevurah. Fire, the head, runs between Chokmah and Binah and Mem, the belly, between Netzach and Hod.

Diagram 1: The Mothers on the Tree of Life

Placement on the Cube of Space is an easy prospect at this point. Following the previous article we find that the Mothers run through the X, Y and Z axes. This is demonstrated in the diagram below:

Diagram 2: The Mothers in the Cube of Space

As you will recall, the three-way axis formed by the Mothers extend through the cube of space, connecting to the sefirot beyond. A connects to Chesed and Gevurah, to Netzach and Hod and to Tiferet and Yesod. This double connection, each of the Mothers being situated between not two, but four^[5] will be important when it comes to interpreting the cards.

Alef: To this letter is given the element of air and the Fool card. For some time it has been given the number 0 and placed either towards the end of the deck or at the beginning, with the advent of Mathers’ “corrected” sequencing. Kabbalistically one might suggest that it is more appropriately give then number 1. There are at least three possible reasons for this. First, it is the first card and the first element, from which the others come from. In gimatria there is no number 0, so 1 is entirely appropriate and it is the gimatric value of the letter . Second, and equally important, , and all the letters after it, are distinctly in manifestation, it is only Ayin Sof, the fully transcendent deity, that is innumerable. Finally, the Fool is the card of beginnings, but not of origination; it is not the nothing from which everything came, but the very first something, walking the balanced path between water and fire, love and fear.

Mem: is the 13^th key of the tarot, associated with the Mother element of water and the Hanged Man card. Given water’s association with Chesed it may seem that the Hanged Man is an unlikely match. However water is also an element used for punishment, such as seen in the Biblical story of the flood. The path between Netzach and Hod has to do, amongst other things, with divine protection and the cessation of divine protection.^[6] It is we who have tied ourselves up, whether or not we will be freed before the water rises depends upon our actions in this world, whether or not we have gained protection or have lost it and so will suffer for our falling in with the “evil inclination.”

Shin: The 21^st key of the tarot and the second to last letter, has attributed to it the element of fire and the Judgment card. The sefira Gevurah is given to the idea of judgment and so , with its Gevuric fire, is entirely appropriate here and no more explanation is needed.

Shevah Kefulot – Seven Doubles
The fourth chapter of the Sefer Yetzirah explains the role and placement of the seven Double letters and their planetary associations. Having already established the Mothers as the horizontal lines on the Tree of Life, the Doubles are naturally placed on the seven vertical lines. Again, the association of the letters and planets has already been established. As mentioned in the introduction, in order to maintain some semblance with the now normative positioning of the letters, signs and trumps on the Tree of Life, I have decided to link the planets with their Hebrew letters, rather than their tarot cards.

Table 2: Letters, Planets, Cards

The same idea that caused this ordering, the use of the Chaldean order of the planets, will also help us place the Doubles on the Tree of Life. This is necessary as even though we know they are to be placed on the verticals, the Sefer Yetzirah is not as obvious about their individual placement as it is for the Mothers. However, for exact placement, we will also turn to the earliest of the of kabbalistic texts, the Sefer ha-Bahir.

In a theme that will be later taken up by the Zohar, the Bahir discusses the natures of many of the Hebrew letters. These brief discussions will help us place the Double letters on the Tree of Life, causing an apparent change to their perhaps logical order. Thus, as you will see, the letter will be placed beneath Chokmah, the second sefira and not Keter, the first.

Diagram 3: The Doubles on the Tree of Life

It is obvious from diagram two that even though the cards are being associated with the same letters as with the modern forms of tarot, their positioning on the Tree of Life is radically different as it does not employ the “path of return” model used in modern decks.^[7] Also, and perhaps more radically, the card-sign relationships are altered, as they were with the Mother letters. A brief discussion of the reasoning behind how the letters are placed on the Tree of Life follows:

Bet: The Bahir,^[8] playing on the etymology of the name of the letter , tells us that we should not read it as “bet,” the letter, but “bayit,” “house.” It quotes Proverbs 24:3, saying: “With Wisdom the house is built. . .” Thus and Chokmah, wisdom, become directly related in kabbalistic thought. Further, the Zohar^[9] tells us that the Bible begins with the letter because it is the letter of blessings, connecting the idea of beginnings with the letter. The kabbalists associated the ten depths of creation mentioned in the Sefer Yetzirah with the ten sefirot.^[10] Most commonly they decided that Chokmah represented the depth of beginning, further establishing an association between and Chokmah. As this is a Double letter, the only place for it is descending vertically from Chokmah to Chesed, where the blessings will fill the “cup of blessing” found in the sefira of Loving Kindness.

To is given the Magus card and the planet Saturn. Astrologically, Saturn is the great teacher whose slow lessons give us wisdom. This is the role of the Magus, the knower of all wisdom. It is through this wisdom, which is experiential, not just intellectual, that the Magus is able to manipulate the world as he does. As Chokmah contains the blueprint of all possible creation the path of the Magus is one of supernal wisdom. For this reason we might rename the card Theurgos or Theurgist, the God-Worker, which in Neoplatonic cosmology is associated with Nous, or the Divine Mind.

Gimel: The letter is described as something that renders (gomel) kindness. is to render goodness to the lower sefirot, to the poor.^[11] All of the sefirot are poor in comparison to Keter, for it is from Keter that everything else emanates. Thus , with its attribution of “wealth”^[12] can only be appropriately placed beneath Keter, the source of all spiritual wealth.

Gimel is the High Priestess and the planet Jupiter. The rendering of kindness, the blessings of Keter is highly appropriate for Jupiter, the greater benefic. Here the High Priestess might be seen as a kind of Upper Shekhinah, hinting not only at the Empress descending from Binah but the World card that leads into Malkhut. These two cards, the High Priestess and the World, may be seen and upper and lower reflections of one another. The High Priestess’ work, like that of the Magus/Theurgos, is truly spiritual in nature, leading us only higher and higher on the path of tikun, rectification.

Dalet: According to the Bahir,^[13] dalet represents poverty (dal, poor). This may be read as an allusion to the Shekhinah and Malkhut, both of which ultimately stem from Binah, through Gevurah. Malkhut is “poor” because it does not give its own blessings; it only receives them from above. D is also given the power of “seed” in the Sefer Yetzirah, an appropriate power for Binah, who is also called Ima, mother.^[14]

The Empress card is associated with , along with the planet Mars. This is significantly different from its now normative planetary correspondence, Venus. The martial ideology here is a reflection of kabbalistic thought. Binah, as the head of the left-hand pillar, is the source of all severity and restriction. It is through the power of restriction that all creation comes, symbolized by the pregnant Empress. This idea is reflected in Genesis, where the name of God that creates is Elohim. This, according to kabbalistic tradition, is the divine name of Binah when spoken.^[15] Mythologically, it could also be added that the Roman god Mars, though a god of war, was a god of crops as well, linking the above ideas together.

Kaf: The fourth Double letter, K, comes from kaf, the palm of the hand. Of this it is written that the palm is called a “pan of merit” (kaf zechut). In the Sefer Yetzirah the “pan of merit” is associated with the letter as the element of water, which is given to Chesed, loving kindness.^[16] Further, K has the power of “life,” which is only appropriate for the life-giving sun.^[17]

The 11^th key is the Wheel of Fortune, connected to the Sun. In the modern systems this card is given to Jupiter and represents, ultimately, good fortune. The idea of the Sun connected to fortune has a kabbalistic precedent. According to the Zohar whether or not one will have children is a matter of fate, mazel. Mazel has the literal meaning of “star,”^[18] of which, of course, ours is the sun. So, we pray for good fortune, loving kindness stemming from Chesed, for the giving of children, one of the greatest blessings a couple can have in Jewish thought. This can, of course, be seen symbolically as representing good fortune in general, so its placement here in fact replaces the planetary attribution of the modern deck.

