Kabbalah and Magick

by Magi

There are no hard and fast rules here and the Kabbalah can be used in anyway you want to. It is an instrument of practical research and not some sort of dogmatic system of plan. It is necessary to gain a firm understanding of the correspondences and uses of the Tree of Life which can only be gained through study and practices or various exercises.

It is essential to build up a mental image of the structural map of the Tree of Life. Practice being able to form a clear mental picture of the Tree in skeletal form. Once this is accomplished, practice filling in the spheres and paths with the appropriate sets or correspondences. The colours are a useful set of attributes to start with. Once you are holding an image of the Tree in your mind, try painting with your imagination the appropriate colours for the sphere.

Once a clear Tree is held in the mind's eye, you can practice at focusing in any particular section of the Tree, perhaps one particular plane, pillar, triad, sphere or path on its own. Study and experience how this is connected to other spheres and its relationship to the whole Tree.

Magick is causing change in line with the Will of the Magician. Mysticism is involved with the attainment of altered states of consciousness, usually through rising above the material plane. In one sense, magick can be described as growth through immanence, and mysticism as growth through transcendence. Both ways can be related to the Tree of Life. The basis of both, in terms of the Kabbalah is to make contact with our own inner world and/or the outer world (which to a magician exists because of his Will, while to a mystic it exists despite his Will).

Once the image of the Tree is firmly rooted in consciousness, you can then work with the Tree as a whole or focus as appropriate in any particular sphere or path as appropriate to your magickal needs.

All cultures throughout our planet's history have described beings and creatures that exist in other realities or dimensions in parallel with and sometimes interpenetrating our world. In the view of some mainstream psychologists, these 'extra-dimensional' beings are the impersonal forces of nature which we personalise so we can attempt to gain control over them. According to others, however, these beings are representative of real forces. looked at superficially, our world is composed o atoms and molecules which arrange themselves to create the different life-forms we directly perceive. If we examine this basic atomic reality under an electron microscope, we enter the world of sub-atomic particles. This is a level of existence where different laws apply, but it is no less real simply because we cannot see it on a mundane level. The same applies to the levels of existence which we cannot perceive with our usual senses but which are, despite this, no less real.

As work on the Kabbalah progresses, we start to meet with 'other beings'. At first sight, talking of meeting 'extra-dimensional beings' may appear strange, even ridiculous, until we consider their nature. Any being or entity outside or ourselves can be considered this way, including other human beings. Whether these 'beings' actually exist outside or whether they are figments or our imagination, projections or parts of us that we do not recognise as being part of us, we all have the experience that they exist.

All the beings that inhabit the world, including animals, plants and all living and so-called non-living things are apparently outside of us and we meet them primarily in Malkuth. At a deeper level we meet astral entities that inhabit the lower spheres on the Tree of Life. These astral beings include those we meet in dreams, astral projections, fantasies, visualisations and include all symbols and thought forms - Tiphareth, while primarily associated with our essential selves is also the sphere for contact with our guardian angels. Whether these angels exist outside of us does not matter in practical terms. When we contact Tiphareth we find such beings in attendance. Then on even deeper levels of the Tree of Life we may contact Archangels and, if we reach the Supernal Triad, we may have contact with the Deity or some aspect of it.

Datth is the unnumbered sphere that resides in the Abyss between the Supernal Triad and the lower spheres of the Tree of Life. It is said to be the access point to the reverse side of the Tree where all the demons that bring 'dis-ease' into our life exist. Again whether these 'demons' merely represent aspects of our own shadow nature and inhabit the dark recesses of our being, or whether they are actual entities with a life of their own is irrelevant. We can communicate with them and affect our relationship with them as if they are real.

But why would we want to contact with astral entities? If we are to be whole, to include rather than exclude all our energies, one way of achieving this is through making contact with all forces within our universe. We are usually quite willing to include the so called good entities such as our guardian angel. On the other hand, once we discuss communicating with demons, we are entering the realm of the shadow, which includes these parts of ourselves that we would rather now face.

Any aspect of our being and our energy that we exclude from our awareness becomes part of our shadow, which can be described as the big bag we drag round behind us. The more shadow we have, the more we are excluding, the heavier our bag becomes and the more it restricts our free movement. Conversely, the more material from this 'shadow bag' we can dredge out, face, deal with, and integrate into our conscious being, the lighter the bag becomes and the more energy we have available to fulfil our life functions from the loftiest sense of the Devine through to everyday functions that help us survive in the world.