ATDTDA map/Tree of Life/Daath/Tiphareth other mystic mumbo-jumbo

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Michael Bailey":
          I've had a little thought cooking. . . .

My little brains have been cooking all week. Like the smell?
Folks tell me it smells like cookies.
 
          . . . .was trying to work out a way to link the 
          Map in a generic sense with the Tree of Life...

. . . kinda reminds me of the generic "Goddess" salad 
dressing they sell over at Trader Joe's. I've got a 
problem with that. It's awful close to dissin' the Goddess.
But seriously: the same engine of creation that brought all 
these strange new spiritual groups, like the theosophists 
and the Golden Dawn and the O.T.O. have a spark of 
feminism in them, they are to a certain extant being steered 
by the Goddess, by spiritual forces often thought as dark
but in fact are best scryed by moonlight.

          . . . .I mean, if somebody tells you a map isn't 
          what it purports to be. . . .

"Just because the package says "Cigarettes" on the outside 
doesn't necessarily mean there's Cigarettes on the inside." 
Jubal Harshaw speaking ex cathedra from his belly button
[paraphrase] 
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein

          . . . .that's almost giving permission to fiddle 
          with the meaning and purport, and the people 
          who burnished the caballa were excellent 
          fiddlers of such. . . .

Don't know that. My sense is that the Ceremonial Magician uses a different 
map of the world [that aforementioned "Tree"]. As I said before and will say 
again and again, Pynchon actively seeks out heresy. The Tree of Life, all by 
itself, constitutes a number of heresies, first and foremost being communication 
with angels---aforementioned channeling being a theme that pops up over and
over in OBA's realms and nowhere moreso than in AtD. 

The central heresy of the Gnostics is direct communication with "G-d". The 
heresy is, if you are not a member of church elect---the priesthood, 
however such an all-male coven chooses to display itself to the world---
then your vision is invalid, those messages that you KNOW [and the 
Gnostic Experience has a very high level of Truthiness] are the work of 
G-d transmitted straight to your pineal gland turn out to be unauthorized 
by the thought police who are guarding this black iron prison, this Desolation 
Row of the spirit.
 
          Wide at top tapering toward the bottom is 
          reminiscent of a triangle, "how many triangles 
          can you see in this picture" - with the Tree, 
          there's the triangle formed by the supernal 
          triad, Kether, Choknah and Binah (which among 
          other correspondences, relates to the Sahasrara 
          chakra (possibly energetics of the cerebral 
          cortex), and left & right brain lobes...

It's funny, losing the job at Borders in no way slowed down finding 
new resources that would apply to Against the Day. The Brass 
Unicorn has a little lending library for employees, and I happened 
upon this book that seems to line up with my thoughts as regards 
Nickey Nookshaft.

      The One Beyond Ten

      In 1893, at the age of eighteen, Aleister Crowley determined to 
      put Magick on a sound Scientific basis. He explains that he 
      adopted the old English spelling---magick---"in order to 
      distinguish the Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits"; by 
      this spelling he also intended to indicate the peculiar nature of 
      his teachings, which has a special affinity with the number 
      eleven, the One beyond Ten.

      "K' (the last letter of Magick) is the eleventh letter of several 
      major alphabets; it is attributed to the god Jupiter, whose 
      vehicle (the eagle) is symbolic of magick power in its feminine 
      aspect; it is 'thesymbol of that gigantic Power whose colour is 
      scarlet, and who has affinity with Capricorn, or Babalon."

      "K" is also the Khn, Khou or Que symbolized by the tail or 
      vagina, venerated in ancient Egypt as the source of Great 
      Magical Power. Magick spelt with a "k" therefore indicates 
      the precise nature of the Current which Therion (Crowley) 
      embodied and transmitted.

      Because the number ten was regarded by Qabalists as 
      the stable number of the system of Divine Emanations, or 
      Sephiroth, the number eleven was considered accursed, 
      because it was outside the system. Therion therefore 
      adopted eleven as his formula.