Peh: , to which is given the planet Venus, descends from Gevurah and has the power of “Dominance” given to it by the Sefer Yetzirah.^[19] The Bahir is silent about , though given its commentary on , and the Zoharic attribution of Luna for suggest this is the only other place for the letter to be placed.

Normally associated with Mars, here is given to Venus and the Blasted Tower. While the Tower may be the Tower of Babel, which was destroyed because of the arrogance of humanity, that destruction also allows for new growth, life and rectification, a major theme of kabbalistic works, especially after Rabbi Isaac Luria. The Zohar simultaneously associates with redemption (purqena) but also the serpent by the shape of its body. Traditionally kabbalistic sources blame Eve, Venus, for humanity being exiled from the Garden of Eden by being tempted by the serpent, opening the way of the evil inclination, represented by the serpent, to dominate the world. It is through the Shekhinah, or in Christian belief theVirgin Mary, that this will be rectified. So the Tower can be seen as a symbol of both destruction and resolution.

Resh: The Bahir^[20] says that is the root of every tree. Leading into Yesod, the root or foundation of the Tree of Life, we can see that is thus logically placed. This logic of discussing Yesod rather than Tiferet directly is continued in a kabbalistic interpretation of the Sefer Yetzirah. Here is given the power of “peace,” shalom, a title of Yesod.^[21]

The letter is here associated with the Sun card and the planet Mercury, which is the planet closest to the sun. The Sun card is here appropriately placed between Tiferet and Yesod, both of which are symbolized by the sun in kabbalistic texts. It is the sun, the Bride Groom or Blessed Holy One that connects to the moon, Shekhinah, a kabbalistic pageantry of the higher self coming into the lower and rectifying it. Thus this card may be said to represent the completion of a cycle, with the higher and lower married, with new prospects in the future.

Tav: The last of the Doubles, indeed the last letter of the alefbet is , to which is given the moon. According to Aryeh Kaplan, in his commentary on the Bahir and its discussion of tohu, “chaos,” the letter , being the final letter, represents Malkhut, the final sefira.^[22] More significantly, the Zohar makes constant allusions to the full moon being the symbolic manifestation of the Shekhinah, the presence of God in creation.^[23] Thus, it can be seen how the World, Malkhut, is entirely appropriate for this letter and its position.

In the Cube of Space the planets form a secondary axis, supported by the Mother letters. Unlike the Mothers, the axis of the Doubles extends only to the perimeter of the Cube of Space, which is made up of the Simple letters. The Doubles, with their tarot and planetary attributions, are as follows:

Diagram 4: The Doubles in the Cube of Space

Unlike as with the Mothers, which have a double set of trump-between-sefirot attributions, the Doubles do not extend beyond the Cube of Space. That being said, as we will see, the sphere of the sefirot described in the previous article will come to influence the Doubles, in fact all of the letters, in unexpected ways.

Shtem Esray Pashutot – Twelve Simples
Chapter five of the Sefer Yetzirah deals with the Simple letters, which are associated with the signs of the zodiac. Of all the chapters of this short text, this is the most explicit about the placement of the letters, telling us their general position on the Tree of Life and their precise position in what will make up the actual cube part of the Cube of Space.

Twelve Elemental

Their foundation is the twelve diagonal boundaries.^[24]

Table 3: Letters, Signs, Cards

There are many different ways that the Simples can be placed on their paths. For instance there is an emanatory method. Each sefira, with the exception of Malkhut, projects from it one or more netivot, paths. The emanatory method simply allows for the paths to extend naturally and chronologically, with each sefira emanating its path(s) before the next. In the cases of Keter, Chokmah and Binah, all of which have two, or three in the case of Keter, netivot leading from them, rather than one, paths are projected first to the higher then the lower sefira

Diagram 5: The Simples on the Tree of Life

It will be noticed that unlike in the form of the Tree of Life used by most modern qabalists, there are no diagonal paths connected to Malkhut. This is in keeping with kabbalistic doctrine that Shekhinah receives only through union with Yesod, the divine phallus, and nothing else.^[25] The reader should also notice that this creates a fundamentally different looking Tree of Life from what is found in most modern books on the qabalistic tarot. Its attributions also differ greatly from versions of the Tree of Life given by the Gra and Rabbi Isaac Luria.

Associated with Aries and the Emperor, has the 5^th key of the tarot. Though this card’s attributions are in keeping with modern tarot decks, its placement is not. To H is given the power of speech,^[26] the ultimate creative act in all of the Abrahamic religions. As the first of the Simples to come from Keter it is fitting that the first and most proactive zodiacal sign be associated with it. The Emperor is here the true King, descending from the Crown, empowering the divine Will of Chokmah with sacred and creative speech.

Vav: Corresponding to is the sign of Taurus and the Hierophant card. The Hierophant is a card of creation, something that gives shape. The numerical value of the letter is six, which alludes to the six directions in space and the six seals of the Divine name that surround it.^[27] This is appropriate for a card that inspires Binah, which means intuition and understanding and is given the power of thought. ^[28] It is this thought that gives meaning and form to the speech of .

Zayin: has associated with it the Lovers card and Gemini. This netivah runs between Chokmah and Gevurah, which is perhaps fitting for a letters whose very image, is that of a sword^[29] and whose name means “weapon.” is given the power of motion according to the Sefer Yetzirah.^[30] Coupled with Gemini, the twins, we have the suggestion of strife or the sword of God cleaving between two things to separate and restrain them as found in the beginning of the alchemical process, which is necessary to create the perfect gold.

Chet: is the Chariot and Cancer. It has the power of sight as bridges the gap between Binah, the supernal Mother, and Chesed, the lower father. The chariot is the merkavah or throne upon which the Upper Shekhinah, Binah. We see upon the chariot the image of God, a vision of creation in its supernal form; the union of Mother and Father. It is this chariot that carries us from the lower sefirot to the Supernals. The feminine nature of Cancer supports both the image of the Shekhinah as chariot rider and the armored chariot itself.>

Tet: leads from Chokmah to Tiferet and is associated with Justice and Leo. Justice is a fitting card for this path as Tiferet is the sefira of justice and true justice can only come from the Supernals, which exist beyond the subjective realm. Justice occurs through the careful listening of the complaint and deciding with wisdom, and hearing is the power associated with this letter.^[31] Leo is the honorable lion, which is also a symbol for Christ streaming down from the Father. Courage is necessary in the carrying out of justice, as it is often the case that we do what is easy, not what is right.

Yod: The card connected with is the Hermit, its sign Virgo. connects Binah, the Mother, and Tiferet, the son. The power of is action,^[32] which, along with its receiving of power from Binah, seems contradictory to the idea of the virgin and the reclusive hermit. However, the virginal hermit is one who, through action and compassion has rectified themselves, overcoming the evil inclination in order to lead others along the path of tikkun

Lamed: Typically Justice is attributed to Lamed, but here it is Fortitude, its sign is Libra. Lamed is the ox goad, and idea which connects this card to , the ox. Fortitude can be seen as the perseverance of moving under pressure, the goad moving the ox. It also speaks of a requisite spiritual fortitude necessary to move from the place of beauty beyond, to higher levels of spirituality that are not so easily gained, and never gained without trial and ordeal. This is represented by the woman taming a lion on the trump. Classically the soul was seen as being feminine in nature, thus it depicts the soul in its ordeal. Lamed is also associated with kingship,^[33] as Tiferet is the king of the Kingdom, Malkhut. The ordeal must be met and passed for that kingship to remain, and for it to vivify the world it must be tempered with loving kindness.

