The Veils of Negative Existence (1): Limitless Light, Limitless Darkness, and how “God” became schizophrenic.

The First of the Negation gates that transcend the Sephirot` (Sapphires/Spheres) of the Tree of Life and Death in Qabalah is known in Hebrew as Ayn Sof Or — the “Limitless Light”.

This Trans-dimensional, Eternal, Transcendent Light is known in Monotheism as the “Light of the Holy Spirit” (AUor b’Ruach HaQodesh in Hebrew), which shines upon everyone in the Universe, “Just and Unjust”, through the Wisdom of the Spiritually Gnostic. The Gnostics — those who “know” spiritual truths experientially — are those souls who have joined their minds, hearts and spirits in Universal Communion with the Entirety of Our Species (The Human Family), and come to communion with the Fullness (Pleroma) of G-d thereby.

This Human Communion with the Ancient of Days is  the True Christ of Sacred Love, which I previously showed is traditionally conveyed via the symbol of the Graceful Dove, with the Olive Branch of Peace within its beak. The Elder Spirit of Life’s Community continually calls and summons us to full participation in brotherhood and sisterhood with ALL other human beings, in recognition of our inseparability as a species. Enter through Anshar’s gate completely, and you will enter into the Mass Celebration of the Wholeness/Holiness of Life. This Joyful, Free, Communal Love was called Agape by Hellenistic Gnostics, and was seen as an extension, expansion, and sublimation of romantic, erotic, platonic, and other forms of the Spectrum of Love and Friendship.

The Limitless Light, or Anshar to Necronomicon folks, illuminates and awakens all human beings to the true nature of our being as Limitless Souls, capable of incarnating any and every virtue and aspect of the Divine and/or the Asuric. The Limitless Light, which is also called “The White Light of the Holy Spirit” in Spiritualist and New Age circles, reveals our True Source as originating within the Essential Soul of the Cosmos. The revelation of Anshar is the revelation of the Infinity of Information within the Mind of GOD. Anshar, the White Space of this Infinite Information, mates together with “his” corresponding counterpart, Kishar — the Spirit set over Limitless Darkness, also called “The Bottomless Pit”, into which those who lead a spiritually evil and selfish existence can find themselves entrapped, but which also creates plenty of room for incarnation, materialization, and sacred creation.

Just as Anu is the Heaven-Father GOD, and Ki the Earth Mother GODDESS, Anshar and Kishar are the infinite extensions (aeons in Greek) from which the solidified “pearls” of our particular “Heaven” and “Earth” individually manifest. Creative emanation (Atzilut`) naturally proceeds from more pure, abstract, spiritual planes into tangible, fixed, concrete realities: limited, individual universes, and particular worlds and planets take shape via this complex yet profound multi-level process.

The Sumerians conveyed Anshar’s domain by pointing to the “Celestial Pole” in the vicinity of the North Star, around which the Heavens apparently rotate, and which was held to be the Sacred Throne upon which An sat and made his pronouncements as Lord of the 60. Kishar’s name, in contrast, means “Host of Earth”: “she” represents and embodies the entire extent of the Space/Time/Matter/Understanding Continuum. Kishar’s darkness is the backdrop for all the stars and planets of Heaven — the stage on which the dramas of our cosmos unfold. In one sense, therefore, Kishar herself IS the Necronomicon, because within her bosom are the potentials and possibilities for evoking all manner of dark deeds, beings, rites, and black magic arts into physical existence. Nonetheless, just as Egypt’s (Khem’s) pitch black soil was world-renowned for its amazing, renewable fertility, the Egyptians are regarded in spiritual literature as the masters of Al-Chemy, which held the power to transmute the basest elements of the material universe into the most exalted, powerful, and medicinal substances, both within individuals and in metals. Hence, while the Darkness is where evil hides and shelters itself, it is not evil in itself. This is a very important point because women and femininity are traditionally associated with the yin powers of Earth and Darkness, and male priests and magi have foolishly demonized them by association for centuries, especially in the Western world. This is silly because without feminine virtues like grace, faith, wisdom, immanence, and gestation, no one can ever successfully employ the Earth’s Serpent Power to positive ends!