      In The Book of the Law, the goddess Nuit exclaims: 
      "My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us," 
      which is a direct allusion to the A.:.A.:. *, or order of the 
      Silver Star, and its system of grades. Nuit is the Great 
      Outside, represented physically as "Infinite Space and 
      the Infinite Stars thereof" (i.e.Isis). Nuit and Isis are thus 
      identified in The Book of the Law. Isis is terrestrial space, 
      illumined by the stars; Nuit is outer, or infinite space, the 
      undying darkness that is the hidden source of Light. She 
      is also, in a mystical sense, Inner Space and the Great 
      Within.
      Kenneth Grant: "Aleister Crowley---The Hidden God"
      Samuel Weiser, 1974

          between the Supernal Triad and the lower 
          intelligences, there is The Abyss...and in the 
          Abyss is "the sephira that is not a sephira", 
          Daath - tres misterioso - relating possibly to the 
          Throat Chakra also to speech
 
          However, the geography would need to be looked 
          at from the below sephiroth to have Daath be the 
          Interdikt line on the map (not that we couldn't do 
          that...the block of 5 Chakras in the middle of the 
          Tree is normally drawn directly beneath with the 
          same width, so looking up from Chesed and um, 
          the one that relates to Mars...just have the taper 
          begin later, or draw the "head" (Supernals) as 
          much narrower as a head is than the shoulders.
 
          Then Daath could be stretched across the Abyss...
 
          However, there are lots of ready made triangles 
          in the Tree - this page http://www.crystalinks.com/kabala.html 
          has good pictures. If (as some think) Mr Pynchon 
          has interest in the Tree. . . .

. . . .and in triangles as well, please note the pains OBA took 
to point directly at Crowley without ever directly invoking him---
T.W.I.T. is, after all, O.T.O.spoken inside-out and alliterates with 
you-know-what. So yeah, triangles everywhere. Somehow the 
notion of the Triple Goddess [Robert Graves territory but also 
Tarot & Numerology associating the number 3 with the Goddess]
sneaks in as well. Then again, speaking of maps, I see Pynchon 
as quite aware of Modern Trends in Ceremonial Magick (ain't dat 
a pantload?), probably biliomantically scrying the shelves of Big-
Box book retailers, hunting down crystal skulls and the History
of Standard Oil, New Jersey. So I see a map of the modern world 
co-existing with the world of the past, no-where moreso than in 
sexual/spiritual matters best left veiled for the moment.

          . . . . then further study might place the Interdikt 
          elsewhere, although the accepted paths do not 
          seem to yield a triangle around any horizontal path...
 
          I mean ter say, the Tree when I look at it definitely 
          has conceivable connections between the sephiroth 
          (or "Intelligences" which is a really neat term for it) 
          which are not made -
          going back to the map analogy, it's as if, yeah there 
          just isn't a road between those two places...
          and maybe there will be sometime or maybe there 
          shouldn't be or maybe there's an undocumented shortcut

Note that Crowley, in taking up the number 11 as a personal
cause is consciously committing a heretical act. Like---say,
an undocumented shortcut, usually regarded as some sort 
of left-handed act, kinda like dealin' from the bottom of the 
deck. And that reminds me to note [once again] the probable 
Firesign Theatre influence in the whole Weird Occult Practices 
in the Wilde West intertwined with psychically attuned private 
dicks in Against the Day---well there's "Waiting For The 
Electrician" and "Nick Danger---Third Eye" right there.

          anyway, a tiny bit of brain wracking is all I can 
          afford on that, and all I can really do in this post 
          is suggest some of the spaced-out notions this 
          suggests. Ideally one would have a cottage deep 
          in the redwoods and some books like
           _Gnostic Pynchon_ and Gershom Scholem 
          to ramify and fortify this properly
 
          non-fans of this sort of thing, please consider 
          yourselves apologized to...

And if you'd really like to be offended, please open this:

http://www.kontraband.com/videos/12091/Hillarys-Downfall/
 
          also, a triangle with a sideways line like halfway 
          up is the alchemical symbol of salt or something, 
          isn't it? 

[Coughing, twitching, uncontrollable urge to suppress 
uncontrollable laughter, try not to think of an Eve Ensler. . . .]

          and without the bottom part it's the Letter 
          A (but the book of Genesis begins with the letter 
          B because its Gematria relates more to blessing)
 
          therefore, this post is brought to you by the letter B

Favorite Sesame Street story. So, in one of those "brought to 
you by the letter B" "commercials, those good folk at the Jim 
Henson work camp came up with a song and dance routine 
[featuring Big Bird] around  "Letter B" to be sung to the tune 
of "Let if Be", and of course, Paul McCartney sued.

It gives me a warm feeling just saying that.

Oh yeah, Dick Clark's into the dark arts:

http://tinyurl.com/3h9quv

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200309/?read=article_hampton

*That's the closest I can get to the triangle symbol that's deployed by the 
O.T.O.