Nephesh in the Jungle

Reading in Rudd's Goetia.

Always the distinction between the magician and sorcerer. Today the two have pretty much become synonymous terms, with the latter denoting a more practical magic, applicable to everyday life; a magic fulfilling basic needs as well as desires. Traditionally though, the distinction was simple, was black and white - magicians were co-workers with the divine; sorcerers had given themselves over to the infernal, and were its unwitting tools. I think of Eliphas Levi talking about diseased creatures who have opened the void within themselves.

Look around. It's obvious who is who, no matter the title they choose for themselves. You can observe those that ooze a black ectoplasm of ego. Their motivations are simple: Feed the Nephesh. Involving themselves in metaphysics has served to amplify their monstrous nature. The older they become, the more obvious their nature. They have devolved into creatures without compassion, irreverent, heartless, cruel, bitter. Not the wizened sage at all. You know who they are. They are the world. They are it's problem.

Rising on the planes, past the postmodern war-torn fields of Assiah—the overgrown garden of ego where "things are done to me, I'm a victim"—rising into Yetzirah, becoming aware of the subtle emanations of Briah and Atziluth, how bizarre the world below becomes. People lost, without identity. Wasting away in false forms; unhappy, unfulfilled, unaware. You can't save them. You can't reach them. You can't make them understand. They come to resent you. I am not a parent, but it must be an extraordinarily excruciating experience. And then, you come back down, and join with these people, again forgetting your own identity, caught up in the entrancing droning pandemonium of the machinery. You've brought back something precious though. A new consciousness. An awareness that this dismal existence is totally malleable.

Something hit me hard yesterday - the last day of Mercury Rx, 1.15.16. It put me in a fetal position. I was struck, but not defeated. I rose again, did not wallow in the Kingdom of Ego, did not seek to lose myself in addiction or behaviors that have an adverse and negative cumulative effect. I've had enough of that. I don't have time for that. I have magic to do, a will to accomplish, things to manifest.

No matter how far we rise, how much we mature and grow, we are yet human. Our realm, our home is Malkuth, and our Nephesh is dominant here. Once we begin to rise above, once we become conscious that our animal desires are not our identity, we are called to tame the beast. Give it something different, that requires an acquired taste. Bring it in from the jungle and into the palace for an exquisite liver-paste hors d'oeuvre.