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It is said in a New Testament epistle that “GOD is Light, and in Him there is no Darkness” (1 John). If one looks at “God” solely from a top-down view, as a Divine Perfection pouring out Light into the vessels of a world trapped in the dark, then this is understandable and excusable. This is, after all, the primary motif in Johannine Christianity:

“In him was Life, and that Life was the Light of all mankind. The Light shines in the Darkness, and the Darkness has not overcome it…The True Light that gives Light to everyone was coming into the world…

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved Darkness instead of Light because their deeds were evil.

The monotheistic religions are, admittedly, primarily Heaven-based religions, in which Truth is Revealed from On High, rather than cultivated from the grassroots of the Earth, as in Wicca and some neo-pagan or feminist religions. Sadly, monotheists have inherited, through the predecessor cultures that converted to One God, a psychological neurosis when it comes to gender. Patriarchal masculinity has, since the rise of agriculture, civilization, and warrior culture, asserted Divinity primarily through the imagery and cults of strong, active male gods who boldly exercise their power through dominance. Marduk, who slew chaotic Tiamat, founded a male priesthood that exercised power through predatory lending. Peasants were systematically, via legal decree, severed from stewardship and ownership of their own lands — a practice that was so successful for the patriarchal elite that it was carried into nearly every other western civilization that followed it, as a means to keep the populace under the power of patriarchal priests and kings.

These polarized cultures decried the feminine as weak or even treacherous, fearing the Earth and Goddess, and believing Her Power had to be contained, controlled, and continually dominated. The Latin word for Lord is “Domine” — it has the connotation of a Master who gets his way through force. For the last 6000 years or so, women have been both politically and religious relegated to serving men as housekeepers, and obligated to provide them with children (preferably males). As men gradually split their own personalities over the centuries by rejecting and demonizing the feminine, they also projected their bipolar split onto women, whom they both loved and feared. This resulted in what has been called the “Virgo/Porno complex”, in which female sexuality is either virginal until male-determined marriage allows it narrow expression through procreation, or dirtied through prostitution into the figure of the harlot, who must make her living by surrendering her body to men’s whims. Ancient cults that gave the feminine equal or even superior status were overcome, marginalized, and sometimes even banned if they grew too brazen in their practices.

This historical-religious situation has been just as spiritually damaging to men as to women, as it has castrated men from enjoying the more graceful aspects of Life and their own personalities. Without equality, love was reduced to fucking, and men became schizophrenic as they lusted after the power of the same “pussies” they decried in their own personalities and actions.

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In examining the roles of Light and Darkness, and the male versus female polarities, let’s talk for a little while about the Lord Yawe — once a tribal/national god who, via Moses’ power and that of the prophets who followed in his footsteps, was ritually, sacrificially, miraculously (and possibly even magically) elevated from an obscure desert tribal spirit to become a single God-entity. The monotheistic god that was announced by Moses as the new and lasting replacement for polytheism, and the liberator of Israel from Egypt and its other enemies, developed and took form in the mind and spirit of a prophet who was an immensely talented, Egyptian and Midiani-trained fire priest. It seems, however, that Moses himself was so insecure — because of his stammering among other things — that he got his brother and sister to do most of the talking for him, both with the Pharaoh of Egypt and with Israel. Having studied the 6th and 7th Books of Moses, which are remnants of old Semitic magic, it seems sometimes to me that Yawe was everything that Moses couldn’t or wouldn’t be to his people — both his superego AND his shadow, you could say.

My own experimental use of the Seal of the Burning Bush, which boasted that “the Spirit that appears here is God Himself”, resulted in an experience of the God of Israel as the Eternal Force of Life. This was very beautiful, profound, and deep, but “God” did not strike me an entity which issued over 300 regulations and expected compliance on pain of death.

