Da'at Night

The focus of this blog is not only the symbolic analysis of the many "occult" events occurring presently, but to also examine the historically unprecedented phenomenon of a multitude of web researchers all presenting their own unique interpretations of these events, sharing ideas, locked in debate, their ideas feedbacking into the events themselves.

I write this just hours before the Opening Ceremony for London 2012, come what may, but the event I'd like to focus on happened a week prior -- the start of the last week of the 70-day underworld journey. I'm referring, of course, to the mass shooting, resulting in 12 dead and 58 wounded, during the premier The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado. Certainly an occult event.

As is now almost commonplace, there is commentary from the usual sources linking the shooting to mind control programs, reports of other people involved, speculations about it being a "false flag" event, examples of "predictive programming", etc. The fact that this type of conspiratorial analysis happens so close on the heels of such an event, and that skepticism towards the "official story" is so widespread and direct, is itself a fascinating phenomenon. It is hard to imagine such a reaction even ten years ago. There has been a change in public consciousness.

In addition to this, though, is even a deeper layer of analysis. This second, perhaps we can call it synchronistic or even "synchromystic," layer is now growing at a faster rate than traditional conspiratorial theorizing and, while complementary to some degree, it really threatens to supplant the first entirely.

When an event like this occurs, individuals across the globe and throughout the web automatically scour the available facts on the lookout for "coincidences", better termed as synchronicities. As strange as it might seem, it is natural for these researchers to look for, and inevitably find, syncs linking the Aurora shooting with the London Olympics. It is interesting to look both at these syncs and also the whole phenomenon that determines them.

I'll summarize some of these syncs here and then I'll examine others more connected to the discussions of this blog. Finally, I'll move into the real subject of this post -- where is this all headed? What is this underworld or Abyss that we are collectively passing through? Where does it lead? This will be the first of likely several posts on the hidden sephirah of Da'at. But first the Dark Knight.

A synchronicity on the first level of analysis is the uncanny fact that a high level medical school, in a nearby suburb of Denver, was giving drills to medical students on how to deal with just this type of mass shooting at a theatre. The drill, the only of its kind in the country, occurred on the same day as the shooting.

 "The irony is amazing, just amazing," said Rocky Vista Dean Dr. Bruce Dubin.

This type of coincidence can easily be assimilated into the conspiratorial model. It matches the well-known pattern of similar drills happening at the same time, and concerning the same type of attacks, as 9/11, 7/7, etc. The drills themselves, and the analysis explaining the "MO" of the drills, have become predictable.

The other synchronicities, especially those which link the shooting to London 2012, are not so easily explained. A weird one is that witnesses were brought a few blocks away by police to Aurora's Gateway High School which proudly boasts to be "the home of the Olympians". Did the Illuminati plan this as well?

Web researchers also noted that in the trailer of the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, which is being shown in theatres immediately before Dark Knight Rises, there is a prominent centre skyline shot of the Aurora building in Shanghai. Immediate predictive programming?

Other researchers discovered that both the words "Aurora" and "London" equal 444 in English gematria. That's a weird enough connection, but a closer look shows that "Christ", "Lucifer", and "Messiah" also equal 444. This is resonant with the last post in which the ambiguity of Christ and Lucifer was shown in their relation to Venus, the morning star.

One researcher pointed out that Dark Knight Rises allegedly includes a bomb plot where a nuclear device is set to go off 23 days after it is activated. Having not seen the movie yet, I can't confirm this, but if this true, as he or she warns, 23 days after the explosive premier on 7/20 would be 8/12 -- the day of the closing ceremony for London 2012. It's interesting, as pointed out here, that 8/12 is also the date of the heliacal rising of Sirius over London. 

Does Aurora, which means "dawn," symbolically refer to the dawn of Sirius?

 

Among all the syncs uncannily connecting the Dark Knight shooting with the London Olympics, the one that really stands out, and it is one that seems to have escaped notice up to this point, is the fact that the alleged perpetrator shot 70 people (12 killed and 58 wounded) -- exactly the number of days in the Olympic Torch Relay, and exactly the number of days Sirius was traditionally said to journey in the underworld. One victim for every day in the Duat?

What is going on here? Why should any of these syncs appear? And why should they be discovered in the way they were? Is this just a matter of apophenia -- arbitrarily finding meaningful patterns in places where no such meaning exists? Clearly, though, if these things are not mere coincidences, then they point to something far more bizarre than even the spells of the most adept of masonic sorcerers. In short, if taken as being significant, they point to the limitations of conspiratorial analysis.