Nun: The sign that corresponds to is Scorpio, the card is Death, which connects Gevurah and Tiferet. The power of is that of smell,^[34] fitting for Death. The letter is also association with nofelim, fallen,^[35] as all eventually fall to death, who is called the End of all Flesh.

Samekh: This is the Temperance card, associated with Sagittarius, a sign of spiritual seeking. Samekh is the support of the world, holding up the fallen.^[36] This idea works well with Netzach, which is accorded the role of giving divine protection to those who need it.^[37] The power associated with is sleep, which is also fitting, as Netzach, along with Hod, are responsible for the spiritual gifts of vision and prophecy.^[38]

Ayin: is the Devil and Capricorn, connecting Tiferet to Hod. Whereas Netzach is given authority to protect, Hod withdraws that protection,^[39] leaving us vulnerable when we have given ourselves to the evil inclination, which is associated with Satan and the power of anger^[40]. Further, is associated with avon, iniquity.^[41]

Tzaddi: The Star and Aquarius, connecting Netzach and Yesod. is tzaddikim, the righteous of the world, which is associated with Yesod.^[42] It has the power of taste,^[43] which refers to the flowing water coming from the water bearer’s vessel; this is the flow of divine blessings from above, originally being poured out from the High Priestess.

Khof: Finally, is the Moon, which is associated with Pisces and the power of laughter.^[44] Khof is associated with deceit,^[45] the most common trait of the new moon, which is given over to the power of the Evil Inclination and Satan. It was for this reason that the Azazel goat sacrifice was implemented, to distract the Evil Inclination so the blessings from above could descend unmolested.

Chapter 5:2 of the Sefer Yetzirah gives us explicit directions for the placement of the diagonal paths to create the actual Cube of Space proper.

The east upper boundary
The east northern boundary
The east lower boundary
The south upper boundary
The south eastern boundary
The south lower boundary
The west upper boundary
The west southern boundary
The west lower boundary
The north upper boundary
The north western boundary
The north lower boundary

The implication here is that the letters should be placed in the above sequence according to how they were listed in four sets of three in the earlier portion of the same section.

Diagram 6: The Simples forming the Cube of Space

The so-called “Cube of Space” isn’t exactly a cube, however. The boundaries described in chapter 5:2 do not form a six-sided shape but a four-sided one, the top and bottom are open, perhaps allowing for the influx of supernal energy into the quasi-cube. Or, as Netzach and Hod are associated with the gifts of vision and prophecy,^[46] this may be the opening through which those gifts are brought into manifestation. That these two sides are open is not entirely relevant to the current discussion, though perhaps interesting given the general subject matter; i.e. divination.

The Cube of Space, as it pertains directly to the tarot trumps, is now complete. However, these first five chapters of the Sefer Yetzirah don’t deal solely with the letters of the alefbet; they also discuss the sefirot belimah, the sefirot of nothing. The role these sefirot play here has to do with the overall influence they have on different sections of the Cube, and how that influence relates to the trumps there and their interpretations. The next section of this paper will discuss the how all of this reflects upon those interpretations.

Part II: The Influences of the Cube of Space and External Sefirot on the Trumps
The Cube of Space, as defined by the twelve diagonals of the Simple letters, is surrounded by two sets of sefirot. The first are those outside of the whole system, designated by the Sefer Yetzirah as Beginning (Chokmah) and End (Binah), Good (Keter) and Evil (Malkhut).^[47] In accordance with their relative positions on the Tree of Life, I have placed these four sefirot around the other depths. These sefirot cut the sphere created by the six directions in space into four quarters. Each of these quarters is influenced by their respective sefira:

Table 4: The Sefirot and the Quarters

The whole system can be seen in the following diagram:

Diagram 7: The External Sefirot and their Influence on the Cube of Space

When the above diagram is broken down, we see that each quarter has within it multiple letters. The cards of these letters fall under the influence of the sefira that dominates the quarter that it is in. The sole exception to this is , which lies in the precise center of the sphere and is either influenced by all four of the surrounding sefirot or none. Given the hypercube that will form around the center of the Cube, the former is more likely than the later. Also, some of the Simple letters, being on the borders dividing the quarters, will fall under the influence of more than one sefirot. The Mothers will likewise be associated with the powers of two sefirot as they pierce the central access of the Cube.

Beneath this is another of influences, determined by the six depths that correspond to the six directions. This will create a second set of influences. Though this becomes very difficult to represent graphically, the follow set of tables in Chart 1 demonstrates how the externals influence sefirot of the six directions. Chart 2 shows how they influence the letters and Chart 3 how the sefirot of the six direction influence the letters. Missing from these charts is the letter , which is affected by all the sefirot.

Chart 1: Externals/Directionals
Chart 2: Externals/Letters

Chart 3: Directionals/Letters
As can be seen each letters, and thus each chard, is governed by not only its astrological sign but multiple sefirot.

What does all of this mean for a kabbalistic tarot? In fact, many things. First, and perhaps most importantly, it allows for a richly complex cosmology. This in turn will affect the use of the cards both for scrying and for divination. In designing each trump the confluence of forces can, and should, be taken into considering, providing for multiple levels of symbolism for interpretation. Also, as the minor arcane and the court cards can be placed on this system, it is a complete system.

On a practical magical level, much as discussed in the previous article, this system also creates a map of energies present in any magical space that is created using this ideology. Thus, for instance, physical postures can be developed to tap into these energies, much like the Order of the Golden Dawn’s grade signs. It also suggests initiatory purposes wherein each progressive initiation moves the candidate through different portions of the hall corresponding to the various levels discussed here and elsewhere.

The tarot is a deeply rich cosmological system. When attached to a kabbalistic paradigm that richness is enhanced many times. Through the Sefer Yetzirah and kabbalistic texts such as the Bahir and Zohar a complex and complete system can be developed to enhance both one’s magical and spiritual journey. The map thus created consists not only of a five-dimensional hyper-cube but one with external and internal structures that can be utilized to explore both the micro- and macrocosm. Such a system must be carefully produced and, more importantly, explored. It will be through a complete investigation of the kabbalistic tarot that its true fruits will be harvested.

Index

Notes

[1] With one exception for those who are used to a Golden Dawn style set of attributes. The version above pre-dates the Golden Dawn’s attributes (Christopher I. Lehrich, The Occult Mind: In Theory and Practice (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 135).

[2]Aryeh Kaplan, trans., Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 1997), 3:6. As with the previous articles, unless otherwise stated, all quotations from the Sefer Yetzirah are from the Kaplan translation.

[3] Respectively. Traditional kabbalah does not reverse the right and left sides as later hermetic qabalah does. Thus, in texts such as the Zohar, constant references to the “Left-hand side,” the side of the demonic derived from Gevurah, are made.

[4] Traditionally Yesod was associated with the place of the Covenant, the circumcised penis. Though generally considered masculine, Yesod is also the place of union between the Blessed Holy One (Tiferet) and Shekhinah (Malkhut) and a portion of its Divine Name, Shaddai, shares a root with the Hebrew words for “mountain” and “breast,” suggesting a hidden feminine side as well.

