The Ripley Scroll. The First Five Cryptograms. 1600s.

https://youtu.be/aveM4w5zv-c

Happy Birthday, Tom Felton! 🎉

“Soy de querer con todas mis fuerzas, por eso evito encariñarme con cualquiera.”

— Stup

Tzimtzum

The word Tzimtzum has at least two meanings. The first is an ontological meaning connoting “contraction”, “withdrawal”, or “condensation.” The second is an epistemological meaning, which connotes  "concealment" or “occultation”. Both the ontological and epistemological senses of the term are necessary to a full understanding of the Lurianic theory of creation.

The doctrine of Tzimtzim gives expression to a series of paradoxical ideas, amongst which is the notion that the universe as we know it is the result of a cosmic negation.  The world, according to Lurianic Kabbalah, is not so much a something which has been created from nothing, but rather a genre of nothingness resulting from a contraction or concealment of the only true reality, which is God. Like a film image that has been projected on a screen, the world exists in all its details and particualrs only as a result of a partial occultation of what would otherwise be a pure and homogenous light.

It is also part of the notion of Tzimtzum that the very unfathomability and unknowability of God and His ways is the sine qua non of creation itself.  Creation, the doctrine of Tzimtzum implies, is, in its very essence, “that which does not know.” God’s contraction, concealment, and ultimate unknowability are thus the greatest blessings he could bestow on the world and mankind.

Although a controversy raged for some time between those Kabbalist’s who interpreted Tzimtzum naturalistically and their opponents,  a physical interpretation of the “contraction” involved in Tzimtzum is really impossible.  This is because the Kabbalistic tradition is clear that God or “Ein-sof” does not originally exist within space and time.  Indeed, it is only through the original Tzimtzum that space, time, matter and light come into being at all.

Our understanding of Tzimtzum can be clarified through an analogy from the world of mathematics.  An infinite perfect mind sees immediately that the arithmetical expressions 21/3, 126/18, 6.72 + .28, etc., etc., are all equivalents of the number 7: it is only from the point of view of a limited intellect that these expressions appear to represent different mathematical ideas.  Indeed, as the mathematical philosophers Russell and Whitehead painstakingly demonstrated, all of mathematics is predicated on a very small number of logical principles, and an infinite mind would in an instant intuit the entire world of higher mathematics as an elaboration of the simplest of ideas.  So it is with the world.

From the point of view of God, the whole world is subsumable under the simplest concept of the One; it is only from our limited point of view that there appears to be a plurality of virtues, concepts and instantial things.  Creation does not involve a limitation in the divine being, which remains completely intact, but rather a limitation in knowledge of the Divine:  an estrangement of certain points within the “world” from the knowledge that all is One.  God does not change in His being, it is rather that His presence is obscured.  He is not completely known in a certain region of Being, and that region of Being becomes our world.

Space, time and matter as well as individual personal existence are the logical consequence of Tzimtzum as concealment or epistemic limitation.  For each of these “categories” serve as a vehicle through which knowledge is limited.  That which is remote in space or time, that which is concealed in or by material objects, and that which belongs to another person or self is in principle, unknown or only partially known.  Space, time, matter and personality are the logical prerequisites for creation, because they are the very principles through which an undifferentiated divine “All” is concealed and hence, paradoxically, manifest as finite, particular things.  

Schneur Zalman, the first Lubavitcher rebbe, regards the very act of God revealing himself in letters and words as an act of Tzimtzum, a radical contraction of the divine essence.  Each substitution and transposition of words and letters indicates a further contraction of the divine light and life, degree by degree. The sefirotic vessels, which, according to Luria, are the products of the Tzimtzum, are regarded by Schneur Zalman as “letters” whose “roots” are the five letters in Hebrew which always terminate a word, and which no letter can follow.   Letters, by structuring and limiting divine thought serve to carry out the function of the divine contraction and are thereby held to be equivalent to the sefirotic vessels.

Si Eva hubiera escrito el Génesis, ¿cómo sería la primera noche de amor del género humano? Eva hubiera empezado por aclarar que ella no nació de ninguna costilla, ni conoció a ninguna serpiente, no ofreció manzanas a nadie, y que Dios nunca le dijo que parirás con dolor y tu marido te dominará. Que todas esas historias son puras mentiras que Adán contó a la prensa. 

Eduardo Galeano.

“Así soy realmente: maligno, borracho, pero lúcido.” Joseph Roth, París, noviembre 1938.

APRENDAMOS DEL UNIVERSO -1

Existen leyes y principios “Universales” que afectan nuestra vida a cada momento.

Hay principios invisibles que contribuyen a modelar nuestras vidas.

Es sorprendente que muchas personas crean que todo el “Universo” no es gobernado por leyes, salvo sus propias vidas y su propio éxito o fracaso… entonces hablan de suerte y casualidad.

Pues bien, resulta que somos parte del “Universo”, como del Cosmos, y necesitamos mantener un equilibrio, como lo mantiene el resto de la Naturaleza.

Toma tiempo crecer y sanar, necesitamos el tiempo adecuado para descansar y recuperarnos, si existen leyes que gobiernan nuestra vida, la luna, las estrellas y la hierba que crece en nuestro jardín.

Somos hoy, en este momento, en este mismo instante la causa de lo que ocurre en nuestras vidas y es más aún de cómo hemos transformado esas experiencias de manera única e individual.

Sí, nuestros pensamientos nos hacen ser “causa”, son fuerzas, es manejar energía…

Marco Aurelio, el Emperador Romano decía: “El hombre es aquello en lo que piensa todo el día”, siempre habrá quienes digan: “nada sirve, nada importa, nada cambia, y que la vida es un sufrimiento constante”, en este caso debemos evaluar primero la calidad de vida de este tipo de persona antes de inscribirnos en este club.

El Universo se rige por:

La Ley de desarrollo en ciclos, pues nuestra vida también por analogía.

De modo que siempre habrá tiempos fáciles y difíciles, con la misma inexorabilidad con que una estación sigue a la otra.

Uno de los grandes retos de la vida es enfrentar el invierno, mientras esperas que mejoras las cosas, las cosas siempre han de mejorar “después de la tormenta viene la calma”, siempre es así, el problema es que a veces nos rendimos y regresamos a casa demasiado pronto, hay que tomar en cuenta que la marea siempre baja.

La Ley de Usarlo o perderlo, lo ilustra claramente la Naturaleza cuando un río deja de moverse y se pudre, lo mismo ocurre con nosotros cuando dejamos de movernos física y mentalmente, lo mas recomendable para nuestras vidas es mantenernos “en servicio”; en todo la Creación nos exige que nos involucremos en todas las esferas de la vida, nos brinda el incentivo de la práctica, y al practicar nos superamos.

* * *

Crow Bone Hex

Crow Bone Hex

“A pentagram of nightshade berries, deadly as the vipers sting. ~The Visions they will conjure bring the spirits from the dark,

A saucer full of milk as pure as the moon, an unseelie offering. ~That tempts the greed of kindly ones so that they soon embark.

A dish of black ink, the abyss in night’s mournful eye, ~That seers call to wonder in the depths of wight’s fateful cry,

A length of twine to describe a circle for spirits to reside. ~That sigil traced to seal the pact of malefic alibi.

Six corvus bones set like a compass, to the four quarters called . ~The victim named, the spirit bound, the offering received at large,

Three black steel pins to bind it, ‘do your bidding after all. ~The spirit departs to deliver it’s venēficia to the stated charge.”

A raven’s feather to sign it, a pact of harm as sure as night. The witches blood to seal the deed that burns as pure as light.