The excellent and fearless researcher, Goro Adachi, makes exactly this point in a recent article on the Aurora shooting:

The Olympic ceremonies are a "mega-ritual," no doubt about that. So many people out there are shouting: "Oh my god, alien invasion! Project Blue Beam! False flag attack!" It's understandable but most are just new at this. I've been at this for more than a decade. I was heavily into this before 9/11. I can point to the fact that I wrote an article on the 9/11 attacks in October 2001 from a multicontextual perspective that's not so different from what I talk about today... including Mars.

From experience I can say that foresight is not something easily attained. Our reality is not static, it's dynamic. The future is fluid and influenced by what we do, see, and are aware of in the present. The future reacts to our actions and perception so as not to "reward" the unworthy with the gift of foresight. The more purely you align with truth, the more you are "worthy", that is to say, the more you resonate with the future (unrealized possibilities).

Most "conspiracy theorists" don't have this quality in them which requires a great sense of balance, lots of self-examination and ego-control. That's why 99.999% of the time they can't foresee anything correctly. Their uncontrolled ego magnet screws up the truth compass. If you can't start from a place of no assumptions and no preconceived worldview, you won't get far. If you go "I'm a Christian" or "I'm an atheist", or "I'm looking for conspiracies by the NWO, the stinking Illuminati!" for instance, you're immediately done right there before you even start, a dead-ender. Talk about self-sabotage. It's so easy to contaminate our reality/future vision with our conscious and subconscious preconceptions.

So, while listening to folks like Alex Jones might initially help you deprogram yourself from the mainstream unquestioning mindset, constantly listening to the endless stream of their version of "I hate my parents, they ruined my life, bahhhh!" day in and day out, well, now that's just another worldview programming, another religion, yes, "mind control." It's very unhealthy. You need to stay balanced so as not to get stuck in a fixed line of thinking. That just makes you a robot.

In other words, reality is far stranger than even the conspiracy theorists will allow for and, in a way that is threatening for dogmatic theorists of any stripe, the observer in his very act of observation alters what he is observing. The theorist's own self will, unwittingly or not, enter into the body of his theory. The deeper down the rabbit hole we go the further we sink into the depths of our own shadows. The process of gathering Knowledge, especially of this esoteric caliber, is itself a journey through the Abyss.

This is what needs to be explored more thoroughly before any of these "occult" events can be understood.

Finding Nemo

The story could start anywhere, but for fun I'll start it a long way in both space and time from London 2012. Let's begin with ex-Harvard psychologist and LSD advocate, Timothy Leary, in the desert of Algeria. Leary had been busted out of prison in 1970 by the Weather Underground and had been smuggled away to Algeria under the "protection" of the Black Panther Party.

According to Leary's friend, the writer Brian Barritt, the story goes that after in turn escaping from the Black Panthers, Leary and Barritt eventually ventured out into the desert at Bou Sadaa in 1971. Here, in the desert, the two had a life-altering acid trip together.

 
They later found out that they had tripped in almost exactly the same location where the magician Aleister Crowley and his poet friend, Victor Neuberg, had tripped on mescaline and performed the important crossing the Abyss ritual in 1909. Crowley himself considered that he and his partner were just continuing in the spirit of the English Renaissance magus, John Dee, and his partner Edward Kelly by employing the Enochian magic that these men had developed. Barritt writes:

Tim and myself tripped for the first time together in the same area in which Crowley and Neuburg dropped mescaline and performed a magical ceremony using Dr. Dee's script!

The new information shakes and impresses us both. It's not reincarnation we are thinking of so much as recurring cycles with different representatives each time around. We feel we are riding the same current that powered Dr Dee and Edward Kelly in the 16th century and Crowley and Neuburg at the beginning of this one. I see a similarity between Kelly, Neuburg and Barritt paralleling the one between Dr Dee, Aleister Crowley and Dr Leary.

The synchronicity involved in this understandably blew their minds, to the point where Tim began to identify himself with Crowley.

There are synchronicities and synchronicities, this is no Jungian beetle crawling over a window sill, this is international! The mysterious force that brought Tim to Bou Saada had to get him out of prison in the States first, fly him across the Atlantic and drive him out of Algiers itself by using Eldridge Cleaver. Was it the same unconscious directive that scooped up Aliester and Victor sixty years ago and deposited them amongst the cones of sand? They seem to have had no more idea of their mission than we had.