[5] With the exception of A, which is lays between Chesed and Gevurah on both the Cube and the Tree of Life. This, in and of itself, suggests something about the nature of A and the Fool card.

[6] This theme is woven throughout the chapter on Netzach and Hod in Gikatilla’s Sha’are Orah. Joseph Gikatilla, Gates of Light: Sha’are Orah, trans. Avi Weinstein (San Franscisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994), 115-146.

[7] This model traces the letters going sequentially down from Keter to Malkhut, These can then be followed back upwards forming the Golden Dawn’s “Serpent of Wisdom.”

[8] Aryeh Kaplan, trans., The Bahir: Illumination (York Beach, ME: Weiser Books, 1979), 6.

[9] Daniel C. Matt, trans., The Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004-6), 1:3b.

[10] C.f. Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 44-6.

[11] Matt, Zohar, 1:3b.

[12] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 4:9

[13] Kaplan, 11.

[14] C.f. Geoffrey W. Dennis, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2007), 34 and Matt, Zohar vol 1, 459.

[15] It is spelled YHVH but said Elohim. See, for example, Gikatilla, Gates, 283.

[16] Kaplan, I believe, mistakenly associates the three Mothers with Keter, Chokmah and Binah. The Zohar fully establishes Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet as being archetypal for mercy, judgment and balance; i.e. the scale described by the Sefer Yetzirah. See, for example Parsha Bo, 201.

[17] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 175.

[18] C.f. Matt, Zohar, 1:115a, 1:137a.

[19] 4:12.

[20] Kaplan, 30.

[21]< 4:16; Gikatilla, Gates 66-7.

[22] 90.

[23] C.f. Matt, Zohar, 1:136a,1:237a.

[24] 5:2.

[25] C.f. Gikatilla, Gates, 55.

[26] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 5:7.

[27] Kaplan, Bahir, 12. This refers to the numerical value of the letter.

[28] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 5:7.

[29] Matt, Zohar, 1:3a.

[30] 5:7

[31] Ibid., 5:8

[32] Ibid.

[33] Matt, Zohar, 1:3a.

[34] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 5:8.

[35] Matt, Zohar, 1:3a.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Gikatilla, Gates, 115-146.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 5:9.

[41] Matt, Zohar, 1:3a.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, 5:9.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Matt, Zohar, 1:2b.

[46] Gikatilla, Gates, 130-33.

[47] Kaplan, 1:5.

The Haunting of Wells Hall

Posted: July 2, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult
Tags: Ghosts, hauntings

The building was quiet. Wells Hall, built in 1938, is home to Northwest Missouri State University’s Department of Communication and Mass Media, and two radio stations. During the school year, students work on projects, or at the campus media, at all hours. However, on Sundays in June, the building is empty; at least of the living.

College senior Victoria Bailey sat in the studio of KXCV radio around 8 a.m. on Sunday 9 June when she realized she might not be alone. “I was putting together news stories, and I saw something pass by the observation window,” she said. “It was out of the corner of my eye. I turned around really quick to see if I could catch who it was and nothing was there.”

She got up and walked into the long hallway the person would have had to go down, but she was alone. “Nobody is here on Sundays,” she said. “Not even janitors.”

Victoria brushed off what she thought she saw and went back to work. At a break, she went into the hallway to get a drink of water. “I thought I saw somebody in the hallway through a glass door,” she said. “I looked up after I got my drink and nobody was there.” She considered she may have seen her relief coming in early for his shift, but quickly dismissed it. “At that point I’m creeped out a little bit,” she said. The creepy feeling would only escalate. “About 15 minutes goes by and I go use the bathroom, and get another drink.”

When she came back to the studio door, she looked through a small glass panel and saw something that froze her. A man she didn’t recognize stood outside the observation glass opposite her, looking into the studio. “There’s a person standing on the other side just staring at the computer equipment,” she said. “I don’t know how I can duplicate my scream.”

The man looked to be a college student, “Asian. Dark hair,” Bailey said. “He was wearing khakis and a blue shirt. It was creepy.”

As Bailey stood, looking at this apparition, one of her contact lenses suddenly ripped. After she fished it out of her eye, she looked back toward the observation window, but the man was gone. “I went down the observation hallway and no one was there,” she said. “I yelled, ‘hello,’ and no one was here.”

Although Bailey had heard rumors Wells Hall was haunted, she’d never heard details, until she posted her encounter on Facebook. Then she got a name and a date: Amos Wong, 1991. Walking with some trepidation into the hallway to a bookshelf containing decades of Tower yearbooks, she pulled out the 1991 yearbook and flipped to the index. “I felt he was looking at it with me,” Bailey said. “I was flipping pages, looking up his name. I felt someone was with me.”

Then she found him, Amos Wong, a photographer for Tower yearbook. The face in the group picture staring up at her was he face she’d just seen through the window of the radio studio. “It creeped me out,” she said. “It was really weird.”

Bailey isn’t the first person who encountered Amos Wong.

Dominic Genetti, a former reporter for the student newspaper The Northwest Missourian, saw Amos in 2008. “I turned and looked out the corner of my eye and I could have sworn I saw somebody in a button-down blue shirt,” he said. “Not a royal blue, just blue. And I couldn’t really get the body type out of it, but it was definitely a person I saw walk by.”

When Genetti looked, expecting someone to turn the corner toward him, no one did. “I walked into the hallway and there’s no one in the basement,” he said. “There were times in the Convergence Lab that the light above me will flicker. There will be a reflection in the Mac computer that looked like someone walked behind me. And I looked behind me and no one was there.” Before digital cameras, the room known as the Convergence Lab was the darkroom.

Amos Wong died in a 1991 car accident. Assistant Professor Laura Widmer, former student publication adviser at Northwest Missouri State, said Wong had a passion for photography. “He was just on staff for a year,” Widmer said. “He was an international student that enjoyed photography and joined the yearbook staff. He was a go-lucky kind of guy. Wouldn’t hurt anyone. Just a little mischievousness in his eye.”

In fall 1991 after Wong’s death, students working at the school’s media outlets started noticing something strange in the basement. A student who had worked on staff with Wong told Widmer, “‘You know, Amos is back in the darkroom,’” Widmer said. “I’m not sure he ever saw Amos, but there are things like music going on and lights going on. Just strange occurrences. Photographers would say there was someone in the darkroom with them. It just felt like someone.”

That feeling seems to lurk in Wells Hall. “There are times where you just get that feeling you don’t want to go to the other end of the basement,” Genetti said in 2008. “There are times I just don’t want to go down there.”

Bailey agrees. She sometimes feels uncomfortable coming to work when the building’s supposedly empty because she knows what she saw. “Was it a ghost?” she asked. “I’ll answer my own question. Yes. You hear stories about Wells Hall being haunted – it is.”

By Jason Offutt

MysteriousUniverse.org

Possessed Patients: True Tales of Hospital Demons

Posted: June 21, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult
Tags: demons, paranormal

underthe-bed

While the woods are full of things that go bump in the night, forested areas hardly have a monopoly on the supernatural. If the stories from medical professionals are accurate, hospitals, nursing homes, and other medical facilities also play host to spirits, particularly those of the demonic variety.