Contemplating this, I’ve come to the conclusion that the true G-D is — although definitely a real being — far beyond any attributes, names, or titles we might know “him” by. And as for the exoteric version of the “Lord Yawe” found in Jewish scriptures, it is an attempt to force-fit an immense being into the language, rules, rituals, and proscriptions of a rather primitive, nationalist, typical tribal society.

I believe that Moses introduced all his laws and commandments with a definite plan in mind for the future of his people, but because of certain perspectives outlined in the book of Deuteronomy, and the fact that the text states that “there never again arose another prophet like Moses”, his successors did not share his abilities and talents to the same degree, and so merely worked within (perhaps subconsciously) an inviolable yet relative framework that he established as an expansion of a rather petty, old Semitic god. Moses may have anticipated that, eventually, someone just as prophetically apt as him (such as Elijah), or even someone who surpassed him (such as Jesus) would come along and complete his vision, reforming his system as necessary.

Of course, if the Torah is to be believed, Moses supposedly laid down inviolable rules that were to be perpetuated “throughout all generations”. Did he really author all the commandments attributed to his time as a prophet? Did he introduce compromise, temporary, makeshift rituals to forge a strong communal identity out of a stubborn, immature congregation, as Jesus sometimes argued? Or did priests just credit their own invented traditions to Moses in order to lend divine authority to their elaborate rituals?

Whatever the truth of the matter — and the nature of Lord Yawe as an Eternal God versus a fallible, neurotic demiurge — the priests and prophets of Israel and Judah performed very powerful miracles (or magic), attested to throughout their tradition and even occasionally by their neighbors at times. By ceremonially channelling the energy of the Infinite, Eternal Light through specific ritual practices, they could accomplish wondrous effects, through the ritual invocation and evocation of the energy and spirit of a very aggressive “God of Justice”, who was “Lord of All the Hosts of Heaven”. In other words, from a red magic perspective, the power that was summoned and evoked was not just that of any one, particular, individual god-ego, but that of the God of ALL gods, the power of Pantheon condensed into a single entity, before which the others were powerless by ritual design. Although their collective projection of God carried all the same hangups and neuroses that they did, the Israelis could overcome — by the power of ritual exclusivity and the taxing, expensive, extensive and elaborate cult practices such singular devotion demanded — the power of ANY polytheistic god or nation, through the simply more concentrated power of an all-encompassing God. Through the exercise of both destructive and healing powers, the prophets compelled Israeli rulers and commonfolk alike to maintain the ethical (if judgmental) monotheism they had been charged with at Mt. Horeb, or suffer divine punishments for their insolence. The prophets were not generally tyrranic people, as they advocated for social justice and the rights of the oppressed. However, they were generally as often feared as they were loved, as they could curse and destroy people and livestock in the name and through the power of The Lord if someone carelessly offended their pride or sensibilities. The prophet Elijah used his powers of compulsion to cause a bunch of bears to massacre some children that made fun of his baldness. Just as with his god, Elijah was always powerful, but not always fair and ethical. Ethically appalling actions such as these have been wrestled with intellectually by devout Jews for ages, and while even the Orthodox are more lenient than the ancient Israelis, they are hard pressed to justify some of these supposedly “divine” judgments.

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In both his blessings and destructive curses, Yawe held such an intimate, exclusive relationship with Moses that rebellion actually broke out several times against Moses’ privileged authority during the sojourn through the Sinai peninsula to Canaan. As I’ve stated above, Yawe had all the powers of the polytheist gods and none of the restrictions.  In the Old Testament of Hebrew scriptures, God is acknowledged in Psalm 139 as “Lord of the Light AND the Darkness”, whose spiritual presence one can and will face and encounter “even in Sheol” (the Void-Blank Grave, often equated with the Greek concept of “Hades”). It is worth pointing out though, that when one studies the Qabalah of the Shechinah — the Presence of God, the Sabbath Bride, and the manifestation of the Singular God in the form of Earth Goddess — a more psychologically complex, bigender image emerges that the fundamentalists and fanatics are largely clueless about.  In these ancient teachings, one can see how the nurturing Womb of Earth encompasses, by its fixed material nature, the Darkness of God, as the Earth accepts all denizens unconditionally and only lashes out at them according to the cycles and effects of natural laws.