 

Crowley himself writes about his experiences in Algeria in his book, The Vision and the Voice in which he talks about the crossing of the Abyss working he conducted with Neuberg. This ritual working would become a major initiatic milestone in Crowley's magical system. He later wrote: 

This doctrine is extremely difficult to explain; but it corresponds more or less to the gap in thought between the Real, which is ideal, and the Unreal, which is actual. In the Abyss all things exist, indeed, at least in posse, but are without any possible meaning; for they lack the substratum of spiritual Reality. They are appearances without Law. They are thus Insane Delusions... Now the Abyss being thus the great storehouse of Phenomena, it is the source of all impressions.

 

The Abyss is the gap between the real and unreal, the noumenal and the phenomenal, and to successfully pass through this gap the initiate was required to destroy his ego. If this did not happen the life, or at least the mind, of the initiate would be destroyed. Crowley first performed this ritual in the desert at Bou Sadaa, and there are some who argue that even he did not successfully cross and that this is why things went badly for him at the end of his life.

To pass through the Abyss Crowley always cautioned that the magician must fully shed his ego to attain his Higher Self. He must become Nemo (Greek for "no man"). To ensure that the magician has done this, or to prevent the success of those who do not become an egoless Nemo, the initiate must must also deal with Choronzon, the Guardian of the Threshold. 

This demonic being is really the last, most shadowy, vestiges of our ego made solid and monstrous by its will to perpetuate itself. It was Choronzon that Dee and Kelly also encountered in their experiments with Enochian magic.

 

 

Guardians of the Gate

Choronzon is really the archetype of various Guardians of the Threshold which can be found in the mythology and temple architecture of cultures across the planet. In every case, these beings protect sacred areas or zones of being from the defilement of the base Self or ego. This they do through fear, repulsion and the threat of violence to the body and the soul.

One of Crowley's successors, Kenneth Grant, claimed that we can find a similar Guardian of the Threshold entity in the fiction of horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft. The Lovecraftian Old One that Grant most associates with Choronzon is Yog-Sothoth. Here Lovecraft describes Yog-Sothoth:

Nor is it to be thought ... that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or than the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and when they shall break through again...

 

We should keep in mind that Lovecraft calls Yog-Sothoth, the gate (Gateway High School?) The gate, or the door, has turned up in this blog previously as related to the Oak, or Duir -- the Celtic letter which corresponds to the Greek Delta or the Hebrew Daleth. Daleth is the initial letter of Da'at, which we will soon discover is the true Door to the Abyss.

It is also very fascinating that Grant works out a whole, very complex mythology whereby Yog-Sothoth/Choronzon is equated with the star, Sirius. This blog will slowly make its way into these murky waters. It is helpful first, though, to examine some other Guardians of the Threshold.

The term Nemo, or "no man," that Crowley is using to title the egoless adept who crosses the Abyss comes from Homer's Odyssey. In the famous story Odysseus uses his wits to escape the cave of the Cyclops, Polyphemus. He tells the monster that his name is No Man, and then later gets Polyphemus drunk and blinds him. When the Cyclops cries to his neighbours for help they ignore him as being mad when he complains that "no man" is attacking him.

 

Odysseus uses his wits to escape the Guardian, but he can only do so by giving up his identity and his ego. He does not pass through the Abyss successfully, however. After leaving the cave he reasserts his sense of self by boasting of his name and heritage to the blinded Cyclops, who in turn curses him. The full extent of the selfish folly of Odysseus, or Ulysses, is not revealed until Dante sings of the hero's last and tragic voyage. I'll return to this in another post.

Gates of Eden

Another key example of this type of Guardian, and this time from the Bible, is the Covering Cherub who with a flaming sword prevents humanity's premature re-entry into the Earthy paradise of Eden.




The Covering Cherub plays a large role in the poetic cosmology of William Blake. Blake combines the symbolism of the jeweled New Jerusalem, or Zion, which returns in the sky in Revelation, with the description of the terrifying but glittering Cherub of Ezekiel 28. Here Lucifer is identified with the Covering Cherub with the fiery sword.

¹³ You were in Eden,

   the garden of God;

 every precious stone adorned you:

   carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,

   topaz, onyx and jasper,

   lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.

Your settings and mountings were made of gold;

   on the day you were created they were prepared.

¹⁴ You were anointed as a guardian cherub,

   for so I ordained you.

You were on the holy mount of God;

   you walked among the fiery stones.

In Blake's theosophy it is necessary to overcome the Cherub, which ultimately he identifies with the Self or Ego, in order to regain entry into Paradise. This entirely matches with Crowley's teaching and, as we'll see, with the Kabbalah. Blake also notes that this Cherub also appears, with its double, on the Ark of the Covenant. Generally these Cherubim are viewed as being Michael and Gabriel, but Blake makes a good case that in the original mythology these two are Michael and Lucifer -- two opposing aspects of the same being.

