The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life is a schematic of polarization that creates a total dynamic of integration. There are those who say that these polarities are endemic to the universe - and there are those who say that we create them through our mental projections. Clearly we are parts of the universe, so polarity and its perception (and the perception of its resolution) are operative on at least THAT level - BUT whether our maps and schematics and diagrams apply in our absence - THAT is a question worth considering.

The Tree of Life has many variants - shown here is the so-called Kircher Tree - because it was published for a non-Jewish audience by the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. For many in the Western Hermetic tradition it is the Only tree of life. It is indeed an admirable set of checks and counter-checks: a circuit that amounts to a consolidation of soul. It is an architectural schematic for a soul, a world. The Qabalah/Kabbalah incorporated these polarity schemas from ancient Greek philosophies of emanation which claim that the light of God trickles into the degenerate levels of manifestation by means of all these conduits. In such conceptions, God is outside the tree- accessed through a kind of bottle-neck in the first sphere, Kether. Our task is to clamber up for an audience.

A non-emanative conception agrees that this is one way of approaching it - a type of serious play or game: an initiatic theatre of alienation and return, BUT - this is not all what is going on. From such a conception the trickle-down economy of God is ultimately an illusion. The Tree as a series of successively more dense spheres is only half a truth. The full truth is that Divinity is never and cannot be alienated. The Tree of Life is a contingent and human schematic for arranging energies - taming them by stratagem. That makes it no less divine. Divinity is all-saturating. The Tree is a fruit of infinite potential - and a means of establishing a world-picture. Both levels can be at play simultaneously without contradiction. Ultimately, Malkuth is where this "true illusion" takes root. Divinity abounds and saturates. It is not absent. Not even from the soil. Especially not from the soil.

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