A Patient Possessed

Nurses deal with death on a daily basis, so it’s hardly surprising that many turn to religion as a source of wisdom and comfort. However, encounters with demonic forces may also influence nurses’ views on the battle between good and evil. In a chilling tale on AllNurses.com, one nurse shares her experience with a dying patient who was more than he seemed. According to the nurse, the patient suffered from a variety of ailments that could end his life at any time. However, the man was terrified of death and raged at the nurses to keep him alive. “Every time his heart monitor beeped, he would go into a rage screaming, ‘Don’t let me die! Don’t let me die,’” the nurse writes. “We soon found out why he didn’t want to die.”

ekg-machine

One night, the patient took a turn for the worse, and the nurse rushed into his room with emergency supplies. However, she wasn’t prepared for what she found. “This man was sitting about two inches above the bed and was laughing,” the nurse writes. “His whole look completely changed. His eyes had a look of pure evil and he had this evil smile on his face. He laughed at us and said, ‘You stupid bitches aren’t going to let me die are you?’”. After this frightening outburst, the man went into cardiac arrest and died 20 minutes later. However, the terror was far from over. Five minutes after a doctor pronounced the patient dead, the newly-deceased man sat up in bed and started to laugh, saying “You let him die. Too bad.” What happened next sounds like something from a horror movie. “We heard a horrible, agonizing scream and then you could hear ‘don’t let me die’ whispered throughout the unit,” the nurse reports. “Every one of the nurses that night was pale and scared. Nobody went anywhere by themselves. By morning, the whispers of ‘don’t let me die’ were gone.”

A Terrifying Vision

Another tale, also from AllNurses.com, describes a patient’s terrifying vision just minutes before her death. “She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days,” a nurse writes of her friend who worked in an oncology unit. “At one point during the night, the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, ‘Don’t let them take me.’ The nurse was freaked out and asked the patient who was going to take her, and she said ‘that black thing up there’ and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.”

The Mark of the Beast

Nurses aren’t the only medical professionals to encounter sinister forces on the job. A paramedic on EMTCity.com shares his experience with a dying patient and a number many call the mark of the beast. Like the dying man in the hospital, the paramedic’s patient was highly agitated, and he seemed to dread his impending death. “We get there and it’s this poor guy in his early 40′s who is bald from chemo and sitting on his brother’s couch,” the paramedic writes. “He just kept saying, ‘Ooh. No. No. Oooh.’ and looking around the room, flinching every now and then like he was waving away flies. We got him to sit on the stretcher, and he said, ‘No, not now.’” The man sadly crumpled to the ground a few minutes later and died with tears on his cheeks. As the paramedic drove the man’s body to the emergency room, he wondered about the patient’s post-death fate. That’s when things started to get weird.

dark-hospital

“As I wondered if the man would go to heaven, I got a bad feeling, like darkness was creeping all around us,” the medic writes. “I happened to look down at the volt-meter and I saw the number 666 flashing. This panel normally doesn’t flash at all, it just reads voltage. It went 666, then .1, then 666, then .1, then 666, then .1, and then it went back up to 1200 or so and stayed that way. The uneasy feeling went away, but I still prayed the whole way to the hospital.” For those unfamiliar with the significance of 666, many Christians associate the number with evil due to a passage in Revelation. In the New International Version of the Bible, Revelation 13:15-18 reads:

“The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.”

Do demonic entities prey on the souls of humans? Let’s hope not. However, many religions teach that evil spirits are a real risk to both the faithful and disbelievers. What do you think?

Christy Gordon

MysteriousUniverse.org

Secrets of Siberian Shamanism

Posted: June 12, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult, Spirituality

By MICHAEL HOWARD—

Today, especially in New Age circles, the term ‘shamanism’ is often used in a generalised way to describe all kinds of indigenous magical practices in a wide range of cultures worldwide. It has also been projected back into a past that it never had, so we can find modern books on so-called ‘Celtic shamanism’ and even ‘Ancient Egyptian shamanism’. Modern writers on the subject such as Dr. Michael Harner have also created what is called ‘core shamanism’ or ‘urban shamanism’.

This takes the essence of shamanic beliefs and practices and repackages them in a safe, sanitised and often diluted form that is acceptable for Western seekers of alternative spirituality. In this article, however, we examine and describe the real ‘core shamanism’ as it has been practised for hundreds of years in its homeland of Siberia and the Turkic-speaking areas of Mongolia, and where it is now being revived.

In the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries the area known as Siberia was colonised by the Russians. They were led there by its abundance of wild animals that created a flourishing trade in animal skins and furs. The Tsars used the income from this enterprise to boost their economy and access the foreign currency that helped create the Russian empire. The influx of Russian hunters, fur traders and merchants drastically affected the local population, which consisted of many different tribes. By the 1900s the native population had dwindled to about 10% of the total people living in Siberia. Along with the fur traders there also came missionaries and, in later times, anthropologists. The former were interested in converting the indigenous population to Orthodox Christianity, while the latter wanted to study their tribal culture, spiritual beliefs and ritual practices. Both these groups of outsiders contacted the tribal shamans of Siberia and, for totally different reasons, recorded and commented upon their religious observances.

The earliest references to magical practitioners that could be described as shamans in fact date back to the 13^th century. It was then that the first Western travellers penetrated Central Asia and visited the court of the Mongol rulers. The explorer Marco Polo, for instance, met magicians who were healers and could diagnosis diseases by the use of divination. Polo says they became possessed by what he described as “a devil,” who then used their vocal chords to speak through them.

However, it was an English explorer called Richard Johnston in the 16^th century who first described what sounds very like the activities of shamans proper. He reported witnessing a tribal priest wearing animal skins and playing a drum “shaped like a great sieve” in “devilish rites.” During the ritual the drummer fell into a trance and was possessed by “evil spirits.”

In 1692 another Western explorer, Nicholas Witsen, described seeing a “shaman” or “priest of the Devil.” He was clad in ritual regalia, consisting of an antlered head-dress and a richly decorated robe, and chanted and beat on a drum to attract the spirits. Generally, reflecting the Catholic culture they came from, these Westerners regarded the shamans as fanatical “devil worshippers” who forced their ignorant and uneducated followers to serve evil spirits and demons.

What is Siberian Shamanism?

The meaning of the word ‘shaman’ is shrouded in linguistic mystery and various explanations have been put forward for its origin. One theory is that it is possibly derived from an ancient Chinese term for a Buddhist priest or monk. The Oxford English Dictionary defines its meaning as “a priest or witch-doctor [sic] of (a) class claiming to have sole contact with gods etc.” It says the word comes from the Russian “shaman” and is a translation of the Tungusion word “saman.” In Siberia and Mongolia, shamanism was known as Tengerism, meaning a reverence for sky spirits. It reflected an animistic belief system where everything in the natural world was alive, permeated by spirit force or, in simple terms, inhabited by spirits.

These spirits had to be respected and appeased or else the land would become infertile and barren, the animals relied upon for food would disappear and eventually the world would come to an end. To achieve this essential and vital balance between humans, nature and the spirit world, a magical specialist was required and the shaman took that role. He or she acted as an intermediary or middle person between humanity and the Other, and a caretaker of cultural and magical tradition. Their job involved conducting blessings, especially on new-born babies, performing rituals of protection, divining the future, healing the sick, exorcising ghosts and demons, overseeing the burial of the dead, and generally communicating on behalf of the tribe with the spirit world and its denizens.