This agrees with the Hero Twin stories we've been looking at. The Covering Cherub blocking entrance to the gates of Eden, the Guardian of the Threshold, is both Christ and Antichrist. The symbols are all ambiguous. Blake viewed the Bible as being circular and not linear. It begins in the Garden and ends with the appearance of the City of Zion, the final revelation. But in a way the cycle repeats with a Fall from the City into the Garden and from there into this fallen Mundane Shell.

 

The fierce, iridescent Guardian is also, from another perspective or state of consciousness absent of ego, the vision of the New Jerusalem -- the true Zion which awaits us all. Christ and Antichrist return together.

Before returning to the Garden, and from there to the City, we must overcome the Cherub who is assigned, we should remember, to prevent humanity from eating of the Tree of Eternal Life having already sinfully partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is in these two trees, and the Fall associated with them, that the solution to the greatest mysteries are found.
 
 

It was knowledge that really condemned Adam and his offspring. Eve and Adam, like most of us, attempted to know something that they weren't really ready for. In short, they attempted to cross the Abyss without first ridding themselves of ego, without first gaining the eternal life of selflessness. This is quite explicit in the mythology. Knowledge in Hebrew is Da'at and this is what the tree is named.

Know in the Biblical Sense

Da'at means knowledge. It can be found in Proverbs 24:4:

 Da'at fills the rooms with precious things.

Apparently the rooms here refer to the 6 chambers of the heart. In the Kabbalah, Da'at is the union of the Wisdom of Chokmah and the Understanding of Binah. This in turn has been viewed since the time of the Zohar as being the sexual union of Father and Mother. This is knowledge in the biblical sense of "And Adam knew his wife Eve." Here is the place of hierogamy, divine marriage, where in union separate egos are melded and dissolved in love.

In the Kabbalah the two trees of Eden are united as one, the Tree of Life, which consists of three pillars and ten centres of emanation, or sephiroth. The middle pillar of the Tree of Life also contains the hidden 11th sephirah, Da'at. In Crowley's system this sephirah is also the location of the Abyss, which the adept has to cross to reach the higher centres. 

On the Tree of Life, each one of the sephiroth became identified with one of seven planets, the elements or the zodiac. The hidden sephirah of Da'at, really the union of all of the other centres, much later became identified with Sirius. 

We should keep in mind the full symbolic equation (although this is all approximate): Da'at=the Abyss=the Guardian of the Threshold=Choronzon=the Covering Cherub=Yog-Sothoth=Sirius. 

The Twin Pillars

The two pillars of the Tree of Life are symbolically also the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, of the Temple of Solomon. These pillars later go on to become major symbols in Freemasonry. Solomon's Temple, though, is most well known as being the house of the Ark of the Covenant. It houses the great mystery of God.


The second Temple, based on Solomon's construction, enters largely into the story of Christ. Gentle Jesus famously kicked out the money lenders, but in a more esoteric sense, and this is also Blake's sense, Christ embodied the Temple. The two thieves he was crucified with also represent the two pillars (and the three make XXX).



One thief asks for Mercy, and is forgiven and granted Heaven, and the other scornful thief faces his Justice in Hell. Mercy and Justice are exactly the equivalents of Jachin and Boaz. The parallels become undeniable at the time of Christ's death. The Temple veil is rent in two from top to bottom. The mystery is finally revealed for all to see.



The story of Christ, then, is another example of the crossing of the Abyss. His Cross is another representation of the Tree of Life.

On this Tree there are the ten sephiroth but there are also 22 paths connecting these ten. Each of these 22 paths are assigned one of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It may be necessary to get deeper into this at a later stage, but for now it is important to note the thirteenth path, the path of the letter Gimel.

The 13th path runs from the heart sephirah of Tiphareth to the crown of Kether. It is one of the most, if not the most, important paths of the Tree of Life because it passes directly across the Abyss separating the Microprosopus of the lower seven sephiroth, to the Macroprosopus of the upper supernal triangle. The 13th path of Gimel, then, passes across the Abyss and through the 11th (non)sephirah of Da'at. Da'at, as was mentioned, is identified by modern astrologers like Gareth Knight as Sirius.

Here is an image of the Masonic tracing board, based on the Jachin and Boaz pillars of Solomon's Temple seen also in the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah. The middle pillar, and its ladder on the tracing board, leads up to a blazing star between the Sun and the Moon. From the writings of Albert Pike, and others before him, we know that this star is also Sirius. The symbolism is becoming clearer.

