In the Beginning was the Word ~ Malkuth

Chapter Ten

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
~ In the Court of the Crimson King ~

- chapter index -
pg. 1 - Intro: The Schizoid Man | pg. 2 - Night Sounds
pg. 3 - Welcome to the Machine | pg. 4 - The Laboratory
pg. 5 - Agamemnon | pg. 6 - Prometheus
pg. 7 - Paranoia's Poison Door | pg. 8 - Projective Identification
pg. 9 - The Promethean Rebel | pg. 10 - Aries and the Emperor
pg. 11 - Mirrors | pg. 12 - In the Beginning was the Word
pg. 13 - Death Seed | pg. 14 - I Talk to the Wind
pg. 15 - Said the Straight Man to the Late Man | pg. 16 - Epitaph
pg. 17 - Apollo | pg. 18 - The Fate of All Mankind
pg. 19 - Malkuth

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Following the Promethean Fire of 21st Century Schizoid Man and the cool intellectual Air of I Talk to The Wind , Epitaph introduces the element of Water.

And so we have...

1) Fire

2) Air

3) Water

Creation - “In the Beginning …”

"Creation is seen to have taken place, in Western kabbalistic and alchemical terms, in the following process.

The Divine mind of God, the Absolute, or in Hebrew the Ain Soph Aur (Limitless Light), through a series of expansions and contractions establishes the boundaries of Creation. The first world is the most subtle, and closest to the original state of non-existence, and is Atzilooth.

21st Century Schizoid Man

This is called the world of Fire, because of the lively, undefined, and almost uncontrollable nature of fire. Next is Briah,

I Talk to The Wind

or the World of Archetypes and forms as our human mind can grasp them. It is symbolized as the World of Air, and is the result as a barrier world that is formed by the creation of the next World, Yetzirah, or Water.

Epitaph

This is the highly psychic and emotionally charged world immediately behind the veil of material existence, or Assiah. Also known as the World of Earth, because of the solid, concrete nature of material life.

The purpose of this scheme, is to show that creation occurs in increasingly dense levels of energy-matter, from the most subtle, or Fire, to the most dense, or Earth.

YHVH

The Hebrew doctrine of Creation sets forth the idea that the Primordial Man, or Adam was composed of the four lettered name of God stacked in vertical form to appear as sort of stick figure being. In addition, all of creation could be found to have it origin in this sacred name, and it pronunciation was closely guarded, so much so, that it is now lost. The discovery of its proper intonation is said to bring power over everything, so much so, that there are schools of kabbalah that only work with the various manipulations of this Name as their form of meditation.

The standard Elemental application: Yod is associated with Fire; Heh with Air; Vau with Water; and the Final Heh with Earth."

- Secret Fire: The Relationship Between Kundalini, Kabbalah, and Alchemy

Because of the solid, concrete nature of material life" (Assiah) "also known as the World of Earth" we might say that the sum total of side one is Earth, or the earthbound, rational, material ideas of Freudian-Kleinian psychoanalysis.

"The physical world is the final crystallization of higher forces, and so the manifest world (such as Malkuth of the Kabbalists) and the element Earth itself are considered to be composed of the other elements."

- Byzant Symbols: Pentagram

"Jung's four psychological functions -- Intuition, Thought, Feeling and Sensation (fire, air, water and earth) -- naturally arrange themselves in a hierarchy of abstraction which reflects their relative "densities." That is to say, sensation (earth) is "denser" than emotion (water), just as water is denser than air, and thought (air) "denser" than intuition (fire). The ancient earth, water, air, fire metaphor symbolizes a profound psychic hierarchy which Jung clearly recognized as an archetypal description of human consciousness. The Kabbalah goes even further and describes each of Jung's functions as an actual dimension; specifically, Assiah (earth), Yetzirah (water), Briah (air) and Atziluth (fire). Indeed, each realm is conceived to be spatially at least as infinite as the physical multiverse."

- Psychedelic Shamanism
by Jim DeKorne

Is there no more to life than oscillating between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions? Between sin and repentance? Are we no more than a walking shadow, a poor player that struts (in the paranoid-schizoid position) and frets (in the depressive position) ...his hour upon the stage"?

"All the emanations of the Tree of Life congeal into the lowest spot. In this place, there is an absence of color, only darkness exists here."

- Malkuth

Epitaph , with its deluge of feeling, represents a breakthrough of unconscious material into consciousness. Yet Freud and his disciples (such as Klein) characterize the unconscious as a dangerous realm to be avoided.

Jung on Freud

"Freud had discovered the realm of the unconscious and successfully mapped its shoreline to our conscious behaviors, but he had never ventured more than a few miles inland. In Freud's view, the unconscious was a chamber of horrors involving death, sex taboo, and traumatic childhood experiences. He based these views on his work with Vienna's anxiety-ridden upper-middle class.

Jung, on the other hand, spent his formative years amongst a far broader range of patients - inmates across all walks of life condemned to asylums. In the unconscious, Jung saw not only a cause to our madness but a means to our healing.

Nowhere was the Freud/Jung dichotomy more apparent than in their respective approaches to dreams. Where Freud viewed dreams as a difficult lock to be picked - and only leading into sex and death at that - Jung saw our dreams as speaking to us - with no limitations - but in an archaic fashion that required interpretive assistance."

- The Jung and the Restless

Moving beyond the depressive position and towards Individuation requires an increasing familiarity with the unconscious. It requires moving, as Jung did, beyond Freud, beyond the intellect, beyond side one.

"I’ll burn my books. Ah, Mephostophilis! . . . .

Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight,
And burned is Apollo’s laurel bough,
That sometime grew within this learned man."

- Doctor Faustus
Christopher Marlowe

The sum total of side one is earth or the lowest sephiroth on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Malkuth. Malkuth completes the journey down the tree into physical incarnation (creation). The spiritual pilgrimage, back up the tree (evolution), occurs on side two and begins with the journey from the earth (Malkuth) to the moon ( Moonchild -Yesod).

Malkuth: The tenth emanation of the Tree of Life.

"Malkuth is associated with the Goddesses of the Earth especially Persephone (Greece), Proserpina (Rome), and Geb (Egypt). Malkuth is the domain of the manifested universe, the immediate enviroment, the plane of physical reality. As a consequence, all 'inner journeys of consciousness' begin symbolically in Malkuth; it is particularly appropriate, for example, that the myth of the rape of Perspehone confirms her both as queen of the Underworld and as a Lunar Goddess. From an occult point of view, the Underworld equates with the Lower unconscious mind, and the Moon, represented by the sphere of Yesod, is the first Sephirah reached on the inner mystic journey up the Tree of Life."

- Cabala

"Power," on the Qabalistic Tree of Life, would represent the Pillar of Severity, and in particular the Sephiroth of Geburah, Power. "Compassion would represent the Pillar of Mercy, and in particular the Sephiroth of Chesed, Mercy. To balance between these two forces, favoring neither one nor the other, would place us on the Middle Pillar, which would be in keeping with Qabalistic spiritual goals. Upon the Middle Pillar are the Sephiroth of Malkuth (the Earth), Yesod (the Moon), Tifareth (the Sun), and Kether (the "Crown," the origin of the cosmos as pure Spirit)."

- The Charge as Ethical Precept

"Occultists identify Tiphareth as the sphere of spiritual Rebirth, and ascribe to it the Solar Deities such as Ra, Apollo, and Mithra as well as Osiris and Jesus Christ."

- Cabala

And after the flood waters of Epitaph have subsided, there comes a prolonged submersion in the still dark waters of Eros.

Virgil's Tomb by Joseph Wright

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