Initiation into the shamanic cult could be achieved in several different ways. The easiest was the hereditary route where magical knowledge, power and skill were passed down from grandfather or father to son or, more rarely, from grandmother or mother to daughter. Sometimes children were chosen at a very early age or even at birth by the spirits and instructed by them through the medium of visions and dreams. Young people who suffered a serious illness or disease or from epileptic fits, were introverted and dreamy, or had any form of mental condition or disability, were regarded as natural shamans who had been specially chosen by the spirits.

In later life those who felt a strong calling to become a magical practitioner would retreat from society, usually to a remote place in the wilderness, and undergo a vigil during which they invited the spirits to contact them and teach them the shamanic ways. When a person was actually taken on by another shaman as his assistant or sorcerer’s apprentice, a formal initiation rite was often carried out. The candidate offered an animal sacrifice, called on the spirits to aid them in their task, took an oath of loyalty to their shamanic master or spiritual clan, and accepted the special ritual regalia of a shaman’s office.

Often these initiations by either another shaman or the spirits involved a traumatic visionary death and rebirth experience. Sometimes this included a journey to the underworld, meetings with deities and the would-be shaman’s body being dismembered and then put together again.

The ritual regalia given to the new shaman reflected the fact that he or she was a special person who was separate and different from other members of the tribe. Siberian shamans wore robes made from animal hide and fur and decorated with embroidery, bird’s feathers, silk tassels, ribbons, bells, small mirrors, jewellery representing symbolic motifs such as the World Tree, and assorted metalwork such as copper discs. Headwear consisted of a conical or pointed cap made from felt or fur or the antlers of a reindeer. Some shamans wore iron-shod fur boots so when they stamped their feet they could drive away evil spirits.

The majority of shamans carried a ritual drum similar in shape to the traditional Irish bodhran. These were made from an animal skin stretched over a wooden frame and decorated with feathers and magical symbols representing spirit journeys to the Otherworld or the shamanic cosmology. The drum was very important and represented the symbolic and magical steed that enabled the practitioner to travel from Middle Earth to the realm of the spirits. It was also a magical object in its own right that contained and focused spirit force or energy. By playing it the shaman could both attract spirits and exorcise them. In addition to the drum a magical staff was often carried. This was made of either wood or metal and was decorated with feathers, bells, ribbons and the pelts of small woodland animals.

Different Types of Shaman

Although Westerners used the generic term ‘shaman’ to describe all the tribal magical practitioners of Siberia and Mongolia, in practice they were divided into several different types, categories or classes with specific magical duties and responsibilities. Using English terminology, these included ‘conjurors’ who summoned and controlled spirits, prophets or psychics who foresaw the future, sorcerers who practised ‘black magic’, trance-workers who travelled in spirit form to the Otherworld, healers who were experts in folk medicine and herbalism, and guides to the dead who laid out corpses and conducted funeral rites.

The shaman-healers were often female and they specialised in health matters connected with human and animal fertility, sexuality and children. They were recognisable by their distinctive skirts made from animal hide and brightly coloured woollen hats. Instead of the ritual drum used by the male shamans, they carried a silk fan and prayer beads. Unfortunately when Buddhism came to Siberia and Mongolia many of these female healers were ruthlessly persecuted and exterminated by the misogynist monks. As a result their extensive knowledge of herbs and plants used for natural healing was either lost completely or taken over by Buddhist healers and only practised in a debased or diluted form.

Another female practitioner was the shaman-midwife, who inherited her power from the maternal line of familial descent. As well as ensuring that babies entered this world safely in a physical sense, she was also responsible for their spiritual protection from evil influences during birth and their well-being as children. In this sense she took on the role of a human fairy godmother. Immediately after a birth the shaman-midwife cut the umbilical cord and then purified the new-born baby with salt water and fire. Any (female only) witnesses to the birth could only be present if they had first been ritually purified by the midwife with fire and water. During the first few weeks of a baby’s life it was very important that the proper rituals were performed to protect the child until its spirit was fully established in the material world. If they were not performed properly then the baby’s spirit might return from whence it had come. These essential rites were the responsibility of the shaman-midwife and her assistants.

Another type of shamanic healer was a bone-setter who called upon spirit guides to help them in their healing work. They mainly repaired broken and dislocated bones and torn ligaments, healed back pain caused by spinal injuries or disease and also skin infections such as boils, rashes, psoriasis and eczema. These gifts were inherited from the paternal side of the family and, because the bones of the human body were considered to be spiritually ‘masculine’ in nature, these shamanic bone-setters were always male.

Most of the shamans worked with what modern New Agers call animal allies or spirit-helpers in animal form. These entities assisted them with their magical work and also taught them. For instance, the shaman-midwives described above worked with an animal spirit in the form of a mountain fox. The first bone-setter is supposed to have been taught his skills by a snake so that creature was sacred to the clan. Other shamanic practitioners were assisted by reindeer or wolves for attacking and destroying evil spirits, and ravens for getting rid of diseases. Other important animal spirit helpers included owls, wild ducks, geese, squirrels, bears, frogs and toads, dogs, seagulls and eagles.

One of the most important and respected types of magical practitioners was the shaman-smith. In all cultures all over the world from Europe to Africa the smith took a central role in tribal society and was regarded as a powerful magician or sorcerer because of his mastery over fire and skill in working with metal. There are many legends about blacksmiths making pacts with demons, gods or the Devil or tricking and outwitting them to acquire their skills. There are also many smith gods in ancient mythology who were magicians, made weapons for the Gods or acted as cultural exemplars by inventing agricultural tools. In Siberia the shaman-smiths made and magically consecrated the ritual metal objects used by other shamans. They were only chosen by the spirits and instead of a drum they used their anvils to communicate with the spiritual realm.

‘Black’ & ‘White’ Shamans

As well as the different types of magical practitioner, the shamans were also divided into two separate, but sometimes overlapping, categories – ‘black’ or ‘white’ shamans. The former were regarded as the most powerful of the two and were sometimes known as ‘warrior-shamans’ because they battled evil forces and were consulted as military advisors. They obtained their power from the north (possibly the North Pole or the North Star) and could be easily identified as they always wore black robes with very little, if any, decoration. The primary function of the black shaman was to deal with demons and the dark gods on behalf of their clients. In this role they were hired to curse their enemies and blight their crops and livestock.

In wartime the black shamans attached themselves to the army rather like the modern padres and helped to win battles using their occult powers. In peacetime they took a more positive role as diplomats, political advisors and emissaries and they oversaw the preparation and signing of treaties with the appropriate magical rites. Black shamans were greatly feared, even after their deaths. In the 19^th century when a famous one died she was placed in a coffin made from the ‘unclean’ wood of an aspen. Her corpse was then nailed down with aspen stakes so she could not become a ‘night walker’ and haunt the living.

In contrast, the so-called ‘white’ shamans obtained their magical power from a westerly direction, the home of the benevolent deities and spirits. They operated at a tribal level almost exclusively as healers and diviners and they only had dealings with beneficent entities. It was their role to pacify angry or evil spirits, exorcise them if they possessed human beings and help the tribe live in harmony with their natural environment and the spirit world. To this end on a physical level they were often employed in an administrative role to oversee tribal affairs.

The Yurt, the World Tree & Spirit Flight

In Siberian and especially Mongolian shamanism the yurt, a traditional dwelling constructed from a framework of wooden poles covered with animal skins and with a central smoke-hole in the roof, was a microcosmic symbol or representation of the universe. For this reason all movement inside the yurt was conducted, if at all possible, in a deosil or sunways direction. This also reflected the traditional direction of movement used in shamanic rituals and dances. The centre of the yurt, where a fire burnt in a hearth and was seldom extinguished, was symbolic of the actual centre of the world or universe. The column of smoke that drifted up from the fire and left the yurt through the central smoke-hole in the roof was symbolic of the axis mundi – the World Mountain, World Pillar or World Tree. This links the underworld below with the heavens above and ends at the North and Pole Star around which all the other stars revolve in the night sky.

