ATD "as above, so below" reflections

[mikebailey]

On Sat, 12 May 2007 robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

>           Bryan Snyder:
>           Admittedly I did not understand the “as above, so below”
>           when it is mentioned (I think twice in AtD??) and I have
>           to dive into M & D (but am really looking forward to it).
>
> The whole Gnostic notion of being "hooked up" to the Overmind,
> Super-Duperconciousness, the Godhead, The Big Cheese. . . .the whole mystical
> concept of a greater sphere, one that---with the proper training---one can link
> up to, have communion with, be one with. So that Overmind is as above. Anyway,
> that's been my take on it for a long time, but I'm only a fool. . . .
>

"as above, so below" is one of the core mission statements of mystical
thought.  Lots of correspondences and restatements - "on earth as it is in
heaven", "Malkuth is in Kether, and Kether is in Malkuth, but after a
different fashion" - also "Makroprosopus & Mikroprosopus"
there's commentary aplenty and different interpretations abound

Like some other central teachings, it's prone to being played with -
you could almost do a "Kenosha-Kid" kind of meditation -
(which, btw, is almost called for in one of Crowley's comments on
The Book of the Law (a channeled transmission known within Thelema
as "Liber Al" (funny, that is like, "Liberal", isn't it?) - where he
says, essentially, don't change any of the letters or the words, but
you can mess with the punctuation)

Permutations I've pondered:

are we invoking the condition of things being below as they are above,
ie praying to emulate a higher condition?

are we stating that in all cases the "lower" form embodies the
conditions of the "higher" form - and if so, in what way?

Does it do so because the higher form has so decreed?

Or because they are "of the same substance" and the kinship persists
through and despite the artificial division?

Does perception play an important role, ie the (I think) Hindu statement
"this is that", meaning (I think) "this which you are experiencing is in fact
the heavenly condition you wish for, if you only could realize and accept
it" - which is tantamount to "as above, so below" (or its reverse and
perhaps corollary - - "as below, so above")

One way to utilize the notion is in regards to power relations...
in GR, there's a mention somewhere of something like "don't think
there aren't dialectical materialist magicians in the Zone", isn't there?

As above, so below, is also what you might call a postulate on which
astrology is built

In AtD, perhaps the action on the balloon recaps/reflects/or in some
way uses the law of similars w/r/t to action on the ground?