The 22 major arcana of the tarot are also corresponded to Hebrew letters in the occult tradition. The card associated with Gimel and the 13th path is the High Priestess. She will become very important later when discussing specific crossing the Abyss rituals. Here she is now enthroned between the two pillars.


 

And here is a more modern version of the same set of symbolism:

Over the Rainbow

One more symbol to introduce briefly before wrapping this up is the Rainbow Bridge. The Rainbow Bridge is situated in exactly the same place on the Tree of Life as the Abyss. It spans Da'at and in all cultures, as in the Bifrost of Norse mythology, it is viewed as being a bridge between men and the gods. The meaning is essentially the same.

Once we pass over the Rainbow Bridge, across the Abyss, and become No Man (as Odysseus did for a time) by transcending the ego, we reach the Star. It is between and beyond all of the opposites. Sun and moon, dark and light, good and evil, male and female, spirit and matter. It is also the state of lucid dreaming, between consensus waking and dreaming sleep. In this lucid state we create our own systems, as Blake taught us.

 

The examples of Crossing the Abyss provided here have tended to be individual journeys. It is important to realize, though, that this passage also happens collectively at certain times. Carl Jung in his later book, Flying Saucers, discusses just this sort of passage in relation to the passage from the Age of Pisces (an age of dualism -- symbolized by Christ and Antichrist) to the Age of Aquarius (an age of a more unified vision).  

As we know from ancient Egyptian history, there are symptoms of psychic changes that always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. They are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the archetypes or "Gods" as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started within the historical tradition and left traces behind within it, first in the transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius.

I agree with Jung that humanity collectively is right now in one of these rapid transformations of the collective psyche -- a shift of the Ages. Whether or not this is occurring exactly in 2012, or whether the shift will be subtle or dramatic are not very important questions. I personally think that it is this year that marks the shift, but in any case the change will come soon.

 

Given this, humanity is once again at a point where collectively we enter into an imaginative space between the Ages. We are all crossing the Abyss together. This is sort of a twilight zone where nothing is fully formed yet everything exists in potential. 

In the Kabbalah this exactly corresponds with the hidden sephirah of Da'at, which can be represented by Sirius on a macrocosmic scale. To be conscious of this shift is to gain access to great power. Awareness allows one to form the emerging Age. This is why those who would keep us transfixed by their Spell want to prevent us from being aware.

By studying the myths of all cultures regarding the shifting of previous Ages, and prophecies for the present shift, we can find valuable symbols and concepts. The appearance of the Hero Twins, the descent into and surfacing of the underworld, the revelation of the New Jerusalem, the crossing of the Abyss, the Rainbow Bridge, the final battle, etc. all return at these points of climax within the cycle. To grasp all of this simultaneously, as one complete vision, is to crack the Spell. 

Prophets not Profit

In all of the occult "mega-rituals" that we witness, one of the biggest about to happen in a few hours, we have the ability to use the Spell against the spell-casters. All of these symbols are ambiguous. The reality engineers have the exact same archetypes to work with as we do. No more and no less. Use their own spectacle to elevate. As the Blake scholar, Northrop Frye, wrote in 1947 almost as if he knew about London 2012:

England has to choose whether to turn its green and pleasant land into Jerusalem or a howling waste of Satanic mills, and Blake is practically the only Englishman who can express the fact that that choice is now before England, and is still a choice. Jerusalem is Blake's contribution to the struggle between the prophet and the profiteer for the soul of England which is England's Armageddon: it is a burning-glass focusing the rays of a fiery city on London in the hope of kindling an answering flame.

In a few short hours, the Flame will light the Cauldron and the underworld journey will come to an end. Sirius, symbolically, will rise from the Duat, just as she will physically at the end of the Games. We do not know what will happen -- whether the prophet or the profiteer will come out on top. We do know the passage through the Abyss is at full pace now. Synchronicities are multiplying, just as Jung said they would be at these times. Things are about to get even weirder.

And speaking of profiteers, London's mayor gave a rousing, V for Vendetta-like, big screen, Buckingham Palace, Torch rally-spectacle speech yesterday in which he said:

The excitement is growing so much I think the Geiger counter of Olympo-mania is going to go zoink on the scale! People are coming from around the world and they're seeing the greatest city on earth.

Zoink! Geiger counter?? Is he just playing with us, or is he really that out of touch?
Is phoney Olympo-mania about to bite the dust? Can Batman save us?