The shamans believed in three worlds of existence connected together by the World Tree or Tree of Life. They were the lower world or underworld inhabited by the dead who are awaiting reincarnation, the middle world or Middle Earth, the material plane of existence in which human spirits are incarnated, and the upper world or Heaven, the dwelling place of the Gods. Numerous non-human spirits also inhabit each of these three worlds. The shaman can access these other worlds in trance by means of spirit travel. His soul body ascends the column of smoke from the fire and passes through the aperture in the roof of the yurt. It is interesting to note that in medieval times European witches were supposed to fly to their Sabbats by ascending the chimney on their broomsticks. It is obvious that this was not done physically so they also were practising a shamanic type of spirit flight.

Shamans can also fly through the air when they spirit travel, either by shapeshifting into the form of birds (such as geese) or by riding on the back of a flying deer, horse or some other large animal. Again, there are many woodcuts dating from the Middle Ages depicting witches riding through the night sky on the backs of goats and rams. Sometimes the shaman visited the spirit world by ascending the World Tree itself or by travelling along a rainbow. This is another symbol that is found in Northern European paganism where a rainbow bridge connects Midgard (Middle Earth) with Asgard, the realm of the Gods.

One of the methods used by the Siberian shamans to achieve trance and spirit travel was the hallucinogenic fungi amanita muscaria or fly agaric. This red capped white-spotted toadstool has a symbiotic relationship with both birch and fir trees, which grow profusely in northern and arctic climes. It is so closely associated with magical properties in myth and fairy tales that it is frequently depicted in illustrations to modern children’s stories about woodland elves, faeries and goblins. Fly agaric is reputed to be able to open up the ‘crack between the worlds’ and experiments in the 20^th century by the two well-known ethonomycologists Gordon and Valentina Wasson revealed the ethenogenic qualities of this most famous of ‘sacred mushrooms’.

In Siberia fly agaric was sometimes fed to reindeer and then the animal’s toxic urine is drank. The shamans said that taking it put them in touch with the spirit of the plant, who appeared as small mushrooms with eyes and arms and legs attached. Needless to say that in large quantities fly agaric is highly poisonous and can be deadly. It must, as with all hallucinogenic plants used in magical practice, be used in small quantities, treated with respect and only taken after the proper spiritual preparation and then only under expert supervision. It should also be noted that in many countries fly agaric and other psychedelic fungi are classified as dangerous drugs and the possession or partaking of them is illegal.

In common with indigenous folk beliefs in the West, it was accepted in shamanism that the spirit world was not entirely separated from the material one. There are special places in the natural environment – sacra loci – where the two realms meet and touch and interconnect. These can be a sacred mountain or hill, a stone, a river, a lake, a forest or any natural landmark in the countryside. While the shaman may be able to access such ‘gateways’ or ‘portals’ between here and there easily, lesser mortals may be unaware of them or, if they are sensitive, they may feel they are ‘different’ or ‘other’. Spooky places, whether natural sites in the landscape or buildings, associated with folklore, paranormal phenomena and hauntings are usually spirit gateways.

In shamanistic belief all inanimate objects were inhabited or possessed by spirit energy or force who controlled their environs. Some shamans taught that living beings, especially human ones, could have more than one spirit inhabiting their physical body. Many accepted that humans had an etheric, astral or spirit double and this could be projected in trance or spirit travel to roam over the Earth and also enter the Otherworld. The shamans believed that the soul of a human being resided in a spherical or ovoid energy field that surrounds each of us. It is probably what Western occultists would refer to as the auric field or aura. It was this energy field that was attacked by demons or black shamans when they psychically attacked their victims and in that way they could cause illness or death. It was the task of the white shaman to redress the balance by healing the damaged aura and if possible bring the victim back to full health.

Earlier we saw how animals were important clan totems and spirit guides to the shaman. Before the 20^th century and the rise of industrial scale food production, hunting was widespread on the Siberian steppes and in the forests. Unlike Christian belief, it was accepted without question that animals had souls and when hunting them down and killing them it was essential that their sprits were respected and appeased. If they were not, disaster and misfortune could befall the hunter, his family and tribe. When a hunter killed his prey it was always despatched quickly, cleanly and without cruelty. Before it was killed the hunter apologised for having to do so and after death its remains were treated with care and respect. The same rule applied to domestic animals. A master animal spirit ruled each species and prayers and sacrificial offerings of incense and fire were made to them before the hunt began. Hunting purely for pleasure, as practised in the West, was an unknown concept.

Buddhism & the Stamping Out of Shamanism

Despite the early arrival of the fur traders and merchants in Siberia and Mongolia, shamanism survived. In the 16^th century, however, a Mongolian ruler called Altan Khan invited a Tibetan Buddhist mission to the country. His motives were political as he wanted to consolidate his own position as the supreme tribal leader by claiming to be the reincarnation of the great Kubla Khan. The Buddhists agreed to recognise his claim and in return the Khan gave the head of the Buddhist Order the spiritual title of Dalai Lama, which of course exists today even though the present holder is in exile in India. As a result of the Khan’s one conversion, he passed laws banning shamanic rituals and granted the Buddhist priesthood a special status in society and privileges that were not granted to the shamans.

In the 17^th century attempts were made by the Mongolian rulers to eradicate shamanic survival entirely. The black shaman brotherhood refused to submit to the new religion and many were killed. Some of the white shamans came to an accommodation with it. This led to the creation of a third way called ‘yellow shamanism’ that submitted to the control of the lamas and combined shamanic beliefs and practices with Tibetan Buddhism.

During the 18^th century in Siberia, Buddhist, Orthodox Christian and Muslim missionaries attempted to convert the native population and opposed the practice of all rival religions. Considering their modern peaceful and pacifist image, the Buddhist monks were the most severe in this respect and they hunted down shamans, beat them and destroyed their sacred sites, replacing them with their own image-filled shrines. The Russian Orthodox Church also forced the pagan tribes to accept baptism at the point of a sword and they flogged or imprisoned anyone who dared to practice shamanic rites such as divination and animal sacrifice.

Despite this religious persecution, shamanism survived the forced conversions and it continued underground in remote rural areas. Sometimes shamanic elements were incorporated into an unorthodox form of folk Christianity that flourished despite the censure of the priests. This movement produced hybrid sects who coincided their sacrifices with Church festivals and made offerings to saints. Some shamans accepted the patron saints of Russia, SS George and Michael, as their deities. St Michael was even given the honorary title of ‘Master of the Shamans’ and blood sacrifices were made to his icons.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, shamanism had a brief revival as the power and influence of the Orthodox Russian Church and Buddhism in Siberia faded away. However, with the beginning of the bloody Stalinist regime in the 1920s, the new policy of agricultural collectivism caused drastic changes in Siberian society. The Soviet communists regarded the shamans as an example of primitive superstition and social inequality and they were condemned as enemies of the state. There are horrific stories of KGB agents throwing shamans out of helicopters to prove to their followers that they could not fly and also randomly executing them by firing squad. In 1980 the central government in Moscow claimed that shamanism was extinct in Siberia.