Archaelogists have uncovered steles and other inscriptions where featureless Yawe is depicted and addressed in the company of “his Asherah”, revealing that at one point in time, the masculine and the feminine shared an equivalent and interdependent relationship in Israeli popular religion. Rabbinic Jews decry such things as heretic exceptions to the norm, but scholars have generally concluded that “pure”, masculine-by-default monotheism was among the latest of developments in monarchic Israel, and was only achieved on a national basis by King Yosiah of Judah because of a power vacuum that existed in the Israeli northern kingdom after the Assyrian conquests and deportations. The gulf appears to have widened as history progressed: in some Jewish scriptures and apocrypha, such as the Book of Enoch/Metatron, God (the Heaven Father) accuses the Earth of sheltering evil beings and people, and threatens destruction upon the planets’ surface unless the Earth (His OWN Feminine Side, if he really is the Sole Deity) yields up the demons hidden within its depths who afflict humanity continually both on the planetary surface AND in the atmosphere. Enraged that his former angels should abandon his Heaven for the chance to marry and consummate love with human women, “God” seemingly extends his condemnation of the feminine to the entire Earth itself, flooding it and destroying not only people in the process, but big chunks of the same natural world he created and engendered. After the vast destruction ends, and Noah and company emerge from their ark and make him a sweet-smelling offering, Yawe suddenly develops pangs of guilt for his actions, and vows never to destroy the whole Earth again on humanity’s account, offering the Rainbow as a token of his promise.

The classic Qabalic treatise “Gates of Holiness” (Shaarei Qedusha) teaches that the Divine Feminine — Faith-Wisdom — is in exile with Israel, having become estranged from the “God” regarded as a singular Heaven Father. This bipolar, schizophrenic split is brilliantly (and ruthlessly) outlined by psychoanalyst Jay Gonen in his book Yahweh versus Yahweh: The Enigma of Jewish History . What’s interesting is that, in the Shaarei Qedusha, it is said that it is the job of a truly spiritual person is to reconcile the Shechinah to God, and thus end the exile of the feminine. Talmudic and Qabalic sources teach that currently, when it comes to the display of God’s  Severity vs. his Mercy, our world — and God’s manifestation within it — has become dangerously unbalanced: artificially skewed in the direction of the Pillar of Severity. This is one reason why Rabbinic tradition often adopted more loose and liberal interpretations of divine commandments, and why it has been taught for some time that people should seek to correct the imbalance by being more merciful than judgmental, and by welcoming the Bride every Sabbath as God’s Beloved, who is the means and evidence of Israel’s redemption and homecoming. It may also explain why Jewish culture eventually switched from patriarchal to matriarchal lineages for determining the acceptance of children as Jews — it may have been a kind of concession to the cultural power of Jewish mothers in shaping Jewish men during their upbringing. The sad thing is that, given no real power within orthodox communities, many Jewish mothers came to use passive-aggressive guilt trips in order to control and manipulate their children’s lives, especially with their sons. After over a thousand years of continual persecution, genocide, and second-class citizenship, the irony is that Jewish men — with the possible exception of the frequently cold, dark, emotionally dead men of the modern State of Israel — are often kept submissive to the women in their lives, particularly by their mothers, through the systematic inculcation of guilt whenever they don’t go along with their wishes. Acknowledging and eliminating the power of guilt in the community has become a vitally important issue for many modern Jews. The imbalance has come full circle: now Jewish men are the ones seeking liberation!

Certain parts of the Gates of Holiness that I’ve read seem to imply that because the Lord YAWE emerged as such an emotionally and sexually imbalanced divinity within Judaism, he developed, as a result, a terribly dangerous and destructive temper that manifested whenever he couldn’t get his way. The tractate teaches that while merely “righteous” people obey his many commands with the expectation of being rewarded (or out of fear of being punished), and more pious people perform them with slightly more noble motivations, the saints who are held to truly love God the most love the LORD only for his own sake. Despite his divine mood swings, national and familial love, and a respect for Yawe’s divine dedication to justice and “bringing low the proud”, led some very devoted (and empathetic) Jews to accept (or even forgive!) Adonai’s  eccentricities, as an inevitable part of what they implied was a temporary imbalance in his nature for which humanity was as much to blame as God. These devotional qabalists sought, via the personal practice of  loving-kindness whenever legally possible, to reharmonize “God’s personality” through a compensatory emphasis on loving-kindness (Chesed) and Mercy in their daily lives and religious practice. This, they believed, would hasten the day when the two halves of God’s personality would be reunified, which would result in an end to the punitive, exoteric version of Judaism, as well as an end to the insecurity of a “False god Demiurge” which, somewhat contemporarily, the Gnostics contended had become insanely wrathful and bipolar due to the horrific combination of unlimited power and isolated identity.

Rather than abandon Israel’s national god altogether, however, the devotional Qabalists asserted that God just needed to be loved unconditionally, and that he only demanded fear and flew off into rage out of pure frustration at being unable to have his affections returned by his people in any meaningful way. If you’re a compensatory egomaniac with unlimited power that’s trapped up on a pedestal of divine superiority, what kind of existence would you be at the mercy of? Even an all-powerful God could, without love, be quite miserable! Carl Jung actually contented in his masterful work “Answer to Job” that for all his power, Yawe, as a “God”, is actually quite insecure when it comes to how humans regard him. He reveals his insecurities dramatically and obviously in the book of Job especially, by abandoning one of his most faithful servants to demonic persecution at the hands of his Satan, who is in reality just a negative, dark aspect of Yawe himself. Satan is the part of Yawe who would prefer to give up on his people and simply wipe them off the face of the planet in a fit of rage — a part he evidently succumbs to from time to time. When Job stands up to Lord Yawe and demands he tell him why he has treated him unfairly, Yawe himself appears in a thunderstorm and terrorizes Job into acquisence, arguing — rather unconvincingly — that because he is God and he is All-Powerful, Job has no right to question him and should just accept his place as a human being, passively receiving whatever temptations, trials, and hardships Yawe decides to dish out for him.

In a great act of humility, Job does this, and the story ends with Yawe clumsily attempting to recompense Job for his losses by blessing him with a whole new family and business that is much larger and successful than the last one, even though its obvious that he cannot (or will not) bring back his original family and farm. Jung contends that this story, which appears not in the torah or prophetic books, but in the more heterodox, liberal, pop-scriptures of the Diaspora world, marks a critical turning point in the evolution of the monotheist conception of God. Yawe’s inability to really give Job satisfactory answers to his sincere, heartfelt, pain-drenched questions, necessitates that at some point in time, God must adopt a more human and compassionate mode of relating to human beings, whose love, respect, and adulation he still, for all his infinite powers, seems to crave more than anything. Jung argues that the revelation of Christ, who suffered right alongside humankind and demonstrated divine compassion without judgment, was a natural result of this theologic crisis. Jack Miles Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God goes into much further detail on this subject for those who are interested.

The Necronomicon, in discussing the ancestral deities that are equivalent to the negative veils of Qabalah, expresses each “generation” not merely as a masculine potency, but as an interrelated, divine couple. In this respect, it can present a more balanced, healthy, and sane view of the aeonic, eternal powers that shape our cosmos through means of both gender and polarity. I have spent so much time discussing the Jewish God in this article because I feel its important to drive home just how critical it is that the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine be harmonized in one’s spiritual practice, especially when dealing with the Outermost Gates.

Without this Great Marriage, as you can see, a truly insane situation — and a truly insane demiurge — may be an inevitable result.