When Professor Ronald Hutton of Bristol University visited Siberia in the early 1980s he was told by experts in the field that there were no more shamans alive and shamanism had died out. At the time he accepted this, but later he came to believe that a number of former shamans had managed to survive the pograms. With the collapse of Soviet communism in the later 1980s and early 1990s there was a revival of traditional culture among the ethnic peoples of the former USSR. Professor Hutton has described an encounter by some British musicians visiting Siberia in 1997 with a person who claimed to be a hereditary shaman. He said he had inherited his powers and knowledge from his grandfather, who had been a blacksmith, and he used his skills for healing and exorcising evil spirits.

Tengrism

In the 1990s a neo-shamanic movement known as Tengrism arose in Central Asia and the new Russian Federation. It quickly organised itself and now claims a rather inflated membership of 500,000. One of its prominent leaders is a Kyrgyzstan Member of Parliament called Dastan Sarygulov, who also runs an international scientific centre for Tengrist studies. Its members have a political agenda and attempt to spread their beliefs and ideology in government circles. Apparently they have had some success as a former Kyrgyz president and the present President of Kazakhstan have both declared that Tengrism is the natural and national religion of the Turkic population.

Unlike the shamanism of former times, Tengrism is a monotheistic form of religion with a cosmology that is suitable for the modern world. It is firmly based on trendy ‘green’ or environmental concerns and believes that humanity should live in harmony with the natural world. Forgetting or ignoring the persecution of the past, it also preaches tolerance towards other religions and seeks to co-exist with them in the spirit of interfaith. Strangely it is also a religion without dogma, prayers or a priesthood. The American academic Marlene Larvelle, who has studied Tengrism, claims that it has been influenced by the atheism of the Soviet years and contemporary ideas about modernity. Its political agenda calls for a recognition of Turkic national ideals and the ultimate unification of all Turkic-speaking peoples.

The revival of shamanism in its modern Tengrist form would seem to hearken back to a romantic past that probably never existed in reality. Its increasing popularity among urban Russians is based on an idyllic image of yurts on the steppes, a nomadic lifestyle and living in harmony with nature. This is in direct contrast to the struggle of daily existence in a modern neo-capitalist and corrupt society governed by autocratic rulers.

An inner desire to reconnect with the natural world and follow spiritual values in a technocratic consumer society, a romantic view of the past and an urge to ‘save the planet’ is also the driving force behind so-called ‘urban shamanism’ in the West. However, the Siberian shaman and his Mongolian counterpart were not so much interested in preserving the environment than surviving day by day appeasing the spirits they believed inhabited it. In that sense the shamanism of the past was an essential part of daily life.

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Select Bibliography

Dr. Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princetown University Press, USA, 1972)

Professor Ronald Hutton, Siberian Shamanism and the Western Imagination (Hambledon and London, UK, 2001)

Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution (Bantam Press, USA 1992)

Marlene Laurelle, ‘Tengrism: In Search of Central Asia’s Spiritual Roots’ in Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Analyst, www.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/3837 (22 March 2008), and www.tengerism.org.

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MICHAEL HOWARD has been studying occultism, magic, folklore and witchcraft for over forty years and lives in England. He is the editor and publisher of the witchcraft magazine The Cauldron and can be contacted by writing to BM Cauldron, London, WC1N 3XX, England or emailing: mike@the-cauldron.fsnet.co.uk.

When Paranormal Entities Change Their Own Rules

Posted: June 8, 2013 by phaedrap1 in Occult

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Writing about the paranormal for about a decade, I’ve seen certain topics grab the public’s attention and quickly fade (orbs, rods), but others, for good reason, stick around year, after year, after year (ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, shadow people). A fairly recent entry into the paranormal landscape that has stalked its way into our deepest nightmares, the weirdest bogyman to show its greasy-haired head in a long time, is the Black-Eyed Kids. I’ve written quite a bit about BEKs, and frankly many of the cases are too similar. Someone alone is approached by children or teens that try to talk their way into a house/car/secluded spot. The children seem strange, then the person notices their all black eyes. The person slams the door and the story is over.

Creepy, but we’ve heard it before. Every once in a while I find someone whose encounter with these entities is a bit different, and that gives me the willies. Here are two.

A Horror on the Farm

Tonya’s family moved from an apartment in town to a small ranch house in rural Indiana when she was five. “My Mom was pregnant with my sis,” Tonya said. “I remember having a swing set and Mom and Dad let me have a rabbit outside in a cage.” One night while her mother and father were inside preparing supper, Tonya played on the swing set and discovered she wasn’t alone. “Another girl appeared behind me,” Tonya said. “I remember thinking I would have someone to play with now.”

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The girl looked dirty, poor, her hair in tangles. “She didn’t speak to me but she scared me,” Tonya said. “I will never forget that. Her eyes were dark and her teeth were wrong; sharp, a lot of them, and dirty also.” Although the girl with the mouthful of needle-like teeth stood still and made no move toward her, Tonya jumped off the swing and ran inside. “Mom gave me a bath after supper and put me to bed,” she said. “The next day … I was too afraid to get out of bed cause I thought she would get me.”

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That day, Tonya’s parents found her pet rabbit dead. Something had opened the lock on the hutch and shredded the rabbit. “I tried to tell my mom about the girl, but she was upset over my rabbit. We both were,” Tonya said. “To this day I remember her face, eyes, and teeth. She killed my rabbit. I knew it then, and know it now.”

My Brother’s Terror

Shay’s brother Korey was young when he became afraid of the dark. “He was just seven years of age and now at the age of 23 he still sticks firmly to his story,” Shay said.

Shay and Korey’s family moved from Arkansas to Olive Branch, Mississippi, in April 1996, and quickly adjusted to the new town, new home, and new school, but after three weeks, some things in the house were still missing. “We had no blinds on our windows,” Shay said. And that brought on Korey’s fear. One night while Shay helped his mother cook dinner, his father watching television in the living room, Korey sat in his room doing homework. “He had only been in his room around 20 minutes when he came barreling down the hallway with the most horrifying scream I had ever heard with tears rolling down his face,” Shay said. “He nearly climbed my mother like a tree trunk all while trying to bury his face as to hide from something.”

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The something was horrifying. “He said as he sat doing his homework he felt an eerie feeling like he was being watched and like something was calling to him,” Shay said. “He then said he glanced up at his window and saw a white-faced boy that looked like a ghost peering into the bottom of his window.” Korey said, “Momma, he looked my age and I thought it was me at first, but when I got close to the window he blinked and moved closer, and he had all black eyes there wasn’t no white there.” Korey knew what he saw wasn’t his reflection; it was something wicked. “I’m sure now if my brother would have stuck around without running away in fear the child may have asked him to let him in,” Shay said. “For nearly three weeks after the incident my brother being scared to sleep in his own room made camp underneath my daybed with my cocker spaniel Danny.” After that, Shay and Korey swapped rooms, but by then blinds hung from the windows – and Shay never opened them. Sixteen years later, Shay knows the memory still terrifies Korey. “As I was leaving work at night somewhat frightened and feeling horrified to walk to my car alone, I called my brother,” Shay said. “I asked, ‘Korey, do you still remember that little boy you saw looking in your window all those years ago?’”

Korey’s voice was shaky in response. “The one with the black eyes?” he asked. “Shay, why did you have to bring that up?” Shay had read an Internet story about Black-Eyed Kids. “I wish you wouldn’t have told me that,” Korey said. “I’ve tried forgetting and it still terrifies me, especially now that I know it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me.”

Jason Offutt.

MysteriousUniverse.com